Chapter Text
Well, I didn’t see that one coming.
Of course, everyone in the office knew that the tall metal shelving unit, unfastened to the wall since Maintenance had to move it— heavy with the binders of invoices I needed for my work and two beds of retention files’ boxes stowed on top— was an accident just waiting to happen. “Aura ▇▇▇▇▇! Don’t you dare fall down!”, had even called one of my work friends when she saw me open the little foldable stepladder.
Yeah, it was a foregone conclusion.
Waking up again, laying down in the middle of a busy street, about a whole meter shorter and not understanding a single word spoken around me? And then the floating dialogue box appearing right in front of my face?
Unexpected! Really unexpected! And, dare I say it, overwhelming.
So I got up and ran away.
I couldn’t see very clearly, you know, due to the dialogue box and all, but I ended up in a conveniently empty side alley, just wide enough for my currently tiny self. Once reasonably hidden, I paid attention to the text displayed on the dialogue box. It read:
「العربية
Deutsch
English
> Español
Français
한국어
日本語
Русский
Tiếng Việt
中文
…」
And it had a little blinking arrow shaped cursor encouraging me to choose and a dauntingly small scrolling bar that hinted to a really long list. With a sigh, I selected Español and the text of the dialogue box blinked out, replaced by a little loading circle animation. It spun twice and then a loud mechanical voice, with a very strong Peninsular Spanish accent, announced:
「 Código de activación: “¡Más vale que valga la pena, me voy a morir aquí antes de que se descargue!” Sistema activado automáticamente. 」
「 Bienvenida al Sistema. Esperamos proveerte de la mejor experiencia posible. Nuestro más sincero anhelo es que, durante tu tiempo, puedas cumplir tus deseos y disfrutar de esta obra. 」
Well, shit. In my defense, one: nobody actually expects to be taken at their word when voicing that sort of thing, and two: that novel had been very, very difficult to acquire! And I wasn’t all that interested in the first place! One of my old roommates was very into it and kept bugging me to read it. I resisted for months, but then she convinced a mutual friend to read it, so both of them were bugging me and in the end I said yes in exchange of them watching Deca-dence, because everything was worth it in the name of the very precious bond between Natsume and Kaburagi-san!
But I couldn’t find the novel anywhere.
Apparently, it had been more readily available before, thanks to a dedicated fan-translation, but the rights had been sold for an official translation and a netflix donghua— or so they said, because there had not been further news about either project and meanwhile the blog where my friends had read the novel was taken down. It went so far, that every link I found to download it was broken, or was obviously some kind virus. In the end, the only somewhat reputable file I could find was a version half machine-translated into Spanish from English (so I was even less excited about reading it) in a ridiculously large PDF file I still tried to torrent even though it had one single sad seed.
And I forgot about it because it was taking ages! Like, civilizations fell! Mass extinction events happened! Entire new continents were formed! Ages! It was like back then in the dark times of dial-up internet.
But before I could complain, the System continued:
「 Debido a que eres una Usuaria internacional poco familiarizada con Camino del Orgulloso Demonio Inmortal, el Sistema te ofrece los siguientes bonos: 」
「 Modo Sandbox habilitado; Modo Historia opcional.
Mientras el Modo Sandbox este activado:
- Usuaria002 no recibirá misiones relacionadas a la trama.
- Usuaria002 no tiene limitaciones OOC.
- La Tienda y mecánica de Puntos-B permanecerán bloqueadas.
- Objetos, locaciones y mecánicas de reanimación no tendrán efecto en Usuaria002 una vez que sus Puntos de Salud estén en cero.
- La cuenta se cerrará automáticamente una vez que los Puntos de Salud estén en cero.
- Una vez activado el Modo Historia, el Modo Sandbox quedará deshabilitado hasta que la trama sea completada al 100%.」
「 Herramientas de Accesibilidad de Idioma optimizadas.
- Para acceder a las Opciones de Idioma, favor de seleccionar el icono ⚙️」
I immediately changed the language to English because no-one from Latam will settle for Peninsular Spanish if given another choice. Additionally to the option to change the System’s language, the Settings offered me subtitles in English and closed captions (both in pinyin and traditional Chinese), which I enabled. The audio was only available in Chinese, but I would have selected it anyways; subs not dubs, you know?
In order to test the Language Settings, I cautiously stepped out my little hiding place and walked until I could overhear people talking again.
