Chương 33: Chapter 32: The First Two Transmigrators Part 1 (The American's POV)

I was fairly certain I'd been shot. Two rounds, center mass, from a teenager who couldn't have been older than sixteen and had held that handgun like he'd learned how from movies. I remembered the sound more than the impact. The impact came later, somewhere on the sidewalk, and after that the memory simply stopped. I moved a hand across my chest, feeling for the two holes that should have been there. Nothing. Just shirt and skin, entirely uninterrupted.

I looked around to work out whether I'd ended up in heaven or the other place. Everything was white, like the concept of it had been applied to the entire volume of space in every direction, with no floor seam, no horizon, no light source responsible for any of it — except for one thing. A pillar of light, enormous, standing off in the distance like it had been driven straight through the white the way you'd drive a stake through soft ground.

It just stood there, radiating something that felt less like light and more like a very quiet, very persistent hum you could see instead of hear. I let out a long breath. There's no way hell has a pillar of light in it. Right? Hell's supposed to be fire and screaming, not... whatever that was. Then I noticed him. An Asian guy, sitting cross-legged some distance away with his back mostly turned toward me. He looked younger than me, but that might've just been the height difference.

Asians are generally shorter than Americans, aren't they? I crossed the distance, which took no time at all despite him having looked considerably further away a second ago.

"Excuse me. Did you also just die?" I offered a hand down toward him.

"I'm Juan. American." Wait, can he even understand me? [You have learned Translation. You can now read and understand the language of this world.] Whoa. What the hell is this? I looked at the screen floating in front of me. Then the guy answered, "Wei Chen." He didn't look up.

"Chinese."

"Did you also get the notification?" I asked. He just nodded and continued to ignore me. I realized that my hand was still extended. I withdrew it and laughed awkwardly. We sat in the white space for what felt like hours. Nothing happened. I lay back, expecting hard ground, and instead found the softest surface I'd ever put my spine against in twenty years of living. Better than my mattress at home. Considerably better than the sidewalk I'd most recently been on. I turned my head toward him.

"Hey, Wei. Aren't you bored?"

"The name is Wei Chen." Still not turning. It can't be helped, you know. Chinese names are so hard to remember.

"Right. Okay. Wei... Chen." I laced my fingers behind my head.

"Hey, speaking of names, did you know mine comes from marijuana?" His shoulder twitched. Just slightly. But he kept his back to me.

"Oho. So you are interested." I got up and moved to sit beside him. He immediately turned to face the opposite direction. I continued anyway, because there was clearly nothing else to do in here.

"So when I was a kid, I asked my parents where I came from. And they told me I came from a plant they were taking care of."

"What a sorry excuse for parents. They should have simply told you the truth." He still didn't turn. But he'd answered. That was the important part.

"But they did tell me the truth." I spread both arms wide with a grin. He finally turned around.

"Are you stupid? How old are you?"

"Twenty?" I held up both hands.

"Right. The same age as me. And you still don't know how reproduction works?" He jabbed a finger at my chest. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"See, the plant they were taking care of was marijuana. They smoked it. Got high. Forgot to use protection." Wei went completely still.

"... You're serious?" I nodded.

"The hell?" He burst out laughing, the whole rigid posture collapsing at once. I laughed with him, and for a minute the white space felt considerably less like a waiting room for the afterlife. Then a voice spoke that was somehow both a man's and a woman's at the same time, layered over itself, arriving from no particular direction.

"Looks like you're finally getting along." A figure materialized in front of us, indistinct at the edges, like something that hadn't fully decided on a shape yet.

"Sorry for being late."

"Who are you?" I straightened.

"Are you the gatekeeper to heaven?"

"No, no." It waved a hand dismissively.

"I'm the God of Transmigration. I'll be sending you both along now, to a world where everything is about height." Wei got to his feet.

"You mean cultivation?" He clenched his fist.

"No one can beat us when it comes to cultivation."

"Culti— yes. Something like that." The god averted his eyes.

"I also know how to cultivate," I offered, proud of myself.

