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[Young Master Xian]—❈—43:: Climax [V]
🕑 Added 2025-01-17 17:09:08 +0000 UTCMy eyes open to a bright, blue sky.
For the first time since my first tango with one of Xian Qigang’s corrupted creatures a few minutes ago, my body is entirely free of pain, and it is that, more than the changes around me, that clues me in that this might not be real. Or, at least, physical.
I look around me, taking in the lush, sunlit forest I find myself in.
This is not Xian Qigang’s hidden realm. That is a desolate place, almost like something that is the aftermath of a nuclear explosion. Ash, dust, and gloomy skies, with charred, haunting husks that look like they may have once been trees.
This place is the opposite of that. This is a place that breathes life. A place of beauty and plenty.
This is my soul.
I look up, spotting the sun hanging directly overhead.
It does not blind my eyes to look at, and its heat is a soothing warmth despite the intensity of its beams.
A deep slow breath fills my lungs, and I bask in the moment free from the pain of Wild Qi wreaking havoc on my body and cultivation.
Glory of The Sun
The proclamation resonates through all things like the voice of the very world.
No, not like, it is the voice of the world. Technically, anyway. And it is a voice I recognize, despite having only met its owner once.
Wanting to be where the speaker is puts me there, like the world moves around me to leave me where I want to be.
That’s nice of it, although where it leaves me, isn’t so nice.
I stare at the huge swath of land where I know more lush vegetation should be now bathed in ash, everything in it burned to nothing.
My eyes land on the man responsible.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I see you still ask stupid questions, Xian Qigang,” The Sun Emperor replies, not even deigning to look at me.
I don’t know why, but something about the way he says my name annoys me.
I sigh. “Must you do this every time?” I ask, honestly tired. “We’re literally stuck together. Likely for life. And, seeing as I’m a cultivator and I have no plans to die anytime soon, it’s hopefully going to be a very long life. Can’t we learn to be cordial towards each other at least?”
“I am me, and you are you,” he says.
I sigh again. “Yes, you’ve said, but even people with vastly different personalities can still learn to get along.”
“Everything that you are irks me, Xian Qigang, so, no, I do not think that we will be ‘getting along’,” he says.
Glory of The Sun
The decree rolls across the world again, but this time, it is not the obliterating fire it conjures but the life-giving warmth.
Green leaves shoot out through ash covered ground, and they stretch, reaching for the distant sun, aging years in seconds.
It’s like what I did with the tree I planted for Magistrate Qin, except on a scale that would kill me to attempt at my current level.
In less than a minute, decades of growth rise before my very eyes, returning what was lost in perfect condition.
No, wait, not perfect condition.
I walk towards one of the trees.
Unlike the others, this one looks... sick. Its branches are warped, its bark flaky, leaves sparse. There’s something wrong with it.
I reach out to touch it, only to recoil the moment my fingers make contact.
I stare with wide eyes.
Wild Qi. The tree is corrupted with it.
My eyes search the other trees; they look fine, normal. This one however, doesn’t.
I turn to The Sun Emperor in realization. “That’s why you burnt it all down. Wild Qi infected them, so you burnt it all down to start anew.”
“The next time a corrupted creature comes at you with fang and claw, Xian Qigang, do endeavour to not stop its bite with your flesh,” The Sun Emperor says, sounding just a tad pissy.
I glare at him.
Why is he such a dick?
“It’s not like I wanted to get bitten,” I say. “Besides, you can fix the corruption.” I turn back to the one warped tree. “Though not perfectly.”
The Sun Emperor seems to take great offense to my words.
“Contrary to what you seem to believe, Xian Qigang, I am not a method meant for healing, or keeping women warm. What I have accomplished here is above and beyond any reasonable expectation,” he says, perfect eyebrows dipped in a severe frown.
I blink at him, taken aback by his reaction. “Um… I wasn’t suggesting otherwise,” I say, but The Sun Emperor scoffs.
“Enlightenment was wasted on you,” he says.
The words confuse me. “What are you talking about? I never got enlightenment, that’s a lie Meng Yi made up.”
