Poppy and Annabelle shared a look between each other. Then they looked at Eros, who shrugged, and pulled out a canteen of water.

I sniffed it before drinking. All I smelled was the leather. I took a drink as Eros walked away, looking at the entrance we had come from.

Annabelle’s face was puffy with tears, but Poppy seemed mostly unharmed, aside from the sand in her hair.

“What do you mean what is mana? Do you mean… philosophically?” Poppy asked.

I sensed I had made a mistake. I took another drink, buying a moment to think. Poppy mentioned her skill consumed mana. My skill didn’t consume any. Instead, it sucked every last drop of darkness-attuned qi out of me.

“Mana… is what you use for your skills?” I asked. “Sorry. Where I come from, we have another word for it.”

Poppy gave me a concerned look, eyebrow raised. Even Anabelle was staring at me now, though her expression was more deadpan.

“Yeah.” Poppy replied. Then she looked to Annabelle. “We should retreat and report this dungeon instead.”

Annabelle glared.

“After all of this?” She said. Her voice was raspy. “Now you want to back out?”

“There’s no exit!” Eros shouted from across the hall.

“What?” I asked, spinning toward Eros. The doorway that we had come down was missing, the wall entirely smooth instead.

As if on cue, the other wall slid open, revealing a doorway into an illuminated hall.

“Shit!” Eros said, walking over and grabbing his face. “We’re trapped in a precursor ruin with no exit!”

Poppy looked from the next door and then back to me.

“You said you’ve heard of places like this? I’ve never heard of a dungeon designed to teach you skills.” Poppy said, staring at me expectantly.

I grimaced.

“That skill said it was the first of thirty-six. There might be thirty-five more chambers.” I added.

Annabelle looked warily at the next chamber.

“Let’s take a moment to recover. Can you check for traps after we reset?”

Annabelle nodded. Unlike her earlier attitude, she was quiet and reserved now.

“I just need thirty minutes.” She said after a moment.

I closed my eyes and focused on my cultivation. The feeling of my meridians being anything less than full was uncomfortable with so long spent with them near overflowing. I pulled in qi from the air. The ruin had mostly darkness attributed qi, along with neutral ambient qi.

I focused on pulling it into the twisting patterns to infuse the neutral qi with wind attributes. Between my enhanced Willpower and the immense amount of qi present here I found myself drinking a river of power, sinking so deep into myself that I lost track of the room around me.

I only came to a few moments later to Eros shaking my shoulder.

“You alright?” Eros asked.

“Apologies. The earlier fight took a lot out of me.”

“Do you have mana exhaustion?” Poppy asked, looking me over.

“I’ve mostly recovered, I think.” I said, standing.

Annabelle stood by the door. Poppy shot her a nod, and her facial features hardened before she slipped out of my perception. She was back only a second later.

“[Trap Detection] didn’t sense anything in the hall, but it hadn’t sensed that golem either. The next room looks like some kind of obstacle course.”

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We headed down the hallway, moving slowly and cautiously until we stood at the threshold to the next chamber.

An eight was carved into a stone sign between us and the obstacle. Multiple stone signs around it depicted a martial art form — a movement technique. I walked from right to left, tracing my hands along the intricate designs. Along with showing the physical movements, they also showed the underlying qi manipulating that enabled the technique.

It was clearly a movement technique — I could tell by the focus almost entirely on the legs and feet — but it’s name wasn’t written.

Between us and the other side was a seemingly bottomless chasm, interspersed by circular stone pillars with flat tops. The room was so long that clouds of humid fog obscured it half way through; it must have been hundreds of feet across.

After a moment, I turned and tried to use [Identify] on the tablets.

[Star Falling through The Void, The Eighth Anti-Light form, instruction manual.]

[Manual Recorded to System.]

“Do you know what this is?” Poppy asked, looking between me and then across the chasm.

“It looks like a night sky.” I said. Each of the columns was dimly glowing. The pillars looked like stars across the night.

“This room shouldn’t be here.” Eros said.

“What do you mean?” Poppy asked.

“It wasn’t here when we were on the outside. Is the — was the floor sloped?”

