Dao of the Deal

Muchen woke to the sight of a man standing atop a sword, flying through the distant sky. The sword cut through the air with the sort of speed he usually associated with a jet airplane. After only a few heartbeats, both sword and man were little more than a blurry dot off in the distance. Muchen watched the dot dwindle in size until he was distracted by a sharp headache and a flood of memories.

It hurt. His first instinct was to throttle back the flow and focus on the here and now. He stared at his hand and tried to focus on the physical sensation of wiggling his fingers. The rush of memories clamored for his attention. He clenched his fist, gritting his teeth and pushing the memories away.

They just kept coming. After a moment he felt something snap. There was nothing he could do but loosen his mental hold and let the memories wash over him. The pain faded away and he was able to start paying more attention to the images rushing past his mind's eye. What he had thought of as one giant river was actually made up of two distinct streams.

In one, he remembered the modern world. His name... his name eluded him. He remembered flying aboard airplanes and grabbing all sorts of entertainment from a worldwide information network. He remembered going to school, busting his ass to keep his scholarships. He remembered hustling poker games and long weekends spent manning a stall at a farmer's market, doing whatever he could to keep himself in pocket money while he worked an unpaid internship that was supposed to act as a launching pad for his career.

He'd managed to wine and dine his supervisor and turn that internship into a solid job offer waiting for him on graduation. He remembered heading out with his friends to celebrate. The faces of his friends were blurry when he tried to call them up, and for that matter much of the evening was a blur, but the last memory hit with startling clarity: a lonely walk home that ended when a bolt of lightning struck from a clear night sky.

Muchen sighed. He'd read about plenty of senseless deaths, but he'd never expected it would happen to him. He could only hope that it had been caught on camera. At least then he'd have a shot at immortality in the form of a viral video.

Actually, his other stream of memories suggested that he might have a shot at a much more practical form of immortality. Muchen had been born on the Qianzhan Continent, in a world where men and women could develop extraordinary powers through a process called cultivation. A combination of meditation, martial training, and the consumption of esoteric medical materials all came together to grant cultivators impossible strength, supernatural powers, and nearly unlimited lifespans.

Having seen a man ride a flying sword, Muchen thought it was safe to conclude that he was now in that world of cultivation. Either that or his mind had finally snapped from overwork, but that wasn't something he was going to waste time worrying about.

Unfortunately, Muchen himself was not a cultivator. Far from it. He was an orphan who had been adopted by a traveling merchant. Old man Wangpai had often said that he wanted to pass down his legacy to someone he had raised himself, even if his legacy only amounted to a mule and a wagonful of goods.

The thought of the old man brought a twinge of pain to his heart. A month ago, he'd died of heart failure. It had come as a shock. Wangpai was old, but he'd never shown any signs of frailty due to his age. In the morning he'd been kicking Muchen awake and cursing him for his habit of sleeping in. Then in the afternoon he'd frozen while driving the cart, then dropped the reins, clutched at his chest, and slumped over. By the time Muchen had been able to get them to the next village, his body was cold.

Muchen had handled all of the funeral arrangements and stood vigil for the old man together with a bunch of strangers. Then he'd sold off the cargo they'd been carrying and set a course for the Cloudy Peaks Sect. He'd visited the area once before and remembered hearing of a low ranked steward who was notoriously corrupt. He'd planned to bribe the steward to sneak him into the sect as an outer disciple. With his terrible spiritual potential, the only way he could hope to enter a sect was through the back door.

He'd been nervous about taking such a long journey all by himself, but he'd buoyed his spirits by focusing on the dream of becoming a cultivator. He'd made it to within less than a day's travel of the sect and had been making camp for the night when a bolt of lightning had struck him from a clear sky.

Looking back on it now, it seemed like the plan of a particularly foolish teenager. It was somewhat excusable, seeing as he was a teenager.

Was he? Muchen turned his attention outward, taking a look at his body. The left sleeve of his shirt had been burned off by the lightning, revealing an arm that had been trained by seventeen years of hard work, with none of the flab accumulated from a life of modern luxury.

He was a teenager, then. Was he still foolish? That remained to be seen.

Muchen grunted as he pulled himself to his feet. His back was damp, courtesy of the morning dew, and a chorus of aches and pains greeted him as a result of a night spent passed out on the ground. Just a chorus, not the symphony he'd expected. Muchen hadn't cultivated supernatural powers, but he'd built up quite a bit of natural toughness over the course of a difficult life.

Unfortunately, it hadn't been enough to protect him from the lightning. The more he explored his memories, the more Muchen was certain that the original owner of the body had been cast out, to be replaced by a soul from a different world. His feelings, his habits of thought, they matched what he remembered from his modern life.

He looked at the charred mark left on the ground by the lightning to mark the spot where the original Muchen left this world. A somber mood came over him as he headed for his cart and pulled a bottle of wine out of storage. The original Muchen might not get a gravestone, but he should at least get a memorial service.

