The Road Goes Ever On

The world spun around in circles as Xander stared at the wooden ceiling with a dimming gaze. A loud droning noise rang in his ears as someone shouted the end of the spar.

“Are you done already, Junior Brother? We still have many pointers to share,” the boy said, smirking. He could barely make out his face, as colors splashed around in his vision, but from the sound of him, he could not have been older than fourteen.

“Peh, that was pathetic. Barely managed to take five blows. Let us leave brother, this scum is not worth our time.”

Xander heard murmurs all around him, words full of disgust and occasionally some of pity were thrown his way. The other boy walked out of the arena, but he remained where he lay staring at the roof above him.

“Someone take Yuan to the Old Man, he seems to have hit his head hard.” A man spoke, as a few people walked over. Two pairs of arms lifted him up, carrying him through his daze. He could barely register their voices as he started to gather his wits.

Two questions burned in his mind.

Where the fuck was he? And who’s this Yuan?

The smell of herbs and incense touched his nose, and he felt something warm prickle his skin. With a painful groan he opened his blurry eyes, taking a look at where he found himself.

“Keep lying down Yuan, your wounds haven’t healed yet. The pill is working but you need to rest.”

An old man stood beside him, wearing a plain white robe. His hair was white, long bushy eyebrows set on a face with more wrinkles than skin and a long beard seen in all those Kung-Fu movies.

A boiling iron cauldron sat at the other end of the chamber, green smoke rising from it as it twirled in the air, floating around the old man’s hand.

“I’ll be making a Qi reinforcement pill, it will heal the damage to your dantian soon. You have nothing to worry about, you won’t be crippled,” the old man said, patting his shoulder gently with a kind smile.

Xander stared as the old man walked back towards his cauldron and let his head fall back onto the coarse and hard bed underneath him.

Where was he? The last he remembered was falling asleep as he was preparing for his Physics test paper and the next instant he was being slammed around by some kids throwing magic bullshit at him.

He didn’t have to wait long, as the answers started to come to him on their own. Yuan, a moderately talented kid from the Seven Rivers village who had found out he’d been blessed with Qi. Like every other kid from a village, he decided to strike out his luck in the city, to try and become a cultivator.

The rest went as typical Chinese cultivation stories go. But Yuan was no main character. He barely got into the sect on his talents and struggled to keep up with his peers as they moved further through the ranks. Years went by and he was now twenty, and still stuck at the third realm.

He got the short end of the stick when he caught the eyes of the insane twin young masters recently, being dumb enough to accept their proposal to have them give him “pointers”.

Looking through his memories, it was obvious to him that the twins just loved to beat and bully those weaker than them, and used the spar as an opportunity to beat other disciples up. Yuan happened to be just exceptionally unlucky, dying from a hit to the head.

And now he was Yuan.

Fuck him.

Xander tried to move but the pain shooting through his abdomen told him that any movement would make him regret all his choices so far. Stuck on the bed, he decided to go through the guy’s memories. There was little else to do.

There was no family that he could think of for Yuan. For all of his childhood he seemed to have been raised by a kind farmer who’d taken him in. He hadn’t left the sect in years. Outer disciples seem to be barely above servants in ranking here, and the only ranks Yuan had been rising in was that of age.

The old man here seemed to be the only one who’d ever cared for him, with his frequent beatings and injuries his visits to this place had been far more common than should be normal. He felt a bit bad about the old man, as he remembered him telling Yuan of how he’d lost his grandchild to a particularly nasty disease. It was clear that he’d seen his grandson in him, and now the kid was dead too.

He had some measures of pity for Yuan as well. He had been an arrogant guy, believing himself destined for greatness and the shattering of his dreams had been harsh. He had never said it out loud, or even muttered a word of thanks to the old man, but he had been the only support the boy had had in his life in the sect.

It was a sad story. A death so pointless. Another nameless guy gone in a merciless world. But while he felt sad, he had no intentions of sticking around here. He had read enough cultivation novels to know how these went. Any young master could come in with a ‘You dare??!’ and he’d meet the same fate that Yuan had.