The Sun Emperor shoots me a long, sour look, like my very existence irritates him.
Finally, he says, “If I cared enough about you, Xian Qigang, I would delight in tearing down this fiction you’ve chosen to hide behind.”
The world changes then, space moving around us to deposit us before a patch of forest heavy with corruption.
I stare at the twisted trees, pale and leafless, a network of pitch-black veins running through them and the earth they grow from.
Just seeing them makes me sick.
Glory of The Sun
This time, the declaration doesn’t come from The Sun Emperor.
It comes from me.
Solar fire of gold and orange washes across all that I see, cleansing the world with its heat.
The destruction of the corruption sends a wave of relief through my soul that I hadn’t even known it craved, and I stare, breaths calming, as the ashes of what had been flutters to the ground.
The Sun Emperor sniffs. “Acceptable,” he says.
I give him a long look. “You’re an asshole,” I inform him.
“Better an asshole, than a coward and a liar, Xian Qigang.”
“Can you stop calling me that?” I say.
Something about the way he says it is just so… off-putting. Like he delights in reminding me of who I am.
The Sun Emperor gives me a look that is the visual representation of condescension.
“What should I call you then?” he asks. “Young Master? Commander? Or… hmm, perhaps I could call you by your name, in that supposed life you lived back on Earth that you never shut up about.
“I am unfamiliar with that one however, so you’ll have to help me. Tell me, Xian Qigang, what was your name?”
The Sun Emperor’s golden eyes meet mine in challenge, an expression of distaste and, paradoxically, enjoyment on his face.
I, meanwhile, am suddenly struck mute. My heart pounding in my chest. A chill crawling down my back.
I swallow with a dry mouth.
“Well, Xian Qigang, what was your name?” The Sun Emperor asks again, gaze holding mine.
My body shifts an involuntary step back, like it’s trying to pull me away from this confrontation.
The Emperor doesn’t let me.
“I’m waiting, Xian Qigang,” he says, eyes alight with delight at my reaction.
His obvious enjoyment of my distress makes me angry, and I latch onto the anger like a life preserver.
“I recall you saying you didn’t care about me enough to enjoy tearing down the fiction I hide behind,” I say. “I guess you’re just as much of a liar as I am.”
The Sun Emperor does not appreciate my words much, but to my surprise, his features actually soften, and his expression shifts into something like pity.
It almost makes me want him to return to the condescension.
“What was your name, Qigang?” he asks once more, tone firm but with an odd gentleness to it.
I don’t reply. I can’t.
“What was your name, Qigang?” he asks again, tone firmer.
“I’m from Earth,” I say. “I was born there. I lived there.”
“Qigang, tell me your name?”
The world reacts to the technique.
Emperor’s Decree
The edict slams onto me like a tsunami. Inevitable. Unstoppable.
I feel it vibrate through my being, shaking me down to my very core. Forcing an answer out of me.
I could resist it, I know. It wouldn’t be easy, but I could resist it. This is my power. Not in the way that it would be if I’d attained congruence, but it is still my power.
I can resist this. The Sun Emperor must know that.
I sigh. “My name is Xian Qigang,” I say, and just like that, the barriers come apart.
—❈—
Once there was a man named Xian Qigang. He was petty, and he was cruel.
But this was not Xian Qigang’s great crime in the eyes of his peers. See, pettiness and cruelty were things barely blinked at in Xian Qigang’s social circles, but there was one thing, one thing above all that everyone held in high regard.
Talent.
And Xian Qigang had little talent.
Now, having little talent was not Qigang’s great crime. No, his great crime was acting as though he did.
A cultivator with talent great enough could get away with anything. Much like the Xian Matriarch, Qigang’s mother. Founder of the Xian clan.
In certain circles on certain worlds, they would call her a protagonist. A woman with talent so great, she pulled herself from the literal gutters of The Capital to become the head of one of The Fifty Great Clans of The Sunrise Empire.
But this is not the story of Xian Qi, this is the story of Xian Qigang, her seventh born and second son.
Xian Qigang had little of his mother’s talent. Not to say that he was a poor cultivator, but for something of his parentage, it was certainly less than ideal.
