The following day is paradoxically one of the most interesting of my life.

On the surface, it has no right to be, considering Meng Yi has basically banned me from stepping foot outside my room until I can at least conduct myself in a manner even vaguely similar to Xian Qigang. Or, rather, ‘my former self’ as she’s told me to think of him.

Don’t know why she bothers? I have zero intention of being anything like that guy.

Apparently, Xian Qigang kept a journal. The entries in it are sporadic at best (the last one weeks old), but what is there paints the picture of a typical Young Master. Which basically means that he was an awful, obnoxious, narcissistic piece of cow poop.

Of course, it takes some work to decode the delusional mini-rants that is much of the journal, but doing so reveals a man so awful, even his own family couldn’t stand him, which was apparently why he was all the way out here, Commander of a tiny outpost nobody but the locals cared about.

When I bring it up, Meng Yi informs me that he has (or I have now, I guess) a reputation in town so bad that most of the establishments I frequent now have mostly male staff, since the girls quit.

“Yeah, no,” I say. “I can’t be this guy.”

“You are,” Meng Yi insists.

“No, I’m not,” I disagree. “This guy’s a right wanker. God, I can’t believe I’m actually glad he’s dead. Have you read his journal?” I ask, holding the book towards her.

“I’d rather not,” Meng Yi admits, looking like she almost feels the need to draw back from the book.

I give her an unamused look. “Hypocrisy is not a good look on you,” I say.

The girl looks like she just barely resists the urge to scowl at me.

“You have to go back to being your old self, Young Master,” she says. “Do you not remember what we’re trying to do? We must be above suspicion.”

“This guy literally joked about crippling a guy because a girl he had his eyes on was sweet on him,” I say slowly, needing her understand every word. “He did it in front of her to make a point. Then he raped her in front of the guy he crippled to make another point.” I shake the journal. “It’s all in here.”

Meng Yi closes her eyes, looking like she was familiar with the event I spoke of.

“Chang and Ju,” she said. “That happened on your second week here.”

“No, that happened on his second week here,” I correct. “Because, I’m not him, and I’m not going to be. Report me to his family if you want, but if surviving in this world means I have to be a supreme tosser who goes around town looking for puppies to kick and babies to steal candy from, then…” I hesitate, the weight of the declaration I’m about to make causing the words to hang in my throat for a moment.

I push through, meaning every word; “…then I don’t think I care much about surviving.”

Because, really, what would be the point?

My family’s gone. All my friends are gone. Everyone and everything I’ve ever known and loved is a world I can’t access away.

It’s hard enough finding a reason to want to live, and now I have to scar myself emotionally and psychologically, doing things that will hunt me for life, for that too?

Sorry to disappoint you, Meng Yi, but, I’m really not that attached to living.

I mean, yes, in the beginning, with all the shock and the confusion and the strangeness, I had been eager for a lifeline. Any lifeline.

But that was yesterday. Since then, I’ve had a whole day to marinate in the reality of my situation. I’ve gone to bed and woken to the dashed hope of not being back in my world.

Most importantly, I’ve come to understand just how much of a right git the person whose life I’ve stolen is.

Suffice to say, yesterday me was an idiot. He had no idea what he was talking about and he really should stop writing checks with his mouth that future me has to cash.

Meng Yi stares at me for a long moment, a complicated cocktail of emotions stirring her features, then, finally, she rises and leaves the room, the door closing gently behind her.

I sigh, laying back on the sinfully soft bed.

Tosser he may be, but Xian Qigang has a bed fit for an emperor.

Wait… emperor.

The word tingles at a memory from yesterday; of the reward I’d gotten from that strange rolling power I’d used on the cultivation manual Meng Yi showed me.

I’d half forgotten about it until now, because Meng Yi had been with me almost the entire time. And when she wasn’t with me, she’d left me with books to read, a qi primer and Xian Qigang’s diary.

The qi primer had actually been a fun read, and had taught me quite a bit about qi and cultivation.

Some of what it taught were either things that Meng Yi had already told me during my exhaustive questioning of her, or things that I was already expecting from my experience with xianxia webnovels, but I’d read the book cover to cover in one sitting nevertheless.

That was yesterday, and after dinner, which Meng Yi had brought to the room, we’d had a conversation late into the night talking about cultivators, cultivation, power levels, and even a little geography.

I’d gone to sleep after that, exhausted by the madness of the day, and it was when I woke up this morning, a couple hours ago that I’d decided to check out the journal.

I rather wish I hadn’t.

Presently, my remembrance of the noble rank manual, brings the item back to mind. Literally. As in, I can see its name in my head.

The Path of The Sun Emperor Cultivation Method

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Okay,” I mutter to myself, “so, I know it’s there, but how do I…”

Apparently, my desire to get the object is enough, and a book of the deepest royal purple, the same size as the only other cultivation manual I’ve seen, appears out of thin air and lands on my chest.

Immediately, I feel it’s power.

Similarly to The Path of The Glowing Noon manual yesterday, this manual exudes qi too. Unlike that manual however, the qi emanating from The Path of The Sun Emperor is so thick and powerful that it damn near steals my breath away.

The purple book sits on my chest. Hot. Heavy. Like walking under the sun in oppressive summer heat.

Yesterday, during our extensive Q&A session, Meng Yi had, at my request, taught me how to sense qi, mine and that of the world around me.

The sense is rather distracting, but luckily, it generally sits at the back of the mind until focused on.

The qi coming from the manual feels more powerful than that of anything I’ve ever sensed. And, yes, I will readily admit that I’ve only sensed the qi of two people; Meng Yi and myself, but, all the same, the realization that a cultivation manual is technically more powerful than I am, is a sobering one.

I pick up the book, thrown for a moment by the light weight of it.

