Chương 22: What the Heart Wants

Two weeks after Coach Williams unveiled the new training program, a flatbed truck backed into the loading bay of Yale's Hall C. The cargo was a decommissioned military g-force training centrifuge, originally built to condition Flyer pilots for high-speed combat sorties over the Catacombs. Williams had found it through a surplus auction at Fort Liberty. The machine was thirty years old and had been refurbished twice. It still worked perfectly. Dr. Reyes handed Leo a stack of liability waivers.

He signed them without reading. She handed him three more. He should have read them. The first time Leo experienced 9 Gs sustained for thirty seconds, his vision tunneled to a gray pinpoint as blood drained from his brain. His chest compressed, each breath a war against the force crushing his ribcage. The pressure suit inflated automatically, squeezing his legs and abdomen to force blood upward, but it only delayed the inevitable. The Divine Sense Press had been brutal, but at least it possessed a certain mercy.

The agony peaked and ended. The suffering had a quick conclusion. G-force training offered no such kindness. Dr. Reyes knew exactly how far to push a human body before catastrophic failure and, more importantly, how to hold it at that threshold. Spiritual medicines repaired burst capillaries in his eyes between sessions. Formation-enhanced monitoring detected the exact moment consciousness began to slip. Recovery techniques pulled him back from the edge of death just to push him toward it again.

Leo spent hours each day in that centrifuge, his body learning to endure forces that should have killed him. His cardiovascular system adapted, developing enhanced blood pressure regulation. His neck muscles strengthened to support his skull against forces that wanted to tear his head from his spine. And when the blackouts came, because they always came, he trained to recover.

"Again," Dr. Reyes' voice crackled through the helmet speakers. Leo's awareness snapped back into existence. One moment nothing, the next moment everything. He'd been unconscious for 2. 3 seconds according to the monitoring systems. In an NFL match, 2. 3 seconds was an eternity. A Nascent Soul-level attack could cross the entire field three times in 2. 3 seconds.

"Recovery time is improving," Dr. Reyes noted.

"You're down to 2. 3 seconds of total cognitive impairment. We need 0. 7." The centrifuge began accelerating again. Dr. Reyes had calculated that maintaining consciousness through certain maneuvers was physiologically impossible. The human body simply could not prevent blood drainage during rapid vertical transitions. No amount of conditioning would change fundamental fluid dynamics. So instead of trying to prevent blackouts, they trained Leo to recover from them instantaneously.

To snap back to full awareness the moment blood returned to his brain. To resume combat operations with zero transition time between unconsciousness and action. The gray closed in again, and the last thing Leo registered before it swallowed him was the taste of copper on his tongue and the distant, clinical sound of Dr. Reyes dictating notes. Coming back was worse than going under. It was a shock to the system, like plunging into icy water, every nerve screaming back to life at once.

Third Person Perspective training made the g-force training centrifuge seem like a pleasant afternoon nap. The technique required Leo to extend his divine sense in all directions simultaneously while suppressing his normal visual processing. Simple in concept. Nightmarish in execution. Most people went their entire lives without appreciating how effortless sight truly was. You opened your eyes and the world appeared, fully formed, requiring no conscious effort to interpret. Objects had depth and color and meaning.

Your sense of self existed naturally at the center of your visual field, an unquestioned anchor point for all perception. Third Person Perspective demanded the complete dissolution of that framework. Leo sat blindfolded in the training chamber, divine sense extended in a sphere around his position. He could perceive the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the equipment scattered throughout the space.

He could sense his own body from the outside, an object among objects, no more privileged than the training dummies or the weapon racks. And it felt wrong. His brain screamed in protest. Every instinct he possessed demanded that he open his eyes, that he return to normal perception, that he stop this unnatural violation of how consciousness was supposed to work.

The sense of self that had anchored his existence since birth found itself unmoored, floating in an awareness that had no center, no privileged viewpoint, no here.

"You're collapsing the sphere again," Coach Mei observed. She walked a slow circle around him, her voice coming from different directions as she moved.