The closed captions appeared as a translucent dark ribbon with white text at the bottom of my field of vision, they read what I interpreted as a [people talking] sort of message because it didn’t change until I concentrated on the voices. It was then that the subtitles appeared as white text outlined in black, just above the dark ribbon, and the closed captions started transcribing the speech. It was really cool, unsettling and disorienting, but really cool.
I was just playing around, listening to random conversations and trying to get used to the subtitles, when someone said behind me: “There you are!” and I was suddenly graved by the upper arm. I was forcefully made turn around to face a woman, who yanked my arm up and dragged me away. She was rough and it hurt, so the eyes of my little body filled up with tears.
As we walked, she started berating me for having getting lost. Like, lady, I don’t know how I ended up in the middle of the street before I was isekaied, but this body was about four, if anything, you lost me.
“Hóng Xīdàn! Are you listening to me?” she said, punctuated by a yank to my arm, but a little chime sounded and I definitely stopped listening to her, because the System piped in (in a completely different mechanical voice):
「 Account successfully bound to role: Hóng Xīdàn ( 洪熙旦 ), Generic Minor Background Character. Current Health Points (HP): 23.996/25. Starting Spiritual Energy Points (SE): 5. 」
The woman yanked at my arm again.
「 HP: 23.991/25 」
「 HP: 23.986/25 」
Whelp.
“System, how can I raise my Health Points’s cap?”
「 The HP cap will automatically be raised as User grows up! A non-Cultivator Human Character can not reach a HP cap higher than 200! 」
「 User must reach the First Layer of Qi Condensation to acquire a HP cap of 300! 」
「 100 SE are required to reach the First Layer of Qi Condensation! 」
That meant I was going to need to learn to meditate, didn’t it?
*
The enormity of the situation I was in did not hit me until later.
After returning home I was sent to bed without dinner. Being confined alone and hungry enough to suspect poor original Xidan had not eaten in a while, in a dark room with the proof of my own mortality— all nice and clearly displayed as numbers that tickled down, slowly and steadily, as time passed— really did inflict a very deep sense of hopelessness.
And well, I had already died once, and while I had thought I wasn’t scared of dying, all of this “waking up as someone else” nonsense did fill me with existential dread; was I condemned to keep living on life after life? Wasn’t I supposed to at least, like, forget my past lives? I definitely did not want to die a second (but now slowly!) time and have to remember it, no thank you, nuh-uh.
So I tried my best to avoid dying again, and it was surprisingly hard!
The woman who had dragged me home turned up to be my wet-nurse, whom had been in charge of me since my mother died. As I understood from what I had overheard (which was a lot! People were really careless around little ears in this house!) I was the oldest child of a man I had yet to meet, whose occupation was still a mystery, but who was wealthy enough to have a fancy complex of courtyards for his wife and concubines― well, just the one, who had been my mother. In usual circumstances, this should have been a very good thing for my wet-nurse, especially so because my father was getting into years, and my mother had been brought into the household because the wife was unable to conceive! If I inherited, my wet-nurse ― being the one who raised me― was set for life!
Unfortunately for her plans, I had an unexpected half-sibling on the way. And not only that! A divinatory chart was consulted and everyone was already expecting a boy! From the wife! A much preferable option for a heir than a shu daughter. (And while I wasn’t complaining about being considered for inheritance at all, I was surprised it happened in a setting where the main guy had three hundred wives!)
Obviously, now with her dreams broken, my wet-nurse had to take out her frustration on me, when she wasn’t neglecting me. After all, it didn’t matter anymore if I was attached to her or not.
It was very fucked up, but it also meant I was left to my own devices a lot, and I used that time to further my plans to become a Cultivator.
*
I didn’t know much about the setting of Proud Immortal Demon Way, like, not only did I know just the bare minimum about the plot, I had not even been into Xianxia! It sounded interesting and there were some donghuas and cdramas I intended to watch, but I never got around to do it.
I regretted that! A lot!
I was now going blind, and to make matters worse, while the Language Settings allowed me to understand what was said around me, I didn’t know how to read and I couldn’t speak on my own; the System could help me by providing some NPC-like dialogue options when I needed to say something, but it felt very disorienting to have my body (which was already not really my own!) talk by itself since I couldn’t do it myself yet, so I tried not to use the System’s help very much. AND! On top of that, regular people didn’t know much about Cultivation in the first place.
