Jake hated running.

Saying he despised running would be taking it too far because, on occasion, running was necessary, and it was good cardio.

Hate was a good word for what Jake felt.

Running for a long time was what Jake hated. The reason was simple, it was boring.

Jake can get behind a good workout, don’t get him wrong, but running sucked.

Running on a treadmill was pointless because you went nowhere despite all your effort. At least outside, you get a view, but it's usually too hot or cold.

Regardless you ended up stuck in your head the whole time. Which was fine for a bit, but after any length of time, it becomes I could be doing something important, but I’m running.

What Jake really needed was music to have a good run.

He did not have music; his phone melted.

So he was trapped in his head. Which sucked.

Leaving Jake the only other option of distracting himself during a run, pushing himself to the brink of exhaustion. Regardless of how far he pushed himself, a stray thought or two would flicker across his mind. Namely, this is not working.

Well, it was. Kinda.

Ignoring the fact that little to nothing happened no matter how many times Jake tried to control his Qi, other than falling on his face as a spasm wracked his body.

Apparently, pawing aimlessly at an internal energy suffusing one's body can affect the body. Who knew?

Also, can't forget the headache and mental fatigue that comes from trying to do something never thought possible by the modern man, let alone something Jake tried before.

Thing was, Jake was still using Qi.

To be more precise, Jake was exerting himself to the extreme. While performing those exertions, he was subconsciously augmenting his actions with Qi.

Probably not efficient, but the Qi inside of him was being used and controlled to some degree, and it made him feel less like a balloon ready to burst.

Or, that was what Jake assumed, considering he had never stopped sprinting and leaping since he started. Actually, he believed he was getting faster.

As far as Jake could tell in his mentally exhausted state, the limit of Qi he could hold had increased marginally along with his speed. It was like judging how much static electricity built up when you roll around in a particularly fuzzy blanket, but you know... inside... him.

It's far more than the electrified feeling, however. The Qi gave Jake a sense of charged potential, waiting to be let loose.

And if the stories Jake read about Qi were to be believed, as more Qi sinks into his body, it would make his Qi reserves larger while increasing his physical abilities.

Thing was, a cultivator was supposed to limit how much Qi they were exposed to and ultimately absorbed. Too much, and at best, one would be crippled.

Jake was new to this, and feeling the Qi inside him was like brushing up against a bare electrical wire. Still, he was sure the amount of Qi inside of him had been rising this whole time, no matter how hard he pushed himself.

He was even sweating out black viscous sweat as he used Qi, which had more to do with sewage than sweat, as far as Jake could smell.

If that fluid was not impurities leaving his body, so he would become a better vessel to hold and use Qi; like in the stories, Jake was having some serious health problems. Should probably see a doctor soon...

So, everything was…great.

Meaning all he had to do was workout harder than was physically possible and do that for the rest of his life. Easy.

Not spontaneously exploding was pretty good as motivations went.

If it was not apparent, Jake needed a new plan.

Instead of running around his house like he had been doing the last few hours, Jake started running up the mountain behind his house.

Not a staggering leap of intelligence as far as ideas go, but it was a start.

As desperate as he was, Jake went with the first thing he saw, which offered some potential.

The trail Jake shot up was not so much a trail as an exit for runoff leading to a large flat rock. That rock was connected to an open slope of the mountain which you can loop around to the side, where you would find some conveniently placed rocks and dirt paths winding up to the top of the mountain.

Taking the makeshift trail at a leisurely pace would take Jake an hour or two. He finished the climb in about twenty minutes, a new record.

At which point he stopped for the first time in hours.

During his sprint-climb over jagged rocks, along scree-lined paths, and past cliffs, Jake watched his feet and where his next few steps were going to be. He thought it was more important to watch his footing during a dangerous climb at stupid speeds, an assumption that was wrong. Very, very wrong.

Jake was standing on a small plateau. An oak tree—really a sapling a couple feet tall—was to his immediate left at the plateau's edge. Behind him, Pine Lake stretched out in the valley with his cabin at the lake's edge. To his right was the slope of the mountain before rising back up into another slightly smaller peak.

