Demon Academy The Paradox of Earth

A When It Clicks RPG - Setting Part 1

CONTINUED FROM The Essentials - Intro

Demon Academy

An Urban Xuanhuan Fantasy Setting

This setting is broken into 4 parts. This one (The Paradox of Earth), The Refugee Crisis, Factions and Powers, and The Academies.

The Paradox of Earth

For billions of years, Earth drifted through the cosmos wrapped in dimensional walls so thick that the very concept of Chi was alien to our reality. We existed in perfect isolation, a mortal realm without spiritual veins, heavenly tribulations, or even the faintest whisper of cultivation energy. The Dao itself seemed absent here, taking the form of physics alone. Consciousness ended at death. Power came only through technology, society, and sweat.

That isolation saved us. While cultivation worlds across the multiverse blazed like beacons, their spiritual energy visible across dimensional space, Earth remained a dark speck of mortality in an ocean of cosmic power. We were hidden not because we were clever, but because we were empty. No gods stirred. No spirit beasts awakened. No ley lines connected sacred sites. We were invisible, safe, and unaware that either state was temporary.

Then we pierced our own walls.

Scientists seeking to unlock the fundamental nature of reality built supercolliders capable of smashing particles at energies approaching the birth of the universe. They sought exotic matter, evidence of extra dimensions, the building blocks of existence itself. What they found, what they accidentally created, was something no instrument could detect and no theory could explain. By brute force of exotic particle physics, they punched holes through Terracore’s dimensional barriers. They created artificial spiritual veins where none should exist. They lit a beacon in the void.

The first experiments left microscopic wounds in barriers meant to withstand cosmic forces. Chi began trickling through immediately, seeping like water through a cracked dam. In some cases, it arrived even before the colliders activated, as temporal anomalies rippled backward through causality. Quantum events preceded their causes; particles were affected before measurements occurred. Chi, fundamentally entangled with consciousness and observation, amplified these distortions until cause and effect blurred.

Unverifiable but accurate reports of impossible phenomena appeared long before 2008: visions in 1920, inexplicable events in 750 BCE, conspiracy theories with accidentally correct timelines. Causality became unreliable as evidence; the timeline meaningless. Trying to trace Chi’s arrival to a single date was like trying to identify the exact moment a child becomes an adult.

And yet Earth still suppressed it. Our planet’s natural hostility to spiritual energy muted most of the incoming Chi, keeping the density far below what any cultivation world would have produced. But the breaches did more than let energy seep in. They made Earth visible.

Once punctured, our world became a signal to the multiverse: here is a realm the Vorac cannot sense, wrapped in walls thick enough to suppress spiritual emanations. A sanctuary. A haven. A chance at survival.

Almost no one knows the supercolliders caused this. Magic, or Chi, remains undetectable with existing instruments, and the connection between particle physics and Earth’s transformation is scattered across unassembled clues. Some scientists suspect; none can prove. The truth exists, but only as fragments.

The Flood

They came in waves and trickles, desperate beings riding dimensional currents twisted through the holes in reality, carrying whatever remnants of their worlds they could grasp. From their pasts and their futures, they flowed to this accidental refuge, fleeing realms consumed behind them.

Over time, the refugees arrived in the millions. Cultivators who had spent lifetimes ascending through realms, their cores glowing with accumulated power. Spirit beasts that had achieved human consciousness and walked upright for centuries. Demonic practitioners stained with blood refinement techniques. Alchemists clutching seeds from extinct worlds. Entire sect hierarchies, master and disciple together, displaced from mountain peaks that no longer existed. They scattered across every continent, throughout the depths of Earth’s oceans, even reaching the barren surface of the moon.

It was as if some cosmic sorting principle placed each species into the environments they could endure. Aquatic sects colonized abyssal trenches; water-path practitioners claimed coral reefs. Fire-path cultivators emerged near volcanoes; ice-aspect adepts appeared in the polar regions. Some even reached the moon, where stellar cultivators established hidden enclaves in craters, still bound by Earth’s Chi suppression but closer to the stars they drew power from.