Being the least talented, and the youngest, among seven siblings was not a good place to be. And among people who saw those of lacking talent as less than dirt, growing up was especially rough on Xian Qigang.
He was the one who all of his peers could pick on. The one who it was safe to pick on.
Among the one percent, Xian Qigang was at the bottom of the ladder, so he went looking for a different ladder.
It didn’t take the boy long to realise that there were people he could pick on. So, he bullied them. But that didn’t stop his bullies from assaulting him, so he doubled down on his victims, trying to make himself feel more than the bug his oppressors made him feel like by crushing those that he had power over.
Things snowballed from there.
Now, again, in the eyes of cultivators, especially those at the top of the world, talent is everything.
Talent is the difference between breaking through realms under your own power and needing a Transformation Lotus to accomplish it. It is the difference between needing a few weeks of meditation to advance and needing millions worth of cultivation supplements to do the same.
Talent is the thing that separates the noteworthy from the trash.
In many ways, especially in the highest levels of cultivator society, Talent is Everything.
Qigang forgot that.
Or perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps he remembered.
After all, his lacking talent was why he’d been designated the trash among his peers. Why his mother left him with a method the same rank as the servants’. So, perhaps Qigang was fully aware of what he was doing, when he began to develop a penchant for crippling promising, young cultivators.
He started small. Picking nameless nobodies who looked like they might amount to something. But soon that wasn’t enough. Soon he needed to cripple real talent.
That was when his life came crashing down.
The Empire needs talented cultivators to protect Her from Her many enemies, so, an eye is always kept out for—and on—cultivators of sufficient talent to add to Her ranks.
If Qigang had talent anywhere near his mother’s hardly anyone would have given him grief over his actions. But, then again, if Qigang had talent anywhere near his mother, he would likely have been a different person.
Xian Qi made amends for her son’s actions, and then, mostly because she couldn’t tolerate him any longer, she sent him off to Silver Springs. And it was in Silver Springs that Xian Qigang had the luckiest encounter of his life… depending on who you ask.
It was on his second day after he stormed off into the mountains, angry because his mother wouldn’t heed his pleas for a higher ranked method.
He’d gotten lost barely an hour in and failed to notice, and then he’d come across a qi beast.
It was a weak thing, barely more than prey, especially to a cultivator of his level, but Qigang gave chase, and the creature took him running.
It was several hours later before Qigang gave up, and by then, he was many li away from home or civilization.
He’d wandered then, telling himself that he was headed the right way even as all evidence pointed to him heading deeper into the mountains.
He’d walked through the night, hungry and tired and too proud to admit it. Most especially though, he was too scared to stop.
It was in the early dawn the next day that he stumbled into it. Quite literally.
The entrances into hidden realms can’t be sensed, so when he fell in, it was entirely a shock.
The bounty he found within was even greater.
Right there, near the entrance, a tree. With a divine rank celestial plum hanging on one of its branches.
It was the greatest find of his life. The greatest find of anybody’s life. But there was a catch.
See, there was a spatial tear in the hidden realm, and through it, Wild Qi had seeped in.
The tree was growing corrupted before his very eyes.
A piece of shit he was, but Xian Qigang was well educated. He knew what Wild Qi was. He knew the harm; he knew the dangers.
His greed made him forget them all.
This was his chance. His opportunity to finally become who he was always meant to be.
With this no one would ever again be able to look down on him.
Wild Qi is, at its heart, chaos. It is not bad, per se, simply… inconducive to order.
Celestial Plums, meanwhile, are one of the very few natural things that affect the soul directly. They connect it to the multiverse at the deepest level, making it part of the framework of reality itself, and as you can imagine, they are not something you want to use if they’ve been infected with raw chaos.
Xian Qigang ate the divine rank Celestial Plum, and his soul shattered.
That’s how I came to be.
I suppose you could say that I’m his conscience. That small, withered part of him that he’d long since learnt to drown out.
I don’t think that’s true though. Because I don’t think it’s possible for a person’s conscience to hate them as much as I hate him.
Due to it being a Celestial Plum, the Wild Qi’s corruption began in his soul, but his soul was broken, and for that moment, I was free of him.
