At 767 years old, Adam entered a part of the world he had never experienced before.
China was unlike Babylon, Egypt, Anatolia, Avalon, Greece, or Rome in almost every way that mattered to him.
He and Zakiti had arrived during the early Western Zhou period, only a little time after the Zhou had overthrown the Shang and begun establishing their own political order.
The transition was still fresh enough that the memory of the old dynasty remained very much alive, while the Zhou were busy establishing their own legitimacy and system of rule.
Adam found that transition especially interesting.
He had seen dynasties and kingdoms rise and fall before, but China gave him another variation of the same human problem.
The Zhou had inherited much from the civilization they had displaced rather than simply erasing it.
Old traditions, craftsmen, rituals, technologies, and beliefs continued even though the ruling house had changed.
Adam had already learned that a dynasty could die while its people continued, but seeing another civilization arrive at the same reality from an entirely different cultural foundation fascinated him.
“What happened to all of the Shang people?” Adam asked one evening.
Zakiti looked at him.
“They didn’t disappear.”
“I know.”
“Then why ask?”
“Because every time a king falls, someone seems to imagine his entire world fell with him.”
Zakiti smiled.
“And you’re disappointed when it doesn’t.”
“No. I’m relieved.”
Adam spent much of his first year simply observing.
He studied the way people organized families, agriculture, government, warfare, craftsmanship, and ritual.
Bronze work immediately caught his attention.
The techniques were different from those he had learned in Egypt and from the metallurgy he had studied among the Hittites.
The objects themselves could be remarkably elaborate, but what interested Adam most was that they were not merely practical.
Bronze vessels could carry ritual and ancestral significance, tying craftsmanship directly to the way society understood its past.
It was the religious structure that held his attention the longest.
Adam had spent much of his childhood in Egypt, a civilization in which gods were deeply woven into politics, daily life, death, and the explanation of the natural world.
China felt different.
Ancestral worship and ritual were deeply important, and the relationship between family lineage, political authority, and the dead gave Adam an entirely different perspective on religion.
He watched people make offerings and participate in ceremonies for ancestors rather than simply appealing to distant divine figures.
“They don’t pray the way the Egyptians do,” Adam said.
Zakiti looked toward the ceremony.
“No.”
“They’re speaking to their ancestors.”
“Yes.”
Adam was quiet for several moments.
“I understand that better.”
Zakiti glanced at him.
“Because you’ve known so many.”
Adam nodded.
“Exactly.”
For Adam, ancestors were not an abstract idea.
He had actually known people whose descendants now lived generations later.
He had watched the living become the dead and the dead become names carried by families.
China therefore gave him a culture in which something Adam experienced constantly was already embedded deeply within the structure of society.
The distinction was fascinating to him, and it was one of the primary reasons he decided to remain instead of simply passing through.
For three years, Adam stayed.
He learned how Chinese chariot warfare differed from the methods he had studied among the Hittites.
He compared Chinese bronze-working with the metallurgy of Egypt and Anatolia.
He studied agriculture, social organization, ritual, and the ways the new Zhou order attempted to integrate territories inherited from the Shang.
Every comparison gave him another piece of the enormous picture he had been assembling throughout his life.
The Zhou world did not feel like a repetition of anywhere he had been before.
It was familiar enough to understand and different enough to remain genuinely new.
During those three years, however, something else caught Adam’s attention.
There were people who spoke about an energy within the body.
Adam initially assumed it was another form of magic.
He had encountered enough strange practices by this point that he was not particularly surprised.
But when he examined these people more closely, he realized that there was something fundamentally different happening.
These were ordinary humans, and Adam could feel that immediately through his connection to humanity.
Whatever they were cultivating was not the result of being another species.
It was something they had learned to develop themselves.
Breath.
Discipline.
Movement.
Adam did not yet have a word for the system in the form that would eventually become familiar to him.
But he understood that humanity had discovered another path to power.
One afternoon, Adam watched a practitioner complete a slow sequence of movements.
“What are you doing?” Adam asked.
The man looked at him.
“Strengthening myself.”
“Your muscles?”
The man shook his head.
“Something deeper.”
Adam smiled.
“I thought so.”
Zakiti watched from nearby.
“You look excited.”
“I am.”
“You’ve seen magic before.”
“This isn’t magic.”
“Then what is it?”
“I don’t know yet.”
That was enough to make him stay longer.
After three years in China, Adam intended to continue farther east.
Instead, the world came to him.
The first sign was the change in the mountains.
Adam and Zakiti were traveling through the Himalayan region when Adam began feeling something he could not identify.
It was not the same pull that had once brought him to Puerto Rico.
It was different, more localized, almost as though the surrounding space had developed a pressure of its own.
Zakiti heard it first.
Not a voice.
Hundreds of voices.
Then thousands.
The sounds were carried strangely through the mountains, as though coming from somewhere that should have been much farther away.
“What is that?” Adam asked.
Zakiti tilted her head.
“People.”
“So many.”
“They’re not nearby.”
Adam looked around.
“They sound like they are.”