That was normal, what he expected after years of coming here.

At the edge of the small plateau before him, cutting him off from the mountain range he knew all his life, was a wall of mist.

Jake would like to pretend it was mist, but it was not mist. He felt a twinge of fear just looking at it, causing him to take an instinctual step back.

The substance composing the wall did not spread out, clump, or spear out at random intervals like fog would. Instead, it flowed along a single arching path with occasional bulges growing and receding randomly along its surface.

More than that, it felt like goop, some mix between putty and dish soap. Jake knew this due to one simple fact, his hand was against the slightly cold substance.

Jake pressed harder.

Now, at this moment, most of his past girlfriends would be giving Jake that look that all women seem to know. The one filled with disgust and exasperation as she looks at her idiot. Where the guy is absolutely sure he is doing something that will get him in trouble but will do it anyway because he started it and is damn well going to finish on the off chance she gets impressed.

Getting injured would get him pity points, so it would not be bad either.

A Jake's guy-friends would have been like, “why don’t you poke it with a stick first, dip-shit?”

Jake should have at least listened to his friends. He knew that in the back of his mind.

Messing with something that might have torn the world apart—how would Jake know if it did or didn’t—is not intelligent. Whatever the mist is, Jake has no understanding of what it is or isn't capable of.

Jake would like to think he was smart enough to walk away.

Under normal circumstances, he might have been. At the very least, he would have searched for a stick to poke it.

Jake probably would have settled for throwing a rock or two before shrugging and deciding to touch it.

But Jake was dying.

He could feel it. Running around was prolonging his—well, not misery. He was the furthest thing from pain or even being tired physically. It was like he woke up in the best shape of his life, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready for a new day.

Mentally though, he was exhausted and torturing himself. The weight of death, lodged in the back of his mind, was weighing him down. He needed a break.

He knew the Qi flooding his body would destroy him sooner or later.

So when you're dying, and you come across real magic, anyone who had imagined flinging lightning bolts or fireballs around in childhood would be loose with personal safety.

If Jake died placing his hand on the goop wall or trying to push through it to see if he could, at least it would be relatively fast.

Jake pushed against the wall, his hand sunk in an inch before stopping. Throwing his whole body into the exertion, Jake’s hand moved a fraction deeper.

Grunting as he strained, Jake sighed as he stopped struggling and let his hand rest against the mist.

A second before pulling his hand back, the mist surged outward in one of the periodic bulges, enveloping his body up to his forearm.

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Moments passed as Jake did nothing, looking in horror at where his hand was.

Where it should be, but he saw nothing.

He could still feel his hand, though, which he twitched to see if he could. Before he tried to pull his hand back.

Throwing his whole body behind the action, nothing happened.

Giving an indifferent shrug, Jake threw his weight forward instead.

His arm went forward farther into the bulge like dripping honey until the bump sort of spasmed, sending a shiver that ran out along the wall.

Stopping, with his arm up to the elbow into the mist barrier, Jake took a moment to wonder if this was a good idea…

Freezing as if a lightning bolt had struck him, Jake’s eyes widened in shock.

Keeping his arm in the wall wasn’t a good idea; he knew he should pull his arm back, but he couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

At first, pushing his arm into the mist was to see what would happen and as an act of control.

If—When he died, it would be under his own power, and if it somehow messed with the earthshaking voice, all the better. A small “fuck you” from Jake, if you will.

Now, Jake needed to go deeper. Just a bit more. Almost there!

Something called to him. He had always known it. He was connected to it. If he could just get close enough, he would remember it.

No. What Jake knew was far... less. Diluted and distilled to something manageable for existence, but it was his heritage.

He had the right to touch upon it.

And be called in turn.

A descendent of a line so old that any relation was near insignificant. The connection was still there, however. Jake was one of its children.

It gave Jake the feeling of home and comfort that he would only get when he was in a forest. When he was "one with nature," as his grandfather called it.