"You keep pulling your divine sense back toward your body. Stop doing that."

"I'm trying," Leo gritted out.

"Don't try. The effort itself is the problem. You're still treating your body as the center of perception. It isn't. Your body is a piece on the board. You are the player. Your body is a piece. Separate the two." Leo attempted to release his attachment to his physical form. His divine sense wavered, the spherical awareness flickering and distorting.

"Now you're losing coherence. You've overcorrected. Find the balance." There was no balance. There was only the crushing wrongness of perceiving himself from outside himself, of seeing his own back and front and sides simultaneously, of existing everywhere and nowhere at once. Coach Mei sighed.

"We'll resume in twenty minutes. Take a break before you rupture something." Leo tore off the blindfold. Normal vision flooded back and relief hit him like a physical thing. The world flat and simple and his again, anchored behind his two eyes where it belonged. The training chamber snapped into familiar two-dimensionality. His sense of self slammed back into his body with almost physical force. He sat on the floor, breathing heavily, feeling like something essential had been scraped raw inside his skull.

That night, Leo logged into the Azure Profound Continent and did absolutely nothing productive. He lay flat on the grass outside their hidden base, staring up at the sky, letting his mind go blank. Mike was offline, taking care of his kids. Kevin was drawing some formations on some shells. Arthur sprawled nearby, content to enjoy his retirement.

"Rough day?" Arthur asked eventually.

"They're all rough days."

Azure Profound Continent It was another one of Leo's breaks in the game world of Azure Profound Continent when, to his surprise, Kevin approached and asked to practice Common. Apparently he had been learning it for months.

"What happened to making money to afford your own Eclipse?" Leo asked.

"That plan has been slightly delayed. The three of us have been talking, and we've realized there are a lot more bottlenecks coming up in your cultivation. We don't want to hold you back." Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

"Bottlenecks? I thought with the NFL we basically have a clear path to Nascent Soul. It shouldn't be too hard, right?" Kevin shook his head.

"If you think about it, there are quite a few issues that will crop up. The most immediate one is that after you advance to Foundation Establishment, the divine press won't be useful enough for you to cultivate with. Even though we've swapped out the storage rings with peak Gold Core weapons, it will just barely be enough for you to reach 10k Si."

"Sure, once you lifebond your NFL gear we'll be able to steal some Nascent Soul tier weapons, but that still leaves a full six months to a year without divine press training. We can't let you fall behind and have people think you're a busted draft pick." Leo opened his mouth to respond, but Kevin held up a finger. He wasn't finished.

"In addition, Earth technology really only goes up to Deity Transformation. Advancing past Nascent Soul means we would need honest fights. We can't just rely on realm suppression anymore. We need to start thinking of ways to get past that barrier."

"And Void Refining? Earth doesn't have any cultivators at that level. At those stages the otherworldly demon summoning formation would be a huge hindrance, restricting our cultivation." Leo reassured him.

"It's okay, Kevin. I'm sure by then we'll be smarter and stronger. We'll figure stuff out. Maybe make some Great Atomic Qi Bombs." Kevin pressed on, holding up another finger.

"And there's so much more. The vast majority of people on earth don't bother improving spiritual roots and just stick with Inferior Gold Cores. If they do decide to repeatedly reform their gold core until they reach superior grade, that takes a long time. Many years."

"If we found spiritual medicine to improve your spiritual roots, you would save a lot of time when grinding for your Superior Gold Core." He held up another finger.

"Then there's the gulf of divine sense needed. As each level grows, our respawn time triples. In the future realms you might not even have time to play in Azure Profound Continent. You'd spend all your time waiting for the cooldown." Kevin's voice grew more animated.

"On Earth basically every single ancient heaven-and-earth treasure has been consumed, who says it's the same here in Azure Profound Continent? Maybe we can find something for your divine sense, saving decades of cultivation." He met Leo's eyes directly.

