Clouds fluttered gently around the Heavenly Demon Sect as Liu Qi, the Grand Elder of the Heavenly Formation Peak, peered out into the jagged mountain range that sprawled before him.
It was a beautiful morning, and the sun was high in the sky, sending streaks of golden light across the land. Birds chirped nearby, their song melodious and healing, while the trees bathed lazily under the sunlight. Fields of green stretched as far as he could see from under the skirts of the mountains, spiritual herbs cultivated by the Sect's laborers swaying with the wind.
In the middle of all this was the Central Peak, the heart of the sect. Even though he was sitting on a cloud, Liu Qi could see the frantic activity over the peak down below, disciples buzzing like bees as they went about their morning routines.
Liu Qi found solace in their monotony. It had occurred to him that whenever his inner demons weighed on his heart, the simple rhythm of the sect provided a strange calm over his boiling thoughts.
There, a young man was waiting before the Alchemy Hall, black eyes glinting and one hand clenched around his spatial bag. Here, a fine young woman, another Outer Sect disciple, smiling as she caressed her new sword, gentle as if she feared that her fingers could somehow harm the glistening metal.
Even the laborers of the sect looked peaceful today. Liu Qi watched as a group of them, recruited from the nearby villages, strode into the Central Peak. They carried buckets of water on their shoulders, sweat drops rolling down the sides of their faces. The disciples around them gave way to their line, faces scrunched up and twisted by apparent disdain.
Just as Liu Qi was about to tear his gaze away, a soft clang sounded in his mind, carried by the winds from the Central Peak where he focused his Will a moment before.
Looking down, it seemed like one of the laborers, a young man no older than twenty, had slipped, and one of his water buckets had gone flying up before finally crashing down onto another young man. That young man was now soaked, his long hair plastered to his face in strips, his eyes wide as saucers as if he couldn't believe what had just happened.
Liu Qi recognized him as Yan He, one of the geniuses of the Inner Sect.
Furious, Yan He turned and jabbed a thick finger into the laborer's face, who stood frozen in his place, trembling like a broken kite.
"You dare!" Yan He roared as the other disciples around him covered their smiles so as not to become a target of his rage. Still, it was clear that Yan He himself felt humiliated in front of his fellow disciples. "Do you even know who I am? I'm the Young Master of the Yan Clan, the genius disciple of the Sword Peak, a candidate of the Core Peak of this sect, and yet you dare to sully my robe?!"
Liu Qi sighed tiredly. Geniuses had always been a difficult subject for sects. Try to control them, and they would walk away searching for another sect. Offer some guidance to them, and you would risk changing the core that made them a genius in the first place. Needless to say, not all of them were like this, but unfortunately, this Yan He fellow was one of those.
The best way to deal with these sorts of geniuses was, well, to let them be.
The laborer flinched back against Yan He's tantrum. His eyes searched pleadingly, looking back at his own group, but most had already turned their backs, acting as if they didn't want anything to do with him.
It seemed nobody in this world wanted to help that young man.
"I'll make you regret ever crossing paths with me!" Yan He roared, taking out a long whip from his spatial bag. Sneering, he started whipping the young man in front of the growing crowd.
The whip swished and cracked as it bit deep into the young man's flesh. Blood gushed out from his wounds. He screamed and thrashed around on the ground, breath wheezing out from his throat.
Liu Qi shook his head. "Inform He Yan that he is to retreat behind closed doors for meditation. He will spend the next six months reflecting on his behavior and actions. Even a genius isn't above the rules of the sect."
He let the wind carry his voice down to the Outer Sect Elders in the Central Peak, knowing one of them would put a stop to this little play. It was the least he could do. If he were to lay a hand on this He Yan, then he would have to bear the rage of the whole Yan Clan.
Not long after, Yan He stopped as an old man strolled into the opening. Ding Yan, an Outer Sect Elder of no particular importance other than the fact that he belonged to the Yan Clan, placed a soft hand on Yan He's shoulder and shook his head at him. Yan He was about to argue, but in the end, he let out a grunt and stormed off from the site, leaving a bloody, broken young man behind him.
"Take this young man to the infirmary. Let's hope he can survive this little lesson and learn how to conduct himself in the future," Ding Yan said as he waved a hand at the group of laborers, a little smile playing on his lips.
