I grit my teeth and pushed my ki against the blockage in my meridian with every ounce of my flagging will.

  Then something gave way. An almost imperceptible crack. It was all I needed. Finding a resolve and a reservoir of internal strength that I didn't know I possessed, I redoubled my efforts, channeling every scrap of will toward that crack.

  The crack widened then the blockage shattered.

  Ki. Pure, wild, glorious, ki rushed into my body and through the newly opened meridian, flowing around my torso. I had done the impossible.

  I collapsed onto the dusty loft floor, gasping but unable to keep the grin off my face. The world spun around me as ki continued to circulate through my Abyssal Deep Meridian, strengthening my core muscles with each pass.

  "First leg of a long voyage, little friend," I whispered to the sparrow. I was a true cultivator again, the weakest I had been in centuries, but a cultivator nonetheless.

  With my first meridian open, I took stock. This meridian was a stream, no, a trickle, of ki when compared to the raging rivers of my past. It wasn't a surprise, but it reminded me of how difficult the path I had chosen would be. If I was going to jump straight to a high quality core then these meridians would need to be able to handle much more ki.

  The risk was that if the meridians weren't wide or robust enough they would immediately rupture from the ki that flowed through them once I created my core. At best that would mean that my cultivation would be ruined. At worst it would lead to a painful death.

  But, I knew the risks and I had made my choice. I gave myself a few moments to recover and then would move to open the next meridian.

  Curious to see what my Soul Mirror might tell me about this I pulled it out and activated it.

  Name: Shen Taros

  Stage: Breakthrough, Abyssal Deep Meridian open

  Path: None

  Attributes: Body: 3 / Mind: 8 (+4) / Spirit: 3 (+2)

  Dao: None

  Titles: None

  Well, wasn't that interesting. The Soul Mirror could tell which of my meridians had opened, it even used the same name for it as I did. In addition it acknowledged the fact that I had been moving ki around my body by increasing my Spirit. However, the increase in my Mind attribute seemed rather excessive for the application of willpower that I had just shown. I paused and thought again, unless of course that was reflecting that I had resisted the auras of both First Mate Jin and Lieutenant Ren that morning. All things to consider later.

  I put the Soul Mirror away and surrendered to the sensation of ki flowing through my body once more. The energy pulsed with each heartbeat, targeting the bruised ribs that had plagued me since waking in this form. Within minutes, the pain started to subside as the ki sped up the process of healing the damage, knitting together the injured tissue and restoring strength to my muscles. Without a core it would still take a day or so for the bruising to heal completely, even with the meridian open, but that was still substantially faster than it would have been otherwise.

  The sensation transported me back to when I had first opened a meridian. A memory that I had forgotten I possessed. The Great Hall of the Azure Tide Sect, the sect I joined, then led, materialized in my mind's eye, its walls of polished blue stone gleamed under the light of a thousand spirit pearls. I could almost smell the fragrant incense and taste the spirit-infused tea on my tongue.

  Elder Shu stood before me, his white beard flowing over jade-embroidered robes. His weathered hands steadied my shoulders as my fourteen-year-old self trembled with effort. Six other Elders formed a circle around us, their combined strength powering the formation that created a shimmering dome that contained and amplified my nascent ki. At the back of the room Chen Huairen paced nervously as he watched. He was there by special dispensation to offer silent support.

  My potential had been noted when I developed a core without any external help and turned up at the gates of the sect. From there I had been nurtured by the best they had to offer. This was the natural next step.

  "Breathe, young one," Elder Shu had whispered, pressing a luminous azure pill against my lips. "The Ocean Heart Pill will guide your essence. Trust the current."

  The illusion of the Great Hall faded and the scent of sacred incense was replaced by the tang of dust that stung my nostrils as the sparrow's cheep dragged me back to the present.

  Then, seven masters, each a legend in their own right, had woven their power into mine, their centuries of accumulated wisdom flowing through me to deliver success. Now, I sat alone in a rotting boathouse having relied on nothing but my will and my knowledge.