"My parents taught me the techniques. Growing leafy weeds."

"I'm quite certain that was just drugs." Wei folded his arms.

"Cultivation is different."

"Is it?" I scratched the back of my head.

"Yes. Cultivation is about height. About reaching the heavens."

"But you can also get high and reach heaven by smoking weed."

"Again, that was not—" The god clapped its hands, cutting him off.

"Wonderful! Both of you will do just fine down there, so long as you continue pursuing height."

"Wait, hold on—" I raised my hand. There were about six questions stacked up behind my teeth at that point, starting with what world and ending somewhere around do I get my old life back if this doesn't work out.

"Nope." The god said it flatly, without even a token effort at sounding apologetic. Then the white ground beneath us began to spiral, folding in on itself like water finding a drain, spinning faster and faster until the specific patch of white where Wei and I were standing had become a hole instead. The god waved cheerfully. We fell.

When I came to, we were in a crater. I stayed on my back for a moment, taking inventory. Arms: attached. Legs: attached. Spine: apparently still doing spine things. I was frankly amazed the ground had been the thing to give way instead of our bodies turning into something you'd need a mop for. I looked up at the circle of open sky above us.

"Probably the work of that god…" Then I looked around and found Wei sprawled in the dirt a few feet away, unmoving. I crawled over and shook his shoulder. He blinked awake, immediately scrambled backward away from me, and looked around wildly.

"Where am I?" I shrugged.

"Sorry. Even I don't know." I straightened, walked in front of him, and extended a hand.

"How about we climb out of this crater first, then worry about it later?" He ignored my hand entirely and started climbing the crater wall on his own. Are all Chinese guys this shy, or did I get a particularly difficult one? I followed him up anyway. The moment we cleared the rim, cool air hit us, and I got my first proper look at the sky. It was full of islands. Floating islands, hanging in the open air.

Dozens of them at different heights, some barely bigger than a house, some casting shadows across entire stretches of forest below. Roots and rock dangled from their undersides. A few had visible structures on them, catching light from a sun I couldn't immediately locate.

"We really are in a fantasy world now..." I mumbled. Wei didn't answer. But he was smiling. The first real one I'd seen from him. Then he immediately sat down on the ground, cross-legged, right there at the edge of the crater.

"What are you doing?" I asked, because the first thing you do after being dropped into an unknown world is definitely not sitting down in the open like a picnicker.

"Cultivating." He didn't move after that. But his breathing changed: slower, deeper, something deliberate about it. Hard to describe exactly. Kind of the opposite of an asthma attack, if that makes sense. I waited. I gave it a solid minute, hoping he'd do something useful toward the general project of us not dying out here. Nothing happened. I sighed.

"Fine. I'll go find food." He didn't answer.

"Be careful. And don't forget to run if something tries to eat you." Still nothing. I turned and headed into the treeline.

The woods were full of fruit, which would have been more encouraging if I'd had any idea which parts of it wouldn't kill me. I know plants. I'm good with plants. But my specialization runs with weeds. I found a bush with berries on it and picked a few. I rolled them between my fingers, then held them up to my nose the way I'd check the quality of weed I was about to smoke. No idea. But they smelled like blueberries, so probably fine. Probably. I picked the rest and stuffed them in my pocket.

Then, behind the bush, I saw something. A weed. And I don't mean I stumbled across it conveniently. I mean it announced itself. The thing was glowing, faint gold, with little firefly-like motes of light drifting inward toward it from the surrounding air, collecting along the edges of its leaves. I crouched down in front of it.

"It looks the same as what I smoke back home…" I turned one leaf carefully between two fingers.

"Except mine only glows after I've already lit it." I stayed there a moment longer, just looking at it. Then I plucked a single leaf, careful not to disturb the plant more than necessary, and dug my lighter out of my pocket. I lit it. The edges caught, curling red, thin smoke rising off it. I brought it up to my nose.

"... Smells the same, too." [Level Up! 1 → 2]"The fuck?" The screen was back.