Unfamiliar surroundings.
The sound of people passing by.
Most importantly, the blinding sunlight.
"...Shit."
My heart sank. My body felt extremely cold.
Why?
It's simple.
"Where the fuck am I?"
The first thing I saw were ruined buildings. These looked like the ancient scenic spots you'd see in Google.
Next was the large traffic of people. They are dressed in a coat of sorts. Then it dawned on me.
"It's so fucking cold."
The shivers on my body mixed with my own trepidation.
For some reason, I was taken off my bed, bypassed the entire house, and was thrown in this unfamiliar place.
No matter what, it was scary.
Gulp.
I saw some of the people looking at me with a strange glance. From the small layer of frost on the grassland, I could tell it was winter.
"Winter?"
No shit.
It was fall before I slept. The warm touch of sunlight back then made me sleepier. The seven consecutive two-hour sleeps I did during finals week made me shudder.
I am getting off topic.
"Where am I..?"
I stood up from the ground. A wave of coldness seeped through my t-shirt and slightly thick jogging pants.
After some time (and apprehension), I was able to approach a group of people.
'She's pretty..?'
She should be around twelve or thirteen years old. She is adorable enough to give off an amicable vibe. Her tied golden hair paired perfectly with it, too.
That's not the point.
"Excuse me."
"Hm?"
The blonde girl looked in my direction. An eerie sense of familiarity came to me. But carried by my anxiety and confusion, my brain decided to look for answers first.
"Where am I?"
The girl looked at me in confusion. I could see it in her eyes.
"Strange."
Under that mutter was an accent of hers. It was British.
Thank god. It seems like I was really kidnapped and not brought into another world or the likes.
"You are in King Arthur's resting place."
"Glastonbury?"
"Uhm."
What.
The.
Fuck.
I looked around and found a familiar place. It was the scenic spot of my missed field trip five years ago.
But…
How?
I live in Hampshire. Calculating the distance…
It's a few hours of long drive.
What… I mean, why would someone kidnap me and throw me into this place?
I couldn't feel any pain in my body. I double-checked and looked through the neck part of my t-shirt.
I found nothing.
Just then, I gazed at the girl.
"Apologies. Thanks for the help."
"No problem."
When she walked away, her back felt more familiar.
Then it dawned on me.
"She looks like Durandal… Yeah, her small version."
Was it a cosplay? I don't know. Her hair did not look thick enough to be a wig.
"Fu… I need to contact my parents first."
*****
Shi Tian.
Twenty-one.
Fresh college graduate in Cambridge.
That's right. My family is well off. Given my parents' resources, I felt the need to work hard. My grandparents came from China to establish themselves in a foreign land.
Filial pity is one thing, but there's also the urge to carry on their legacy. Becoming successful is a way to do that.
I ended up successfully graduating. It's a good achievement.
But then, some sort of inexplicable thing happened to me.
"Fu…"
I took a deep breath to calm my hyperactive mind down.
I chronologically listed the clues I found after seven hours of walking.
First, my appearance.
I hadn't noticed it back then. My height became smaller, my body felt weaker, and my voice became less deep.
Upon looking at the mirror, I found out that I am back to my twelve-year-old self.
"Who thought of this…"
It's very similar to the plot in Detective Conan. You know, a promising young detective gets injected by a serum that reverts him into a child. Fast forward thousands of chapters later and decades in real life, only a few years had passed in the story.
I am getting sidetracked.
Long story short, things got more unreal.
I could feel the creeps crawling on my neck.
What do they want with me? Ransom? Kidnapping? Pure sadism?
I stomped my feet to the ground. The bench I was sitting on shook.
"Ugh… fuck."
I cursed today more than what I did in the past month.
My feeling of unease did not solely come from this.
"There's no number… and search results."
After toughing up, I was able to ask a stranger to borrow their phone. I tried calling the number of my parents… but to no avail.
The number is unavailable.
