Stepping out of the scrapyard, it would be hard to tell she’d left the boundaries of the business at all, both sides of the double door are grungy, windowless, and poorly lit. The only difference is that this hallway isn't made up entirely of people in boilersuits.

  Waiting for a gap, Lian steps into the crowd and follows the flow back toward home. Both the hall and the people within it bear similar marks of… ramshackle construction. The metal of the hall, once painted some shade of green, is now a yellowish brown with large slabs of metal welded on every surface in a patchwork method of construction and repair. Mirroring this, the crowd wear clothes equally covered in patches, synthetic cloth repaired again and again until it’s more patch than original fiber.

  After a few minutes of walking down the long corridor, the hallway opens up into a large atrium. Twenty stories tall, the windowless space looks as if it was created by welding a hundred different buildings and construction styles together before rubbing everything in dirt. Every surface, from floor to ceiling, is composed of random sheets of metal attached at uneven angles with thick, sloppy welds holding everything together.

  That poor infrastructure seems almost intentionally obscured by holographic advertisements and any sound drowned out by vendors calling out their wares to the masses that pass by.

  But as the scrapper walks toward the hallway that leads home, her eye is drawn to one holographic screen in particular. The largest and most animated, it holds a place of prominence on the largest wall. Its a video feed, showing a high overhead shot of two people facing each other with swords drawn on the level sands of an arena. Beyond the sands the two are surrounded by grandstands of people in elaborate and well pressed robes, roaring in approval as the two size each other up.

  Cultivators…

  Lian stares at them, captivated even as she continues on her way.

  The two stand like statues as they take in every detail of the other, but that stillness is shattered as one opens with a slash faster than the camera can see, parried and countered with similarly inhuman perfection.

  Everyone on that screen, even the combatants, are wearing the cleanest clothes she has seen since she’d died, adding to the strangeness.

  The blows continue to fall at impossible speed, each perfectly caught and countered before –in a moment too quick to perceive– one person leaps backward as the other remains frozen where they stand, sword held at the end of a slash.

  Sliding to a stop, the man who’d been forced to retreat reaches upward and rubs a thumb across the blood pooling from the cut on his cheek.

  Then Lian’s view is disrupted as her feet carry her through the atrium and down another hallway toward her home. A shame, but she’s seen a hundred fights just like it.

  Cultivator fights look almost nothing like the fights she’d taken part of when it was behind a keyboard and screen, but she can still pick out a few of the moves and tactics, even now when it's more real than ever before.

  It’s odd, seeing those fights on the screen and knowing that she has the potential to do the same.

  She can feel it sometimes, at the edge of her senses when she’s near the most toxic poisons of the scrapyward. An almost buzzing sensation buzzing in unison with her surroundings, eminating just above her diaphram and below her soul.

  Her soul is yet another thing she neer thought she’d be able to feel so strongly, but she can certainly feel that too.

  Continuing down the hall, shops and holographic advertisements are replaced by hanging cloth over empty doorways or in random corners, each marking a person or family's living space. The scrapper is forced to focus and at least appear aware of her surroundings to avoid catching the eye of the more… desperate.

  She meets the gaze of a person she’s never seen leave this hall as they watch her with familiar hunger.

  Winding though a maze of near identical hallways, covered in cloth and saturated in the quiet din of muttered conversations, the scrapper stops at the last intersection to the hall her home is on where a vendor selling heated nutrient mash, and buys a puck of the substance.

  It’s one of the cheapest and most commonly available foods around.

  It tastes exactly how the description would suggest.

  Grimacing at the flavor, she eats the slightly slimy puck with one hand as she walks the final steps home. Coming to a stop with a cough, the scrapper pushes the ragged cloth aside and is forced to duck as she enters her home.

  There’s not much, barely large enough to lie down in if she tucks in her knees, it’s filled with scattered pieces of metal, lots of rough cloth, and mounted fittings that suggest this used to be some sort of janitorial closet.

  “...Home sweet home.” She mutters with a quiet chuckle.

  Removing her boots and other valuables, Lian puts them in a lockbox that had been presumably used for cleaning chemicals at some point, then places some weights on where the cloth marking her door touches the ground.

  It won't stop anyone, but from her testing there’s no way to move that curtain now without making noise.

  The scrapper looks around at the space, not large enough to stand up in fully and barely wide enough to lie down, then takes another bite of her puck and stretches an aching rotator cuff.

  When Ailos said squalor, they meant squalor.

  The thought causes a slightly hysterical giggle to bubble up in her throat and she fails to stop the sound from escaping. The choked amusement morphs into some mixture of a laugh, gasp, and cough before she regains control, blinking her eyes rapidly before taking another bite of her puck.

