October 2025, Earth

  Leo Chen had become something of a campus legend, though not the kind anyone aspired to be.

  The whispers followed him everywhere, on the rare occasions he was actually seen. That's the guy who missed inauguration. That's the guy who hasn't shown up to a single new student mixer. That's the guy whose roommate says he lives inside a VR pod like some kind of techno-vampire.

  Tom Wheeler, Leo's roommate, was a natural storyteller. Broad-shouldered, affable, the kind of guy who made friends in line at the dining hall and left with three phone numbers and an invitation to someone's yacht.

  He had taken to Leo's peculiarities the way a documentary filmmaker takes to a particularly fascinating specimen of deep-sea fish.

  "Every three hours," Tom would say, holding court in the common room while his audience leaned in.

  "I'm serious. Like clockwork. The pod opens, he crawls out clutching his head like someone's drilling into his skull, and he just... groans. For like five minutes. Then he drinks this tea. And I'm telling you, this tea gets delivered to our room every single day in these fancy sealed containers, and then he climbs back in."

  "What kind of tea?" someone would invariably ask.

  "No idea. He won't let me try it. I asked once and he gave me this look..." Tom would attempt to replicate Leo's hollow, thousand-yard stare.

  "Like I'd just asked to drink his blood. Creepy as hell."

  The truth was both simpler and more terrible than Tom could imagine.

  Getting killed seven to eight times a day does things to a person.

  Leo had read once that sleep deprivation was used as a torture technique. He now understood why. Two-hour stretches of sleep, interrupted by the visceral experience of having his divine sense crushed into paste. Day after day after day.

  The happy-go-lucky freshman who had arrived at Exeter six weeks ago was gone. In his place was something that moved through the world like a sleepwalker, responding to stimuli with the minimum necessary effort.

  "Hey Leo, want to come to the..."

  Stare. Blink. Fall asleep standing up.

  "Leo, the RA wants to talk to you about..."

  "Leo, your mother is on the phone and she sounds really..."

  Immediate wakefulness. Terror. Scramble to answer.

  His mother remained the one force in the universe capable of cutting through the fog. She had taken to calling whenever Arthur reported that Leo had skipped one of Mike's "training sessions". The guilt trips were legendary.

  "Do you know how much that tea costs? Do you? This is our immortal potential we are pouring out for you. Mommy is working 7 days a week, dealing with screaming patients without taking a break. We are dipping into our savings making this huge sacrifice for you. This is for your own good, Leo..."

  By now the tea expenses had crossed a hundred thousand dollars. Leo was effectively an indentured servant, trapped between his mother's financial guilt trip and Mike's crushing divine sense in Azure Profound Continent.

  The strangest part was that the teachers tolerated it.

  Leo had stopped showing up to almost all of his classes. He was a ghost in the dormitory, a rumor in the hallways, a cautionary tale told to freshmen about what happened when you let gaming addiction consume your life. And yet no disciplinary notices appeared. No academic probation letters.

  Because the teachers knew.

  They had watched Leo Chen arrived with a large amount of divine sense, 60 Si, and they had all watched as that number climbed with impossible speed. 70 Si after two weeks. 95 Si after a month.

  Now, forty-five days in, Leo's divine sense had reached 110 Si.

  For context: the average Exeter graduate, after four years of intensive training, achieved somewhere between 80 and 120 Si. Leo was already matching that benchmark as a mortal, and he was still accelerating.

  ---

  Professor Williams was twelve minutes into his midterm examination when the door opened.

  He looked up, annoyed. Students knew better than to arrive late on test day. The policy was clear: if you weren't in your seat when the exam began, you didn't take the exam.

  A figure shambled through the doorway.

  Professor Williams had been teaching at Exeter for nineteen years. He had seen athletic prodigies, academic savants, the children of billionaires and the offspring of cultivation dynasties. He had never seen anything quite like the creature that now stood blinking in the fluorescent light of his classroom.

  The boy was thin, not slender, not lean, but thin in the way of famine victims and chronic insomniacs. His eyes were sunken into dark hollows, and his school uniform hung off his frame like a sail with no wind. His hair stuck up in directions that suggested he had either just woken up or had never gone to sleep in the first place.

  He stared at Professor Williams.

  Professor Williams stared back.

  "Can I help you?" the professor asked.

  "I don't believe I've seen you before. Are you certain you're in the right room? This is Advanced Mathematics, Section B."

  "THE ZOMBIE!"

  The scream came from the third row. Tom Wheeler had half-risen from his seat, arm extended.

  "THE ZOMBIE IS HERE! Everyone! Look! I told you guys he was in our class."

  Thirty-seven heads swiveled in unison.

  Leo blinked at his roommate.

  Tom's face was a mask of genuine shock, as if he had just witnessed a unicorn stroll through the door and ask for a syllabus. "I didn't think you knew where the math building was! I didn't think you knew what math was! How are you even awake right now? It's before noon!"

