‘You know chimera, you’ll have to set an example’ Dan intoned as weaved through an absolute flurry of attacks.

Dan was at peace as he exercised his new body in ways that would make the peak of physical conditioning the peak of muscle atrophy. He even used a ‘minor’ spiritual technique with nothing but the knowledge about the technique, something that would make a few cultivators ‘spit blood’ with shock.

Metaphorically, of course, if simple shock can make you spit blood, you’re doing something wrong.

Perhaps, then, it was understandable that Dan was getting a bit carried away. He was getting a high, not a high that a man can experience from simple drugs, unless you know the right people, but a high from power and adrenaline.

He could see it all in his mind, he’d tire out the chimera, he’d turn it into his companion, and they’d pull all the stops! The world would be their oyster, Dan and the chimera would take every opportunity that comes at them and they’d be worshiped for it!

As the saying goes, ‘First immortality, then the bitches.’!

‘for what the aspiring craftsmen of the future to not do! If your creator applied even the slightest amount of more effort into your brain, you’d have been able to use your power and magical snake arm exponentially better!’ Dan goaded the chimera in hopes of wearing it out, it would be far easier to subdue after it had been exhausted.

‘But enough of the grandstanding! Now,’ Dan crouched while in anticipation of the action, it was all he could do to not dance around the battlefield in anticipation.

‘Let’s have some fun!’ Dan called with his face absolutely twisted in pure glee.

But that’s when it happened.

Dan felt it before he anything else. The ‘all encompassing’ qi that was being released throughout the entire clearing, waste of qi, really, changed.

It went from pure, animalistic rage, radiated from a beast with a simple mind, into something wrong.

It twisted and shifted like the chaos Dan knew instinctively, but it wasn’t pure, and it wasn’t controlled. In a slow motion that Dan didn’t even know he could achieve, he watched, as this chaos flowed through the beast’s meridians, perverting all that it once was.

Cells dissolved and became cancerous lumps right before Dan’s senses. The chimera’s very lifeblood, it’s qi itself, turned against itself. The beast stopped being a beast entirely, more a living meat puppet, a lump of demonic qi turning the animal into a mechanism for carnage.

If Dan had to make a metaphor for it, he would say it was as if a person’s blood was replaced with gasoline and someone pointed that person in a direction to fuck shit up.

As Dan sat there, the shock faded quickly, before he started feeling anger, anger at this. All he was, the chaos he was perverted, used not for in it’s natural state, but pushed towards a way that made the world around it worse.

Dan knew, not instinctively, not only from his extensive knowledge base, but from experience, that chaos was change, that all it was one really big chain reaction, and all it took was a single push, to make it do the most extreme of things.

That change wasn’t bad, it wasn’t evil, it was natural, and more importantly, it was needed. For good to succeed, and for evil to be unable to hold, change was a godsend. It went beyond good and evil, it was a primordial force.

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This, however, was evil, and Dan bristled. ‘I’m going to kick that thing’s ass before I make it my companion.’ He thought, ‘Imma heal it and show it how to really use demonic qi!’

But, yet again, Dan’s emotions were burst like a bubble when he realized something, that chimeras aren’t natural. That this thing most likely hadn’t just stumbled upon some demonic qi and was misappropriating it.

Dan felt like wet tissue paper, having realized that this creature was either just the result of an experiment, or this combat was the experiment. That someone or something was just attempting to control and amp up the fighting potential of this creature was deeply disheartening.

Righting a fellow practitioners wrongs was a deeply different that entering a brawl with the Xianxia equivalent of a Nazi soldier hopped up on a mixture of meth, opioids, and cocaine.

‘Of course, the soldiers were people. So the metaphor isn’t perfect.’ Dan thought, apparently having thought of the same metaphor that was in the narration. ‘The creature probably doesn’t have a fully functioning brain, so I guess it’s not as-’

Dan was interrupted once again as the beast finally sprouted wings and began to fly upwards, the qi, it did something that was missing before.

It broadcasted pain. Pain, fear, desperation, confusion, regret, and a plea. A plea for help.

That, that was what broke Dan. No more. No more trying to turn this into anything about him, he would do what was right.

As he saw the beast flying towards him, Dan said the only thing that came to mind.

‘You’re no fun.’

It was simple, it was quiet, and it was true, but it hardly encompassed Dan’s feelings.

At once, just before the chimera reached him, Dan reclaimed a large part of the energy he spent on his form and dematerialized.

As the beast passed through his natural, incorporeal form, Dan had no thoughts, no witty observation, he just steeled himself for what he needed to do.

Once he was in knowledge form, physics themselves were relative. His qi barely managed to bend reality in a way that allowed knowledge without a medium to exist, but movement was instant when one had no mass.

In an instant Dan was 100 feet, or 90 chi, above the chimera. In a feat of massive concentration, Dan near instantly materialized face downwards.

Dan placed both of his hand outwards, like he was imitating a certain comic book hero. Dan brought his hands together, and with co-ordination that revealed his demon nature, did two entirely different complex tasks.

He used the qi in his human body to accelerate his descent in a common, but usually overlooked spiritual technique. It usually is only useful in mortal diving operations.

He secondly, at the same time, began materializing a blade in his hands.

He needed a piercing weapon, and the Jian was the most useful thing that he had intimate knowledge of for the situation.

He needed strength, so the blade, hilt, guard, and pommel were made out of titanium.

‘More!’ He thought, so the titanium was made into a titanium alloy.

‘More!’ He pleaded, so the chaos inside reached out to his focus and imbued the sword with an inherent sword qi.

And he was on the beast. Over two seconds of free fall and his spiritual technique had transformed Dan into a guillotines blade.

The sword lodged itself into the base of the beast’s thick neck, which offered more resistance that even Dan realized, but with a devastating strike to the beasts spine, the beast endured a near instant death, and suffered no more.

Dan’s right side hit the beast as well, at over 100mph, his right side was no more, what was left was ravaged across the forest floor.

But Dan was up before the dust was settled, and was whole again by the time it was.

Dan stood before the beast, lost in thoughts.

‘What did I get a second life for?’ Dan thought forlornly, ‘To fuck around and become the newest cool kid on the block?!’

Dan only held regret in his heart. ‘What do I do after I lose my family?’ Dan barely stopped himself from crying, yet his emotions were shown anyways. ‘Joke around like a fool?!’

‘Do I think things are gonna change if I just cruise through life?!’ Dan thought about everything he knew about in his old life, then everything he knew from all the lifetime’s worth of knowledge he had.

‘Shit’s… fucked.’ Dan finished wearily.

‘I’m sorry friend.’ Dan eventually sighed.

With a wave of a hand, Dan retrieved and absentmindedly sheathed his blade.

‘Have better luck in the next life. I’ll ensure you get there.’

Dan performed a simple ritual to a death deity that his knowledge told him existed and accepted all comers.

A prayer, a fire, a mantra, Dan just hoped it was actually enough for a second chance.

‘What do I even want?’ Dan asked himself as he watched the body burn.

‘Oh yeah,’ Dan thought as he remembered his observer. ‘I want change.’

‘Hello little man, let’s talk.’