CH1: A Bad Day

For my sanity, I'm writing this soul-bound Diary. Whether there will ever be a reader doesn't matter. I have so much to get off my chest.

First and most importantly, I'm not from this time of 1519. I was born nearly 5 centuries later before I died. Only I didn't stay dead; I awoke in a world of cultivation, but that wasn't important. Diary, you can't have those emotions; they're mine, and I decide when to give them up.

I breathed and held onto my sanity by a loose thread. My only privacy came from hiding in a broom closet in the late night hours while the rest of the crew slept. We had a hold filled with blue African involuntary servants, and the whole ship smelled of salt and death.

The Diary hovered in the air, staring at me with one celestial eye. How was it supposed to help my mental health? I picked up a wooden cup, took out a knife, and began carving while using my digits to make some measurements.

Today had started with taking over the body of some poor bastard who tended the horses. One kick to the head, and suddenly, I was in. That wasn't a good thing.

According to my teacher, I died as a mediocre cultivator whose only talent was in sealing arrays. Not even arrays and talismans but specifically in sealing arrays. When someone in the sect needed their immortal cave renovated, I was the one they called. I could make seals to gather, filter, transform, and concentrate Chi. Most cultivators above the core realm could do everything I could with their cultivation alone. My customer base had lots of turnover.

How I died and what led up to it will have to wait. This was for my mental health, not to tell a story.

When I woke up, I was surprised by the malevolent Chi and thought some other demon sect had purchased my body from the sect. I had feared I was one of those rare corpse puppets that retained their soul. Oh, that would have been preferrable to reality.

The horse looked back at me after gaining my barring, which was half dead and seasick. Poor creature horses were my spirit animal. Not really, but I have always loved them. Maybe it was because of that movie, Spirit.

"Stable handler, stop lazing about and fix buttercup."

I stared at the man covered in parasites. Single-eyed spirit beasts stuck to the man like fat ticks on dogs. They gyrated as the man moved, robbing the man of something vital.

Something lurched, and I turned and puked on the floor. "Whats wrong with you? Have you caught your death?" The man said.

"Get away from me. You disgusting thing." I flicked my wrist, and nothing happened. My cultivation was zero, nothing no chi to speak of, and the man I insulted turned red.

"Disgusting, am I." The man kicked over a bucket, and disgusting slop poured over the floor. "Clean that up." The man said.

There I was again, making enemies everywhere I went. I was mortal, and for all I knew, those parasites were on me. The sheer revulsion of such a reality sent shivers down my spine. Something big descended, putting pressure on the world, and I leaped back and hit behind Buttercup. The guy followed until Buttercup kicked him in the head.

I stared at the horse that had potentially killed two people in less than 30 minutes before making myself small. Wheels and eyes spun atop the head of the humanoid being that descended. Its skin looked wooden, and it smelled of rotting corpses. The creature was androgynous, and looking at it hurt.

Teeth stretched out from the sides of its jaws before its face flipped up. A stomach connected to a cord fell upon one of the leeches and gulped it down. I felt something wet roll down my cheeks and touched it to find blood.

My old cultivation world didn't have something like that, or at least I didn't have to deal with it in the sect. I felt a change and turned my attention to the man's soul. Malevolent Chi encircled it before pressure rose, and the thing's head snapped in its direction. A fat leech crawled from the man's chest, and I covered my mouth.

How could this be the way of the world? Was it cursed or something even more sinister? My teacher wasn't here to pester me with leading questions, and no library could help me here.

What I thought was my old mundane world was not so mundane. My spirit sense awakened me to a new reality and an entire ecosystem of spiritual entities fighting over every scrap of power.

I had to write it down and tell someone, or else I feared it would drive me insane. Souls fed on the living, leeching their spiritual energy in life, and those same people became parasites upon their deaths. A predator waited for the souls to grow fat and killed them off.

How were they related?

Blood carried small traces of spiritual energy even in this world. Just enough to start up the symbols making up a seal. I raised my cup and inspected its edges; black liquid splashed my face, then tossed it with the other failures. The malevolence was complex to manipulate.