So, I stole his body and I ran.
Infected with Wild Qi or not, a divine rank Plum was still a near unmatchable force in the universe, and with its effects flooding through me, I knew what I needed to do.
As I was, I wasn’t enough to make a person. Sure, I could manage it well enough while under the effect of the Plum, but eventually, that would wear out, and I would be done.
I didn’t want to be done.
So, I reached out, into the vastness of the endless realms, and I grabbed what I could find.
They were echoes. Memories almost, of people who had lived.
I brought them to me, and, following an instinct provided by the Plum, I wove them into myself.
It was a birthing, almost. Of myself.
Like all newborns though, I needed to gestate before I could be brought into the world.
So, I draped the shell of Xian Qigang’s psyche over myself like an itchy, ill-fitting coat, and I went to the only place I knew.
Meng Yi thought Xian Qigang had been somewhat reticent the following days due to embarrassment. The truth was Xian Qigang was stuck without a body in a hidden realm a day’s walk into the mountains. What she’d interacted with was little more than a veneer of the man I subsumed a few days later when I was ready to awaken.
I hadn’t meant to create the fictitious history. But, apparently, mixing oneself with multiple personalities, even if mere echoes of what they’d been, leaves its mark. And it had been oh-so pleasant to not be him.
In a way, this is Meng Yi’s fault.
I remember in the beginning, when we first met, and I wanted to tell her my name from my supposed life back on Earth.
She’d shut me down. Made me accept that I am Xian Qigang now and that wasn’t changing.
I don’t know what name I would have told her, likely that of one of the vestiges I subsumed, but the effect was stronger then, and if she’d let me indulge in the fantasy of not being Qigang, I suspect that it would have settled in firmly.
In many ways, she’d left the first crack in my façade.
I sigh as my eyes open to see The Sun Emperor still staring at me.
“You’re still a dick,” I say to him, though without any actual animosity.
“And you are still an irritation,” he replies, tone matching mine.
I turn to look at the forest I’d scorched.
Glory of The Sun
Life returns with the proclamation, sprouting and shooting up to leave lush vegetation.
A quick search for some corrupted ones reveals a couple.
I try to not let it bug me.
“Are there any others?” I ask The Sun Emperor.
“Not that we can do anything about,” he says, irked by the admission.
I simply nod in acceptance.
“I need to go,” I say. “I have to punch myself in the face. Heavily and repeatedly.”
“Good,” The Sun Emperor says. “He is quite unpleasant… And Meng Yi is a fine servant. Get her back, Qigang.”
That surprises me. Then I smile and nod.
“See you, Sun Emperor,” I say.
“I surely hope not,” he replies.
—❈—
Back in the hidden realm, corrupted with Wild Qi and plentiful with enemies, my eyes slam open and the world catches fire.
Comments
Kt-x
Thanks for the chapter 🙂
BubblyGhost
Aren't all people in this world a mis match of ideas, experiences, and others who have touched our lives? Perhaps not quiet so literally or so strongly, but similar enough to be considered his own person
Zaim İpek
@Jackpot-kun Thank you for the clarification. That makes sense. Do celestial plums normally grow completely alone or in pocket realms with other natural treasures? I think that would be a significant factor.
Zaim İpek
So many questions. How is his family exiling him compatible with this idea of him having support from his family? Where is the subversion? Qigang did compete for resources at the auction not long ago. . . But I agree he is probably less greedy than other cultivators. . . . Not sure what that has to do with anything. Why would anyone fight him for a fruit unless he started advertising his ability to randomly spawn items? Your comment confuses me.
MagicWafflez
I also don't like your condescension "maybe you are unfamiliar with the genre". excuse me? maybe *you* are unfamiliar with the genre. this is not the usual xianxia. this is a subversion of that genre like BOC. Unlike most xianxia protagonists, qigang has his family's support. they are not some weak clan that can be bullied. And Qigang isn't the kind to compete with cultivators for resources. They'll go scrabbling around the mountain and he'll be home drinking tea. No one is going to come fight him for a fruit he already ate and can't be stolen. Also with wild qi fucking with everything, the tree could be any rank, or dead at this point. the evidence is consumed by chaos.
aj0413
Original, but I have to I guess I’m part of the minority that doesn’t care for this. Frankly, I’m more with the Sun Emperor. He’s not a person. He’s a thing. A facsimile of a shade of different people pretending. Idk But for a while moving forward, it will definitely color my view on every interaction he has with others. I just find the details of his existence distasteful and the idea of romance with it…uuhhh, not great.
