The warehouse looked like a warzone.

  Wood shredded and scattered across the concrete floor. Stone pillars scratched and pitted with four-finger patterns that no human hand should have been able to make.

  Metal shelving bent at impossible angles, groaning faintly as it settled into new shapes. Plastic storage bins cracked into fragments, pieces scattered across a twenty-foot radius.

  All of it marked with the same parallel grooves. Evidence of something that shouldn't exist, couldn't exist, and yet undeniably did.

  Daniel and Henry stood in the middle of the destruction, neither of them quite able to process what had just happened.

  "Holy shit," Daniel said quietly.

  "Yeah," Henry agreed, camera hanging forgotten at his side. "Holy shit."

  Then Henry's expression shifted. Something calculating entered his eyes.

  "Can I try?"

  "What?"

  "Show me how." Henry set the camera down on a crate, carefully, reverently, then formed his hand into a claw shape. His mimicry was perfect. Fingers curved like hooks, thumb tucked against the palm, wrist aligned. "If you can do it, maybe I can too. Same instructions, same technique..."

  "Henry, the Basic Sensing Exercise, remember?" Daniel shook his head. "You tried it for a week and couldn't feel anything."

  "Yeah, but maybe that's different. Maybe with the right technique, the right mental state." Henry was already moving toward one of the scratched concrete pillars. "You said it yourself. You stopped thinking and just felt hungry. I can do that. I'm always hungry."

  "That's not the same kind of..."

  But Henry was already striking.

  His hand connected with concrete. A dull thwack. The pillar didn't even shiver. Henry's fingers bounced off the surface like he'd slapped a wall.

  "Ow. Fuck." He shook out his hand, wincing, flexing his fingers experimentally. "Okay, that hurt."

  Daniel couldn't help it. He started laughing. Relief and exhaustion and something else mixing together into a sound he couldn't quite control.

  He pulled out his notebook, flipped to a fresh page, and wrote in exaggerated scientific notation: "Subject 2 also hit concrete pillar like an idiot, experiencing normal human pain."

  "Asshole," Henry said, but he was grinning despite the reddening knuckles.

  "Just documenting the evidence."

  Henry looked at his hand, then at the gouges Daniel had left everywhere. Deep furrows in wood, scratches in concrete, dents in metal. The contrast was stark. Undeniable.

  "So you're just... special?" The word came out without any resentment. Just curiosity. Scientific interest.

  "I don't know." Daniel shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable. "Maybe? Or maybe you just need to start with the basics. The breathing exercise RisingPhoenix posted. Probably weeks of that before you can even feel qi, let alone use it."

  "Damn." But Henry didn't sound disappointed. More thoughtful. Processing. "So this is really your thing, huh? Your superpower."

  "I guess so."

  They stood there for a moment longer, surrounded by evidence of the impossible. The afternoon light had shifted while they'd been testing, the bars of sun now angled lower through the gaps in the corrugated roof.

  Daniel lined up for another strike. One more, just to feel it again.

  And felt nothing.

  He stopped, hand raised. Tried to summon that hunger, that coiling sensation in his spine that preceded the spiral. Reached for the qi in his dantian.

  Empty.

  Like trying to squeeze water from a wrung-out sponge or catch smoke with his fingers.

  "What's wrong?" Henry asked, noticing his frozen posture.

  "I can't..." Daniel focused harder, reaching deeper. The qi flickered at the edge of his awareness, barely there. "I think I used it all up."

  "Used it up?"

  "The qi. I can barely feel it now." Daniel lowered his hand, suddenly aware of how heavy his arm felt. His legs felt heavy too. Everything felt heavy. He sat down on a nearby concrete block, the cold surface biting through his jeans. "It's like... I had a tank of gas, and I burned through it all doing donuts in the parking lot."

  Now that he was sitting, the exhaustion hit him properly. Not muscle tiredness. He hadn't been doing anything physically demanding.

  This was something deeper. Something that made his whole body feel hollow, like someone had scooped out his insides and left only the shell.

  Henry was already reviewing the camera footage, rewinding and pausing, squinting at the tiny viewscreen. "Okay, but look at this."

  He turned the camera toward Daniel. On the screen, a frozen image: Daniel's hand mid-strike, connecting with the wooden pallet. But something was wrong with the picture.

  "See that?" Henry pointed. "Your fingers are blurred. Just for that frame. Like the camera couldn't quite capture the movement."

  Daniel squinted at it. The blur did look strange. Unnatural. His hand seemed to stretch slightly, trailing afterimages that shouldn't exist at normal speed.

  "Is that the qi?" Henry asked. "Or just motion blur from the strike?"

