Abnormal! If James were asked to describe his present experience travelling under the arm of a middle-aged man skip-jumping through the sky, he would start with that word. Closely followed by uncomfortable, not solely because of the lack of any safety restrictions to prevent his death from falling and not even so much because bugs kept hitting him in the face and the wind burned his cheeks, but mostly because this powerful but amiable-seeming middle-aged man was constantly rubbing his nipples in flight.

Now, James has never said any bad words against gay men, but being abducted and molested in mid paranormal flight was definitely one of the most uncomfortable moments in his life. The only saving grace was that while molesting him the man was also rubbing and squeezing the taught ass of the unconscious Jessy.

At this juncture, James could only take solace in his hope that this older man was gentle because he had the strength of 10 men and his arm didn’t even budge an inch no matter how hard James struggled. He was starting to wish he’d passed out along with Jessy. At least she wouldn’t be having nightmares about this in the near future.

Even more aggravating than this was that it seemed all the wind just parted like the red sea as he travelled, leaving his clothes almost entirely unruffled.

James, of course, thought this ability to be of the greatest use in skip-jumping flight. Regrettably, either by the lack of ability to, or for childish amusement, the man’s wind splitting technique seemed to have no effect on James. So by the time they’d travelled across the kilometres wide patch of grain he’d swallowed bugs in the dozens and was pretty sure his nipple had a blister from all the rubbing.

To make matters worse he couldn’t even complain or beg mercy because by coincidence or the flying man’s design, every time he opened his mouth he’d end up swallowing something he wished he hadn’t. Curiously despite these bugs looking like abnormal hairy skin growths that snapped off a sick man’s body and grew wings, every time he was forced to swallow one a strange warmth spread through his abdomen like he’d just swallowed a shot of strong Russian vodka.

It got to the point at the end of the trip over the grain field that his entire body felt like it was aflame and not in a kinky bedroom kind of way, more in rubbing your whole body with hot sauce kind of way.

Little did he know this was his first actual step into the world of cultivation and at this moment the man dragging him through the sky had a baffled and curious expression on his face. After all, he owned and administrated this grain field and every grain field for 30km in every direction and being said owner, he’d never seen so many Golden Grain Fly’s in a single area in the last 20 years he’d managed them.

‘Just catching five or six in the time span of a year is miraculous, but since the moment this kid entered the grain field with me they’ve been flocking to him, and he’s eating them like lollies. This kid’s got the luck of the gods.’ Was Flying Man’s first thought watching James being forced to swallow these flies.

He knew full well that these Golden Grain Flies were incredibly difficult to catch being fast as a bolt of lightning and he generously decided not to try to interfere in this boy’s fortuitous encounter. He also knew if he tried to grasp one he’d spend half a day chasing it through the fields.

Never would James have imagined that the assortment of painkillers and pills he took back in the sea-lab would be the cause of the grain bugs fanatic desire to dive straight into his mouth. Needless to say, none survived his stomach acid, but the feeling of swallowing them and the burning feeling spreading through his body remained unwelcome by James.

It took not even 30 minutes to travel nearly 30km to a nearby city surrounded by grain fields in every direction. The grain filled landscape was marred only by an occasionally rocky hill and the rivers and streams cutting along like the tracks of a giant serpent.

The city itself was rather odd because it appeared to consist of thousands of grain silos reaching into the sky with only a few tens of thousands of houses varying from shanties and shacks to villas and mansions with small areas of forest or extensive gardens growing various strange and obscure looking plants.

James judged them to look a lot like herbs and shrubbery with the occasionally glowing plant sparsely separated throughout and what seemed like a feeble bluish mist hovering over them. James couldn’t help think these gardens appeared bizarrely big for a personal herb garden.

All in all, James judged this city to more aptly be described as a grain silo township covering only two or three hundred odd square kilometres in total. Most of that being divided by the private forests and gardens of the handful of palace-like villas.

Having finally arrived the flying man suddenly stopped in mid-air. James immediately resumed his poker-face not knowing how to process this development.

Previously the flying man had always been in motion while flying, so James had assumed he needed to maintain momentum to remain airborne, to his surprise the man just stood in the air unmoving. Occasionally strange distortions spreading out from the base of his feet like ripples on a lake.

