April 2028

  Coach Williams sighed.

  This had been the strangest season he had ever coached.

  It started week three, after Harvard, with the Thousand Talents Program controversy. Every major network ran the same story for weeks. Leo Chen, the sixteen-year-old Qi Refining prodigy, poster child for everything wrong with Earth's cultivation gap.

  The talking heads loved it. Here was a kid who could embarrass Foundation Establishment cultivators in a flight arena but who would fold like wet paper against any of the divine children descending from Catacombs Eternals. Why pour resources into Earth-born talent when the real threats operated on a different scale entirely?

  Reporters camped outside the training facility in shifts. They rotated like sentries, three vans minimum at the entrance every day, cameras pointed at anyone who walked through. Williams found it harder and harder to refuse interviews.

  He had hoped the media cycle would move on. Find some other story to chew.

  It moved on. Just not in the direction he wanted.

  Week seven. Columbia. Wien Stadium.

  His flyers had spent the entire game systematically immobilizing Columbia's players. Harry would clamp them down with gravity arts. Jimbo would chain them in place. And then Leo would fly over and practice his omnidirectional awareness technique against a living, breathing, terrified human being who could not move or look away.

  The fallout was immediate. Columbia's parents flooded every sports network with tearful interviews. One mother described her son calling home at two in the morning, unable to sleep, saying he could still feel something crawling under his skin. A father threatened to sue the NCAA, Yale, and Coach Williams personally.

  Williams banned the technique the next day. Absolute prohibition. No immobilizing opponents for training purposes. He made Leo sign a written agreement in front of the entire coaching staff.

  Yet somehow it got worse.

  Week eight. Brown. Brown Stadium, Providence.

  Leo didn't need Harry and Jimbo anymore.

  He just flew alongside enemy players and examined them. Kept pace with them through every maneuver, every dive, every desperate evasive pattern, hovering two or three feet away with his eyes locked on theirs. Reading the patterns of their divine sense while maintaining full omnidirectional awareness.

  No chains. No gravity fields. No physical contact of any kind.

  Brown's coach called Williams at halftime. Williams had to explain, very carefully, that Leo was technically not breaking any rules. He was just looking at people.

  The NCAA officials stopped calling after week nine. Williams could almost hear the lawyers on the other end of those conversations, flipping through the rulebook, searching for something, anything, that prohibited whatever Leo was doing.

  What were you going to do about it? Ban eye contact?

  Week eleven. Princeton. Palmer Stadium.

  The video went viral within hours.

  Forty-seven seconds of footage, shot from a fan's phone in the upper deck, shaky but clear enough. Leo flying directly eye to eye with Princeton's captain. The captain was firing everything he had. Sword strikes, wind arts, feints, combinations drilled into muscle memory. Princeton's gunners were laying down suppressive fire from the fort, unloading at Leo.

  Leo dodged all of it. His body snapping from one vector to another with zero hesitation. And the entire time, his eyes never left the captain's face.

  At the thirty-one second mark, the captain stopped attacking. His sword arm dropped. He hung in the air for a long moment, and even through the grainy phone footage you could see his chest heaving through the armor.

  He flew down to the fort and refused to go back up.

  The referee called a medical timeout. Princeton's coach was screaming at the officials.

  The TikTok hit forty million views within hours. The comments section became its own ecosystem. Half the internet thought Leo was a sociopath. The other half thought he was a hero.

  The Bulldog Army, Yale's fan base, adopted the stare as a rallying gesture. At the week twelve tailgate, tens of thousands of fans stood in formation outside the stadium and held unblinking eye contact with the opposing team's bus as it pulled in. The military had to intervene.

  Everyone knew what Leo was building toward.

  The speculation had consumed sports media for weeks. ESPN hosts drew diagrams on whiteboards. Former NFL flyers broke down Leo's technique, explaining what omnidirectional awareness actually meant and speculating whether a Qi Refining cultivator could really sustain it in a divine domain.

  Everyone was trying to figure out what this sixteen year old... no, he had turned seventeen in March. What this seventeen-year-old flyer was building toward.

  Because everyone remembered the third game of the season. Everyone remembered Mateo.

  And at the final regular season game, against LSU, Leo had publicly challenged Mateo to a one-on-one duel at the conference championship.

  The whole nation was waiting for Saturday. Harvard Flying Aces Stadium, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard had expanded their stadium with modular seating structures, bringing capacity up to three hundred thousand.

  Formation masters were reinforcing the arena wards for what the press was calling the biggest duel below Nascent Soul in history. International broadcast rights had sold for figures that made Williams' head spin."

  Williams leaned back in his office chair and stared at the three championship banners on his wall.

  At the very least, he was proud of his players.

  Leo trained with a dedication that bordered on compulsion. Zhao had confirmed that Leo had mastered the Scholar's Finger while maintaining omnidirectional awareness. Coach Mei described Leo's progress in terms Williams had never heard her use for any other athlete.

