A Strange World

The Age of True Qi Author: Zaohua Zhaizhu

Synopsis:

This was a world where True Qi engines had replaced steam engines.

The state implemented eight years of compulsory internal cultivation education. Everyone possessed internal force, and True Qi permeated every field: travel, work, entertainment... there was nothing that did not need True Qi as a power source.

As a result, the population had become a strategic resource. The state arranged marriages, and young people of marriageable age faced prison if they did not marry.

On the Eastern Sea Continent, the Hundred Schools of Thought had each established states based on their own philosophies. A soul from Earth was born into the body of an orphan in Su State, a nation of the Mohist School.

Volume One: Roots Firmly Planted in Broken Rock

Chapter 1: A Strange World

A headache. A splitting headache. His consciousness spun as if he had fallen into a blender. Never mind thinking about what had happened—he could not even remember who he was.

"Si Ming! Si Ming! Si Ming..."

An anxious voice called in his ear. A warm current flowed through his body, and the stabbing pain in his head gradually subsided. His consciousness regained control of his body, and he slowly opened his eyes.

A young woman in a white, fitted beiao jacket came into view. Her expression filled with relief. "Thank heavens, you're finally awake. Your heart stopped just now. You scared me so badly my heart stopped too."

"Where am I? What happened to me?"

The boy asked, looking utterly bewildered.

"You were far too reckless, treating your own life like a joke! Is internal cultivation something you can practice however you please? The elementary school textbooks spell it out clearly: internal cultivation concerns life and death. You must approach it trembling with fear, as though treading on thin ice. Practicing recklessly can get someone killed!"

The young woman scolded him instinctively, then remembered that he had only just woken up. Her tone softened as she comforted him. "I understand how painful it is for you not to be able to practice internal cultivation, but you can't abandon yourself to despair and start doing things recklessly. Creating an internal cultivation art takes decades, even centuries, of accumulated knowledge and refinement. It isn't something that succeeds just because someone has an idea."

Then she turned to the boys standing behind her and snapped, "Did none of you study elementary school medicine either? You actually forced True Qi into someone else's body! If he'd died, you would all have been murderers, and not one of you would have gotten away!"

One of the boys protested, aggrieved, "We didn't agree to it at first, but Si Ming insisted..."

"Hm?"

The young woman gave a displeased grunt, frightening the boy into clamping his mouth shut and falling silent as a cicada in winter.

"All right, that's enough of that. Si Ming, you need to learn from this and never do anything so dangerous again. Please, I'm begging you!"

The boy's head was still full of mush, his mind foggy, as though two people were quarreling fiercely inside it. He answered instinctively, "I promise I won't make the same mistake again."

"Good. If anything troubles you in the future, come and talk to me. Don't let your thoughts run wild on your own. Practicing internal cultivation isn't the only way to get ahead in this world. Your body is fine now, so stay here and get some rest today. You don't have to attend this afternoon's classes. I'll ask for leave for you."

With that, the young woman left the infirmary with the boys.

"What's going on? I remember being hit by a car-ssst!"

The boy tried to recall what had happened before he lost consciousness, but his head immediately felt as though it were splitting apart. The memories of two different lives clashed, and two entirely different personalities fused. It felt like forcing isatis root and beer together; his brain was about to boil over. The pain sent him rolling back and forth on the bed.

He did not know how long he lay there before his consciousness finally settled down. His head was still foggy, but he could at least think, and his body could move again.

"Looks like I've caught the transmigration trend. I remember that woman mentioning 'internal cultivation' just now. Did I transmigrate to an ancient wuxia plane?"

The boy sat up in bed and glanced at his clothes, immediately dismissing his guess. His school uniform had an antique look, with classical touches in some of its details, but its style was unquestionably modern.

Then he noticed a thumb-sized school badge pinned to his chest. The name of this body was written on it.

"Si Ming... looks like that's what I'll have to call myself from now on."

In ancient society, changing his name on a whim would have been no big deal. But in modern society, the government kept strict records. If his name did not match the one on file, it would surely arouse suspicion. So no matter what he had been called in his previous life, in this life he could only be Si Ming.

