Young disciple Wei Cabbage-Heart stood before Senior Sister Divine Thunder-Snail in the Hall of Ten Thousand Administrative Scrolls within the Soaring Phoenix-Dragon Sect. His right arm was in a sling, all of his hair was missing and a pattern of lightning scars traced itself across his entire body.
“I see that you’ve recovered from your failed attempt to perform the signature Needle of Heaven technique," Senior Sister Divine Thunder-Snail said, suppressing a smile as she recalled yesterday's spectacular mishap. The technique was supposed to summon a miniature lightning bolt, but Wei Cabbage-Heart had somehow managed to electrocute himself while simultaneously setting his own robes on fire and dying for about 42 seconds.
"Honorable Senior Sister," Wei Cabbage-Heart said formally, bowing as deeply as his injured arm allowed, "I wish to formally withdraw from the Soaring Phoenix-Dragon Sect and return to mortal life."
Divine Thunder-Snail's jade pendant clinked against her desk as she leaned forward in surprise. "You've filled out form Cloud-Pattern-881?" she asked, noting the perfectly brush-stroked document before her. Most disciples who quit simply fled in the night, leaving only a hastily scrawled note - if that.
"Yes, Senior Sister. And the form Mountain-Peak-236 regarding the return of sect resources, plus River-Flow-167 documenting my cultivation progress, or... lack thereof." He smiled self-deprecatingly.
"And your future plans?" she inquired.
"I've had some success growing Spirit-Touch Turnips and Moonlight Cabbage in the outer fields," he said. "I believe my talents lie more in nurturing things that grow in soil rather than attempting to harness heaven's fury."
"What sort of plants are you going to cultivate?" The Divine Thunder-Snail Sister asked. "You are aware that the specific spiritual herb, fruit and vegetable cultivation rights belong to our Sect and anyone growing such outside of our compound walls is to be fined first and lightning-executed if the crime persists, yes?"
"I will not be growing spiritual herbs," the disciple answered. "I wish to grow… people."
"I don't understand," Divine Thunder-Snail raised an elegant eyebrow. "You want to grow... people? What, you mean, become a teacher?"
"No, sister," Cabbage-Heart shook his head. "I plan to grow people. Literally."
Thunder-Snail squinted at Cabbage-Heart as if he'd grown a second head. "What?"
"Most cultivation techniques have been already discovered, documented and claimed by the cult Immortals as their divine right," Cabbage-Heart explained. "But this one hasn't."
"Probably because it's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," Divine Thunder-Snail said, massaging her temples. "Growing people? Like... vegetables?"
"Precisely, Senior Sister! Through my experiments with Spirit-Touch Turnips, I discovered that certain spiritual energies can affect growth patterns in fascinating ways. I believe by combining these principles with the Ancient Jade-Bone Essence Formation and the Seven Stars Nurturing Method—"
"Enough!" Thunder-Snail raised her hand. "I don't want to know more.”
“I just wanted to make sure that I’m not executed for this cultivation method,” the disciple said.
“You won’t be, because nobody is insane enough to grow… people,” the woman said with an eye roll. “Just... just take these approved forms to Elder Thousand-Year Pine in the Treasury Hall. He'll process your severance payment."
She paused, then added, "Actually, given how thoroughly you've completed these forms - even using the correct Celestial Calligraphy style on Cloud-Pattern-881 - I'll authorize a full refund of your entry fee as well. That's an additional hundred spirit stones."
Wei Cabbage-Heart's eyes widened. "The Senior Sister is too kind!"
"Just promise me one thing," she said, affixing her Thunder Seal to the documents. "Whatever this 'people growing' technique becomes, don't name it after our sect."
"I shall call it the Humble Cabbage Cultivation Method," he declared proudly.
"Whatever," Divine Thunder-Snail muttered, already turning her attention to the stack of other administrative scrolls awaiting her review. “Just get out of my sight already.”
Wei Cabbage-Heart bowed one final time and quietly left the hall, his footsteps echoing against the pink marble-inlaid floors. By mid-day he had collected his severance payment, packed his few belongings into a burlap sack, and slipped out through the sect's lesser-used Western-Gale Gate.
No lightning bolts marked his departure, no heavenly omens appeared in the sky - just a former disciple walking down a mountain path, a cloth bundle over his shoulder.