Liu Qi sighed yet again. It seemed that his pursuit of tranquility today had only invigorated one of his inner demons.
...
No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried to force myself out of it, I couldn't keep my eyes away from that one pimple nailed in the middle of the old man's forehead.
What the hell was that thing?
It looked so normal, except waves of black currents rolled underneath the skin, like some sort of wicked fog trickling down through the man's head. Should I pop it? Would I dare do such a thing when he glanced at me in such a way that made me feel so little?
In the end, I decided to keep my silence, letting the man rub the thick paste over my stinging wounds. Whipped to death wasn't that glamorous of an ending, but hey, it at least did a solid for me. And I wasn't about to complain to a man who was trying to heal me.
Easing my head against the bed, I let my thoughts wander to my new reality. From the memories of my soul-brother, Wei Ying, I knew that I was reincarnated into a xianxia world after that crash. It all seemed so distant, my last life, as if hundreds of years had passed and now I was here, stuck in another man's body, but alive once again.
I sent a prayer to whatever Gods there were over the rolling clouds that graced me with another chance. I promised I would do it justice.
Before that, though, there were a couple of things to consider. First of all, it seemed like I wouldn't be getting a head start considering this Wei Ying's situation. As the youngest child of the Zhao Clan, a clan of cultivators with a badass Grandpa running the gig, he always thought he would be a top prospect for all the sects around here, until it turned out that he didn't have much of a talent.
Like any sensible xianxia clan with a useless son would do, his clan had decided to kill him and be off with him, which apparently was one of the ways cultivator clans got rid of their descendants who had a decent chance of bringing shame to the family. His mother had volunteered for the deed, which shocked all the clan members, with some of them praising her for holding the clan's name above her motherly love.
That gave her the chance to secretly send her son off to the Heavenly Demon Sect as a laborer with a new name.
Here, Wei Ying was treated as a nobody, carrying buckets, scrubbing floors, picking trash and doing all that laborer stuff. He wasn't a slave, though, as the sect paid him a glorious sum of five silvers at the end of each month, which was barely enough to buy a single spiritual pill.
So, in theory, it was possible for a laborer to cultivate his way into the Outer Sect in about two or three years, unless they were killed in an unfortunate accident, of course.
Trouble was, it seemed like it was often the case with these people, and the eccentric Young Masters were the least of their concerns. There was always the chance of getting crushed under the toes of a spiritual beast when bathing it, or becoming a target for a lingering sword energy suddenly finding its way to their little village under the Central Peak and going berserk.
But I wasn't bothered with any of this. For me, the thought of getting a second chance alone weighed more than my rather humble circumstances.
I was of the mind that my xianxia knowledge could aid me in this grand endeavor. I wasn't planning to become an Immortal to rule the world. That whole murderhobo stuff and the competition didn't sit quite well with me. I though Imight help this Wei Ying deal with his family situation should I get the chance, but for now, I was more fascinated by the world around me and the promises it held.
One such promise was the faint currents sprawling all around me.
Was this Qi? The spiritual energy coveted by all the beings in this world, that could turn a simple man into a highly regarded Immortal who, with a wave of his hand, commanded the heavens and the high seas? If so, how in the hell could I see it?
It was odd, as even having spent three years in the sect, Wei Ying had only managed to step into the first step of the Qi Condensation Stage while his peers were already halfway to the Foundation Establishment Stage. He didn't have a killer technique, nor did he have some special cultivation manual. Hell, he couldn't even sense the Qi, instead depending on the spiritual pills to cultivate.
Shaking my head, I tried to inhale the faint currents around me, imagining they were being sucked into my mouth and my pores, only to gawk when they remained indifferent. I refused to give up as I tried once again, this time taking a deep, long breath.
"You're not doing yourself any favors acting like that, kid," came a voice as the old man's face appeared before me, one brow arched in mild annoyance. "Stay still and ease your breaths. You're lucky to be alive."
I gave the man a nod and smiled in gratitude, letting him think he was some master healer who had brought a broken man from the claws of death. Still, the tingling around my wounds told me that I was healing in real time, the long gashes closing visibly even as I watched them. There, the magic was happening right before my eyes. Or, inside of me, as I could see the faint currents of energy slowly converging around my wounds.