The next day, they found a mountain settlement unlike anything either of them had encountered.
Adam quickly realized that it was not really a settlement at all.
It was a gateway.
Something about the place felt wrong to his senses.
His connection to humanity could tell him that humans were present, but the surrounding space seemed to resist his understanding.
Then he saw them.
Warriors.
They were fighting.
Not a battle.
A ritual.
Rows of fighters were engaged in a continuous sequence of martial contests, rotating with one another so that the combat never truly stopped.
Some fought with bare hands.
Others used weapons.
Some appeared to be meditating while others fought.
Every movement seemed to be part of a much larger ritual whose purpose Adam could not immediately determine.
Zakiti watched them.
“They’ve been doing this for a long time.”
Adam stared.
“How long?”
A man nearby answered.
“Three years.”
Adam turned.
“Three years?”
“We have not stopped.”
Adam looked toward Zakiti.
“That isn’t normal.”
She smiled.
“Neither are we.”
Eventually one of the senior practitioners approached them.
“You are Adam.”
Adam’s expression changed.
“I suppose someone told you.”
The man shook his head.
“We knew you would come.”
Adam looked toward the warriors.
“Why?”
The man smiled.
“Because the city has been waiting for you.”
That answer bothered Adam more than it impressed him.
“What city?”
The man looked toward the mountains.
“K’un-Lun.”
Adam had never heard the name.
Zakiti hadn’t either.
The man explained that K’un-Lun existed beyond the ordinary world, a mystical city hidden deep within the Himalayas.
, and had deep martial traditions and followed Shou-Lao the Undying.
Adam looked at the seemingly endless martial ritual.
“Why have you been fighting for three years?”
The man answered simply.
“To move the door.”
Adam frowned.
“Move it where?”
“Here.”
Adam stared at him.
“You moved your dimensional gateway because of me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The man studied Adam for a moment.
“Because we knew where you would eventually go.”
Adam folded his arms.
“And you knew what I would do?”
“We knew you would take the step, Shou-lao spoke it so ”
“That’s a very broad prediction.”
“Not this time.”
The man looked toward the mountains.
“You would make humanity more compatible with what you find here.”
Adam became quiet.
That was exactly what he had been considering since arriving in China.
Chi.
He had already recognized the possibility that humanity possessed an energy system independent of Mana, and now he was standing before an entire civilization that had apparently turned that principle into a disciplined tradition.
K’un-Lun was not merely another culture for him to study.
It was an entirely different branch of human potential.
Adam looked at Zakiti.
“What do you think?”
She shrugged.
“You wanted to know what humans here could do.”
He smiled.
“That’s true.”
Then the mountain opened.
The dimensional connection appeared before them.
Adam stepped forward.
Zakiti followed.
The world changed.
K’un-Lun was unlike anywhere Adam had ever been.
The air itself felt saturated with energy.
The people he encountered moved with an ease and precision that immediately caught his attention.
Their martial practices were not merely physical exercises.
Chi was integrated into their movements, bodies, and disciplines in ways Adam had never encountered among ordinary humans.
He spent days observing.
Then weeks.
He tested himself against what he was seeing.
He spoke with practitioners.
He studied their breathing.
He studied their energy circulation.
He studied the relationship between body and chi.
He had already developed the Mana heart and Mana brain within humanity’s biological framework.
What he needed now was adaptability.
The problem was not that humans lacked the potential for chi.
The problem was that their biology was not universally prepared to accommodate it.
Adam began modifying the template.
He altered the Mana heart so that it could adapt to different forms of supernatural energy rather than being limited to Mana alone.
He did the same with the Mana brain, creating a biological capacity to recognize, process, and develop around different energy systems.
Then Adam took it one step further.
Children would no longer necessarily have to develop along a single path.
Some humans could be born naturally compatible with Mana.
Some could be born naturally compatible with chi.
Some could possess the potential for both.
Others might possess the underlying adaptability needed to develop one later through training.
Adam stepped back from his work.
“What do you think?”
One of the K’un-Lun practitioners looked at him.
“You have changed the human body.”
Adam nodded.
“So humans can use both.”
“Some.”
“Depending on what they’re born with.”
“Yes.”
Adam smiled.
He had not simply given humanity another power.
He had made its biology more flexible.
Mana no longer had to be the only supernatural system humanity could naturally accommodate.
Chi could become part of the human potential as well, and the distinction between the two could vary from person to person.
Zakiti watched her son.
“You’ve started again.”
Adam looked at her.
“I know.”
“After everything?”
Adam smiled.
“I spent three years learning something new.”
He looked toward the mountains.
“How was I supposed to leave it alone?”
Zakiti laughed.
Adam turned back toward K’un-Lun.
He had come to China expecting another civilization.
Instead, he had discovered a new dimension of human potential.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized this might be one of the most important changes he had ever made.
Not because he had made humans stronger.
But because he had made humanity more adaptable to what they could harness.
K’un-Lun had not simply given Adam chi.
It had given humanity another door.
Adam had simply made sure that, when humanity eventually found that door again, its biology would be ready to walk through it.