______________________________________
Massarim... the name of this world was Massarim. I wasn't in Kansas anymore.
I still couldn't believe how it happened. One moment I was drifting off during my lunch break, and the next I was inhabiting the body of Wei Cabbage-Heart, a failed cultivator who had apparently died from a lightning technique gone horribly wrong.
According to the other novices, the original Wei had been technically dead for nearly a minute before my consciousness slipped in - just long enough for his soul to depart but not so long that the body was unsalvageable.
It was a strange experience, having access to all his memories and knowledge. I could recall his childhood in the mortal realm, his excitement at being accepted into the Soaring Phoenix-Dragon and then his growing disillusionment and frustration as he struggled to master even the most basic cultivation techniques.
The original Wei had been, to put it kindly, a complete disaster. His attempts at the Needle of Heaven technique weren't even his worst failure - there was that time he tried to perform the Phoenix Wing Step and somehow ended up stuck upside down in a tree for three days. Or when he attempted the Dragon's Breath meditation and gave himself hiccups.
Looking through his memories, I could see why the original Wei had been so desperate to try the advanced Needle of Heaven technique despite being warned repeatedly not to. He'd been trying to prove himself after the "Immortal's Tea Ceremony Incident" where he'd accidentally set Immortal Instructor Marmokosh’s prized thousand-year-old teapot on fire. Yes, somehow he'd managed to set liquid on fire. The Immortal's expression had been particularly memorable - a mix of rage, confusion, and genuine curiosity about how it was even possible.
I winced, rifling through more of Wei's original memories as I walked down the mountain path. What I found most interesting wasn't the failures themselves, but rather a conversation I discovered between two elder disciples who had been discussing Wei's case in the garden below one of the many white halls.
"His heart core is too big," Elder Sister Frost-Pine had said to her peer. "It disperses his spiritual energy focus before it can properly concentrate. Every time he tries to gather power, it leaks out like water through a broken vessel."
"Isn't that usually a good thing?" Second Brother Iron-Storm had asked. "The wider the meridians, the more potential for power?"
"Not in his case," Frost-Pine sighed. "His heart core is abnormally enlarged - like a spiritual cardiomegaly. When most cultivators gather energy, it naturally concentrates in their dantian. But his oversized heart core acts like a second dantian, pulling energy downward and dispersing it before it can properly settle."
"So there's no hope for him to advance?" Iron-Storm had asked.
"Not in any traditional path," Frost-Pine replied. "If the boy persists at it, he will likely encounter a catastrophe. Proper application of power requires focus and he is simply unable to focus his Qi."
Wei had took the conversation to heart and took it as a challenge to attempt the Needle, instead of slowing down. That was his end and my beginning in his body.
In essence, from the soup of Cabbage-Heart’s memories I slowly came to understand that Cultivation was bullshit magic that relied on the following essential ingredients to function:
First, there was Qi - the fundamental spiritual energy that permeated everything. Traditional cultivators gathered this energy through meditation, storing it in their dantian (a spiritual core located in the lower abdomen) before refining it into more potent forms.
Second was the meridian system - the spiritual pathways through which Qi flowed. Most cultivators had naturally narrow meridians that helped concentrate and direct energy. My inherited oversized heart core was like having a four-lane highway where there should have been a carefully controlled canal system.
Third was the empowerment methods - the various techniques cultivators used to strengthen their bodies and spirits. I knew from Wei's memories that these typically included consuming spiritual pills and elixirs, performing specific meditation techniques, absorbing energy from special formations, and practicing martial arts forms with Qi-infused weapons that helped circulate and refine Qi.
The standard path involved slowly building up one's foundation through careful meditation, gradually expanding one's meridians while maintaining perfect control. Cultivators would spend years just learning to sense Qi, then more years learning to draw it into their dantian. They'd consume carefully measured doses of spirit herbs and pills, each designed to enhance their progress in precise ways.
And finally, came the technique - the specific methods and formations used to manipulate Qi, listed in the thousands of shelves lining the Sect's walls. This was where the original Wei had catastrophically failed time and time again. Through his memories, I could see that the traditional techniques were designed for practitioners with normal spiritual anatomy. They assumed a cultivator could concentrate Qi into tight, focused streams - something my inherited body simply couldn't do.
