The New World seemed to a paradise to us when we took our first steps onto its land. It was a lush, green world with abundant life (albeit life that was mostly alien to us) and resources beyond our ability to calculate. To the amazement of our scientists, the New World was approximately one hundred thousand times the size of Earth. Considering the calculated density of the planet, it should have had a gravity many times greater than that of our homeworld. Instead, the gravity was only slightly higher, at 1.2 Earth Standard.

Of more interest was the fact that, the farther an object gets from the ground, the higher the gravity becomes. At ten thousand feet above sea level, the gravity was recorded at three times Earth Standard, and at one hundred thousand feet, the last measure before the recording device failed, it was measured at twenty times Earth Standard.

This was our first indication that the rules on the New World were different. We would have to gain a new scientific understanding before we dared utilize the technologies of the old world.

This also extended to those with the talent for cultivation… which, in this new world, was almost all. The amount of chi in the atmosphere subjectively reported by those who had cultivated on Earth was millions of times greater, so much greater in fact that almost anyone could sense it with minimal training.

Unfortunately, objectively measuring chi has proved impossible, though measuring basic cultivation talent has proven simple. Moreover, the conventional weapons of our previous world, such as firearms or explosives, have proven less than effective against those who have passed the Gathering stage of cultivation.

This is similar to how our weapons failed against the Outsiders, and many of those who thought they would be the rulers of what we call the City-States have found their positions tenuous at best. In a mere five years, tens of thousands of individuals have successfully passed through Gathering to Condensation, essentially making the military they sought to use to control the people utterly useless.

Instead, cult-like groups, following the teachings of cultivators who are progressing more quickly through the stages, have become to form. These have become factions within each of the enclave colonies, and the politicians have found out a fundamental truth of the New World… cultivation determines all forms of power.

Moreover, new professions have arisen catering to cultivators. In particular, compounding pharmacists have found ways to utilize the local flora and fauna to accelerate the development of cultivators, earning them a position of honor with all the factions. The best amongst them, those who have also progressed their cultivation and can infuse chi into their creations as they refine them, have begun to call themselves Alchemists.

The few molecular scientists that made the transition are even now studying how the Alchemist’s concoctions effect the cells of cultivators, but the results have been spotty and inconsistent.

Recently, the local animal population has proven to be the greatest challenge to our growing and changing society. It appears that they have their own methods of cultivation that make them as dangerous or moreso than the best of our cultivators, necessitating that they be hunted to keep them from our walls.

Hunting them has become a challenge and a sport for the most combative of cultivators, and their organs, skin, and bones have proven to be useful to the Alchemists.

Unfortunately, too many of our number die every year fighting the local beasts. As fast as we are progressing, changing and gaining power, I can’t help but wonder if the memory of Earth will die entirely with the first generation…

~From a nameless treatise found in the ruins of Washington Reborn after the Reclamation

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It is difficult to comprehend the words of the Ancients who founded our civilization, even though the languages have been preserved amongst our scholars and priests. So many of the concepts they took for granted are meaningless to us, and it is difficult to imagine a world where those concepts were a reality. I was stunned to read the entry of when our ancestors wrote with joy about the first cultivators progressing to Condensation. Considering that most children progress to Condensation before they turn seven, even without alchemical aids, it is almost beyond comprehension.

The Original Legacy of Washington Reborn, known as the Witch’s Soul, proves that the words of our ancestors were not a lie. The Witch, for all that she never made it to Condensation, created a cultivation method so efficient that its use can be crippling or fatal if the individual lacks the will to master the storm of chi it draws in. The fact that a premier genius who was obviously peerless in terms of talent never reached Condensation shocks those of us who have had the honor of passing her tests.

In addition, the techniques she offers to those who pass the tests before Condensation are all Evolving Techniques, showing an immense insight into the nature of the Daos and chi itself that can boost those who can comprehend them to the level of a peerless genius. While this insight cannot match that of those who have reached Foundation Establishment or passed the Foundation Stages to become a Warrior or a Sorcerer, for those in the early stages, it can create a foundation that creates the possibility for perfect progression.

Considering how most paths cut off after reaching the Warrior stages, this is valuable beyond measure, and it is why the three Freedom Sects dominate the challenge and prevent other sects from using it. Without that advantage, they would find themselves lagging behind the more independent sects that struggle with them for power.