  "Mr. Wheeler," Professor Williams said, his voice carrying the particular frost of a teacher whose exam has been disrupted, "please sit down and continue your test."

  "But Professor, you don't understand. This guy lives in a VR pod. He doesn't see the light of day!"

  "Sit. Down."

  Leo shuffled to the front of the room. "I need," he said, and paused to gather his thoughts, "a pencil."

  Professor Williams stared at him.

  "And a calculator."

  "You came to a midterm examination," Professor Williams said slowly, "without a pencil or a calculator."

  "Yes."

  "Did you bring anything at all?"

  Leo considered this question slowely. He patted his pockets. Empty. He looked down at his hands. Also empty.

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  "No," he concluded.

  A muffled snort emerged from somewhere in the classroom. Someone else coughed in a way that might have been suppressed laughter.

  Professor Williams pinched the bridge of his nose. Nineteen years. Nineteen years and he had never...

  He opened his desk drawer, retrieved a spare pencil and a basic scientific calculator, and held them out.

  "Do you know where you're sitting?"

  "No."

  "Row four, seat seven. The test is already in progress. You have..." he checked the clock, "...one hour and forty-three minutes remaining. I strongly suggest you use them wisely, Mr. Chen."

  Leo took the supplies and shambled toward his assigned seat. The students he passed leaned away slightly, as if sleeplessness might be contagious.

  He sat down.

  He looked at the test.

  The test looked back at him, four pages of algebra and geometry that would have given a normal student nightmares. But Leo never had much problem with Academics. It was one of his strong suites pre-transmigration.

  Leo picked up his pencil.

  Professor Williams had been grading papers at his desk, occasionally glancing up to monitor the room, when the first student approached to turn in their exam.

  This was expected. There were always a few overachievers who finished early, students who had studied until their eyes bled, who lived and breathed mathematics, who would rather die than lose their class rank.

  What was not expected was Leo Chen shuffling up to the desk alongside them.

  Professor Williams looked at the clock. Forty-seven minutes had elapsed. Less than half the allotted time.

  He looked at Leo, who was holding out his completed exam with the enthusiasm of a man handing over a parking ticket.

  "You're finished?"

  "Yes."

  "Are you certain? You still have nearly an hour remaining. You could review your work, check for..."

  "I'm finished."

  Leo set the exam on the desk, turned around, and shambled back to his seat, where he immediately put his head down and immediately fell asleep.

  Professor Williams stared at the exam.

  Curiosity, that most dangerous of academic vices, stirred in his chest. He had been teaching long enough to recognize the signs of a student giving up, the half-finished problems, the blank pages. He expected to find such carnage when he flipped through Leo Chen's test.

  He picked up his red pen.

  He opened to the first page.

  His pen hovered, searching for errors.

  His pen continued to hover.

  Professor Williams turned to the second page. Then the third. He began flipping faster, his frown deepening with each sheet of paper.

  At the front of the room, Tom Wheeler had just finished his own exam. Normally he would take his time to double check his work to squeeze out some extra points. But this time he noticed Professor Williams, uncharacteristically grading a test. It must have been Leo's.

  Tom got up to turn in his exam, and was able to sneak a peak at the score after Professor Williams laid it down.

  98/100.

  ---

  Azure Profound Continent

  For better or for worse, as Leo's Si reached 200, his progress began to stall.

  Before, Mike's Foundation Establishment spiritual pressure could flatten Leo's divine sense into paste within seconds, a quick, agonizing death, now each session stretched into prolonged warfare. Leo's divine sense had grown dense enough that it resisted the crushing weight for agonizing minutes.

  The rapid progress had been intoxicating. Watching Leo's Si counter climb: 50, 80, 120, 180, had created a sense of momentum, of destiny. They had found a cheat code, a heaven-defying opportunity, and all they had to do was keep pressing the button.

  Arthur and Kevin had spent their days lounging in their cave hideout, cultivating at their leisure, entering the game completely plastered, secure in the knowledge that their investment in Leo was paying dividends beyond their wildest projections.

  Now the counter barely moved. 200 Si. 202 Si. 203 Si.

  Their immortal destiny seemed to be slipping out of their grasp.

  The silver lining, at least for Leo, was that the extended sessions exhausted even Mike. He could only manage three or four rounds per day since he needed to rest and recover his own divine sense. This meant Leo now received something he had almost forgotten existed, real breaks longer than two hours.

  He slept for six hours straight on the first such break. He woke up crying, unsure whether the tears were from relief or from the realization that he had forgotten what uninterrupted sleep felt like.

  Arthur and Kevin finally started working on the Divine Sense Press project that they had proposed a while back. In fact the two of them actually met up in the real world to go visit some of Arthur's old contacts to get some help and dig up forgotten knowledge.

  The core concept behind the press was the same: trap Leo's divine sense between two walls of overwhelming spiritual pressure and squeeze until something gave. But the execution required a source of powerful spiritual or divine sense pressure. They needed strong artifacts. Preferably Nascent Soul grade, but they knew that was completely unrealistic.

