The epic story of Reincarnation of the Hellbound Potato, humble as it is, starts in the Luminous Nut Secret Realm of the Eastern Rushing Wind Provinces of the Great Xuan. Normally a delicious if bitter place, the Luminous Nut Secret Realm was currently disturbed by energies most foul. The Heavens and Earth were united in roaring their divine wrath, ground and sky rumbling as the two cultivators fought. Shadows lanced through the air, space crackled, and fire sang as they fought, their awe-inspiring presence enough to stun even the bitterest critic of xianxia.
One of the cultivators, his faction clearly discernible by his white robe, shot into the air. "Fool! You dare to think to drag the secret of the Orb of Intranuminous Light from me? You can tear the flesh from my legs to my lips, but never will you get its location from me."
The other cultivator, dressed appropriately in black, sneered. "Of course I wouldn't - if I ripped the flesh from off your lips, then you wouldn't be able to speak. But there is only one thing I want from you, Feng Peng."
And he pointed to the earth far, far below, where a young man eating popcorn could be seen enthusiastically watching the battle.
"Who is he and what the heck is he doing here?"
The youth noticed he was being watched, and waved at the aerial pair. “Oh, hi! Don’t mind me - I’m only here to enjoy the thrilling experience.”
“The ‘thrilling experience’? We are fighting to the death!”
“Sure you are,” the youth replied patronisingly. “And you’re firing cool glowing lights all over the place. I was particularly fond of that, what did you call it, ‘Golden Monkey Foot Technique’ - the effusion of luminescent sparkles was rather pretty.”
“That effusion had the power to eviscerate a cultivator of the Fourth Circuit! And you, you’re, what, not even finished the First? Why are you so excited? You could have been annihilated instantly! Which is precisely my point - why are you here? This Secret Realm is fit only for cultivators of the Fifth Circuit or higher!”
“Tourin’,” the youth said, crunching down on another mouthful of tasty popcorn. “I wanted to see if the Luminous Nut Secret Realm was a luminous secret realm of nuts, or a secret realm of luminous nuts - and, furthermore, whether the nuts were glowing acorns, or really shiny crazy people. Lastly, I wanted to answer a crucial question of all-consuming importance to all men: are spirit nuts tastier than regular nuts?”
“Well? Are they?” The cultivator dressed all in white asked. He noticed the cultivator in black looking at him incredulously, and spread his arms wide in indignation. “What? It’s a legitimate question!”
***
“My people - demons, monsters, nightmares, creatures of the dark and cold and grim! It is time - time for us to make war upon the kingdoms of men, to conquer their cities, massacre their menfolk, enslave their women-”
“Amazing! Are these columns genuine obsidian?”
The Demon King paused in the middle of addressing his mighty arm, standing rank upon rank in their thousands below. Stunned, he turned around, away from the balustrade from which he could gaze haughtily on all he possessed, and into his voluminous throne room behind him.
Some sort of shabling monstrosity - part man, part chicken, part squid, part robot - was examining the obsidian columns of his throne room with unabashed glee, taking notes at a ridiculously fast speed and firing questions buckshot at the stupefied Demon King.
“How in all the Heavens did you carve an entire column of obsidian out of a single block of stone? The engineering and technical skill required to achieve such a feat - even for cultivators - it’s, it’s, absolutely mwah.”
“Oh, well, if you must know,” said the Demon King, abashed, as he scratched the back of his head, “what I did was- no, wait a moment, that’s not the right question. Why are you here? How are you here? This is a concealed fortress at the centre of my domain, a hidden nation absented from the mortal realm. You shouldn’t even have access to the demon realm, nevermind to my throne room. How did you sneak past the guards?”
The youth puffed up his cheeks and smiled. His eyes literally burned with excitement, enthusiasm taking physical form in his pupils as he digested the Demon King’s charge. “Did you say this is a hidden realm? Oh gosh golly, you have to tell me more. How did you hide an entire realm? Is the fortress concealed within the realm, or merely by comparison to the mortal realm? And why hide when you were planning to return to the mortal realm anyways?”
“Oh, well…” Said the delighted Demon King, and clapped his hands.
