It seemed like his consciousness came too before his body did. Nothing Tony could do would cause movement, but he could distinctly feel his surroundings. He could feel that beneath his body lay a soft fabric, wrinkled in an intricate manner. Compressing him from the top was a fluffy cloud of warmth. A lavender-esque scent permeated his mind, with a hint of … something else. And the distinct noises of nature – or perhaps the lack thereof – indicated he was in a building of some kind. Tony instinctively knew – perhaps from his life on Earth – that he was lying in a bed. Who's bed? He wasn't sure.
Just as that very question entered his mind's eye from the periphery, a deluge of thoughts and visions swamped his mind. It was as if he was sailing on calm water with the warmth of the sun peacefully basking upon his entirety, only to voyage directly into the depths of a hurricane. The headache was insurmountable. Waves of pain and misery overturned his humble mortal vessel. Clashes of blades and screams could be heard beyond the thunder. Accompanied with the thunder were flashes of loneliness and sorrow as a lone hand reached towards the heavens.
He could see a life of solitude with a clarity contrasting the rain and wind surrounding him. Bloodied bodies heaved off the side of a boat into the rapids below. A crying boy, somehow still alive, pulled from the icy waters. An island in the eye of the storm, warmly receiving him. And none on the island to guide or assist him.
And then it all subsided as if nothing were there at all. Slowly regaining control of his body, Tony's face reflected mental strain via a creased brow and scrunched eyes. He couldn't make sense of it. Recovering from the storm only provided more questions. Those sights were not his own. Who’s were they? And who was he?
Tony thought and thought – straining his mind to the extremes. Suddenly recalled his meeting with the man in the heavens not too long ago. “You shall become a hero,” he recalled. With nothing else to go off of, he could only believe he was sent to a world where bloodshed was common, sects fought for resources and land, and cultivators isolated themselves to achieve dao and touch the heavens. All at the expense of the mortals ambling beneath them.
He wondered. Who occupied this body before himself? Only a name and limited memories came to mind. He was Lin Yan, an outer disciple of the Verdant Jade sect. Lin Yan had been annihilated in what the elders decided was an exchange of pointers between disciples. Unaware of his inevitable demise, Lin Yan was treated in his unconscious state using the bare minimum the sect promised to outer disciples. Naught but the cheapest of spiritual herbs were used and no restoration pills were to be dispensed. After treatment Lin Yan was brought to his residence. It was a shared space – much like modern military barracks – that all outer disciples called home. Each received a small room containing a bed, a few storage bins, and a small meditation area. The washroom was a communal affair.
This bothered Tony. Under normal circumstances there should have been no reason for his room to be scented lavender. There was that underlying scent too. Straining to open his eyes and sit up in bed, Tony quickly surmised why. Half dried and half soaked into his sheets was a black tar-like substance that reeked of rotting eggs. When his soul arrived in this body, impurities must have flooded out of his body and coalesced into the ooze on his bedding. Instead of cleaning him up and changing the sheets, whoever had encountered the smell unceremoniously spritzed lavender scented oils into the room to mask the repugnant smell.
Deciding to do something about the sickening sludge covering himself and the bed, Tony got up and walked over to one of the couple storage bins found in his room. From one of the lower ones, he fetched the spare bedding provided to him by the sect. He clumsily changed his sheets, attempting to adjust to his new lanky frame. It was more difficult than one would might expect. Places that shouldn't have been within arm reach suddenly within grasp was a very foreign concept. Several times, flesh collided with the wooden frame of the bed, making terrible thumping sounds. A couple minutes later and after somewhat synchronizing with Lin Yan’s body, his work sped up tenfold and was finished in no time. Tony walked along the oaken floors - some spare clothes and dirty sheets in hand - first to the garbage room and then to the washroom.
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The walk to the garbage room was straightforward. No one was in the halls to disturb his path and the path itself was simple. Apparently, Lin Yan had made this trip countless times before. The sect did not have enough resources nor care to allot each outer disciple with a mortal servant to do these chores, so everyone in the living space had to take care of the tedium themselves. Tony ended up in what amounted to a room with a furnace inside and hefted his dirty sheets right into the glowing orange chamber. It was not worth it to try and save those sheets. Mundane methods of removing the impurities would have little to no effect and might even damage the fabric. Tony left and sauntered towards the washroom.
Upon arriving in the male washroom, he was greeted by the sight of floral paintings hung on walls made of stone masonry. The rough oak floor too had been replaced by smooth stone slabs. Undressing, and fetching a modesty towel made, Tony enjoyed a mediocre bath by modern Earthly standards. The water was slightly warm, heated by one of the thousands of low-grade fire-aspected spiritual treasures the sect owned. The soap lacked any scent or even any indication it was actually antibacterial. Tony only mindlessly grumbled to himself that he needed to adjust his mindset if this were to be his life from now on. Maybe one day when he formed a Golden Core he would no longer have the need to be in a bathhouse at all. Perhaps simply a thought could dispel any mundane impurities from one's body and clothing.
But that was a far off fantasy. If Lin Yan's memories were anything to go by, he hadn't even finished with Qi Refining. Once completed, Tony first had to progress through the arduous process of Foundation Building stage and experience many trials. Then he could partake in the long journey of forming his Golden Core. Then and only then would he be able to clean himself with a trifling wave of his hand. It was regrettable that dozens of decades would be spent honing these skills by a cultivator of Lin Yan's talent.
As he finished up his bath Tony dressed and reaffirmed to himself that he would attempt to change that. Hopefully with whatever plot armor he was given by the man from the heavens, he would be able to ascend at a much quicker speed than otherwise afforded to him. As for how much quicker, that would have to wait. Tony's grumbling stomach cried for food, and Tony was starting to sympathize with it.
Unfortunately, Tony noticed a startling absence of light shining through the frosted glass embedded in the boathouse walls. "That explains the lack of people wandering about," he thought. So instead of making his way to the cafeteria - where mortal cooks prepared mortal meals for the outer sect disciples - Tony instead roamed over to the exit of the living space.
Stepping outside was a wonderful experience for an earthling like Tony. Never before had he smelled air so crisp, so unadulterated by the pollution from factories and cars. He sighed. "I could get used to this," he whispered to no one in particular. The freshness of everything around him felt invigorating, offsetting the hunger that plagued him. There was also something else in the air. Something magical. His mind told him that it was qi, an ethereal energy permeating the cosmos. He walked over to a nearby willow tree. The grass under his shoes gave a certain lightness to each step. Upon reaching the tree he sat down, assuming a lotus position.
Using Lin Yan's meditation techniques, Tony felt qi running through the ground and air and into his meridians. The open ones were stimulated and the closed ones were gradually being forced open. Concentrating – with a single bead of sweat on his forehead – he found that out of the plethora of meridians in his body only a few remained closed. A startling difference from Lin Yan’s memories. It seemed that the removal of impurities during his soul’s arrival caused him to open up his meridians at an alarming, dangerous rate. If he was unlucky, Qi deviation may have occurred and he would be crippled for life. But he was the main character, so no such thing happened. No longer was he Mid Stage Qi Refiner. Rather he had broken through to Peak Stage almost instantly.
With proof that he could change the lowborn fate of Lin Yan, Tony said in a muttered breath to himself, "this time I'll write my own story."
The chirp of the crickets and the breezes of the night were all that answered. And from a window over a kilometer away, a pair of amethyst colored eyes observed with a certain curiosity.