While Han Wei was dodging rubber balls in a Long Island warehouse, the fabric of reality was thinning in places far more ancient, and far less civilized.

  In the deepest depths of the Himalayan range, where the air is an afterthought and the stone is older than memory, the Hidden Mountain Sect made its home. They did not have LED screens or 'Admin Training.' They had the Weight.

  Kaelen—known to his few surviving peers as 'The Crag'—stood at the bottom of a vertical shaft hewn directly into the heart of a granite peak. He was seven feet of knotted muscle and scarred skin, his torso wider than the door of a subway car. He wasn't wearing robes. He was wearing chains.

  Four massive chains, each link cast from 'Deep Iron' that hummed with a low, oppressive frequency, were bolted into the rock walls and hooked into the metal rings that had been surgically implanted into Kaelen’s collarbones.

  "The Earth does not give," a voice rasped from the shadows above.

  A small, withered man paced the edge of the shaft. This was the Sect Leader, Grandmaster Gorm. He looked like a dried root, but his eyes glowed with a sadistic, amber light. He held a heavy obsidian mallet, which he tapped rhythmically against his palm.

  "The Earth takes," Gorm continued. "It takes your breath. It takes your strength. It takes your resolve. If you wish to be the Sovereign, Kaelen, you must become the thing that cannot be taken."

  Gorm swung the mallet. He didn't hit Kaelen. He hit a release lever.

  Ten tons of raw, unprocessed stone—a single slab of basalt—slid from a ceiling chute and slammed into Kaelen’s shoulders.

  The crack of bone and the groan of metal links filled the shaft. Kaelen’s knees didn't buckle; they hissed as they ground against the frozen stone floor. His breath escaped him in a cloud of crimson mist.

  "Carry it," Gorm whispered, his voice carrying the weight of a landslide. "Or be buried by it."

  Kaelen didn't scream. Screaming was a waste of Qi. He squeezed his eyes shut until droplets of blood leaked from the corners. He reached into the very marrow of his bones, pulling on the 'Granite Core' technique he had been perfecting since he was five years old. He wasn't lifting the stone with his muscles; he was convincing the stone that he was its superior.

  Slowly, agonizingly, the basalt slab rose an inch. Then two.

  "Good," Gorm said, a thin, cruel smile touching his lips. "Now, I shall add the 'Shattered Spirit' needles. We shall see if your focus can hold while your nerves are on fire."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  *

  Thousands of miles away, in the shifting dunes of the Gobi Desert, the air didn't smell like stone. It smelled like copper and jasmine.

  Li Mei, known as 'The Silver Ghost,' moved through a forest of spinning blades. She was the polar opposite of Kaelen. Where he was a mountain, she was the wind that carved it. She was lithe, her movements so fluid that she seemed to blur at the edges, her robes of silk-shadow trailing behind her like smoke.

  She was the pride of the Nine-Viper Sect.

  She wasn't fighting a man. She was fighting a swarm of mechanical dragonflies, each one tipped with a needle dipped in 'Void Toxin.' One scratch would paralyze a mortal for life; for a cultivator, it would rot the Dan Tian from the inside out.

  Li Mei didn't use a sword. She used her fingers. Her hands moved in the 'Surgical Strike' pattern, her nails reinforced with emerald Qi.

  Snip. Snip. Snip.

  The dragonflies fell in pieces, their silver wings shorn mid-flight. Her trainer, a woman draped in veils of living shadow, watched from a throne of bleached bone.

  "You are fast, Mei," the Shadow Matriarch said. "But the 'Grandmaster of Queens' has the luck of the simple. He has captured the hearts of the masses. He uses their collective belief to anchor his Qi. To kill him, you cannot just be fast. You must be invisible. You must strike the thread of his fate before he even knows you have entered his shadow."

  Li Mei stopped, a single dragonfly wing held between two fingers. "He is a median disciple who found a quiet pond. I will turn his 'Park' into a graveyard."

  *

  And then, there was the Iron Blood Pavilion.

  High above the clouds, on a floating island of volcanic rock that sat in a pocket of distorted space, Prince Zhan was meditating on a lake of fire.

  He was the 'Genius' who had sent the messenger. He was royalty in a world where blood was the only currency that mattered. He didn't need to carry stones or dodge needles. He was a master of the 'Solar Devastation' path.

  His Qi didn't glow. It burned.

  "The lizard has begun his montage," Zhan said, his voice level and cold. He was looking into a bowl of liquid mercury that displayed a pixelated, magically-intercepted image of Wei kicking the training trees in Long Island.

  "He thinks he is being clever," Zhan continued. "He thinks by blending our ways with the crude tools of this Silenced Realm, he can close the gap. He thinks he can become a Dragon through... logistics."

  A tall, broad-shouldered man in heavy armor stood behind the Prince. "Shall we intercept them, Highness? Before they reach the Amazon?"

  "No," Zhan said, a flicker of flame crossing his eyes. "Let him come. Let him bring his 'Administrative Administrator' and his actor-disciple. I want the world to watch as I shatter his foundation. I want the Earthlings to see their 'Grandmaster' reduced to the background noise he was born to be."

  Zhan stood up, the lake of fire parting around his feet.

  "Kaelen. Li Mei. And the Lizard," Zhan whispered. "The semi-finals will be an interesting display. But there can only be one Sovereign. And the Heavens have already chosen the Blood."

  *

  Back in New York, Han Wei sat on a crate in the middle of the warehouse, drinking a 'Spirit-Infused' protein shake Sarah had forced on him. He didn't know about the basalt slabs in the Himalayas, the poison needles in the Gobi, or the volcanic fires of the Prince.

  He just knew that his shins hurt, the floor was trying to trip him, and for the first time in his life, he was excited about a fight.

  "You're smiling, Wei," Sarah said, looking up from her tablet. "Stop it. It means you’re not focused."

  "I am focused, Sarah," Wei said, looking at his bruised hands. "I am focused on the fact that I am no longer Rank 4,392."

  He stood up, the warehouse echo catching his voice.

  "I am the one who is going to win."

  *