I tried reaching out to the landline on our house but met the same end. I ended up searching our family on google and shockingly found… nothing.
It was as if we were wiped out of existence.
Fortunately, I saw some crucial info in that phone.
"2012." I muttered. "How..?"
It was the year 2028 when I graduated. Why, in the Lord's name, would they set the date on the phone as "January 2012"?
Unless they are mentally challenged, it could only mean it is the default date.
Meaning, I somehow traveled back in time; back to a place where me and my parents did not exist.
It's still far-fetched to fully believe in this theory, but for now, it is something I can hold on.
I exhaled deeply as my thoughts began to consume me. I did not realize it was already turning nighttime and…
Gurgle.
My stomach rumbled in protest. I had not eaten anything since the morning. My body was still fine up to the afternoon due to the adrenaline surge I had. By the evening, it wore off.
I can feel how exhausted my body was. How hungry I felt.
I missed the warm and cozy bed I had back at home.
A cold breeze passed through me. I had a premonition of having a cold tomorrow.
"...fuck."
Now, I know how homeless people feel.
I am lucky enough for this bench to not have spikes and the likes. It's still 2012. Anti-homeless architecture does not exist on a large scale… yet.
Shivering in the cold, I tried my best to sleep.
Just a bit. This could be a very realistic dream. That I could go back to my room after waking up tomorrow.
Although this probability is less likely to occur, I still had it on me.
The thought of eating a warm meal and a cozy bed…
Yes…
That's just right…
*****
"Ahh?!"
The usual sensation of falling down a cliff forced me to wake up. I found myself kneeling on a dark floor.
"Hah…"
Was it a nightmare? I can't remember what I dreamed of.
"Did I fall off the bench?"
I looked back and saw a vast expense of darkness. There wasn't any bench whatsoever.
Hell, forget about the bench. There's nothing!
…nothing.
I blinked several times and snapped out of it.
"Oh no. Not the backrooms…"
The dream-like scenario I had since the morning came to my mind.
What if I am hallucinating? And that all of them happened in the backrooms? Or maybe the purgatory?
"Fuck, fuck…"
Resisting my body's urge to tremble, I looked around.
Everywhere, I saw nothing but darkness. Even the floor I was standing on was made out of darkness.
The only source of light was a golden orb floating in the sky.
The moment I saw it…
{The Great Dao of Heaven and Earth.}
{The force of nature that maintains all things.}
{Three thousand Daos lead to a single answer.}
{The truth all immortals seek.}
These words came to my mind involuntarily, as if I knew what it was from the beginning.
{All doubts will be borne by it.}
{The greatest teacher to immortality.}
…
Several new thoughts appeared in my mind. Each one of them explained what the golden orb was.
I have a feeling… that this is a cheat. MY cheat, to be exact.
It's already in place. I was sent to the past as my younger self. All that was left is a cheat of sorts.
Narcissistic thoughts aside, the golden orb explained many things to me.
It opens up the system to Immortal Cultivation. The likes that cultivate qi, build a nine-storey foundation, open their purple mansion, the perfection of golden core…
That huge info dump made me rest for a while. It further added to the confusion I felt after waking up. I am afraid my heart can't take much of it.
Roughly five minutes of calming down later, I started reorganizing my thoughts.
"What a strange cheat…"
The golden orb is the 'Great Dao'. It points out the way to immortality. The kind where people become unmoved by countless tribulations. Endless lifespan was nothing but one of its benefits.
As to how it 'points' out…
"Do I have to create my own techniques?"
I can feed a 'technique' to the golden orb. It then auto-corrects all of the mistakes related to cultivation. This, in turn, creates a flawless technique that is suitable for immortality.
In short, I can make random bullshit, feed it into the golden orb, and have it get auto-corrected. There are no limitations whatsoever.
I can invent a cultivation technique, alchemy technique, talisman-making technique, and so on.
One problem was that I can't see its 'true limitations' for now.
What if I create a technique so absurd it goes from Qi Refining to Immortal King in one realm?