James didn’t have to wait long to find out what the flying man was waiting for. He could soon faintly hear the rapidly approaching cussing and screaming of old man Skay coming from the grain fields.

Although this brief moment of respite was nice, James’ body was growing even more uncomfortable, as he was starting to turn red faced. Undoubtedly it wasn’t due to the nipple rubbing, but from his agitated nerves that felt like they were on fire. He wanted to start asking the flying man some more questions when just as he opened his mouth the man took off again in the direction of one of the bigger mansions in the city.

Noticing the boys plight the man skip-jumped his way to a large well-maintained garden in the back of the mansion and threw James into a rock pond covered with slushy ice, saying only “Stay there and adapt” before shooting off into the mansion.

Almost immediately James felt a refreshing cooling feeling flow through his skin into his body, slowly comforting his emblazoned nerves. After this immediate release from the intense discomfort, James felt a dizzy wave before falling into a deep sleep leaning on the edge of the pond.

When he finally awoke, he was lying on a marble bed staring at a strange ceiling, and despite everything he’d been through recently, he felt unusually great.

This was unusual because his second biggest vice only marginally falling behind sex was sleeping. He felt so good in fact it almost felt unnatural, like he wasn’t even in his own body. James seized this first quiet moment he’d had to try and figure out what in the hell was going on exactly.

‘Firstly … portal? Wormhole? Surely something of this nature. Although I’ve had no experience of such things and in fact had never even heard of any factual or theoretical evidence from so-called theorist and physicist experts on Earth supporting any such things, but I’m sitting right here, and all those experts are currently ashes amongst the nuclear holocaust. For now, I’ll just forget about what I can’t know and think about things I know for certain.’

‘Secondly. This is definitely another world. As the multiple Suns can attest to. Also, the exotic plant and insect life can be some supporting evidence. Strangely everyone is wearing weird clothes. Initially, I took no notice of this anomaly as it was surely the most insignificant thing I had on my mind immediately after arriving here. But now that I think back to the flying man and his gang they all wore robes of monks or priests.’

He suddenly realised this was why his original notion of a clan was a cult of some sort. After all, isn’t it common knowledge that cultists wear robes.

‘Returning from that random deviation, I need to think about the people here. More specifically what they could do. Although they looked and sounded exactly like regular humans, they could do astonishing things that looked and can only be described as … magic.

‘For starters, the flying man running on air. That unexplainable pressure these people could exude at a moments notice, and also dispel if I remember correctly. The flying man dispersed the pressure of that despotic dick with a wave of the hand.’ Clearly, James had some aggrieved thoughts of the ass-hat who tried to pressure him and knocked Jessy to the ground.

‘Also odd was them speaking English … a whole different world and they just happened to speak a language developed on Earth from thousands of years of it evolving and mashing together with other languages. After all, most of English was based off a brutally butchered Latin and God knows where Latin evolved from. Probably grunts and squeals if I were guessing. Something is definitely strange about the nature of language in this world.’

James then briefly paused his inner monologue as a terrifying thought struck him.

“Mind reading?” He mumbled to himself aloud.

‘No, impossible.’ Returning to his inner monologue, he tried to reason with himself. ‘There’s no way mind reading could just learn an entire language from my head in an instant. There must be some other paranormal phenomena at the root of this.’

Back on Earth mind reading was James’ greatest irrational fear, with zombie apocalypse coming in as his close second. His list of rational fears was even fewer with only one fear, and that was bread from the biological imperative to reproduce. The fear of being alone.

As he sat up on the bed to start organising all these rapidly occurring thoughts, the door to the room opened followed by the entrance of the constantly enraged at everything and always mumbling Dr Skay and a youth who’d accompanied the flying man he’d met on the day they arrived.

For the moment it seemed that Dr Skay was far calmer than when James first met him. He was almost shocked to see him not cussing at something whether living or inanimate.

“You’re awake that’s good. I’m sure you’ve got a lot of questions so let’s go see Elder Gau.” The youth noticed James sitting up and with that brief sentence he turned on his heel and walked back out with Dr Skay in tow muttering something about ‘gods?’ ‘heavenly laws’ and other unintelligible words and phrases.

