Pach

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  “Cough, cough… Ugh.”

  Inside an abandoned-looking, damp wooden , a young woman in her mid-twenties coughed blood. Surrounding her kneeling body were piles of different grasses, bottles, and a rusty alchemy cauldron. Her hands were bloody, covered by the broken shards of the bottle she had used to drink an Elixir.

  “Agh…! Fuck!”

  She felt a throbbing pain that started inside her stomad then spread across the rest of her body. A burniion that made her feel like she was about to melt. The sensation only intensified with each passing sed. She felt like she was going to vomit her own guts at any moment.

  “Hahhh… I ’t die. Mom… Ruby!”

  She gritted her teeth as she fell onto the wooden floor. The burniion intensified with every moment she gave. She was told that to awaken fully into a cultivator, she’d o first burn her sealed Meridians with Ki, which was only acquirable to mortals by drinking poisonous elixirs.

  The deadly energies that her human body could not handle properly started to spread further, like a deadly acid. It felt like her insides were burning aing. The agony she felt was nothing pared to anything she had ever experieo this point.

  Even when she was beaten almost to death at the er of the street for stealing a rice ball to eat or when her left arm was stabbed by a cursed, rusted knife, giving her a horrendous iion and an intense fever that sted several days.

  Tears started flowing from Katherine’s eyes as she experiehe pain. F herself to stand up only to fall onto the wooden floor stantly, blood mixing with broken gss shards and her own tears.

  “Mom…”

  As she kept trying to remember her family, she couldn’t help but think about the experiences she had gohrough after she nded on this strange, alien world.

  It happened in a fsh; a bright blue light swallowed her whole when she was moving bae after a day of hard work at the office.

  She was going to drink a lot of beer a snacks as usual; the weekend was ing.

  Yet…

  “Huh? W-Where am I?”

  In the blink of an eye, she found herself in the middle of farmnd. Rice fields extended as far as the eye could see, and in the far background, enormous white peaks extended.

  However, the most bizarre sight wasn’t this, but the skies!

  They weren’t blue like bae; no, they rotated in a myriad of colors.

  Sometimes they turned red, other times yellow, then bck, green, and blue again!

  It was almost psychedelic to watch.

  “W-What is this? Am I… am I dreaming?”

  “ROAR!”

  However, her first experien Murim was unkind. From the bushes to her left, something roared, and a creature appeared. A gray-colored wolf with a golden horn on top of its head. The golden horn seemed to be produg small amounts of electricity.

  “E-Eh?”

  Katherine, back the pletely paralyzed by the sight in front of her. A wolf as big as two meters with a golden horn appeared!

  “Yeah, this is definitely a dream. Did I fall asleep on the bus? Hahh…”

  “RAAARR!”

  ZAAAP!

  Yet the pain she felt when the wolf released a spark of electricity that zapped her away quickly made her realize she wasn’t dreaming.

  “Aaargh! W-What?! Ugh…! M-My head…!”

  She felt all dizzy; her hands looked burnt. The pain didn’t e right away, as her heart started beating faster. Adrenaline filled her bloodstream, making her blood boil.

  Run.

  Escape!

  Run away as fast as you !

  These three things were filling her mind as Katherine saw the cautious beast sloroach, sniffing the smell of burnt flesh.

  “Ahh…! Aaahhh!!!”

  She ran away, screaming in utter horror. The wolf followed her rapidly. She ended up breaking her heels and starting to run barefoot over the hard soil, her feet breaking out and bleeding.

  “Shit, shit, shit!”

  She kept screaming and running, but the wolf was already right behind her, harnessing Ki to release yet another zap, perhaps the final oo kill her.

  “Uwaah!”

  BOOM!

  As the zap was about to hit her, Katherine jumped off the road ahrough the wetnds where the ritations were located, rolling at least a hundred meters down aing covered with water and mud in the process.

  “Ugh…! Agh…! Help…! Someone… Someone help me!”

  She screamed as the wolf started slowly moving down to eat her; it didn’t fear the water at all. Katheriried to stand up but felt one of her awist the other way.

  “You ’t be seriht now; I ’t die… My mom, my sister! F-For fuck’s sake! I don’t want to die!”

  As tears flowed from her eyes, someone came. Farmers—many of them—noticed the wolf approag and immediately started screaming loudly.

  “GO AWAY!”

  “CHOO! CHOO!”

  “Throw sto it!”

  A group of five farmers threw sto the wolf, which whimpered and started running away once a sto its head, making one of the beast's eyes bleed intensively.

  “H-Huh? People… People! Please help me!”

  The farmers sloroached the woman. Katheriiced that all of them looked very Asian, more ese than Korean, but there were also some with more Japanese faces.

  They looked at the strange woman who had fallen off the cliff, gng at her weird clothes and the bag she was carrying.

  “Who are you?” One of them asked a tall, muscur pain, pointing his hoe at her.

  “I-I am K-Katherine… I got lost; I don’t know how I got here. Like a fsh of blue light ate me and…!”

  “What?” The man squinted his eyes. “You must be some beggar, huh? You twisted your ankle. My wife could heal you if you got something to pay.”

  “P-Pay?” Katheriaken aback by the question.

  In the world of Murim, nobody was going to do something good for you without payment. The people here didn’t pity her; they had gohrough so much shit themselves, and they only focused on proteg themselves and their families.