He carefully unwrapped the protective cloth from the bottle. It seemed a little excessive, but the padding had done its work in letting Muchen transport a fifty tael bottle of wine halfway across the Qianzhan Continent without any damage.

Fifty taels... his fingers froze in the action of unsealing the wine. After a moment, he wrapped the protective cloth around the bottle.

In a memorial service, it was the thought that counted, right?

Muchen offered a bow towards the scorch mark.

"I'll do my best to lead a good life and let our name be remembered with admiration," Muchen said, then smiled and shook his head. "Although I'm afraid I can't in good conscience go through with your plan."

He shook his head as he made his way back over to the cart. It took a special kind of person to try and bribe his way into a position as an outer sect disciple.

Outer sect disciples provided labor for the sect in exchange for cultivation resources and cultivation guidance. It sounded nice in theory, but working in exchange for room and board—and by the way not being allowed to leave—was not Muchen's idea of a good deal. The cultivation resources provided were a relative pittance, and even holding on to that much was a challenge under the vicious competition between disciples seeking that all important admission to the inner sect.

The only way to ascend from the outer sect was through immense talent or immense good fortune. The original owner knew he didn't have the talent. He'd been planning to make it by hard work and luck.

Muchen could only say he had been too naive. Selling yourself into indefinite servitude in exchange for a lottery ticket was bad enough, but what about that corrupt steward? Once the bribe had been paid and it was clear that Muchen couldn't be squeezed for any more money, could he really hope to enjoy a good life? He'd be lucky if the steward didn't have him killed to erase the traces of his misdeeds.

He hoped that, if the lightning bolt had caused them to swap places, the original Muchen would take a more sensible approach to the modern world.

Muchen turned away from the scorch mark, then paused as a thought occurred to him. "Of course, I could be persuaded to change my mind if that lightning came with some kind of cheat power attached."

Muchen had read enough web fiction to know that an orphan with little talent could become a domineering protagonist overnight with a sufficiently powerful cheat boosting him up. He struck a dramatic pose. "System? System store? Status? Menu? Open sesame?"

The only response was a whickering snort. Muchen looked to the side to find Huichen the mule looking at him with a hint of derision in his eyes. Well, the animal hadn't wandered away after its master was struck by lightning. That was pretty good. It couldn't be helped if he wasn't a particularly appreciative audience.

Muchen put away his thoughts of an immediate rise to power and checked over his cart after putting away the bottle of wine. It had been untouched by the lightning and, as far as he could tell, had gone unmolested while he was unconscious. That was good. He had the foundation he needed to make his own plan.

If a heaven-defying opportunity fell in his lap, he would grab onto it with both hands and not let go. He'd be happy enough to defeat a tide of young masters and ride the escalation treadmill to ultimate power.

He couldn't just assume that something like that would happen, though. He needed a stable, reliable plan for the future. Really, even if he did get some cheat power in the future, it would be better if it were backed up with a plan of his own.

Old masters handing out top level techniques, for example, could hardly be trusted. There was no such thing as a free lunch in this or any world. You'd end up fighting off a body snatching attempt if you were lucky; in the worst case, you'd end up getting dragged into fighting all of the old master's enemies.

Godly weapons were even less reliable. They could break at a critical moment, they could be stolen, they could even try and eat your soul.

Cheat powers in general were a poisoned chalice. How many protagonists had lost access to their cheat in critical moments, forced to rely on their own wit and ability to survive? Actually, once he took a minute to think about it, Muchen couldn't come up with an example. Nobody had ever accused him of having particularly discerning tastes as a reader.

He didn't have access to a cheat, anyways, so it was best not to dwell on it.

What he did have was a cart, a mule, and a decent sized stash of silver. In other words, start up capital. All that he had to do was make that stack of silver grow.

Money was stable. A tael of silver was a tael of silver, no matter where you traveled.

Money was safe. No lump of silver would ever stab Muchen in the back out of jealousy. Money would never break an engagement with him because of his low talent for cultivation.

Money was popular. Nobody hated money, and everybody wanted to have more money.

Muchen believed that if you were confronted with a problem that couldn't be solved with money, then the underlying problem was that you didn't have enough money. There was nothing wrong with the original's dream of using money to buy passage down the pathway of immortality. The problem was that planning to buy a place as an outer disciple was thinking too small.

Accumulating enough money to offset his lack of talent would be hard work, but Muchen had never been afraid of hard work. He just had to make sure that his efforts were focused in the right direction.

Right now, the most valuable piece of information he had was the name and rough location of a corrupt member of the Cloudy Peaks Sect. The steward might be a small fry, but it was precisely because of his humble position that Muchen would have a chance to talk to him. Instead of using that connection to buy his way into the sect and leave the steward with all the profit, though, he intended to adopt an approach that would be more mutually beneficial.