Eros dropped down and touched the ground, padding his way back toward the hall. When he pressed his hand to the exit, he stopped in midair, like he had hit an invisible screen.

“Shit.” Eros said.

The visible passage into the wall slowly turned white and opaque.

“This dungeon is screwing with space.” Eros said.

“Precursors…” Poppy trailed off, voice angry. She stared across the chasm in the ground. “Sai, how do we cross this thing?”

“It looks like it wants us to use the movement technique.” I said, looking up and around the room. I could sense qi in the ceiling. At the first realm, I couldn’t reach out and understand it completely, just sense the embedded formation. “But I think there’s more. It’s probably going to throw you back if you’re not using the technique at the beginning.”

“No, that’s insane — this thing wants us to learn another skill?” Poppy asked.

Her eyes weren’t afraid or shocked, though. Instead, they were greedy, the same as they were when we first saw the ruin.

“I’ve never even heard of the skill you got.” Annabelle chimed in. “Void fist? It sounds like…”

“Like Old Magic.” Poppy licked her lips, then stared at me. “Can you do it?”

“I can try.” I said, limbering up as I stared at the cultivation technique recorded across the standing stone tablets.

I stretched out my legs fully, debating whether to try to cross with this technique or just my own.

I was confident that whatever formation was on it wouldn’t try to kill me. This wasn’t a place for a legacy — it looked more like a place for students. This was the heart of the formation, the challenge that we were expected to face, without a doubt.

The only question was whether I even had enough qi to perform the eighth form.

A single punch shouldn’t consume anywhere near as much as a continuous movement technique, and I had to maintain it for dozens of feet to cross the gap. I hadn’t recovered completely from the single punch the last chamber demanded.

If all else failed, I could use Across Darkened Skies and pray I was fast enough.

“What about the rest of us?” Eros asked suddenly.

“When the challenge is completed, the room should deactivate. Just like with the golem.” I said, stepping up to the beginning of the course. My eyes scanned the pillars, trying to figure out the fastest route to jump across them. Then I began cycling the qi through my legs.

Using qi techniques was like carefully weaving threads into complex knots and patterns, driving the loops of power already flowing through my body into new shapes that carried their own properties. Across Darkened Sky infused my legs with wind, warping the air around me and allowing me to sail forward.

When I was younger, I had dreamt of using the technique to fly. It enabled cultivators to cross the sky. Not like the Feng Family cultivators, who had to rely on flying swords. But in the first realm, I was cursed to walk on the ground.

As I weaved the qi through my legs more deftly than I ever had before, practicing the pattern over and over, I realized that wasn’t true anymore. If I could find a way to keep the enhanced Willpower I had in this formation, breaking into the Second Realm would come with ease.

If I wanted to, then one day, I could fly. How much power could I eke out of this ruin? More than enough to help

The darkness qi in my legs erupted in power as I shot myself forward. I felt reality bend and warp in a new way. I had accelerated before using the wind to push myself forward, but this technique was doing something else.

As I took the first step, the complex shapes of qi in my legs began to Enforce their attributes onto reality. Space tore.

I felt myself being pulled forward.

Unlike my own movement technique, which propelled me by shifting all the air around me and pushing on me, this seemed to carve the world in front of me away.

A heavy weight dragged behind me, as if I was running ahead of my own body. The formation in the ceiling activated, an ominous purple glow shining down toward me as I navigated the empty gaps between pillars. Every time I kicked off, I blurred in a streak of white light, landing on the next.

The formation above me erupted with power, a wall of force flowing out… and missing me entirely. I risked a look behind myself.

There was an afterimage of myself exploding into smoke as the wall of purple force pushed it back. Poppy shouted my name as I continued forward.

Three more times the formation above activated, disrupting the illusory body trailing behind me, but I continued forward.

Then, mid jump, the Darkness qi inside of me that the technique had been using bottomed out. The after-image slammed into me, space compressing. I wobbled on one of the pillars, panting and catching myself, beginning to re-shape my qi into the complex pattern that would let me use Across Darkened Sky, my own movement technique.

Before I could finish, a wall of purple force slammed into me.