George Tasie
Zaim ipek, none of that is happening here actually, for a few reasons: it hasn't been mentioned yet, but fruits like celestial plums do actually grow one to a tree, and worse, the plants can't be grown by humans, any interference in their growth immediately kills them. It's why they're so rare. The only way they can be found is in the wild. More importantly though, the hidden realm has an ungodly amount of Wild Qi corruption, that has been improved by evil Qigang. You are right about one thing, The Empire is coming, but it's not to find treasure, it's to cleanse the area and shut down that hidden realm before the corrupt gets any worse. Paradoxically, while the corruption has been strengthened by evil Xian, he is also the only reason it hasn't covered half the mountains yet. He keeps it restrained so as to not draw attention. The moment he dies, they have a couple weeks tops before the corruption reaches Silver Springs. Wild Qi isn't something to fuck with.
Zaim İpek
. . . do you really think a noble ranked plum is comparable to a divine ranked one? And fruit indicates a tree. Even if it only produces one fruit at a time, there will be another. Also, you are wrong about the empire. They are practically an outside entity. There are no imperial government members within a very long distance of this tiny town. Maybe you are unfamiliar with the genre or are just very optimistic that this is a softer kind of story. In a typical cultivation fantasy setting, imperial soldiers would quarantine the entire area and give all locals a limited time to evacuate before they simply killed anyone who remained. Then the royal family would send all their young talents to compete for who can find it first, and that person would be declared the next heir to the empire. That's a basic Xianxia type plot. The reason that hasn't happened is because it is suspected Qigang found a more mundane plum. As soon as his ability to roll items gets revealed, it will become clear that he ate a VERY special plum, and it will be chaos.
RavenCore
Now that’s a twist. I didn’t see coming.
Temp Email
I have to congratulate you Author-san. I don’t know how you did it but I’ve had a small suspicion that something very similar to this was what happened for quite a few chapters. Out of curiosity, what are the Chekov’s guns you left w.r.t this in the text? You definitely must have left some that I noticed subconsciously
Kevin Rule
I expected something like this, though my thought was that he was a reincarnation whose past life had become ascended over his present, looks like was close but not spot on
MagicWafflez
I don't really understand how this reveal is any different than the usual reincarnation isekai with the original person's memories. He died on earth. what was left of his soul fused with xian qigang's tiny good part. he didn't remember how he got there until now. now he remembers qigang's memories. it's functionally the same as a normal reincarnation isekai, but right now we're *framing* it from qigang's point of view. "He died and took over qigang's body" and "his soul shattered and took in soul pieces from dead people" aren't mutually exclusive.
MagicWafflez
the story was already spread far and wide as a noble ranked plum. And people will assume Young Master Xian took all that there is to take, as far as the hidden realm is concerned. And the empire isn't some outside entity. They're part of the empire, if cultivators want to go trudge through the forest looking for hidden realms, that doesn't particularly matter to anyone else. Him being a body snatcher is much more tense, because right now he has the backing of the xian family. no one is going to threaten him while he has that backing. If he was a body snatcher he'd *be* the one the xian family goes after.
b
I agree that the story is done well and i'd like to see more, I just dont like genre drops as i feel information amalgams, soul fragments, or gestalt entities dont fall under isekai its more like an information download at that point. It can also be used to explain an individuals knowledge in a bad way, any new skill or info can just be hand waved to have existed in one of the soul fragments that make up the mc with no limit Though that hand wave is not as bad as the stories where the person is somehow a maverick jack of all trades with infinite knowledge and limitless motivation
George Tasie
I don't know if the ideas I have on this will ever become relevant, but here's a thing to note, that song doesn't exist in one reality.
