A bright light shone around Ivor, who was in a cramped dark space, having worked so much that he couldn’t even remember why he worked. He suddenly found himself in a blank white space accompanied by someone who looked suspiciously like a homeless person. He was covered in soot and wore brown rags that didn’t match at all with his fancy-ish brown beret. However, despite his gross clothing, he let out a sense of trustworthiness that left Ivor unable to be wary of him. “Hello. I’m known as the Hobo. I would say that it’s nice to meet you, but why would I? You’re an ant. No, compared to me, you’re far less than an ant compared to a human. What are you, twenty-four? Although it seems like you were pretty overworked. Oh yeah, it’s been a few years, but I remember now. You were a wage-slave, weren’t you. You should be happy that you got taken out of that place… what was it… oh yeah, Ivor Hill. Anyway, you’re being taken from earth. Long story short, magic exists. To hear the long story… I’ll tell you if you can make me laugh.”

Ivor was confused. He didn’t know what was going on, his head hurt, and he wanted rest now that he didn’t have to slave away in a cubicle anymore. He fell unconscious. The old man started guffawing uproariously. “Damn… I’ve seen a lot of reactions, but passing out? That one’s new to me.”

After a few hours, Ivor woke up. There was nothing in the blank space, and then the Hobo flickered in front of them, seemingly teleporting. “Hello… Ivor, wasn’t it. Anyway, for making me laugh, you get three rewards. One, I’ll tell you about the essence of cultivation. In this universe, one can cultivate, following these eight steps: build a foundation, nurture your divinity, form a core, attain immortality, escape bonds, grasp your dao, rule your dao, and become your dao. To start building a foundation, you need to pick a cultivation technique for a qi type, and then find that qi type or convert some other qi into it. But that’s after you hit the peak of qi attunement. Speaking of that, here’s your second gift.”

Ivor’s body lit up with pain that felt like carnivorous centipedes eating every part of him. Thankfully, it faded quickly, leaving behind a refreshing feeling. He felt far stronger than before, like he would be unharmed by handguns and could crack rock. “You’ve been elevated to the peak of qi attunement. Next you’ll have to open your meridians, but that isn’t my problem. Anyways, your third and final gift is a sovereign contribution point, but you can also exchange it for a few very important sentences, since you’re the most amusing human I’ve seen. Trust me, it’s a very good deal.”

“I’ll… I’ll exchange, I guess. I need more knowledge. I don’t know what it's worth, but I get a feeling that you’ll murder me in a fit of rage if I don’t exchange it for this.”

The Hobo smiled. “You’re right. Well then, I’ll tell you. Every concept can become a dao, and the essence of a dao is qi. To reach the pinnacle, you must be a trailblazer.”

Ivor thought about it, but didn’t realize too much. Maybe I have to make my own technique? Wait… every concept is a potential dao, right? That means that I could cultivate everything. What will I cultivate… wait. I’ve read some cultivation novels, right, and in them there were treasures. Treasures were objects containing qi. “Is there such a thing as treasure qi?”

The Hobo smiled the first genuine smile that Ivor had seen them make. “Kid, you understood quite quickly. No, there isn’t. Good idea. You might even help fill the quota.”

Ivor’s thoughts raced. If I cultivate treasure qi, I’ll be able to make treasures. I’ll be valuable and wealthy! Maybe… I’ll absorb treasures into myself? Yeah, that seems like it would work. This is great. A bright light flashed around Ivor and they were transported with a method similar to how they entered the blank space.

* * *

When the light faded, Ivor was in a strange forest. All of the bark was black and shiny like obsidian and the leaves were the color of blazing flame, white in the center and orange around the edges. When Ivor looked around, he saw over 10,000 people nearby and more in the distance, with only a few outliers like him, most being packed together. It seemed to him like the forest was around the size of Rhode Island. Then, the moles came. Giant maws burst up from under the soot-covered forest floor. The maws had serrated teeth and brown scales, but had the shape of a venus fly trap. A tenth of the people he could see were eaten in the first five seconds after he was transported. Ivor used his newfound strength to shimmy up to a fairly high tree branch with superhuman speed. He saw some others, maybe one out of 1,000, doing the same. They were probably cultivators. The rest started desperately climbing trees, reaching the safe-ish low-hanging branches, although not as safe as the ones that the cultivators had gone to. One of the people on a low branch yelled up to him “Hey, you got up pretty high, and quickly at that! Are you superhuman or something? Anyways, you can call me Advon.”

