Wandering through a forest on Earth was strange. Perhaps it had something to do with location.

Civilization had been around these parts for centuries. That meant the ‘wild’ forest he was presently searching for materials was bounded on all sides by small estates. He’d try to accelerate to a more comfortable speed only to end up standing in a manicured lawn. His dismal estimate was that, without crossing onto the property of another family, he only had about three li’s worth of forest to search.

Translated, this involved Henry moving at a snail’s pace, carefully scanning each foot to make sure that even inferior plants would make it into the old burlap sack he’d requisitioned from the family shed. The musty bag had been holding sports equipment until Henry had elevated it to the higher calling of containing the random plants and rocks he haphazardly thrust into it.

It seemed that fortune was not on his side in this endeavor. The items he was deciding to bring couldn’t be considered spiritual herbs or stones. They were objects with higher-than-normal amounts of qi, that was all. Nearly completely useless to anyone.

Anyone except those like him, that is. Henry was known as a loose cultivator, one untethered from a sect or clan. Loose cultivators had a reputation for taking any trash and somehow using it to further their own power. To eagerly grab materials that even children from sects would turn up their nose at.

Mainly it came down to not caring about side effects. Sects sheltered their members, by and large. Unless the pain was a learning experience they made sure their precious little rough gems were cut and polished in a precise way. That meant even plants that may have an important use were scorned unless the side effects were mitigated somehow. Cultivators had a completely deserved reputation as pill-popping freaks obsessed with personal strength above all else, but by the heavens they would make sure that the pills they threw back with regularity wouldn’t give them even the lightest stomach tremble.

Slowly the bag filled. Most of this he was going to have to throw into a pot and just manually pull the qi out. A mind-numbing and slow experience that nonetheless left a drinkable end product. Cultivation soup was the name it was most commonly known as. Tasted awful and would make you violently ill, but you’d get stronger than just cultivating alone.

He had other uses, of course, but that depended on if his mother could find the items on the list of supplies he’d given her. He would’ve gone into town except there was simply too much to do. Also he didn’t know how to drive. He was sure that he knew, once, but even sitting in the driver’s seat brought no memories forth. So he had to hope his mother would accurately assess what he needed and bring it to him promptly.

There was a difficulty in relying on other people. For years even those he’d been closest with relied on him more than them. For physical needs. He relied on them desperately, something he’d never admit to anyone if tortured, for emotional clarity. The first half-century had completely disconnected him from that part of humanity that still lingered in his battered soul.

Henry was pulled out of his brooding by a familiar scent. His eyes shot up and scanned the tree that stretched overhead. It was an old, twisted something he couldn’t quite recognize a bit taller than the surrounding trees. A ten-foot jump let the cultivator grab the lowest thick branch and pull himself up.

One short scramble later and he found what he was looking for. In the crook between two gnarled branches grew a very familiar plant. It looked like a humble variety of grass, albeit one with a swirled blue-green color. Henry’s eyes sparkled as he looked at the plant.

Spirit Grass. The most base of the true spiritual herbs. Every sect worth their land set aside a large parcel to cultivate Spirit Grass. Spirit grass also surrounded many lesser sect’s dedicated cultivation chambers, since large quantities of the plant just being there would increase the qi of an area.

“Hello, beautiful,” he murmured, “How about we get you out of this place and take you somewhere nice?”

With the gentlest hand Henry carefully dug into the rotted bark and leaves the grass was growing in and removing the entire clump the Spirit Grass was growing in.

His mother liked to garden, instructing her on how the hardy little spiritual plant was maintained would be easy.

A victorious smile plastered itself to Henry’s face as he jumped down. This was enough to get started with the essentials. This and the bag full of clutter. Even with all of the progress he’d made in the last couple of days there was still a feeling of idleness as he just...waited for things to happen to him.

Eyes glued to the grass, cradling with a gentleness that would rival that of a new mother, Henry left his feet and his cultivator’s senses to guide him home.

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Potting the Spirit Grass and settling those pots in the correct places in his developing basement Qi Chamber took up only the next hour, so he could return to cultivating for a few hours.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

This underground domain had become Henry’s unofficial sanctum. The attic bedroom was a place to sleep and plot. This was where he trained. Prior to his return, this basement had been a sort of den for the family. A couple cheap couches picked up at garage sales, an older videogame console on top of an old wooden television.

Now the only items that remained in the surprisingly large open area by the sliding glass doors were a single couch and now two pots, each with a single Spirit Grass plant inside, the larger clay pots dwarfing the thin spiritual herbs.

It was enough, though. Henry could already feel the ebb and flow of the qi increasing as the natural movement of energy was aided by the cycles of the plants. That simple, low-quality herbs like these caused a noticeable difference only pointed out to him how this really was the best location for a Qi Chamber on his family’s estate. Once he could set up something resembling a proper qi-gathering formation, then things would really kick off.

