"Halt!!" a voice resounded through the dense forest once again. Michael turned around and saw someone running towards him. He was a young man in around his late teens. He wore a blue robe and a lot of expensive looking jewelry. Although he looked like a rich person, currently his robe was dirtied and sweat was all over his body, as he seemed to be quite exhausted. He carried two large bags while running towards Michael. Surprisingly, he was still faster than the fastest human on Earth.
As Michael looked closer, he could even feel a very slight trace of spiritual energy emitting from his body. So this really is a cultivation world. Even a teenager can be faster than anyone I've seen on Earth.
The young man came closer until he stopped right in front of Michael, "Hey you, caveman. I give you the once in a lifetime opportunity to guide me, young master Hai Yan back to Yungyue City. From now until I reach the city, you will be my servant. Take my baggage, go ahead, and show me the way!"
Michael was stupefied, "I know my outfit is bad, but to assume that I want to become his servant. Isn't it going too far?", he said in his head. "Hahaha," Iris laughed. "You indeed look like a caveman, but this guy really seems like an asshole."
Michael focused back to the young master, "Nice to meet you too Hai Yan. Sadly, I can't be your servant, since I don't even know the way to the city you spoke of." better to be nice than to make enemies. These are my first encounters in my new life after all, Michael thought.
"You! You dare to call my name directly. It is young master Hai Yan for you. And on top of your transgression of addressing me casually, you dare lie to me right to my face. I might not be from around here, but I know Yungyue is the only city nearby. The wilderness would be too dangerous for a mortal like you without any cultivation. I know you know the way back. Now stop pretending and start obeying. This is your last chance. If you don't want to feel the wrath of the Hai family, you better start moving." Hai Yan responded angrily.
Michael was even more confused. "Sorry, ähm.. What was it? Young master Hai Yan?" he said in confusion. "I really don't know how to get there. I'm just a traveler and have never been to Yungyue."
Hai Yan was furious, "You dare to mock me, young master Hai Yan. You are courting death, caveman!" Hai Yan released his cultivation base, letting his spiritual energy flow free to the outside to pressure Michael. He wanted to bring Michael to his knees and show him his place.
Michael could not believe it "Hey Siri, do you know what courting death means?", Michael asked and in shock even forgot to change the name to Iris.
"It's Iris idiot! And I don't know what it means, but this little guy seems to be quite angry." she chuckled.
"How did this happen? All I did was being nice and trying to help. I don't want to make enemies on the first night of my new life."
"Maybe he is afraid of you and turns his fear into anger and authority to pretend to be strong in front of you. Maybe in this world, rich people like him get kidnapped a lot, so he needs you to think that he is stronger. You look quite scary in your outfit, so I wouldn't want to be at your mercy." Iris said.
Michael thought about everything Hai Yan had done so far and had to agree with Iris. Judging by the state of his clothes, he has probably been lost and alone for a while, so meeting a stranger might be scary for him. This weird behavior would not make sense otherwise. "You might be right. I will try to calm him down." Michael was relieved to have finally found the reason for this odd behavior.
"Young master Hai, calm down. I'm not courting death or whatever you said. I'm just a peace loving, young master Hai loving, traveler, who is keen on helping. Hahahaha young master don't be distraught with your little strength. I, the great Michael, will help you find a way back to the comfort of your family, you seem to like so much. I can even give you some navigation tips to improve your sense of direction, so you will never have to be lost in the wild again, hahahaha. Peace, peace, peace, happy, happy, happy. I will bring young master, straight to his pappy." Michael began singing and clapping during his last sentence.
At this moment, Hai Yan felt completely humiliated. The outburst of his cultivation base seemed to have had no effect on Michael at all, and he even started to pity him. He called him weak and helpless and even began singing like he was speaking to a little child. All of that combined was enough to make him red out of anger. "Caveman! I have been patient with you, but you took it too far. I will now show you the strength of the number one genius within the Yun prefecture. I won't kill you. I will bring you back to my family and let you be tortured until you beg for mercy. But I won't let you die even after that. For the humiliation you inflicted on me, no, the entire Hai family, I will let you be humiliated in public and slowly die." He shouted in rage and pulled out his sword. "I will now crush you with my cultivation of the 4th realm of Qi Gathering realm!" After his long monologue, he charged at Michael.
Meanwhile, after hearing the young master speak Michael was even more lost. "He wants to attack me? Didn't I say that I would do what he wanted me to do? I was even singing a song for him to encourage him. Isn't this the best service? Iris, can you tell why he is so angry?"
"I think you hurt his ego. You said he was weak and lost after all. Although I agree with you, he also mentioned that he is the number one genius of a whole prefecture, so maybe he thinks that he shouldn't be called weak. But I don't really understand it either."
"So just because of that, he wants to torture me? Isn't that way over the top? Fuck. Do I really have no choice but to knock him out? I don't even know the laws here. I don't want to be on the run from the police straight away." Michael said with uncertainty.
