“I’ve always had that weird fascination with towers, so listen, listen, I had this dream of a tower a few days ago, due to some weird exhaustion that filled me I fell asleep and there I was in this tower made out of blue bricks floating above the mortal realm.”
“I never thought of you one to start up a conversation like this, what’s the deal?” the hoarse voice of the companion in timeless attire spoke in mild surprise, having spent many years together with his friend it knew him in and out.
“Could it be an omen? I was never good with those divination shenanigans you people do, you know me, was only ever useful in war, as times change so did my relevance fall off a cliff.” the older man spat into the void below them as they continued to slowly float towards their objective.
“An omen? To whom, us? The only thing that could hurt us right now is the primordial chaos in between realms, we are the peak of life as we know it.” the timeless voice answered and sped up, far ahead of his companion he turned and said with a smile : “Our task, don’t forget it...” a small rainbow pagoda appeared in his hands “...this planet was here since the beginning unburdened with the matters of the cultivation world, its name Earth as the residents call it. Our task is to turn it into a training ground for our descendants.”
“Have we already arrived? That was faster than expected, your abilities never stop surprising me.” the old man took out his horse-chopping sabre and asked with a smile: “Do I open a chaos rift inside or outside the planetary system?”
The timeless man saw the old patriarch’s grin and grinned too: “this planet had weak energy rifts appearing throughout its history but even the smallest chaos rift might just turn it into dust. How about an energy rift instead, hadn’t built one since I was a young boy.” the man said while looking like someone who just turned twenty.
“Fine.” The old man’s grin turned into a smirk as he grabbed his blade and swung down.
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Earth Town #1 – Place of Impact
Would one believe in god if he appeared in front of him? Surely. There would still be doubters though. God unfortunately was of the slightest relation to the thing that awaited humans at that day.
Dawn broke as it all just happened to start. Mountains moving, new landmasses just appearing out of thin air it was like the Rapture was starting but it was far worse. Those small groups of people scattered around the world knew well of what was happening at the time, they had been waiting for this event for thousands of years.
One of the smaller and newer clans on Earth had no information on the apocalyptic event, so they weren’t prepared for it when it had come.
One of the members of that small clan was Sasha. Born in a branch of the Tepes clan, he was never forced to learn the history of the cultivation world and stuff related to the family. His mother was a woman of little words and never spoke to him unless it was related to his upbringing, she worked hard to earn him a spot in a prestigious school and he worked hard not to flunk and get kicked out of it.
His talent at cultivation was bad anyway, he wasn’t an important child to nurture and train in the family, and his mother had no fondness of the cultivation world at all.
As soon as the energy that cultivators used to train with became denser many normal people awakened abilities to use it and train with it. Society was on the verge of collapsing but larger sects and clans took control of many rogue cultivators and explained it all to the world.
Sasha’s mother sat him down at the brink of dawn, his eyes closing and opening at random intervals was a sign of not enough sleep. But she had no time to wait for him to wake up as she dropped a glass of cold water over his head and shook him a few times.
“The world is going to be rowdier for a few years, so I need to do this for your safety and probably the safety of the whole clan.” His mother pulled him into a chair as he was slowly coming to a realization that his mother was remarkably serious for the first time in forever.
“Okay, I think I am wide awake. No, I am wide awake. What’s going on?” he spoke as he rested his head on one arm and the other one was scratching his left cheek.
“It’s related to the clan and the whole world at once. Let’s start with the clan side of things. You cannot be exempt from clan duties anymore and will need to start cultivating, as of today.” His mother looked just like him but more feminine, both had short black hair and were of average height. The only part that stood out was their eye color, which was a verdant green. Their look average, Sasha a bit more on the handsome side than his mother.
“Right, and I thought I had no part of that whole clan schtick though? What happened to that? I led a perfectly fine life until now what could have changed to make you go back on our deal?” questions were shooting out of his mouth as a minigun.