  The irony wasn't lost on me. I now possessed more experience than all those ancient masters combined, yet here I was, celebrating an achievement most cultivators would consider merely the first step on a long road.

  But I knew better and rested my palm against my chest, feeling the steady rhythm of ki now flowing through my Abyssal Deep Meridian. What I had accomplished was thought impossible, even by me.

  Opening a meridian without a core, without guidance, in a body that had never channeled ki before was unprecedented. The feeling was bittersweet. The satisfaction ran deep but those friends and colleagues with whom I would have shared this triumph were not here.

  "Your lessons served me well, Elder Shu," I whispered to ghosts seven centuries distant, "though not perhaps in the way you intended."

  I sat up, dust swirling around me and the sparrow in the dim light of the boathouse loft. Now that I had one meridian open, I could begin using proper meditation techniques rather than the crude method I had initially needed to gather the ambient ki.

  * * *

  I drew in a long breath, thinking of Elder Shu led me to think of Archivist Meiyu and my Silent Pagoda Archive. Perhaps not all the ghosts of my past had vanished after all. Meiyu was part of me, she couldn't disappear unless my soul was destroyed. With one meridian open, even without a proper core, I now possessed enough ki to access the Archive.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The Silent Pagoda Archive was a mental cultivation technique that was one of the prized secrets of the Azure Tide Sect. It allowed you to store details of your memories perfectly.

  Knowledge that one doesn't use frequently fades and, eventually, will be lost. As you may imagine there were various skills, knowledge, Dao insights and more that I would not have thought about or needed for centuries. By storing those in my archive I could take them from my mind while they were at their peak and preserve them perfectly.

  Should I then need that knowledge in the future I could access it without having to relearn it from scratch. To be clear, it wasn't that you would forget the information immediately, it was more that as the memories faded over time, you would then have the means to access that knowledge and information perfectly. I used my Archive from early on to store and process information. Extraordinarily effective, and one I would wholeheartedly recommend.

  In my previous existence, I had eventually used the Archive primarily for storing information that I needed to rule my kingdom: people, places, that sort of thing. I had long passed the need for most of the cultivation techniques and arts I had accumulated over the years. All that "beginner" knowledge, that would be considered legendary to many but elementary to me, I had filed away in the Archive's lower levels to prevent losing them.

  Frustratingly, the higher level knowledge that I used in my day to day life had faded over the last day in this body. This mind just didn't have the capacity to store and process it. However that would soon be remedied. For now though, I needed to revisit the basics. What I really needed was some of the knowledge from my youth.

  The beauty of the Silent Pagoda Archive technique was that any knowledge I stored there would remain perfectly preserved. It was designed to be accessible whenever needed.

  And it was needed now.

  I settled into a cross-legged position, crudely gathering ki once more. No matter, when I emerged from my Archive I would have access to a proper meditation technique alongside many other arts. With deliberate focus, I directed the energy toward my mindscape, initiating the connection to my Silent Pagoda Archive.

  The familiar sensation of my consciousness shifting washed over me but something was wrong. Instead of the seamless transition I had experienced countless times before, my entry felt jarring.

  When my awareness stabilized, I found myself standing amid ruins. The once-magnificent tiered pagoda of my mental archive lay partially collapsed, scrolls and tomes scattered across cracked stone floors. Sections of walls had crumbled, and what remained stood precariously, threatening to topple at any moment.

  Before I could process the devastation, a tempest of silver and gray stormed toward me. Archivist Meiyu, her scholar's robes billowing and her half-moon spectacles flashing dangerously as she approached. More concerningly her face was contorted with a fury I had rarely witnessed. And that fury was directed squarely at me.

  Meiyu was created from a shard of my consciousness that I had sacrificed in order to allow the Silent Pagoda Archive to function. She had started, as all custodian of the archives did, as a clinical professional librarian. However centuries of an independent existence had led to her forging a personality of her own. One that was, when provoked, perhaps a bit more volatile. Rooted to the spot, I felt the waves of her anger crash over me. This would need careful handling.

