Chapter 11 – The World Keeps Turning

Shen Jian dived to the side but unexpectedly, he flopped to the ground much quicker than he should have.

Nonetheless, he just barely dodged the giant boar charging towards him.

“Damn it, whose bright idea was this?!” He snarled as he picked himself up hastily and then had to dive to the side again anyway to dodge another charge. “Oh yeah, my own.” He muttered as he spat some dirt out of his mouth.

The rows of thick unchained iron manacles on his arms and legs clanged noisily.

One ordinary morning, Shen Jian had the brilliant idea of adding weights to his training regimen. Nothing too special, just some wrist and ankle weights to slow him down so he would have to put more effort into his movements.

To him, it sounded like an excellent idea. After all, it worked for those characters having their training montage in other fictional worlds and his own current world was miraculous enough to be considered one of those fictional ones so he thought his idea might actually work.

It felt like a true opportunity to break past the strength bottleneck he had been at for many months.

With his mind set, he used some of his saved-up money to commission a few pairs of such wrist and ankle weights so he could execute his scheme. The village blacksmith didn’t ask any questions. He along with most of the other villagers were used to his bouts of eccentricity.

Shen Jian received the iron weights a few days later. To his annoyance, they looked like sets of thick unchained manacles instead of something sleek and decorative.

He supposed he had some unrealistic expectations for their appearance.

He tried out one set of weights on his arms and legs. Amazingly, he was just barely affected. He was quite stronger than the average powerless human after all so it was not a surprise.

In the end, he had to resort to wearing all of them at once to get a proper handicap for himself. At the time, he was satisfied and after some warmup exercises, he headed into the sparse forest.

However, Shen Jian had forgotten arguably the most important requirement he had when fighting against the beasts.

Sudden movement.

Whether it be dodging or throwing a surprise attack, both of them and more required sudden explosive movements to properly pull off. And while he could certainly move without too much trouble with the weights on, sudden explosive movements were… slightly more difficult to pull off.

“Shit!” Shen Jian cursed as he had to dive again before he even picked himself up from his previous one. The charging boar had readjusted its course and went towards his new position mid charge.

His joints ached with the punishment he was putting on them with his forced movement but he had no choice. Now that he had foolishly entered combat without thinking everything through, he had no choice but to follow through with it.

To that end, the next time he had to dodge, Shen Jian attempted to side step instead of diving. He ended up doing a side leap instead of a side step to clear the beast’s massive girth but he was successful, although just barely.

He repeated that trick several more times to get used to it, just barely sidestepping the beast’s charge again and again. And once he felt ready enough, the next time the boar came charging in…

Shen Jian sidestepped and then threw a backhand towards its face. The momentum of the heavy weights added to it and ended with him slamming the back of his fist to the boar’s face.

To his utter astonishment, the boar was abruptly thrown to the side, one of its tusks broken. The beast lost balance and fell to its side, looking visibly dazed by the hit.

Shen Jian had to stop and stare at the result of his hit. Then he stared at the weights on his arms.

“How heavy were these again?” He muttered, soon remembering that he hadn’t asked what the specific weights of the manacles were and the blacksmith hadn’t volunteered to answer.

“Oh well.” He shrugged and darted towards the boar struggling to stand up. He finally took the time to unsheathe his sword.

A minute later, he was standing in front of the dead beast, placing his sword back in its sheath. He looked at the boar and sighed.

“Dragging this thing back is also good training, I guess.” He mumbled, dispirited. He reluctantly grabbed its tail.

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Despite the trouble he had in the beginning, Shen Jian’s idea of weight training paid off very well. His physical prowess which had stagnated many months ago had once again begun to rise slowly and steadily.

The increase in strength was highly noticeable as well. A few months after he’d started the new training, he’d gained enough strength that he now had to forcibly hold himself back from breaking something when he performed casual actions.

He was still embarrassed by the one time he’d tried to open a door and ended up with the doorknob dangling from his hand.

At one point, he decided to test just how much his strength had increased. His method to test such a thing was to punch a tree and see how big of a crater he could make in it.

He was briefly reminded of the time Mei did the same thing but he put thoughts of her out of his mind and focused.

At the outskirts of the sparse forest, he set himself in a stance and with little fanfare, punched out at the tree trunk.

A loud explosive noise echoed around the area.

Shen Jian blanched and scrambled out of the way as the tree he punched fell to the ground with a loud crash.

He stared incredulously at the result of his punch.

The two feet thick tree trunk had been punched all the way through and the explosive force from it had shattered the wood surrounding the path of the punch. With nothing holding it up, the tree had fallen down.

Shen Jian stared at the place where the tree had been torn off. Soon however, a dopey smile came to his face.

“Hehe… hehehe…” He chuckled dumbly. “That’s so cool.”