They looked like worms stretched far too thin, blending into my flesh and somehow stitching my skin back like they knew how my body was supposed to be. Did they simply act on their own, or was there anything guiding them to fix my wounds? Perhaps the spiritual energy knew that I was broken. Such an odd thing.
That pimple, though, still bothered me. I raised a hand over my face, wincing as I rose slightly to glance at the older man. His name was lost on me, but the least I could do was alert him about that pimple. Something sinister was at work under that acne. Something that stank.
"Senior," I said, earning yet another arched eyebrow from him. "I don't know much about these things, but I think you should get that pimple checked. It looks… different."
The old man paused, clearly taken aback as he regarded me. His other eyebrow joined the first one as they both arched in surprise, before both giving way to an annoyed smirk on his lips. "That whip got you bad, eh? Shook that little brain of yours, perhaps? I've seen it happen back in the day—kids suddenly going insane after taking a simple beating. I wonder if you're such a case, kid? Or why else would you try to lecture this old man in the field of remedy?"
"I… Uh… What?" I sputtered, my eyes growing wide as the old man shook his head and waved a dismissive hand at me.
"Your treatment is complete. Go back to your place and rest," he spat, turning his back and placing the paste jar slowly down on one of his counters. "If you feel any pain around your head… Well, try not to mess with the geniuses of the sect again, eh? That should do the trick."
Rising to my feet, I was ushered away from the infirmary by one of the old man's apprentices, a young guy who had a helpless look on his face. The whole thing was so ridiculous that I couldn't believe it even as I started off down the mountain path.
I knew being a laborer wasn't the most esteemed profession in the sect, but it at least should've warranted me some degree of common sense, like being treated like a normal, wounded man. Yet, after rubbing a paste over my wounds, the old man essentially shooed me away, as if I was a stray fly that had barged into his place and buzzed annoyingly by his ears.
When I thought about it, though, his attitude toward me was about right with what I knew from xianxia stories. I was but a mere laborer, not even a disciple, and there was no doubt that the old man thought the sect's resources were being wasted on me. For all I knew, he might've preferred my corpse instead of my soul-brother's half-broken body, so that it would relieve him of the discomfort of treating a no-name's wounds.
Either way, the pain around my wounds had alleviated into a mild sting now, and I could live with that. It was just that it made no sense to me that the old man hadn't been aware of who he was messing with. It wasn't wise for him to fall in with a newly reincarnated soul. Not very wise at all, as in the future, I might have to deal with him to clear my heart of any lingering inner demons.
For now, I would let the matter rest. I was more interested in the novel world around me.
Trees towered along my path down to the Laborer's Village, mountains rising and falling in the distance like a jagged wave of green and brown. Now and then, I heard the whistle of a sword passing overhead with a disciple or two on its back. Spiritual beasts roared and screeched, some lounging by the giant pagodas perched on top of the little hills.
And every little thing was coated with faint lines of spiritual energy.
Even the ground beneath my feet had wisps of energy wafting about, slithering around my legs and vanishing toward the clouds.
There, at the Western Gate of the Central Sect, a hurricane of those lines was busy trying to drill into an old man's body, who lay snoring on the grass. Three disciples on guard duty sneaked hesitant glances at him, as if not sure whether they should wake him or not. Thanks to that, I breezed through the gate, and off I went to my village.
For a sect of thousands, it seemed only right when I saw the magnitude of the village of laborers below the Central Peak. Resting under the grand shade of the mountain, the simple bamboo houses stretched forth as far as I could see, blending into the spiritual herb fields further beyond. People scuttled about in the streets, some bare-chested and others clad in gray robes.
It soon became clear to me that the whip session my soul brother had gone through had become a topic of interest among my fellow laborers. People stared at me with pained expressions, some even offering tea or a bowl of porridge. Others had righteous anger burning in their eyes, so intense that I knew in that moment it wouldn't be impossible to rally them against the authority.
Just a fleeting thought, though, as I didn't plan to make short work of this life. No, I wanted it to last long, longer than the one I had before.
I thought I might have an idea about how to do that. For all I knew, I was the only one who could see those faint lines around the world, and that had to mean something.
...