As far as we can tell, every one of the original enclaves had an Original Legacy of similar might and value. However, as more than half the enclaves were lost during the First Beast Wave, it would take a true hero to rediscover them…

~From the writings of a scholar of the Dark Times

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Our first meeting with the beastmen was peaceful. It might surprise those who have fought in the wars along the frontier, but when we first encountered the beastmen, both sides only had an interest in trade. Neither side had anything the other side wanted badly enough to risk their own destruction over, and while individuals sometimes clashed, it never developed to the level of true war.

However, a century after the enclaves’ borders met those of the beastmen, a Sect Leader traveling the lands near the border discovered a hidden realm full of natural treasures that could help the cultivations of both beastmen and humans. Since it was on the border, both sides claimed it, and for a time, it was held in common.

However, in less than ten years, skirmishes along the border became commonplace, and there were even a few battles between cities, as both sides tested the water. Though our histories mostly claim that the beastmen began the wars, the blame, in truth falls on both sides.

Twenty years after the hidden realm was discovered, true war broke out between the enclaves and the beastmen. Five years after that, the small cities built near the border were devoid of population, the destruction of cultivators killing one another in battle making it impossible for common citizens to dwell there.

The First Beastmen War (called the War of Betrayal by the beastmen) was a conflict on a scale that our civilization had never experienced. Without experienced generals, neither side had the ability to make efficient strategic decisions, and armies clashed and were destroyed without any real gains. Commoners were given powerful but limited cultivation methods to make them more effective, and the beastmen did something similar with their own.

It took almost a century for the war to die down. By the time it did, over four billion had died on both sides. The treaty that was signed afterward turned the depopulated areas into a no-man’s land where neither the enclaves nor the clans of beastmen were allowed to have political power over.

However, this situation didn’t prevent ‘independent pioneers’ from building towns and villages throughout the region. Over time, beastmen and humans intermingled there, surprisingly finding that the races could interbreed, leading to the region becoming something of a de facto independent nation that served as a buffer between the two sides.

Neither the enclaves nor the clans welcomed this, though. To the ideology and power-obsessed leadership that had built its power on the idea of an enemy across the border, a nascent and peaceful nation separating both sides was nothing but trouble. The need to unite against an enemy had given men and women with limited cultivation but high political skills more power than they had had since the initial days after the enclaves’ establishment. A similar situation prevailed on the other side.

Various pretenses were used by both sides to eat away at the border zone, capturing and enslaving its inhabitants. This period did not last long, though. Roughly two years after both countries began eroding the border zone, the denizens of the buffer zone united and rose against the invaders. Leading them were nine peak experts called the Nine Kings. In the war that ensued (later known as the Laitesh War of Independence), three of the Nine Kings were slain, but this cost the lives of many of the peak experts from both the beastmen and human nations of the time.

This war continued until the new nation had expanded to its natural borders at the edge of the Nainas and Kherpesh mountain ranges. With the mountains and only a few passes to make their new homeland defensible, the peoples of the former border region became the Laitesh Confederation.

To this day, the Laitesh Confederation is the only place where beastmen and humans can interact without the threat of death or enslavement. Moreover, it is, ironically, the only nation that does not allow generational slavery. Only criminals and debtors may be enslaved, and their children are freemen.

~From An Honest Assessment of the Early Era of Wars by Sage Katsuto

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A caravan was making its way through the wilderness far beyond the edge of civilized lands. In itself, this was not unheard of. Expeditions to hunt for rare ingredients, natural treasures, and valuable beast parts were common, and at first glance, the caravan seemed like it might be just another of those. However, when one’s eyes found the wagons at the center of the caravan, where it was most protected, the difference between the caravan and those expeditions became apparent.

This difference lay in the contents of those wagons, which were made of iron covered with inscriptions, pulled by massive beasts that resembled a buffalo at first glance but were five or six times the size of those once found on Earth. The wagons were of a matching size, and those at the front of the column were using fire and earth techniques to clear a road for their passage as they went.

Inside the iron wagons, protected by several cultivators at the peak of the Warrior stage were over five hundred children. Those children were of many different races. Some were humans, some were beastmen, and there were even elves and dragonnewts. They were not collared, so they were not slaves, but neither was their clothing of high quality, so they weren’t members of powerful families being escorted to some mystic retreat beyond the borders of civilization.

