The Academy’s Bio-Dome Sector was a glaring anomaly within the rust and ferrocrete sprawl of Mega-City 9. Enclosed within a massive, climate-controlled glass hemisphere, the botanical gardens housed thousands of rare, mutated, and Aether-infused plant species used for high-tier medical research. Security was impossibly tight. Automated laser grids covered the perimeter, and thermal-sensing drones swept the canopy every five minutes.
It was the most heavily guarded sector outside the Inner Spire.
For Chen Xi, it was just a puzzle waiting to be solved.
He clung to the underside of a massive, titanium-reinforced ventilation intake, suspended fifty feet above the jungle floor. He wore his dark, unmarked tactical gear, the rusted iron mask hanging loosely from his belt.
"Drone patrol passing in three... two... one. Clear," Sylphe’s voice whispered in his ear through a microscopic earpiece. "The thermal grid is cyclical. Wraith has already overridden the localized node for Sector 4-B. You have a twelve-minute window to descend and cultivate before the system reboots."
Chen Xi dropped. He fell through the dense, bioluminescent canopy, his descent completely silent. He landed softly on a bed of glowing blue moss, his dense Kinetic Qi absorbing the kinetic impact perfectly.
The air here was radically different from the toxic smog of the slums. It was thick, humid, and completely saturated with pure, unpolluted cosmic energy.
He didn't waste a second. He walked to the center of a clearing surrounded by ancient, towering Spirit-Wood trees. He sat cross-legged on the moss, closed his eyes, and ignited the Stellar Furnace Art.
The reaction was instantaneous and violent.
Because the ambient energy in the Bio-Dome was so pure, it rushed into his lungs like a tidal wave. His heart hammered a terrifying, deafening rhythm against his ribs. The energy compressed into Kinetic Qi, flooding his vascular system, desperately trying to upgrade his physical vessel.
Chen Xi gritted his teeth, his entire body trembling. His skin flushed a dark, dangerous red. Sweat poured from his forehead, instantly turning into steam as it touched his superheated skin.
He was pushing the Ignition Phase to its absolute limit. He needed his body to match the sheer density of the metal he forged. He forced the Qi deeper into his bone marrow, demanding that his cells break down and rebuild stronger.
Crack.
A sickening, microscopic pop echoed in his right shoulder. Then another in his chest.
Chen Xi violently coughed, his eyes snapping open as a mouthful of dark, oxygen-depleted blood splattered onto the glowing blue moss. His Stellar Furnace Art forcefully disengaged to prevent him from literally cooking himself alive from the inside out.
He collapsed forward, gasping for air, his muscles twitching uncontrollably.
"Chen Xi!" Sylphe’s voice cried out, laced with genuine, frantic panic. Her holographic form materialized instantly, hovering over his face, her tiny hands hovering uselessly over his chest. "Your capillary network is rupturing! The bio-etheric pressure is too high! Your human tissue simply cannot contain the density of the Kinetic Qi. Stop immediately!"
"I can't... stop," Chen Xi rasped, wiping the blood from his mouth, his eyes burning with stubborn, relentless ambition. "Zhao Ming was a spoiled brat. But the elites... the true Rank-S prodigies... their bodies are tempered with million-credit serums from birth. If I don't break this biological ceiling, my own Qi will tear me apart before I ever reach the Transcendent Realm."
"You are currently experiencing severe myocardial stress and micro-tears in your deep fascia tissue. If you circulate that energy one more time, your aorta will explode."
The voice didn't come from Sylphe.
Chen Xi’s combat instincts flared. Despite the agonizing pain, he vanished from the ground, launching himself backward. He landed in a crouch ten feet away, a Viper-Mantis blade sliding from his wrist with a deadly snikt, ready to kill whoever had sneaked up on him.
Standing at the edge of the clearing was a young woman.
She wasn't a Peacekeeper, and she wasn't an Elite combat cadet. She looked to be around twenty years old. She wore a pristine white lab coat over a simple Academy medical uniform. Her hair was a messy, disorganized nest of soft brown curls, held back by a pair of sophisticated, augmented-reality diagnostic goggles resting on her forehead.
She didn't look at the lethal, nine-inch blade pointed at her. She wasn't looking at his face, either.
She was staring intently at his bare forearms, her bright, emerald-green eyes tracking the rapidly fading, superheated veins pulsing beneath his skin.
"Fascinating," she muttered, pulling a sleek, silver diagnostic datapad from her pocket and tapping it rapidly. "I detected a massive, localized thermal spike on the environmental monitors. I assumed one of the Class-3 Fire-Orchids was entering spontaneous combustion. But it’s you. You're acting as a biological reactor."
"Who is this disorganized, glasses-wearing interloper?!" Sylphe hissed in Chen Xi’s mind, hovering protectively near his ear. "Her bio-signature registers as a Rank-B Healer, but her intelligence parameters are wildly anomalous. Kill her, Chen Xi. She has seen too much."
She didn't call security, Chen Xi observed, slowly standing up, though he kept the blade extended. She came alone. She's a researcher.
"You're trespassing in a Class-1 restricted zone," Chen Xi said, his voice cold and steady, hiding the agonizing pain in his chest.