  "Who are you? How did you get in here?" She placed her hands on her hips, eyes narrowing. "There's only one person allowed in this place."

  "I know. It's me, Meiyu." I spread my arms, feeling oddly vulnerable before my own mental construct. "I know it doesn't look like me I'm in a different body."

  Her eyes widened slightly, then narrowed again. Somehow this revelation had made her more angry, not less. "It is you, isn't it? Then what in the seven hels is going on? Six hundred and ninety-six years of meticulous organization!" Her voice started to gather energy once more. "Centuries of perfect order and now you allow this to happen? And to be clear I'm not taking ANY responsibility for what happened here."

  She gestured at the destruction around us. "I've been here, alone, watching everything crumble. The plan was simple. You would ascend; I would fade away. Instead, you're whatever this is. I'm still here. And the whole place is a disaster."

  "As best I can tell, someone interfered with my Ascension ritual. They somehow transferred me into this new body." I sighed and looked around. "It looks as if whatever they did then affected this place as well."

  Meiyu took a deep breath and as she let it out, the calm precise archivist that I knew appeared again. She circled me, examining my unfamiliar form with critical eyes. "A new body, huh? It's not an improvement."

  Fair.

  "So what happens now? I assume that you're going to exact a disproportionate vengeance on whoever did this to us."

  "Yes, but not yet. I don't even know who to target. This body had no cultivation. None." I ran a hand through my hair in frustration. "I'm starting from the beginning and in a year I'm going to have to fight a Vanguard."

  "A Vanguard?" She stopped walking around and looked at me incredulously. "Unless I'm missing something, that body is essentially mortal. Even if you fight up a stage, getting to the Martial Realm in a year is impossible. What am I saying, even managing in a decade would be impossible. In fact, anything less that a quarter of century to get through the Awakening Realm would definitely lead to us having to face down a tribulation for defying the heavens. A powerful tribulation at that."

  I smiled. "Agreed. If it was anyone else then it would be impossible. As it's me it's only almost impossible. That's why I'm here. I need to access some of my early techniques and arts to accelerate my development. Maybe a dao vision or two as well. It's still going to take a huge amount of work and not a little luck, but with this place I have at least a sliver of a chance."

  Something shifted in Meiyu's expression. Her usual wry expression melted into something I rarely saw from her. Was that compassion?

  "I'm afraid that's not going to be as easy as you think," she said.

  "Really? It may be a mess in here, but we've got more than enough to help me get back to where we were."

  Without answering, she led me across the rubble-strewn floor to one of the collapsed shelves. With careful movements, she extracted a scroll from beneath a fallen beam.

  I recognized the label immediately, Waterlock Ki Method. It was a Martial Realm technique I had used extensively during the 174th Celestial Dawn Tournament to restrain my opponents. I felt a rush of fondness for it even though I had outgrown it centuries ago. It was far beyond anything I could manage at the moment but I would look forward to relearning it soon.

  "Open it," Meiyu said.

  Confused, I took the scroll and unrolled it. Where intricate meridian maps and precise breathing cycles should have been there was nothing. Just blank parchment stripped of my hard-won secrets.

  "No." A cold tide washed over me.

  I dropped the scroll and rushed to one of the cabinets where I stored my Dao insights. Trying to stop my fingers from trembling, I pulled out a crystal that held a hard-won insight into the Dao of Currents. I channeled a dribble of ki into it, expecting, hoping, to see the familiar swirling patterns.

  Nothing. The crystal remained clear.

  I turned to Meiyu and let crystal slip from my grasp. "Is it all like this?" My voice was raw with disbelief. "Everything that we learned over the centuries is gone?"

  Meiyu's shoulders slumped slightly. "All of it," she said, then she paused, her head tilting in that way it did when she was reconsidering. "Well, almost all."

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