Some of the guards’ gazes were fond, while others were indifferent. The children stayed clear of the guards, despite the fact that it was normal for a child to look up to and honor cultivators who had passed through Foundation to Warrior. All of this spoke of a situation that was anomalous in every way that mattered. The uninformed observing their interactions would be confused beyond measure, without a doubt.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

One thing that stood out as a stark contrast to the mixed races of the children was the fact that every member of the caravan, from the least of porters to the powerful Spirit stage cultivator who served as the leader was human. It was an odd mix considering the notorious arrogance and disregard for other civilizations that the humans tended to possess. What was even stranger was the fact that there was no sign of contempt or arrogance in the guards or those who looked in on the children.

There was every sign that the children were valued by the leadership, even if the rank and file were often indifferent to them. The accommodations of the wagons were comfortable, if not luxurious. They were defended against the elements by barrier inscriptions and a roof of enchanted spidersilk. The children had toys to play with (though they were mostly simple ones made of carved wood and string), and the food they were given was rich in natural chi, though not so much so as their guardians.

The last thing that stood out was that every child was at the peak of the Gathering stage. This was strange because there was little meaning in remaining at the peak of the first stage of cultivation. It was at Condensation and Foundation where value could be found in remaining in the stage to build oneself up further than normal. Most parents, most masters, would have encouraged the children to break through, not remain in the earliest stage. At Gathering, children were too fragile compared to the creatures that stalked the gigantic terrestrial planet humans still called the New World.

Nonetheless, it was apparent that all of the children were maintaining their current stage while pulling chi into their bodies, an action that was meaningless given the limitations of a cultivator’s body prior to Condensation.

Moreover, it was most likely agonizingly painful, as in Gathering, chi could only circulate through the meridians. This was because all beings that weren’t born as cultivators had to open their dantian to reach the Condensation stage. Without access to their dantian to properly circulate the chi and their bodies already saturated with what they had gathered, they were simply causing themselves pain for no apparent reason.

The leader of the caravan, an ancient figure who had only made the transition to the Spirit stage in extreme old age, sat atop his personal beast mount, a gigantic black tiger, thinking about the children.

Gathering so many talents without anyone of importance noticing was even more work than I anticipated. The Imperial Enclaves’ experts would never have let us leave if they knew what I know, He thought, caressing the head of his mount and partner, who purred in reaction to the casual affection of his master.

The children in the wagons were the results of carefully scouring thousands of settlements across four nations for talents hidden amongst the poorest of the poor. It had taken two years and thousands of agents with the Sight to find those who met the required conditions. He had used almost the entirety of his clan’s plentiful resources in that campaign and outfitting the caravan. If this ploy failed, the clan would wither on the vine and be forgotten in a few short years.

Kido Yuuma was at the end of his lifespan. Reaching the Spirit stage had extended his life by several hundred years, but his time was running out quickly. He knew he would never reach past his current cultivation. His method was imperfect, a deliberately corrupted version of the Washington Reborn cultivation method known as the Witch’s breath. The corruption was not a problem in the Gathering or Condensation stages, but it introduced flaws into the Foundation stage that made it nearly impossible to get past the Warrior stage.

This was common outside of the major sects. Soldiers and commoners were always given corrupted cultivation methods, as a matter of public interest. Too many were threatened when a commoner reached for the heavens without paying their dues, in the minds of the establishment.

The sects balanced this out by ‘adopting’ the most talented of the commoners discovered at ten years of age. However, Yuuma had taken children who were under the age of ten. The oldest of the children inside the wagons was eight years old and most of them were between five and seven.

The reason why the Testing was done at ten years old in the Enclaves was another measure to limit the capabilities of those born of common blood. Most noble and sect-born children progressed to Condensation at the age of six or seven and then spent the next three years building up to Foundation. By the time they turned twenty, the best of them were already at the peak of the Warrior stage. Most children outside the sects and nobility would only reach Condensation before they hit ten years of age, meaning they were often two or three years behind the others in terms of cultivation.

This might seem like a small difference due to the long centuries even Warrior stage cultivators could live to see. However, a year of youth was far more valuable than a year of an adult. If one wanted to proceed beyond the Spirit stage to the Sage stage, then onward to the King stage and further, one couldn’t afford to waste even a single year of their youth. At the very least, passing through Foundation by the age of twelve was an absolute necessity to prepare the body and soul for the higher stages.

