{Earthly Realm}

Zohan had an otherworldly experience, but it seemed as if the mental faculties that could recollect the experience he had were sealed. It was as if they were all stored in something that functioned as his mind in a different universe.

Same were true when it came to his experiences of earth, they were stored as memories, which were pretty much electric impulses, the physics of a different universe.

If he had to make sense of it all, it was like experiencing the sun, then experiencing the moon, then reflection of the moon in a pond, then the reflection from the pond onto a wall.

It was as if various dimensions of experience had been removed.

It seemed as if he had hallucinated corresponding memories of earth in his body here. But the experiences with Light Bringer were sort of sealed in the back of his mind. It's like he knew things intuitively, but he couldn't articulate them. He could feel them, but he couldn't grasp them.

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There's never any good enough reason to make sky scrappers. It's not just about the high cost of huge amount of steel and concrete needed to stop them from swaying, high relative energy consumption for heating, cooling or using elevators, or the really high maintenance costs.

It may surprise you when you do the math, but they are really inefficient when it comes to housing, they don't really have more living area in less space if you do the math. They also come with lots of issues related to parking, commute time issues and various other things.

Hence, Zohan wasn't really a fan of them, specially the ones famous in the world, who had queues of poop trucks at their feet everyday.

Compared to building as high as possible, or building as impractically as possible- for example building majestic structures which end up becoming parking lots in the ocean which need high maintenance; they all exhibited vanity issues.

Skyscrapers were treated as an indicator of corruption instead of abundance.

Same couldn't be said about the structure in front of Zohan right now. The giant halls that seemed eternal, did their job very well of intimidating and humbling outsiders who visited them. Perhaps that's what people on the Arabian Peninsula should've done, investing money on grand Arabian architecture instead of wasting money on making tallest buildings of the world, while not really solving any urban problems.

Meeting up with the custodian, he found out that the supposed reason of him appearing in this world.

Custodian Ja Hu:[ Resources are always limited, they are never enough for either ever increasing demonic beast, nor us cultivators. The war has been a cycle of life, which has kept both forces in check. But, then there was the rise of demonic cultivators, who took control over demonic beasts. They would wipe out all cultivators and humanity itself, then the world would be overflowing with demonic beasts who would extinguish resources faster than they can replenish.

We cultivators can reduce resources consumed and have great efficiency by dividing ourselves into social structures, where every spirit copper coin is valuable. But demon beasts and demonic cultivators don't have such social structures, they live for the present moment, with no thought of the future.]

Zohan:[I don't understand what it has to do with me being brought here? Or more accurately, how did this me came into being, which feels very different than what I can feel intuitively?]

Custodian Ja Hu:[The Sect Ancestor of our Sky Parting Sect, had device a cultivation technique which would help one create a deviant golden core. Only a cultivator with deviant core would have enough power to defeat groups of Sage Beasts that rein supreme. The supreme golden core cultivators can only be as strong as a Sage Beast, so we cannot break the equilibrium as imposed by the laws of the world. However, no cultivator on this plane of existence was able to cultivate the technique, due to our fundamental incompatibility. Seeing no other way out, a huge amount of resources were used and sacrifices were made to help a suitable person have guided ascension from lower planes of existence. You're like a dream that has risen up into everyday existence]

Zohan:[But I didn't ask for any of this. If the price of bringing me here was so great, then that implies it would be nearly impossible for me to send back?]

Zu He:[Consent doesn't matter against circumstances. Your compliance would be enforced, forget about going back. Besides, you're objectively better off here]

With that said, he send summon for an elite disciple of the sect, whom he assigned to Zohan, while giving Zohan some things.

Zu He:[Lei Yan would be your guide. You've been given the cultivation scroll that only you can cultivate, along with some cultivation resources of an outer disciple. I don't have much hopes from you and I was always against the sacrifices made to bring you here. You wouldn't get any more handouts, until you prove yourself]

Zohan had read many other world summon stories. Often people in those stories were summoned as heroes, but they received nearly no aid from the countries that summoned them. Perhaps the logic behind that would be having the hero be someone loved by the people, instead of being like some entertainment wrestler in scripted shows. Some entertainment wrestlers used to be suddenly brought at the top of the chain for their looks. Hardcore fans who despite being the vocal minority, formed the majority when it came to chants and shouts- would take over shows and pummel the popularity of the golden spoon stars. Then they'd have no choice but to pick scripts of villains and slowly take off the heat.

But here, in the big eats small world where everyone seemed to be struggling for survival, it was pretty much avoiding falling for sunken cost fallacy. Just because a lot of resources were spend on summoning someone, it didn't mean that more should be spend on them. It could be considered a necessary test.

Zohan:[I guess it's actually a test within a test, since I feel like the light.... Even though this reality feels like that of higher quality and my whole existence before seems relatively a dream, the experience I had before I came up here felt like that of a far higher awakened state.]

But nevertheless, he was in an unsuitable fantasy with ethics that totally contradicted his own.

Zohan:[I guess it's the difference of morals born from the contrast between an abundance and scarcity, something I've been thinking about since I got here]

But perhaps it wasn't just about the mindset. In a world where people struggled to survive, nobody would bait an eye on things like murder. There wouldn't be a society which believed in rehabilitation over punishment.

Lei Yan:[Here's where you'd live. I'll have my people keeping an eye on you. If you have any troubles, tell them when they contact you everyday.]

A man then came over, carrying what seemed like a huge number of clothes, all wrapped inside a cloth.

Perhaps they were considerate and brought him enough clothes, since he seemed to be wearing what felt like something used for covering "things" instead of clothes. Perhaps he'd been growing in this universe in a parallel physics..... or for a different choice of word, magical lab?

The man handed what he was carrying to Zohan, and everything collapsed on the ground as Zohan didn't have the strength to hold it up.

It didn't feel like gravity to Zohan, but something else.

Maybe his whole life on earth was a dream of his otherworldly body and mind, him dreaming up a lower quality world with it's own rules. Perhaps that's what science would say that alien beings with IQ in thousands could do?

Lei Yan:[These are some very basic books that you'd have to study, since you know nothing about here. You don't have much time, so try going through them as much as possible]

Oh, so it was a mountain of books for him to read.

Zohan would've very much prefered being the character Stressed by a Moutain of Books of Holy Paladin's book instead.