After some trials and tribulations, which mostly consisted of climbing over ferns and rubble, we had finally reached my apartment complex. I thanked my lucky stars that the building had only toppled about 6 degrees, looking somewhat like a modern Tower of Pisa.

The stairwell was partially out of service past the 24th floor, so some serious jumping and climbing was required. Thankfully, it wasn’t a problem for either of us. I was used to climbing things, and Miss Rada was a fit kitsune motivated by pure, undiluted fear of cultivator-shaped judgment.

I shoved my keys into the steel door and pushed it open with my double-human strength. The door groaned, sliding open just enough for us to slip inside.

The interior of my apartment was in a state of horrendous decay. My beautiful IKEA furniture looked like giant moths had eaten it a thousand years ago.

“What are you expecting to find?” Celes asked.

I reached into the closet and put one of the keys into an old, small metal safe. It opened after some struggle. I reached inside and pulled out my handgun, still sitting within a leather holster. I promptly proceeded to strap the holster to my side.

Sadly, it didn’t have that many bullets left in it. I had gone to the range about two days before the world ended. It’s hard to plan for the apocalypse, okay?

The geisha looked at me. “What’s that?”

“It’s a gun!”

“A what?”

“A weapon that fires metal projectiles… Uhh… Kind of like a bow, but faster.”

“It won’t help us,” she sighed, her face darkening. “The Enforcer’s skin can’t be pierced with a bow, and it’ll just go through servitors.”

“I’m not planning to hunt Enforcers or ghosts with this. There’s other fish in the sea. Don’t you geishas know anything about cultivation?”

“I know… enough to make empowering teas from herbs. They produce the same effects as cultivation pills, but they taste nice.”

“The world is broken, and I don’t understand how it works,” I said, walking to my balcony and sitting down.

The view of my devastated city was quite something… staggeringly sad. A big, new part of me still couldn’t believe what it was seeing.

I turned to my companion. “Tell me about your power.”

“What?”

“Tell me in exact detail how you make your magical drug-tea, woman!”

“Why?”

“As Ash Sparks, I only know some cultivation… mainly how to steal stuff and run away. I’m not going to run anymore. I’m going to create things. I want to fix the world.”

“How?” Celes asked.

“The people who built this city long ago...” I pointed at the overgrown ruins. “We were pretty good at figuring stuff out. We made things without the aid of spirits and magic! We did things that you would likely find impossible and incredible.

“We bound rivers, created seas, and carved apart mountains without having to eat souls. We made men fly without cultivation and magic pills. We had machines, technology, science, chemistry. We had the scientific method and rationality.”

“Hrm,” the geisha made a noise, not quite believing.

I took apart the gun and loaded the bullets in and aimed it upwards. It was time for a test.

“You don’t believe me?” I asked.

“Not really,” Celes said.

“Can you see Qi?” I asked her.

“Sure,” she nodded. “I can see Qi.”

“Is there Qi in this?” I showed the gun to her.

“No.” She shook her head. “None. It’s just a piece of steel. How is this even a weapon?”

“Observe,” I said as I aimed the gun at Lord Boundless. “Power without Qi.”

I squeezed the trigger.

The gun went off with a resounding, ear-splitting bang. The tracer bullet flew upwards, etching a burning line into the sky. Test successful. The tracer bullet and the gun mechanism hadn’t expired after a thousand years thanks to good-old Boundless-butt screwing with time. Hooray!

“W-what?” Celes choked. “What... what did you do?! How... in ninety-nine thousand hells?!”

She stared at me, gold eyes open wide in shock.

“This is an ancient weapon,” I said. “The metal tube uses a small, powerful detonation to send a tiny piece of metal flying out at high speeds. The explosion comes from a special substance that explodes when struck sharply. This explosion pushes the metal piece, called a bullet, down the tube and out towards whatever the gun is pointed at.”

“An explosion... without Qi?” Celes blinked. “How?!”