My arms were sore from all the carving, but I would get it right. Sealing was what I was good at. I couldn't enchant, challenge he heaves, or shatter mountains with a flick of my wrist. But I was good when I wanted a type of Chi to become something else or stay away. My hands worked as I focused back on my Diary.

The monster hasn't left the ship. My chi sense wasn't great as a mortal, but it was pitiful at restraining its natural pressure. The beast waits in the crow's nest for signs of pressure. I needed to inspect the rest of the crew to determine the size of this parasite plantation.

…

I felt like killing everyone on the ship and turning their bodies into corpse puppets.

Hours after Jose's death, he was tossed into the ocean, and in there, I saw them. Monsters made of malevolent spiritual energy filled the sea, hunting each other in an endless war. Waves of fear colored yellow to my spiritual sense screamed at me. I clutched my chest and collapsed to the floor. The crewman ignored me until my boss appeared.

Pedro De Alvardo was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed man with a bushy mustache that reminded me of every middle manager I've ever met. He didn't say a word, only picked me up by my shirt and punched me in the face. I saw stars.

"Give me a reason not to throw you overboard, senor," Pedro said.

My mind spun. Parasites covered the man from head to toe. Some vibrated, and the veins pulsed on the man's temples. I wanted to vomit, and my jaw throbbed from the punch and the kick to the head.

"You don't want to take care of your seasick horse," I said.

The man frowned and released some of the tension in a sigh. "Beg for forgiveness from God and pray for Commander Cortes's good health." Pedro pointed at me. If Buttercup dies on our voyage, then so too will you. Get out of my sight and back to scooping dung," Pedro said.

Captain Pedro De Alvardo turned and began screaming at a sailor when he saw a mark on the main deck. I went down below and kept my eyes away from the ocean. Long tendrils reached out from the depths, snagging for the monster floating atop the crow's nest. I felt them reach, and the beast above shied away from their tender mercy. Strangely, the creatures paid no attention to the parasites.

I wanted to be demystified and declare this a spiritual ecosystem, but they wouldn't let me. Feeling them and knowing what was around me hurt. It felt like I was looking into the abyss without sign of anything familiar.

Cultivation was dangerous, and I didn't trust the malevolent Chi. It might not even be Chi, for all I knew.

It irked me to change terms, but Chi didn't fit anymore. I still followed the principles of the law of cultivation, but these creatures were outside my experience and tutelage. Maybe my master would have been able to make sense of them, but they felt wrong to me. I couldn't understand what I was sensing when I felt them.

Seeing something didn't make a = b. The parasites on Pedro looked different than the ones on Jose. I stared down at my body but couldn't see any parasites. That didn't mean they didn't exist. All it meant was that I couldn't see them or sense them.

As they drained away at my spirit, they might be able to blend in. Clearly, I needed to get rid of them.

I felt the pressure from the distant cosmic being. Something was always baring down on this world, a presence more significant than anything I've ever felt and incredibly far away. Like a distant black hole, I only noticed it because of its effect on things around it. I decided to name it the Malevolent Heavenly.

What was I dealing with? I didn't know, and it drove me mad. 

So, I decided to skirt the edge and deal with what I did know. I could still cultivate; the ingredients were there, but I needed to filter, condense, filter, refine, and filter outside my body. The heavenly spirit was like crude oil to a gas engine. I needed to carefully find the right mix and seal away the parts I didn't need.

With this small insight, I had a path to take. Gaining back my cultivation in this barbaric world was my most important concern.

I found a closet and took my knife to its door. Sealing could work with any spiritual energy, including the mass I was working with. Keeping people out of my new private room was easy enough, and everything within quickly became mine. This room was filled with wooden cups, wine, and hard tack. This wasn't the entire crew's supply room, but only a closet 4 hours of wood carving left my hands a shaking wreck, but I had a room for privacy.

With my saferoom and food handled, I made my way down to the horses and shoveled while contemplating filters.

"Senor, do you know how much longer we'll be on the ship?" I asked a traveling sailor.

"Two weeks, like the commander said." He looked me up and down. "Don't bother me. I'm going to see the blue girls for some fun. There are some virgins Cortes hasn't taken."

