I couldn’t sleep last night for obvious reasons and instead I spent most of the night in meditation. I knew my mom was planning on leaving that morning and getting on a plane. I had planned for this and was ready. Hugging me my mom said, “Sweetie I am leaving for my trip. I won’t be back for a couple days.” As soon as she finished her sentence I said “sorry mom but you will have to stay here today.” I grabbed her by the arm and gently forced her to sit down. I then explained to her that today something bad was going to happen and that I needed her to stay here. She was very angry that I stopped her as she would lose her job if she did not go. I tied her up, as she was yelling at me, knowing this was the only thing I could do to save her life and knew in a few hours she would forgive me. I sat with my mom listening to her rambling on about how much trouble I was going to be in for a couple hours. Then I put on the news on the TV so she could see the airplanes crashing into the twin towers in New York. Her jaw dropped and she began to sob softly. After the tears had dried she looked at me and said “How did you know?” I then replied “I wish I could explain this all to you but if I do, you may really think I am crazy.” She looked at me with those stern eyes like I was in trouble for hiding stuff from her. “I am your mother and you just proved to me that what you said was true and now you don’t want to give me any more details? Do you think I still can’t punish you?” As if I was 10 years old again and in trouble I began to just say everything all at once in tears. Mom had to stop me and calm me down so that she could piece together what I was trying to say. “You mean to tell me that in just a few hours this entire world will end? And the only way for me to live is to stay here in the house until it’s over?” I left out the part about me living for the next 20 years without her and being reborn as to not sound completely crazy. “Yes mom. If you stay here with me until after everything goes dark we will be fine.” I knew telling mom too much was not a good thing so I could only tell her bits and pieces for now. We then sat there for the next few hours until the bombings began.

Once the bombings started the TV began to flicker and then only a few moments later it went black. We then saw the world outside go completely black. Then all of a sudden there was an ominous light that appeared on the horizon which then moved like a wave over the land hitting us and went beyond to engulf the whole world. At this time I felt the fluctuations of Qi beginning to grow around me. I knew that now was the time and said “Mom I need you to not answer the door no matter what. I will sit here and meditate for a bit so that I can clear my mind.” Mom was still in a daze and could only shake her head in disbelief. I sat there in the living room cultivating the technique that I had found in some old ruins several years ago. The cultivating technique that I had decided to use to build my foundation was the Supreme Yang art. This would allow me to build a solid Qi foundation that would work best with my Unyielding Divine body art. Because I was already prepared for this and did not waste even a second I was able to make an immediate break through to the foundation building realm. This is the first realm of cultivation. The levels of this age are, Foundation building, Qi gathering, Core foundation, and then there is the Golden Core. Golden Core is the highest level of cultivation I have seen even in my previous life. There are rumors that it goes beyond that but no one here has managed to reach that level. When I died I was only a peak Core foundation cultivator so I was not weak but I was by no means the strongest.

After about 2 hours my mom broke into my meditation with worry in her voice. “John you need to tell me what the hell is going on here!” I opened my eyes and stood up feeling the change in my cultivation. It made me smile and I looked at my mom and said “Mom welcome to the world of cultivators.” I began to explain the basics of what had happened with the flash and further explained that things like the car and TV will no longer work here. Mom didn’t push too much as I felt that she had reached her limit for the day on all the craziness happening. I took mom by the hand and told her it may be a good idea for her to go ahead and take a rest in her bed for the night. She couldn’t refuse as she was still in complete shock and I lead her into her room and got her in bed and closed the door to give her some time to get settled. I spent the rest of the night consolidating my new realm and clearing my mind for what is to follow. In cultivation you must take it step by step. First you must practice and once you have endured, grown stronger, and maybe even a fruitful encounter you may be able to break into the next realm of cultivation. Cultivation however takes a long time and one must be patient. The fact that I had already planned and prepared to break through had given me a step up against regular people.

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The next morning mom came out with her towel wrapped around her asking me why the water would not work. I explained that the companies who took care of the water and insured people like us had running water could no longer do so because of the bombs. “So do we just go find a river or something?” Laughing I told her “Yes mom. If you need to wash up we will need to go find some river or lake to bathe” Mom then looked to the ground and went silent. “Mom please understand that the old world is over and we will need to adapt to the new one. You haven’t even been outside yet so you have no idea how things have changed.” With a angry mom said “Don’t think you can be rude to me just because you know more about what is going on.” I could only simply reply “yes ma’am” with a smile on my face. Even though I was being scolded I was still happy to know that she was there with me this time.

A couple hours later I explained to mom that we will need to pack up and leave this place. At first she was really against it and didn’t want to leave our home we had lived in for so many years. But after I explained to her that nothing in the house works anymore and it’s not like we can make a fire in the living room to cook our meals anyways so it is best that we find a new place to stay. After I told her to only pack one bag I went and packed a couple different bags myself. One of the bags I used for food while the other I used for weapons and one set of clothes. I did not need much. The problem was my mom thought she needed everything in the house.

After the battle of the baggage mom and I finally left the house. We lived in a small city in Texas and when we walked out I began to explain what has change around the world. Texas no longer exists as we knew it. Much of the world had been destroyed and because of the breaking of the limiter and Qi now surrounding us all the time, the left over land masses began to form new continents with new lands and different kinds of people. Even though we were just living in our family home in Texas It became clear that day that Texas was no longer Texas. After only walking for about an hour the plants, weather, and even animals were different. It felt like we were in a Vietnamese jungle in the middle of the Vietnam War. There were people screaming in the forest and plenty of people asking for help. I had to, more than once, pull mom away from the cries and had to explain to her that the peaceful world we once knew no longer exists and the weak shall die and the strong shall live. It took her some time and even then she was upset that we could not help those people asking for help. As the sun set for the first time in the forest mom fully understood why we couldn’t help them. We sat there in the darkness watching as a woman cried for help and a couple of men came to help her. As those nice men were trying to help her up the lady stabbed one of them and three others came rushing out to kill the other. With a gasp mom said, “Is this really the world we grew up in? Can we not care for each other and help?” In a soothing voice I told mom that, “If we want to protect those people we must cultivate and learn martial arts so that we can not only save them but also protect ourselves.” A glow lit in mother’s eyes and she looked at me with all the determination she had and said, “I want to learn to cultivate. Will you teach me?” Knowing that this would come up one day I had already had a plan for this. “Mom I will take care of all that for you and help guide you through these dark days.” I did not want to have her cultivate in this jungle as there was too many people lurking in the woods and so I told her that in the morning we will move out of the woods and find ourselves a nice cave in which we can protect ourselves well and I can have her start her road to cultivation.