James, once again lost in the situation, could only follow along as the youth travelled a winding and confusing path through the mansion.

Along the way James encountered few people, and of those few they passed in the halls most were wearing the clothes of servants and only moved aside bowing their heads silently as they passed. Dr Skay seemed completely disinterested in this matter, but James was secretly a little shocked inside.

His mind spinning as he tried to figure out just how rich and powerful this ‘Elder’ was to have such a huge mansion with so many servants attending it.

After a few minutes of confusing travel, they came to a large hall lined with tables and seats enough to fit a few hundred people. More interesting was the tables and seats were in the style of a Chinese like setting, with cushions on the floor instead of chairs and the tables sitting only a few feet off the ground.

Sitting at the main table in the hall was an old and wizened looking man with a full white beard reaching down into his lap. His snow-white eyebrows were so long as to droop halfway down his face almost looking like bangs. The rest of the hair on his head was shaved gone, and he wore a set of purple robes embroidered with a red anvil and hammer.

Most shocking was his eyes. When James first met those eyes, he felt like he was staring into the clear night’s sky containing endless shining and flickering stars. Now he really felt as if his mind was being read as a shiver ran up his spine, and a cold sweat broke out on his back.

Although he felt no apparent pressure like when he first met the flying man he felt a profound and penetrating psychological pressure. His face immediately become impassive as if he noticed nothing.

Contrary to James first impression and reaction Dr Skay almost couldn’t contain himself as he ran up placing the odd glasses with fifteen inner lenses on his face and flicking through the lenses as he stared directly into the old man’s eyes.

Standing behind the Elder was the flying man wearing casual grey robes with a blue embroidered hammer and anvil. Accompanying the flying man and the elder was that brash arrogant young man, whom at this point James was assuming was flying man’s son or some similar relation.

He also wore grey but had a sword crossing over the anvil instead of a hammer embroidered on his robes. Seeing the pair’s reaction to the Elder, one looking disinterested and the other looking like he was about to dissect him, the lad’s face began to turn red, and he was trembling as if any moment he would erupt.

Before the chance came however, Jessy finally arrived in the main hall. She had changed clothes into something resembling a black Chinese Cheongsam with her long red hair hung in a wavy style down her back.

The moment she entered all eyes but Dr Skay and the Elder’s diverted to her as if drawn there by the natural laws of the universe. Even the usually reserved, floor observing servants in the hall couldn’t stop their attention being drawn.

Although the dress was long the slice running up the side from the bottom to the hip revealed almost the entire white slender, toned leg from the flat shoes to the inner thigh with every step showing almost everything.

But only almost. As if to just tease the eyes, the moment the leg was almost entirely revealed, the next step was already hiding it back beneath the cloth like some tortures cruel trick of the Gods.

The cheongsam, although drawing a significant amount of interest to her beautiful legs also didn’t skimp out on displaying her other charms. It fit to her tightly, almost as if a second skin. Her ample bosom pushed against the fabric of the dress as if in an attempt to escape and the air was just chilly enough in the hall to exhibit a reaction here.

Also helping with this response was the many lustful eyes trained on her as she strode into the room and against her will she felt her nipples hardening into small points, clearly visible through the dress.

Most importantly, was her physiological reaction as many pairs of eyes trained in on her, she blushed. The moment she started to blush she showed a very shy smile and the light was stolen from the world and all that was left was her and her alone.

Almost every male in the hall and amusingly some females groaned slightly in synchronous as if they just came a bit and a little piece of their soul was stolen.

The most obvious and powerful reaction in the hall was that of flying man’s son, who’s entire body shook. His eyes filling with unbridled greediness and desire. The evident tenting of his robes and dark splotch in that area went entirely unnoticed by him as he stared and his unfulfilled lust just grew stronger.

After a short moment of Jessy’s stunning visage, James regained his senses and began counting backwards from 100 in sevens to distract his mind and reduce the pressure in his underwear. The arrogant young man then promptly caught up to the situation as well as he waved his hands about frantically using some cultivator magic to eliminate the evidence of his embarrassing accident.