But as I walked down the mountain path from the white brick walls of the Soaring Phoenix-Dragon Citadel, I began to see possibilities the original Wei had missed. His - my - oversized heart core wasn't necessarily a weakness. It was just horrendously incompatible with the Soaring Phoenix-Dragon Sect's methods.
Their techniques were all about concentration and explosive power - lightning bolts, dragon flames, phoenix wings, punching holes through people's livers, etcetera. To succeed as the sword-flying, one-punch-man one had to force massive amounts of Qi through very narrow channels.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Another interesting point of note I discovered in Cabbage-Heart’s head was that Qi resonated with artifacts in all sorts of curious ways. An artifact was basically any object infused with Qi, be it a shiny rock, a scroll, a magic sword or a beast core.
As I had quit the cult, I no longer had access to such bounties. However I had a bit of a cheeky plan to acquire the most potent sort of an artifact at no cost at all.
"Good day sir," I greeted the bored-looking cemetery keeper, an elderly man with wispy grey hair and a perpetually hunched posture who was lazily sweeping leaves near the graveyard entrance.
"Eh? What's that?" he squinted at me through rheumy eyes, leaning on his broom. His faded blue robes were patched in several places and had definitely seen better decades.
"I was wondering," I said carefully, "if you've had any particularly... disagreeable individuals pass away recently? You know, the type of person everyone in town really, really hated?"
The old man's bushy eyebrows shot up not expecting my inquiry. "Ya kno’, normally people come here to pay respect to their loved ones," he said. "Not ask about the town assholes."
"Ah, but you see," I smiled disarmingly, "I'm starting a new... agricultural venture. And I'm particularly interested in using natural fertilizers."
"Natural fer- wait." The old man's eyes narrowed. "You want to dig up dead people for fertilizer?"
"Not all dead people!" I hastily clarified. "Just someone really awful. You know, wife-beaters, corrupt merchants, that sort of thing. The kind of people whose relatives probably wouldn't mind if their final resting place contributed to something productive. Like cabbages."
The old keeper stared at me for a long moment, then burst out laughing. "Boy, I've been tending this graveyard for forty years, and that's the most creative grave-robbing excuse I've ever heard! Usually they just mumble something about lost jewelry or family heirlooms."
He wiped tears from his eyes, still chuckling. "Let me guess - you're one of them failed cultivators from up the mountain citadel? The ones who come down here thinking they can harvest 'yin essence' or whatever nonsense?"
"Actually, I'm more interested in the mineral content," I replied earnestly. "You see, when a body decomposes the bones release calcium and phosphorus, which are excellent for plant growth," I continued cheerfully. "And if the deceased happened to be a cultivator, well, those minerals would be spiritually enriched! Just think - all that expensive spirit herb consumption and meditation, going to waste underground when it could be nurturing the next generation of produce!"
The old keeper was now doubled over with laughter. "Spirit... spirit-enhanced... COMPOST!" he wheezed. "By the Heavenly Dao, that's a new one!"
"Dead men tell the best tales," I grinned. "And I'm sure you know many dead. Here, this should brighten your evening."
I pulled out a massive bottle of wine from my bag procured from the compound's 'confiscated items' storage before my departure.
The old keeper's eyes widened at the sight of the wine bottle. "Is that... Crystal Moon Palace wine? The kind they serve to Immortals?"
"Indeed," I smiled. "Confiscated a century ago from some junior disciples who tried sneaking it into morning meditation. I figured it would be better appreciated by someone with real stories to tell."
The keeper grabbed the bottle with surprising speed for his age, examining the seal. "Well now... perhaps we could discuss some of our more... problematic former residents. Did you ever hear about Old Man Zhou, the loan shark? Nasty piece of work, that one. Charged 220% interest and took people's children as collateral. When he died, his own family refused to claim the body."
"Hmmm," I nodded. "Sounds lovely, but was he a powerful cultivator? I'm looking for someone who could do magical bullshit with an eye-blink."
"That sort of people don't usually die here," the cemetery keeper replied, vanishing the wine in his robe. "They generally get eaten by a spirit beast, get crushed by a leviathan, explode into burned meat chunks or rainbow sparkles up in their fancy mountain compounds or ascend to immortality or whatever. Though..." he scratched his chin thoughtfully, "we did get us a Jade Lady just two days ago…”
“A Jade?” I leaned closer.
