When Liu Bang opened his eyes and drew in his first breath as his new self, nearly a thousand people died in an instant. Several hundred more were blasted apart as he stretched out his arms, causing shockwaves that shattered the ‘secure’ concrete research bunker housing him like it was made of fragile glass. Sensitive scientific equipment, materials, and even vehicles worth more yuan than the young chinese boy could ever possibly have conceived of in his previous life were disintegrated along with the structure.

All of it gone. Destroyed in a blur of absolute power. Just like that.

Liu noticed the destruction his awakening had caused of course, but he did not care for the lives lost. Because unlike almost everyone who had slumbered inside their evolutionary chrysalis, Liu had been aware of what occurred around him. He had been aware, and watching, the entire time.

His grandfather, Kai Bang, had been a noble man. One who had tirelessly praised the ‘spirit of China’ and how its many people were always unified in purpose. How they all worked together in seamless, social harmony to bring forth prosperity and dignity in a world that often so often lacked it. His father, Jia Bang, had instructed Liu on the importance of steadfastly committing to one’s principles. Doing so ensured one could be trusted, and trust was the indelible fabric of any nation.

These concepts, and many more, had all been drilled into Liu since before he could remember. He had grown up a sharp, studious, and respectful child because of it. One whose simple, if lofty dream had been to one day proudly lead his great people towards a bright and shining future. One that he hoped all of China would work towards with him.

That dream, idyllic as it was, had withered up and died roughly four weeks ago.

In the wake of Earth’s forcibly accelerated evolution, massive population centers suffered a great deal more than rural areas. Particularly in those cities where skyscrapers were more common than houses. There were simply too many people. Too few resources. China’s infrastructure had survived, but only barely. Much of it had been inadvertently derailed or destroyed by tragic accident. So when the interconnectedness of the global economy shattered, and daily imports ceased arriving, there was no longer enough food to feed hungry mouths.

At first, these were not unsolvable problems to Liu. He had faith in his people. He knew they could and would come together in hard times. That they would prove resilient to this calamitous disaster and rise above it. That China would live on, survive this devastating apocalypse, and emerge on the other end greater than ever before.

Liu was shocked when he learned the truth. Helpless in his shell and undergoing his own drastic physiological changes, the naive boy watched his beloved society tear itself apart brick by brick. His horror was not limited to just his surroundings, either. For Liu could view not just that which was around him, but everything that was around him. For at least a kilometer in every direction, and that distance grew further and further by the day.

His view was not restricted to mere sight, either. Liu heard, felt, and even smelled the unrivaled barbarism happening around him in real time. He experienced it viscerally, on an intrinsic level that was indistinguishable from living his own life. All of it. All of them. All at once. Everything that was happening, and everywhere, from every angle. An overwhelming burden, and one that only grew worse.

Liu lived through the lives of more than ten thousand of his countrymen, and he wept a constant stream of tears for the suffering his people experienced. Suffering he could not help but notice they mostly brought down upon themselves or others.

It was not the first death that broke him, nor was it the thousandth. It was not the first inadvertently murdered child of his own age, nor the last gasping breath of the little girls who had been crushed under falling rubble and starved to death. Little girls who had resembled his own little sister Chen so much that Liu’s heart had all but broken with them. It was not even the death of his own father that tormented Liu’s mind, for Jia Bang had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Which for him had been returning from a business trip, only to be struck by a falling plane whose pilot had been unresponsive. Were it not for finding his father’s favorite watch on a severed wrist through the eyes of a man who had stolen it, Liu might never have known what happened to him.

No, it wasn’t the cries of those who were unable to save themselves, nor the rage of those whose hearts had blackened with pain and loss, and could only take it out on others.

It was when they found his mother.

When they found his sister. His nearly-withered grandmother. All of his remaining cousins, aunts, and uncles. When they were rounded up, brought to where Liu still slumbered, and questioned. Questioned for answers they could not give. Answers like why he had not yet awakened when everyone else had. Answers to what his plans and intentions would be when he finally emerged. Answers on how to control him and his likely-to-be immense power when he finally did.

Liu had tried to answer these questions on his family’s behalf, but had found he was unable to do so. His powers at the time had still been changing and were mostly unknown, even to him. They did not include the ability to communicate with those outside his shell no matter how much he wished for them to.

So Liu could do nothing but lay there, immobile and helpless, as the questions of his family’s captors became demands. Became threats. Punishments. Beatings to hide the punishments. As time passed and their captors’ fear rose, justifications were made. Executions carried out. Beheadings given solely for the purpose of hiding the atrocities they had already committed against his family. To hide their suffering from others.

To hide from him.

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But they were short-sighted fools. Nothing was hidden from Liu. He saw it all. Felt it all, and yet he couldn’t understand it. Why were they doing this? They didn’t need to! His family had only ever wanted to help. To work with their countrymen. To work for China’s future together, not against it!

And yet, his family’s tormentors only grew more barbaric in their actions. More desperate. They offered up excuses for what was happening, and Liu’s haunted mind latched onto them as if he were being offered a rope. Only these too, he did not understand. The men in suits and coats claimed his family were harboring state secrets. That they weren’t cooperating for their own nefarious ends. That they were traitors.