It might be unrealistic. I don't know what the golden orb will do by then.
I stopped thinking about its pros and cons and focused on the problem at hand.
"How can I create a technique?"
Although I have an eastern origin, I only know simplified Chinese. Hand me over a Traditional Chinese text and it'll be pure gibberish in my eyes.
Aside from the problem of texts, I don't have any shred of knowledge about chinese medicine and the likes. The meridians I saw in some webnovels is a good example. I only know that there's one in the heart, lung, liver, spleen, etc.
Submitting a dumber-than-dumb manuscript to the golden orb… will it work?
"If ChatGPT was here… I can ask it to cook up something."
I am from an engineering course and did not need an AI to construct my essays. I still have standards.
Nevertheless, I experienced the convenience it brought when I forgot to do an assignment from my minor course. I woke up three minutes before the deadline and was able to use AI and a proofreader to have a grade of 92%.
Then again, it's 2012. It's not too late to invest in Bitcoin and the likes.
"Do I need a paper or..?"
I tried to form a simple manuscript in my mind.
The exercise my father did at home—Tai Chi.
It only has a few forms and a breathing pattern to watch out for. It was something ingrained in my mind for about half a year now.
I was able to completely think about the Tai Chi exercise. A flash of golden light appeared atop my hands. It was a hardcopy version of the Tai Chi I envisioned. A thin book with a blue hardcover and lined pages magically appeared on my hands.
From the two-line explanations to my father's illustration of each form, it was present. The only issue was the thinness of the book.
"It's the stuff I made up. Then…"
I don't know what ritual to do. I looked at the golden orb and said:
"I need guidance..?"
I looked back and forth between the golden orb and the blue book. It was then I saw changes occurring on the book.
Buzz-!
Hum-!
A line of golden light passed through it like a scanner. Moments later, the entire book changed.
It flashed with a golden light as its pages started to become thicker. The title on the front cover, simply named "Tai Chi", was swept by a golden light and changed into a new one.
"Toushen Yin-Yang Aperture Spiritual Guidance Manual."
…
What's with the long title?
I think it's enough to rival the titles of the Japanese light novels I have seen.
"Well."
It is very ungrateful to complain. I opened the book's first page and saw several paragraphs written in…
That's right, simplified Chinese!
"Okay, okay. I'm good."
It took some time for me to read the entire page. Out of habit, I checked the book's thickness and estimated around a hundred pages on it.
"I survived Calculus 1 and 2 with a 95% grade. I can do this."
Reading ten pages of the manual felt very novel. It first introduced some basic concepts of cultivation in-depth.
Firstly, cultivation does not work solely by inhaling and exhaling. There's a lot more to consider—namely, the tripartite talent indicators.
First was Spirit Roots. It is an intangible 'talent' responsible for attracting spiritual qi and giving various bonuses based on its element. A Fire Spirit Root can give a cultivation bonus to fire-based technique, be it in cultivation speed or spell damage.
Second was Spirit Bodies. It is the so-called 'Physique' that acts as an added bonus atop Spirit Roots. It's more random than Spirit Roots, as there are physiques inclined to thunder, spears, swords, flames, water, and so on.
Third was Comprehension. It is the rate at which a cultivator understands the Great Dao (i.e., nature). It plays a huge role in learning techniques and cultivation.
These three form a tightly-knit cycle that complements one another. If there are no Spirit Bodies, cultivators become more reliant on Spirit Roots and Comprehension. Consequently, if they don't have both Spirit Roots and Spirit Bodies, they need a sky-high Comprehension to find a way to cultivate without using spiritual qi.
It's a matter of conservation. If one aspect is lacking, the burdens on the other two become higher. If one of them is high while the rest are ordinary, the strong aspect can carry the remaining ordinary ones.
If someone happens to be unlucky and has zero talent on all three of them, they can only become a mortal.
