The door disintegrated.
Hu's boot went straight through the center, sending shards of rotted pine door flying like shrapnel. The giant of a man stepped into the cramped space, his presence sucking the air out of the room. Hu was a large man built of bad meat and worse intentions, his knuckles scarred from the beatings of the weak. His eyes glared at Li Xiao noting the visible changes in the 'rat'.
Behind him, two of his lackeys hovered in the rain, clutching rusted pipes and grinning with the anticipation of a one sided fight.
"You look different, rat," Hu said, his eyes narrowing as they landed on Li Xiao. He sniffed the air, his nose wrinkling at the metallic, oily scent of the Purge. "You smell like a sewer, but you're standing straighter. What did you find? A pill? An herb?"
Li Xiao kept his hands down at his sides. He could feel the Emerald Qi swirling in his gut like a tiny, angry whirlpool. "I found nothing for you, Hu. Go back to your master, you Dog".
The two lackeys laughed, but Hu didn't. He was a bully, but he survived by instinct, and his instinct was telling him that the scrawny boy in front of him wasn't the same boy anymore.
"Bold," Whispering, he lunged towards the dirty youth.
It was a strike of seasoned bully. A heavy, straight jab aimed at Li Xiao's throat. In the past, Li Xiao would have been on the ground before he even felt the wind of the punch. But now, the world was different fir him. Time had slowed to a crawl. He saw the sweat flying off Hu's brow. He saw the way Hu's weight shifted, exposing a weakness in his lead knee.
Li Xiao didn't block instead he sidestepped with the flow of wind. He looked and smelt dirty but his movement was of a gracefull hunter.
He stepped to the left, the movement so effortless it felt like he was sliding on ice. He caught Hu's wrist not with strength, but with a sudden, snapping twist.
CRACK.
The sound of Hu's radius snapping was followed by a silence so profound you could hear the rain hitting the mud outside. Hu gasped, his face turning the color of old parchment. He tried to pull away, but Li Xiao's grip was like an iron vice.
"My turn," Li Xiao muttered.
He didn't use a martial arts or technique, since he knew none. He just focused all the heat in his Dantian into his right palm and drove it upward into Hu's solar plexus.
Hu watched in horror as the punch hit him.
A faint, sickly green flash illuminated the shack for a microsecond. Hu flew backward as if hit by a runaway carriage. He flew through the doorway, cleared the narrow alley, and slammed into the stone wall of the tanner's shop across the street. He hit the ground and didn't move, his chest caved in like a discarded tin cup.
The two lackeys dropped their pipes. Their "Iron Fist" leader was wheezing pink froth into the mud, his eyes rolled back in his head.
"Cultivator..." one of them breathed, his voice cracking with terror. "He's a hidden cultivator!"
They didn't stay to help Hu. They turned and bolted into the fog, their screams for help echoing through the slums.
Li Xiao stood in the center of his ruined home, his breath hitching. His hand was shaking not from fear, but from the sheer, terrifying rush and excitement of power. It felt good. That was the scariest part. He looked at Hu's broken body and felt a cold, hard knot of satisfaction where his heart used to be.
But the logic of the slums took over. Hu was a dog for the Black Dog Gang. The Gang reported to the City lord. An ash born kid suddenly manifesting Qi wasn't a miracle to the authorities; it was a rebellion. By sunset, there would be armored men here to collect his head.
"I can't stay," he whispered to the empty room.
He moved with a frantic, focused energy. He grabbed a piece of old burlap and threw in his few treasures: the wooden comb, the cold river stone, and the emerald shard, wrapped tightly in a rag. He didn't look back at his bed or his broken door.
He stepped out into the rain, avoiding the main streets and roads. He stuck to the "Veins" the narrow drainage pipes that ran beneath the city. He was covered in mud and blood, a fugitive before he had even learned his first technique.
As he reached the city's northern perimeter, he looked up at the Howling Peaks. They were jagged, cruel, and beautiful, silhouetted against a sky that promised a storm.
"You wanted to change," he murmered to himself, his voice lost in the wind. "Well, here it is."
He climbed over the outer wall, dropping into the tall, wet grass of the wilderness. He was a fifteen-year-old boy with one shattered Gate and a shard of something ancient in his pocket. Behind him was a grave and in front of him was the abyss they called cultivation world.
He started to run.