Henry settled back into the couch and crossed his legs. It was an old, wood-backed and threadbare affair, covered in a multi-colored crochet afghan. Nevertheless, the cushions were still firm enough for the cultivator to be properly seated.

There were many cultivators who would argue that to meditate on furniture such as this was the height of folly. That to become powerful you had to reject the pleasures of the mortal world and strive to purify yourself, disconnect from the mortal and embrace the immortal.

What this boiled down to, in Henry’s experience, was a disdain for anything seen as ‘mortal’, i.e. common. If there was a play to be seen by the Heavens it would have cultivator actors. A painting? It’d better be a black and white, somber exploration of philosophy. The same books were read, the same works published over and over again. Cultivation arts were never changed, only smoothed over the course of millennia. It really added to the sense of cultural stasis that a lot of the Omniverse operated under.

That wasn’t fair, of course. Wasn’t even his own opinion, really. It was an argument he’d heard over and over again. Earth Realm natives like him grew up with constant change. A nonstop stream of experiences. In his home country they preached the word freedom like it was a religious mantra to ward off the Devil. To keep slaves? To prevent choice? That was not simply the authority of those in power being exercised in a reasonable manner. It was an active and pernicious evil to be fought at every opportunity.

The Specters of Humanity had not been the first group of Earth Realm natives fighting against what was, to give credit to the detractors, a blatantly unfair system. Unfair to the eyes of Earthlings. To the Omniverse? Might made right. If you wanted to be a benevolent patriarch or a slaving demigod made no difference, really, as long as you had the power to back up your personal ethos.

That was the lesson Henry had learned first. That the only thing that mattered in this new world was power. Because of this, the acquisition of power itself could be argued to be a moral decision. To reject the power to reduce suffering when able was evil. To reject advancement, therefor, was a morally bankrupt choice, which (conveniently), made Henry’s decisions logical in that framing. Murder as a moral action as long as you were better off after the killing.

The beating it had taken to get him to even rethink this after using it as an excuse for decades had been truly incredible.

Henry smiled and dove into the memories as qi flowed through him. Mags had sat the entire team down for a movie night as soon as she’d gathered the materials to have a working video player. He’d still been rebellious back then. Considering his options, pushing his limits, running through his techniques to try to break the hold she had on him.

It had taken far too long to realize that his following her orders wasn’t because of some ability.

There had only been a few movie nights. The forces that had claimed the Earth did well to destroy the previous civilizations. The video was projected onto a cliff face by a fragile, mortal machine. The sound was tinny and thin, as if the effort of recreating this lost world, if only for a couple hours, was almost too much for it.

He’d been enraptured. To see the world he’d had taken from him decades ago displayed on that cliff had almost made him weep. Lucky he didn’t, as several of the other Specters started blubbering and he almost couldn’t make out the words.

It was a story for children, a morality play of adventure and creating your own story. For the adults, however, the lesson was more complex. The main character, a boy abandoned by his mother to two wizened seniors to find a great treasure, represented a person lost, adrift. Not knowing what to believe or even if there was anything worth believing in.

Not a similar story to his own, but universal enough that Henry could, at the minimum, understand the child’s plight.

Then, a talk next to a moonlit lake. An old warrior, too old to continue the battles that had composed his life until then, condensing his knowledge into a legacy for the child in the form of a simple speech.

Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love…

True love never dies.

You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things.

Because those are the things worth believing in.

Enough time had passed since seeing the film to admit that he, the Demon of Slaughter, had shed a tear at these words.

Margaret had a way around those sorts of things. She could sail through the turmoil of the people she surrounded herself with and gift them what they needed, even without intending it. At that moment, sitting in the dark and staring at the ghosts of a world that would never exist again resurrected twenty feet high on a white cliff face, those words were a balm to his soul and a boon to his cultivation. Enlightenment did not come easy to him, but those words were part of the compass Margaret had helped him build for himself to make up for his lacking mentality.

Sad that it didn’t work completely. He could shed tears at the pain but that did not rebuild the damage. The man once known as Henry Stroeder was no more. That wasn’t accurate. When the end of the world had come, he wasn’t yet a man.

The man once known as Henry Stroeder was never given a chance to live.

Henry came back to himself slowly, and checked his progress. He was now at the third level of Qi Gathering. The memories were restrained once again.

Allowing the mind to introspect, to drift through it’s own experiences, was an advanced and powerful meditation method when combined with a breathing technique. Hard to do for most, and disliked by those with the capability. A route to power, yes, but most people didn’t want to regularly relive their best and worst days one after another on repeat forever.

Henry believed that, as long as he was constantly reliving them anyway, he might as well get some benefit out of it. Right now, though, he had to put his face back on.

His mother had returned from shopping.