BananaBobert
I'm fairly neutral on it. From the description of what happened, it's basically a gestalt of souls (soul echoes?) from our world with a thin bit of conscience from the original Xian. So it's effectively the same as an isekai/si that has his personal details removed. Just with a different lore flavor. It sounds like there wasn't much of the original Xian in the mixture anyways, so it's the "person" from our world in the driver's seat. Of course, this does get into what makes a person a person. Does that soul gestalt from our world that clearly has his own likes/dislikes and opinions count as a person? Or is the fact that it's not all from one person make it not a person? The reason I'm neutral on this reveal is that to me, it's a lore/world building reveal, but it doesn't actually change the main character. He still remembers what he remembers of our world. He should still identify more with our world than the original Xian's. He just knows how he came to be. To me, it serves a similar purpose to the stereotypical "conversation with ROB/Eldritch horror/god/The Company" isekais have. I do find this a lot less cringe and enjoyable because we've already had the chance to know the MC. I like his bumbling attempts at trying to reconcile modern morality with Xianxia society. So finding out how he came to be leaves me with a feeling of "That's neat. Now let's get back to the character interactions." Anyways, that's my two cents. I (selfishly) want more of this story and this reveal hasn't changed that for me.
Franco R
Not totally against your comment, specially cause I didn’t realize he had lost that much of his memories until this chapter. If he had more of his ‘earth’ memories, then it would be almost effectively the same thing as an isekai though. I wonder how our spider lady is going to take this.
Franco R
It’s close to what I was theorizing was the case all along, that he WAS qigang. Though I thought he was like his own previous life’s memories not memories from randomness. Reason being that the girl that wrote ‘fly me to the moon’ also got memories from the same planet.
wanderer117
I mean, did he? Part of him is from earth, part of him is Qigang. He lied to himself about how he arrived / was created but that was apparently also a side effect of stapling a bunch of ghosts onto his broken soul.
Snuckytoes
So THAT’s why his “re-roll” ability is random. Wild Qi is pure chaos and it infected his celestial plum. Also, I love all the foreshadowing and little hints to this reveal. All the pieces clicked together quite nicely.
Zaim İpek
He is still someone who found a secret realm with a divine celestial plum. If anyone ever catches wind of that, the entire empire will invade this tiny region to search for it, and much blood will be shed in competition to be the first to find it. I think this raises the tension rather than lowering it. The consequences for him being a body snatcher are significantly less severe.
Zaim İpek
He did not. The Divine Celestial Plum did that.
b
I'll be honest I don't like this reveal I first followed this story because it was listed as xianxia + isekai. Truthfully half the isekai i read is for the wish fufillment aspect,what if I was portal fantasied and theory crafting in their place. A native getting amnesia +obtaining knowledge of another world isnt isekai and doesnt allow for that same vein of thought. It shifts my thoughts from active,what i would do in their place, to passive, lets observe and see what the native does, in this story. A genre drop/swap also comes across as a bait and switch from my perspective,like a gamelit|litrpg world turning out to actually be a vr story. Though i also have a slight bias as the 3 stories i recall with a similiar twist had a drop in quality immediatly after
Apoca
He forgot the part where he created a system what randomly creates items of increased quality of the same.
SquiddlyWinks
I like this a lot!
MagicWafflez
you see, I like this a lot~ he's not lying to people calling himself qigang, and he doesn't have to fear his family 'finding out' there's nothing to find out. he is himself and he hollowed out the terrible parts of himself and filled them with other bits xD. phew. that clears a lot of the stress from this whole thing. and he likely now remembers enough bits about his family to be realistic when he meets them. I *do* think that he's likely going to be the next magistrate. it will take months to appointment someone and he's close to qi realm (if this wild qi didn't set him back)
marconjecture
Wow! I did not see that coming! 👍
Rylee Richter
No, he lied about being from earth, he’s just a bunch of echos
SuperDani
so enlightenment is really just seeing Earth/getting knnowledge about it? normally in xianxia stuff earth is a super low realm or qi-dead world or something. interesting to see it treated as something like a higher plane