“Let’s go to the world part of my explanation and you’ll know. First, how much truly do you know of the world I am part of?” his mother’s green eyes were staring right at him.
A suffocating silence went on for a few seconds as he tried to think of the cultivation world and what he knew of it. His answer: “Not much. I know I had the chance to cultivate but you felt it was useless and asked the clan to take me away for me to live a normal life. Considering this huge info dump you are throwing at me I can safely assume that is no longer possible.”
His mother looked a bit embarrassed as she opened her mouth and started explaining.
“Right, I am sorry about that, but you’ll probably never go back to the life you knew. So, to finish this conversation and travel to the clan’s headquarters. Cultivators have existed since humans could think, there were all kinds of them, many of them being remembered as monsters and legends that you kids learn in school nowadays, the most famous ones being vampires, I think.” His mother was staring right at him to keep track of his reactions, it wasn’t that bad as she didn’t notice many emotions on his face.
“To continue, the energy we cultivators use is scarce and doesn’t renew itself fast enough for all of us currently existing cultivators. That’s one of the reasons most cultivator clans and sects are dying out, the situation has been better in the past but it wasn’t like right now. Right now, at this exact moment the energy is rising to unprecedented levels and we have no idea why, the whole world is in panic. So I need you to be in safe hands as we investigate this, and I need you to start cultivating as well just to be sure.”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Sasha was unfazed through the whole shtick his mother was throwing at him as he said: “What if I don’t want to? What if this is just some big ass cultivator having a breakthrough and you all are just having a panic attack or something? It’s hard to say no, but at the same time I kind of grew accustomed of being normal now that I don’t want to believe in any of the shit you’re spewing right now. Sorry for the language I am using. This all seems like you wanting to drag me back to the clan just because someone is forcing you rather than for my own safety.” He stood up and went to grab a drink. He left his mother shocked with his words and her face still stood shocked as he came back.
“Anyway, what happens to all the humans that don’t awaken cultivation capabilities? Do they continue on with their lives or what?” he asked as he sat down in the chair.
“We predict that they will either join smaller sects to learn how to cultivate with the help of scriptures or that they will in fact as you have said die.” His mother replied as the shock on her face wore off, she opened her mouth again to continue with her story but was cut off.
“That’s in case it isn’t a great cultivator breaking through to some higher realm or something. Even if the situation is as you cultivators predict it is, I still don’t see a reason to join you and cultivate when I can just go on with my own life until I d—?!” a hand grabbed the hem of his shirt as an angry mother’s face pushed into his.
“You’re not dying as long as I am alive! How could I have raised a child with no will to live? I thought that I was being clear enough that you need to keep on living! Do you know how much time and energy I spent just to hide your cultivation talent from the sect? Do you know what kind of pain you would go through just to become a cultivation cauldron to one of the daughters of the main branch?” his mother slammed her fist on the table with tears that were forming in her eyes.
Sasha was silent due to shock. He never saw his mother act out like this, this wasn’t her character, she was the quiet type, reading books and reprimanding him only when he got bad grades. He had no reply to her burst of anger, and it was probably better that way.
“Anyway…” she sat down on her own seat and let go of his shirt as she continued : “you probably already figured it out from that burst of anger that your talent is not non-existent as you may have thought. The Tepes family clan is a small one compared to the others that still stand. We are basically glorified farmers. We cultivate flowers that we sell to the clan we are subsidiaries of. Our branch family is used to birth boys with talent for the main family to use as cauldrons for their descendants. You were also supposed to be one, until they found out that you had no talent whatsoever. You can thank your now deceased father for that, he used all his power to hide the that ‘talent’ of yours that he had no power left for the mission he was sent to as punishment from the clan.”
“Great, now I find out my father’s death was my own fault, why tell me this now?” with a deep breath he took in all the new information. He needed something stronger than water as he stood up and got himself a cup of coffee. “You done with the info dump?”
