Chapter 24: Azn Lazy Boys

It was on the next morning that Jin woke up finding himself a participant in a spiritual war fought by man since his inception.

"Ugh," he groaned as his eyes blearily opened to witness the majestic ray of sunlight shining from light years away through his window directly onto his face.

At first, he lay there not even finding the energy to move.

Today was the day that he was supposed to go down the mountain to look at the zombies that the military had brought with them, wasn't it?

But today was also the day that was the day after two of the days at which he had still been working on Dragonslayer Ornstein back at the Mad Monks Sect.

In other words, today was the day that he was supposed to have started relaxing to regain some of his mental faculties and avoid potential burnout.

Unfortunately, today was also the day on which the previous day Elder Flower had told him that he had to participate in this scenario challenge to make an Illusion Room for the purpose that General Shroud wanted it.

Make the Illusion Room Sect Great Again... Awesome...

Today was also a day on which Jin felt bad enough that he was seriously considering disregarding that order.

His thoughts were sluggish, his limbs were heavy, mom's sweater was on his spaghetti already.

"Fuck," he groaned. He just didn't have it in him to wake up bright-eyed and run down the mountain to look at the shambling corpses that the army held captive. Did that make him an omega, or a sigma? On one hand, he was off that grindset, on the other he was disobeying the orders of a direct superior who could very easily kill him.

What was the point of fulfilling an order that would only entrance him further into Elder Flower's camp, assuring him of further tasks in the future?

Protection? Sure, he knew that moseying up to older more powerful cultivators was one way of staying alive and securing one's progression, however surely the Illusion Room sect wasn't in a position where at any moment they could be wiped out by either a demonic sect incursion or by a war, right?

His thoughts flashed to the conversation of yesterday, where Elder Flower had elucidated very clearly that if any conflict actually occurred, they did not have many ways of escaping it unscathed.

Which left him with the option of cosying up to the one person in the sect who was useful in a fight, and if she liked him enough, might even escape with him if it ever came to that.

And that person was Elder Flower.

Despite his rationalisations, however, he continued lying there staring at the wooden ceiling.

It was a very nice joining of the main support beams, and perhaps an analysis of the local architecture would help him in developing future scenarios.

This wasn't him being lazy, this was just him preparing for any eventuality. Who knew when a scenario in the future would depend on how support beams of an apartment building-like structure were joined together on a structural level?

This was very important business.

He suddenly noticed that he was very thirsty, and tried to use that need to make himself stand up.

The cup of water that he had on the nightstand was empty, therefore his only recourse was the bucket that he'd raised from the nearby well to replenish his source for drinking and cleaning. It was too far away. His body gave up before it could even start.

However, where the human mind and the human body failed, qi came to the rescue. He forced a sliver of it out, now having enough to manipulate it outside of his body and sent it like a tentacle of a particularly molecularly unstable octopus towards the bucket.

It floated in mid-air for a second, extending up to a metre, half of the way there, before it fell flat to the ground, unable to retain its position.

Jin strained himself and imagined a snake, at which the tendril started undulating on the ground, wriggling on the floor, approaching the bucket at a sluggish pace before finally reaching it and clambering over the top. It sucked in greedily until it coalesced into a unit of qi holding up what was probably around a deciliter of the life-saving liquid.

Another struggle brought the tendril back, less strenuous than it had been to get it there even if it now weighed more. The water soon came to hover precariously over Jin's head, which he gently extended, lips puckered, to suck at the liquid.

The first touch of his lips to his qi broke the spell's concentration and delivered onto him a completely localised phenomenon of a miniature shower. He fell back into the bed, now soaked in water...

"That's one way of waking up," he muttered to himself, feeling some energy return to his body from the sudden baptism.

He wondered what time it was, surely as tired as he was he had slept for longer than usual.

"Oh boy, I sure enjoyed that lunch I just ate at the Food Hall 15 minutes ago before I rushed home to have my daily session of painting!" a loud and exuberant voice suddenly resounded from the corridor.

That answered that question.

Now what?

-/-

It was around dinner time that Jin finally managed to leave his abode after having wiggled and laid about the space enjoying every single non-productive moment of it.

He'd made sure that his neighbour wasn't in the corridor between apartments before leaving and was now walking towards the food hall to soothe his complaining stomach before taking a stroll down the mountain to look at the zombies.

He was trying to think of it as a not necessarily non-work-related expedition. It was actually more like going to the zoo, yeah.

Walking around in nature, looking at some weird curious creatures trying to bite one's face off. Wasn't that the epitome of a careless evening for any man of sufficient class to not have to work a day in their life?

He strolled, he shambled and he glided thusly all the way to where the food smell was coming from and consumed a number of calories which got him concerned looks from his contemporary disciples.

They acted like they'd never seen anyone eat meat for the first time after six months before. It wasn't like Jin was against vegetarianism, but after a while, one did develop a craving for more easily accessible protein.

He wasn't all that much of a connoisseur of watching the light leave an animal's eyes or listening to the sounds that they made right before death, but when it came to eating their flesh, he was very much an enthusiast.

After three hefty portions of the meaty stew being served, Jin left the food hall feeling, for the first time in a while, truly human.

The rest, the meat, the fact that he was once again home and free to walk around without an escort. It truly was an amazing feeling.