  No.

  She closes her eyes.

  She has neither the time, energy, or water for that right now.

  Deep breath in…

  Not right now.

  …and out.

  Lian opens her eyes.

  Unfortunately, despite knowing everything there is to know about Lian the Unconquered, the Ailos lore mostly glosses over the years of work and painful struggle it took to actually become someone important enough to watch. Which is unfortunate.

  Because right now she’s living those years, and she’d really like a guide.

  Finishing the puck that is the second of her two meals for today, Lian shuffles over to a pile of rough cloth and collapses onto it with a pained groan and wet cough.

  She knows the original, the Unconquered, had the potential to be a cultivator, one of the strongest in all of history.

  It stands to reason that potential is still there, just waiting to be unlocked.

  It should be easier for her, with knowledge of optimal builds, combined with a knowledge of the next decade of disasters, troubles, and treasures, she should have an excellent chance of becoming just as strong as the original, if not stronger.

  But knowledge is only useful if she’s in the position to use it.

  Lian feels her eyelids drooping in exhaustion, so she roughly pinches herself in the arm and sits up with a huff.

  No. Doing it like the original tried is just begging to die again.

  The scrapper grabs her bag, stares suspiciously at the cloth divider to the outside world, then moves to the back of the space where there’s an air vent constantly blowing cold and dry air into her home.

  She’s got a better idea.

  Getting onto her hands and knees, she carefully removes the grate of the vent, reaches her arm into the hole and, after a bit of fumbling in the dark, finds her fingers pressing against a small lever on the inside wall.

  With another glance at the cloth blocking any potential peeping, she pulls the lever which unlocks with a click, and the large rectangular seam around the vent reveals itself to be a hatch barely large enough for a person to squeeze into.

  She pushes it open and hurriedly crawls though, sealing the door behind her with a foot.

  It’s almost pitch dark and too narrow to turn around, so she presses forward, quietly crawling until she feels the route split, one continuing forward and the other going right. She contorts her body to take the right path and sees a pale orange light spilling through another grille just ahead. Crawling on, she uses an identical lever to open the hatch and starts dragging herself out again.

  The space she’s entering is the size of a small bedroom with the depression in the wall she guesses used to be a door covered by a slab of welded metal, every surface covered in dust and almost completely empty, the space presumably forgotten by new construction.

  She’s assuming the vent doors are maintenance hatches, working in conjunction with the air system to let maintenance people get at something broken behind a wall. Though that's not for certain, and she's not explored anywhere past another intersection just a little further down.

  Getting lost in there would be… fantastically bad.

  Lian shivers at the thought, then restrains a cough as she finally manages to pull her other leg out of the hatch and the movement disturbs some of the dust.

  She knows the original found this place too, because it’s where she found the cultivation manual among a few other semi-valuable items.

  Glancing to her left as she pulls herself up into a crouch, she reaches into her bag and drops her coins in the small pile with the rest of her small savings.

  As a result of this place’s forgotten nature, the lights embedded into the walls have burnt out long ago, leaving the only source of light to come from the window that sits on the left hand wall.

  It's the only window she's seen.

  Rising to her full –if malnutrition diminished– height, the scrapper can feel her gaze being drawn to the portal, and once again she’s forced to pause at the sight on the other side.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  …Stars.

  Against the backdrop of a void so dark it feels as if it's both infinitely far away and right in front of her nose, more stars than she’d ever seen on earth paint the void in rainbow hues, vibrant oranges and whites speckled with piercing blue and bright burning reds which burn steadily against the black.

  So many stars.

  To the left, there’s a burst of bright yellow light, and Lian flicks her attention over just in time to see a ship’s engines cut off with a flare of wasted plasma.

  She knows that ship, it’s a CT-9A cargo transport. Larger than any city from her original world, it’s one of the largest manufacturable ships in existence. But at this distance it looks to be the size of a soda can, unpainted metal sides lit with flashes of maneuver thrusters and swarmed by small tending craft like a shoal of fish.

  And even it is dwarfed by the station it’s drifting into dock with.

  Home.

  The space station, as large as a small moon, is a construction composed of a hundred thousand smaller ships, welded together into a single mass then half disassembled for parts. Layers and layers of metal form the central core with crooked rows of circular windows attempting to mimic the stars they’re blocking in a single yellow hue. From that core, massive columns of metal erupt at seemingly random locations like branches from the trunk of a tree, where ten thousand docking berths battle for space with creeping construction.

  It almost looks as if the station is alive, like some massive venus flytrap that draws ships in only to eat them before incorporating that mass into itself and growing larger in the act.