  But the starters were the ones who made Williams' chest tight when he thought about them.

  Harry, Vicky, Ellie, Jimbo, Zhao, Shawn, and Dee. This season, for the first time in Williams' tenure, none of them had skipped a single practice.

  Harry Rockefeller, who in previous years would vanish for "family obligations" at least twice a week, had attended every session, every film review, every conditioning block. Vicky Walton, whose tabloid schedule used to compete with her training schedule, had gone dark on social media entirely since week three.

  The rich kids had mobilized their family resources with a dedication that surprised even Williams. They had hired retired Harvard flyers to run simulated engagements mimicking Harvard's starting lineup.

  The sheer volume of work and preparation that had gone into this Saturday, the Ivy League Conference Championship, eclipsed anything Williams had ever been a part of.

  They wanted it because they believed in what they were building.

  He allowed himself a small, private moment of satisfaction.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Then his phone buzzed.

  He read the message.

  The most difficult conversation of the season was scheduled for today. Williams had received word that Lord Newmont had arrived secretly to discuss matters pertaining to Leo Chen.

  Williams stared at the championship banners for a long time.

  Then he sighed, stood up, and went to find Leo.

  ---

  Lord Newmont sat across from Leo in his olive military overcoat, the ranked insignia catching the dim light of the basement room. A privacy formation hummed against the sealed door, wrapping the space in silence.

  "You're probably wondering why I'm here," Newmont said.

  "A few guesses."

  "I'm sure. You must have questions, Leo. Quite a few of them, I'd imagine. I'm here to answer what I can."

  Leo said the first thing on his mind.

  "What's the point of all this? If I beat Mateo on Saturday, what do I actually get?"

  Newmont leaned back and grinned.

  "Think about how much you've progressed since we last spoke."

  Leo did. He was significantly stronger. He had learned so much more about the nature of the heavenly dao.

  Leo counted them off on his fingers. "Omnidirectional Awareness. Scholar's Finger. And I've started on the Heart of Flesh, though I'm still pretty early with that one."

  "More than pretty early. You've touched it." Newmont's eyebrows rose a fraction. "You are considerably stronger than the boy I pinned a gold bar on in that hospital bed. That Elo rating of seven is looking rather outdated. Quite a few people above my pay grade are watching your progression with great interest."

  "Thanks," Leo said. "But I don't really believe in 'the journey is the reward.' I want something good."

  Newmont studied him for a moment.

  "The fight is very important. More important than you may realize. You and Mateo are fighting for the pride of a generation. Everyone your age and younger, every cultivator coming up behind you, they will end up idolizing whoever wins on Saturday."

  Newmont let that settle.

  "As you've probably learned by now, relationships are important. The prime of a generation will have a voice. People will listen when you speak. Doors will open when you knock."

  Leo nodded slowly. The sheer scale of everything he had experienced, from the Battle of Fort Cambridge in the Catacombs to arriving at the Western Seat Immortal City, had made him realize you couldn't cultivate immortality alone in a cave. There were too many people, and it was easy to get swept along. If you wanted to control your own destiny, you needed a voice that carried weight.

  He chewed on it for a while, and then asked the question that had been bugging him for months.

  "Who's behind the sudden push for the Thousand Talents Program? Why were Mateo and I targeted by all the reporters? What are we being used for?"

  Newmont didn't answer immediately. He rubbed the back of his neck, staring at some fixed point on the table between them.

  "I spent a long time thinking about how to explain this to you," he said. "Whether to explain it at all." He looked up. "But you deserve to know the truth."

  "The crux of the Thousand Talents matter is one word. Divine."

  Leo waited.

  "The talent program won't be able to recruit divine children like Mateo. No divine child would care about something as simple as spiritual qi subsidies. And there aren't many good recruitment targets in the Catacombs either, since almost every cultivator there has already sworn worship to a cult."

  "So what's the purpose of the talent program then? Who would we recruit?" Leo asked.

  Newmont let the question sit for a moment.

  "Worshippers of the Cult of the Grey Sovereign. The cult that worships Mateo's grandfather. If the program passes, the only cultivators that would be recruited are those already sworn to Mateo's bloodline."

  Leo frowned. "What's the point of that? They wouldn't help us. They'd just spend all their time worshipping Mateo."

  "Yes," Newmont said. "That is precisely the point."

  The words landed. Leo's mouth went dry.

  Newmont continued. "The conspiracy behind the Thousand Talents Program is preparation. Preparation to bring the worship of humans that walk among us."

  Leo opened his mouth. Closed it.

  He thought about the Bulldog fans screaming his name after the Princeton game. The signs with his face on them. He felt like the center of the world.

  But that was fandom.

  What Newmont was describing was something else entirely.

