Arrival

I knew the drill by now.

Died, got summoned by some eldritch multi-dimensional being, and then made a deal.

The classic. Now that I think about it, I wonder if those beings made it so that mere mortals like us created the genre in many forms to prepare us for the real thing.

I couldn't imagine some 16th-century man having Ghubbu the Tentacle Moose pulling up on him and being fine with it. He'd probably go, "God, why hast thou forsaken me!" or something.

Not that I was fine with it as well; it wasn't until this being morphed to a more acceptable form I could speak to normally.

…come to think of it, Heaven was the original isekai adventure, so maybe they wouldn't be surprised by what's happening, but more by the appearance of the 'God' they meet.

Anyway, I digress.

I would arrive in another world—a fantasy world, from what I understood—with some powers of my own. Once again, classic.

I wanted to meet dragons, so for me, a fantasy world was perfect. Obviously, I could arrive in a world without these majestic beasts… Let's just hope that's not the case.

However, the powers I'd receive were unknown to me. A surprise, Ghubbu said.

Now, the eldritch moose was really cool and quite chill—more chill than I expected these kinds of beings to be—but I was terrified of the kind of power I could get from him.

Him? It was a masculine voice, but… Let's just settle on the pronoun 'it'.

The change was instantaneous. One minute I was floating in absolutely nothing, the next moment, the smell of something pungent and disgusting overwhelmed me.

I coughed because of the sudden influx of air. After a few seconds of emptying my lungs just after filling them with air, I opened my itchy eyes. I could already feel the tears falling down my cheeks.

Surely Ghubbu the Moose could have made my landing less painful?

"Hey, yer okay, young man?" The hoarse voice made me pause in my coughing. This wasn't a voice I recognized.

"I've been better, to be honest with you," I said with difficulty. Even though I stopped coughing, the hard pole my nape was leaning upon made for a bad experience. Not painful, just uncomfortable. At least I was getting used to the horrible smell by now. "What, what happened here?"

"Heh, could have guessed that," he said with a small chuckle. "I found ya passed out behind this ol' barn earlier…" I could hear the unasked question in his voice. I guess my benefactor tossed my body earlier in this world, and I only woke up when my soul reunited with my flesh.

My flesh?

I looked down, the blurry sight making me sigh in relief. It was still my body, and nothing changed in it. I trained for years and was a decent athlete in what was now my past life. Didn't want to lose all of that hard work.

"Y-yeah, drank something which I shouldn't have and ended up like this. Thanks for the help, man," I said, and by the look he gave me, the excuse didn't work.

But since I don't know what truly happened, it would have to do.

"...alright, lad, be careful of what ya put in yer belly the next time," he said with a hearty laugh, despite clearly not trusting what I said.

When I tried to stand up, my wobbly legs ended up betraying me, which drew another, more genuine this time, laugh from the man who I could now see correctly. He was old, but still pretty muscular, like someone who worked hard his whole life. The brown barn I supposedly passed out in behind him, and the smell of… animals all around me. The straw hat on his head and the clothes he wore—I could safely make the assumption this man was a farmer.

The sun was bearing down on me, and I didn't have the protection the man's hat provided, but I couldn't feel the burning sensation on my skin—something I wasn't used to, being unable to get a tan and all.

His good-natured aura ended up getting to me as well, and I laughed at my predicament. "Let's get ya up, lad," he said, helping me to my feet.

"Thank you. That stuff must've been truly strong. Never had one which knocked me out like this before." If I kept on hammering the lie, surely, at one point, I would succeed?

"For sure, for sure." It failed. He seemed to have come to a conclusion by himself, one which I wasn't willing to ask for.

I dusted off my clothes by reflex and realized it wasn't dust, but mud dirtying my hands. I brought my hands to eye level, looking at the brown appendages, and sighed. It wasn't my day.

Better quickly start cultivatin-

Cultivating? Where did that come from?