Once this brief and enlightening interlude ended, James turned back to the Elder who was being examined everywhere by Dr Skay. Skay seemed so excited he almost reached out to touch the man’s eyeball but held himself back at the last moment, coughed bashfully at his loss of control and then unceremoniously sat down on one of the three cushions in front of the Elder.

James and Jessy glanced at each other and then quickly followed suit. At this moment flying man’s son remembered himself and started to flush red with fury again.

“Filthy weakling peasants, don’t even know to greet their seniors properly. No cultivation even though there so old, no respect for their betters. Disgusting. At least one will be good for some fun later.” Although he appeared to be muttering quietly, he was purposely loud enough in his mutterings for the trio to hear.

Following this provocation, Jessy flushed red and looked as if she was getting ready to launch herself across the table and bit the man’s face off. Before she had the chance, a grin spread across James’ face as he remembered when he first met this punk and what flying man said to him before he got launched into the grain field like a pebble.

“Piss-ant side show card trick magician. Can’t even cow a powerless commoner to his knee with all your strength. Pathetic.” James retorted calmly as he maintained an evil looking grin and stared straight into flying man’s son’s eyes.

Following this verbal counter-attack flying man’s son looked ready to launch himself at James and beat him to mush. The Elder smiled slightly and not giving him a chance he waved his hand speaking with a soft aged voice.

“Xanzu. You can return to the Sword Hall and ask Elder Grace to teach you how to control your spirit aura again. Don’t come out until you withstand a blow from the 4th Golem. Go.” With that command, the fury and hatred for James glaring in Xanzu’s eyes grew even more intense.

Despite his desire to break James’ back and throw him into the slum district, he couldn’t refuse the Elder’s commands. Turning to the Elder and Flying man, he clasped his left fist in his right hand brought them to his chest and bowed slightly to the Elder before letting out a final harrumph.

As he left, he glared one last time at James and Jessy then marched out through a side door looking like he was ready to kill someone.

“Finally! Let’s start, I have at present around 3000 questions I’ve written down, and with any luck the more you answer, the more I’ll have. I should progress to at least 10,000 in the next twelve hours!” Excitedly Dr Skay interrupted the slightly tense atmosphere and pulled out what looked to be a piece of flexible rolled up plastic.

This entire time he was completely oblivious to all other things but his desire to learn. It was truly insatiable and if the people of this world ever observed Skay’s abnormal attitude they would be filled with envy, jealousy and hatred!

To a martial cultivator, a strong willpower and drive are needed to strive forth and grow stronger and although on average many had stronger hearts and willpower in this world than on Earth very few would ever match up to Dr Skay’s insatiable greed for knowledge.

Almost like a machine, no baser desire could overpower this need to grow by learning. It was almost as if some mutation appeared in his genetic makeup leaving only this one need to be fulfilled. Although he partook in other baser instincts such as lust and gluttony on occasion, it was only when he was blowing off some steam multi-tasking his body’s need to relieve stress while his mind continued to spin in full gear working on 100’s of interconnected problems and simultaneous.

It was this drive and willpower that initially won him the right to lead the research team on the Infinite Energy Project and was something cultivators tried to cultivate as much as they cultivated their mystical powers.

The Elders eyes seemed to twinkle even more brightly as he stared at the doctor. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking, but what the elder thought of him was the last thing Skay cared about. Right now, he must have answers and with a flick of the wrist Skay’s rolled up plastic became a rigid A4 sheet and turned black. Then after a moment it appeared to start projecting something onto the screen. This was clearly some kind of personal computer pad.

James wasn’t aware, but for the last three days, he’d been in a coma after he passed out in the ice pond.

During these three days, while the Elder waited for all three of them to awaken, Skay had been furiously running experiments with some roughshod made equipment he assembled from the random parts that came through the anomaly with them.

Using this equipment he slowly tried to get some understanding of this new world, and finally, this opportunity had come to learn about the thing he was most interested in. Magic! Or rather not magic, it was hard to tell at this point which was exactly why he was so eager at this moment.

He began by asking the Elder if he would answer a series of ‘yes/no or I don’t understand’ questions, and so began a marathon Q&A. They were all seemingly simple until after nearly an hour the questions changed to short answer questions and Skay became even more excited and fanatical as he started asking things like how they measure distance or time or volume.