  "Why?" Leo asked. "What does anyone gain from that?"

  Newmont rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  "Just as you need spiritual qi to cultivate, Deity Transformation Monarchs need faith power. Converting spiritual qi into divine power is extremely inefficient. For centuries, that inefficiency kept things stable. Monarchs suppressed personal cults because the realm above was a distant dream. Why risk the emergence of more rivals when the ceiling seemed fixed?"

  "However things have changed now, the Catacombs has revealed to us realms above Deity Transformation. The Realms of Void Refining and Great Ascension. Every Deity Transformation cultivator on this planet has begun to scheme for faith power. Every Nascent Soul with ambition is looking at the path ahead and doing the math."

  Newmont stopped talking.

  The basement room was very quiet.

  "So if you're asking who is pushing the Thousand Talents program," Newmont said, "the answer is simple. Anyone with dreams of Deity Transformation in our nation has a stake in pushing Mateo forward. He is the seed. The proof of concept. If one cultivator builds a religion and America allows it, the precedent is set."

  Leo's fingers curled against the edge of the table.

  "Everyone," Leo said. His voice came out quieter than he intended. "Every Nascent Soul who wants to reach Deity Transformation. Every Deity Transformation Lord who wants Void Refining. If Mateo builds a cult and America allows it, the door is open for all of them."

  He looked up.

  "Every single powerful cultivator in this world has a reason to push this forward."

  Newmont said nothing. He just watched Leo with that careful, patient expression, hands folded on the table, and Leo stared back at him.

  At the Nascent Soul Lord across from him.

  The Nascent Soul Lord.

  "Including you," Leo whispered.

  The words hung in the air between them.

  Newmont didn't flinch. He didn't smile.

  "Yes," Newmont said. "Including me."

  Leo pushed his chair back. The legs scraped against the concrete floor.

  He didn't stand up. There was nowhere to go.

  "So what is this?" Leo said. His throat was tight. "What's the purpose of meeting me and telling me? Are you actually trying to help me fight Mateo?."

  "I am a man of my word Leo."

  "How can I trust you word?"

  Newmont's voice stayed level. "I want to be honest with you, Leo. Every Nascent Soul in this country, myself included, stands to benefit from the precedent that Mateo's worship would set. That is simply a fact. The path to immortality has been revealed, and we all have our personal ambitions."

  Leo's jaw clenched. He could feel his heartbeat in his teeth.

  Newmont let the silence hold. He didn't rush to fill it. He sat there and let Leo look at him, really look at him, with all the suspicion and anger that a teenager could bring to bear.

  "The question you should be asking yourself," Newmont said quietly, "is whether that makes me your enemy."

  Leo stared at Newmont and turned over everything he knew about the man. Lord Newmont ran a corporation. A mining company. He had built his fortune surveying the Catacombs, finding spiritual ore deposits that the Catacombs had written off, and extracting them at scale. He was wealthy, powerful, a Nascent Soul cultivator with military rank and political connections.

  But was this someone worthy of worship?

  Leo studied him. Newmont looked the part of a military hero. The olive overcoat sat well on broad shoulders. The ranked insignia gleamed. He had the weathered face of a man who had seen real combat, real loss, and carried both without complaint.

  But godhood? There was nothing divine about him. He was impressive the way a good general was impressive. The kind of man you'd follow into the Catacombs, not the kind you'd build a temple for.

  "I'm sorry," Leo said. "I just can't picture people worshipping you."

  "Exactly," Newmont said. He grinned. "That is exactly why you can trust me. I am unprepared for the return of the cults. Who would worship me? I'm a man who digs holes in irradiated dirt for a living."

  The grin faded, and something harder settled back into his expression.

  "The ones who stand to benefit most from Mateo's victory are the strongest Deity Transformation Monarchs on Earth. The ones who already have infrastructure, lineages and networks of loyal cultivators spanning generations."

  "As frightening as that sounds, it constrains them. Monarchs are too visible to act directly. So they build momentum from afar. The Monarchs at the top framed the push for personal cults as the trend of the times. That faith power is necessary to combat the Catacombs and open new tiers of cultivation. That restricting personal cults holds humanity back."

  Leo's fingers tightened against the edge of the table.

  "So what, we just give up? How am I supposed to fight the trend of the times?"

  Newmont tapped a finger against the table.

  "The argument is compelling. Parts of it are even true. And it has become very difficult to oppose publicly. But that does not mean everyone wants it. Most cultivators are like me, Leo. Nascent Souls who can see that such a shift would end up only benefiting the most powerful Monarchs."

  Newmont leaned forward.

  "All you have to do is open a crack in the dam. Beat Mateo. Prove that a mortal cultivator with no divine bloodline, no cult, no faith power, can stand at the top of his generation."

  His voice dropped.

  "The water will rush through on its own."