The Shovel Dao

Jackie groans under the colossal thumb. It pulls back a moment later, and its owner's voice booms sadly, "Just a mortal. Dear me."

Twilight turns and carries Jackie into the cave on her palm. The old pair pass through several chambers containing many occult and mysterious articles. Jackie can't recognize anything in this alien place.

Soon, they arrive into the domed chamber at the back of the caves. Many intricate patterns that glow with a mysterious purpose decorate the walls. Jackie realizes that the symbols swim across the walls and floor, forming an enormous array. He can see translucent energies flowing throughout the room from the symbols.

"My private cultivation chamber," introduces Twilight. She waves her hand. Hundreds of stoppered bottles fly into the chamber from the other rooms. All sorts of shimmering and glowing materials follow the bottles.

The materials fall into a complex arrangement on the floor and walls and interact with the energies in the room to create a vortex of light in the center. "I've prepared a long time for today. Imparting cultivation techniques usually damages the soul and spirit of the stronger party or makes little ones like you explode."

Twilight gazes down at him, "Don't worry about that. You should feel proud, a Pure Body. What a mysterious phenomenon. You have to have grown up in a place with no celestial energy to change you.

Today, I'm going to impart a selection of the Twilight Sect's Eight Yang Trigram cultivation techniques to you. We cultivate the flesh, the spirit, the soul, and the container.

Those other sects like to focus on one or two; body cultivators believe in their muscular bodies to pummel enemies. Spirit cultivators rely on spells, while soul cultivators rely on the mysteries of the immortal soul."

She motions to her body, "That's because cultivation costs time and resources. Each technique requires rare and invaluable materials to advance, and typically a single cultivator can only contain a certain number of competing powers in his body before he explodes. However, our great ancestor and sect founder discovered that cultivating the Vessel allows us to contain and grow the competing scriptures and powers."

Her eyes turn into crescent moons as she smugly says, "That's why we are so much larger than the other cultivators. Only Twilight sect has the Vessel cultivation methods. We have two methods - Dawn and Dusk."

She then says, "You were inside our forbidden zone, access for outsiders is thirty Perfect tier Celestial Stones." Her lip curves down into a frown. "The penalty for entering without paying is forty-five Perfect tier celestial stones, and if you can't pay, you are required to work off your fine in the sect."

Her voice booms as she pronounces his sentence, "From this day forward, you are my indentured servant. It will take you one hundred and thirty-five years to pay off your debt. But, I can see that you have less than ten years of life left in your body. I will invest in you, to see you grow. I have selected compatible Dawn cultivation techniques to my Dusk Dao. "

"When you become my peer, we will cultivate the Twilight eight Trigrams; it is the only way to advance to supreme power in this land! Also, we'll live a whole lot longer."

She waves her hand and sends Jackie flying through the air.

Jackie's heart lerches in his throat, eyes going wide as he sails far above the ground in a graceful arc. He sees the chamber's floor zoom closer and closer to his pale face. "NO!" He shouts, clenching his shovel the instant he slams into the floor.

He bites down on his teeth for a few moments, then, realizes that he feels fine. His eyes flutter open, and he looks around, finding himself sprawled on the ground. He sits up and places his shovel across his lap as he crosses his legs.

Jackie sees the giantess looking at him with a mischevious glint in her old eyes, hand on her hips.

She then busies herself in arranging the materials, pointing here and there before sending out her golden waves of energy to form intangible bonds, making incomprehensible occult arrays that cause the space to crack and swirl. The concentration of the floating energy wisps in the room builds stronger and denser.

She continues working for an entire hour before she rubs her glabella and turns her attention to the well-behaved old man at the center of the room. She twerks her booty and moves closer in an instant. She lowers herself to both knees and then crosses her legs to sit facing him.

Twilight nods at him and quietly asks, "Will you accept this power? You will become a member of our sect's fraternity, The Brotherhood of Dawn, and swear to uphold our values. You will be treated fairly and impartially, even as an indentured servant."

Jackie looks up into her eyes, and his mind goes blank for a few moments. He realizes that he doesn't know the world at all. Nothing, he doesn't have a method to treat his heart illness, and he is entirely out of his element. A foreign world, in an alien land. He's old and feeble, on the verged of passing away in a few years without a backing here.

He cups his chin and looks up at the waiting giant, she tilts her head and raises an eyebrow back at him, allowing him time to consider.

He looks at his system, at [Dimensional Dig] and the shovel's 1/100 integrity. Jackie believes that he will have to raise the shovel's integrity and his shovel points to activate that power and dig his way back home. Perhaps it needs rare and exotic materials to be repaired.

He glances at the extravagant and exotic items all over the cultivation room and scrunches his eyebrows in thought. Perhaps the best choice is to accept the offer, work for the sect and gain merits to purchase the materials the shovel needs to be fixed. If he's wrong, at least he can learn more about this distant world the shovel kidnapped him to.

Jackie Lewin's eyes fill with determination and his chest puffs out. He nods, "I agree!"

Twilight's old eyes brighten, and she nods back towards him, raising her hand to her glabella. She draws out a long whisp of golden power that turns into a bright ball of energy that looks just like the ball the shovel had given him from the gift box.

Jackie starts sweating. This is going to hurt!

Twilight extends her fingertip towards his head, the ball brushes his glabella and then explodes into hundreds of lights and images that drill inside his mind.

[Ding!]

[Dawn Eight Trigrams Detected, converting...

[Hundred Solar Steps Converted to Hundred Shovel Stomps]

[Rising Dawn Shining Soul Dao Converted to Shimmering Chromed Shovel Soul Dao]

[Igniting Solar Tyrant Body Forging Converted to Hardworking Tyrant Excavator Body Forging]

[Five Elements Spiritualism Converted to Five Shovels Spiritualism]

[Dawn Immortal Vessel Sculpting Converted to Eternal Shovel Vessel Dao]

[Eighteen Overlord Fists Converted to Eighteen Void Maneuvers]

[Dawn Alchemy Dao Converted to Shovel Alchemy Dao]

[Dawn Array Dao Converted to Entrenching Array Dao]

[Ding!]

[Conversion Complete - The Shovel Dao will now be imparted.]

The mighty soul energy rushes through his body and meridians, through his spiritual palaces and soul, polishing and reshaping everything.

The mysterious energy in the chamber rushes into his body, flooding every corner and reinforcing it to better support the mighty soul force of the giantess. He witnesses hundreds of years of experience in these fields, shaping him and changing him in ways he couldn't believe only days before.

Then, the warm energy turns rougher and rampages inside him.

Jackie blacks out.