470 Arrival in a Qi-less World

470 Arrival in a Qi-less World

In the blink of an eye, the world twisted.

Alice’s planar travel spell collapsed space like folded paper, and the next thing I knew, we were standing into a forest.

It wasn’t graceful.

Gu Jie dropped from the air the moment we arrived, her flight failing instantly. I barely reacted in time, catching her by the leg before she could smash face-first into the dirt.

“Waaa~ waaa~! Achoo! Achoo!”

She burst into thick tears, sneezing violently in between sobs.

Ox-Head, who had insisted on maintaining his human form, stumbled as if drunk. He tripped over his own leg and slammed straight into a boulder.

The impact cracked the stone.

Ru Qiu looked worse.

He staggered forward, one hand on a tree trunk, retching as though he wanted to vomit, except nothing came out.

“What is this cursed place?” Gu Jie cried between sniffles. “I can’t breathe properly! It feels empty! Achoo!”

Ox-Head groaned from the crater he had just created. “The air… it’s filthy. There’s no structure to it. No flow. It’s revolting.”

Ru Qiu wiped his mouth, pale. “My qi circulation feels… strangled. I can still move it, but it’s like pushing water through dry sand. This is disgusting.”

Alice and I exchanged a look.

“I didn’t expect it would be this bad,” she admitted.

It hadn’t crossed my mind.

The World of Losten, the setting LLO was based on, didn’t have qi.

This was a qi-less world.

Gu Jie tugged weakly at my sleeve, her face beet red. She sniffled and avoided eye contact.

“Father…” she whispered miserably. “I… I soiled myself…”

Alice immediately scooped Gu Jie from my grip with alarming enthusiasm. “River. Now.”

Before I could comment, she had already marched off toward the sound of running water.

I turned back to the two grown men who were currently losing to atmospheric conditions.

“You two good?” I asked.

Ox-Head slowly lifted his face from the dirt, looking personally offended by existence itself. “Why is the air so unclean?”

“I can’t tell the difference,” I admitted honestly.

He tried to stand again.

He fell face-first.

The crater doubled in size.

I dusted off my robes. “Need a hand?”

“I will recover,” he said stiffly, attempting dignity while embedded in soil. “I merely require time to adjust.”

I shifted my attention to Ru Qiu. “You?”

He stood upright, technically. His complexion, however, suggested imminent tragedy.

“I can still circulate qi,” he muttered. “My techniques should function.”

He leaned over and resumed retching at absolutely nothing.

Alice returned not long after, looking far too amused.

“Where’s Gu Jie?” I asked.

Alice grinned. “Not Gu Jie. In this place, her name is Guin.”

She stepped aside.

There stood our little girl.

Pink dress. Clean. Tiny shoes. Damp hair combed neatly to the side.

I covered my mouth.

Gu Jie glared at me with icy dignity. “Father, I refuse to be treated like this. I am a grown woman.”

“Physically,” I replied, “you are not.”

Alice nodded sagely. “You came through my womb. As far as I’m concerned, you are my daughter.”

The sheer mythological absurdity of Gu Jie being reborn through Alice’s womb was something I decided not to unpack.

“I’ll kick your shin, Father, if I could,” Gu Jie huffed. “Be grateful for my magnaniwity.”

I lost it.

She had mispronounced magnanimity.

I squatted down to her level and pointed dramatically. “Who is the cute widdle baby?”

I tapped her forehead gently. “You are.”

She bit my finger. It was not a playful nip. A fang punctured skin and drew blood.

I flinched.

She released me and immediately hid behind Alice, baring her tiny vampiric fangs in warning.

My finger healed within seconds thanks to natural regeneration.

Alice observed calmly, as if examining an interesting specimen. “It appears she retained her vampiric traits. I’ve also noticed her mental age has regressed with her body. Look at her ears.”

Gu Jie’s ears were bright red from embarassment.

“And there,” Alice continued. “She just rolled her eyes at me.”

Gu Jie crossed her arms with as much authority as a toddler in a pink dress could muster.

“She certainly has attitude,” Alice concluded.

My relationship with Alice and Gu Jie often felt like we were playing house.

It was absurd.

I cherished them both, that much was undeniable. Yet nothing about our situation was normal. A reborn vampiric daughter who had come through Alice’s womb. A planar traveler mother who treated apocalypse-level threats like mild inconveniences. And me, pretending this patchwork arrangement resembled something domestic.

Behind us, the sound of impact split the forest air.

Ox-Head and Ru Qiu had begun sparring.

They moved cautiously at first, testing footwork, balance, and breathing. Then, as their confidence returned, the exchanges escalated.

Ru Qiu’s dark flames flared along his fists as he drove a punch forward. “My joints feel sluggish, but manageable!”

Ox-Head twisted aside, countering with a palm strike that shattered three trees in a line. “Motor control is stabilizing. Reaction speed is at seventy percent of peak!”

Ru Qiu laughed and retaliated with a sweeping kick that cratered the earth. “Let’s see if regeneration still works properly in this damned place!”