  It…

  Another ship, a smaller CT-4O cargo vessel, ignites its own engines from a berth further away, drawing the eye toward the light, but the act puts the jewel of this station in the center of Lian’s view.

  White, gold, and silver, so clean in contrast to everything else it feels impossible, the smooth lines and intentional architecture to the Silver Firmament Sect sit like a flower atop the enormous amalgam of steel it controls.

  There are other sects, smaller ones the Silver Firmament allow to exist within their station, but it is them that hold command by right of martial dominance.

  It’s beautiful.

  Lian blinks as she almost bangs her head against the window, having moved across the room without realizing it. Then holds a hand over her mouth to cover a cough and block some of the dust her movement disturbed.

  She’s not sure she’ll ever get tired of that view.

  Reaching into her bag, she rummages around for the capacitor among all the other components she’d gathered today.

  But if she ever wants to get out there –out of here– to see it all, she needs to be strong enough to reach out and take it.

  The scrapper reluctantly turns her head away from the window and toward a sealed circular airlock barely bigger than the maintenance hatch she’d entered through, the words ‘escape pod’ stenciled on the metal in almost completely faded paint, then pulls the capacitor from her bag of components and walks towards it, kicking up more dust as she goes.

  Her ‘ship.’

  Lian gives a shallow laugh at the thought of calling it a ship, a decommissioned and half rotten escape pod only just large enough for three people. It was barely sufficient for the task when it was first built, and that was a long time ago.

  But it’s got a small fusion reactor, electrolyzer, maneuvering thrusters, mag-locks to attach to ships, and something resembling a life support system, so it fulfills all the qualities that make it technically a spacefaring craft.

  …At least she’s pretty sure it has all those things. Because she recognizes the control layout from graphics in-game and that’s what escape pods had, no impulse thrusters, no spatial folding capability, no room for cargo, quite literally the cheapest ship money can buy.

  The lack of spatial folding means no faster than light travel, but she’s got a plan to get around that.

  Lian kneels down at the airlock door, then squints and stifles a cough as the dust in the air starts coating her throat.

  In truth she has almost no idea how any of this works, her knowledge of machines ends at how to disassemble things somewhat safely, so the idea of repairing something is… tenuous.

  But she’s learning, with trial, error, and an endless supply of examples for every way something can be broken.

  If she just keeps at it–

  Reaching toward the hatch lever, more dust drifts in front of her nose and a particularly large clump slips down her throat, which forces a heaving cough.

  Then another.

  And another.

  Lian stands up to get away from the dust and presses an arm against the wall as the cough worsens and she struggles to breathe, an ugly rasping noise that has her putting more and more weight against a wall as she curls in on herself like a dying insect.

  Then the capacitor drops out of her fingers and, in a combination of her lack of air and a blind instinctive need to keep hold of it, she collapses to the ground as well, fingers sweeping across the dusty floor and kicking more of it into the air as her lungs feel as if they’re trying to turn themselves inside out.

  It takes at least half a minute before she has the presence of mind to yank the stained cloth around her neck over her mouth and forces herself to breathe.

  It takes another few minutes before her cough subsides.

  Pushing herself up, Lian lowers her mask just long enough to spit a thick glob of reddish black gunk from her mouth onto the floor before continuing to take slow measured breaths until the black spots in her eyes disappear.

  As she waits, the scrapper glares at the dust as it floats around her.

  She gets enough of this at work…

  _____

  _-__-_

  –––––

  Calm eyes track the incoming attack, a downward diagonal slash. It’s a probing strike to keep tempo and limit her opportunities, not a genuine attempt at injury.

  She taps the blade with her own, keeping at guard, tapping the attack off line into uselessness.

  Her opponent retreats a half step back and pulls his guard in, it’s an obvious feint.

  She still pretends to fall for it, sending a strike to probe the false guard.

  He counters, lunging forward while using the tight guard position as leverage to gain control and increase blade speed to turn a guard into a thrust.

  She ripostes, pushing the attack off line in a simple disengage, her blade slides under the lunge before launching a rising slash at his unguarded side–

  Both combatants freeze as if time had stopped, the bout ended in the fourth strike, and Kaido does not blink as she stares at her opponents eyes.

  The man proves exactly how inexperienced he is by not returning her gaze, instead staring at where her blade sliced through his silken robes and made contact with his flesh, just below his ribcage on the right side. But that dismay quickly turns to anger.

  “How dare you mark my noble person!” He screeches, reaching down to pull her blade away. “I am the first disciple of a member of the elders council! You will pay for this insul–”

  Kaido doesn't allow the blade to move as he tugs on it, instead pressing the slightest bit more into his flesh as he tries to overpower her.