  "I don't know. Could be either."

  "We need a better camera. Multiple angles. High-speed film if we can get one. Some of the university labs have them." Henry was making notes rapidly, his handwriting cramped with excitement. "If the qi actually speeds up the strike, or creates some kind of protective field, or..."

  "Henry."

  "What?"

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  "Can we figure that out later?" Daniel let his head hang forward, suddenly too tired to hold it up properly. "I feel like shit."

  His stomach growled. Loud.

  "Hungry?" Henry asked, looking up from his notes.

  "Starving."

  Which made no sense. He'd eaten lunch two hours ago. A big lunch, rice and pork from the place on Stockton. But now it felt like he hadn't eaten in days. His stomach was a clenched fist demanding attention.

  "Is that normal?"

  "No idea." Henry made another note. "Maybe burning qi burns calories too? Like, the energy has to come from somewhere. Conservation of energy and all that."

  "Great."

  "We should track your caloric intake," Henry grinned. "See if there's a correlation between qi usage and..."

  "Henry. Later."

  Daniel tried to stand. His legs buckled halfway up, muscles refusing to cooperate. The world tilted sideways.

  Henry caught his arm, steadying him. "Whoa. Easy. You really are empty."

  "Yeah." Daniel's legs felt like jelly. Worse than jelly. Like someone had replaced his bones with wet noodles. He managed to get upright, but only by leaning heavily against the concrete block. "This sucks."

  His mouth tasted strange too. Metallic. Like he'd been sucking on pennies or licking a battery. Daniel grimaced and swallowed. The taste didn't fade.

  "How long was I going?" he asked.

  Henry checked his watch. "The successful strikes? About eight minutes. But if you count all the practice attempts before you figured it out, more like twenty."

  "Twenty minutes." Daniel repeated it, letting the number sink in. "That's my limit? Twenty minutes of Tiger Claw and I'm done?"

  "Maybe it refills?" Henry suggested. "Like a stamina bar in a video game. Or a mana pool."

  Daniel closed his eyes, tried to feel his internal state. The qi was still there in his dantian. He could sense it now that he was focusing but the qi had diminished. A pilot light where there should be a furnace. Barely glowing, slowly pulsing with each breath.

  "I think so," he said. "But I don't know how long it takes to refill. Could be hours. Could be days."

  "Something to test." Henry pulled out his notebook again, started a fresh page. "Can you still do the Basic Sensing Exercise? Or is everything depleted?"

  Good question. Daniel tried the breathing pattern. Slow inhale through the nose, hold for three heartbeats, exhale through the mouth.

  There. The qi responded to his breath, growing slightly stronger with each cycle. Not much, barely perceptible, but enough to feel. Enough to know it was working.

  "It's coming back," he said, continuing the breathing. "Slowly. Really slowly."

  "So the breathing exercise helps recovery." Henry was writing rapidly now. "Okay. So we've got: approximately twenty minutes of active use, unknown passive recovery rate, accelerated recovery through breathing exercises. What else?"

  "I'm exhausted. Starving. My mouth tastes like metal." Daniel listed the symptoms, watching Henry write them down. "And my legs feel like someone replaced them with overcooked pasta."

  "Qi depletion symptoms," Henry said, labeling the section in careful block letters. "We should see if these are consistent. If you always get the same effects when you run empty, or if it varies depending on how much you used, how fast you used it, what techniques..."

  "Henry. You're spiraling."

  "Right. Sorry." He tapped his pen against the page. "It's just... there's so much we don't know. So much to figure out."

  "And we will. Just... not right now. Not when I can barely stand."

  Henry paused in his writing, pen hovering over the page. A new thought had clearly occurred to him. Daniel could see it forming behind his eyes.

  "Wait," Henry said. "What happens if you try to use it now? While you're empty?"

  Daniel blinked. "I... don't know."

  "So try it."

  "That seems like a really bad..."

  "Science, Daniel. We need to know if you CAN'T use it when empty, or if you just SHOULDN'T. There's a difference."

  Daniel wanted to argue, but the logic was sound. If he was going to rely on this ability. If he was actually going to use Tiger Claw for anything real. He needed to know its limits. All of them.

  He pushed himself up from the concrete block. His legs wobbled but held. Walked slowly to the nearest intact section of pallet, each step feeling like he was wading through mud. Formed his hand into a claw.

  Tried to find that hunger. That coiling sensation. The spiral that began in his feet and ended in his fingertips.

  Nothing. Just emptiness where the qi should be. A dry well. A dead battery.

  He struck anyway.

  Normal human hand hit wood.