  “I-I got… alcohol to pay. This is beer; it is ihis metal .” Katherine said, the beer s. “And these are salty snacks. I pay you for this? I got these s…”

  “Metal s with alcohol and weird bags with snacks?” The man analyzed it all. “Oh, is that bronze?”

  He quickly snatched the s from her hands, smiling.

  “Okay, e then.”

  “E-Eh?”

  She slowly followed the man, barely able to move at all. Nobody carried her; she had to crawl her way behind him like a dog. This was tremendously humiliating, and even when she asked someoo help her carry her, nobody said anything.

  She entered a small vilge, children ughing and pointing at her ridiculous walk as she reached the small where the man lived with his wife.

  “Shehere's someone hurt; you heal her ankle?”

  “What? Yht angar again because they gave you some s, my stupid husband?”

  “e on now, woman. I am busy; I’ll get going.”

  The ma without saying another word. Katherine could describe this world with a single word...

  Th!

  Everyone was incredibly blunt with their words; there was barely any respect. They were also very cold; nobody ever had empathy, and they offered help if they could get something iurn.

  Although Earth was also like this in many pces, there were also incredibly kied people who would always offer help to the poor for free.

  “Let me see your ankle- Ah, this is not so bad.”

  The woman who greeted Katherine had one of her eyes burned and had a slightly cute face, looking to be in her early twenties, with long bck hair and sharp eyes.

  She checked the paralyzed Katherine’s ankle and then brought a mix of herbs and oils, gently pg it on her ankle while twisting it back to its former shape.

  CRACK!

  “AAAGH!”

  Katherine screamed loudly. There was n; the woman just did it!

  “There, it’s do’ll heal in a day or two.” The woman said, “Now… Sigh, I’ll give you something to eat; these bronze s are not that cheap to get.”

  She gave her some water and two rice balls, which Katherie without thinking twice. She hadn’t said a word since she ehe house, still thinking and baffled about everything.

  Her body was just moving on its own at this point, ag by instinct.

  Eventually, such a particur ability would bee one of her greatest strengths.

  “T-Thank… thank you.” Katherine sighed, looking at the woman. “Could it be possible to… Could you tell me where I am? Is this in a or somewhere else? Weirdly, you all speak English, though.”

  “English?” The woman wondered. “uage is Xing Shu; it is the nguage spoken in the Eleventh Venerable Era.”

  “Eleventh… Venerable?” Katherine only had more questions than anything. “This is h, isn’t it?”

  “Earth?” The woman tilted her head. “You must have been hurt very badly... You stay a night with us; your payment should be enough to secure that. But after tomorrow, you must leave this house.”

  “A-Ah… Okay, thank you…” Katherine cried. “But what… What am I going to do now…”

  “That is not my problem.” Sighed the woman, without batting another eye at her.

  “O-Oh…” Katheritered meekly. “Sorry…”

  It was a harsh world, full of mean people. Although they would do hings if paid, many would deceive her. Katherine slept the night there, and then she asked the family if she could work for them as a farmer.

  She didn’t have ao go, was in a strange alien world she didn’t know anything about, and didn’t have any money, proper clothes, or even a house. Her instincts as a sary woman quickly told her ohing: she o work!

  Her adaptability was incredible, but it was mostly due to the shock value she had and the adrenalihat was still pumping through her blood. Katherine, above all, wao survive first and then think ter.

  And like that, she worked and worked and worked. Every day, without a break, for ten whole years. She learned many things, such as that this vilge was simply named “Rice Vilge,” which beloo the Yeng family, one of the three families that goverhe Green Fields and White Peaks sect.

  The sect city wasn’t located here, though, but above the peaks she had seen before, where only people known as cultivators could enter, powerful people that had awakeheir Meridians and the ability to trol Ki.

  Everybody in this world was often born a mortal, but those with great talent could awaken their meridians naturally. The worst and weakest families, however, ended up being farmers, farming rid etables for the sects, while the sects offered them some prote.

  For these farmers, being a cultivator was nothing but a fleeting dream, something impossible. They had seen tless youngsters die trying to awaken their Meridians, crafting shitty potions that ended up killing them.

  In this vilge, the women that Katherien talked with always told her, “You’re pretty, Kat. Find yourself a fair man and marry him, so you spend the rest of your days as a housewife and not as a farmer.”

  The only good thing these women could think of was marrying a man and being a housewife. There was nothing else—no traveling, no cultivating, no learning. Nobody here knew how to do math, read, or anything.

  Katherine, however, was different; ing from another world, she had a differe of values. She wao meet her family again and find a way to go back to her world.

  And for that, iably, she’ll have to awaken as a Cultivator.

  She worked hard, enough to earn herself three rice balls and a cup of water a day, along with some meat from the little rabbits she hunted sometimes.

  After ten years, she mao afford a small , and after having been deceived and almost killed three times, she had bee sharper and didn’t trust just anybody with a smile on their face.

  Because she learhat those who smile in Murim are either psychopaths or bandits. Nobody will smile at you, ever.

  She grew bitter, but as a lesbian woman, she couldn’t fall in love with a man or accept being their wife either.

  There were didates, but she always rejected them.

  And this eventually made it so someone really started to grow obsessed with her.

  Knock, knock.

  “Ugh…” