The Old Man From Beyond The Heavens

"Interesting! Interesting! Hahaha….", standing in the air with his hands behind his back, an old man chuckled. His face was wrinkled and his snow-white hair reached down to his back. His age was apparent for anyone who might see him, yet his eyes shone with a youthful glint like a child that found a new toy.

"There is not a hint of Spiritual Qi in this world, yet their civilisation is so advanced! The people, be they old or young, are but fledgelings of barely a hundred years old – mortals one and all… How can they build such curious structures…", the old man continued to mutter with excitement, his eyes darting from point to another, yet always focused on the cities below him.

He saw people in loud, moving cages of metal and glass, orderly following a road of smooth stone one behind another. Not far away were other, quite large cages that could fit many more people, who came and went as they pleased while the cage followed along two tracks of steel on the ground.

Then there were buildings hundreds of meters tall, their walls mostly built of glass, yet seemingly unbreakable, again with a multitude of people sitting, walking, standing, even laying around inside them.

The old man in the sky could barely contain his wonder and continued to mutter aloud, "I've never a seen a world like this… No Qi, no longevity, no Martial Arts, yet the people are content. They busy themselves the whole day, then sleep the whole night, day in, day out, they do nothing else, yet they seem so content. So… So peaceful. The Chaos churns and tumultuous times are upon us all, yet they live so peacefully… They…"

Without a care, the old man continued to observe this world and its people, muttering about this and that from time to time until night fell. He watched as people returned to their homes and spend time with their families, while others went out in lavish clothes and danced to the weirdest kinds of music while getting drunk with strangers.

"Hah… I wandered the Chaos for the past thousands of years already, yet this might be the most unique world with human civilisation that I've ever come across.", the old man muttered once more, his eyes drifting away from the city and darted along the skies above, "These weird energies… They're similar to sound transmissions, yet different at the same time. How curious, so very curious…."

He stretched out a hand – his skin dry and wrinkled like old wood – and made a grabbing motion in the air, seemingly catching nothing, yet his eyes once again twinkled in the night sky, "Information…. So it is a transmission… It's not only sound, but images too. And text – script I've never seen before – moving pictures that look like memories, yet they are not… How strange…"

For days, the old man stayed in the sky above a city, not once to be seen by any human, nor detected by any machinery, while he caught strands of information in his hands again and again, observing, learning from and understanding them at an unbelievable pace.

"Huh? Qi? Cultivation? This weird civilisation; They do know of cultivation, even if there is no Spiritual Qi? Martial Arts, Secret Techniques, Demons, Devils, Gods, Immortals… What is all that? How can there be so much random information? How can there be so many different interpretations? Where does all this originate from?", the old man spoke in a shocked tone.

He waved his hands again and again, pulling strands of information before him again and again, organising and structuring the information together.

After a while, he looked at it with a stoic expression, clicked his tongue and shook his head. "A fantasy! Nothing but a fantasy! A so called novel that has nothing to do with true cultivation… An unfortunate soul from this world, brought to another with supreme talent that rivals the Gods and Immortals, and some kind of 'System' to assist them… These people! They are not just content with their peaceful lives – They are bored! Bored to the point they would lose themselves in such nonsensical fantasies!"

Once again, the old man waved his hand, pulling more strands of information toward himself and studied them. "Pah, what 'Immortal Master Unrivalled Under The Heavens'! Not only is he an idiot bored out of his mind, he even has the gall to call himself unrivalled! A lunatic, an utter disgrace of a human!"

More and more agitated, the old man collected strands of information at an even faster pace then before, looking upset and offended – like he was possessed. "Hm…'Zhang Baichi'? So that is his real name…. And he is from, hm…. Oh, from the city down here. Let's see, the location should be over there?"

The old man looked around, then fixed his gaze at a certain house in the distance and vanished from sight. The next moment, he was already above the house in the distance and looked straight down with an expressionless face. "Not here. So he is one of those that go out at night?"

A moment later, the old man vanished again, reappearing in the room he was just staring and looking around. He saw a bed, a few shelves and closets, a table with a weird hunk of metal on it and another hunk of metal under the table and stared at it. "His presence is most prominent on the bed and at the table. But what are those hunks of metal. Glass again? Weird."

The old man stared at the black hunk of metal on the table and saw his own reflection on the glass front, then closed his eyes for a moment and stiffened up where he stood. "There he is."

His eyes snapped open and he turned in another direction, vanishing from sight again, only to appear in the sky the next moment and look down at a bar. His eyes locked on to a young man in his late twenties; a skinny frame, black, lustreless hair, white, oily skin and an average face, reddened from drinking too much alcohol.

This young man was Zhang Baichi. The self-proclaimed "Immortal Master Unrivalled Under The Heavens". The young man laughed with his friends, while the old man stared at him with a disapproving look and sneered again. "What a wastrel. No cultivation, a weak body and soul and no awareness of his surroundings. He acclaims himself unrivalled in this world? What a joke."

For a while, the old man just watched and before long, Zhang Baichi stood up, staggering a bit when he got too his feet, obviously already drunk. He spoke to his friends again, excused himself and left the bar. A few deep breaths of fresh air later, he started walking home, never noticing the old man floating just a few meters over his head.