"I have Level-8 security clearance. I live in this lab," the woman replied distractedly, finally looking up at his face. "I am Dr. Sera. And you are an idiot. You are using a high-tier cultivation manual, but your cellular density is completely unrefined. You're pouring rocket fuel into a paper cup."
She walked toward him, completely ignoring the blade. She stopped two feet away, reached out with a pen-light, and unceremoniously shined it directly into Chen Xi’s pupil.
"Pupillary response is sluggish. Oxygen saturation is dropping," Sera muttered, scribbling notes on her pad. "Your body is desperately trying to synthesize the cosmic energy, but it lacks the necessary binding proteins. Who is your sponsor? They should be sued for gross medical negligence."
"She poked you in the eye! Slash her datapad in half!" Sylphe raged, her digital avatar stomping her foot. "No one touches my host without my permission!"
Chen Xi sighed inwardly, retracting the blade with a soft click. He swatted the pen-light away gently.
"I don't have a sponsor, Dr. Sera," Chen Xi said, his voice returning to its calm, calculating baseline. "I am a logistics cadet. I scavenge what I can."
Sera froze. She lowered the pen-light, her emerald eyes widening as she looked at his faded grey uniform, the bronze wristband, and then the dark blood on the moss.
"Logistics? You're a mechanic?" She looked back at his dense, perfectly sculpted musculature, her scientific curiosity turning into outright bewilderment. "That's impossible. Mechanics cannot circulate Qi. The bio-etheric pathways for external mechanical empathy and internal physical enhancement are genetically mutually exclusive. Unless..."
She took a sudden step closer, her face inches from his chest, her eyes wide with manic, scientific glee. "Unless you possess a spontaneous, unrecorded Dual-Class mutation. Oh my god. You are a walking medical impossibility."
"Get away from him!" Sylphe shrieked in Chen Xi's head, entirely ignored by the physical world.
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"If you report me to the inquisitors, I will be dissected by corporate labs," Chen Xi stated flatly. He didn't threaten her; he just stated a fact.
"Report you?" Sera looked utterly offended by the concept. "And let those corporate butchers ruin a perfectly good anomaly? Absolutely not. I have been trying to synthesize a cellular-binding serum for high-impact Fighters for six months, but I lacked a human subject with a high enough pain tolerance and pure enough energy output to test the catalyst reactions."
She looked at him, her eyes gleaming with the ruthless pragmatism that Chen Xi deeply respected.
"I won't report you," Sera proposed, tapping her datapad against her chin. "In fact, I will grant you unrestricted backdoor access to this Bio-Dome at night. You can cultivate in the high-density zones all you want."
"And in return?" Chen Xi asked, his eyes narrowing.
"You become my patient. My test subject," Sera smiled—a bright, slightly unhinged smile of pure academic ambition. "I will synthesize restricted, black-market-grade bone-tempering serums specifically tailored to your unique biology. I will fix the micro-tears you just caused, and I will force your cellular structure to evolve so you can actually handle that ridiculous breathing technique of yours. But I need data. And..."
She glanced at the Viper-Mantis bracer on his wrist, her sharp eyes having noticed the flawless, non-corporate design.
"...I need a mechanic. The automated bio-incubators in my lab keep misaligning by fractions of a millimeter, ruining my delicate enzyme cultures. The Elite engineers refuse to come down here to fix them because they think botany is beneath them."
Chen Xi stared at her. A bio-healer who didn't care about rules, who wanted to experiment on his impossible body, and who needed mechanical maintenance.
It was the perfect synthesis.
"Accept the deal," Sylphe sighed reluctantly in his mind, having run a billion probabilistic outcomes in the span of a second. "Her serums will increase your physical durability by 400% within a month. I hate her, and she smells like synthetic formaldehyde, but she is useful. Just... do not let her touch you more than medically necessary."
"Deal," Chen Xi said, wiping the last drop of blood from his chin. "But my biology remains entirely off the official grid. If I see my metrics pop up on an Academy server, I will dismantle your lab down to the screws."
"Please, I run my own encrypted shadow-servers," Sera scoffed, waving a hand dismissively. She reached into her deep lab coat pocket and tossed him a small, heavy vial filled with a glowing, viscous silver liquid.
"Drink that. It's a localized coagulant mixed with calcium-binders. It will stop your internal bleeding and temporarily reinforce your chest cavity so you can walk back to your dorm without collapsing," Sera instructed, turning her back on him to examine the blood he had coughed onto the moss. "Come to Lab 4 tomorrow at midnight. We will begin your refinement."
Chen Xi caught the vial. He didn't hesitate. He uncorked it and downed the silver liquid. It tasted like ash and cold iron, but the moment it hit his stomach, a soothing, icy wave spread through his chest, instantly numbing the agonizing pain of his torn muscles.
"Goodnight, Dr. Sera," Chen Xi said.
By the time Sera turned around to warn him about the bitter taste, the clearing was entirely empty. The shadow had vanished into the canopy, leaving not a single rustle of leaves behind.
Sera stood in the quiet, bioluminescent garden, a thrilled, dangerous smile on her face.
"A Dual-Class," she whispered to the glowing flora. "Oh, the papers I am never going to be allowed to publish about him."