The consciousness-transfer technology had been used by Apocalypse as well. Where Apocalypse had acquired it was another matter—Daisy's best guess was that the Brotherhood of the Shield had originally seized it from the Brood during their ancient campaign, since the technology was simply too outlandish. Modern humanity couldn't develop it. Ancient Egyptians certainly couldn't. Alien origin was the only answer that held together.
She rubbed her temples and filed Mister Sinister away for later. Dealing with an enemy like that required meticulous planning and a strike like lightning—let even one clone slip through the net, and the fallout would be catastrophic.
For now, he was hiding in the dark. From her perspective, that almost made him easier to track. She had time to prepare properly.
The foot-soldiers were dealt with. Even with every precaution, she'd still gotten blood on her. Daisy pulled a change of clothes from her pack, incinerated what she'd been wearing, and left the ninjas' bodies for the mountain's wildlife. She saw no reason to clean up after them.
She straightened her gear and continued deeper into the mountains along the same path.
With her trackers eliminated, she moved at full speed. The terrain was no obstacle at this level.
Time was short and the mission was pressing—none of her earlier impulse to play with the wildlife. When animals crossed her path, she sidestepped wide.
At one point she kicked out a brush fire she'd started, having flown into the air to let the K'un-Lun ring calibrate its coordinates. A bird had been bold—or stupid—enough to attack her, and she hadn't been gracious about it. She roasted it on the spot and ate well. Then she resumed her search for the convergence point between K'un-Lun and Earth.
On the ninth day into the mountains, the K'un-Lun ring transmitted a reasonably clear signal.
Daisy stopped and took stock of her surroundings.
She was near the summit of a peak. It wasn't mirror-flat, but the top was remarkably level. Absent any human intervention, the odds of nature producing this kind of terrain struck her as extremely low.
Is this where K'un-Lun descends each time?
She hovered, measuring distances. The plateau was only a few hundred square meters—nowhere near large enough to house a city of tens of thousands. But K'un-Lun's core was an alien spaceship that had drifted into Earth's orbit; they almost certainly had space-folding technology. To enter Earth's dimension, they only needed a single spatial anchor point. They didn't have to compress an entire city onto this mountain's peak.
Her instinct wouldn't let her drop straight into the heart of a city she didn't know. She wanted to scout the perimeter first—which meant the landing point mattered.
She flew slowly, estimating the total footprint K'un-Lun would occupy when it materialized, then adjusted her vibration frequency at what she judged to be the city's outer edge.
This particular string was threaded through extradimensional space and tricky to isolate. Her technique was far sharper than it had been, though. Small errors could be corrected on the fly.
PERIL, housed within the Atomic Cutter, assisted with the bulk of the calculations. After more than a dozen cross-checks, the figures locked in. Daisy opened a portal—pale blue shot through with faint sparks of red.
She didn't walk through immediately. She tossed a rock in first. From the other side came a startled "Ah!"—confirming a humanoid presence. Only then did she step through.
A low, weathered room. A nostalgic style—like an old tile-roofed house from ancient times.
A young Asian man in a coarse linen top and loose trousers stood barefoot. He pointed at Daisy, opened his mouth, shut it again, and couldn't find words.
His clothes were worn but laundered clean.
Daisy silently cursed the fact that she had psychic power and no mind-reading technique. Her only option was to bluff her way through.
Inside this space, the K'un-Lun ring's stealth function dropped away. She raised her palm toward the young man, ring-face out, and held it in front of him.
The young man's eyes were sharp. He caught sight of the ring, and something clicked. He bowed deeply—a show of respect directed not at her, but at K'un-Lun itself.
He spoke at length, quickly. Daisy sorted through the sounds and decided it resembled the ancient Guanzhong dialect—rigid syntax, clipped and resonant, very old. She wasn't going to learn it fast enough to be useful.
She had a better way. She extended her psychic power toward him in a careful, controlled thread—a mental communication she guided gently. He had never encountered anything like it; he assumed the voice appearing in his mind was simply her speaking.
Through carefully crafted questions, she gathered surface-level intelligence.
This was indeed K'un-Lun. They kept their own internal time system, roughly aligned with the outside world—the dimension's conditions were close enough to Earth's that whoever had designed this space, long ago, had done something extraordinary: sunlight from outside, moonlight, starlight—it all filtered in normally.
K'un-Lun returned to Earth once every ten years. The ordinary residents knew this, though it had nothing to do with them. They were K'un-Lunians, born and raised here. Just as the Asgardians were not Norse—these people had no particular connection to any nation on Earth. The ten-year return was tradition, and according to the young man, no one ever walked out through the city's gates when they were docked.
"What's your name? Where are the Elders right now?" she asked through the psychic link. She'd invented a cover for herself: an Elder on official business, away from the city. He was guileless, entirely trusting, and answered without hesitation.
"I've heard the Elders are all in closed-door cultivation—they should be in the Place of Nobles right now. Shouldn't you be reporting to Yu-Ti first?"
He hadn't given her his name. And he seemed puzzled that an Elder didn't know proper protocol.
"Yu-Ti is here!" she shouted into his mind.
The young man spun around. There was no one there.
He was unconscious before he could turn back.
"Sorry. Sorry." The apology had no real feeling behind it. Daisy stood there, genuinely uncertain how to proceed.
She could change into rough-spun clothes and blend in as a commoner—but that seemed pointless. She wasn't a spy. She had killed Madame Gao, which by any reasonable accounting counted as a service to K'un-Lun. Walking in through the front door, on the other hand, didn't suit her either.
She settled on it quickly. Night infiltration—the classic move from every novel and film she'd ever read.
She injected half a vial of anesthetic into the young man. He'd be out for two days. She sat inside the room, reviewed the transit data PERIL had recorded, and waited for darkness.
Night arrived on schedule. Daisy stepped outside and surveyed the city, now still.
She was at the base of the Sacred Mountain. According to the young man, Yu-Ti and the Elders lived within the mountain itself. The mountain was K'un-Lun. The ordinary people lived in the townships clustered around its base.
Daisy hopped onto a rooftop with two quick steps and moved fast through the dense network of close-packed buildings, making straight for the Sacred Mountain.
The closer she got, the more clearly the structures resolved. What the young man had called the divine tower was, to her eyes, a signal transmitter. What the locals believed to be a pavilion looked, on closer inspection, like a warp engine—completely dead, damaged beyond use.