“I am telling you things that will affect your life okay? Just because it’s too much at once does not mean it’s okay to disregard half of it. All of this will affect you.” His mother was once again angry at his nonchalant behavior regarding the future of mankind.
He grabbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers like an actor imitating a headache as he shook his head left and right comically and said : “Right, listen, you still haven’t convinced me that all of this is that important, and I don’t see anything that could make me go into the cultivation world without any way of turning back. Tepes clan? Don’t know ‘em. Cultivation cauldron? What’s that? Father died because of me? Nice of you to ruin my mood early in the morning.”
His mother couldn’t face reality. Her son was rejecting her help and accepting death in her eyes. “No! Stop throwing your life away!”
“I want you to stop and look at yourself in the mirror. The year is 2020, if you want me to just be okay let’s go and forget this whole thing I spent 18 years on doesn’t matter, you’re dead ass wrong about that. I spent my whole life making friends and living in the real world and you come now, tell me the whole world apart from the cultivation part of it and some lucky ones will die. How am I supposed to accept that? Tell me.” He burst of anger silenced he woes as he took his cup of coffee into his room and locked the door.
...
...
“Making me believe I was leading a normal life all this time.” He laughed in irony as he took his shirt off to switch into something else than pajamas. He noticed a small black drawing a bit below his belly button. “At least one part of her story checks out, I am definitely not normal.”
He grabbed himself a change of clothes as he sat down and opened his laptop up to do some searched on the internet.
“Is the world ending?” he typed it in and confirmed one thing. The world was in fact not ending. His mother’s claims seemed less and less believable as time passed. He calmed himself down and thought that it all seemed strange, why would his mother reveal so much yet so little at the same time.
“What are cultivation cauldrons?” he typed in hoping for actual answers. He got a lot of speculation from otaku’s around the world and conspiracy theorists but no real answers. From what he could gather that seemed possible, a cultivation cauldron was either a literal cauldron for alchemy or a corpse used by devils.
Too much information was dumped on him in a little amount of time. He had forgotten it was a school day.
The cultivation world was always a strange part of his life. He knew he had connections to it but never interacted with it. Being born into a clan was no better, even without any formal education he still knew about weird things happening in his own town.
He once saw a guy just jump on top of a small building without any external help. He was one of the cultivators his mother talked about, he thought.
“The appearance of the black mark is definitely a weird one, could it be that mom noticed it and that’s why she wants me to cultivate? Or is the world truly on the edge of falling apart?” his phone lit up as he was pondering on the information he had.
“Why are you not in class?” a message appeared on the locked screen. The sender was a friend in that same class.
“Sasha felt sick.” He answered back in 3rd person, thinking it was funny. He grinned and left the phone on the bed as he took a deep breath and walked out of the room.
The apartment was empty. His was mother nowhere to be seen.
“Are you still here?” he asked as he looked around. He found an usb drive on the kitchen table. It wasn’t there when he left earlier so his mother had left it for him during his calming down session.
He grabbed the flash drive and went to his room to check what was on it.
An hour later of browsing through the files the flash drive had he was having a hard time breathing. The drive his mother left him had all the information their clan had gathered about the cultivation world of today. From the smaller clans to the bigger ones.
It was the most detailed explanation on all things related to the clan mother was part of and many things not related to him or his mother. If this fell in the hands of an outsider they would have thought it was a novel in the making. A far too detailed novel at that.
With a deep breath and a few sighs he talked to himself: “So, to make things clear to myself. I was a ‘flower slave’ as the clan called male children from branch families. I was supposed to be the flower slave of the third daughter but the clan found out I had no talent, or so to say they couldn’t see my talent. A fact I can only find out if it’s true or not by becoming part of the clan.”
He slammed his head softly on the table he was sitting at and looked outside the window of his room.
“Maybe she was telling the truth?” doubt seeped into his mind. “Aaaaah!!” he let out a load voice of frustration as he stood up to open the window as the air was getting stale inside his room.
...
“Hi there.”