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In his previous life, Nolan had watched the Iron Fist saga and winced at the inconsistencies: a mythical Eastern stronghold dressed up in mismatched robes and borrowed symbols. In reality Marvel's reality K'un-Lun was a hidden city, a pocket realm with its own rules, power sources, and politics. The names were grand, the legends louder, but the substance? That was what Nolan had come to test.
Up close, the truth was simpler. These so-called "qi adepts" weren't divine saints they were practitioners channeling a specific class of arcane energy through training and ritual. To villagers and travelers, that looked like godhood. To Nolan, it was a system with inputs, outputs, and a traceable source.
If anything had truly set K'un-Lun apart, it was history: the legacy of the first Iron Fist, the singularity of Shou-Lao's power, and, on rare occasions, a mantle bearer crossing paths with forces as cosmic as the Phoenix. Fame followed but raw power was another matter.
Nolan closed his fist. The Dragon's power winked out from his palm, reabsorbed. Lei-Kung and his martial elite still had research value their "qi" behaved like a versatile mystical substrate, good for body reinforcement, weapon imbuement, hypnosis, and more. Any such magic had a source sometimes a sentient patron, sometimes a wild dimension. Either way, traceable.
"Monster," Lei-Kung snarled, hearing that the Iron Fist's power had been stripped, rage snapping every syllable. He launched like a spring-loaded catapult, speed blurring to most eyes.
A circular portal bloomed in front of him.
Another opened overhead.
Lei-Kung dropped from the ceiling mid-leap, momentum stolen and pride shattering on polished stone. He plunged again as a second portal swallowed him and spat him out across the hall.
Nolan sighed. "A conclave of off-world mystics squatting on a borrowed legend. Could've made peace with that. But then you let outsiders bleed away what was yours."
"Kamar-Taj…?" Yu-Ti whispered, face tightening. The portals were decisive—few on Earth could throw space magic that casually. "You are the Sorcerer Supreme, Nolan?"
He'd met the Ancient One, once. He knew what that title meant. Whoever this man was, he'd bent Lei-Kung the Thunderer without a ripple.
Nolan didn't bother to answer. His psionic sense swept outward, mapping K'un-Lun's boundaries. This wasn't a hellscape or a raw plane like the Psionic Dimension; it was a pocket universe finite, layered with physical law, its sky threaded by a particular arcane spectrum.
A "dimension" where life couldn't take shape was simply a dimension. A "pocket universe" fused energy and matter into a stable ecology. K'un-Lun was the latter. Within its air, Nolan sampled the signature of the city's "qi" cataloging resonance, testing whether K'un-Lun itself was the taproot, or just a key to a deeper Qi Plane he could triangulate and claim.
"Sorcerer… we have no quarrel with you," Yu-Ti said at last, voice cautious. "Why trespass in K'un-Lun?"
"Shou-Lao interests me," Nolan replied. The scan had already found it: an enclave drowned in pressure, power dense as a neutron star of myth. Not merely a shrine a vault. The aura was easily on par with a high-tier champion.
There were two canonical origins for Shou-Lao. One: a mortal frame rebuilt, a vessel. Not likely here no trace of a "Master Khan." The other: a being summoned by a grand sorcerer ages ago Chang-Ming, if the echoes were right.
If a magician from Earth had hauled a dragon that skirted Skyfather-class into a pocket world… then Earth's old guard had been mightier than most remembered.
"We—" Yu-Ti started.
"This is a notification, not a negotiation," Nolan said, and flicked two fingers. Across the hall, Lei-Kung's anatomy unfolded in his mind—organ structure, micro-meridian mapping, gene markers.
Another gesture, and the Thunderer rocketed backward, skipping across flagstones until he skid to a stop in a shower of grit.
Lei-Kung groaned, forcing himself to a knee. "You'll pay for this."
Nolan had already blinked out, a ripple of space swallowing him.
"Find Shou-Lao," Yu-Ti hissed, sprinting for the inner sanctum. "If we can't reason with him, we unleash him."
Lei-Kung wiped blood from his lip, fury burning. "Understood."
High above, the dragon's heartbeat rolled through stone heavy, patient, and very much awake.
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