Yale Bulldogs Training Facility

  "Come in."

  Williams was on the phone. He waved Leo toward the chair and hung up. Behind him, three championship banners shared wall space with a whiteboard covered in flight diagrams that Leo was pretty sure hadn't been erased since September.

  "Chen. You look like you died."

  "Long night. Coach, I need to skip the Dartmouth game."

  "Why?"

  "Special training. I want to prepare for Harvard."

  Williams leaned back. "Normally I'd let you. Dartmouth is a cakewalk. After this one, you can miss every non-conference game on the schedule. Some of the easier conference matchups too."

  Williams opened a desk drawer and pulled out something wrapped in tissue paper. He peeled the layers back with both hands.

  A jersey. Deep Yale blue, trimmed in white, formation threads glinting like silver capillaries through the fabric. Across the back, in bold commemorative lettering: LEO CHEN 7.

  "Special commemorative jersey. Seven as in Flyer Seven. You're wearing it Saturday."

  "Coach."

  "The Athletic department is planning on making two hundred thousand. Limited edition, just for this weekend."

  "I don't need a special jersey."

  "This has nothing to do with what you need." Williams held it up for him to inspect. "We didn't bring any of this up when you were down at Florida. They had over twice the losses we did in the Miami Catacombs. You don't wave a war hero in the faces of people grieving their dead."

  He set it down and smoothed out a crease.

  "Dartmouth is different. Dartmouth is in New Hampshire. You know the Ivy League is overrepresented in the Boston Catacombs. That place is practically a rich kid training ground."

  Williams held up three fingers.

  "You saved thirty thousand people, Chen. Every college and high school in the region had multiple transports caught in the Eastern Echelon. Exeter had three. Yale had six. Multiply that by sixteen students per transport. Almost everyone in that stadium Saturday knows someone you saved."

  "Are there any rewards that come with this? Favors?"

  Williams laughed. "That's the funny part. You already have access to everything we can offer. What are we supposed to give you, a Costco membership?"

  Leo waited.

  Williams stopped laughing. He leaned forward and rested both elbows on the desk.

  "Let me explain something to you, before you let it get into your head. All those people out there buying jerseys and losing their minds? They're not doing it because you're talented. Heroes die in the Catacombs every week. People are grateful, sure. But grateful doesn't sell two hundred thousand jerseys."

  Leo shifted in the chair uncomfortably.

  "You're sixteen years old. And you killed two Mountain Domain Lords." Williams let that sit for a second. "Do you understand what that means to a parent sitting in the stands? To some Foundation Establishment dad who's been dreading the day his kid gets deployed?"

  He pointed at Leo.

  "It means the next generation is going to be stronger. And the one after that, stronger still. It means the Catacombs aren't going to be a meat grinder forever. That maybe, twenty years from now, a hundreds years from now, we push underground and actually start winning this thing. Start taking high tier spirit veins. Open the path to Void Refining and Great Ascension."

  Williams picked up a pencil and rolled it between his fingers.

  "That's what you represent, Chen. Hope. The kind that makes people believe their grandchildren might grow up in a world where the Catacombs are just another territory on a map instead of a graveyard. There will be Nascent Souls in that stadium Saturday. And they'll still be on their feet cheering. Because you made them believe the future is going to be better than the present."

  He pointed the pencil at Leo.

  "So yeah. No Costco membership. You gave them something money can't buy. Which is why marketing is malding. They've got the most promotable athlete in the Ivy League and nothing to sell him."

  Williams tossed the pencil onto the desk. "Best idea they had is fame. They're pretty confident you'd break a million TikTok followers within a day."

  "There is zero chance my mom signs the social media consent form."

  "Zero?"

  "She thinks the app is a Confounding Formation designed by the Chinese government to rot people's brains."

  "That's a shame. At least you'll sell a mountain of jerseys."

  Leo sat up. "How much do I get per jersey?"

  Williams' amusement drained away. "Nothing."

  "What?"

  "NCAA amateurism rules. You can't make a single cent off merchandise."

  "That's outrageous. Players should be able to make money off their own name, image, and likeness."

  "Big lawsuit about that. Went all the way up."

  "And?"

  "Nothing. Every program is federally subsidized. The swords alone cost more than most programs can cover. If a program turns a profit, the surplus gets clawed back to repay the government for propping up the whole system. Court looked at the numbers and decided it would all collapse."

