Chapter 03
Shit Means Nice
The old man, perplexed by Jon's expletive, tilted his head slightly, a wrinkle of confusion etched between his brows. "Shit?" he echoed, the word foreign and rough on his tongue.
With a straight face, Jon replied in Mandarin, "Oh, it's nothing really, esteemed elder." But the old man, his interest piqued, wasn’t ready to let it go.
"What does that word signify?" he asked again, his tone insistent, as if the word held the key to some profound universal truth.
Thinking fast, Jon affected his best impassive diplomat mask. "It's simply a term of admiration where I'm from," he lied smoothly. "It means 'nice' or 'impressive.' Your sect's name struck me as truly formidable, which is why I said it."
The old man stroked his wispy beard contemplatively, considering this new data point with utmost solemnity. "Ah...'shit'..." he mused, savoring the flavor of the uncouth syllables. "Shit, is it?"
Then, with a nod of approval and turning to Jon with a smile, he declared, "You are 'shit'."
Every ounce of Jon's being strained to maintain a politely bemused expression rather than bursting into hysterical, anxiety-laden laughter.
"Why thank you, venerable elder," he replied, the very image of graciousness as he returned the absurd smile. "You are equally...shit, as well."
The surrounding cultivators, witnessing this exchange, began to murmur "shit", nodding to each other in apparent satisfaction, convinced they had grasped a compliment of the highest order from another realm. The word echoed through the chamber, a bizarre mantra of cross-cultural connection.
It was incredibly childish of him, and Jon had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from visibly cracking as the assembled mystics congratulated each other on being so delightfully "shit."
As the discordant chorus began to ebb, Jon seized the opportunity to steer the conversation toward his more pressing existential burden.
"Esteemed elder, please forgive my boldness," he interjected with the perfect blend of polite deference. "But may I ask the reason for my being summoned to your hallowed sect?"
He allowed just a hint of underlying concern to bleed into his tone, skirting the line between respect and cautious worry like a tightrope. Three distinct clues had cemented Jon's suspicion that this was no chance displacement:
First, the old man’s initial greeting of ‘summoned one’ was a dead giveaway. Duh, Jon mused sarcastically within the safe confines of his mind.
Second, the intricate patterns etched into the ground where he had first materialized. The designs were elaborate, traced in a substance that was unmistakably red—blood, he hoped not of a human variety. Definitely some freaky ritual shit.
And third, well...this whole situation reeked of a "summoning from another world" premise straight out of the novels he used to read. Like, zero percent chance this was a delightful meet-cute.
As Jon contemplated this, the old man's voice cut through his thoughts. "You shall have the honor of contributing to our heavenly leader's ascent to the next cultivation realm , the great Chun Shian," he declared, his eyes gleaming with pride and anticipation.
The word 'contributing' rang alarm bells in Jon’s head. Ooookay, where is this going...? he thought. What did he mean by "contributing" to ascend to immortality? Surely he didn’t mean...
As if on cue, the old man, perhaps perceiving the flicker of doubt in Jon's body language, clarified, "Your otherworldly blood shall be used in service of the greatest of causes."
Oh no, Jon realized internally, his fears confirmed. It was exactly what he thought. The bottom dropped out of his stomach as the grotesque reality crystallized. Of course - these lunatic cultivators thought his interdimensional essence would be the key ingredient to their big bad's power up brew.
Wonderful. Just fucking wonderful.
The realization set Jon's mind racing, searching for an escape or a retort that might diffuse the situation. He had to think fast, lest he become an unwilling martyr in a ritual he had no desire to partake in.
He lifted his gaze, confronting the old man and his entourage. While some smiled, their eyes twinkling with the thrill of the forthcoming ritual, others regarded him with a cold, calculating stare. Jon's palms were clammy, his stomach twisting into knots, the raw edge of fear sharpening his senses.
Attempting to negotiate his way out, Jon stammered, "Venerable elder, pardon my straightforwardness, but I- I think that would be a mist-" His plea was abruptly cut short. A man in the crowd, previously unnoticed, suddenly up against him, made swift, precise gestures, his hands blurring in motion. Jon couldn't fully comprehend the actions, his mind racing with alarm.
The man, having completed his rapid assessment, turned to the elder and his peers, stating matter-of-factly, "The 'window' was almost closed."
The window? What the fuck, dude? You just touch people randomly like that? Who raised these guys? he thought, bewildered by the man's cryptic movements.
But before Jon could grasp the gravity of those words, he felt sharp stings where the man had seemingly touched him. A wave of excruciating pain followed, paralyzing him in an instant. He tried to speak, to move, to do anything, but his body refused to obey. Powerless, he crumpled to the ground, his world contracting to the throbbing of his own heartbeat and the distant sound of the dog barking furiously at the men.