That meant I could not find information on my own and I couldn't ask questions.
So instead, I threw myself wholly into the more familiar and comforting grounds of Language Acquisition. My new body still had its wonderful brain plasticity! I was picking up grammar so well! I made mistakes, but they didn’t look out of place in a child, even if they probably weren’t the sort a native speaker would make, and I had the muscle memory to pronounce and recognize most sounds! It was great! Even the hardest thing to do, which was learning to read and write, brought an unexpected boon! As I practiced and wrote interminable writing exercises, first on the dirt and then on innumerable bamboo strips, I found out it sometimes made my spiritual points raise, even if only by just a hundredth.
Eventually, through trial and error, I learned I could achieve similar results with weaving and needlework, and by playing the flute, so I figured it was related to effort and discipline. Unfortunately, there was some other criteria I was lacking and I probably needed actual instruction to achieve consistent results.
*
I was eight the first time I met a Cultivator.
Two persons had disappeared near the riverbank— both of them young women, of course— who had been there one moment and then just gone, according to witnesses.
A request for aid had been sent to the closest Sect, but the case was apparently considered low priority. In the meanwhile, the town had no option than to try keep everyone away from the river. Nevertheless, that situation was unsustainable for long, and an inevitable third victim was taken.
Fortunately, a wandering rogue Cultivator had arrived in town in time to rescue the girl and— hear this— he killed the monster by collapsing the cave where it lived.
Yeah, that monster was absolutely dead and it was definitely not going to get out in about ten or so years to start killing again.
But I didn’t hold it against him, in part because he didn’t know we all lived in a novel, but also that he had not escaped unscathed from the whole ordeal, and also because he seemed like a genuine good person in how he indulged me and my little brother while he was housed with our family.
“Can Mo-daozhang tell us more about his travels?” I asked for Hong Xitian, who was four, very shy, and had developed an immense case of hero-worship.
“Of course, what would Hong-guniang like to know?”
I thought about it. On one hand, this was my best chance to learn about real Cultivation. On the other, A-Tian, who wanted to hear more about cool monsters, was giving me the puppy eyes, and I was weak against the puppy eyes— I was weak against him in general, but specially so to the puppy eyes.
“Has Mo-daozhang fought many monsters?”
He smiled and told us some adventures, probably heavily edited to be child-friendly, but still slightly bloody. This man was definitely a ‘cool uncle’ type.
In the end, I didn’t have to ask; he probably expected it from every child he encountered, so he offered to examine my meridians and, with some trepidation, I extended my arm.
Mo-daozhang placed two fingers over the pulse on my wrist. After a moment he hummed and released me.
“Well,” he said with a smile. “It does seem like Hong-guniang has potential as a Cultivator.”
“Really?”
“Yes, but this one believes Hong-guniang would benefit from formal instruction.”
*
One year later I found myself digging a hole, which was not at all how I imagined it going.
Mo-daozhang had been the one to arrange the whole thing, from convincing my parents to let me Cultivate (easy, once Mother realised that me leaving to join a sect would cement Hong Xitian’s position as heir) to arranging the journey to Tian Gong mountain range; even though Huan Hua Palace was nearer, he believed my chances to be accepted were higher at Cang Qiong.
It didn’t seem like that to me now that I was exhausted and covered in dirt, dreading what would happen if I didn’t catch the eye of any of the people in the fancy robes, and I was also very surprised I didn’t have blisters on my hands yet. I wished Mo-daozhang was a little less of a “cool uncle” type as to be ok being responsible for children in a permanent manner.
My nails scratched against something hard and I stopped digging. I dried sweat from my forehead with the back of my sleeve and looked up to the sky with a sigh. The patch of ground where I was attempting to dig was riddled with large rocks I would need to break in order to remove and I couldn’t just go around them, since they were so large and numerous. Breathing hard, I screwed my eyes shut and gritted my teeth, swallowing a complaint. I had already dug a nice sizeable hole before encountering this problem, and while the aspirants had not been told what sort of hole we were supposed to excavate, or how we would be judged, we had been instructed to dig until told to stop. That meant I had two options that would fulfil that requirement: keep at it or start anew.
I took a deep breath and let it go. I opened my eyes, climbed out and searched for a new unoccupied spot. There weren’t many, seeing as Cang Qiong had many aspirants, except for a space left next to some shrubbery I would have to take out, but dealing with some roots was preferable (and much more viable) than attempting to break a boulder without any tools.