  “If I am to pay for something.” She states calmly. “I expect the collector to be the one whom I owe.”

  The weakling seems unable to decide whether he wants to look at her or the blade cutting into him.

  “I– I– Agh!”

  “Tell me, first disciple.” She growls, slicing the slightest bit deeper as she leans closer, stepping forward when he tries to step back. “Should we continu–”

  “Cease.” Her master's voice calls quietly, sounding tired.

  Kaido complies instantly, blade disappearing into its sheath with a blur of silver, then spins on the spot to bow toward the man sitting at the edge of the private arena’s packed sand.

  “Yes master.”

  She does not need her eyes to feel her master’s quiet amusement, nor the fiery rage from the weakling she’d bested. Both sensations equally satisfying marks of a job well done.

  Her master sighs, followed by the quiet slurp as he takes a sip of tea.

  “First Disciple Ro, your blade does not strike with passion. You guard and wait for your enemy to make a mistake. I had hoped trading pointers with a disciple who exudes passion in excess might have remedied the imbalance in both. But…” He trails off, then takes another sip of tea. “You are dismissed. Read and meditate on the writings on the vital passion of combat before we meet again.”

  There is a small silence, and the rage flares higher, but it’s forcibly repressed. Soon after there’s the sound of rustling cloth as Ro presumably performs a bow.

  Such a child, it was barely a flesh wound.

  “Yes elder. Thank you elder.” He says, followed by the sound of sand hissing as he turns on his heel and walks to the exit.

  Kaido does not move, not a single muscle betrays her discipline as she waits to be addressed by her master.

  He takes another sip of tea, then groans.

  “Stop that.” He mutters, continuing as she straightens to attention . “My most troublesome disciple… what is to become of you?”

  The disciple merely gives a short bow, placing her palm on her sword again.

  The first time she’d heard that question it was a deep blow to her pride and an insult to her honor. But now, having spent years under her master, this line of conversation has been memorized just like any other blade form.

  “I know my duties, Master. I am loyal to you and the Silver Firmament Sect, till the stars dim and my name is forgotten.”

  Her master leans his head back slightly to get the last of the tea from his cup then sets it down on the grass.

  “Yes yes, I know.” He sighs, waving her over. “And I assure you, if I begin to suspect otherwise I will personally lead the search effort to find wherever your doppelganger hid you.”

  Kaido nods as she steps off the sand of the arena and follows her master as he rises to his feet before walking over to the edge of the glass dome the arena sits underneath.

  “Thank you Master.”

  He waves the thanks away with an exasperated flick of his wrist then crosses his arms beneath his sleeves and stares out at the black nothing beyond the arena.

  “That loyalty is… invaluable, it’s something that cannot be taught, or purchased.” He says, musing to himself. “I just hope…”

  Kaido, familiar with this silence, comes to a stop next to him and stands at a steady attention, waiting for him to speak.

  Her patience is rewarded as he slowly inhales to continues.

  “Disciple, in our sect's oldest texts, there is an object those ancient authors held in high regard, simply known as ‘the heavens.’” He starts quietly. “Are you familiar with those works?”

  Kaido blinks, mind scanning though the slice of the archive she’s memorized but coming up blank.

  “...No Master.”

  Her response evokes a small smirk from the man.

  “I’d think not. Very few sword forms in those works.” He says with dry humor. “But in my youth I made a point to study the oldest of the texts I could find, and in that research I found that every piece of literature from our ancient past was obsessed with that single idea, ‘the heavens.’”

  The disciple nods in understanding, then makes a mental note to look into this herself as her Master takes a long pause before continuing.

  “Our forebearers considered it the domain of the gods, the ultimate goal for any cultivator, and an object of endless wonder and infinite desire.” He mutters, then slowly gestures out into the nothing beyond the glass keeping the air in. “Tell me disciple… what do you see?”

  The disciple furrows her brow slightly, considering the question.

  It’s obviously some kind of trick, or attempt at a lesson, what she is seeing right now must have something to do with the idea of ‘the heavens’ as their ancestors put it.

  She squints at the void.

  But there’s nothing there, not even air, just some dim spots of light from a few stars, but even that’s almost completely obscured by the artificial light cast on the arena.

  Eventually she gives up and shakes her head.

  “...I don't see anything Master. I apologize for my insufficiency.”

  Her master laughs at her response, removing a hand from his sleeve and twitching a finger to signal for the servants to remove the abandoned tea set.

  “There is nothing to apologize for, my most troublesome disciple.” He refutes, turning on his heel and walking toward the exit. “I don't see anything either.”