"We can't let you keep carrying us forever. We need to pull our own weight. There is so much we can do to help you. And the stronger you get, the easier it will be for us to drink some soup and advance too."

"You eat the meat, we drink the broth, and we all become immortals."

Liu Heng's Perspective. Azure Profound Continent Liu Heng, disciple of the Pond Gazing Sect, fell in love with Sister Zhou Yanmei on a Tuesday. Zhou Yanmei had been helping the kitchen staff prepare lunch because she had noticed the head cook's arthritis flared. Liu Heng watched her carry steaming platters to the dining hall, her Foundation Establishment cultivation making the heavy loads trivial, her smile bringing joy to the disciples of the Pond Gazing Sect.

He worked up the courage to speak to her three weeks later. She laughed at his fumbling introduction, the way spring rain laughs at the flowers it nourishes. By the end of the conversation, she had agreed to walk with him by the lake that evening. That was two weeks ago. Now, sitting beside her on the stone bench overlooking the eastern shore, every small discovery about her felt like a hook setting deeper in his chest. The shape of her laugh when she found something genuinely funny versus politely amusing.

The way she preferred jasmine tea but would drink whatever was offered because refusing felt rude. The folk songs she hummed while she walked, old melodies from a village in the southern provinces where her family still lived. The soft touch of her hand in his. Each detail made the gap between them harder to ignore. Zhou Yanmei possessed heavenly spiritual roots, the rarest configuration, the mark of someone with unbounding immortal potential. The elders spoke of her as the future of the sect.

Core Formation by thirty. Nascent Soul by fifty. The whole Pond Gazing Sect's hopes rested on her. She would revitalize the sect, leading their return to the central provinces. Liu Heng possessed water and earth spiritual roots. Dual-attribute. It was always his pride, but measured against hers it felt like bringing a candle to stand beside the sun.

Nascent Soul was a dream for men like him, requiring over a century of grueling cultivation that would leave him old and depleted while Zhou Yanmei still looked as young as she did today. She would outlive him by centuries.

"You're doing it again." Zhou Yanmei's voice pulled him from his thoughts. They sat on their usual bench. The moon hung low over the black water of the lake. She had brought sweet rice cakes from the kitchen, and the remnants of their picnic lay scattered between them.

"Doing what?"

"That face." She reached up and pressed her finger to the furrow between his brows.

"The one where you're calculating something unpleasant."

"I'm just..."

"You are." Her hand moved to cup his cheek. Her palm was warm despite the evening chill.

"Tell me." He should have lied. He should have invented some worry about his upcoming assessment or his lagging technique practice. But Zhou Yanmei's eyes caught the moonlight, and her touch made him feel like something precious, and he found himself unable to deceive her.

"I'm not good enough for you." She sighed. She had heard this many times the past two weeks.

"Liu Heng..."

"Your spiritual roots are heavenly. Mine are barely adequate. In fifty years, you'll be forming your Nascent Soul, and I'll be..." He swallowed.

"I'll be a middle age man struggling to stabilize my Core."

"Cultivation isn't everything."

"It's everything." He pulled away from her touch because he couldn't bear the kindness of it.

"I can imagine the elders are already whispering. And they're right." The words hung between them. The lake lapped at the shore with a sound like breathing. Zhou Yanmei was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was careful. Measured.

"What if there was a way to change it?"

"Change what?"

"Your spiritual roots." Liu Heng laughed. A brittle, humorless sound.

"Spiritual roots are determined at birth. Everyone knows that."

"If everything was determined by birth, there would be no immortal path." She stood, brushing rice cake crumbs from her robes.

"Come with me." She led him along the eastern shore, past the training pavilions, past the dormitories, towards the lake where disciples rarely ventured anymore. The air smelled of deep water and something else, something mineral and ancient.

"Yanmei, where are we going?"

"There's something I need to show you." Her voice had changed. Become distant, dreamy.