As his vision tunneled, the last thing Jon saw were the blurred faces of the cultivators looming over him, their expressions a blend of curiosity and triumph. They seemed to be congratulating the old man. The sounds around him began to fade, as if he were sinking into deep water, and his consciousness wavered on the brink of oblivion.
Then, darkness swallowed him whole, the pain and fear ebbing away as he succumbed to the forced stupor. This was peaceful, all things considered.
*****
Jon slowly awakened, his eyes opening to a blurred ceiling above. As his vision gradually cleared, distinct scents filled his nostrils—the aroma of tea, the earthiness of the soil, and the metallic tinge of blood overshadowed by a nauseating stench reminiscent of a decaying body.
Remarkably, he could more or less pinpoint the origin of each smell, their individual trails as clear as if they were colored strings in the air. The horrible odor being the closest, am I near a corpse? He thought. Then, all his sensory systems, as if they had been dull his whole life, awakened in a way that was purely and simply brutal.
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This overwhelming tidal wave of stimulus crashing over Jon was distinctly not a panic attack - he knew the familiar grip of anxiety all too well from his past struggles. No, this was something entirely different...something he had never experienced before.
It felt like every one of his five senses had been abruptly sharpened to nuclear levels, cranked up to suicidal volumes with no filter or dimmer switch. The ordinary sights, smells, textures and sounds of the world were now battering him in vivid high-definition, as if his entire perception had been muted in a dreary black-and-white fog his whole life until this moment.
Jon's nostrils flared with each breath, recoiling from the intense bouquets of scent data viciously assaulting his olfactory receptors. His eyes darted around frantically, struggling to focus despite the disorienting hyper-clarity of detail jumping into stark resolution all around him.
Even the routine whisper of air across his skin felt like a coarse scouring grit, each microscopic texture magnified into harsh, abrasive realism. The cacophonous symphony of ambient noises swelled into an overwhelming tangle of white noise, crashing like an overpowering tidal wave of deafening static. It was utterly disorienting, disjointing...like someone had peeled off his personal reality filter and shoved him headfirst into a bombarding multi-sensory rave he could neither process nor escape.
And the nauseating reek of decay that cloyed the air around him...Jon was amazed his sensitive taste buds didn't disintegrate from the putrid, concentrated notes of rot and death coating his abused senses.
But most disorienting of all was the utterly foreign - yet intrinsically familiar - sensation pulsing within him. A warm, soothing flow of... energy? Yes, that was the best way to put it, it emanated from Jon's abdomen, head and most intensely, his chest. It didn't hurt, but it also felt unmistakably unnatural...yet at the same time, the potent inner energy surged through his meridians with an indescribable cohesion, as if it had always been an innate part of him that he was only now capable of perceiving.
Phantom tingles skittering across nerve endings from head to toe.
It was all just...too much. Too viscerally intense and REAL in a way the world had never been before. If this was his new existence, some cosmic prank or trial by fire, Jon wasn't sure his psyche could withstand long against such an onslaught...
What the fuck is happening to me? His heart pounded as reality seemed to warp around him in lurid hyper-clarity.
But just then, Jon recalled the words of Dr. Harris, his psychiatrist from years ago. When panic attacks threatened to overwhelm him, she had advised, "Breathe in, breathe out. Clear your mind. Don't dwell on your father...on that state he was in. Remember the joy instead, Jon. The happier memories."
Heeding this advice again, Jon took deep, controlled breaths, pushing his mind towards comforting thoughts—his parents in a time of joy, before the tragic event he referred to as the 'Batman incident.' Calm down, calm down...
This mental shift seemed almost magical, as his heightened senses gradually recalibrated to a bearable level. The pounding of his heart and the heavy pumping of his lungs started to recede, and a semblance of peace enveloped him as his senses stabilized.
Jon eventually subdued the tumult within, his senses now sharpened beyond their prior limits yet no longer overwhelming. As he gingerly opened his eyes, he became acutely aware of his physical state. Initially, he thought he had been sweating profusely, but a closer inspection revealed something startling.
"Oh, God." The fluid coating his skin was light brown, oozing from his pores with an atrocious odor. "That reek was me?" he whispered in self-disgust, recoiling at the realization.
His attention then shifted to something peculiar on his body. Scattered across his skin were acupuncture needles, aligned with unnerving symmetry. As he traced their placement, a surge of anger flashed through him. They were positioned exactly where that damned cultivator had struck him earlier. "Son of a bitch..." he cursed under his breath, resentment boiling at the thought of the cultivator's calculated precision.
