There was a sound like a thousand reams of dry paper tearing at once.

  Birds screeched into flight. Trees toppled in a circle, shattering like burnt-out coals as they hit the ground.

  The Wraithcrow gagged. It turned tail so fast a puff of feathers came loose; as it flapped away, it made a sorry sight.

  Zane grinned.

  He’d never get tired of spooking birds.

  Then he looked around and blinked.

  Jagged voids tore through the realm halfway up the sky, slowly mending. That bird had been quite lucky, it looked like.

  That hadn’t even been an attack. He was trying to be careful there.

  He’d never claimed to be great with delicate things. Finesse, he usually left to Reina. As he studied the rift—which a passerby could’ve mistaken for the coming apocalypse—he got the sense he’d need to learn to take a bit more care here.

  He wouldn’t want to break this place before he figured out its secrets.

  He wondered if he was the strongest creature here. He very well might be.

  It was a satisfying thought, in a way. But also a bit disappointing. It meant there'd be no one here who could give him a good fight.

  He supposed he wasn’t meant to fight here anyway. He was just here to take a poke around.

  …Come to think of it—this place felt pretty flimsy; it broke quite easily beneath his power—could it really hold secrets that could tremble the galaxy?

  He thought it a bit dubious.

  He’d soon find out.

  One direction looked pretty much like the next. Might as well pick one and get going, he figured. Then he frowned into the distance—was that… chimney smoke? It looked to be a town.

  He wasn’t sure what he was even meant to be looking for. His instructions were pretty vague. Maybe a local would know. Noughtfire did say a lot of folk lived here.

  He took a step and nearly blasted off on instinct before he remembered that any movement Skill might just collapse the continent.

  Besides—

  “It will serve you to remain inconspicuous,” Noughtfire had said as he’d handed off the map. “Though nearly nothing will be a threat to you, there are certain dangers, dangers beyond the world that lurk in the dreamscape. Nightmares, as well as dreams... It's unlikely you'll encounter them. But still—no need to waste your time fending them off. You’ve got better things to spend your time on.”

  He looked down at his body, which was half as tall as some of the trees and twice as thick.

  His job was to remain inconspicuous and not break things.

  “…”

  This… could be harder than he’d thought.

  ***

  He’d wandered for something like half an hour before he heard the shouts.

  “Hup! Hup! Hup!”

  Some light fluctuations of essence—a Skill, and a very weak one at that. It used a sliver of essence and Bloodline—just a hint of Bloodline, that of some common beast.

  Zane headed toward the sound.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  He found a youth punching a mossy boulder in a clearing, knuckles bloodied and bandaged. Lean, with close-cropped short black hair. He stopped and took a long drink out of a canteen.

  His face was vaguely handsome, but at the same time very ordinary—like he could be just about anyone.

  “C’mon,” he said, clenching his fists. “Just ten thousand, six hundred to go!”

  At first, he seemed like any other teenage boy. But Zane’s Great Sage Mind caught something strange in his chest, and he peered a little closer.

  A bonded treasure—some purple gemstone. A peculiar one—surprisingly strong for the grade.

  Third Eye Crystal (??? Grade)

  The Third Eye Crystal, heirloom of the Sealed King, was lost for generations. It grants its owner the ability to copy any Skill at a glance, except for Skills requiring Godbeast blood or higher-tier Laws.

  Weird.

  Lines of Fate stretched all over it.

  Zane wasn’t sure what this kid’s deal was, but he didn’t think much of it. He wasn’t interested enough to pry. He was mostly considering what to do when he got to the nearest town.

  Just then, the kid wiped some sweat off his brow and glanced over.

  He did a double take. His mouth dropped slowly open.

  The word inconspicuous floated through Zane’s mind.

  “…”

  The boy looked down at his head, chest, and legs—after all Zane’s workouts and the treasures he’d taken in, he cut something of a figure.

  “Who—who are you?” gasped the boy. His eyes widened. “You’re a martial expert!”

  Zane blinked. “You could say that.”

  As the kid stared, looking like his jaw might dangle off his face, Zane wondered if he should’ve thought up some kind of secret identity.