"Something that can help." The sect's namesake lake, once vibrant with life, now lay black and perfectly still. No lotus flowers grew along this shore. No insects chirped in the underbrush. The silence pressed against Liu Heng's ears like a physical weight. Zhou Yanmei walked to the water's edge. She stood there for a moment, moonlight catching her profile, and then she waded in.

"Yanmei..."

"Wait there." The water rose around her ankles. Her knees. Her waist. She kept walking, kept moving forward, entering the blackness as though answering a summons. Liu Heng's heart hammered against his ribs.

"Yanmei, please..." She disappeared beneath the surface. He lunged forward, ready to dive after her, but some instinct held him at the shore. The water was wrong. Even standing beside it, he could feel the wrongness, the way it seemed to drink the moonlight, the way his reflection didn't quite align with his movements, the way the cold radiating from its surface felt less like temperature and more like hunger. Seconds passed. A minute. Zhou Yanmei emerged.

She rose from the black water like something from a dream, her robes streaming, her hair plastered to her shoulders. Her hands were cupped before her chest, cradling something. She walked toward him, and he saw what she carried. His stomach turned to ice. It was a heart. It pulsed. The rhythm was slow and patient, the heartbeat of something that had been waiting for a very long time.

The surface gleamed with a crystalline sheen, blue-white in the moonlight, and where the severed arteries wept, the fluid that emerged caught the light and scattered it into fragments of color.

"What..." His voice cracked.

"What is that?"

"An opportunity." Zhou Yanmei's voice was soft. Reverent.

"I found it a few months ago, at the bottom of the lake. I've been waiting for the right moment to show you."

"That's a heart. That's a human heart."

"It was." She stepped closer. The pulsing organ glistened in her palms.

"Now it's something more. She was powerful, Liu Heng. More powerful than anyone in this sect. More powerful than almost anyone who has ever lived. When she died, her love became... this." The crystalline fluid dripped between her fingers. Where it struck the ground, the soil darkened and drank it in.

"It can improve spiritual roots." Zhou Yanmei's eyes were bright. Eager.

"I've seen it. Three times now. Disciples who consumed it showed dramatic advancement. Their cultivation barriers crumbled. Their spiritual pathways widened. For hours, they possessed power beyond anything they could achieve naturally."

"Three disciples?" Liu Heng's mind raced. He thought of the bodies found over the past month. The peaceful expressions. The opened chests.

"Yanmei, the deaths of the three disciples... this caused them?"

"The heart returns." She cut him off, her voice taking on a strange, layered quality.

"It searches, and when it doesn't find what it seeks, it returns. The disciples who died, they were merely... incompatible. But you..." She pressed closer. The heart pulsed inches from his chest.

"You could be different. You love me the way she loved him. I can feel it. The heart can feel it. That kind of love. Pure, desperate, willing to do anything, that's what the heart is looking for."

"Yanmei, you're not making sense. Who is 'she'? What are you talking about?"

"Consume the heart." The words came out layered, two voices speaking in almost-perfect unison. Zhou Yanmei's and something older, vaster, infinitely sadder.

"Let it search you. If you're the one it's looking for, you'll gain power beyond imagining. You'll be able to stand beside me forever. That's what you wanted, yes?" The ache in his chest, the inferiority, the longing, the desperate need to be worthy, surged forward. She was right. He wanted that. He wanted it more than anything. He looked at the heart. The muscle glistened. The arteries trailed like something hungry. The crystalline fluid wept from its surface in a slow, steady drip.

He thought about raising that organ to his lips. About biting into tissue that should have rotted centuries ago. About swallowing something that had been cut from a corpse and somehow still lived. His stomach heaved.

"I need..." He stepped back.

"I need to think about this." Zhou Yanmei's face flickered. For a single instant, her expression contorted into something raw, something that belonged to no twenty-three-year-old disciple. Then her smile returned, gentle and patient.

"Of course." She cradled the heart against her chest, stroking its surface with her thumb.

"But don't wait too long, my love. The emptiness only grows. And the heart..." The organ pulsed faster in her hands, eager, hungry.

"... the heart wants to help."