"It's almost dark. I'd better go home first. Home was... Minggui Orphanage. So this body is an orphan. That's fine; it saves me quite a bit of trouble."

Si Ming got out of bed. The moment he stood up, another wave of dizziness struck him. He barely managed to steady himself and accidentally knocked over a bottle of mineral water sitting by the bed. His soul had evidently not yet fully merged with his body, and he was still slowly receiving its memories.

"That bottle wasn't here before, was it? Hmm, I think a girl came to visit me. Who was she? I can't remember. Forget it, I'll deal with it tomorrow."

Si Ming dragged himself outside, his mind somewhat hazy. Everything around him seemed strangely unreal, as though he were looking through a screen: he could see the picture clearly, but could not touch it.

When he left the school gates and reached the street, he finally confirmed that he was indeed living in a modern society. The level of public infrastructure around him was roughly comparable to the early years of reform and opening up in his previous life, though people's standard of living was somewhat higher. For example, he saw cars driving along the street, although there were not many of them.

But after walking for a while, the clouds of doubt in his mind only grew thicker.

"What kind of world is this, anyway?"

Si Ming saw a woman park her car crookedly. She got out, lifted the rear with both hands, and set it inside the parking space. She struggled a little, but she had unquestionably done it on her own.

He saw a double-decker bus pull up at a stop, and quite a few passengers flipped straight out of the upper-deck windows and landed steadily on the ground. Among them was a woman over sixty carrying a basket of vegetables, whose nimble movements would have made acrobats cover their faces in shame.

He also saw two workers carry a banner to opposite sides of the street. Without using ladders, they sprang up, planted their feet against the lampposts, and scampered upward, leaping six meters in a single go. After hanging the banner, they slid back down.

Countless things beyond common sense happened before his eyes. Any one of them would have sparked heated discussion among internet users across the country in Si Ming's previous life, but here they were ordinary little things everyone was accustomed to, not worth a second glance. Si Ming felt that his worldview had suffered a severe blow.

If someone had jumped out and told him that the people here were all descendants of the Calabash Brothers, he would not have been surprised in the least. At most, he would have wondered whether the Calabash Brothers' wife was Little Butterfly or the Green Snake Spirit.

Following instinctive memories, Si Ming arrived in a daze at a building with a courtyard. Several large characters were written on the wall beside the gate: "Minggui Orphanage."

Minggui, clarifying the existence of ghosts and spirits, was one of the ten principal Mohist doctrines. It had nothing to do with horror or suspense.

Si Ming took a key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. The moment he stepped inside, he heard a woman roaring.

"Fuck them! Is everyone at the Marriage Bureau blind? I have a face like a flower and the allure of a mature-bah! I'm a peerless beauty, and they picked a loser like that for me to go on a blind date with? He's very smart, is he? A person who wakes up in a ten-square-meter bed is a scion of a wealthy family. A person who wakes up in a hundred-thousand-square-meter bed can only be a homeless man. He's so smart he's practically bald!

"If you match me with another face like a realist painting symbolizing society's dark side, I'll file a complaint against you for neglecting your duties and letting a jade treasure be ruined in its casket! If you don't understand that last idiom, hurry up and hit those heads of yours, emptier than water-injected pork, with the sixth edition of the Mohist Science Dictionary, you bunch of illiterates!"

Si Ming walked into the inner room and saw a graceful woman angrily slam a receiver back into place. She was using an old-fashioned telephone with a circular dial that had to be turned around once for each number. The receiver looked like a large tobacco pipe and rested on top of the machine like a balance scale when not in use.

The woman turned and saw Si Ming. She paid no attention to her outburst just now and said casually, "You're back. Why do you look like you've been completely hollowed out? Did a female hooligan drag you into an alley and squeeze you dry on the way home?"

Her expression changed. "The thing I feared most has finally happened. You have such a handsome face, but hardly any ability to fight back. Isn't that just asking someone to commit a crime?" Her tone held a fair amount of regret, as though she lamented not making her move sooner.