Despite spending more than a decade in this world and fighting oversized beasts for a part of it, in the depths of his heart, part of Shen Jian still saw himself as a regular human back on Earth. And that part of him couldn’t help feeling awed by his current feat.

Punching a tree clean off was certainly an amazing feat after all. One he could relate to much more than fighting oversized animals.

“Ow!” He hissed all of a sudden, holding his right hand as a bit of pain made itself known. He looked at his hand and saw it covered with sharp wood chips. Some of them had pierced his hand and drawn blood.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He grimaced. “Right. No more punching trees until I get a better technique.” He declared.

After going home, bandaging his hand, exercising and going to sleep, Shen Jian woke up the next day covered in black oily residue.

“How many times is this by now?” He muttered in a low voice.

Lying on his now dirty bed, his eyes suddenly twitched at the extra laundry work that got added to the day’s routine.

He sighed.

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“Anything interesting today, uncle Cheng?” Shen Jian asked as his moved across the various open crates in front of him.

“Haha. Unfortunately, I still don’t have anything related to cultivators, young master.” A tall and well-built man with dark blond hair replied.

“Aww” The boy whined softly.

The man just laughed at his disappointment.

Lai Cheng, or uncle Cheng as Shen Jian called him, was one of the few merchants that had regular contact with the remote village Shen Jian lived in.

Most merchants in the wider area weren’t interested in trading with the village but a couple few who began their trade just recently and still didn’t have many connections did so because the village was a decent source of forestry products despite the long trek they had to make.

Chief among the many products were the pelts and hides of the oversized animals that inhabited the sparse forest, along with their meat in the event where too many of them were hunted. Evidently, they all fetched a good price in the cities.

It was also how his father and mother saved up so much money. His father had given up more of the meat from the beasts during harvesting in exchange for keeping their pelts and later selling them to the merchants.

While most merchants only visited the village when they were still in their beginning stages and eventually stopped after they acquired contacts and deals in better places, Lai Cheng was an exception to that rule.

He was the only merchant who continued trading with their village even after he became successful on other trade routes. No one in the village knew why exactly but most of them believed that he was simply good friends with some of the people in the village.

Shen Jian’s father had introduced him to the man when he was still young, even before he started to hunt. Over the years, Shen Jian had followed his father to visit him whenever the merchant arrived.

He and Lai Cheng had eventually grown familiar enough with each other for him to call the man uncle Cheng. Lai Cheng didn’t take that lying down and when he found out about Shen Jian’s intentions to become a cultivator, he started jokingly calling him Young Master.

Lai Cheng was close enough to their family that when he heard about the death of Shen Jian’s parents, he had gone out of his way to visit their house to check on Shen Jian back when he was still in his depressed state.

The two of them considered each other good friends despite only seeing each other once every few months. It was awkward for Shen Jian to accept someone so much older than him as his personal friend though, so he saw him as a family friend instead.

To him, Mei still remained his first true friend.

But as much as Shen Jian traded animal pelts with him, he still had his eye on getting anything related to cultivators.

To his continued consternation however, Lai Cheng just seemed unable to get his hands on any such thing.

The most he’d ever gotten were story books, the kind that he’d read when he was a toddler. While those were great for young children, they were completely unsatisfactory for Shen Jian now.

Shen Jian’s shoulders slumped in resignation. “Are cultivator goods really so hard to come by?”

Lai Cheng gave an apologetic smile. “They are. At least, it’s like that until I establish contacts with a cultivator or a cultivator organization. And most of the time, they’re not interested in making such contact.”

He sighed and scratched his stubble-marked chin. “Mundane goods just don’t interest them very much. And their own goods are something they can trade through their own channels. They don’t need us mundane merchants for them.”

Shen Jian looked at him, interested. “So how do you make those contacts then? You can’t possibly say that it’s impossible.”

The man smiled wanly. “It’s not impossible, no. It’s just…” He looked like he was struggling for words. “I need to get something that they’d be interested in buying. And if they did buy it, they’ll buy it with spirit stones.”

Shen Jian suddenly looked much more interested than before. “Spirit stones?”

Lai Cheng waved his hand. “It’s their currency. Silver and gold are much less valuable to cultivators, so they use something called spirit stones. While it’s great and all, there’s a big problem with its usage.”

“What problem?” Shen Jian asked.

“The problem is that no cultivator worth anything would ever exchange spirit stones for mundane currency. No matter the amount. Even if I give up a pot full of gold, they still wouldn’t trade for even the smallest spirit stone. It’s priceless in a very literal sense.”

Shen Jian looked bewildered. Were spirit stones that precious?

“Only a cultivator who’s completely down on his luck would trade it for gold.” Lai Cheng shook his head. “But… once I do get some, the matter would change.”