I searched through my mind, and instead of what I thought would be my most recent memories with Ghubbu the Moose God, I found notes, research, and knowledge about cultivation.

From xianxia.

I froze on the spot, my eyes wide open. There's no way it sent me into a xianxia world, right?

I can feel my body shivering at the thoughts of jade-like skin and young masters. And the mass killings for greater power without batting an eye. And th-

"Hey, there's some after-effects, lad? Yer looking quite pale right now." The old man grabbed my shoulder and looked at me.

"O-Oh yeah… no, there's no problem; just thinking about… scary stuff," I answered.

He blinked before releasing me. "Ay, try not to think about this too much, then. You seem to be a good lad, and you've got some good shoulders on you," he said, taking a look at my body. "If you have nothing to do, you can help me out for a few days. You know, get a couple coins for your hard work..."

It took me a short pause before I realized what he meant. I obviously had no money on me, and I wore thin clothes. While I was a little creeped out because he must have looked at my body for a while to notice that—or started searching more thoroughly—he was right.

I was completely broke.

A cultivator farming… Somehow, it felt like a case of poor career choices, but I needed some sort of currency before moving onto bigger and better things.

Remembering some lines from the few xianxia media I read… Bigger? Surely. Better?

…probably not.

But I didn't get transmigrated to a fantasy world to waste my life away from growing plants. Sorry to all the farmers out there, but I was meant for more interesting stuff.

Like dragons. Women also, but especially dragons.

The growl my stomach produced at this moment informed me I would need to deal with the more urgent problems before addressing my dreams of glory.

"Eh… Sure?" I answered, stretching my open palm towards him. He raised his eyebrow, and before the embarrassment of realizing people here probably didn't know about shaking hands, he clasped mine and shook it.

So not only do they speak English, but they also shake hands. What an impressive start here.

The worst thing would be to find out I didn't speak the language. That would have been problematic.

The harsh working conditions of farming under a scorching sun were something I wasn't used to. Even with my newfound resistance to heat, my skin reddened when I stayed too long outside. In retrospect, this kind of work contrasted from what I was used to, in the safety of an airy building, working on machines that had specific weights attached to them.

It was the burning exhaustion and the ball of fire in the sky continuously hitting you with death rays which was very hard to push through. But my parents didn't raise a quitter, and I needed the goddamn money.

So I moved forward, my loyal hoe brandished against the very earth it came from.

I noticed very quickly I was much stronger than before, and it helped me immensely. I surprised the old man as well when I ended up creating a small crater the first time I handled a shovel.

Needless to say, my pay went up that day. I could do the work of multiple people because of my higher endurance and stamina, among other things.

I grunted, satisfied when I finished the entire field. The ache in my shoulders was a familiar feeling by now.

I could hear Old Hinks coming over, to check the progression since he needed those fields ready as soon as possible.

"Good work, Tian. Ya really saved me a lot of time with yer insane strength," he said, his hand hitting my back repeatedly. He laughed—the same charismatic, trustworthy, inviting laugh—so of course, I laughed with him.

The past few weeks were so different from what I lived through before; being a kid born in a big city, the novel experience was eye-opening for me. Farming was…

It was fun. Old Hinks here was a good person. Someone I found myself respecting in a matter of days.

He apparently thought I was an adventurer who collapsed on my way to the big city further ahead and deduced he could get my help due to my lack of resources. And he was right.

He needed help for a while since he experienced difficulties doing manual labor due to his old age, and lack of aspiring applicants.

So, of course, I inquired about his family, since I always assumed farmers often had a whole family around them to help with the work.

I asked him one day, and he got this look, as if he was reminiscing about the past—but not in a good way—and simply changed topics. I never asked him again after this, the gaze he had was enough for me to understand.

He wasn't willing to give any information about his family, but the gravestones I've seen on the small cliff overlooking the fields told me enough.

Poor guy.

