The following week passed quietly, but quiet never lasted long on Blue Star.
Base City 5's rhythm rolled on—students studied, merchants shouted, engineers patched the city dome's microfractures—but underneath the hum of daily life, a small disturbance was spreading.
It began in the Martial Association's District Command, buried under three floors of concrete and data servers. The report from the night of the "energy disturbance" had been tagged as no immediate threat. But the waveform had refused to fade from the archive feed. Every day, the system reflagged it for anomaly review. And every day, someone new looked at it.
The curve was too clean—no noise, no elemental fluctuations, no trace radiation. Just one perfect pulse: power born and gone in a single breath.
Even among veteran monitors, that kind of efficiency was rare.
Aiden didn't know any of that. His days were filled with repetition—school, meals, quiet training.He avoided the park, keeping his practice contained to the small reinforced alcove in his apartment.
The more he trained, the more he understood that control wasn't optional. The Primordial Breathing Technique worked like water through channels; if he widened them too fast, they'd flood. So he adjusted carefully, keeping each breath smooth, each intake precise.
By the end of the week, his power had already doubled twice more.
[Physique: 6,553.6 | Spirit: 6,553.6][Realm: Martial Warrior — Gene Lock 1, Sub-Lock 0]
He could feel the pressure of strength under his skin now, not heavy, but present, like a tuned engine waiting for the clutch.
He started noticing small things: doors opening half a second earlier when he reached for them, sound carrying just a little slower when his focus drifted. The System's interface, normally calm, flickered more often in the corners of his vision, almost like it was watching him as much as he watched it.
At school, rumors had started to swirl.
Someone had heard the Association was scanning for a "rogue cultivator." Others said a wild beast had surfaced from the ruins.No one agreed on details, but everyone agreed on one thing—the power reading had been massive.
Darius leaned across the cafeteria table, whispering like a spy. "You hear? They say the pulse was strong enough to crack reinforced alloy. Kellan's been jumpy all week."
Aiden looked up from his food, feigning mild curiosity. "Really? Could've been an industrial malfunction."
Darius nodded sagely, missing the irony. "Right. But you didn't see his face. I think he knows who it was."
Aiden lifted a brow. "Who?"
Darius shrugged. "No one knows. But if you find out, tell me first. I wanna shake his hand."
Aiden smiled thinly and changed the subject.
That evening, after his parents left for a social function, Aiden stayed in his room and ran another controlled breathing cycle.
This time, he didn't focus on pulling energy in. He focused on feeling where it came from.
The world around him changed.
Each breath painted invisible lines through the air—currents, faint but definite. They moved in spirals, drawing from something far beyond the building walls. He could sense the city's energy grid, the life pulsing through it, the faint residue of cosmic particles still drifting from the rift that had once torn the sky fifty years ago.
It was beautiful.
And heavy.
The more he saw, the more he realized how small Blue Star was. The energy above the dome wasn't chaotic—it was layered, ordered, like faint echoes of higher frequencies overlapping each other. Layers of existence he couldn't yet reach but could feel.
This world isn't sealed… It's just asleep.
His body began to hum, faint light tracing his veins again. The Sheath around his energy core tightened instinctively. The System whispered in response.
[Comprehension State Engaged]
Host has entered Deep Focus.Efficiency: +640%.
Aiden stilled. He could see his own energy pathways now, like thin rivers of light. Some ran clear. Others pulsed irregularly.The first gene lock was open, but the sub-locks… those were barriers—nine faint rings like tempered glass. He reached toward them with thought.
A spark of resistance met him—calm, precise, immovable.
So that's what separates the sub-locks…
Every lock was a compression of potential, and opening them required either brute power or perfect understanding.He didn't need brute force.He had comprehension.
He focused. Each breath aligned with the pattern. Every cycle made the barrier more defined. The ninth breath—then the tenth—
A faint click echoed through his mind.
One sub-lock shattered quietly, dissolving like mist.
The System confirmed.
[First Sub-Lock of Gene Lock 1: Opened.]
Gene Strength: 2x baseline Martial Warrior.Current Force Output: 18,000 kg (Approx.)
Aiden exhaled slowly, feeling the energy settle deeper into his muscles. No pain, no instability—just power obeying its place.
But something else stirred with it. The moment that lock opened, he felt a presence.A distant awareness—cold, vast, ancient. Like something in the world had turned to look his way for the briefest second.
The System flickered.
[External Energy Interference Detected.]Source: Unknown. Scanning…Result: Interdimensional frequency overlap – probability 0.002%.
Then silence.
The presence vanished.
Aiden sat still, heartbeat steady, trying to understand what he'd just felt. The words "interdimensional overlap" meant nothing to him—but the feeling didn't fade. Somewhere out there, beyond the dome, something had noticed.
He ended the session and stood. His reflection in the window looked back at him—taller somehow, posture straighter, eyes clearer. He didn't feel invincible. He felt aware.
One sub-lock in… eight to go.
He closed the panel and lay on the bed, not sleeping yet, just breathing. The city outside glowed like a sea of fireflies beneath the dome.
Everything felt peaceful again. But peace had a sound—and tonight, it was too quiet.
Meanwhile, at the Martial Association Headquarters, a technician frowned at her console.
"Sir, that same reading showed up again—faint, but almost identical to the District 12 event."
The senior officer looked up sharply. "Same pattern?"
"Within 0.04%."
He leaned forward. "Show me."
The holographic map bloomed to life. At the very edge of Base City 5's energy field, a small flicker appeared—a clean pulse, rising and falling in perfect symmetry. The same kind of power signature that made no sense to their sensors.
The officer stared at it for a long time before sighing. "That's no industrial failure."
He turned to the tech. "Flag the anomaly. Classify it as unregistered cultivator, category gray."
"Sir, should we alert headquarters?"
"Not yet." His tone hardened. "We watch. If it happens again, we find out who they are."
The technician hesitated. "And if it's… one of ours?"
"Then we still find out."
The console lights dimmed, and the room fell silent except for the soft hum of machinery.
The city above remained unaware, but the ripples had already begun.
And somewhere beneath Base City 5, deep under layers of reinforced steel and forgotten ruins, an ancient mechanism stirred—its sensors flickering on for the first time in decades, reacting faintly to the same pulse that had come from a boy's breath.
[Doubling Cycle Complete. New Cycle Initiated.]Current Attributes:Physique: 13,107.2 | Spirit: 13,107.2Realm: Martial Warrior – Gene Lock 1 (1/9)
That night, as Aiden slept, a low vibration passed through the foundations of the city—so faint that no sensor registered it, no human felt it.But the ancient machine below did.And it remembered the same resonance once before—fifty years ago, when the sky first split open.
This time, it wasn't a rift.It was a signal.