The kid had a pot belly, black hair and dark brown eyes, with olive skin. “Hey, Advon. I’m Ivor.”

In contrast to the kid, Ivor stood at a height of 5’11, had near-white skin due to his Chinese Canadian descent, and was in possession of deep blue eyes. However, they had a similarity; they were both disheveled and absolutely terrified. They also didn’t have much on either of them, just the clothes on their backs and everything they carried with them.

A bone-chilling yet relaxing voice resounded from the sky, the voice of the Hobo, although not accompanied by a body. “This is volcano tree island. Those beasts below are gone, because I wasn’t actively keeping my aura from killing them. The reason that every non-cultivator here is alive is so I can say that for the next month, there’s going to be a beast tide a week. Why? Because the scum who can’t survive a simple beast tide won’t make it very far in my game, and because I’m bored. If I’m entertained by one of you dying, then the one who died will have contributed more to society by amusing me than everything else they’ve done in their life combined. I’ll design some fun gimmicks for the waves. Toodles!”

The terrifying aura disappeared but the terror remained, fueled by the callous nature of the message. Ivor realized a little bit of what might have become of him if he refused the exchange offer. He wouldn’t have been killed… it would’ve been worse.

Then three powerful auras rose up from the crowd, and three messages reached the ears of every human on the island. “I’m Vast Heaven, the strongest human under the heavens! Come join my Heavenly Form sect and work as a service disciple and we’ll protect you from the beast tides.”

“I’m Chrono, Patriarch of the Karma Convergence Sect! I know that this sounds stupid, but our sect usd to recruit through Reddit! Come join the Karma Convergence sect and in addition to protection from the beast tides in exchange for ten Karma points a month, you can exchange excess Karma points! You can even gain Karma points from outside the sect, although you can’t do internal missions and you won’t get a stipend of one a month!”

“I’m the Grand Void Daoist, great elder of the Samsara sect! If you join the Samsara sect, although you’ll have to help fight off the beast tides, you’ll get far more cultivation resources than any other sect would give you! We’ll also have an open market, although you can only use spirit stones and barter, no common currency!”

Ivor thought, ‘Well, none of that is really an option. I’m sick of being exploited. Although, doing external missions for Karma points and exchanging for resources and maybe protection might work. Now that I think about it, it’s strange how I’m staying analytical without freaking out or disbelieving any of this. Well, I guess my body is proof of the existence of cultivation at least, and I’m betting that a cultivar is suppressing my freakout.’ Ivor sent out his divine sense and expectedly felt a type of qi that carried a trace of the majesty of the Hobo’s qi penetrating into his mind and another, less tangible part of him. ‘Hm… what should I call this. Well, it affects emotions, so I guess I’ll call it emotion qi.’

Ivor flared up the qi inside his head and forcibly removed the emotion qi. The stress that was being suppressed remained in his heart, but it was countered by the confidence granted to him by his newfound power. He then had a thought. ‘Wait… I think that these leaves contain qi right? Wouldn’t that make them a treasure?’

Ivor grabbed a few handfuls of leaves, broke a few pieces of bark off the tree, and jumped off the tree, running to find a cave where he could safely experiment while picking up any strange-looking plants he saw along the way.

* * *

Up above, the Hobo’s clone was watching Ivor, chuckling. “This kid… I might have stimulated his latent talent a little, but he picks up on things really quickly. Hell, if this kid doesn’t meet an untimely end, there’s even a tiny chance that they could become a Sovereign. This seems like it’s going to be very entertaining.”