JumpMasters

In the valley, fantails flew and a grandmother’s hand stilled. Porcelain clinked as warm tea sloshed over Wei’s knuckles. Ten thousand years of ego’s wrath seethed in the void as the Celestial of Raging Flames, Liánhuǒ, unleashed a vengeance that did not come as fire, but as absence—the un-breath before the inferno.

As eternity cracked and stars careened, Wei looked at the tea on his hands and realized the scroll of his life had just gone viral under his feet. The world was vanishing, and the only thing holding the fabric of being together was the quiet, persistent flow of Qi in a grandmother’s trembling fingers.

When destiny ignites a zodiac Qi out of balance, fire answers emotion instead of control. A fracture in reality ripples outward. A sudden awakening shifts the flow of energy, turning feelings into force and moments into consequences. What was once internal—fear, love, loyalty—now shapes the world itself. As unseen forces move through the cracks, the path forward is no longer about power, but alignment. Guided by ancient feng shui and the rhythm of the zodiac, harmony becomes the only way to restore balance before the fracture widens. Because in a universe governed by energy, destiny may strike the spark—
but balance determines what survives.

The terminal smelled of fried lotus buns and a looming glitch. Gateway Seven shimmered under strings of red-and-gold lanterns, their paper skins pulsing with the sickly green glow of the great portal. Li Wei gripped his birthday gift, his heart matching the hum of the luggage drones weaving through the holiday crowd. He was sixteen jumps around the sun today, but the stars weren’t celebrating—they were shivering.

When the Shadow Zodiacs tore through the fabric of the concourse, the music died. TinTing stood her ground, her cybernetics fusing with a raw, handmade Qi that defied the tyrant’s code. As the shields in the ancient floor tiles woke up, a single piece of Pounamu—cool, green, and heavy with ancestry—became the only anchor left in a world dissolving into digital ash.

“Find me,” Pip whispered against the chaos, a light promise held in a stone that had traveled ten thousand years to be there. “Mā te wā.”