  He’d figure it out later.

  “Say, kid,” he began. “Have you seen anything unusual in the Astral Plane, around these parts?”

  The kid looked at him blankly. “Astral… plane?”

  …This might be tough.

  “I’m looking for mysterious places.” He realized this wasn't much to go off of. “Probably very hot.”

  That didn’t help much either. It was pretty hard telling someone what he was looking for when he wasn’t really sure himself.

  He wondered how big the world was. He could be in the wrong continent entirely.

  “Hey—are you the Blood Skull Monk?” said the kid, squinting at him.

  “No.”

  “…Rafe Three-legs? Elder Oaksworn? Could… could you be from the Sect?!”

  “No.”

  The boy looked puzzled. “But that’s all the experts I know ‘round these parts, and I know all the experts! Unless…”

  He gasped. “Foreign expert?!”

  “Call me Zane.”

  “Zane…” whispered the boy. He nodded, still wide-eyed.

  “Senior, My name is Jin Wei, of Littleleaf Village!” He thumped his chest, all puffed up. “I’m gonna be the #1 martial artist in all the Four Winds Kingdom. You can bet on it!”

  “Sure, kid,” said Zane. He figured he’d find a shop in town and snag a map. Then he’d check out likely spots from there.

  “Hey, how’d you get to looking like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like..."

  He looked at Zane the way a teenage boy might look at a poster of Arnold Schwarzenegger. His eyes shone brighter—“Could I look like that?”

  “No more questions,” said Zane hastily. They could be there all day. “Do you know the way to the nearest town?”

  ***

  The rest of the way down the mountain went something like this.

  “Hey, could you beat a chimera?”

  Zane shrugged. “Probably.”

  Jin considered this, then brightened.

  “What about an aggrorantula?”

  “I’m not from these parts, kid. I don’t know what that is.”

  “Oh…”

  Silence, for a few seconds. Then a gasp—“Do you know any secret techniques? Like the Silverwind Sect’s Dark Moon Steps?”

  Before Zane could answer—“That’s where I’m gonna go,” Jin declared. “The Silverwind Sect! That’s where all the best fighters in the kingdom go.”

  His eyes blazed. Zane noticed they tended to do that a lot. “I’m gonna take the entrance exam this week, and this time I’m gonna pass it for sure. Then Liu Yi, and all my cousins, and—and even Fei-Fei—they’ll all be sorry they ever said I was the trash of the Wei family.”

  “Sure, kid,” said Zane. The village looked to be just another mile away.

  “Right now all I've got is the basic Crouching Tiger’s Fist, First Form. That’s what you saw me doing back there,” said the kid. “That’s our Wei family’s heritage art. Father said there are even higher versions in the capital… But we’re just a side branch. We don’t get those. They only let us have the First Form.”

  He deflated for a few seconds. Then his eyes did the thing again. “But don’t worry. I won’t let that stop me, senior!”

  “Great,” said Zane, who hadn’t been worrying.

  “Until just a week ago, I couldn’t even do the basic version. They wouldn’t give any Bloodline treasures to a trash like me… I’m not trash. They just… they keep calling me that, just ‘cause of my spirit root.”

  He clenched his fists. It seemed to weigh on the kid quite a bit. He sniffed. “Don’t worry, senior Zane. Sometimes it gets me down, but I’ll never let them keep me down, never ever! After the exam—”

  It went on for a while.

  ***

  It must’ve been a village of a few thousand. Jin seemed well-liked—his Wei family was pretty prominent here, it seemed. As they headed up a cobbled path, he got waves from blacksmiths, street vendors selling lamb skewers, and a butcher skinning a boar as big as a hippo. He even got a slap on the back from a kid he called ‘Fatty Zhang,’ which seemed a bit of a rude thing to call someone.

  Right after they all saw the kid, they saw Zane right beside him.

  The blacksmith gaped, and his hammer fell out of his hands. The butcher almost dropped his knife on his foot. Fatty Zhang fell over.

  The word inconspicuous floated through his head again.

  “I’ll need a map,” said Zane.