  While the adults schemed about artifact acquisition and scouted the outside world, Leo threw himself into the one task that didn't involve his divine sense being systematically destroyed: language learning.

  Leo's tutors rotated frequently, he spent his time in the Azure Profound Continent game world listening to stories, and trying to tell some of his own. They paid farmers, merchants, traveling storytellers; anyone willing to spend hours each day speaking with the strange young master from lands far beyond.

  It was a very enjoyable experience and really gave Leo a lot more confidence as well as time to polish his hypothetical backstory.

  By the three-month mark since arrival, Leo was dreaming in Common. He could haggle with merchants, follow overhead conversations, and read simple texts. He still spoke with an accent that his tutors found exotic and faintly comical, but he could make himself understood.

  However, now was the time to stop hiding.

  One by one, the group pressed their weapons into their storage rings. The foundation establishment cultivators had taken their time looting bandit camps for weapons, storage rings and silver.

  Mike had even found time to craft an AK-47 and ammo. Apparently he was a huge gun nut. Their transport waited outside the cave: a wooden cart with iron-banded wheels and a leather harness.

  Arthur strapped himself in, looping the thick straps across his shoulders and chest, while the other three settled themselves into the cart bed.

  With a grunt, Arthur lurched forward, legs running against the packed earth as he pulled the cart and its passengers behind him.

  The Foundation Establishment cultivators would rotate throughout the journey, each adult taking their turn as they made their way toward the Pond Gazing Sect, where answers and riches lay in wait for them.

  ---

  The loose cultivator marketplace sprawled across a mountain valley three days' travel from their cave. Ramshackle stalls and semi-permanent pavilions clustered around a central plaza where a massive stone tablet displayed sect announcements and bounty postings. The air smelled of exotic herbs, beast blood, and the particular ozone tang of spiritual artifacts being tested.

  "You're telling me," Arthur said, listening to Leo's report, "that these Pond Gazing losers are actually a powerful sect?"

  "Regional powerhouse," Leo corrected. "Gold Core is considered high-end power in this country. No locals are willing to offend them."

  Kevin's expression cycled through disbelief, irritation, and something approaching grudging respect. Deriding the Pond Gazing Sect had become a favorite pastime for the group.

  After all, cultivators who stared at ponds. How threatening could they possibly be? They had spent an entire evening inventing increasingly ridiculous theories about their cultivation techniques.

  "The pond," Leo continued, consulting his notes, "is apparently something called a Profundity."

  Mike perked up. "A what?"

  "A Profundity. Like Azure Profound Continent. Apparently important enough to name the entire realm after it. People aren't really sure what a Profundity actually is. They only know that it's really dangerous and you shouldn't touch it."

  Arthur waved his hand dismissively. "Okay well, we'll figure out the cosmic mystery later. What I really care about is how we're going to rob this marketplace. Have you found any leads on Gold Core artifacts? Spiritual ore for life-bound swords?"

  Mike shook his head. He had accompanied Leo during the scouting journey, playing the role of intimidating cultivator escort while Leo did the actual intelligence gathering.

  "It's unlikely my AK will be able to give us enough of an advantage to clean out the marketplace. I've checked, the Foundation Establishment tier guards are decked out in spiritual armor. Bullets might inconvenience them."

  He pointed at the cluster of elegant mansions surrounding the distant pond.

  "And Gold Cores can reinforce in a matter of minutes. We'd have maybe five minutes of chaos before someone shows up who can kill all of us with a sneeze."

  Arthur stroked his chin, eyes distant. The gears were clearly turning.

  Kevin recognized that look. "Arthur, whatever you're thinking..."

  "I've got it!" Arthur's face lit up like a child who had just discovered where his parents hid the Christmas presents.

  "We tunnel in!"

  Silence.

  "We... tunnel in," Kevin repeated slowly.

  "Yes! I brought my shovels, the formation reinforced ones I made for quick excavation. We rent a warehouse somewhere near the marketplace, dig underneath the whole thing, and pop up right inside the smithy vault or wherever they keep the good stuff." Arthur was already pulling up mental schematics, his enthusiasm building.

  "These backwards idiots will never expect it!"

  Kevin pinched the bridge of his nose. "Arthur. We're in a world with people who can sense spiritual fluctuations from miles away. People who can probably feel someone digging through the earth like you'd feel someone tapping on your shoulder."

  "We'll just look up and install some isolation formations," Arthur countered, as if this were obvious.

  "Mask the vibrations. Maybe do it at night when everyone's meditating or whatever they do."

  "Gaze at the pond," Leo offered. "They gaze at the pond."

  "Perfect! They'll be too busy staring at their stupid pond to notice a little underground construction project."

  Mike, who had remained silent throughout this exchange, wore the expression of a man who had learned to pick his battles. He couldn't believe the old boomer was also an Ex Military. Failure in his civilian life must have affected him deeply.

  "I agree," Kevin continued, warming to Arthur's idea, "nobody ever expects the tunnel. It's like the Spanish Inquisition, but with shovels."