In some cases, the land itself shifted subtly to meet them. A valley with unnatural microclimates. Forests with temperature gradients that defied physics. Oceanic regions where the water’s properties were altered in confined zones. Nothing overtly impossible, but enough to sustain the displaced.

Among these displaced millions, stories circulate about the dimensions they fled. Names heavy with loss: Qing Tiān, where immortals walked clouded peaks and nine-colored tribulation lightning split the heavens. Netherforge, where demonic cultivation painted the sky crimson. Jade Verdant, where spirit beasts ruled thousand-year forests as Beast Emperors. Stellar Meridian, where practitioners drew power from dying stars. Ashen Cauldron, where continents themselves were pill furnaces. Samsara’s Gate, where past lives could be recovered through karmic meditation.

All gone. All consumed. All reduced to wandering refugees in a dimension that rejects their fundamental nature.

Earth’s dimension, this bubble of mortality wrapped in impenetrable walls, has come to be known as Terracore by those who found sanctuary here. The name carries weight among the displaced: Terra for the world that sheltered them, Core for the dimensional heart it represents, the closest point where the multiverse touches this isolated reality.

Approximately twenty thousand humans and animals were caught in the first Chi flood and spontaneously developed cores or cultivation abilities. Earth natives, transformed by exposure to an energy their biology could not comprehend, became known as the Awakened. Their cores formed in strange places, their powers followed no known path, and their systems baffled the refugee masters who tried to understand them.

Earth’s resistance to Chi slowed the process but did not stop it. Spiritual veins began to form where none existed. Ley lines grew along paths of least resistance. The Dao itself, long absent, was awakening in a universe that had lived without it for billions of years.

The Vorac: Hunger Without Mind

To call the Vorac a creature would be to grant it characteristics it does not possess. It is not alive in any sense we understand. It does not think, does not plan, does not communicate. It simply is - and what it is, is hunger.

The Vorac exists as both ethereal mist and gravitational fluid, simultaneously material and immaterial, defying categorization as either particle or wave. Imagine smoke that has weight. Imagine gravity that can be seen. Imagine something that passes through solid matter as easily as air but devours Chi like a black hole consuming light.

The Vorac appears at vastly different scales, and no one truly understands why. Sometimes it manifests as individual tendrils - wispy fingers of consuming mist that drift through dimensional barriers like morning fog. Other times it coalesces into coordinated swarms, thousands of tendrils moving with eerie synchronization despite possessing no central intelligence. And occasionally, catastrophically, it unifies into massive entities capable of engulfing entire cultivation worlds, drinking in their accumulated spiritual energy like a man dying of thirst.

It devours Chi, spiritual essence, and Chi-saturated matter with single-minded purpose. Mortal realms without cultivation energy are beneath its notice - it will drift right past them, ignoring their existence entirely. But let a world contain even the faintest spiritual veins, let practitioners refine even the weakest cores, and the Vorac will eventually sense it. Eventually arrive. Eventually consume.

The devastation is not violent in the traditional sense. There are no explosions, no cataclysms, no world-shattering battles. The Vorac simply arrives and begins feeding. Chi drains from the air like water swirling down a drain. Spiritual veins dry up. Cultivators feel their cores fragmenting, their life’s work evaporating. Spirit beasts revert to mindless animals as their accumulated consciousness dissolves. Artifacts crumble to dust as the Chi binding them together is consumed.

What makes the Vorac truly terrifying is not its power but its mindlessness. There is no malice in it, no evil intent, no satisfaction in the devastation it leaves behind. It consumes cultivation worlds the way fire consumes paper - not because it wants to, but because that is fundamentally what it does. You cannot reason with it. You cannot negotiate. You cannot even properly fight it, because destroying one manifestation means nothing when countless more drift behind it.

The Vorac’s threat to Earth remains minimal. For now. Terracore’s dimensional walls are not merely thick - they are fundamentally resistant to the emanations that attract the Vorac’s attention. Combined with Earth’s natural resistance to cultivation energy, most spiritual activities remain invisible to the drifting predator.