To be blunt, if one managed to reach Foundation as a child and pass through it in their teens, they were ensured centuries of youth and quick growth. Whereas one who reached Foundation as a teen and only progressed to Warrior as an adult would find themselves falling behind their younger-seeming peers.

For Yuuma, this was enough of a reason to go out of his way to obtain so many talented children… for the sake of his clan. Those children would be the future, intermarrying with his own descendants to build them into a force to rival the greater sects and noble clans.

The final key to this lay in a ragged map made of an oddly slick material he had discovered in a ruin of the Pioneers during his youth. It was his belief that it led to one of the lost original cities of the Enclaves… and to one of the Lost Legacies. If children with sufficient talent could reach such a Legacy outside the control of the Enclaves, it would be possible for them to rise as high as their talent would allow them.

It was his hope that this would be the case. The few children of his clan that were near the same age were scattered throughout the caravan with their parents. The expedition was the last resort of a man who didn’t want to see his descendants suffer the way he was, even if it was too late for many.

Yuuma absently continued to blast the forest in front of him with his corrupted Phoenix chi, using a simple technique that sent it out in what many an Earthling would have recognized as a fireball. A Warrior would have had to concentrate to fire with the same accuracy, but he had no difficulty perfectly overlapping the blast circles so they didn’t miss anything. The ashes were filled with the revitalizing effect that came from the Phoenix’s flames, so in a few weeks, the area would be lush and green once again.

The Warrior stage cultivators to his right and left used variants of Earth chi to flatten the earth in front of them, making a packed dirt road for the wagons behind them to pass over. Five more Warrior stage cultivators flew ahead on their swords, marking the landmarks they were instructed to look for.

Those landmarks were mostly small ruins leftover from humanity’s first attempts at developing the New World. It was a mark of how much more advanced the technology of the Pioneers was that their ruins still remained, more than six thousand years after they were abandoned. Only a few of the original Pioneers remained alive, all of them Immortals that didn’t get involved in the affairs of commoners and the sects any longer. As such, they monopolized the knowledge of high technology and dealt it out as needed (in their minds) and withdrew it when it was overused.

Yuuma didn’t have any objections on that front. High technology did some things that cultivators found difficult, but those were exceptions rather than the rule. Most of the luxuries of the ancient human civilization could be duplicated using inscriptions and enchantments, so there was no need to abuse the resource-intensive technology of old.

After all, a single high-stage alchemist could do the work of a thousand pharmacists in an evening, and a Master Smith could make the greatest of engineers look like a child playing with blocks. There was little reason to rely on high technology for everyday matters, in his mind.

Yuuma could be forgiven for not understanding the value of mass production, as the concept no longer existed outside the minds of the few surviving ‘Pioneers’.

Each night, they enclosed the caravan in a dome of stone created by the earth cultivators. Most of the food was soup made from the meat and bones of beasts killed along the way. It had been months since they left the civilized lands behind, and the last of the dried vegetables and fruits ran out a week before.

The few edible natural treasures found along the way were reserved for Yuuma and the children. Yuuma because he was the leader, the children because they were the future. All of the cultivators with the caravan had agreed to this, as their future cultivation potential was set in stone, while the children still had the possibility to reach for the heavens.

It was approximately one hundred thirty-two days after their departure from civilization when the caravan stumbled upon their destination.

The destination was an ancient ruin of steel-reinforced concrete and shattered glass, overrun by grass and vines. It extended for over fifteen miles, the remnants of a massive wall crumbled around the edges.

A shattered tower of steel could be seen in the distance, and Yuuma felt himself quivering with anticipation. The map was correct!

Many of the caravan’s members were on their knees, praying to whatever deity they believed in. Others merely stared at the ruins with awe and hope.

Ikaikyou, one of the Lost Enclaves, stood before them. It was a city that had once contained over four hundred thousand denizens who survived the fall of Earth. It was lost in the First Great Beast Wave, over six thousand years in the past, along with a full third of all the enclaves.

However, the city itself wasn’t what Yuuma was seeking for the children… it was the Lost Legacy of Tsukuyomi, one of the First Legacies of humankind. Without those legacies, it might have taken another ten thousand years for humanity to build a real civilization, and that was an optimistic estimate. Most thought that humanity would have gone extinct.