From its aura, I’d expected it to be heavy to move.

Failure

Cannot roll reward item.

I blink at the message.

I see.

Makes sense though, and to be honest I’d rather expected it.

Ignoring the message, I sit up, observing the book; reading the familiar title written out in golden kanji, or whatever they call it here, and running my fingers across the rich, thick covers.

After a moment, I open the book to the first page.

The pages of the book are gold, the words on them written in a bright, rich red, like blood.

The letters look Chinese, no, wait, actually they look Arabic… no, they don’t, in fact, they look Cyrillic script, no, these are hieroglyphs…

…What the hell? They’re changing.

Frustratingly enough though, I feel like I can understand them. Like, if I simply focus hard enough, everything will be clear.

Determined, I focus on the page, pinpointing on a singular, morphing word.

It changes, warps, twists, hurting my head just looking at it, but I don’t give up, I focus and—

The Emperor stood on the path to heaven. One man facing the cosmos.

He would prevail. He knew this. All he needed was his crown.

It came to him, a star with the power to hold a dozen worlds in its orbit condensed into a simple band of fire.

A simple band of fire that was the totem of an Emperor.

He took it in both hands, feeling its power shake him to his very bones.

“HEAVY IS THE CROWN,” he said. “AND UNEASY THE HEAD THAT WEARS IT.”

He put it on and his soul screamed.

I come to violently, Meng Yi snatching the cultivation manual from my hands and gently setting down the closed book on the bed beside me.

‘What happened?’ I try to ask, but I don’t even get out the first syllable, my body spasming too much for breathing, much less talking.

“Shh,” Meng Yi shushes me. “Don’t talk, Young Master. Lay back.”

‘I feel hot,’ I try to say and again fail.

I do feel hot. Ridiculously so. Like there’s a furnace in my chest.

Hot, spasming, out of breath, and with a strange sort of pain that’s feels not physical, Meng Yi lays me back on the bed and helps me stretch out.

She picks up the cultivation manual again, staring from it to me for a moment, before she slots it into the drawer by my bed.

“Hold on,” she says. “I’ll be right back.”

She rushes out, and I lay on the bed panting and shaking and feeling stupid.

So much for hiding the rolling power from Meng Yi.

She returns barely a minute later, a tray in her hands, and I feel better enough that I sit up without any help.

Meng Yi sets the tray on the nightstand, then she hands me a small cup.

“That’s a peasant ranked qi pill,” she explains. “It will help.”

I stare at the smooth, round jade object in the cup.

It looks more like a bead than a pill, a big bead too; there’s no way anyone is swallowing that thing without some major complications.

I tilt the cup, rolling the pill onto a trembling hand.

I sense its qi immediately, nowhere near as potent or as much as what I felt from the peasant ranked manual, but noticeable nonetheless.

1 – 500 (Beast Rank)

501 – 800 (Peasant Rank)

801 – 950 (Sage Rank)

951 – 999 (Noble Rank)

1000 (Divine Rank)

Roll: Yes || No

“Young Master Xian,” Meng Yi calls, and I look up at her. “Swallow the pill,” she says.

Roll: Yes || No

I roll.

Rolling…

490 (Beast Rank)

Reward: Nil

Ah. So when I get a roll lower than the object’s rank, I get nothing.

Good to know.

“Young Master,” Meng Yi says again, forcefully this time.

Right. Pill.

A little apprehensive due to its size, I put the pill in my mouth and it immediately melts into a cold energy.

Surprised, I swallow, and the energy rushes down my throat and settles in my stomach, from where it spreads out, quenching that strange heat from my head all the way down to my toes.

I let out a slow breath, filled with a supernatural surge of vigour that settles the vestiges of my spasms and sharpens my senses like never before.

Bloody hell, I feel like I just injected concentrated caffeine into my veins.

“I understand you’re new to this, Young Master,” Meng Yi says calmly, “so permit me to explain this; cultivation can be incredibly dangerous. Altering a preestablished cultivation even more so.

“In light of that, the next time you intend to try to tear down your cultivation and rebuild it two ranks higher, please, inform me beforehand. Okay?”

“That wasn’t…” I sigh, then nod, feeling small and stupid.

“I suppose you want to know where that—” I gesture at the drawer she’d tucked the manual into “—came from.”

“Yes,” Meng Yi says. “But I can tell you don’t want to say. So, permit me to ask you this, Young Master; did someone give it to you?”

I shake my head. “No.”

She looks relieved for a moment, but then her gaze hardens again as she asks; “And however you got it, what did you sacrifice?”

I blink at that. Had I sacrificed anything?

I’m not really sure how this rolling thing works, but it doesn’t feel like I lost anything to get the reward.

“I don’t think I have to sacrifice anything,” I say.

Meng Yi looks doubtful at that, but I clearly believe my own words so she accepts it.

“Very well then. If Young Master Xian is sure.”

Rising, she packs up the tray.

“You should rest,” she says. “The effect of the qi pill will wear out in a few minutes. You need sleep.”

I feel as awake as I ever have, but I don’t disagree. Meng Yi has proven herself to be knowledgeable in these matters.

Distractedly, I look out the huge windows, and I noticed for the first time something that my mind had been too preoccupied to pick up before now; the light looks wrong.

“Meng Yi, what time is it?”

“It’s almost sunset,” she says and my eyes widen.

It had been morning when I picked up the manual.

Seeing my expression, she nods understandingly.

“Rest,” she says. “We will talk tomorrow. Goodnight, Young Master Xian.”

“Goodnight.”

Meng Yi exits the room, door closing gently behind her.

Just like she said, in a few minutes, the energy from the pill begins to fade fast, and my eyelids begin to droop.

I decide to lay back, and I doze off as soon as my head hits the pillow.