Pain dragged Dhiraj back to consciousness.
Not the sharp kind from the collapse earlier.
This sat deeper, somewhere behind his eyes, like his thoughts had been scraped against rough metal.
For a while he stayed where he was.
The reactor chamber overhead pulsed with weak blue light that brightened and dimmed irregularly across the ceiling.
Somewhere far above, massive rings continued rotating around the core structure with slow mechanical groans.
The sound reminded him unpleasantly of overloaded factory turbines back on Earth.
His throat felt dry.
He swallowed and immediately regretted it.
The visions were still stuck in his head.
Floating cities drifting through darkness.
Reactor structures large enough to swallow mountains.
Entire worlds burning beneath red fractures spreading across the sky.
And that silence afterward.
Dhiraj pushed himself upright carefully.
Pain spread through his ribs fast enough to make him stop halfway for a second.
Dust slid from his sleeve when he moved.
One of the miner gloves Shen used to wear had torn near the thumb sometime during the collapse.
Weird thing to notice first.
The inheritance process had left his thoughts sluggish and uneven.
Whenever he tried focusing too hard on the memories shoved into his head, pressure built behind his eyes again.
The chamber looked dimmer now.
Earlier, more formation arrays had been active.
Now several had already gone dark.
Blue conduits embedded through the walls flickered inconsistently while sections of damaged machinery spat occasional sparks before falling silent again.
The place felt less like a hidden treasure chamber and more like a dying industrial site somebody had abandoned halfway through evacuation.
Dhiraj rubbed both hands across his face slowly.
Fragments of the Infinite Reactor Scripture drifted through his memory whether he wanted them to or not.
Circulation pathways.
Meridian diagrams layered with geometric formations.
Symbols he partially understood beside others that dissolved into static whenever he tried focusing on them directly.
It felt annoyingly similar to opening corrupted CAD files.
Enough remained visible to know the original design had been absurdly advanced.
Not enough to rebuild it.
A faint pulse echoed through the chamber.
Then the voice returned.
“…host consciousness stabilized…”
Dhiraj stiffened.
This time the sound did not come from the reactor chamber itself.
It appeared directly inside his thoughts.
Cold.
Precise.
Flat in a way human voices normally were not.
“…basic inheritance integration successful…”
He stayed quiet for several seconds before speaking.
“ASTRA?”
Saying the name out loud felt strange.
Like talking to software that should not exist.
The chamber answered only with distant humming machinery.
Dhiraj exhaled slowly and leaned back against the damaged pillar behind him.
The metal felt cold even through the thin miner clothing.
Maybe the inheritance process had damaged his brain harder than he thought.
“…designation confirmed.”
The voice appeared instantly inside his mind again.
Dhiraj nearly jerked upright.
The sensation still felt wrong.
Not hearing exactly.
More like information inserting itself directly into conscious thought.
A faint blue glow formed several meters away.
The projection barely held together.
At first it looked like distorted light reflected through cracked glass.
Then the outline stabilized enough to resemble a human figure.
Female.
Tall.
Incomplete sections flickered constantly as if entire pieces of the image were failing to load properly.
The face remained indistinct except for the eyes.
Blue.
Watching him without expression.
Dhiraj stared at the projection quietly.
The engineer in him wanted answers immediately.
Explanations.
Structure.
Definitions.
The rest of him was more concerned with the possibility of starving underground beneath a mountain full of murderous cultivators.
“You’re part of this ruin?”
“…partial correction.” Visit g.com for the full chapter.
The projection flickered near the shoulders.
“…ASTRA functions as auxiliary guidance intelligence linked to the Infinite Technology System…”
“That explains almost nothing.”
Silence followed for a moment.
“…accurate.”
That caught him off guard enough that he laughed once under his breath.
Not because the response was funny exactly.
More because it sounded weirdly honest.
The projection continued flickering.
Dhiraj noticed one side of the chamber behind it had gone completely dark now.
Another light must have failed during the conversation.
Somewhere deeper underground, machinery groaned again beneath layers of damaged stone.
Questions kept crowding his thoughts anyway.
What exactly had the Ascendancy been?
How had a cultivation civilization built technology like this?
Why did parts of these systems resemble engineering principles from Earth?
And how the hell had he ended up here after a reactor accident in another universe?
“…insufficient data available,” ASTRA said suddenly.
Dhiraj narrowed his eyes.
“You can hear my thoughts?”
“…partial neural synchronization established during inheritance activation.”
“That’s concerning.”
“…agreed.”
The answer came immediately this time.
Dhiraj stared at the projection for another few seconds before rubbing his forehead again.
A headache was starting behind his left eye now.
ASTRA continued speaking.
“…host physiological condition unstable…”
Faint symbols briefly formed around him before fading.
“…malnutrition detected…”
“…internal muscular strain…”
“…minor skeletal damage…”
“…spiritual pathways dormant…”
Dhiraj frowned at that.