I recall that Cortes had a lot of concubines or something like that from history. This is not from the failure of a public school I attended but from YouTube videos. After all, history class only cared about the current regime, World War II to the present. They edited what was told to keep us nice and pliable.

Buttercup dropped another pile on the floor. I didn't feel like ranting to the sound of falling dung.

Shovel in hand and Buttercup facing away and eyeing the man, I thought about causing an accident. Jose seemed like the kind of guy that wouldn't be missed. I was in the past, my world's past.

The cultivator in me said to kill the guy, take him to the closet, and turn him into a corpse puppet. Do it to the entire crew. Mortals that don't bow until their heads touch the ground were worthless to me. Shatter the chains of history and build a sect.

Cultivators rarely reached immortality by worrying about mortals all day instead of focusing on their path. Also I had a mystery that ate at my mind every second of the day.

The man had a sword on his waist and a pistol holstered. As a fellow squishy mortal, I wouldn't be a match for him if this became a fight. If I closed in, that could be another story.

I sucked in a breath and let it out. I could do experiments on his body to figure out how to make the man's spirit pressure dangerous to the parasites.

"You shouldn't rape them. They will have a hard time becoming wives or concubines." I said.

Why enslave women when they could be given out as concubines, rewards, and even wives. It was something I didn't understand. Were they here to ensure the men who didn't have wives could pass on an heir. Stress relief was a given, and I was dealing with mortals.

I sucked in a breath.

The man spat at my feet.

Buttercup jumped at his sudden movement. It wasn't wise to spook such an ornery horse.

The man snorted. "They are property. They'll let whoever I tell them to poke them or be caned." The sailor shook his head. "What's your name? Captain Alvardo doesn't like soft men in his crew?"

I decided then that this guy would be the first I killed and experimented on with corpse puppetry.

"Enjoy your poke," I said.

"That's what I thought, Senor." The man laughed, walked up to Buttercup, and slapped her rear.

The black mare reared up, and the man took a blow to his shoulder as he stumbled away from her. I caught her reigns before she could do more.

"You should treat Captain Alvardo's horse more carefully, Senor," I said.

I patted the mare after he left. She bit me and ripped her head away, leaving a harsh bruise on the shoulder. Maybe I should move my plans forward. I glared at the animal. "I'm going to turn you into a spirit beast just so I can have your apology." 

…

My very mortal hands shook as I tried to carve a line into a wooden cup. Working with circles was hard, and doing it on a rocking ship was impossible. Carving the door had taken too much of my strength, and I had to relieve myself earlier.

Diary, did you know these ships had no toilet paper or running water. I do. How do these people live? No one washes their hands. They just clean themselves with their hand and go about their day. It's disgusting. The sooner they are all corpse puppets, the better. Clearly, mortals of this age were insane, and I needed weapon platforms to combat all the spirit lifeforms. I wasn't calling the things ghosts.

They could interfere with reality just fine, but only for their own gain. I was almost sure they fed off the emotions produced by the soul. When the monster fed, I felt a small amount of emotion-tainted spirit enter the Malevolent Heavenly. The pressure of the spirit acted like a magnet and pulled the emotion to it.

I don't know why something so large would feed off emotions. The parasites I understood and the larger monsters fed from them. While the colossal sea monsters fed from the predators.

A cold drop of water hit the floor, breaking the silence. I stared up as the sound of rain filled the closet. There were leaks all through the ship. I sucked in a breath and let it out. Like a kick in the head, I felt a second predator appear.

There was screaming from the spirit sense. It shouldn't be possible, but I heard them screaming from within the other predator. This one was even stronger than the first monster, and its pressure made the rain fall harder. I felt their battle and checked my seals to make sure nothing could notice me.

I planned to break through to the first realm. Body Tempering wasn't anything extravagant, but it was necessary. Chi turned their body from mortal muscle, flesh, and blood into a for fit for cultivation. The ship rocked, and my face was planted in the wall.

Rage filled my every cell as I struggled to write coherently. "Those monsters are going to die. In the next entry, we will discuss cultivation principles and how I will abuse them."