***
“Give it up, Ned, you waste! You’ve always been a piece of trash, and have never been as talented as me, Ed!” The Arrogant Young Master cackled maniacally, as he stood over the injured Ned in the arena.
The latter was being booed by the dozens of watching cultivators as he struggled to climb back to his feet, his face a mask of determination, his body stretched taut with a manifest unwillingness to lose.
Ed the Arrogant Young Master stepped back to let his enemy climb back onto his feet, mocking him all the while. The latter, incensed beyond belief, finally lost it. His eyes glowed red, shards of crimson flickering across his flesh, and he pulled an amulet out from under his shirt with a roar.
The Arrogant Young Master fell onto his back in terror, desperately trying to crawl away from the infuriated former waste. “What- what is that?”
Ned laughed darkly and was about to respond, when out of the now silent crowd came a shocked voice.
“Egad! Gadzooks! The Mystic Dingdong that’s been lost for over nine thousand years, ever since it disappeared during the collapse of the formic kingdom of Antlatis over three hundred thousand miles from here!”
Ned put down his arms in surprise, the red draining from his skin. “Yes, that’s… exactly right. However did you know?”
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The crowd parted to reveal a rather odd looking youth, jumping up and down in excitement. He whipped out a magazine. “Simple! I subscribe to Archaeological Digest Monthly, the periodical of the Confucian Bureau for Museum Affairs.”
And he waved the magazine in the air. It had a picture of a beautiful female cultivator posing modestly in front of an archaeological dig site, and was labelled with such lurid headlines as:
* The most fashionable Secret Realms to visit this summer.
* HOT makeup tips from a 37,000 year old Ancient Slime.
* Should You Decorate Your Dress In Dragon Leather? We Asked Three Barbarian Cultivators
“Haven’t you heard of it?” The youth asked beamishly.
The still prone Arrogant Young Master stared at him, jaw dropped, expression disbelieving. “Dude, I spend all my time harassing the weak and making creepy remarks to women. You don’t think I actually read, do you?”
The youth hung his head sadly. “Yeah, makes sense. I’d heard it was originally an academic journal, but they found out nobody was reading it - apparently cultivators only cultivate their power levels, not their minds - so they turned it into a tabloid. They still have nobody reading it, though - or at least I haven’t found anybody. If you ask me they should change it back. There’s certainly precedence for such a decision, as three centuries ago when the emperor was-”
“Ugh, a history lesson. All of a sudden I’m feeling the passion drain from my body.” Ned rolled his eyes, and tucked the Mystic Dingdong back under his shirt.
“Same. Want to go out a drink? I know a great tea shop,” Ed the Arrogant Young Master returned.
“Sure,” said Ned. He helped the Arrogant Young Master onto his feet, and then the two left to enjoy a drink together.
The youth shrugged and, completely heedless of the many angry looks being thrown his way by the disgruntled crowd, went on his own merry way.
“Man, I love exploring random locations and not getting caught up in any crazy wacky adventures.”
***
Yu did three backflips, a kickflip, two cartwheels, and a donkey roll. She snuck in between the rock towers, carefully ensuring that nobody could track her, and stepped over puddles of water. She was on guard the entire time, eyes flicking about, body taut, prepared at any moment to fight for her life.
The bath attendant wasn’t sure what the crazy female cultivator was doing, but frankly she’d seen weirder things in her time working with cultivators and wasn’t greatly inclined to stress herself over one sneaking ninja style through the bathhouse.
The Happy Glade Bathhouse catered to cultivators, and employed a careful series of talismans and formations to ensure that its series of natural, rockstrewn pools resembled the mystical spirits pools cultivators preferred as closely as possible. They couldn’t mimic the qi, but then, they didn’t want to; their entire charm was that one got all the atmosphere of a mystical spirit pool, but none of the qi that caused cultivators to fight viciously over pool ownership, thereby ensuring that one could relax freely while visiting the bathhouse.
At least, that was the intent. Their latest guest was frankly a little weird - she was supposedly a princess of the Great Xuan (whose emperor the bathhouse attendant had technically sworn fealty to, she supposed), but she had none of the charms the attendant normally expected from a princess. Or even a normal cultivator, when it came down to it. She was, well, militaristic and paranoid.
