A jubilant voice resounded in the ears of thousands of cultivators. “The home front isn’t looking great, but the other sects are doing FAR worse. They don’t have a barrier like us, or an army of angels, and they only have one Earth Great Realm cultivator each, although they are the second and third strongest people out dealing with the waves. You’ll be going to the Karma Convergence sect; they’re saying that Grandmaster Chrono will make pills for our sect in exchange for reinforcements, and if you perform well, he might even make one for you! The elders are having some trouble now, so I’ll be taking a trip to the front lines now. Supreme Warrior Lord King Badass, out.”

Ivor expressed his puzzlement at the ending of the message. “He calls himself… Lord King Badass? But why?”

Silkpants shrugged in response. “It’s not our place to judge the Supremes of the sect who’ve reached Spirit Cleansing. I think he cultivates Awe qi and his technique revolves around acting like a cliche action movie hero and shounen protagonist had an affair.”

Ivor decided to accept the explanation, because he remembered hearing the word pills. “Alright guys, back into the barrier, we’re getting another assignment so we can get pills - I mean help those in need. Yes, we need to help those in need.”

A tide of outer sect disciples and service disciples charged back towards the barrier, but the line still held. A man with a sheathed katana charged out from behind the barrier doing flips and shit, smashing the skulls of monsters without even drawing his blade while the disciples fell back. Ivor’s team, which will henceforth be referred to as “The Gang”, hopped over the trench and joined a group heading to the Karma Convergence Sect.

A few hours of beating back beasts later, they arrived. A horde of monsters far more numerous than the ones encountered on the way there charged in on an army half the size of the Samsara sect. They were protecting a wide array of huts, cabins, and a few proper stone buildings surrounded by a marble wall. They only managed to hold their own because most of the Divinity beasts were slaughtering each other, and the ones that weren’t were just barely held off by some red-skinned, horned humanoids that seemed to be at the Earth Great Realm from the level they were fighting on.

It was a confusing sight, but it was quickly explained in the minds of the Samsara sect’s reinforcements. Hello hello, Lucifer here. Some call me Satan, that’s wrong, Satan is the snake man. Not here, he went off to explore the stars a while ago. I shouldn’t be going off-topic, should I? Anyways, that whole thing about me falling from heaven or something is made up. I just got assigned the absolute WORST job possible: punishing sinners. Apparently I have to punish them before they’re reincarnated so Gaia has good Karma. If you’re wondering why that’s important, 2020 happened because of bad Karma. Anyways, I’ll have enough qi to bind another Divinity beast soon, so get to work! I just need you to hold off the weaker ones until I’ve bound enough Divinity beasts to take the pressure off of the devils.

The voice cut out, and the reinforcements were silent for a bit. The group rushed in while screaming in affirmation after the group leader let out a cry of “religion later, BATTLE NOW! AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!”

Ivor’s group was standing back with a few others until Silkpants pointed something out. “Hey… rewards are based on contribution, right? Let’s get going.”

Ivor grunted affirmation and the Gang jumped into the fray to take care of the stragglers. Silkpants descended on a large frog of some sort with a dropkick, Klutz charged at a tiny, black hyena, Edwina and Advon ganked an ostrich creature, and Ivor cut into a metallic snake that coiled its tail and shot itself at him like a spring. The battle went on for a while without the line breaking, but Ivor was getting impatient. Dammit! At this rate we won’t be able to make many contributions!

As if granting Ivor’s wish, one of the devils was mauled to death by a Divinity beast. That’s when the battle went downhill. Thankfully, even as it drew its last breath, the devil managed to place a paper talisman on the beast it was fighting, which dissolved into the monster but caused its movements to grow significantly slower and weaker. The aura emanated by the talisman contained a little bit of a familiar majesty, a vestige of Venerable Samsara’s aura. The Venerable clearly didn’t work too hard on it, but it was his personal creations, and it was capable of temporarily reducing Divinity beasts to the level of low Spirit Cleansing cultivators by consuming their user’s dying wish.

