The emerald flame vanished from beneath the cauldron as simply as it had appeared, leaving the room in a stunned, heavy silence.
Izuku just stared at the cold bronze metal. No ignition. No heat. No Quirks. His mind, usually so quick to categorize and analyze, hit a solid brick wall. Magic. Actual magic.
"M-Miss Shen Yue," Izuku stammered, his voice trembling slightly as he looked up at her. "What year is it?"
Shen Yue paused, her mortar and pestle hovering mid-air. "It is the 43rd year of the Azure Emperor's reign."
"Azure... Emperor?" Izuku swallowed hard. "Not a Prime Minister? What about the government? Are there... are there Pro Heroes here? Police?"
Shen Yue's delicate brow furrowed. She set her tools down and walked over to him, her expression shifting from teasing to genuine concern. She knelt beside his mat, bringing her face close to his to inspect his eyes.
"Emperor? Heroes? Police?" she repeated the strange words carefully, tasting the unfamiliar syllables. "Izuku, look at me. Do you know what continent we are on? Do you know what a Sect is?"
Izuku shook his head, his green eyes wide with a mix of panic and confusion.
Shen Yue sighed, a sound of profound pity. She gently placed a cool hand against his forehead. "You have no fever, but the sheer trauma your body endured must have severely shaken your mortal soul. You have lost your memories of the common world."
Izuku opened his mouth to correct her, to shout that he was from Japan, from U.A. High School, from a world of Quirks—but he snapped his mouth shut. If he told her the truth, she would think he was possessed by a demon or completely insane. Amnesia was the safest alibi he could possibly have.
"I... I think you're right," Izuku lied smoothly, though his racing heart betrayed his anxiety. "Everything is fuzzy. Could you... could you explain it to me? Like I'm a child?"
Shen Yue gave him a sympathetic smile. "Of course. Rest your head. We live in the mortal realm of the Profound Sky Continent. It is a vast, ancient land. Here, the energy of Heaven and Earth flows through all things, and anyone can learn to breathe it in. Every farmer, merchant, and commoner practices the basics of Qi Condensation to plow fields longer, fight off beasts, and extend their lives."
She gestured toward the bronze cauldron. "But there is a vast chasm between a mortal with a little extra strength and a true Cultivator. To reach the higher realms—to fly on swords, wield the elements, and live for centuries—requires immense natural talent and a high-grade Spiritual Root. Ninety-nine percent of mortals will never break past the early stages of Qi Condensation, no matter how hard they try."
Izuku's mind whirred. Okay. So back home, 80% of people had Quirks, but here, literally everyone can use this 'Qi'. The difference is that the power ceiling is entirely dictated by talent. It's not a genetic lottery of what power you get, it's a lottery of how far you are allowed to climb.
"The few who possess true talent," Shen Yue continued, her voice growing serious, "gather into massive factions called Sects, which govern entire mountain ranges and cities."
"Are they... good?" Izuku asked, his heroic instincts flaring up. "Do they protect the mortals?"
Shen Yue's golden eyes darkened slightly. "I do not know what these 'Heroes' or 'Police' you mentioned are, Izuku. But here, the strong make the rules, and the weak survive by keeping their heads down. A high-level cultivator could wipe this entire village off the map with a single wave of their hand over a perceived slight, and no one would dare seek justice."
Izuku's fists clenched under his blanket. A world without All Might. A world where the strong casually crushed the weak, and everyone just accepted it as the natural order. It made his stomach twist.
"Now," Shen Yue said, her tone becoming brisk and professional as she reached for his wrist. "Enough history. Your heart is beating like a trapped bird, and you are far too weak for such shock. Let me see how badly your internal pathways are damaged. Give me your arm."
Izuku instinctively offered his right arm. Shen Yue placed two slender fingers lightly against his pulse point. A sudden, sharp chill—like a drop of icy water—slipped beneath Izuku's skin at her touch. He flinched, but the sensation quickly smoothed out, traveling slowly up his arm toward his chest. It wasn't a physical pressure; it was a thread of her own Qi, manually tracing the damage inside his body.
Suddenly, Shen Yue's golden eyes widened. The calm, unbothered demeanor she had maintained for the past four days fractured entirely.
"This..." she murmured, leaning closer, her delicate brow furrowing in deep concentration. She pressed her fingers harder against his wrist. "How is this possible?"
"Is it bad?" Izuku asked, the familiar anxiety flaring in his chest. "Are my bones not setting right?"
"No. It is the exact opposite," she said, her voice dropping to a bewildered whisper. "When I brought you here, your meridians were entirely shattered. Ground to dust. In the cultivation world, such an injury requires high-tier alchemical pills and years of secluded meditation just to walk again without pain. But your internal pathways... they are forcibly knitting themselves back together. The speed of your recovery is terrifying."
Izuku blinked, his hand instinctively resting over his heart. He couldn't summon the lightning of One For All, but he could feel that deep, pulsing warmth stubbornly burning inside his chest.
Closing her eyes, Shen Yue pushed her thread of Qi deeper, probing his core to find the source of this miraculous recovery. Because Izuku had no Qi of his own to act as a barrier, her energy moved through his body unimpeded. She expected to find his body frantically absorbing the ambient spirit Qi from the room to fuel this healing.
Yet, to her utter shock, her internal probe detected absolutely nothing.
