The World of Jie was a place of extremes. The Yin and Yang so many of the more philosophical denizens of the place loved to endlessly muse about was very well founded, as it was a world which contained caves of unending fire, and mountains of equally haunting cold, a massive moon and blistering sun, calm meditation and catastrophic rage, and, of course, some people who lived perfectly content with calm, mundane lives, and others that strode the Martial Path, that sought the road to world-trembling powers.

So when, in this world full of extremes, to the rice paddies of a small, no-name village in the middle of nowhere, a rocky hill started to rumble and shoot beams of blue light out of the cracks, the farmers around hardly batted an eye.

“Ey, Ren, go call Li Gong, will ya?”

———Dungeon POV———

Okay, ow, everything stopped hurting so bad. I think I can think a bit more clearly now. As far as I can tell, everything seems to be going wrong. I was... reincarnating, I think? I’m honestly not sure, it was a very strange experience- and then it felt like something slapped me in the soul, and I... fell... sideways? For a really long time before hitting wherever I am now.

Which seems to be a small cave full of rocks. I can’t really ‘see’, exactly, not I the same way I could as a human, but there’s this sense of what’s around me. This is all really weird, but... I’ve already come to terms with reincarnating while in that... other place, now I just have to get out of whatever the hell is this mess that I’m in. In the center of my senses I can feel myself- a small, glowing gemstone in the middle of a pile of rocks. There’s several cracks, which can’t be good, but they’re also sealing themselves... at a very, very slow rate. It should be fine. Probably. Hopefully.

I notice a strange shape below a pile of dirt off to the side started to move- two insectoid wings shoot up, dredging up a cloud of dust. Behind them, two arms pull themselves up, and then, a full, feminine body, though barely recognizable beneath all the grime, rises into view. And starts to scream at me- actually, scratch that, at nobody in particular. I can’t understand the words, but with how angry her tone is and how vigorously she’s gesticulating, it doesn’t take a linguist to figure out she’s cursing at everyone and everything. Looks like we’re in the same boat, huh?

After a little bit more of that, she turns back to me, and starts to do... magic! I mean, yeah, I’m a rock now, but this is the first actual, proper magic spell I’ve seen! She’s chanting words and waving arms full of weird sparkles and everything! As she finishes, the words start to come into focus. The actual sound doesn’t change, but the meaning seems to become clear to me. Some sort of translation magic then, huh? The fairy- as it’s pretty obvious that she is- starts to talk:

“-Well, whatever the fuck that was or where this is, I’m still a dungeon fairy, and the dungeon is still here, so I can make this shit work. Oi! Dungeon! You should be able to understand me now, yeah?”

Well, yes, I can, but the fact that my new body is an actual rock is beginning to make itself known. I tentatively try to... think a ‘yes’ at her, I guess? Oh, it seems to have worked!

“Good, you’re in working condition! Alright, my name is Lana, I’m the shmuck who was supposed to be your guide before getting somehow slapped out of the spirit realm- but that’s not important right now! What’s important is that you’re a dungeon, I’m a fairy, you build shit, I’m your right hand! Got all that? Any questions? No? Start digging!”

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Sir-yes-Sir, I try to transmit. Jeez, this fairy is a drill sergeant. Well, at least it’s better than starting this with no help at all, I guess. But now, time to dig. I imagine a drill pointed at the far wall, and the glow around my body seems to respond, shaping itself into a blue haze that floats into the vague shape of what I directed it into, and getting to work carving through the rocks at frightening speed. The debris doesn’t fill out the room, loose rocks that hit the ground just break apart into a fine grey dust that doesn’t seem to actually fill out any real space. Wow, magic is easy! But that’s probably part of being a dungeon.

——•——•——

It’s been a while... I’m not sure how much, digging with magic is so easy yet monotonous that time feels weirdly liquid after a while. It’s been several corridors, turns, rooms and a couple of weird alcoves made at the orders of the drill sergeant fairy, but now it feels like I’ve hit a wall of some sort- not literal, the rock is still the same, but progress just feels much harder than before. Lana flies up next to my mana drill and raises an outstretched palm in a ‘Stop’ gesture.

“Alright, you’ve reached your limit! Your energy can only claim so much space as part of the dungeon before it runs out, so you can stop digging now.”

Claiming, huh? I didn’t notice while in the haze of digging, but yeah, that’s right. I can feel all the space that I’ve made so far as if it’s part of my body, a roughly L-shaped structure, with the room that I woke up in at the corner, one room at the shorter part, and three more in the longer one, each room roughly a small space roughly five by five by two meters connected to the nearest by five meters of hallway like on a grid. Trying to expand it right now feels like stretching a body part too far- I can do it if I really want to, but I’d really rather not.

I suddenly feel a dull sting in my core. The fairy seems to have slapped my gem while I was distracted.

“Oi! You might have dug some, but don’t rest just yet! Now it’s time to fill out these empty rocks!”

Fill out? Oh, yeah, this should be the fun part! Putting in traps and monsters, not to mention actually making rooms and decorating the dungeon, all that stuff! I fill out as much as I can, the whole dungeon filled out with blue haze, concentrate, and- this might not have been such a good idea.

RRRRRRUUUUMBLE

———Back on the Surface———

Li Gong was an interesting boy, not that you could tell by his appearance. He a was a teenager, was short yet stocky, a tough, dwarf-like build, and had features best described as ‘rough’. However, he was very well known in the village, for a good reason.

When he was just eleven years of age, a group of cultivators from a small sect had passed by their village. They were just at the start of the second stage, Foundation Building, nothing to be too impressed by in any large sect, but in this village in the middle of the wilderness, they were treated as dragons among men. Little Li Gong, never having been among the brightest, had talked directly to them without any honorific or deference, and, to everyone in the village’s surprise, the cultivators merely laughed. One of them noticed that this strangely amusing child also seemed to have some decent meridians, and so, he ended up being taken away to the sect.

A year later, Li Gong returned, a half-step away from Foundation Building, wearing the sect’s robes, yet without a care in the world. He said the life of an outer sect disciple had grown boring and dull, all work and cultivating all the time, so he simply left back to the village. Thankfully, this wasn’t a tyranical sect, so he was, in fact, allowed to leave.

Now, a couple years after that, Li Gong remains notorious among the village for his prodigious strength and rudimentary Qi techniques as a Qi Gathering stage cultivator being a great help in the farms, while also infamous for the fact the cultivation method that he learned while in the sect couldn’t be used by anyone else, as it seemed that it required a secondary source of energy, be it environmental, from pills, or something else, but there was absolutely nothing of the sort anywhere near.

So when weird things happened in this vicinity, Li Gong typically got dragged along, because his Qi mastery, rough as it may be, was all the village had.

And when Li Gong knelt down to take a look at the strange rocky mound, his mouth opened with joyful shock.

“-Dude! So much energy... T-this is... This might be... a great Qi spring!”