  Leo sat with that. Thirty thousand lives on a commemorative jersey, and the person who did the saving couldn't buy a watch with the proceeds.

  Arthur would have had an aneurysm.

  "Fine. I'll play. But change the jersey. Take my name off. Make it Flyer 7."

  "Flyer 7."

  "And make sure the crowd doesn't chant my name. If people cheer, they cheer for the Bulldogs."

  "You want to explain that?"

  Leo thought for a moment and came up with a reason.

  "I'm working on the Heart of Flesh. The whole point is feeling the Desire for Life in all beings. The last thing I need is a hundred thousand people chanting my name trying to convince me to cultivate the Heart of the GOAT."

  Williams held the pencil still. Something shifted behind his eyes.

  "That's a good answer." He tapped the pencil against the desk twice. "Flyer 7. Bulldogs chant. I'll make the calls."

  "Thank you."

  "But expect every person in that stadium wearing a Flyer 7 jersey. And they'll know exactly who Flyer 7 is."

  "I can live with that."

  "Good. I'll tell the marketing department that we'll need four hundred thousand jerseys."

  Leo flinched. Williams was already reaching for his phone.

  ---

  Back in his room at the training facility, Leo stood under the shower and let the water work on the knot between his shoulders.

  The jersey thing bothered him. He'd asked Williams to remove his name on instinct, then scrambled to justify it after the fact. The Heart of Flesh reasoning was real, but it wasn't why he'd said it.

  He knew where the reflex came from. Fourteen years of pre-transmigration life. A world where everyone died the same way. You didn't walk around acting special when a bus could hit you tomorrow.

  This world was different. Cultivation meant hierarchy. People greeted Gold Cores as their Superiors, and Nascent Souls as their Lords. Everything was unequal and everyone knew it.

  The Azure Profound Continent worked the same way. So did the Catacombs. Three out of four of the heavens and earths Leo lived on ran on the same rule. The strong stood above, looking down at the weak with contempt. That was how it always worked.

  Leo had consulted every professor he could find about the Heart of Flesh. The answers were consistent and discouraging. Yes, people had cultivated it. Yes, it took a long time to cultivate. The timeline was usually measured in decades. Decades of slow, unrewarding work against the grain of a Heaven and Earth that rewarded the opposite.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  But Leo had four Heavens and Earths. Pre-transmigration Earth. Post-transmigration Earth. The Azure Profound Continent. And the Catacombs.

  Three of the four were dead ends for the Heart of Flesh. Cultivation worlds, soaked in hierarchy. But pre-transmigration Earth was clean. Fourteen years in a heaven and earth where equality was instinct, where lifespans were near universal.

  Leo thought back to Professor Vogt's formations class. She mentioned that the Heaven Earth Man formation could also be read as Future, Past, and Present.

  If he could link that experience to the Heart of Flesh, those fourteen years weren't wasted time. They were fourteen years of cultivation he'd already completed without knowing it.

  A past rooted in the only heaven and earth untainted by cultivation. That had to be worth something. Something profound.

  And his future was completely incalculable. Shen Tianyi had mentioned that most cultivators' trajectories could be predicted from family background and spiritual roots.

  Leo fell outside of every model. Transmigrated soul, no cultivation lineage, spiritual roots that had already changed once. Nobody could predict where he was going.

  An unknown past. An unpredictable future. And a present having shower thoughts.

  Leo shut off the water.

  He needed to write everything down. Every memory from before the transmigration. He was going to make diaries. Lots of them. Before he forgot.

  He sat down at his desk and started with the earliest thing he could remember. A playground. Red slide. He wrote it down and moved to the next one. Then the next.

  The details were sparse, half-formed, but once he started pulling at the thread, the memories kept coming. A birthday cake that wasn't the ice cream one he wanted. None of it was dramatic.

  Hours passed. His phone alarm went off. Time to go back into the Azure Profound Continent to try again.

  ---

  Azure Profound Continent

  Leo walked up to the field of wheat again.

  Arthur's ceramic container was left aside at the edge. Leo crouched and examined the wheat where the herbicide had been poured.

  The stalks were fine. The roots showed no discoloration. No wilting. No damage at all.