“How so?”

“Because then I can use those spirit stones to buy their special goods. While they probably won’t trade anything truly valuable by their standards, there is still a market that opens up with spirit stones.” The man enthused.

“Remember those trade channels of theirs I said earlier? I’d become one of them. Though I’d forever be on the lowest rung of that ladder since I’m not a cultivator myself.” He looked very excited.

Shen Jian was silent for a moment before he opened his mouth. “But uncle… How are spirit stones useful for you? They’re not the currency you use so wouldn’t you… lose out in terms of profit?”

Lai Cheng laughed. “I told you they don’t value silver and gold as much, right? Exactly because of that, they have a tendency to hoard that silver and gold without using it. So I just have to ask for some of it in exchange for lowering the spirit stone price.”

Shen Jian had a look of realization. “You’d just be bartering the spirit stones and cultivator goods while getting gold and silver as a free bonus.”

“Exactly! Though I’d have to set the spirit stone price high enough to still make a profit to continue trading though.” The man spoke thoughtfully.

Shen Jian quirked his lips. “All this is if you get into that market though.”

Lai Cheng’s shoulder dropped. “If indeed.”

Shen Jian stayed silent, pondering on the things he heard. There was a surprisingly complex yet flawed system in place between the mundane and supernatural parts of society.

Although he wasn’t very knowledgeable about trading, he still could tell there were questions that could be asked still.

For example, why not trade with merchants who already had the cultivator contacts? They would have spirit stones, wouldn’t they? And if cultivators didn’t value gold and silver, why did they hoard them? Or even better, how exactly did they even hoard without trading with mundane merchants for it? Did they mine and process it themselves?

There were too many questions. He didn’t understand. But perhaps that was exactly why uncle Cheng said there was a ‘problem’ with their system.

As he watched other villagers discuss with uncle Cheng with neatly packed animal pelts and other goods, Shen Jian’s thoughts returned to the man’s earlier words.

“Goods that cultivators would be interested in buying…” He muttered thoughtfully.

His eyes drifted towards the forest on the side opposite to the forest he usually visited. The thick forest.

“Hmm.” His eyes narrowed.

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Time continued to pass quickly.

Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months. Months turned into years.

Nearly two years had passed since Shen Jian had last met Mei. He was now over 13 years old. Two years left until he left the village according to plan.

His training had proceeded well and borne excellent fruit. He had grown so strong that he was now capable of feats that he’d never thought would be possible before becoming a cultivator.

A porcine cry echoed in the clearing as an oversized boar charged forwards.

At a distance, in front of it, Shen Jian set himself in a strong stance. He watched with a calm breath as the boar neared him, coming closer and closer.

His muscles flexed, his right foot slid back, his fist cocked backwards.

He took a breath.

The beast entered his range.

In a moment’s flash, his foot stepped forward and at the same time, his fist came forward and upwards.

A small boom echoed in the area.

His powerful uppercut hit the beast in the chin and completely reversed its course. Its forward momentum was cut off entirely and the beast was thrown into a sudden backflip and flung backwards.

It landed on its back with a crash. Without a moment’s waste, Shen Jian appeared beside it and he ruthlessly stomped on the beast’s neck.

The sound of something breaking was heard clearly.

The boar struggled for a few seconds and then laid dead on the ground with a broken neck.

Shen Jian stared at it silently. The beast that he’d struggled to fight in the beginning and trained himself against for so many years was no longer a challenge to him.

However, the sheer aggression these seemingly normal beasts possessed never ceased to surprise him. If they so much as caught sight of a human, they would immediately attempt to gore them to death.

It was the reason he didn’t feel terribly bad about mowing them down like he did.

His head turned and his amber eyes moved towards the direction in which he knew laid the thick forest, rumoured to be filled with spirit beasts that only cultivators could fight.

He hesitated and frowned. “Am I ready for that?”

He didn’t know.

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Under a clear evening sky dotted with emerging stars, a woman could be seen standing on a flying sword.

Calling her a woman was an exaggeration though since the truth was that she was still a girl in her late teen years.

Her long black hair floated with the wind, a red shine visible when the falling moonlight hit it at just the right angle. Her red dress barely shook, fit to her form as they were. Her blue eyes focused on the sight in front of her.

In the distance below her lay a mountain with a tall peak, her current destination. At the foot of the mountain laid a somewhat sparse forest.

She squinted her eyes. In the distance, she could see a village built next to the forest, bordering a river.

Even from so far away, she could tell it was a mundane civilian village. Her eyes averted away, losing interest and she ignored it.

She was here for what laid at the top of the mountain. And that was what she would focus on.

Her sword started to move forward and with a sudden acceleration, headed towards the mountain peak with the girl standing on the flying sword with a composed look on her face.