These issues then progressed further into increasingly advanced topics about political environment of this world and region divisions and currency system and then finally … superpowers/magic/paranormal or whatever the hell it was, which many questions and answers before this point had slowly been building up to.

Many of these topics were far beyond James’ ability to retain or understand from a single 12-hour discussion, but he managed to learn a great deal about the basics of this world.

During this whole time the Elder as if infected by Skay’s madness and zeal become even more in-depth in answering and only helped to generate more questions. His eyes were glowing with a madness once their discussion ended for the first break after 12 hours.

At this point in time, James’ eyes were bloodshot, and he looked as if he’d aged ten years and lost 20kg. Upon returning to his quarters late in the night, his mind raced, trying to organise and remember everything he could that he’d managed to understand.

The most important thing he’d learnt was that this world was in an entirely different universe to Earth and in this universe, a person’s mind could alter the natural laws around them by training what cultivators here called their ‘spirits’.

As their progress of cultivation advances, the control they wield over the natural laws of the universe becomes stronger and stronger. Eventually, a cultivator can reach the stage where, as the Elder described it, “Literally part the oceans with a sneeze, obliterate mountains with a casual fart and even pull stars from the sky like stealing your neighbour’s most precious apple in the dark of night.”

The last part was a strangely particular metaphor by the Elder, with an even stranger glint in his eye as he said it. Hearing this Jessy began to blush a little as she inferred a weird connotation which James ultimately couldn’t understand.

This is the goal of all cultivators. Not to steal their neighbour’s apples, naturally, but to reach this godlike level of power and stand above all others. When hearing this part James and Jessy looked at each other, their bloodshot eyes shining brightly, after all, who doesn’t want to wield god-like power?!

James also learnt that many influential cultivators gather together and found cultivation schools, referred to in this world as a Sects. Generally, depending on the strength of the founder, a sect starts off small and slowly grows over time as more members join and fight to secure resources for the Sect and its future growth.

In order to encourage the strongest cultivators to grow into future leaders and to maintain the sect’s power, wealth and glory, disciples will have to battle with fellow disciples and cultivators to earn a larger share of the resources. While plentiful compared to outside the sect, the resources available to sect members were still spread thin.

That, of course, is a rule of thumb, because there is nowhere impervious to the treacherous shadows of greed pride and envy. Usually, as a Sect grows too fat with resources and corruption, it starts to weaken until another stronger Sect rears up and consumes them.

James also quickly understood that a clan in this world is referring to a large family that is similar to a sect in structure. The main difference being the majority of members are related to the main bloodline of the family and enjoy the richest of the resources.

Non-blood related members are generally only employed or enslaved by the clan and are more of peripheral members. Clans often hold a significant amount of power in their circle of influence, as attested to by this entire city and a good deal of land in the 50km radius being under the control of the Gau Clan.

Another question that James had been wondering about was eventually explained when Elder Gau started to describe ‘World Steppers’.

“Generally the majority of Steppers pass through the fixed Gateways to this universe from their own worlds to train or travel to other Universes connected to Ascension Star. It’s rare for non-cultivators such as yourselves to travel here at all and mortals commonly only appear through a Gateway that randomly generates.

“Usually, when anyone cultivator or otherwise, comes through a random Gateway, they will be captured and enslaved by bandits, slave traders or unscrupulous types. In this case, you’re just lucky that Hao witnessed your anomaly patrolling the fields and not another group.”

Flying man or rather Hao who’d been patiently standing behind Elder Gau for countless hours chuckled then muttered some proverb about ‘luck can also be considered a strength’ as he fixed a gaze onto James.

James had no idea what that was in reference to and just assumed he was referring to his timely arrival at their Gateway. Never suspecting this was regarding the dozens of Golden Grain Flies he swallowed. If he could, he would never remember that experience and forget everything between their arrival to this world and waking up in the mansion … for a multitude of disturbing reasons.

James felt Hao’s occasional glances were far too often and lengthy during this meeting. Every time it swept past him he shivered inside and subconsciously crossed his arms to protect his chest.

Soon he could no longer focus as his strained and overloaded mind calmed and began drifting into sleep.