  Arthur was gone. The old man was probably somewhere on Earth, asking people in his retirement home about Agent Orange.

  Leo thought about the diary entry he'd just written.

  I remember going to a corn maze with my parents when I was little. We spent a long time looking for the treasure. When we found it, it was just a chest that said "congratulations." There wasn't even a sticker. Dad said he would buy me something on the car ride home.

  Leo looked at the field of wheat.

  Somewhere deep in the field, the Monarch walked its endless circuit, hollow and leaking. Forced to spend eternity patching a straw body filled with holes.

  A disappointing treasure.

  Leo stood up and stepped into the field.

  The wheat closed around him. Stalks pressed against his arms and chest.

  He walked.

  The cutting sound started. That long rasp of metal through fiber, steady and rhythmic, growing closer. The stalks around him trembled.

  A wave rolled toward him through the wheat. The stalks ahead bent at their midpoints. The divine domain pushed ahead of the entity like a pressure front before a storm.

  Just a dumb treasure chest that won't even open, Leo told himself.

  Step.

  The wave reached him. The wheat around him flattened to the ground. Every grain head pressing into the dirt.

  Step.

  The pressure built. Leo's legs trembled. His knees wanted to buckle. The name carved itself into his mind, Monarch Scattered Straw, and the weight of it pressed down on his thoughts.

  Another step.

  The divine domain closed over him like a fist. His thoughts scattered. His body locked.

  But in the fraction of a second before his mind went blank, Leo felt it.

  Two steps.

  He had taken two steps inside the divine domain of a Deity Transformation Monarch.

  He finally had tangible process. He now had a direction, and something he could grind.

  ---

  Yale Bowl Flying Aces Stadium

  The reporter caught Leo outside the locker room. Although there wasn't that much time before their game with Dartmouth she somehow made herself unavoidable.

  She was young, holding a microphone in one hand and a clipboard in the other. A press lanyard bounced against her chest as she jogged up. She was wearing a Flyer 7 jersey, its hem hanging well past her waist.

  She shoved her microphone at Leo's face.

  "Leo Chen! Quick question before the game. How does it feel being the star of the show tonight? The entire stadium, including the Dartmouth section, is wearing your jersey right now."

  "I thought you couldn't ask that question," Leo said. "Isn't that in the interview rules?"

  The reporter blinked. She looked down at her clipboard, flipping to a page near the back. Her eyes scanned. Her eyebrows climbed.

  "Huh. You're right, it's listed right here. 'Do not reference the player by name or frame questions around individual celebrity.'" She flipped the page over, looking for context. "This doesn't make any sense. Why is this rule here?"

  "I'm trying to cultivate the Heart of Flesh."

  The reporter's head snapped up. She didn't know what the Heart of Flesh was. But her eyes sharpened at hearing something unexpected.

  "Can you tell me more about that? Why are you cultivating the Heart of Flesh?"

  "In order for the Bulldogs to make the playoffs this year, we're going to have to beat Harvard at least once. The Heart of Flesh is the only technique I've found that lets you fight inside a Divine Domain."

  The reporter grinned. "So how has your cultivation been going? Any success?"

  Leo couldn't help it. He'd been dying to share his progress.

  "I just took two steps on it last night. I feel like I'm actually making progress."

  "That's amazing. Congratulations. Is there anything your fans can do to help?"

  Leo thought about what Coach Williams had told him before. Something about Texas A&M 13th Man.

  "I think in order for Yale to beat Harvard this year, it has to be a team effort. I can't do it alone. I need everyone's help. The whole school. Show them that Yale won't bow down to a mere divine domain."

  He paused.

  "Coach Williams told me about Texas A&M's 13th Man tradition. I don't really know the details. But all I know is, if we add a hundred and fifty thousand men and women to our team, I'm pretty sure we can overwhelm Harvard together."

  The reporter was already beaming. She turned to the camera.

  "You heard it from the man himself. We need you all cheering loud for the Bulldogs tonight. From the stands, from your dorms, from wherever you are. Let's make it hundreds of thousands strong!"

  Leo ducked past her into the locker room.

  The locker room was a wall of Yale blue. Every starter, every reserve, every Soldier and Gunner had a Flyer 7 jersey pulled over their T4 armor.