Periodic breaches do occur. Dimensional rifts that allow tendrils of the Vorac to slip through. Localized incursions where cultivators pushing for breakthroughs create spikes of spiritual pressure that briefly overcome the walls’ suppression. These incidents remain rare, quickly contained or dissipated by Earth’s natural hostility to Chi.

But this safety is not guaranteed. It is not permanent. It is not even truly stable - merely a temporary equilibrium that degrades with every passing day. The more cultivation practiced in Terracore, the stronger the dimensional scent becomes. Every breakthrough to a new realm. Every core formation. Every technique activation. Every spirit beast achieving higher consciousness. Every pill refined, every formation activated, every immortal torn from forced hibernation. All of it adds to the accumulated spiritual pressure pressing against those dimensional walls.

The walls are not weakening through simple exposure. But they can only suppress so much. Create enough spiritual pressure and eventually something will leak through those dimensional barriers. The walls will work perfectly right up until the moment they don’t. There’s no gradual failure, no warning signs before catastrophe. Just continued safety, safety, safety - then sudden visibility.

The origin of the Vorac remains a complete mystery. No cultivation world’s records extend far enough back to document its first appearance. No immortal remembers a time before it existed. What is known, what is tragically and absolutely certain, is that every cultivation world that tried to fight or contain the Vorac ultimately failed.

Terracore: The Mortal Fortress

Terracore’s dimensional walls are not like the barriers of other realities. Most dimensions exist with relatively thin separation from the greater multiverse - permeable membranes that allow commerce, communication, and travel between worlds. Terracore has no such connections. Its dimensional walls consist of exceptionally thick layers that cut it off from the multiverse with almost absolute finality. These walls do not thin with time, cannot be worn down through exposure, refuse to degrade under any natural process.

Penetration requires immense focused power, clever bypass methods that slip around the barriers rather than breaking through them, or osmosis-like slippage over immense spans of time. These walls serve a protective function that goes beyond mere isolation. They actively suppress magical emanations, preventing spiritual signatures from broadcasting outward. A Golden Core cultivator achieving breakthrough in Terracore produces a fraction of the dimensional noise they would in their home world.

This suppression is what kept Earth hidden from the Vorac for eons. While cultivation worlds burned bright with spiritual energy - beacons visible across dimensional distances - Earth remained dark. Invisible. Beneath notice.

The cruel irony is complete: even with the breaches that allowed refugees entry, leaving Terracore remains practically impossible. The dimensional walls that let desperate beings slip inward make deliberate exit nearly unthinkable. The pressure differential works entirely in one direction. And any exit large enough to allow escape would act as a siren call to the Vorac, broadcasting spiritual signatures across the multiverse.

Earth actively resists Chi as an alien force. This is not metaphor - it is observable, measurable reality. Cultivation techniques that work reliably elsewhere behave unpredictably here. Spiritual energy dissipates faster, requires more effort to accumulate, fights against being shaped or refined. The planet itself treats Chi as fundamentally incompatible with its nature.

Through Chi’s influence, Earth has developed something approximating consciousness - though calling it sentience would be overstating the case. It is more like an immune response that learned rudimentary awareness. A stubbornness that became self-aware. The planet has developed a character: hostile to Chi, hostile to cultivation, hostile to the very concept of spiritual energy.

But it dislikes the Vorac even more. This creates a strange dynamic. Earth resists the refugees and their cultivation, suppressing their spiritual activities, making their very existence more difficult. But when the Vorac’s tendrils occasionally slip through dimensional breaches, Earth’s response is immediate and violent. The planet’s natural hostility to Chi becomes a weapon against the consuming entity, disrupting its cohesion, destabilizing its manifestations.

In a real sense, Earth fights the Vorac not to protect the refugees but to protect its own integrity. The Vorac represents everything Earth has spent billions of years being: empty of cultivated Chi, hostile to spiritual forces, fundamentally mortal.

https://wicdemonacademy.substack.com/p/the-setting-part-2