The Rise of the Unbound Sovereign Sect Chapter 1: Chapter 1

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“The scholar reads the warning, but only the bleeding thumb understands the blade.” I narrowly dodged a thick root as I ran for my life. Unfortunately, I didn't account for the next five and hit the ground hard, knocking the remaining air from my lungs. The packed dirt tore at my palms, but I barely felt it. Running for your life has a way of turning down the volume on pain—a lesson I was learning fast. “Ffsss,” I hissed, dragging myself up. A cold chill killed my momentum as I took in the view ahead. “Yeah, of course I’d find the only dead end in the middle of a forest.” The path was blocked by a sheer rock face, rising fifty feet straight up and slick with wet moss. A literal wall of stone sitting right in the middle of the timber. I spun around, pressing my back against the cold rock. The brush ten yards away exploded. Branches snapped like dry bones as the beast crashed into the clearing. It was a boar, but that was like calling a tank a car. It weighed at least three hundred pounds and was covered in thick, bristly black hair. Its hooves dug deep trenches in the dirt as it skidded to a halt. The real problem was its tusks. They hummed with a sick, yellow light, and hot steam vented from the thing's snout every time it exhaled. It lowered its heavy head, locking its bloodshot eyes right on my chest. I pushed my wire-rimmed glasses up my nose with a bleeding, shaking palm. My chest heaved, pulling in air that tasted like copper and burning metal. Right. This is the part in the stories where the hero awakens his hidden power, screams at the heavens, and punches the monster into the sun. Unfortunately, my only power is a Master's degree in Ethnobotany, and my cardio is absolute garbage. I am about to become meat paste, all thanks to a glowing bush pig. To understand how a certified acupuncturist ended up cornered by a magical pig, we need to rewind about forty-eight hours. “Julian? What do you think?” I turned to Professor Davis and shrugged. “You know just as well as I do. Even if we take into account the translation errors in the Ming-era transcripts, the meridian pathways described here don't map to actual human anatomy. If someone actually tried to force their breathing to match this cycle, their lungs would collapse." Professor Davis sighed, tapping a latex-gloved finger against the stainless steel table. Between us sat a bronze tablet. Unlike most recently unearthed relics, the surface was completely free of oxidation—a physical impossibility that was currently giving me a massive headache. "You’re looking at it purely from a modern medical perspective, Julian," Davis said, his tone taking on that patronizing academic drawl I hated. "It’s a spiritual text. A metaphor for the flow of Qi." "It’s an instruction manual," I corrected, leaning over the table to point at the etched characters. "And a bad one. They were boiling cinnabar and sulfur to induce hallucinations and calling it a spiritual awakening. It's not magic, Professor. It's just heavy metal poisoning." I rubbed my temples. I loved this stuff—I had dedicated my entire adult life to understanding the roots of Neidan and traditional herbal medicine—but dealing with academics who romanticized brutal, primitive chemistry was exhausting. "Just translate the next stanza," Davis muttered, checking his watch. "The museum wants the exhibit labeled by Friday. Handle it carefully." Davis walked out of the archives, leaving me alone in the basement with the humming fluorescent lights and a slab of metal that was supposedly three thousand years old. While my associates tended to be a bit zealous about the ideas we studied—and I was usually the first to shoot them down—this piece was genuinely amazing. Three thousand years in the dirt, yet the metal looked like it was poured yesterday. But its pristine condition was far from what made it interesting. I ran my finger over the main text, then slid it to the very edge of the tablet. Tucked along the rim was a second inscription.