The night was cold and Zhang Baichi sneezed after a while, earning him another disgruntled comment from the old man, one which he will never be able to hear in his life. He took a shortcut through an alleyway that he knew all to way, while the old man looked back with raised eyebrows. "Bandits? How unusual for such a peaceful world. Let's see how he deals with this."

The bandits, clad in black clothes made from a leather-like material, approached Zhang Baichi from behind. One of them held a thick wooden stick in his hand and raised it above his head, ready to strike. The old man frowned, as Zhang Baichi has still not even noticed these bandits presence and spoke in a voice only Zhang Baichi could hear. "Watch out, you fool."

"Huh?!", startled, Zhang Baichi turned around and his pupils constricted as the thick wooden stick neared his face. He tried to duck and fend it off with his arms, but his slow reaction led to being hit square in the head, yet this was only the start of his torture.

The old man crossed his arms in front of his chest, a frown and an impatient look in his eyes gracing his face as Zhang Baichi got the ever living sh*t beaten out of his drunken and weak self. The young man couldn't even defend himself and lost consciousness soon after, while the bandits pulled a small hunk of metal with a glass front and a folded leather pouch out of his clothes, then stole Zhang Baichi's jacket as well and threw him onto a heap of green bags filled with trash.

By now, the old mans face was expressionless and he didn't move a finger. He sat cross-legged in the air, still a few meters above Zhang Baichi and closed his eyes, complaining about Zhang Baichi's earlier performance in a flat tone.

Hours passed and Zhang Baichi slowly regained consciousness. Now battered, bruised and still drunk, he climbed out of the heap of trash, noticed that he has been robbed and searched his pockets for his valuables. Of course, he found none. Neither did he find his jacket.

Dejected, he hung his head low and continued his way home in the cold and foggy morning weather. As the first rays of light shone onto the smooth stone roads, Zhang Baichi returned to the main streets, stopped at an intersection, waited for a metal contraption to turn from red to green and crossed the stone road.

The old man glanced to the right and frowned. Thus far, the metal and glass cages with people in them stopped whenever one of these contraptions showed a red light, yet there was one – about twice the size of normal cages – that continued toward the intersection at a high speed.

Accustomed to such scenes from his own world, the old man didn't bat an eye, "A young master or young miss thinking themselves more important than the mortal peasantry, yes? How uncouth."

His eyes glanced back and forth between Zhang Baichi and this exceedingly fast metal cage, shook his head, and floated a few meters higher with a sigh. "A pity.", he said as the metal cage pulled to the right, crashing directly into the unsuspecting Zhang Baichi, then the metal contraption behind him.

A woman's scream could be heard, then silence, followed by the panicked cursing of a man, who jumped out of the crashed metal cage. The man rushed to Zhang Baichi, yet the letter was already dead as can be.

In the sky, the old man carefully hid his presence again, observing what would come next, only to frown in the next moment. He looked around, confused, then back to where Zhang Baichi laid dead. The old man could see a whisp of pure white rise from Zhang Baichi's body, only to hover in its place right above him.

"…How can this be? His soul has already left his body on its own, yet there is no one to collect it. Neither are there any Laws in place to govern the lost soul. Weird, weird, truly too weird!", a thoughtful look appeared on the old man's face, the confusion in his voice betraying his wise look.

He continued to wait for a few more moments, yet still nothing. Above Zhang Baichi's body, his soul started to flicker from time to time, whisps of it dispersing into the air around it, while its form destabilized.

"…There truly aren't any Laws of Samsara, nor anyone to collect the souls of the deceased.", the old man spoke with shock in his voice. He returned to silence, while Zhang Baichi's soul continued to flicker and disappear. Finally, the old man sighed and waved his hand, pulling the small soul into his arms and shrouding it in a cocoon of dull black light. "Forget it, if there are no Laws in place, I will be the Law this once. There's karma between this child and I, after all."

He vanished from the sky, as did Zhang Baichi's soul with him. Reappearing above the small world he's been watching for a few weeks now, the old man looked back at it and muttered to himself again, "Truly a weird world, yet so very interesting. Let's find a suitable place for this child for now. I'll return here in the future."

His words still lingered in the air, but he was long gone by that time and already stood above another world, so far away, it couldn't clearly be explained in words, yet it only took the old man an instant to arrive. His eyes scanned his surroundings; The world to his feet, the surrounding stars and worlds, then his head snapped to a certain place in one world. "Oh? What a coincidence. Another young man dead… and the same name as well…?"

The old man returned to silence and started calculating with his fingers, then his face lit up with surprise. "A special Constitution, no destiny whatsoever, yet the Karma of his whole race? Interesting, very interesting… The Karma left with the soul and entered Samsara, yet the wondrous Constitution remained with the body…"

His mutterings became more and more arcane as the old man sunk into his own thoughts, while his expression turned and twisted again and again, only to return to his original, expressionless face after a few minutes. He looked at Zhang Baichi's soul in his hand and his expression softened into a mischievous smirk. "A 'System' was it? A 'Cheatsystem' fit for a 'Protagonist'… Sure…. Have a special Constitution to boot… Best of luck little fellow."

The old man split into two as he spoke; One corporeal and one made of black and white light, yet identical in posture and expression. The old man of light flickered and vanished into Zhang Baichi's body. Afterwards the remaining old man flicked his hand, throwing Zhang Baichi's soul into the dead body of the young man in the world beneath his feet.