"Then…"
The [Toushen Yin-Yang Aperture Spiritual Guidance Manual]... or the [Toushen Manual] in short, wasn't a spiritual qi technique. It is a manual that forcefully elevates the aspects of Spirit Roots and Spirit Body of its practitioner.
Once fully mastered, it grants them the 'Perfected Five Elements Spirit Root' as well as 'Ten Lights Immortal Physique'. Its sole requirement was a good Comprehension, though I am not sure if I fit the bill.
It does not have any 'mastery' or the likes. All I need is to repeatedly practice it according to the routine it spat out. It went against my expectations of techniques having mastery stages.
As for its benefits, I can't understand most of the eastern jargons. What it mentioned, however, was that the practitioner has a good chance of reaching the Dao Integration realm... whatever that was.
Looking at this technique and the unreachable golden orb in the sky, I did not know what to feel.
Everything's like a fever dream. The sudden kidnapping, time travel, and then this cheat…
"I can think of it tomorrow…"
*****
I don't know when I fell asleep. When I woke up, I felt something sliding away from me. It was a white jacket blanketed on my body.
"Huh..?"
It wasn't only that.
Underneath my arms is a wrapped sandwich.
Gurgle.
Starving for an entire day feels very terrible. My body feels weak. I feel lethargic in general.
"Who gave these..?"
I could not help but tear up slightly. There are still good people in the world.
"Fuck…"
Becoming a homeless kid with presumed zero identification in a foreign time, atop all, was disheartening. I realized the importance of my cozy life yesterday. Although I am lacking in sleep and suffered from a congenital heart disease, I lived in 'comfort'.
Then, I remembered it.
The encounter in my dreams. The golden orb.
"Huh..?"
The contents of the [Toushen Manual] appeared in my mind. It was extremely complete. I haven't finished reading its contents, yet I can recall all of them perfectly, as if I have some sort of photographic memory.
All that's left is to practice it myself. I can cross-check whatever I am doing and eliminate the mistakes thanks to that photographic memory.
Anyways…
It has a total of twelve postures, three breathing patterns, and a formula that needs to be recited at the start.
The original Tai Chi's purpose is to increase the cardiovascular system, strengthen the joints, train core strength, and calm down the mind. It increases the basic health condition of an individual.
That translated to a heaven-defying technique that increases a cultivator's talent, thereby letting them get closer to the Great Dao.
"The purpose of the original techniques matter… I can then control the purposes of the revised versions…"
I unfolded the wrapping of the sandwich and slowly ate them bite by bite. I did not dare eat all of them in one go.
I can still remember a case back then. There are people starving for a week straight. When found by others, they did not hesitate to give them food.
As a result, they died due to shock.
It is for this reason that the body should be allowed to slowly digest food after starvation. Once I finished eating half, I wrapped it back up.
Although my stomach is still rumbling, I ignored it. Instead, I walked up to the park's drinkable fountain and filled myself with water.
Due to my height, I can only scoop it up with my hands to drink it.
After my small breakfast, I sat down on the bench. I wore the white jacket on me, blocking out the cold I felt throughout the night. Mucus was forming on my noose, however.
My only hope in this predicament is the technique I brought out.
I reviewed it in my mind for a while.
"Alright."
Seeing that the sun still hasn't risen, there aren't many people around me.
I can practice without restraints.
I stood with my legs two feet apart. My core was positioned neutrally.
The first three postures involved the upper body—arms in particular. It was easy to do.
"Ever-flowing; existing anywhere;
The force of nature regulating all;
Voidness does not equate nothingness;
It is the clarity in one's form which dictates;
Virtue is not an indicator;
And so is Malice;
All things are equal;
Under the Dao's unassuming eyes…"
My concentration was broken when I broke my breathing pattern. I was already halfway through. It involved the upper and core strength.
Reciting a formula, controlling my breathing, and perfectly moving as the technique indicated was challenging.
Thankfully, I was able to finish it after three attempts.
The moment I did so, I was surprised to see a white fog forming around my body.