Ivor saw an opportunity and hatched one of the most idiotic plans he would make in the near-future. “Hey guys… it looks like there aren’t any Spirit Cleansing cultivators to deal with the Divinity beasts. Maybe we should go over and help?”

Silkpants laughed heartily before turning serious in an instant when he realized Ivor wasn’t joking. “That depends… are you in the mood to die?”

Ivor was not, in fact, suicidal. “No, no, I have a plan. A very bad plan, but a plan nonetheless. According to what I remember, I think I have a way to distract it. I’ll have to rely on the elders to cover for me, but I think it’s doable. And remember, all opportunities contain tribulations or some shit like that.”

Silkpants sighed in disappointment. “Do what you want, but I’m in the mood to stay alive. I won’t be covering for you.”

Ivor nodded in understanding before heading towards one of the Qi Gathering elders to put forth his idea. “So, I have an ability that would let me distract the beast for at least a second. Would you be confident in taking advantage of the opening if I can?”

The white-bearded old man, elder Flamezy, let out a morbid chuckle. “Would I be able to take advantage of the opening? Kid, you’re at Body Tempering. I won’t save you if you fail. But if you could create an opening, you came to the right place. I have a powerful mystic art, and if I let out my full storage at once, it could do some damage to that thing. But I can’t fire it without being sure it’ll hit. If you mess up, you’re dead. Although, the sect’s done anyway if we do nothing, the disciples at least, so I can give it a shot. Now go.”

Ivor charged at the beast, who ignored him due to not feeling a threat from him. Even if it did, it would still keep its guard up - it was intelligent. Then Ivor farted… but this time, he didn’t charge the special gas of his fart with qi. Instead of attention repulsion, it attracted the full attention of those in range - Ivor and the beast. The both froze and looked each other in the face, and in that instant, a strange green glow formed above the feathered bear. It grew over the course of half-a-second, during which the bear charged at Ivor, ignoring all else - it was originally a Divinity beast, giving it some resistance, and Ivor’s attraction wasn’t as powerful as the original black boulder, but the beast didn’t try to resist too much. As a beast, it didn’t have much of a Dao heart, and its Divinity was being suppressed, severely clouding its cognition. All these factors combined kept its focus on Ivor.

The beast moved faster than Ivor could see, and he found both his legs crushed by the creature before deliverance came. It arrived in the form of nuclear hellfire descending upon the beast and leaving a large mark in its back. The beast’s trance was broken, and it pivoted, kicking Ivor away with tremendous force. Ivor’s last words before unconsciousness were, “Oh god, my organs!”

* * *

Ivor came to in what looked like a hospital bed. “I acknowledge that I made a mistake there, I will attempt to not make mistakes of that nature agai-”

Ivor began vomiting blood by the gallon. After he finished, he took note of some needles sticking into him, connected to cloth bags presumably filled with some kind of elixir. “How am I even alive?”

A voice came from the doorway into his room out of the mouth of a blond man. “Well, strictly speaking, you aren’t. Not in the normal sense of the word, at least. You’re a very lucky man. Your soul flew directly into Lucifer’s bag of holding. Almost like something was guiding it. In fact, I suspect that there was. Nobody in the sect can read your Karma, which makes me think it’s very strange, powerful, or both. As to how you’re lucid and sitting up, Lucifer bound your soul to your corpse, and I pumped it full of healing potions. It wouldn’t work with most, but your body has an exceptional affinity with treasures. It’s honestly a miracle that you’re alive right now. As thanks for your efforts, I, grandmaster alchemist Chrono, am planning on concocting a pill for you. Any requests?”

Oh no. I’m doomed the moment I go to sleep, aren’t I? A dream related power it is, then! “Can I have a pill that gives me calmer dreams, preferably by stimulating a yin meridian other than my lung? I use treasures to open my meridians, and one of those is next on my list.”

Chrono responded with an affirmative. “I’m definitely able to do that. I can metaphysically stimulate your liver to allow it to purify and balance your body, which will help with dreams. I’m not going to pry into why you want that, but I’ll concoct it now.”

A few short hours later, Ivor had a filled liver meridian and was ready to fall asleep.