Jim wasn’t your average cultivator.
No. Behind his fists was a fury that no other denizen on this world could, or would, ever understand. The type of anger and seething rage that spawned itself from a pure and unabashed history of living in a homeowners association, and wasting his life away in a pointless marriage with ungrateful kids.
And then dying from a Karen pulling into her driveway on his way to pay off a fine for letting her grass grow too long.
Jim Lee stretched out his back; looking at the sun rising above the sect of this new world. He’d been reborn as some peasant with wife and children.
Naturally, as a man who got trapped into a life with wife and children in the suburbs, Jim wasn’t about to have a new lease on life feeding three other peasants in some rural community in a world without toilets.
No.
The first night after was reborn, he told his new family that he was going to check the rice fields. And then he took off like a star flying through the sky.
Yeah. Maybe he wasn’t the best person. One might even call that sort of behavior ‘really fucked up,’ all of his friends in the past life might even say, ‘holy fuck Jim, But you know what he was? He was free.
Jim scratched his nose and looked at the sect arrayed before him. Square with perfect little buildings and houses arranged in a very pleasant and straightforward manner. Inside of which were about a hundred bald—Jim assumed that having no-hair somehow let the qi into their body faster—cultivators, currently gathered around performing the morning exercises.
If I’m going to be a big-head-hancho in this world, I need to pull myself up by the bootstraps.
From his point overseeing the sect on the hill, he’d seen several monks wearing light orange robes doing rounds around the others. Now, Jim didn’t know much about this cultivation business. He’d picked up snippets from those on his way to the Flying Dragon Sect—a ridiculous name, if you asked him—and apparently, they were seen as the most powerful of the powerful. And why? Because they punched really good. Like. Really good.
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Like, beat Chuck Noris, Bruce Lee, and a whole Professional Wrestling organization good.
And apparently by punching things real good, they got money, fame, and somehow lived longer. That last part he doubted, but fuck it, he wanted fame and money.
So, Jim found out where they stayed, and then watched out. Of course, he purchased a bottle of sake—local booze, and camped out to observe these monks. But they didn’t do the story any justice at all. From what he could tell, this sect was peaceful—and just sat around most of the day? How the hell were they supposed to be strong when they spent the entirety of the night and morning sitting around.
Jim cleared his throat, fixed his greasy hair up, and strode straight towards the middle of this rural sect.
One of the senior-baldies raised his eyebrow and gave a forced smile. “It is not customary for non-sect members to pay their respects, not just stride into our territory in this manner.”
“I’m here for power.” Jim said back.
“…Do you court death?”
“Are you threatening me?”
The man blinked in surprise and looked at a couple of the other baldies around him; yet they gave him nothing. Nobody knew what was happening. Could this stranger be a spy from a rival sect? Surely, a fool wouldn’t walk in here asking for power out of nowhere.
“I do believe you’re lost.” The main monk said, moving closer. His arms were tucked away in the long sleeves of that orange robe, and his strained smile was starting to break. “It is best if you leave here right now. Or I will be forced to make you leave, mortal.”
Jim belched, and patted his stomach. Man, that booze was really starting to hit. “Ain’t lost. Gimme power. I know you got it. Not leaving ‘til you share.”
The monk shook his head. “As you will it.”
In a flash the monk closed the distance—a single palm flowing into Jim like a bullet, ripping through his flesh and tearing out the other side. Jim gasped as he sunk to his knees—before it all went dark.
— — — ㊋ — — —
Jim woke up with a start; coughing up phlegm and shaking in a pit. He crawled out; his hands covered in dried blood as flies buzzed around his head.
He was down the road from a sect; the memories flooded back. Jim set a hand to his stomach—a hole in the tunic he’d been wearing from where the monk eviscerated him with an open palm.
“I can’t fucking believe this.” Jim growled. It wasn’t fear. No. It was the righteous indignation of a boomer with nothing to lose in a foreign land that he didn’t want or care to understand. Didn’t he see that Jim was out here trying to earn a place in thsi world? To get his share of the pie? “That fucking millennial.”