Rather than forming…
"It feels very warm…"
My body itself emitted a high temperature out of nowhere. It was the equivalent of an hour-long hot tub session.
My brain felt pleasure from the sudden comfort.
This session lasted for an entire minute before disappearing. Miraculously, the mucus on my nose was gone. My body felt refreshed compared to before. I still felt lethargic, but not as much as before. My stomach rumbled, still.
"That warmness should indicate success. But… it's supposed to last for three to five minutes on the first try?"
I thought hard for a while. The webnovels I have read popped up in my mind.
"Could it be that… I am in the modern setting. Spiritual qi is more scarce."
If there's no spiritual qi, then I should create it.
As to how…
"There's a reason why Einstein left so many traces in my engineering course."
The Work-Energy Theorem proposes that 'energy' is conserved throughout a system. That meant kinetic energy, potential energy, and elastic potential energy produced energy to do work.
Although spiritual qi is lacking in the modern setting, there are many other energies, including but not limited to the three aforementioned earlier, electrical energy, nuclear energy, and the likes.
If I can filter it in some way, attract them, and turn them into spiritual qi, my cultivation's a done deal.
"That's it. A filtration technique, then a real cultivation technique."
Amidst this cold winter, my heart steadily beat in excitement.
*****
"Achi!"
A white-haired girl sneezed. She had just given her jacket to a poor boy in the park.
"All of them are full at this hour. Why am I unlucky?!"
Her pair of ocean-like eyes stared at the high-rise building in resentment. She had arrived in Glastonbury in search of her old man. Only god knows how much she went through after her father disappeared like a deadbeat, only leaving a black card to ensure her expenses. That, and a reliable phone number.
Due to the sudden influx of high-ranking visitors, all the hotels in Glastonbury are occupied. She was forced to wander on the streets searching for a vacant hotel.
Just then, she felt a strong gust of wind. It was strong enough to blow her double braids over.
"This feeling..!"
It appeared momentarily before disappearing.
She did not know when it appeared. The girl has a feeling every time those 'zombies' appear. It was a suffocating force that could make everyone weak.
Just now, a thin pillar of that 'suffocating force' appeared not far from her.
The girl subconsciously held the gun holstered on her back. She looked around and found nothing.
She simply bit her lower lip and decided to investigate.
With her current gorilla-like strength, it wasn't hard for her to sprint more than 500 meters in a minute.
Soon, she arrived at the place. It was the park she passed by earlier.
Kiana became more vigilant. Its wide space did not mean safety. Those undeads and flying monsters can appear out of nowhere.
She went closer to the place she felt 'that'.
What she saw next stunned her.
"It's that guy…"
There was no one around the park at this hour. Only the boy existed amongst the four benches available. He is doing a form of exercise with eyes closed. His mouth was moving fast, saying things Kiana could not understand.
Strangely, the suffocating pressure disappeared when it came to him. Only a gust of wind was left along with her uncertainties.
A total of five minutes had passed since then. The boy opened his eyes. The suffocating force also disappeared at the same time.
His eyes were caught in some sort of extreme comfort. A large amount of white fog rose up from his body.
"This is a hot spring… It's very magical."
Shi Tian was still caught up in his own world when he glanced at Kiana who was watching him.
She was silent.
He became silent too.
First was bewilderment, then amazement.
"How can she be so accurate..?"
"Hey!"
His mutters were stopped by her voice. Unlike what he expected, even Kiana's voice sounded a lot like Kiana despite speaking in English.
It felt very natural.
"Ah..?"
"Do you know what you're doing?"
"Uh?"
Shi Tian looked at her confusedly. Kiana also fell silent upon not receiving the reply she wanted.
Just then—
Swoosh-!
Bam-!
—a small white silhouette crashed on the park's ground. The cement had a large web of crack due to it.
Under his shocked look, he saw what it was. A small monster encased in a white shell. It has the shape of a bat with purple lines on its wings.
"...No shit."
It seems like he traveled to Honkai.