The journey north was a pilgrimage of perception. Kael moved with a singular focus, his new sight transforming the arduous trek into a constant lesson. He watched the chaotic red-and-black Qi of the Wastes slowly give way to the more stable, earthy-brown energies of the central plains. He saw how rivers were not just water, but flowing conduits of blue-green Qi, nourishing the land. He learned to differentiate the vibrant green aura of a healthy plant from the sickly yellow of a diseased one. He was a naturalist cataloging a world he had been blind to for centuries.
After months of travel, he saw them.
First as a glimmer on the northern horizon, then as impossible silhouettes hanging in the sky. The Lumina Peaks. A mountain range of floating islands, held aloft by the power of colossal Luminite crystals, the heart of Aeridor. The base of each floating mountain glowed with a soft, white light, a beacon of power visible for hundreds of miles.
As he drew closer, the very air changed. The Qi became refined, pure. To his new senses, it was like stepping out of a noisy, crowded marketplace and into a pristine, silent cathedral. The air hummed with the clear, sharp notes of Metal Qi, the crystalline fragility of Ice Qi, and the brilliant, overwhelming purity of Light Qi. It was so clean, so potent, that it was almost painful.
Getting into Aeridor was a challenge he had prepared for. The Theocracy did not welcome wanderers. Their "gateways" were Qi-based teleportation arrays on the ground that led to the sky-cities, each one guarded by stern, white-robed priests who could sense the nature of a person's soul.
But Kael knew of another way, a memory from his 12th life, the one that had ended on a purification altar. He knew the city of Aethel, the lowest of the floating islands, was supplied not just by magic, but by massive freight elevators, colossal platforms that carried raw materials and goods up the side of the anchor mountain.
He didn't try to bribe or sneak past the guards. He simply joined a crew of mortal laborers, men and women from the grounded foothills who were hired for the most menial, undesirable tasks the cultivators of Aeridor wouldn't deign to perform. He was just another face in a crowd of the disenfranchised, his rootless nature a perfect camouflage. To the cultivator overseer who gave the crew a cursory glance, Kael's aura was so dim, so devoid of Qi, that he was functionally invisible, a non-entity not worth a second thought.
The ascent on the freight elevator was breathtaking. He rose through the clouds, the world shrinking below him, until he arrived at the underside of Aethel. The city was a marvel of white stone and polished crystal, its architecture elegant and impossibly clean. Graceful bridges connected floating sections of the city, and waterfalls cascaded from its edges, dissipating into mist thousands of feet below.
But his new sight revealed a different story. He saw the brilliant, flaring auras of the Aeridorian cultivators, striding through the streets like gods, their bodies blazing with pure, refined power. They shone with the light of their powerful spiritual roots. And he saw the mortals—the servants, the laborers, the outcasts. Their auras were pale, flickering things, starved and struggling to draw even a mote of sustenance from the rich Qi around them. It was a visual feast for the powerful, and a famine for the weak.
Kael, with the constant drain of the parasite in his chest, felt an immediate kinship with the mortals. He was one of them, yet entirely other.
He used the pittance he earned from a day of hauling stone to secure a tiny room in the mortal district, a place of shadows and whispers huddled at the edge of the gleaming city. His goal was simple: access to knowledge. He needed the Theocracy's libraries, their understanding of runic arrays, energy transference, and material sciences. He needed the blueprints of the masters to design his own abomination.
The next day, he found work. A cleaner. In the Lyceum of Radiant Law, the most prestigious cultivation academy in all of Aethel.
The chapter of his life closed with him on his hands and knees, scrubbing the pristine marble floor of a vast hallway. A group of young disciples, boys and girls his apparent age, walked past. Their auras were like young suns, vibrant and arrogant. They spoke loudly of Law Perception and Sword Intent, their laughter echoing in the hall. They never even glanced down. They were utterly oblivious to the ancient being in their midst, the heretic who was patiently polishing the floor of their temple, his strange eyes seeing the very light and laws they worshipped, and already beginning to figure out how to break them.