"Why do you care about authorities? Just beat them up if they come for you." Iris stated.
"Iris, this is my new life. I don't want to be some kind of villain always on the run and hated all around. I want to be happy, make friends, help people, maybe trick some people and most importantly do what I want to do and be free. I don't want to beat up cops and governments that are after me for violence. There is no fun in that." Michael explained.
"Okay softie. How can you even be so soft after living for so long?" Iris asked.
"Well, after all, even while I was crazy and filled with drugs, I never killed or hurt anybody. It is not something I have ever done, and there is no reason to start now. Even though this guy wants to kill me in the most gruesome way imaginable, I don't really care. He is no threat or enemy to me. He is just someone interesting who helps me out of my boredom. I'm rather thankful to him. I might as well just knock him out and let him rest for a bit. After calming down, he might not want to hurt me anymore."
"Surely he would be thankful to you for knocking him out." Iris teased. "Listen just by the way he talks and behaves, if you really want to have your undisturbed peace and do what you want, you should just kill him and nobody needs to know about it," Iris said.
"As I said, I'm not going to start killing random people just because they want to kill me. I don't know how it is in this world, but where I come from killing is not something you should ever do, and it's even worse if you are doing it casually. In the worst case scenario, I will knock him out and go away. Hopefully we would not meet again afterwards."
As Michael was focused on his internal dialog he didn't pay any attention to the outside situation, where Hai Yan faced an unexpected problem. He just charged toward the unmoving Michael and swung his sword while screaming "Dancing Rain slash!!!". While swinging and seeing the still unmoving Michael, he was assured that Michael was stunned by his strong aura and couldn't move away out of pure fright. But as the blade hit Michael, the one in shock was Hai Yan.
As the sword collided with Michael's arm, instead of cutting it off, the sword was repelled off of Michael's skin. It felt like Yan Hai had struck iron. Michael's skin felt completely unbreakable and Hai Yan suffered the whole impact of the strike.
Hai Yan could not believe it and couldn't help but stare at Michael for some time. He felt no spiritual energy emitting from Michael at all, so he thought that Michael was a weak mortal without any cultivation. Coupled with his poor looking outfit, Hai Yan thought there would be no danger facing him. But now, it seemed like his earlier assumptions were all wrong.
There is no way someone without any spiritual energy was this sturdy, Hai Yan thought. Yes, it has to be a treasure that can block one slash. It was unlikely looking at Michael's outfit, but it had to be true. A treasure that saved his life. If I can beat him, maybe the caveman has some more wealth on him. Hai Yan thought greedily.
Now that Hai Yan assumed the treasure was gone, he wanted to capitalize. But just as he was about to strike again, Michael suddenly spoke: "Do you really want to kill me? Listen, you might not know, but I think I am a lot stronger than you can imagine. I really don't want to knock you out or hurt you, and I apologize for angering you. I really just wanted to help you out. Can we just make peace and let each other go?" Michael, oblivious to the strike from before said.
But Hai Yan didn't agree, "Haha nice bluff," he laughed. "Your treasure, blocking my strike just now, surely dissipated. Otherwise, you wouldn't try to make peace with me. Do you think I am too stupid to see what game you are playing? The Hai family is not some backwater place where you can show off one treasure and expect to get out unchecked. I will show you the consequences of messing with the Hai family." He said and went to attack again.
Michael sighed in disappointment and finally decided that he needed to knock out Hai Yan. The only problem was, that he didn't know how much power he should release to knock him out without killing him. After thinking for a bit, he moved too fast for Hai Yan to react and punched him in his gut. He used round about half of the strength he would use to bring down a tree.
Hai Yan flew back through the impact and hit a tree. He was instantly knocked out. Michael was quite satisfied. So it seems like the 4th stage of Qi Gathering equals half a tree. But at the same time, he still couldn't understand Hai Yan's behavior. "Was that really necessary?" he sighed in his head.
"He wouldn't shut up, so I guess there was no choice." Iris remarked, and after a short pause suddenly said:" Hey! I've got an idea. This is the perfect test. Let's get him into the Immortal Spirit Farm and let him out after some time. We can test the time flow differences between this world and mine and decide if we can ask others to enter. Gogogo, get him in!"
"You might be right. A little test, to see how long the time difference between the Immortal Spirit Farm and this world is, would be a good idea. Ok, I will start by getting him into my sea of consciousness. You will need to do the rest."
"Alright, let's go!", Iris responded.
Michael walked close to the unconscious Hai Yan and touched his head. He then dragged the spirit of Hai Yan into his sea of consciousness. "Your turn!" he said, and suddenly the body of Hai Yan vanished as well. "He's in," Iris said.
"Ok, so the first test should be how to get him out. Iris?"
"Yes I just need to eject his body and soul from my planet, and he should be back to your sea of consciousness. Then you just have to eject his spirit, and he should be back to where he came from."
"Alright, let's start!" Michael said.
