Jia Tao looked down at Wen Jie’s corpse with a complex expression on his face. The Jia Clan of the eight cursed families was a power that should never have stepped unto these barren lands, but heaven could make mockery of even the most adept of schemers.

The outside world, at least those who were strong enough to know about the existence of the eight cursed clans, could only see them as monsters walking within the skins of humans. And indeed, they were correct.

However, what the cultivation world had forgotten was that monsters were not always born monsters. They were moulded into shape by their environment, their sense of right and wrong distorted, and their perverse actions, praised.

Jia Tao did not wish to be a monster. However, the eight cursed families would not be given that name if they could not manage their own well, for such clans would have long fallen prey to internal and external strife. Those who were ruthless to others, could be even more ruthless to one’s own.

The moment he defied the clan, Jia Tao would die. That in itself, was not such a bad outcome. However, if he died, there would be no one left to stop the actions of the Jia clan.

‘It is a conundrum,’ the young Jia Tao thought to himself, as he looked down upon the actions of his handiwork. Wen Jie’s meagre belongings were taken away by Jia Tao, not that he cared about those, but because it had to look like the actions of a rogue cultivator. He lay down flat upon his back, cold, empty eyes staring at the skies without focus within them. His robes were died in red, blood seeping into the soil beneath him, though its flow was slowing down. The remnant streaks of tears streaking down his eyes were cleaned up, and Jia Tao had left a set of false trails and fabricated evidence to sell the rogue cultivator theory.

He gave one, final glance at Jia Tao, and then turned his back upon him. There was no risk of information regarding his identity being leaked, as he had already extracted Wen Jie’s remnant soul and crushed it on the spot.

He did not apologize, for it would only seem like a mockery of the deceased. For now, he would do nothing but wait. Wait, for one day a chance would surely come.

============================================

Xander Davis awoke to a blistering headache, getting up into a seated position. And the next moment, he collapsed again.

Information flooded his brain at an almost unbearable pace, causing him to almost scream out loud in a mixture of both pain and shock at the unexpected welcome to this new planet. His jaw was tightly clenched, and his rubbed against each other rather unhealthily.

Wen Jie… Cultivation…. Qi Refinement Stage…. Flowing River Qi Cycling Technique…. Outer Sect…. Alchemy… Formations…. Flags…. Five Element Sword Sect…. Jia Tao…..Eight Cursed Families…. The Jia Familiy…. Jia Tao. JIA TAO! JIA TAO!!!!!!!!

This time, Xander truly screamed in agony. The fixation of those memories with that figure called Jia Tao, the one who killed the owner of this body, almost drove him insane. However, just as it was reaching the tipping point, Xander reached out within his mind towards where he knew the will used to rest, and directed it to act against the foreign corruption.

This time, Xander could not feel any sentience from the will. It was as if it completely belonged to him, it was part of himself and… it was no different from Xander’s own will.

A minute passed, and the foreign influence was rapidly ground down by the intensity of the will that was now his possession.

Xander exhaled a sigh of relief, as he looked up at the skies to see a purple moon that seemed to gaze right back at him, illuminating the world with a soft, purple glow, despite easily dwarfing Earth’s moon in terms of size. It should easily be double the size, but Xander had no way to ascertain the same.

Slowly, he got up and gazed at his surroundings.

“I am Xander Davis,” he spoke out loud, and confirmed that his will had completely obliterated any trace or influence Wen Jie might exert upon him. After all, it would be extremely odd if the will of a man who dared to try and replace the heavens lost to a cultivator in the third stage of Qi refinement. Just like that, he had acquired most, if not all, of Wen Jie’s memories. He supposed he had his ‘friend’ in the heavens to thank for this arrangement.

Did he feel bad for Wen Jie? Xander thought about it, and answered in the negative. He had not stolen Wen Jie’s body, he had simply been killed by a superior cultivator.

A wave of chills ran down Xander’s spine and he frantically started looking around. He did not dare to lurk in this area, and all his belongings had already been pilfered.

As much as he’d like to sit down and figure out this cultivation stuff, he would rather not come face to face with that demon again. So, he broke out into a sprint in the direction of his sect, in bloodied robes, after having lost all of his belongings.

He could not feel any pain in this new body of his, only comfort. He wasn’t in danger of bleeding out, for Xander could detect no wound in his abdomen to begin with. As far as he could tell, his body was in perfect condition. That too, made sense, for it would be truly sick if he were transmigrated into the body of a dying man.

He did not cycle his qi, for he simply did not know how to. He would run back to his sect like a mortal, or at least close to its territory, before he dared to experiment.

As he was running, Xander realized that the first thing the world had presented him upon his arrival was a moral dilemma: what should he do about the villagers? What about the nefarious plot of the Jia clan?

Xander had nothing but time as he ran for his life, so he analysed the situation in his mind. After all, if that monster Jia Tao were to come after him, qi or no qi, death would still come nonetheless.

So firstly, the Patriarch of the Five Elements Sword Sect was a core formation cultivator. However, he was only this generation’s patriarch. According to Wen Jie’s hypothesis, it was likely that the sect possessed a Nascent Soul Ancestor, but his station was too low to acquire the relevant information. That was the first crucial bit of information.

Now the second. A qi refinement cultivator who reached thirteenth stage at sixteen was unthinkable for this area. A foundation establishment cultivator at that age was an impossibility for these people. Xander found no relevant information in Wen Jie’s memories for this disparity, but he was someone who had seen the thousands of worlds under the Heavenly Dao’s mandate. Thus, he could make some rough conjectures, but no solid guesses.

And finally, if he reported this information, the ‘Master’ would know that he survived. Xander did not understand this cultivation business yet, but it was far from the complex numerical equations and physics breaking calculations he expected it to be- it was far more esoteric and intangible. Wen Jie’s memories seemed to tell him that if he tried such a thing, he wouldn’t even understand how he died.

Xander had made his decision. He was simply going to pretend that he never witnessed Jia Tao and his wretched conspiracies. He was just a small qi refinement cultivator who got robbed by rogue cultivators, and nearly died. It had nothing to do with him.

He felt genuinely sorry for those people, and were he the old, naïve Xander, that had not suffered the pain of an entire lifetime coalesced into a few years, perhaps he would have informed the clan regardless of his own personal feelings. Not to mention, the master of such a prodigious cultivator had to be a master himself. Xander did not have enough information to speculate, but he had a feeling that even his sect’s Nascent Soul Ancestor would end up with his head on a pike if he dared to investigate.

This was an entirely new world to him, and he would not make his move without at least having a basic understanding of the various political powers and the strengths and weaknesses of various cultivators.

He would, however, write a letter to Wen Jie’s parents and instruct him to move to the largest city they could without caring for the cost, in the opposite direction of that unfortunate, hidden village, effective immediately. He also thought of writing an anonymous letter to the patriarch, however the spiritual sense of a core formation cultivator would easily trace it back to him.

After that, Xander did not think of much else and focussed on running. Even without understanding how to use the qi present in his body, he still felt that he could multi-task and think through matters with much greater efficiency than when he was back in his mortal body. That at least was one feeling, that he did not dislike.

He truly hoped the cultivation world had more to offer than crazed cultists that believed in human sacrifice.

For Earth was starting to look positively friendly in comparison.