But this was not walking among the trees, shrubs, animals, and insects that comprised a forest. No, this was the root of it all.

Jake surged forward. Back hunched, feet planted and butt clenched, Jake shouted, thrusting forward with his arm as his body shook with strain. He needed to touch it. To know what it was, what he was.

Fractions of inches at a time, the mist rippled over his skin.

Jake had to know.

What was the root of nature?

Almost there! Constant destruction, upheaval, and revival.

Animals and plants adapting to environments and circumstances, struggling against each other to prove they are worthy, lest death claims them.

It was the struggles of life where the only purpose is survival, wild and untamed savagery.

CHAOS!

A voice both male and female, that was neither a voice nor thought but both, and in every language, but none, rocked Jake to his core.

The faintest tendril, so tiny the smallest pinpoint would be too monumental in size to give the faintest frame of reference, seeped into Jake’s finger.

Body arched in a wordless scream, Jake tried pulling his hand back as his instinct fought for survival.

Down his arm and into his chest, the pure power of— ravaged Jake's body.

Limited as the Qi Jake absorbed may be, it was still tens of thousands—no, millions of times more concentrated within his body than the speck of — he just absorbed. And yet his Qi quailed.

Previously rampaging around his body like rowdy children, his Qi was now pushed to the farthest corners of his body, cowering like a beaten animal.

Body twitching and trembling uncontrollably, Jake came back to himself enough to notice he was on the ground before the wall.

At some point, it must have let him go.

Jake had no memory, nor did he care, of when the wall released him as he gasped for air.

Surprisingly, Jake felt like he was better off than he was moments ago, even if his chest burned like a bonfire was lit inside it, and his throat was clogged with a boulder.

Oh, he was still dying, faster now than before.

But Jake felt that if he could just circulate his Qi from his extremities to his center, it would provide enough insulation. A buffer between the — Seed.

Since the moment the — Seed entered Jake's body, his mind had been occupied. Specifically on the mind-numbing unending agony, in its many forms, wracking his body, that was quickly becoming the norm in his life.

Horrible experience as it was, it saved him. It locked his mind on something of order and logic.

Whatever the cause was, the result was that he was in excruciating pain. Cause and effect. Simple.

Examining said cause and trying to understand it was altogether different.

Taken right down to the line, Jake was a rational being.

Not in the sense that everything he thought and did was logical and well thought out, no, never that. It was just that Jake’s thoughts, his very being, had an order to them.

A far greater mind than his would be needed to figure out what that Order was, and a greater one still to understand, but it was there if one was of the mind to look.

Chaos had no order. Its very nature was the antithesis of order.

So when Jake's ordered mind made contact with a primal force of existence that was antithetical to him, small as it might be, he shattered.

Flashes came to Jake. Moments of clarity in the endless swirling madness.

Him running down the hill, laughing wildly, before he leaped forward, ducking into a roll before coming to his feet and doing it again. Then again, and again. Before flopping on his back, kicking his feet for a bit.

Stumbling up from a blood-smeared boulder, Jake cackled, then dove forward up a new mountain, eyes closed.

Jake was where he wanted his field to be. Churned ground was all around him, with furrows of dirt meandering one way then another as they crossed each other. Digging his hands into the rich soil, Jake pulled up a clump of dirt, throwing it into the air, starting another furrow.

In Jake’s hands, and scattered around him on the ground, were seed bags. He twirled around, chanting as he scattered seeds, “Grow seeds, Grow! You plant the seeds they Grow! Grow seeds, Grow! You plant the seeds, hi-ho!”

Swing after swing thunked into the tree like a fast techno beat, slivers and chunks of wood flying through the air. The sap gushed out of the jagged wound as the pine tried to heal, but it would fall, just like all the rest. "Teach you to rustle at me like that!"

The trees were chopped into rough-edged logs. Jake was stacking or throwing them as the occasion called with abandon, giggling like a child.

Jake's clarity lasted a little longer through each flash of sanity as an instinctual Will grew.