“Zheniya the Chryzanthine Barracuda. Now there was a piece of nasty work. Magistrate's daughter, quite the talented cultivator too. Was quite the terror of town before someone finally had enough and slipped Sunset Widow spiderlings into her breakfast tea."
"Oh?" I perked up with interest.
"Oh yes," the keeper uncorked the wine bottle with a rusty knife, settling onto a nearby bench. "Zheniya was what we call a 'young mistress' type - talented, beautiful, and utterly ruthless. Had this signature move where she'd call down purple lightning to fry anyone who displeased her. Called it the 'Chrysanthemum's Judgment' or some such."
He took another drink. "Word was she'd been slowly poisoning her father with mercury, making it look like cultivation sickness. She was set to inherit his position as magistrate within the week. Would've been a disaster for the town - she already had plans drawn up to 'renovate' the poor quarter by burning it down and building some sort of spiritual formation array."
"The whole town knew what she was doing to her father, but nobody dared speak up. She had this nasty habit of making examples of people. There was this one street vendor who accidentally splashed some soup on her robes. She got so mad he exploded from a single tap of her pinkie. Took the street cleaners a week to scrub lightning streaks and blood stains outta the cobblestones," he chuckled darkly, taking another swig. "Though I'll tell you something funny - when they brought her body in, her perfectly manicured jade-like skin had turned this hilarious shade of angry purple. Matched her lightning technique perfectly! The mortician couldn't stop giggling while trying to make her presentable. Had to stuff extra cotton in her cheeks 'cause her face was all puffed up like an angry toad. Angry in life and even angrier in death, that one."
"How deep did they bury her?" I asked, trying to sound casual.
The keeper gave me a knowing look. "Standard six feet, northwest corner, plot 668 under the willow tree. Not that I'm suggesting anything, mind you," he added with an exaggerated wink. "Just making conversation about our local history. Though if someone were to, say, redistribute some of that spiritual enrichment to more productive purposes... Well, I'm getting old. My eyesight isn't what it used to be, especially at night. And my hearing's going too - wouldn't notice if someone was digging unless they started singing while doing it."
"Was she buried in her full cultivator regalia?" I asked curiously.
"Nay," the keeper shook his head. "The Rainbow Toad Town Council made this long-ass roll of all of her terrible crimes and stripped her of her worldly possessions as recompense. Not a single person came to her defense when she was buried, not a single soul said anything nice. Everyone hated her for she was the worst type of mistress, hostile to all below her, indifferent to the needs of her town. They say she once spent three hours lecturing everyone about the proper way to appreciate spirit tea while simultaneously electrocuting her servant for 'breathing too loudly' during the ceremony."
The keeper took another long pull from the wine bottle. "They buried her in a plain hemp robe - though they did leave her that gaudy purple jade pendant she always wore. Said it was 'spiritually bonded' to her. Personally, I think they were just scared it might curse whoever tried to remove it." He chuckled. "Served her right - being buried in peasant's clothes after all her preening and posturing about being 'cultivation nobility.'"
"She sounds perfect," I said thoughtfully. "I mean, perfectly horrible. I'll go over and pay her some respects now then."
As I approached the willow tree in the northwest corner, I encountered a peasant relieving himself on what was clearly Zheniya's grave, judging by the headstone featuring her name and passing date.
"Oh, pardon me," the beardly, balding, slightly drunk man said, hastily readjusting his trousers. "Just paying my daily respects to the Young Mistress." He spat on the grave for good measure. "She had my brother executed for 'disrupting spiritual harmony' when his cart wheel squeaked too loudly."
"No need to apologize," I replied cheerfully. "I'm sure she appreciates the... irrigation. Say, would you happen to own a shovel?"
The peasant blinked at me, then broke into a wide, gap-toothed grin. "A shovel? Why, sure I've got three in me shed! Why?"
"Well," I smiled innocently, "I was thinking of starting a garden. And I hear purple jade makes excellent fertilizer."
The peasant leaned in conspiratorially, breath heavy with rice wine. "You know, funny thing about that jade pendant of hers - word is it's worth enough spirit stones to feed a family a year. Not that I've been thinking about it or anything," he added hastily. "Just something I heard while definitely not planning any grave robbery."
"Oh, I don't care about the pendant," I said truthfully, knowing that the pendant was likely cursed and set to cultivate some stupidly specific technique which I could not use due to my wide-as-hell meridians or whatever. "I'm more interested in her... other assets. The spiritually enriched ribs. For agricultural purposes."
