Alexander Douzheng was a thirty year old man with a dead end office job. He was making just above minimum wage working in a cubicle, riding a cramped dirty train to and from work, living in a cheap apartment alone.

He’d been in a few relationships, they didn’t last too long. He’d had a few friends he still talked to occasionally. But whether he was with other people or alone, he still felt empty. He’d gotten kind of out of shape too. He started watching old kung fu movies again, and rekindled an old love from his childhood. He’d always wanted to do martial arts when he was younger, but his mother wouldn’t let him, and money was tight anyway.

When he was a teenager, he’d already thought it was too late to learn, as silly as that was. But now that he was thirty, he really thought it was too late to learn. He could have looked up some videos online, but it didn’t seem mystic enough. He wanted some book with the forms to follow along to. Or more realistically, he should probably pick up a book on tai chi or something.

Either way, he felt a compulsion to find some old book on the subject at a used book store he hadn’t gone to since he was a teenager. It was a hot summer day, but when he got near the store, it started raining, and the sky started to get darker. Storm clouds were coming.

He rushed inside, and up into the second story shop. It was pouring out now. Thankfully he’d brought a backpack in case he found a lot of good books. Hopefully it’d protect them for long enough to get to the train station again if it started raining after he left.

As he looked through the fantasy books, western and eastern, and the instructional books on fitness, from boxing and karate to kung fu and tai chi, he came upon an old book.

It was a large book with no cover. It seemed like there had been golden writing on the spine, but it was too worn to read. It didn’t stand out much between the rest of the books on the bottom shelf, but something about it drew his attention.

He opened the book in that empty aisle of the store, the rain beating down harder than it had before, and he looked at the strange letters. It didn’t look like any language he’d ever seen. He almost felt as though he might be able to understand them though, as he looked at them he felt realization dawning on him, as if he could intuit the meaning and learn the language simply from trying to understand it.

Then the letters and characters began to move, whole words were falling off the page, and spilling out of the book. Alexander felt like he couldn’t move. Or rather, like he didn’t want to move. It was the same feeling as laying in bed in the morning, when your body is starting to recover from a workout, the blood is flowing into the muscles. You want to rest and take in the feeling. But it was something more. He couldn’t quite describe the energy he felt flowing through him.

Soon all of the words had left the book and started swirling in front of him, forming some kind of swirling vortex. The pages crumpled in his hands, the book became nothing more than ashes and joined the words in the vortex. It began to glow, and it looked, to him, like a portal. He felt an equal desire to step forward through it, as he did to run out of the store and never look back. As if voices in his head were asking him to step through it, and others were screaming at him not to.

He couldn’t understand the meaning of the words fully, only intentions. Alexander thought maybe he’d gone insane, but he would never refuse this, whether it was real or not. He walked forward and stepped through the portal.

For a moment, and a very long moment at that, Alexander felt as if he was stuck in place. No motion continued, his foot hadn’t hit the ground on the other side, not really. He also felt as if he was hurtling through space. As if he were frozen in perpetual motion. Dread began to seep in, but he soon began to enjoy this feeling. It was like being stuck in a waking nightmare and a dream at the same time. Like a sort of sleep paralysis.

The screaming at him to stop had gotten louder, an overwhelming cacophony, but soon after he began to enjoy it all as part of the experience, it stopped. The movement of the universe in this void stopped too, and soon a new world emerged. Grass growing out around ruined stone appeared, and he stepped onto it.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

There was a ruined temple, some sort of eastern design, surrounded by a dense forest with large trees. Maybe it was a rainforest, there were vines hanging off the trees, and it was hot.

Alexander decided to take a look inside the temple, and he began climbing the stone staircase. It wasn’t all that high, all things considered, but he was already getting out of breath. He’d gotten pretty out of shape, over the past several years especially.

He opened the large wooden doors that were hanging slightly ajar, and stepped into the temple. It felt cooler and drier than it had outside, despite there being no logical reason for it to be like this, almost as if there was an air conditioner and a dehumidifier. He shut the doors behind him and noticed the walls had some strange runes etched on them.

After wandering around through the dilapidated temple for a while, he came upon a library, or at least a room with many scrolls and books. This room was even cooler and drier than the others, perfect for storing books. He grabbed a book and tried flipping through it, and despite it being a language he’d never seen before, he could understand it.

Or, rather than having never seen it before, he’d only seen it once. It was the language in the book that had created the portal. It was amazing that he’d gained this knowledge, not to mention the fact that magic exists, but he wasn’t particularly interested in one thousand and one rice dishes, so he closed the large book and put it back down where he had found it.

After a while he found a large room, it looked like some kind of training room. There were practice dummies, and bags hanging from the ceiling. Mats, sticks, all sorts of things. It really looked like some old temple from a movie, but with some strange architectural designs.

After wandering around for nearly an hour, he’d seen every room, most importantly he’d found a kitchen. Ever since coming here he’d felt strangely hungry, and he was growing thirstier too. There was an old stove that needed firewood, but there wasn’t much wood. There were buckets, and cups, but no water left.

He sat down on a mat at the table, and contemplated his existence. Did he get teleported to another world, or just another part of the world? Does magic really exist, or did he go insane? If this is real what should he do? For now, he decided to grab the stick with two buckets and try getting some water. He saw a stream not far from the temple.

Alexander carried the buckets down the stairs of the temple. By the time he reached the stream he was already feeling out of breath again. He took a few drinks at the stream to sate his thirst, then he filled up the buckets and began walking back to the temple.

As he started to walk, he heard howling. It was getting dark, and he felt a compulsion to drop the buckets and just start running. But he just kept walking, more quickly now, and made steady back to the temple, and up the stairs, even as he felt like he was being watched. He entered the temple and turned the bars on the door, locking it this time. He hadn’t noticed it during the day, with the light coming in from the windows and the holes in the walls, or maybe they just hadn’t come on yet, but some of the runes on the walls and ceiling began giving off a faint light.

The kitchen was well lit, and he poured the water into some old pots, put the lids on, then poured himself a few glasses. After some time he found some rice that was stored away, though not much, and despite not being sure if it was still any good, he tried to cook some in a pot with the bit of remaining firewood.

While the rice was cooking, Alexander went back to the library and started looking for anything useful. He felt it wouldn’t be long until he had to defend himself, and he knew he wasn’t in any shape to do much of anything. Soon he found some books and scrolls on what he needed.

Cultivation, meditation. How to cultivate chi, how to use chi. Different forms of martial arts, body cultivation, everything useful, but only the basics. He found a nice table in the library and put down all of his books and scrolls, then returned to the kitchen to make sure he didn’t overcook the rice.

He’d never cooked with real fire and wood before, and he didn’t want to ruin what little rice there was. He was starving, but eventually it was finished. He scooped it into a bowl with a large wooden spoon, and began eating with some old chopsticks. He ate the whole pot in less than an hour.

Alexander took another drink and returned to the library. He hadn’t found anyone still alive, but he hadn’t found any corpses either. He figured whoever was here must have left, that must be why the door was open. But it was literally hanging open, just a bit, so maybe they’d left in a hurry.

Alexander read the books and scrolls on chi cultivation first, then meditation. He’d always thought it was made up, so he’d never tried any of this in his old life. After reading what he could, he began feeling tired. He went to a large bedroom, maybe for an old master of martial arts, or whatever this temple was for. Hopefully they wouldn’t mind. He shook the sheets and beat the pillows to try and get the dust off. Then he laid down and fell asleep.