The orbital station was a bleeding wound of neon and rust.
Kael moved silently through the lower maintenance levels, leaving the broken bodies of the three guild hunters far behind him. The narrow service corridors were already beginning to empty. The system-wide bounty announcement for the corporate heiress had transformed the entire station into a feeding frenzy.
Every mercenary, scavenger, and bounty hunter with a working weapon was racing toward the upper docking levels.
Sector Four was being abandoned.
Perfect.
Rainwater poured through rusted ventilation grates in thick, freezing sheets. The acidic drizzle washed streaks of blood from Kael's knuckles as he walked, though the dull ache beneath his skin remained. The wounds themselves had already sealed.
The Iron Body technique was stabilizing.
But the earlier fight had revealed something important.
A flaw.
When the plasma bolts had struck him, his flesh had dented.
A true Iron Body would not have yielded at all. The plasma should have shattered against his skin like rain against stone.
He was operating on scraps of power.
A powerful cultivation engine running on fumes.
That would not do.
Kael continued through the maze of dripping pipes and flickering yellow hazard lights with effortless spatial memory. Every corridor in the station looked identical, but Kael had mapped the route the moment he first walked through it.
Eventually he arrived back at the dead-end alley where he had first awakened.
The corpse remained exactly where he had left it.
No one had bothered to touch it.
In a place like this, a dead body with empty pockets was nothing more than trash waiting for an automated sanitation drone.
The cyborg's skull was still violently crushed inward. Rain pooled inside the broken chrome faceplate.
Kael stepped into the alley and knelt beside the corpse.
Earlier he had ripped out a secondary capacitor—a small surface-level battery pack that had given him his first taste of the universe's crude artificial energy.
But machines like this did not run on surface batteries.
They had cores.
He placed both hands against the cyborg's thick chest plating.
His fingers slid into the jagged seams where cheap chrome met rotting organic flesh.
Then he pulled.
Metal screamed.
Synthetic tendons snapped like overstretched cables.
The chest plating tore open in a violent spray of sparks.
The smell hit the air instantly.
Burnt circuitry.
Leaking coolant.
Coagulated blood.
Kael ignored it completely.
He pushed aside severed cables and shattered mechanical organs until his fingers touched something vibrating deep inside the torso.
The primary reactor.
He gripped the device and ripped it free.
The locking clamps shattered instantly under the force.
The cylinder was heavy in his hand, nearly the size of his forearm. A pale blue ring of light pulsed slowly in its center like the heartbeat of a machine.
This wasn't a cheap street capacitor.
This was a sustained power source.
Violently contained energy.
Kael studied the device briefly under the neon light.
Primitive engineering.
But effective.
He moved away from the corpse and sat beneath the partial cover of a rusted overhang. Rain fell in a thick curtain just inches away, isolating him from the distant noise of the station.
Kael sat cross-legged.
The reactor rested in his lap.
Both hands pressed against the metal casing.
He closed his eyes.
The Stellar Void Body Art was forbidden in his previous world.
Orthodox sects called it demonic.
It did not gather Qi from the environment.
It consumed.
It tore energy from external sources and forced it into the cultivator's flesh.
Kael inhaled slowly.
One breath.
Hold.
Three heartbeats.
Exhale.
His mind extended into the reactor.
The energy inside was violent.
Jagged.
It lacked the smooth, natural flow of heaven-born Qi. Instead it churned like a storm trapped inside a steel cage.
The power wanted to explode.
Kael tightened his grip.
Then he pulled.
The reactor shrieked.
Blue light burst outward, illuminating the alley.
Energy surged through Kael's palms.
The pain was immediate.
Artificial Qi crashed into his meridians like a tidal wave of shattered glass.
His veins bulged beneath his skin.
The sheer volume of energy threatened to rupture his fragile internal pathways.
A mortal attempting this would have died instantly.
Kael forced the power outward.
He redirected the chaotic flood away from his organs and into his muscular system.
The transformation began.
His muscle fibers tore apart under the pressure.
Then rebuilt themselves instantly.
Thicker.
Denser.
Stronger.
Steam erupted from his skin as rain struck his overheated shoulders.
The energy continued deeper.
Into his bones.
A low vibration spread through his skeleton.
His teeth rattled as the marrow inside his bones heated and expanded. The skeletal structure reinforced itself from within, preparing to support the massive increase in density.
For a moment the energy almost broke free.
His heart skipped once.
A violent tremor passed through his body.
The artificial Qi attempted to escape his control.
Kael clenched his jaw.
His will hardened like steel.
"No."
He forced the energy back into submission.
The threshold broke.
The chaotic energy suddenly snapped into perfect synchronization.
The artificial Qi stabilized.
A metallic sheen spread across Kael's skin, starting from the center of his chest and flowing down his arms to his fingertips.
The air around him distorted slightly as his physical density increased.
For three seconds he looked like a statue forged from living steel.
Then the light faded.
The reactor in his lap emitted a dying whine.
The glowing blue ring flickered once.
Then went dark.
The metal casing collapsed into gray dust between Kael's fingers.
He had drained it completely.
Kael opened his eyes.
The world felt different.
Sharper.
Slower.
He stood up.
His body felt immensely heavy.
Not weak.
Not tired.
Dense.
Every movement carried the weight of compressed power.
He needed to test the result.
Kael turned toward a nearby support pillar.
The durasteel column was nearly three feet thick, built to support the cargo transit lanes above the alley.
Kael raised his fist.
He didn't wind up.
He simply punched.
The sound exploded through the alley like a cannon blast.
The durasteel pillar screamed.
A massive crater appeared in the center of the metal column as the steel folded inward.
A concussive shockwave blasted outward, blowing the falling rain away from Kael in a perfect circle.
The entire overhang groaned.
The pillar had been permanently deformed.
Kael pulled his fist back and examined his knuckles.
Unbroken.
Unbruised.
Not even red.
His flesh was now harder than the armor worn by the guild hunters he had killed earlier.
The Iron Body tier was no longer unstable.
It was his baseline.
Kael looked calmly at the damaged pillar.
Cultivators in his old world fought endless wars over tiny spirit springs and rare herbs just to gather enough Qi to advance one minor realm.
Power was scarce.
Precious.
But this universe was different.
This universe was drowning in energy.
Reactors.
Power cells.
Starship engines.
They had built machines to compress power into manageable containers.
To everyone else—
They were batteries.
To Kael—
They were cultivation pills.
His gaze lifted toward the upper levels of the station where the docking bays waited.
Where the Valen luxury cruiser would soon arrive.
A Class-III Stellar Core.
If a scrap reactor from a street thug could stabilize Iron Body…
A stellar core from a billion-credit warship would shatter his current limits entirely.
Meteor Flesh.
In a single step.
Kael's lips curved slightly.
Predatory.
"Stellar technology," he murmured quietly into the rain.
"Artificial Qi."
The galaxy had no idea what it had built.
And Kael Vance was going to devour it.
Author's Note:
Kael just discovered something huge.
Stellar reactors = condensed Qi.
Imagine cultivating by eating starship engines.
Would you try it?