He didn't even mind that much having to go down the mountain to look at the zombies. It would be interesting after all. But, inadvertently as he passed inner disciples on the long staircase downward, his thoughts inevitably went into the direction of how exactly one could turn what he would see into a game.

The biggest issue that he saw was the fact that what the General Shroud had described to be a zombie, was not necessarily going to conform to his previous world's understanding of what a zombie was.

After all, this world's reanimated corpses, the hopping Jiangshi, were only zombies on a very technical level. Reanimated corpses with a very odd movement ability for sure, they didn't fit his old world's definition because they lacked one defining quality.

Namely, they did not have the capacity to infect others and turn them into zombies.

Each Jiangshi was an entirely individual creation upkept by a complicated talisman with a certain storage of qi that became self-replicating when cycled through a body that could still produce bioenergy.

The zombies from Jin's old world however were more the result, in most fiction, of an infectious parasitic disease which sought to spread through humans.

Even if the zombies captured by the army fit the requirements exhibited by the zombies in Jin's previous world in terms of looks, movement and attack vectors, if there was no infectious attribute then it all became useless. The possibility of becoming a zombie while still alive was where the horror came from. Without it, the narratives of the games that he remembered didn't make a lot of sense.

And if he couldn't transcribe a narrative, simply having to rely on his observation of the monster to create a simple scenario as was common here, then he would inadvertently lose the challenge because there were surely other inner disciples who were more capable than him at creating non-narrative non-innovative Illusion Rooms.

He couldn't even make a game like the ones he knew himself, with his own storyline, if this was the case, because of the very short time frame that they had to actually develop the scenario. Additionally, considering that he was apparently supposed to work in a team, it was very much in the air if he could convince other disciples to follow his creative vision.

"Halt in the name of the Empire," a bored voice suddenly said in front of Jin, causing him to look up at the two soldiers who barred his entrance into the army camp by crossing their bone-white swords.

He'd been so lost and thought he hadn't even realised that he'd traversed the entirety of the mountain during the last hour and had arrived at the bottom.

"I'm from the Illusion Room Sect, here to look at the monsters that you hold captive," Jin said clearly at which the two guards clad in their light black carapace armour uncrossed their swords and let him through without another word.

His momentary blocked passage was just a formality. Who else, other than the disciples working on the scenario, would go all the way here into this relatively obscure valley where only one sect lives, to enter the camp?

For some reason, Jin didn't think that in a world united by the permanent threat of incursions from demons, there were that many people interested in infiltrating the camps of armies which were composed mostly of mortals.

Surely, if one wanted to steal something, there were easier or richer targets abound.

After stepping into the camp, suddenly finding himself standing on a branching path full of neatly organised tents with soldiers lounging in front of them, Jin wondered for a second how he was supposed to find where the zombies were imprisoned.

This was an army of around 30,000 people. It was essentially a small city of tents.

He was just wondering if he should ask someone when a resounding cheer suddenly erupted from a point not far away from him.

Already suspecting what he was going to find, Jin quickly turned in that direction and started walking.

He didn't find the army encampment particularly interesting so he didn't feel the need to linger.

It was essentially just a large assortment of sweaty smelly men who looked at him wearily because of his obvious status as a cultivator, and who were unlikely to be dialogue partners of any particular interest.

Even the surroundings themselves were uninteresting in their uniformity and while this was Jin's first time walking through such a place and thus his first time seeing the way that ancient armies organised their camps, it wasn't really anything special.

What was interesting, however, was the large cage made out of overlapping wooden bars that he found upon reaching the source of the noise.

As he had expected, this little clearing in the middle of the tent city was indeed the place where the zombies were stored. However, upon making his way for the crowd who respectfully let him pass, opening up a little circle of space in their midst, he found that it wasn't only zombies in the enclosure.

They were ugly things, looking approximately how he'd expected them to look. Half rotten, in a state of decay with exposed bones and tendons, they shambled and moaned around like Computer Science students after someone had forced them to play sports for longer than five minutes.

No, what surprised him was that inside the enclosure along with four of these badly kept corpses, was a man garbed in the leather armour and cap of the low-rank infantry who danced around his enemies and smacking away their jaws and claws with the flat side of his sword.

"Are they already practising?" Jin asked himself out loud not expecting an answer.

"No, idiot. The general told them to get in there so that we can get an idea of how they move," a voice set from Jin's right causing him to glance there and see that he was standing next to Lung Junior, dressed in his typical non-standard disciple garb, This time an elaborate robe of what looks to be silk with patterns of trees and rivers stitched onto it. His long ponytail had what seemed to be little shards of Spirit Stone woven into it.

The boy, man, grandpa, having noticed who he'd spoken to after Jin had turned his head decisively, looked away and put his nose further in the air.

Jin, not feeling like starting a conversation, also focused back on the zombies.

Both of them ended up observing the way the soldier deftly evaded the snatching attacks of the corpses inside the large wooden prison in which they'd been confined.

The question now was. How closely did these zombies resemble those that Jin knew from his previous life?

Even if the answer ended up being, not very much, being here with the photographic memory still meant that by looking at how they moved he would get the general idea of how he could model them for later.

He settled himself into a comfortable standing position to start the information-gathering process of scenario development.

-/-

AN: Zombeeeeeeeeee. As you will probably see though this arc won't be as straightforward as you might think. First question, do dey infect?