The sun rose, painting the yard in pale gold. Yan Shen stepped out of the house.
He moved with deliberate slowness. Not from pain: there was none. His body felt heavy, not with weight, but with potential. A contained pressure hummed in his bones. His skin felt like a thin dam holding back a river.
He reached the porch. Three wooden steps he'd known his whole life.
He lifted his right foot to take the first step down. The motion was a fraction too fast, a misjudgment of force.
His heel hit the wood.
CRACK.
The step exploded. Wood splintered and snapped. The sound ripped through the quiet morning. Yan Shen stumbled, catching his balance as he landed hard in the dirt.
A glance back showed the damage. The plank wasn't just broken; it was shattered from a single, careless movement
He stared at his foot. No pain. No strain. The wood had given way, not him.
Knees bent slightly, testing the tension. Power coiled in the thighs and calves, tight and ready. Every shift of weight felt dangerous. This was a weapon now, not a body for walking.
He moved away from the porch, each step precise. The dirt crunched too loudly under his feet.
The village woke around him. Birds called. But to Yan Shen, the world seemed quieter. His mind was the loud thing now.
Past the garden, beyond the crooked fence, into the forest's edge. The air smelled of pine. This was the old training ground. A place for stillness. For patience.
Today was different.
He stopped beneath an old pine, its trunk thick and gnarled.
His hands curled into fists. His feet settled into the soil.
A single step forward. A punch thrown. Not full strength. No Qi. Just a test.
His fist connected.
The sound was a deep, wet THUMP. The bark ruptured. The trunk snapped inward with a sickening crack. Splinters shot out like arrows. The tree shuddered, then groaned, tilting.
It fell. Not with grace. It crashed to the ground, flattening a swath of underbrush. The impact shook the earth.
Yan Shen stood, arm still extended. He looked at his unmarked knuckles.
"I barely tried," he whispered.
A wild thought entered his mind. He crouched, muscles tensing like springs.
Then he jumped.
The ground beneath his feet erupted. Dirt and stone sprayed outward as he launched into the sky. His robe whipped around him in the wind. The forest shrank. The village rooftops became tiny tiles. He soared past a startled hawk, climbing higher.
Eighty meters. A hundred.
He twisted in midair, heart hammering. No technique. No talisman. Just raw, physical force.
Then gravity reclaimed him.
He fell like a meteor, crashing onto a rocky ridge beyond the trees. Stone shattered under the impact. A crater bloomed where he landed. Debris rained down around him.
He rose from the wreckage. Unharmed. Heat radiated from his skin. A sharp silence gripped the forest. The birds had gone quiet.
He looked at the destruction he had caused with a single, uncontrolled leap and exhaled, a sharp, disbelieving sound.
"Okay," he said. "That's not normal."
He sat in the center of the crater, cross-legged, and closed his eyes. He reached for his Qi.
It responded instantly. Not like a tool to be wielded, but like an extension of his will. The energy flowed through his meridians- sharp, precise, and utterly obedient. He guided it through complex patterns.
Circulate. Condense. Spiral.
The first attempt was sloppy. The second was flawless. His body learned. It adapted in real-time, correcting errors, optimizing the flow without conscious thought. It wasn't practice. It was compilation. A system updating itself.
Then his eyes opened sharply.
"That's not cultivation," he murmured. "That's engineering."
He looked at his hands. Steady. Quiet. Humming with new power.
The memory surfaced. The voice in the void.
Cognitive signature confirmed. Command link authorized. Internal ignition… complete.
It wasn't a random awakening. It was a system booting up.
The way his body moved. The way it learned. It wasn't just enhanced. It was… designed. Like a billion tiny engineers worked beneath his skin, optimizing, rebuilding, rewriting his very biology in real-time.
Smart atoms…
The concept hit him with the force of a physical blow.
Not just a stronger body. Autonomous matter. Living code. Spiritual and now Scientific mechanics fused into his flesh.
His heart thundered. Not from exertion, but from realization.
This was a cheat. A gift.
The memories crashed over him. The rain-soaked comic. The desperate hunger. The words he'd whispered into the dark.
"I want his power."
Invincible.
It wasn't a dream. It was a blueprint. He hadn't just been inspired. He had been rebuilt. Transposed across realities and recalibrated into flesh.
Half of him was still of this world. But the rest?
Not human. Not cultivator. Not bound by Qi or elemental law.
"I'm… half-Viltrumite," he whispered. "Next time i see that God i need to thank him profusely"
The words were absurd. Yet every fiber of his being roared in agreement. Strength beyond reason. Adaptation beyond cultivation. Power forged through conflict, not peace.
He stood. A slow grin spread across his face, his eyes alight with a terrifying understanding.
"…Wait."
His body pulsed: a perfect sync of Qi and biology. He looked up at the sky, the grin turning sharp.
"Wait a minute."
He tensed his legs, the ground cracking under his weight.
"Does this mean… I can fly?"
---
A kilometer away, in Qinghe Village, the tremor hit.
First, a low rumble from the ground, not the sky. Then a sharp shake. Cups rattled on tables. A clay pot fell from a shelf and shattered.
Old Lin, the oldest in the village, looked up from his porch. "Rockslide?" he muttered. He didn't believe it.
In the small apothecary, Yan Bao dropped his pestle. His bad leg twitched. He looked toward the mountain, then the forest, his face hardening.
Li Meiyan ran from the garden, wiping dirt from her hands. "You felt that too?"
Yan Bao nodded once, his voice grim. "That wasn't weather." He limped to the doorway, scanning the tree line. "Something big landed. Too big."
On a nearby rooftop, children pointed at the sky.
"I saw someone fly!" one boy shouted.
"Nobody can fly, idiot!" another scoffed.
"I swear! It was like a person! Like an immortal!"
Yan Bao's hands curled into fists at his sides. The yard fell silent.
His eyes were dark with dawning fear.
"Where's Shen?"