I didn’t know how much time had passed, just that I had made some progress, even if not nearly as much as I had before I bumped into the rocks, when a disgruntled young man in white and yellow clothing called me over and guided me to a tent where awaited his master, the Lord of An Ding Peak.
That last little titbit of vital information I only knew because—while my guide just delivered me and then left without further word, to me or his master-- during our travel from my hometown to Tian Gong, Mo-daozhang had taken the time to explain to me that I was in luck because the previous generation of Peak Lords had just ascended last year, meaning that, if I passed the admittance test, I would be part of the very first crop of disciples chosen by the newly invested Qing generation. Thankfully he had also made sure I knew their names and their respective mountains, which— due to the generational name— was akin to memorising the dwarves’ names in The Hobbit, but conveniently color coded like Homestuck trolls.
I bowed low, with the backs of my hands facing him, but I was unsure if I should greet him as “shifu”; was I already in, or was this the personal interview part of the test?
“This master is called Shang Qinghua. May you tell me your name?”, he asked after telling me to rise and inviting me to sit at a low table. The tent was undecorated, but rather full with piles of lose documents and ledgers, like he had work to do throughout the test. The Peak Lord himself was very baby faced, as to appear even younger than the disciple who had brought me to him. He was wearing very fancy yellow and brown robes and an elaborate guan, but looking at his ink stained hands, deep eyebags and flyaway hairs, I got the impression of someone who regularly ate lunch on his desk, if he even got to eat lunch in the first place. I was immediately predisposed to like him.
“This one is called Hong Xidan, sir.” He hummed and pushed paper, brush and inkstone to my side of the table.
“Can you show this master how it is written?”
So personal interview it was.
I did my best to clean my hands discretely on my clothing, grinded some ink and wrote my name. I took care of making the characters neat and small, utilitarian clerical script, instead of fancy and showy calligraphy. He took the paper and nodded, smiling a bit.
“Does Hong Xidan know what does An Ding Peak do?”
“This Xidan know it is the logistic’s Peak, sir.”
“But do you know what does logistics mean?”
“It is—” I had to think about it for a moment “—the management of resources?” He lost the smile and blinked a couple times, did he expect me to not know? Well, I supposed a normal nine years old child would probably not.
“Yes, it is. This means that An Ding Peak is the one who acquires everything that the Sect needs, does the deliveries both to and from the Sect, the maintenance, the storage. Also, for some reason, it is the one doing the accounting and auditing,” he said, listing the items with his fingers as he said them. “That means that An Ding does a lot of paperwork, so much paperwork--” he illustrated that part with a gesture that encompassed the whole tent “—and heavy lifting and thankless, straight up unpleasant work nobody else wants to do... May I see your hand?”
I offered it, a bit too aware of all the dirt I wasn't able to remove, figuring he wanted to check my meridians, but he only inspected the palm.
“See? No blisters and you still have all your nails. You are already subconsciously using qi to reinforce your body, or did you do it on purpose?” I shook my head. “Well, you did, which is great and it will serve you well. An Ding needs sturdy disciples. Ahh, but do you know what made you catch my attention?” I shook my head again. “It was when you stopped digging, you looked really frustrated and I thought ‘this kid is gonna quit’ but instead you very obviously swallowed a curse and started again. That’s what I’m looking for... On the other hand you also showed a willingness to cut your loses, and it is such a drag when disciples decide to quit, it is a whole administrative process. So, knowing this do you want to join?”
I bowed again.
“This disciple thanks Shifu for the opportunity.”
Because, ha! He might had been trying to scare me but the joke is on him! That sounded exactly like all the jobs I had before dying in my previous life!
Was I thrilled to be doing it again? Absolutely not. Did I want to return home with the tail between my legs to be either killed off or married out? That would be even worse! The only thing I would miss was A-Tian, but he was also the very reason I would be miserable and I didn’t want to become bitter towards him! Here, I could keep loving him and instead hate my boss and co-workers, which was a perfectly normal and not at all unhealthy thing to do!
“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you!” said my new master with a grin, and then dismissed me from the tent while another aspirant was ushered in.
Ping, chimed the System.
[Congratulations! Congratulations! Congratulations! Important things must be said three times! User has received the Achievement: Joining a Sect.]
[Activate Story Mode:]
[YES] [NO]
Absentmindedly, I selected “NO”, just like every other time it had asked before.