A Will to survive.

The one that had been keeping him alive, that was not necessarily his. If it was a conscious effort on Jake's part, he would have long since died.

Not for lack of trying. No, Jake already fought long nanoseconds for life and was crushed under the weight of pure potential when he first thought of the — Seed. Futile as it might be, Jake was not one to go down without a fight.

Jake would have died—should have died—because any structured thought was impossible. Any ego Jake had was stripped away when he touched the — Seed with his mind.

He was a child—no worse, an animal. Driven by impulse.

The Will that had kept Jake alive, was still keeping him alive, was the same instinct that kept life moving forward.

It was the constant drive to keep struggling and evolving against every challenge placed against life, even when everything looks hopeless. Life persevered.

Struggle. Evolution. Survival.

Call it what you will, but the core instinct of life pushed Jake to live. The — Seed would either be his cause of death or be the means for him to live.

Instinct forced Jake's Qi, where consciousness failed, to protect his body from the energy released by the — Seed by insulating it. In the throes of madness, his Will was diamond-hard when it came to survival; his Qi conformed.

Even with the survival instincts of his body forcing his Qi to obey, Jake would have still died. It came down to raw power. A strong will was not enough.

He did not have the Qi density to permanently contain the — Seed. It was like trying to put out a campfire by pouring a bunch of paper on it. Sure, you might smother it for a few moments, but the coals will eventually start the fire again unless it's a mountain of paper.

However, he had what he needed to survive.

The part of Jake connected to—, that called out and pulled the — Seed into his body as his arm was stuck in the mist wall, perked up.

It was a part of himself that Jake was always semi-aware of but never tried to delve into. Before, it manifested as a slight feeling of being at home in the wilderness, those places untouched by man.

The more time he spent in a given forest, the more he felt connected to it, and the greater the urge for him to return. It was an addictive cycle he was never very inclined to break.

What was the harm in walking through a forest?

That part deep inside Jake that he could never fully access or control, acted as a bridge. A means for Jake, a being of Order, to interact with the raw potential of —. Coupled with the mad drive to survive, it was everything that was needed.

In a bubble of reality riding the waves of the Chaos Sea, a man born at the edge of Chaos and Order, whose lineage was once one with nature—the last portion of reality containing a remnant of Chaos—and seeks to be unified again, placed Order onto Chaos.

It was not a significant limitation. It was what every living thing in existence strived for, survival.

To facilitate survival, one needed to evolve and adapt as the situation demanded.

It was a compromise between the Seed of— and Jake. A necessary understanding for survival.

How could a fragment of— survive in a world of Order.

Jake sat on a flat rock before the small oak tree on the top of the mountain, looking out over the valley.

Occasionally, Jake would break out into a wild cackle of giggles. But on the whole, Jake was content to sit and wait.

The time was not right to act.

The pines submitted after some regrettably harsh prompting. Toothpicks think they're sooo cool poking the sky. Teach them to prick me… At least the oaks fell into line afterward.

His blood was smeared across plenty of earth and rocks. Word should have gotten around by now. Rocks never could resist gossiping to the wind; breezes have them wrapped around their gusts.

Now that his essence was planted around the valley, Jake could feel his connection to the land strengthening. Shh~ quiet. Patience. Patience, patience. That is what we need. Time. A little more time and we will be on—

“Now! Now! Come to me NOW!” Jake shouted, voice ringing off the walls of his valley.

Qi came to his call. Flooding into his body like never before.

Though it never seemed like it before, Jake had successfully prevented some Qi from entering his body. Not much, but some.

It was different now; Jake called to the Qi. He wanted it to enter his body. Not one type or another, but all Qi.

And it responded with abandon, droplets of Qi combined into streams and streams into rivers of Qi. It wanted to be with him. And Jake would need it all.

He would survive. Jake's voice raised, lowered, and broke at random, all of which was undercut by his excited giggles, “My body is the land! The — Seed my catalyst! Qi, my fuel! Let evolution reign!"