5 minutes later
"Iris?", Michael said. "Is he coming out?"
"Well... I kind of... Can't get him out of here." Iris said.
"What, you can't get him out? Can't I help?" Michael asked.
"No, I think it is just not possible to do at the moment. It shouldn't be a problem with non-living things, but people can only enter and not leave."
"I don't believe it. I will help you. Let's try everything we can."
12 hours later
The next morning was beginning, as the sun started to bring light into the before dark forest.
Between the trees of the forest, a single man was sitting on the overgrown forest floor. He looked somewhat stressed, even though he seemingly just sat at the same place for the last 12 hours.
"Michael, it is useless. We can't get him out. We tried everything. Maybe as time passes we can assimilate my world better into your body and then try to get him out later. But for now, it is useless." Iris said.
"You are right." Michael sighed. "I can't believe you wanted to test, whether or not it is possible to get a living person out of your world. You should have told me," Michael scolded.
"If I said it, you would never let me bring him inside."
"Yes, that is exactly my point. This guy, right now, is alone in the Immortal Spirit Farm and has the same fate I had without even knowing what happened. And we don't even know how much time he had to spend inside because you still didn't figure out the time difference." Michael said angrily.
"Chill. Why are you even so worked up about this guy who wanted to torture you, and kill you in public after? Just let him suffer for some time, and maybe he will even change a little bit after he comes out." Iris tried to calm Michael down.
"Well, he was an asshole. But I still don't want him to suffer without even knowing if it will ever end. I will go into the Immortal Spirit Farm myself and apologize to him. I will also tell him that he will be free as soon as possible." Michael said. "You are sure that I can go out. Right?"
"Yes, you can 100% get out again. It is within your own body, after all."
"Alright, I trust you once again. But if I can't get out, I will fight my way out. And if I do that you know that you, or rather your planet, could die as well," Michael warned.
"Yes, I know. Don't worry. You will be fine to go in and out whenever you want." Iris responded.
Michael nodded and once more went into the place where he spent the last 1 billion years alone.
As he arrived at the familiar planet, he was shocked. All the vegetation Michael had planted was gone. The planet looked exactly like when Michael just started his trial, except for the small house he stayed in missing. He wanted to ask Iris why this was the case, but at first, he wanted to find the stranded Hai Yan.
But as he searched for Hai Yan, he found something he didn't expect. At a random part of the planet, there were various holes dug into the ground and as Michael flew closer he was shocked. On the ground in the middle of a large hole, there were human bones scattered around.
"Is this? Is this Hai Yan?" Michael gulped and suddenly realized. "Oh no! Was the time difference really that high?" Michael asked.
"Wait, he is dead? I don't really know the time difference yet. As I said, it will still take some time until I know what the current time difference is. Well, it seems to be quite a lot, as he couldn't survive even 12 hours," Iris said.
"So I killed him? And even the same way all those people in the trial died?" Michael could not believe he killed a human.
"Michael it's fine. You didn't kill him. I did. I put him into this world, and I am responsible for the accelerated time. And even what if you killed him? He is someone who wanted to kill you, torture you, humiliate you. Even if you had killed him, you shouldn't feel guilty. In this new life, you have the power to do what you want, to not be bored and to save lives and to take them as well. And if you kill people like that, people who attack you at the slightest misunderstanding, you should not feel any guilt." Iris comforted him after seeing his somewhat lost expression.
"Thank you, Iris," Michael said. "But you don't quite understand. I don't really feel guilty or anything for his death. He wanted to kill me and I didn't want to kill him. I don't want to take people's lives, but I don't really care about them either. My goal is to live my own life. If somebody wants to kill me, they can die if they want. Enough people died in Euler's trial. You could even say, that me living was causing others to die, since it was said that only the last one to survive gets out. It's just kind of frustrating. He basically just killed himself. I didn't even try to do anything. And the biggest problem is the way he died. Just like I lived and without the happy end." Michael tried to string together his thoughts.
"You are right, that guy was really stupid. He wanted to kill you over nothing and ended up paying the price." "Anyway," Iris continued. "This was just one unfortunate incident, but we learned a lot. We can't get people out, so we can't ask people to take care of the plants for us. Unless you want to take care of the plants, we can't grow them. But I have an idea that could work if there are a lot of people like that guy in this world. And it wouldn't even be too bad for them."
Iris explained her whole idea to Michael, who at first was against the idea of involving more people from this world, but after hearing what Iris had in mind, he actually considered it.
"If this really works as intended and there are enough evil people in this world, this will work," Michael said, astounded by the wicked yet genius idea Iris had in mind.
Iris laughed, "Just say it. I know I am the best and smartest world spirit."
"Yes, yes. You are so smart." Michael responded.
Iris laughed "No need to say it. I already know."
With that done and after Michael's first "kill", he left the Immortal Spirit Farm without any problems and finally went ahead to explore the new world he found himself in. A world of cultivation.