That was part of the reason why I was delaying my leave as much as possible. Both of us knew I would depart at some point. According to Hinks, I had enough money to live for a couple of days in the nearest city, called Orario, so long as I didn't splurge and found myself a job soon enough.

But I decided to leave today.

Hinks here gave me the hope this world possibly wouldn't be filled with unreasonable bastards with too much power in their hands, but the tale of what he called 'Adventurers' and how 'Familias' worked quickly shut that down.

Gods coming down from a higher plane, even if their strength was sealed, seemed like a bad idea no matter the world. In a xianxia one? It was the worst-case scenario.

"Hey, I'm working according to what I'm getting paid," I said.

"Oh, yeah? Then I might need to knock off a couple stones from yer pay." He laughed again, walking towards the place where all the farm tools were stored.

I never heard of the word 'stones' being used to talk about money, but I shrugged it off pretty quickly when I started working here.

When he walked away, I stayed silent, nervous. My heartbeat became faster, and I fiddled with my thumbs. I was never good with words, so I did the only thing I knew how to do.

"Um, Hinks?"

"Hm?"

"I… I'm going to leave for Orario this afternoon."

"...sure." He said after a brief pause. Was I looking too much into this?

"And, um, yeah. I'm going to pack my things… Thank you for everything."

"Ay, no problem lad. Ya worked for me and I paid ya. As simple as that." He turned around. The smile on his face prompted me to do the same, but I knew mine was awkward.

He looked over his field. "Ya even worked more than I thought ya would. Wish I could find more passed-out adventurers around here," he chuckled, before giving me a pouch. I could hear the sounds of gold coins hitting each other inside of it, so I took it, weighed it before thanking Old Hinks once more.

"Yer gonna eat this noon here at least?" He asked, putting his hand on my shoulder.

"Yeah, probably going to do that. Would be a shame to leave here with an empty stomach."

Well, that went better than expected. So long as Old Hinks was fine with it, I would not complain.

#####

I never realized how dangerous forests could be until I transmigrated here. Then again, it could be because of the man-eating plants attached to some trees. Tall, green, and luscious trees with a canopy of green leaves blocking some of the light of the sun. Normal-looking trees. With man-eating plants on them.

Yeah, this is really a fantasy world.

The enormous drooling jaws, filled with pointy teeth, were not a reassuring sight. Not even the fact they reminded me of piranha plants.

The only reason I had the courage to walk into this forest to begin with, was to search for something important to me.

And these things couldn't move away from the trees.

So, keeping far away from these monsters, I walked through the forest, one step at a time, searching for wildlife. I lost all of my confidence when I was nearly eaten by the plants, the translucent liquid smeared on my arm being the proof of their dismemberment attempts.

Therefore, I expected some sort of monstrous animal to be present in this forest, since the idea this place was 'normal' had been thrown out of the window a long time ago.

The grass here nearly reached my knees—and I wasn't a midget—but I still spotted something moving towards me. The slithering sound reaching my ears made me smile.

I finally found what I came here for.

The little thing jumped at my leg, but it was slow enough I managed to dodge the attack and grabbed it by its neck. Technically, a snake was all but one head and a neck, but that's beside the point.

It was small, smaller than I would have liked, but it would work out in the end. It hissed at me, which only made me laugh. Its jaw open, the snake wiggled around, trying to escape my grip.

I definitely wouldn't have attempted that if my body was as weak as before, but I was different now. I was better.

"Hello there, you cute little thing," I cooed, touching its slippery skin.

The knowledge I received from Ghubbu covered a lot of the knowledge about cultivation, and in spite of the fact it was very basic, it was varied and extended to all fields. There was a very interesting bit about how normal animals reacted to qi, especially when gifted from a cultivator and not gained naturally. Now, I am a bonafide cultivator.

And I had just found my dragon.

#####

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Beta: AsuraJZero and Ekaterina.

A/N: This is the rewrite.