Feng clan, in an alleyway not far from the south gate.

Jon was seated on the cobblestone with his back up against the wall, scraping mud out of his ears. Across from him sat the only person in the town that was dressed worse than him: Old Ji, a beggar.

Honestly, he was not sure what he expected. Early as it was, the gate leading out of the Feng clan was still guarded. And there was a bigger problem: even if he managed to escape, he still lacked the energy to make the long trek back to the Jian clan by foot.

It was getting brighter out and the townspeople were beginning to stir. Afraid of being seen, he decided to hide out in alleyway, where he coincidentally met a beggar named Ji.

“So… she just left?” Old Ji glanced up at him, continuing their conversation.

Jon felt a righteous fire burning in his gut. “Yup. One day we’re holding hands, smiling at each other, making googoo eyes ‘n all that. The next? She tells me we’re done. Just like that.”

“Just like that,” Old Ji repeated his words back to him. “What was her name?”

“Lea,” Jon said, happy enough to unload his emotional baggage onto this hapless beggar. Old Ji was a genuine listener—a very rare thing. It felt good to talk to him and he swore his headache subsided a little as he did. Jon reached inside his loose robe and pulled out a small bundle of cloth containing his 15 small silvers. “Here,” He tossed over the small sack, which fell at Old Ji’s folded legs with a metallic jingle. “It’s all I have. Thanks for listening.”

Jon climbed to his feet with some difficulty and turned to exit the alley.

“…Wait”

He turned around. Old Ji had extended his palm up to him. In it, there was a leather-bound booklet.

‘Bingo’

“This is…?” Jon said, appearing confused. He knew exactly what it was. More importantly, he knew what it signified.

Jon was aware that Jian Chen had many main-character qualities about him. The transmigration only made it more obvious. What he was still unclear on was exactly how much the world would bend over to help him. This was a low-risk way of testing it. The beggar trope. Do a beggar a small kindness, and they will repay you a hundredfold, or so the trope goes.

Jon did not immediately receive the bound book. He met Old Ji’s gaze. The old beggar shook his head: “It’s not much. An old cultivation manual that has been in my family for generations. I am too old to have children, so I may as well pass it on to you.”

His arm shook weakly beneath the weight of the book. Jon kneeled down to steady him.

“If what you say is true, then this is worth more than I could ever—”

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

Old Ji’s breathing steadied and his hand slowly pulled away, leaving the book in Jon’s hands, “Don’t mind it,” he said, coughing. “I don’t have much longer anyways. Just promise me something.”

Jon did not hold his breath. Did he want revenge on some old foe? A statue erected in his honor? To remember him when he ‘made it big’?

Old Ji sighed and closed his eyes. His voice was closer to a whimper: “That you'll become strong and live free.”

.

Noon. Jon had already read the cultivation manual front to back. Simply, it taught him how to cultivate. There was nothing else to it. He understood all of it. Another trope associated with the protagonist was an uncanny comprehension ability. Courtesy of Jian Chen, all the profundities of the manual were lain bare in his mind, reduced to their simplest forms. In the span of a half a day, he had acquired mastery over the “Sunfire Breathing Technique.”

He was still sitting out in the street, but Old Ji had departed, muttering something about a tavern. Since then, Jon had been practicing the Sunfire Breathing technique. The manual’s only real requirement was that the practitioner cultivate outside, in clear view of the sun. The mouth of the alleyway fulfilled this requirement, at the cost of bringing him closer to the passersby.

It felt good to cultivate, if a little boring. As he breathed, the sunshine rejuvenated his body and mind, replenishing his energy reserves and imbuing him with tiny, incremental droplets of newfound power. While not a substitute for real food, it would be enough in the short term.

When evening came and the sun began to set, Jon noted that the efficacy of his cultivation slowly began to fall off, just as the manual described. No sun = no Sunfire cultivation. Undaunted, he climbed to his feet and brushed the dirt from his sackcloth. It was about time he left this horrible place.

He did not need to do much either. After making a few discreet inquiries, Jon discovered that, as far as the town knew, young master Jian Chen was still alive and well, the esteemed guest of the Feng clan and, colloquially, the “toad that dreams of eating swan meat.”

‘They’re hiding it.’ He concluded.

Maybe they would disguise it as a suicide or as an accident. Either way, the news would get out soon: “Jian Chen, the trash of the Jian clan found dead. Cause of death: suicide.” Something along those lines.

This was an opportunity. If the information had yet to trickle down to the gate guards, then escaping was just a matter of waltzing out the gate.

And that is exactly what Jon did. The only guard that noticed him just waved him along. Under the dim lantern light, his face was obscured. The only other feature that could be used to identify him, his royal blue robes, had already been traded for rags. He was just a bum, probably drunk, wandering outside the walls to take a piss.

.

It was not until Jon put a few miles of road between himself and the Feng clan that his taught nerves began to settle. Cultivation clans, he grumbled. Those crazy, crazy cultivation clans. He wanted nothing to do with them and their politics, if he could help it. Despite thinking that, his current destination was one such clan: the Jian clan. The tidbits he extracted from Jian Chen’s memory did not exactly paint a sunny picture. Much like the Feng clan, they considered themselves a higher breed of cultivation nobility with the inborn right to lord over the surrounding mortals.

Worse, despite his status as the firstborn son of the Jian clan patriarch, Jian Chen reflected poorly on the clan due to his nonexistent cultivation talent. Jon suspected that the only reason he succeeded in cultivating Sunfire Breathing was the sheer quality of the technique itself. Again, good things come to those with plot armor.

Jon continued his march according to where Jian Chen memories dictated the nearest settlement was. While he was bound to suffer some injustice at the Jian clan, there did exist some people who Jian Chen had been on good terms with. If he called in a couple favors, he might acquire enough information to make an informed decision on what to do next, now that he was stranded in this strange yet undeniably familiar world.