“It uses a special substance that, when ignited, releases a great amount of force. Did you see how it kept burning after I fired it? It’s sort of like an arrow covered in oil and set on fire.”

“But... it went so far… and so fast,” Celes said. “What kind of alchemy does that?”

“Not alchemy... chemistry,” I said. “There’s no Qi in the bullet or the gun. Anyone can use it, even a geisha.”

“Chemistry…” the kitsune girl repeated.

Her eyes narrowed.

“So, you have some power,” she said. “What will you do with it when we return to the Gold City?”

“I’m going to figure out exactly what the shit that is!” I pointed at Lord Boundless in the sky overhead. “It might have made quick work of my civilization, scorching us all into ashes and bones..”

“Find out? It’s Lord Boundless... what’s there to find out?” She blinked.

“Tell me in precise detail how you make your tea. If I can understand the exact process of your cultivation, then maybe I can improve upon it with my… um… arcane, lost knowledge,” I said. “Please teach me what you know. Maybe this memory of a long-dead human that I have in me now is mostly useless in a world where magical ghost bullshit is everywhere and entropy doesn’t seem to be a problem… or maybe it’s my... no our key out of this mess.”

“‘Our’?” She blinked again.

“Do you want to be my friend?” I asked.

I felt as Ash mentally retreated to the back of my mind. She’d been terrified of making friends ever since the Hand Gang betrayed her.

“Sure,” Celes said with the smallest hint of a smile. “The Gold City brought me nothing but misery. I know that we’ll most likely die very soon... but at least with you, it’ll be less boring, Ancient.”

She eyed the gun in my hands. I slid the weapon back into its leather holster, sending her a wink.

“The power of those you now call Ancients was never strength or speed. It was our intelligence that built this city.” I waved my hand at the ruins far below us.

I stood up and walked out on a rusted steel beam and stared out at the shattered, torn skyscrapers. Then I spun on the beam, basking in my twice-human agility, and looked up at myriads of glittering gold stars that dotted the underside of Boundless Chorus.

“The cultivators of the Gold City know nothing of the heights humanity achieved long ago. They rely on Qi and spirits to do their bidding. They do not know what the power of mathematics, reason, and science could do, before it was all extinguished when the stars fell from the sky.

“My world might lay in ruins… but I am still alive,” I declared as I blinked tears from my eyes. “I will prevail!”

We relocated to the roof of my building. It presented a nice view of Lord Boundless above and of the ruined city below.

The sun was slowly rising over the desolate terrain, revealing the devastation beneath in its full post-apocalyptic splendor. Low-lying clouds slowly drifted by, catching onto the islands of jagged teeth, the skeletons of decrepit, overgrown buildings.

I was hoping that my lab was still intact, but alas, it looked like you-know-who had stepped on it. Only a round crater had remained in its place, filled with sparkling blue water.

Nature had fully reclaimed, devoured, and redecorated my former skyscraper building. I had to admit to myself that there was unexpected pulchritude born from the ruins of my civilization.

The roof that Celes and I were sitting on had a few cherry and apple trees growing on it, framed by wild patches of blue and orange lilies. Sparkling waterfalls poured down from Lord Boundless, casting rainbows over the savage rooftop garden. The fruits looked extra succulent; my mouth watered at the sight.

I knew that the local flora was poisonous to me, but I had never asked why it was poisonous. Was it radiation? There were no nuclear plants nearby that could have had a meltdown and any radioactive clouds from ones farther away should have theoretically dispersed over the passing centuries.

I did have a unique way of observing the world at my disposal. I pushed Qi into my eyes and squinted at one of the apples that had fallen off the nearest tree and sat near my foot.

The apple, unlike the melon that I had stolen from the market, was dead in my magical-vision. I pushed even more Qi into my eyes, as much as I could safely manage. My eyes lit up, casting a blue glow onto my nose.

The apple on the ground didn’t change one bit, not a single sign of possessing Qi.

It looked completely inert!

Hrrm.

I looked at the apple tree. There was no Qi flowing through it at all either. A hypothesis was beginning to form in my mind.