  Jimbo overheard. He pointed at DeShawn, six-three, jersey stretched tight across his shoulders. Then at Ellie, five-five, idly twirling her sword. Then at Leo.

  "Yeah," Jimbo said. "Identical. Also, you still have your insignia on."

  Leo looked down. The golden crossed arrows of a Ranked cultivator sat pinned over his heart. The only set in the room.

  Part of him wanted it gone. The other remembered every painful death it took to earn it.

  "Don't bother," Jimbo said. "I saw marketing hauling in spotlights on the way in. Pretty sure those are for you. No point trying to hide."

  Leo sighed and looked towards Harry. "What's our game plan tonight?"

  Harry grinned. "You remember what you did in the high school playoffs?"

  "I beat every starter and injured them all badly."

  "Exactly. Do that."

  "Harry, I'm supposed to be a hero tonight."

  "It will be great for morale! Shows everyone what the army is made of." Harry waved a hand upwards. "Whole stadium full of Flyer 7 jerseys. Give them what they want to see."

  Leo down at the T4 armor he was wearing under his jersey.

  "Is it even possible? They will also be wearing T4 armor."

  Harry considered it. "If you exhausted them first, maybe. But I think taking their whole team down in the first few minutes would have a similar effect."

  Leo sighed. He sat down on the bench and rubbed his face with both hands.

  "Am I ever going to get my normal life back?"

  Harry looked at him. "Since when have you been normal? Must have been before Qi Refining."

  "I'm serious. I've been trying to cultivate the Heart of Flesh. The whole technique is about staying grounded. Connected to ordinary people. I'm worried I'm going to lose what little progress I had."

  Harry sat down next to him.

  "I've been looking into the Heart of Flesh too. And I think you're getting caught up on something. Don't confuse the Heart of Flesh with the Heart of Man."

  Leo looked up.

  "No Heart of Flesh cultivator is normal, Leo. None of them try to be. Go read the biographies. Every single one of them was extraordinary. The technique doesn't ask you to be ordinary. It asks you to stay connected to life. Those are very different things."

  Leo sat with that. It didn't fit the shape he'd been building in his head. The humility, the deflection, the stripping of his name off the jersey. He'd been trying to shrink himself down. Maybe that was wrong.

  "If there's anyone extraordinary," Ellie said from across the room, "I can only think of you, Leo."

  Leo grinned.

  The locker room door swung open. Coach Williams leaned in.

  "Captain Chen. Coin toss."

  Leo blinked. Looked around..

  "Chen, you're the captain from now on." Williams paused. "Just a reminder. We're the home team so you call the coin. Heads or tails. If you win the flip, pick a side. North or South."

  Leo's ears went warm. Williams had clearly heard about his gaffe in the quarterfinals of the high school playoffs last year.

  He followed Williams out of the locker room and into the tunnel corridor.

  The cameras found him immediately. Three lenses swung into his face before he'd taken two steps. The sound hit him a moment later. The stadium above was screaming. The noise filtered down through the concrete.

  Williams gestured him forward. Leo walked ahead, cameras tracking every step.

  ---

  Visitors Locker Room.

  "You're telling me you played with him last year?"

  Cortland's captain had to shout over the cheering bleeding into the visitors locker room.

  Cortland Winthrop sat on the bench and sighed. The five Flyers and seven Defenders of Dartmouth's Flying Aces team were probably the only twelve people in the entire stadium who weren't wearing a Flyer 7 jersey

  Even their coach had tried to sneak around in one earlier. Claimed it was to blend in and steal signals.

  The players made him take it off.

  "Yeah," Cortland said. "We went through the playoffs together last year at Exeter."

  Dartmouth's captain gestured at the TV screen mounted on the wall. Leo and Coach Williams were walking through the corridor toward the field, the crowd noise building with every step.

  "Did you expect this back at Exeter?"

  Cortland watched the screen. "To be honest, not really. But last year he told me he fought a Nascent Soul. I didn't believe him at the time." He paused. "Maybe he was already on this path back then."

  Dartmouth's captain sighed.

  The locker room door opened. Their coach stepped in.

  He was wearing a Flyer 7 jersey. This one fit better.

  Dartmouth's captain sighed again, stood up, and walked over to get beaten by the hero of the Boston Catacombs.

  Even stepping stones had to show up to the fight.