  Pain exploded through his knuckles. No cushioning. No protection. No qi hardening his fingers or absorbing the impact. Just bone against hardwood, flesh against splinters, eighteen-year-old stupidity meeting immovable object.

  "FUCK." Daniel jerked back, clutching his hand. His knuckles were already reddening, skin scraped raw in two places. "Okay. Bad idea. Very bad idea."

  "So you CAN hurt yourself." Henry was writing rapidly, "The qi protects your hand during the technique. Without it, you're just a normal person punching wood."

  "Thanks for the obvious observation."

  "I'm serious. This is important." Henry looked up from his notes. "If you run out of qi mid-fight, you can't just keep using Tiger Claw. You'll break your hand. Maybe your whole arm."

  Daniel flexed his fingers experimentally. Nothing broken. The strike hadn't been full force. But they hurt. Throbbing pain radiating from each knuckle, skin already starting to swell.

  "Noted," he said grimly.

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  "Henry," said Daniel looking at his hand.

  "What?"

  "I can do Tiger Claw."

  "Yeah. You can."

  Henry lowered his notebook completely, setting it aside. A slow grin spread across his face.

  So, what are you going to do with it?"

  Daniel knew what he was really asking. Not "what technique will you learn next" or "how will you train." But "what are you going to DO with supernatural martial arts powers in the real world."

  "I've been thinking about that," Daniel admitted. The words came slowly, pulled from somewhere deep. "You know, in Legend of the Righteous Dragon..."

  "You want to be a hero."

  "I want to help people." Daniel looked at his hand again, then at the destruction surrounding them. Evidence of power. Real power. The kind of power that could protect someone. Or hurt them.

  "All those movies we watched growing up. The heroes didn't just train in secret and hide from the world. They used their skills. They protected people who couldn't protect themselves."

  "Those were movies, Daniel. Fiction. The good guys always win because that's how the script is written. In real life, those guys either die or get tossed in jail."

  "I know. But..."

  He gestured at the gouged concrete pillar, the shredded wood, the dented metal.

  "I can do this. Actually do it. And if someone's in trouble. If I see something happening and I could stop it and I just walk away because I'm scared or because it's not my business or whatever..."

  "You'd feel like shit."

  "Yeah." Daniel met Henry's eyes. "Wouldn't you?"

  Henry was quiet for a long moment. The warehouse creaked around them, settling into its bones.

  "Well, you've got twenty minutes of qi," Henry said finally. "One technique. Against a normal person. One normal person. Sure, you'd probably win. But what if there's more than one? What if they have weapons? What if you run out of qi halfway through?"

  "I know."

  "I'm not saying don't do it." Henry held up his hand. "I'm saying be smart about it. You've got Tiger Claw. That's offense. But what about the rest? Movement? Defense? Wasn't there a whole list?"

  Daniel nodded slowly. Henry was right. One technique didn't make him a kung fu master. It made him a beginner who could do one really impressive thing. For twenty minutes, until he ran out of gas and turned back into a normal kid with scraped knuckles and overcooked-pasta legs.

  "Ghost Step," he said. "That was the movement technique. And Push Hands for defense, redirecting force instead of blocking it."

  "So if you can figure those out using the same method. Stopping trying to control it, just letting it happen..."

  "Then I'd actually have options. A complete toolkit."

  "Exactly." Henry stood, started gathering their things. The camera went into his backpack first, protected by a wadded-up jacket. The notebook followed. "Plus we still don't know your real limits. Can you damage your meridians permanently, like those forum posts warned? What happens if you train while depleted? Does the recovery rate improve with practice?"

  "More testing."

  "Always more testing." But Henry was grinning now, the familiar light of curiosity back in his eyes. "At least we know the fundamentals work. Actually, genuinely, defying all physics and logic work."

  Daniel stood too, legs still shaky but holding. The exhaustion had settled into a bone-deep weariness that made every movement feel like effort.

  But underneath it, something else was stirring. Excitement. Possibility. The knowledge that the world had just gotten bigger, stranger, more dangerous and more full of potential.

  "Come on," Henry said, shouldering his backpack. "Let's get out of here before someone investigates all the noise. You look like you're about to collapse."

  "I feel like I'm about to collapse."

  They walked toward the exit together, picking their way through the debris. Wood splinters crunching underfoot, concrete dirt coating their shoes. The warehouse looked like a tornado had hit it.

  At the gap in the fence, Daniel paused and looked back at the warehouse one last time.

  "Henry."

  "Yeah?"

  "Thanks. For being here. For... all of this."

  Henry shrugged, but Daniel could see him trying not to smile. "Someone's gotta document the impossible. Might as well be me."

  They squeezed through the fence gap, metal rattling behind them, and stepped out into the late afternoon.