She had shown up with her entourage yesterday and requested a room, explaining that she was there to search for demonic cultivators. When the bathhouse manager had expressed his belief that such no individuals were present in or near the bathhouse, she had withdrawn a sealed scroll, containing within it a dedicated order from the emperor explaining that she was in fact licensed and ordered to examine the bathhouse for signs of demonic cultivators.
(“Seriously?” The emperor had asked, when his daughter made the request in private. She wrinkled her nose and crossed her arms. He groaned. The things he did for familial love.)
Thereupon she had done her darndest to find evidence of demonic cultivators in the bathhouse, in a search that the attendant thought was frankly excessive. How, exactly, demonic cultivators were supposed to fit in sewer pipes of a six inch diameter was entirely beyond her; nonetheless, the princess assured the attendant that they indeed could.
The princess knew the attendant thought she was nuts, not that Yu cared. Yu was here for work, not vacation - never vacation - and had no plans to perform an inadequate job for the sake of her reputation. As Xunzi so rightly said, the only face that counted was that earned for honourable conduct.
Yu Yao finished her bath, towelled herself off, and then went inside for a light snack prior to her evening exercise. The kitchen was empty; it was a small inn, private, a fashion ideal for cultivators who liked their peace and quiet. Generously stocked, of course, with every food one might desire - a fashion ideal for cultivators, who liked their good food as much as their peace and quiet.
Yu prepared a nice salad and filled a cup with wine, then sat down to enjoy her snack. None of her guards ate with her - she preferred her privacy during meals. (It was, in her view, one of her only foibles.)
And then she heard a sound. It was not a loud sound - barely more than a whisper - but to the ear of the paranoid it may as well have been a cannonball serenade. She froze, fork halfway to her lips, wide ears twitching as they tried to find the source of the sound.
It took her but a moment to locate the origin of the disturbance. It was the one place she hadn’t yet been able to check - the tiny slit between the cupboard and the wall that no one could reach, and which would invariably become a gathering place for dirt and dust and refuse if one was so unwise as to get unmovable cupboards.
Cursing herself for a complacent fool, Yu leaned down - activating a stealth technique as she did - and peered into the dark of the room. She peered, and gazed, and stared, and looked, and pondered, until at last all became clear.
There were three men. They were dressed in blood stained rags, carrying wicked blades, and by their ugly and despicable appearances she knew them for demonic cultivators. (The stench of demonic qi - barely concealed by whatever technique was letting them hide between a cupboard and a wall - assisted matters slightly.)
Yao’s lip quivered. All this time she’d thought her father had been going out of his way to find some cryptic excuse to send her on vacation [he had], when really he’d been sending her on a mission all along [he hadn’t]. How he’d learnt that demonic cultivators were abusing the angles of space time to hide in kitchen cracks was beyond her, but then, he was the emperor - the very Mandate of Heaven incarnate.
Their discussion, though vaguely audible to her ears, was yet too muffled for her to discern. Closer, she leaned in, closer, and nearer yet, until-
“Aha! Gotcha!” one of the men cried, wrapping one hand around Yao’s mouth to keep her from screaming as he dragged her under the cupboards. “Thought you could sneak up on us, did you? Nobody gets the jump on the Gander Gals!”
Yao struggled, and reflexively tried to release her qi in an explosion, but the qi muffling technique they were using to prevent anyone from detecting their demonic energy apparently worked just as well at suppressing her own pure qi, and her cultivation was worse than useless.
Quick as a brown fox, the three demonic cultivators trussed her up, binding her hand to foot in ropes and charms intended to further suppress and drain her energy. When they were done they stood back, laughing at their diabolical savagery.
“Man, what a pretty prize we caught today,” one said. “What do you think we should do with her? I think-”
“Oi,” returned another, “keep it PG. We’ll take her to Craghair Castle, where we’re meeting the boss; he’ll know what to do with her.”
And, while Yao protested vainly, her cries muffled under the gag they’d tucked over her mouth, they carried her away, into the endless dark under the sink.