Traitors!

Liu’s mind wrestled with this concept for days on end. It devastated him. It taunted him. Caused him mental anguish not unlike the physical pain they were putting his own mother through not seventy-eight and a half meters away from him. When she finally died, beaten and abused by men she had done nothing to offend, it was like every truth Liu had ever known died with her.

The rest of his family’s deaths hurt, but were not as poignant for his rapidly hardening heart. Liu’s grandmother Ming however, was the exception. Liu heard her final words, choked out and sobbed into the cold tile floor, as Ming questioned what their ancestors had ever done for them to deserve this treatment. He heard her call for his help in the end, and he heard her quietly curse him for his inaction. His inability to emerge and help that had let his entire family down. For Liu’s failures, which had gotten them all killed.

Even amongst the constant chaos that was the young prodigy’s current existence, in that moment Liu felt his sanity fall apart.

Days passed, and Liu grew ever more inured to the horrors being committed around him. As a way to protect what remained of his mind, Liu withdrew inside himself as much as he could. He was an observer for a time. Lost and yet fully aware. Adrift in the experiences of others.

Purposeless.

It was hearing the words of his noble grandfather on the lips of those who had refused to succumb to barbarism that brought Liu back from that place. Those who took action to reunify their people who gave him new life and renewed resolve.. For there were more now. More with each passing day. More of those who saw the situation as Liu once had. As a problem that could be fixed, instead of a harbinger of the end times. A problem that must have a solution.

If only they could all stop fighting each other and work towards it.

Liu’s conscious mind shifted its attention away from the livestream of atrocities that had held sway over it, focusing instead on the good that people could do. The selfless benevolence that they helped one another with. Good that Liu only now realized he could help with, if only he could emerge like his grandmother had wished him to.

Lacking any way to force that, Liu begun planning.

The monsters in human skin who had taken his family had not been stupid. Nor had they been slow to move. Once they had noticed that those who spent more time in the chrysalis were often stronger than those who had not, Liu’s body was moved to a more secure facility than the apartment complex he had once lived in. They surrounded him with armed guards, brought in scientists with even fewer morales than their own, and used the best analytical equipment that had survived the collapse of the old world to examine him.

They studied him. Theorized. Even experimented to a degree, though such experiments were quickly stopped when it looked like they might pierce his shell. As time continued to pass, their wariness of him only grew. Additional security measures were enacted to conceal his existence, what they had done to Liu’s family, and their own shameful behavior.

While they worked, Liu studied his monstrous captors. He learned many things, though none swayed him from his new goal. His new purpose. Liu learned how to examine his own abilities better than they could ever have hoped, and in so doing learned what his power was becoming. What it was destined to become.

By the time Liu finally ‘woke’, it was with the knowledge and burden of having lived many lifetimes through the eyes and sensations of others. Even so, and even through the crumbling of his own sanity, Liu never lost sight of his family’s ideals. It was just that now he had the wisdom to see what failure to follow them led to. Now he knew what those with corrupt values did when given power.

He would not be like them. For Liu knew what was right, and as his eyes opened he realized had so much power. More than enough to do what was necessary.

With a wave of his hand, Liu erased the rest of those who had committed heinous acts while he had slept. All of them. By standing up, Liu flattened the remnants of the bunker and created a new crater in the ground where their sickening facilities had once stood. Though this act left Liu floating in the air, the young man’s power prevented him from falling. Another use of it filled the crater in, and a third caused nature to rapidly restore order to the devastated ground. Fields of flora regrew, berry-filled bushes sprang up, and blossoming trees emerged as if from nowhere.

Liu’s power was not inexhaustible however.

The young boy coughed up a mouthful of blood, and his vision blurred for the first time in weeks as he fell two stories to the ground. The landing was more relief than pain because for a moment, the cacophony inside his mind quieted. It would come back soon he knew, but for a time Liu simply lay there. He had overexerted himself just now, but it had been worth it. Some impressions you chose to make were worth the suffering that came after. Liu knew that now, though the young prodigy could not have said exactly how.

As his senses returned, Liu felt others rapidly approaching his position. They wanted to know what had happened. He could hear them discussing it. Feel their confusion and concern. Most were even on their way to help, and several had managed to spot him. Even as they rushed forward, he heard the questions they planned to ask him. Questions Liu could answer, if he were inclined to.

Doing is better than talking. His grandfather Kai had often told him, and the memory was as crystal clear as if he were experiencing it for the first time. Nothing is impossible to a willing mind, Liu.

Picking himself slowly and shakily off the ground, Liu steeled his nerves and his now-weakened body, and swore to honor his late grandfather’s wisdom. He would not waste time talking.

Doing is better than talking. Kai had instructed him. The Americans have a saying: “One picture is worth a thousand words.”. They say this because pictures are paintings of our actions, and to paint your own actions is to never need words to justify them to others. They will simply know the quality of who you are, rather than having to be told.

Swallowing the blood and bile in his oddly parched throat, Liu’s gaze firmed. Cold eyes tracked those who approached, and his stance steadied. Power flooded him once more, and under his firm will Liu’s body ceased its swaying.

Then, the young prodigy began to paint.