“Dormant?”
“…host possesses no active cultivation foundation.”
Right.
Shen had been ordinary.
Just another miner buried under sect control.
No cultivation talent.
No status.
Probably no future either.
Dhiraj looked toward the slowly rotating reactor core deeper inside the chamber.
The Infinite Reactor Scripture surfaced through his memory again.
Circulation patterns.
Qi stabilization methods.
Layered diagrams woven through meridian structures.
Trying to fully process it made his head ache worse.
“…warning,” ASTRA stated.
“…host comprehension level insufficient for complete scripture interpretation.”
“No kidding.”
He lowered himself carefully beside the damaged formation pillar again.
One knee popped painfully when he bent it.
The floor beneath him felt freezing through the thin cloth pants Shen wore.
Somewhere nearby, water dripped steadily from damaged pipes or cracks in the rock overhead.
The Scripture did not behave like normal memory.
It sat beneath conscious thought almost instinctively.
Whenever he focused on it, fragments surfaced automatically.
Traditional cultivation methods from Shen’s memories emphasized force.
Gather qi.
Pull it inward.
Refine it through willpower.
The Infinite Reactor Scripture treated the body differently.
Like infrastructure.
Meridians became circulation channels.
The dantian acted as a stabilization core.
Spiritual energy flowed through layered circulation systems designed to constantly rebalance and refine themselves during operation.
At least that was what Dhiraj thought the Scripture meant.
Half the terminology remained incomprehensible.
Certain diagrams appeared only briefly before dissolving into static again.
Other sections stayed completely inaccessible no matter how hard he focused.
“…inheritance corruption exceeds acceptable thresholds,” ASTRA said.
“Can it be repaired?”
The projection flickered harder for a moment.
Not exactly comforting.
Dhiraj leaned his head back against the pillar.
The chamber felt colder now.
Or maybe exhaustion was finally catching up properly.
Mei was still somewhere aboveground.
The sect cultivators were probably still fighting over the ruins.
And he was trapped beneath Graystone Mountain holding fragments of an inheritance powerful enough to start wars.
His stomach growled suddenly.
That annoyed him more than the existential horror for about three seconds.
He had not eaten since before the collapse.
Panic would not help anyway.
He needed strength first.
Everything else could wait.
“How do I get out of here?”
ASTRA’s projection distorted briefly.
“…mapping systems offline…”
“…upper tunnel integrity critically compromised…”
“…multiple hostile biological signatures detected in outer ruin sectors…”
Cultivators were still alive.
Dhiraj shifted carefully against the pillar and immediately regretted it when pain spread through his ribs again.
He exhaled slowly through his teeth.
Without cultivation, he was weak here.
Worse than weak, really.
Disposable.
The Infinite Reactor Scripture surfaced through his thoughts again.
Circulation.
Qi absorption.
Core stabilization.
He frowned.
He barely understood cultivation at all.
Shen’s memories contained fragments, rumors, overheard conversations from miners and low-level sect disciples, but nothing close to real instruction.
Even so, the Scripture kept dragging his attention back toward the first circulation method.
Like an unfinished calculation sitting open on a monitor.
“…host considering initial circulation attempt,” ASTRA observed.
“Can I do it?”
“…probability of failure: high.”
“Helpful.”
“…probability of death currently indeterminate.”
Dhiraj stared upward toward the reactor chamber ceiling.
One of the overhead lights flickered three times before stabilizing again.
Not encouraging.
Then again, staying powerless in this world did not seem particularly survivable either.
He remembered sword qi carving through tunnels above.
Spiritual pressure forcing workers to the ground without physical contact.
Cultivators treating mortals like loose debris caught in the wrong place.
This world did not care about weak people.
Dhiraj closed his eyes slowly.
The fragmented Scripture unfolded through his thoughts again, though this time he ignored most of it and focused only on the beginning.
The first circulation route.
Simpler than the others.
A pathway connecting breath, dantian, and surrounding spiritual energy through resonance instead of domination.
Synchronization.
Balance.
The concepts felt oddly familiar to him.
Less like mystical enlightenment and more like stabilizing an overloaded energy system before increasing output.
Dhiraj adjusted into a cross-legged position on the cold metal floor.
The chamber hummed quietly around him.
Blue light pulsed across the damaged walls in uneven rhythms while ASTRA’s unstable projection stood nearby without speaking.
Fear sat somewhere in his chest.
Not really fear of pain.
More the fear of screwing this up permanently.
He had no teacher.
No proper understanding of cultivation.
And the thing guiding him was a damaged ancient intelligence trapped inside a dying reactor buried beneath a mountain.
Bad setup overall.
Still— he inhaled slowly.
Then exhaled.
The circulation pattern surfaced again through instinct more than memory.
One breath.
Then another.
At first nothing happened.
Only the distant groaning of ancient machinery and the sound of water dripping somewhere behind him.
Then, very briefly— he felt something cold move through the air around him.