Ox-Head took the blow head-on, ribs audibly cracking before knitting back together. “Structural recovery confirmed!”

They were dishing out killing moves with reckless confidence. Both trusted their immortality to regenerate whatever damage slipped through.

If, for some idiotic reason, that immortality failed, I was here.

“You two okay now?” I called out.

They disengaged mid-exchange.

Ru Qiu rolled his shoulders. “If a fight breaks out, I can handle myself.”

Ox-Head nodded. “We have adjusted sufficiently. Combat capability remains viable.”

“Good.”

I turned to Alice. “What’s next?”

“I’ll lead the way,” she said simply.

She stepped ahead, brushing branches aside as if she had walked this forest a thousand times before. We followed. As we moved, I quietly tested various blessings from LLO, game mechanics I had once taken for granted.

“Voice Chat,” I murmured internally.

Nothing.

“Shop.”

Nothing.

That was disappointing.

“Is that a village?” Ox-Head asked from behind me.

Through the trees, smoke rose into the sky.

I narrowed my eyes. “Yeah,” I said flatly. “A village of demons.”

They weren’t subtle about it.

Crude wooden structures. Spiked barricades. The stench of sulfur and blood. And chained in the center… were elves.

My jaw tightened.

Infernal speech drifted through the air.

“Keep that one alive. Scream louder, ha ha ha~!”

“Break her spirit first. They’re more fun that way.”

“Breed them if they’re still fertile.”

I understood every word.

The sight before us was worse than any patch notes could capture. Elven women bound. Bruised. Some collapsed and unmoving. Demons of various shapes and colors laughed as atrocities unfolded openly.

I didn’t think.

Zealot’s Stride activated.

The world blurred.

I passed through three demons in a single motion, Silver Steel already drawn. Their torsos separated a heartbeat later. I seized another by the face mid-laugh and crushed its skull in my grip. Bone and ichor splattered across the dirt.

An elven woman being violated scrambled away as her captor suddenly went limp, its body sliding off her in two clean halves.

Ru Qiu appeared beside me, having stolen a fallen blade.

“They’re weak,” he observed calmly as he cut one demon down, then another. “Not even Ascended Souls.”

Ox-Head’s fist caved in a demon’s chest. “Breeding ground,” he muttered. “Demons increase their numbers indiscriminately.”

Alice moved like a phantom, dismantling fleeing figures with precise, economical strikes. None escaped the perimeter.

Within minutes, it was over.

Silence fell over the ruined village.

I turned to the elves and spoke in their native tongue.

“Is there someone here who can take charge?”

None of them lifted their heads.

All of them avoided my gaze.

What had happened to reduce a noble race like theirs to this?

Most were women.

Ox-Head’s earlier words rang true.

The elf I had saved slowly raised her head.

“Sir… you are a Paladin, correct?”

“Yes,” I answered.

Her eyes were gray-white. In other words, she was blind.

She opened her mouth.

There was no tongue.

“I am speaking through my wind spirit,” she said. A small green mote of light shimmered at her throat. “If they discover it, they will kill it.”

Her voice was soft, carried by the spirit’s power.

“As you can see, I am blind. They removed my tongue. They left us our hearing so they could enjoy our reactions. So we could hear their laughter. Their infernal breath.”

My grip tightened on Silver Steel.

“The same is true for my sisters,” she continued. “We were broken. Used as tools.”

Her wind spirit flickered faintly.

“Beyond this place, there are worse fates. Some are turned into undead. Some are ground into pills. Some are used as crafting materials for rituals I dare not imagine. I only know because my wind spirit has heard the stories.”

The forest felt very quiet and small.

This world had no qi.

But it had plenty of evil.

I stepped closer to her and spoke gently, “How about I heal your eyes and your tongue?”

The elf did not recoil. She did not tremble. She simply tilted her sightless gaze toward my voice.

“And then what?” she asked through the wind spirit at her throat. “Offer us hope in exchange for greater despair?”

The green mote flickered faintly.

“It is over. The factions of Light and Dark no longer matter. There is only the Final Adversary, and we have already lost. O Paladin, I speak for myself and for my sisters. Can you grant us a peaceful death?”

Her hands trembled, but her voice did not.

“We will dig our own graves if we must. Let us return to the embrace of Mother Nature. Pray for us, so that the gates of the afterworld may open, and she will welcome us home.”

Gu Jie tugged at my robes.

“It’s no use, Father,” she said quietly. “There are some things even you cannot heal.”

Her words pierced deeper than any blade.

I felt anger rising, hot and suffocating.

“I don’t care,” I snapped.

The forest seemed to recoil from the weight of my voice.

“If you think I will assist you in your suicide, then you are terribly unlucky. I hate it when things do not go my way. Even more so when it is caused by blind faith.”

I pointed toward the ruined sky above.

“Your gods are not here. They are gone. No one is waiting for you in the afterworld.”