Struggling to his feet, Jon grappled with the new, intense sensations coursing through him. The needles, he now understood, weren’t just randomly placed; they were deliberately aligned with the tender spots left by the cultivator’s touch, suggesting a method to the apparent madness.
Jon’s sudden alertness was triggered not by the physical changes he observed, but by the unfamiliar sensation within him—a warm, soothing energy, akin to a gentle fire, radiating from his abdomen, head, and most intensely, his chest. This energy pulsed through his veins.
As unsettling as the experience was, it didn't feel overtly unpleasant either. More...natural than anything, despite its foreign origins. Like the extension of some innate ability he'd been blind to until now.
As he rose, his hands clutched the edges of the wooden table he had been laid upon, only for it to snap effortlessly under his grip. Jon's initial thought was to blame the poor quality of the wood, but a spark of realization hit him.
The peculiar stench, the acute senses, and the warm internal energy mirrored the tales of 'body transformation' he had read in countless xianxia novels. In these stories, the protagonist often awakens post-cultivation to find themselves enhanced, possessing heightened senses and almost superhuman strength. The effortless destruction of the wooden table seemed to confirm his suspicion.
To test his budding theory, Jon turned his attention to a metal chair nearby. With curiosity and disbelief, he gripped it and applied pressure. To his astonishment, the metal yielded to his touch, bending as if it were made of clay.
A sardonic smile tugged at the corners of his lips. "Well, fuck me sideways..." he muttered to himself in disbelieving awe. "Guess I'm cultivating now."
Still grappling with the reality of his situation, he looked upwards, half-expecting some divine or cosmic entity to provide answers. "So what - I'm the main character of my own personal xianxia now? Is this some kind of sick meta joke I'm being subjected to?" he muttered, his voice tinged with disbelief.
As he plucked the acupuncture needles from his skin, a cool draft caressed his bare skin, prompting a startled realization. Jon was naked. His eyes darted around, half-expecting to find some celestial audience amused by his predicament.
Sitting back on the remains of the wooden table, Jon pondered over the surreal sequence of events.
"Okay...let's recap," he began in a low murmur, still trying to wrap his head around everything. "I get effortlessly snatched by a giant disembodied hand along with Evil Incarnate - the dog, that is - just to preface how utterly fucking insane this day decided to be..."
His eyes scanned the modest, threadbare furnishings of the unadorned chambers - little more than the destroyed table, a couple of simple metal chairs. Well, one chair and the mangled husk of another that was currently impressing him.
"Then I get dragged off to meet the weirdos and their immortality-obsessed cult leader who literally wants to sacrifice me - the Isekai'd rando - to ascend to some next level shit," he continued.
The distant, tinny sound of a dog barking suddenly registered, momentarily derailing his train of thought as a fleeting pang of guilt lanced through him.
"Ah shit, Evil Mutt back there...I hope Cujo's alright at least," he muttered, pushing the thought aside as he refocused. "Anyway, yeah...then their sketchy Number Two dude goes all Drunken Boxer Viper Strike on me from outta nowhere and everything goes black."
"Seems about right.” he concluded. "What a splendid day!"
Jon, now fully aware of the stakes, shifted his thoughts toward escape. "No chance of negotiating my way out of this," he mused, his mind racing through potential strategies. The fact that he was left unbound and alone in the room hinted at the cult's overconfidence—or perhaps underestimation of him.
"Ah, the perks of main character plot armor," he chuckled to himself. It seemed that, just like in the novels, the antagonists possessed a certain lack of foresight, failing to take essential precautions.
Jon almost chuckled, contemplating the oversight of his captors. "They really don't think things through, do they? I'm guessing these mouth-breathers didn't exactly plan for their ritual lamb to wake up with super powers pre-slaughter..." He shook his head in amused disbelief. "Well, their lack of strategic planning could be my ticket out of here."
As Jon scoured the confines of the small room, his observations confirmed that escape routes were limited: just one door and a window. His newly amplified hearing subtly picked up the murmur of voices nearby, indicating that the door was not a viable option without risking immediate capture. The window, then, was his best bet for escape.
Approaching the window, Jon gauged its height. While it was certainly high, his supposed enhanced physical abilities reassured him that the jump was within his capabilities. The real challenge lay in the stealth required for his escape. Being butt naked would make it difficult to go unnoticed.
Jon couldn't help but grimace at the irony of his predicament. Of all the times to have a naturist adventure, it has to be when I'm breaking out of a cult's stronghold, he thought wryly. Despite the ludicrousness of his situation, the gravity of his circumstances wasn’t lost on him. Naked or not, his life depended on a successful escape.