There were few inheritors of the partial legacy of Tsukuyomi left in the Imperial Enclaves, all of them descendants of refugees from Ikaikyou. The full legacy was lost with the city, and the knowledge of the locations of the lost enclaves was buried during the centuries it took to solidify humanity’s position in the region.

The only question that remained was whether the Legacy had survived the fall of the city. Though artifacts from one of the Lost Enclaves would bring a profit, without the Legacy, his clan was doomed to mediocrity, with all the dangers that came with mediocrity in a cultivator society.

Yuuma ordered half the caravan’s Warrior stage cultivators to begin searching the ruins, even as the other half began building a fortress at the entrance to the dead city using earth chi. Stark walls of stone rose from the earth as they worked in tandem, reinforcing them with steel taken from the ruins and low-rank inscriptions.

It took most of three days for the fortress to be completed, and during that time, the search proceeded.

Yuuma smiled slightly at the well-preserved crystal discs his agents had found in the central tower. Such discs were used in the early days when it became apparent that normal electronics were vulnerable to chi surges. Each contained an immense amount of data from the city’s founding to its fall, and they would sell at an immense price to a collector or one of the Pioneers.

Besides that, there were numerous weapons of blood steel, the metal that could no longer be produced by the smiths of the enclaves. Blood steel was known for its ability to conduct all forms of chi at tens of thousands of times the efficiency of most naturally-existing ores. However, the method of creating it was lost during the Beast Waves, and so the alloy sold for hundreds of gold per ounce.

This, along with a few natural treasures found growing within the ruins, were the current spoils. These alone would pay for the expedition with interest, but his searchers had yet to find the Mausoleum or its ruins. Yuuma’s true goals could only be realized if the Legacy was intact.

Technically, he could search out one of the two other lost enclaves with Legacies that were shown on the map, but the closest was almost four months out… too far for them to reach with the children in tow. Years had been spent scouting out the route to Ikaikyou for the one with the least powerful beasts. To try for another city would be too much of a risk.

“Clan Lord!” A familiar voice coming from outside the treasure room caused Yuuma to quickly exit through the door, meeting a middle-aged Warrior just outside.

“What is it, Kyushiro?” He asked calmly, keeping himself steady with great effort.

“The Legacy has been found! It is the Sunlord’s Legacy, just like the ancient scripts said!” Kyushiro, a great-granchild of Yuuma said excitedly. One of his daughters was in the age range to take the tests of the Legacy, so he had good reason for his excitement.

The Sunlord’s Legacy, one of the three Legacies of the enclaves of long-lost Japan. The Sunlord was the leader of Japan’s cultivator forces and the protector of the city known as Kyouto in the old world. His cultivation, movement, and fighting techniques using Sun chi were known for their destructive potential.

The scraps left to the refugees who fled Ikaikyou during the Beast Wave were enough to earn the most powerful noble titles in exchange for selling out the other refugees. While the indenture of Yuuma’s ancestors was long past, the records of their betrayal and humiliation at the hands of their fellows remained in the clan library.

It would be an appropriate revenge for his clan’s children to master the undiluted Legacy of the Sunlord.

Yuuma wistfully wished his grandfather had had the courage to do as he had done. If he had, then Yuuma might have been of the first generation to raise the family up beyond its humble roots.

However, he shook his head after a moment, clearing it of distractions.

“Kyushiro, how are the levels of chi in the Legacy’s accumulation core?” He asked.

“There is roughly the equivalent of a low-Foundation rank cultivator’s base in the core… so maybe one hundredth of its original capacity,” Kyushiro answered seriously.

The Legacies made before the flight from Earth were different from those made by later generations. The low cultivation of their creators combined with the mostly technological approach to creating the basic structures that supported the Legacies made it necessary to supply them with chi, which was then held in the accumulation core. When it was full, the old Legacies could put a dozen or more through the tests before needing to recharge. It seemed that the chi levels were extremely low. It would take time to refill them.

“Instruct the clansmen who have yet to complete Condensation to channel chi into the core in shifts. We can’t afford to weaken the Warriors or those at Foundation right now. It will take a week or more to fill the core at that rate, but better to be careful, given the stakes,” He decided after a moment of consideration.

“Yes, Clan Lord. I will see it done,” Kyushiro bowed deeply to his ancestor before departing.

Yuuma’s wrinkled features split with a grin and a cold fire burned in his eyes, “Soon, everything will change…”