The peasant squinted at me. "You want to... farm with her... bones?"
"Indeed! Think about it - all that spiritual energy she used to torment people with could be redirected to grow the biggest, juiciest cabbages this town has ever seen. Wouldn't that be a fitting legacy? The woman who exploded people over soup stains, transformed into affordable produce for the common folk?"
The peasant stared at me for a long moment, then burst into wheezing laughter. "By the Luminar Emperor's perfectly groomed beard, that's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard! She always went on and on about her 'noble spiritual legacy' - bet she never thought it'd be feeding the same peasants she looked down on!"
He wiped tears from his eyes. "Tell you what - I'll help you dig her up, but on one condition."
"Oh?"
"I want the first pick of whatever cabbages you grow from her bones. We coud serve them at the town's autumn festival, tell everyone they're 'Chrysanthemum's Last Judgment' cabbages!" He cackled. "Maybe make a nice kimchi. She always did hate 'commoner food' - said it disturbed her refined spiritual palate."
"Sure," I grinned. "Though we should probably wait until nightfall..."
"Won't be too long," the peasant looked up at the setting sun. "Let's walk to my farm and get the shovels."
. . .
Under the silver shimmer of the shattered moon above us, Hoe-lin Gourd and I split ways. He with the cursed jade bracelet, me with a violet corpse in my bag. Hoe-lin was so exceptionally glad to have robbed the wicked-Jade-witch's grave that he'd insisted on giving me his lucky shovel as well to jumpstart my farming career.
The crystal lanterns of Rainbow Toad Town swayed gently in the night breeze, casting shifting shadows across the cobblestone streets as I made my way through the empty marketplace. Above, the imposing silhouette of the Soaring Phoenix-Dragon Sect's mountain citadel loomed against the starlit sky, its white walls gleaming with protective formations that pulsed with soft spiritual light.
In hindsight, acquiring a proper farm before engaging in midnight corpse procurement might have been the more logical approach. But given the town's barely concealed hatred for the deceased Young Mistress, I suspected her remains wouldn't have stayed buried much longer anyway. Some drunk farmer would have eventually dug her up just to dump her in a ravine out of spite for the spirit beasts to devour her whole.
At least this way her spiritual essence would serve a productive purpose. The original Wei Cabbage-Heart's memories indicated that cultivation resources were absurdly expensive - a single low-grade spirit herb could cost as much as a common farmer's yearly income. And here I had an entire cultivator's worth of spiritually-enriched remains, obtained for nothing more than a bottle of stolen wine and the promise of revenge-flavored cabbages.
Things were looking up. The Chryzanthine Barracuda was silent in my burlap sack, thrice-bundled and buried in several pounds of rotting spring-apples and lilac sniff-grass to hide the smell.
Now I just needed to find somewhere to actually grow my theoretical people-cabbages. Ideally, somewhere remote enough that nobody would question why my vegetables occasionally screamed during harvest season. Or walked around.
I wasn’t really sure what sort of a cursed abomination was going to grow in my garden, but it would certainly be very magical and harvestable either good for tea to empower idiots or poison to put them down forever.
The problem was that most available farmland near Rainbow Toad Town was already claimed by established families. And while I had enough spirit stones from my sect severance payment to potentially lease a small plot, I suspected that "growing people from dead cultivator bones" might violate some obscure agricultural zoning laws or just generally freak people out.
As I pondered my real estate options, looking at the closed real estate temple, a weathered wooden board caught my eye amongst a hundred other land plots listed for sale: "BANSHEE VALLEY FARM - CHEAP! (Previous owners died horribly but property taxes are low!)"
Well. That seemed promising.
Cultivators relied on meditation in Qi-rich places, specifically, their white walled Citadel Compound, which basically trapped Qi in a single place using a bunch of walls. From what I could recall, a banshee was a type of a noisy, dread-type spirit beast inhabiting cursed land. Cursed land meant there was a lot of Qi in the place.
Death-aligned Qi that most cultivators considered impure.
I wasn't most people.
I adjusted my sack of former Young Mistress and headed toward the tiny mountain village address listed on the sign. Sometimes the heavens did provide - even if their gifts came wrapped in supernatural tragedy.