The ambient energy in the room was completely undisturbed. There was no Qi vortex, no magical artifact, and his Dantian was completely hollow. To her probing Qi, Izuku registered as nothing more than a completely ordinary mortal. The healing didn't register as a cultivation technique at all; instead, it felt as though the boy's very blood, bone, and marrow possessed a monstrous, inherent vitality that was perfectly, flawlessly self-contained.
Whatever power was healing him, it completely bypassed her understanding of reality.
Shen Yue slowly withdrew her hand, her golden eyes fixed intently on his face. The gentle, teasing apothecary was completely gone; in her place sat a woman staring at an impossible puzzle.
"Izuku," she began, her voice quiet but carrying a heavy weight. "What exactly did you do to your body before you lost your memories? Do you remember your training?"
Izuku shifted uncomfortably, the bamboo mat creaking under his weight. "What do you mean? I just... I trained hard."
"Trained hard?" Shen Yue let out a breath that was half-laugh, half-sigh. "Ordinary mortals 'train.' What you possess is an absurd physical foundation. To have a body that heals shattered bones using nothing but its own inherent vitality... you must have undergone a brutal, almost suicidal method of Body Cultivation."
She leaned closer, her gaze calculating. "Tell me what flashes in your mind. Were you forced to bathe in the boiling blood of spirit beasts? Did a harsh master crush your bones under a heavy-water waterfall just to force them to heal stronger?"
Izuku blinked. Bathe in boiling blood? Crushed under waterfalls? His mind instantly flashed back to Dagobah Municipal Beach. He pictured All Might sitting on top of a refrigerator while Izuku, crying and screaming, dragged literal tons of rusted scrap metal across the sand for ten straight months. Then he thought about the U.A. Sports Festival, where he had forcefully shattered his own fingers over and over again just to stay in the fight.
Well, Izuku thought, a bead of sweat forming on his brow, when you put it like that... maybe my training was a little insane.
"I didn't bathe in any blood," Izuku said carefully, trying to translate his past into a way she might understand without breaking his amnesia alibi. "But my mentor... he did make me push my body far beyond its natural limits. I moved mountains of heavy scrap by myself for months just to build a vessel. And after that..."
He hesitated, looking down at his scarred, mangled right hand. "The power... the strength I was trying to use was too much for my body to hold. For a long time, every time I fought, the sheer pressure of it would shatter my bones and tear my muscles from the inside out. I just... had to keep pushing through the pain until my body adapted."
Shen Yue stared at him. For a long moment, the only sound in the apothecary was the soft bubbling of the medicine cauldron.
"You shattered your own bones from the inside out," she repeated slowly, as if tasting the sheer madness of the words. "Repeatedly. And you simply waited for them to heal so you could do it again."
Izuku rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly feeling very self-conscious. "Um. Yes?"
In his mind, however, Izuku knew the truth. His physical training under All Might had built him a strong vessel, yes, but he wasn't superhuman by birth. A normal human body didn't knit pulverized bones back together in a matter of days.
The real reason for his terrifying recovery had to be the embers of One For All. Ever since he had awakened in this world, that faint, flickering warmth deep in his core had been humming quietly. He couldn't manifest it as green lightning anymore, but it felt as if the power had turned inward, acting like an invisible furnace desperately patching up his broken pathways.
If this world ran on "Spirit Qi," then his Quirk factor was somehow absorbing it perfectly, hiding it deep within his cells so even a healer like Shen Yue couldn't detect it. Of course, he wasn't about to try and explain the concept of inherited Quirks to a woman who could summon fire from her fingertips. Letting her believe his recovery was just the result of "brutal training" was much safer.
Shen Yue closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. She looked like a master who had just discovered her student was eating rocks for breakfast.
"You are a lunatic," she stated flatly. "A lucky, incredibly resilient lunatic. To force raw physical power through unrefined meridians... it is a miracle you haven't detonated your own Dantian."
She stood up with a graceful swish of her robes, walking over to a wooden shelf lined with various clay jars and bundled bamboo slips. After searching for a moment, she pulled out a worn, unassuming paper booklet and tossed it onto Izuku's lap.
Izuku winced as it hit his legs, but he carefully picked it up. The cover was entirely blank.
"What is this?" he asked.
"It is the Mortal Breath Mantra," Shen Yue replied, returning to her seat at the table. "It is the most common, fundamental Spirit Qi gathering technique in existence. You can buy a copy for two copper coins in any mortal city. It is useless for advancing to the higher realms, as it only teaches the very basics of drawing in ambient Spirit Qi and circulating it through the major pathways of the body."
She picked up her mortar and pestle again, her golden eyes meeting his with a stern, uncompromising intensity.
"If your body possesses such monstrous vitality, you need to learn how to guide energy properly instead of just letting it explode inside you. Read it. Memorize the meridian pathways. Once your bones are fully knit, you will begin meditating. If you are going to stay in my apothecary, I refuse to watch you cripple yourself out of sheer ignorance."
Izuku stared down at the worn booklet in his scarred hands. A basic technique to control this world's energy. If he could learn to circulate Spirit Qi, maybe he could finally reach the embers of One For All trapped behind that heavy, invisible gate.
He gripped the booklet tightly, his green eyes shining with sudden, intense determination.
"I understand. Thank you, Miss Shen Yue," Izuku said, bowing his head as deeply as his injured chest would allow. "I won't let you down!"