Joan’s words resurfaced in my mind. A demi-god of the Priest Legacy whose prayers had gone unanswered. A world where divinity had grown silent.

Rage surged through me.

“I will not lecture you about life being precious. To hell with the so-called Great Enemy. Their lives are dust to me.”

My voice grew harsher.

“Be angry. They razed your world and left nothing behind. Be angry that your ancestors’ legacy has been defiled. Be angry for the children you will never have and the futures that were stolen before they were born.”

Light erupted from me as I cast Blessed Regeneration across every elf present. Flesh knit. Scars faded. Torn bodies restored under radiant force.

It was selfish.

I was imposing my will upon them.

“Let me carry it,” I said, my voice lowering but no less intense. “Your grief. Your despair. Your hatred. I will bear it with you. You do not have to suffer alone.”

Holy power surged.

“We will drag the Final Adversary from their lofty throne. We will grind them into the dirt and destroy them in ways they have never imagined.”

I was a God of War.

I understood what I was offering.

They did not need hollow comfort. They needed faith.

“Have faith in me,” I said softly. “Because I am here.”

Ophanim ignited behind my eyes. Divine Possession unfolded, and I projected an alternate reality before them. Exalted Renewal burned through my soul as I raised my stats beyond measure. My essence blazed like a star tearing itself apart.

With a single swing of Silver Steel, I rended the sky.

The heavens split.

The earth fractured.

The forest sundered in a wave of divine ruin.

It was not destruction for its own sake. It was demonstration and proof.

I ended the illusion as swiftly as it began.

The forest returned.

The air stilled.

I drove my sword into the ground.

“My name is Da Wei,” I declared, my voice steady despite the fire still eating at my soul. “Supreme Bearer. Immortal Paladin.”

I met their faces one by one.

“And I have come to save this world.”

It was not bravado.

It was a promise.

Anger churned within me, thick with self-blame. I could have come sooner. I could have prevented this. But regret was a luxury I could not afford.

What was done, was done.

Only forward remained.

The elf before me gasped.

Color flooded back into her eyes.

Her tongue regrew within her mouth.

She touched her face with trembling fingers as tears streamed freely.

She fell to her knees.

“Oh, Da Wei,” she cried, hands clasped in prayer. “Deliver us from this hell.”

Around her, the other elves lifted their tear-streaked faces.

“Oh, Da Wei,” they prayed in unison, voices breaking yet resolute. “Smite the evil that scarred this world.”

Their faith settled upon me like a mantle.

It was heavy, burning, and unavoidable.

I embraced it.

Ru Qiu looked at the elves kneeling before me and asked the obvious question.

“What do you plan on doing with them? If we bring them along, they will only slow us down.”

He was not wrong.

We were not on a leisurely expedition. Losten was hostile territory. Every step forward could be a battlefield.

“I have an idea,” I replied.

I trusted my party enough to object if it was foolish. The fact that none of them immediately did gave me confidence.

I raised my hand.

“Summon: Holy Spirit.”

Radiant light gathered beside me, coalescing into the familiar skeletal form clad in sacred aura.

Ezekiel stepped forth.

The elves recoiled instinctively at the sight of him. Bones were not a comforting symbol in a land already saturated with death.

“It is my Holy Spirit,” I clarified calmly. “His name is Ezekiel. He will not harm you. That, I promise.”

The wind stirred faintly through the ruined village.

“My party must move on. We cannot afford to be delayed. The road ahead will be terrible. It will be deadly.”

I let that truth stand unsoftened.

“But I believe you are stronger than you think.”

I gestured to Ezekiel.

“If danger arises, he is more than capable of defending you from most threats in this region. If the worst occurs, I will come.”

I stepped forward, planting Silver Steel into the earth once more, marking the direction we would travel.

“Hear me. Leave this village. Follow the path we walk. Consider it a pilgrimage.”

The word carried weight.

“Ezekiel will guide you. He will point the way. At the end of the road, I promise you this, you will find me.”

The plan was simple in structure, complex in execution.

We would advance ahead, searching for leads, for Joan and Dave, for answers. Along the way, we would carve a path through enemy territory. Any villages we liberated, any prisons we shattered, the survivors would join the trail behind us.

It would be a growing procession of believers and refugees alike.

Of course, it would be a logistical nightmare. Food alone would become a pressing concern in a world where scarcity was weaponized. I would have to rely on Ezekiel’s capacity to replicate himself, to defend, to organize, and to sustain.

It was ambitious.

Perhaps reckless.

But it would work.

Ezekiel bowed his skull slightly toward the elves, silent yet resolute.

The once-blind elf stepped forward.

Her restored eyes shone with something that had not been there before.

Not despair.

Conviction.

She knelt deeply, pressing her forehead to the dirt.

“From this moment onward,” she said, her voice steady despite the tears that still traced her cheeks, “I devote my life, my mind, my body, and my soul to this faith that has found me.”

She lifted her gaze to meet mine.

“I answer your call.”

Behind her, the other elves followed suit, bowing in unison.

The pilgrimage had begun.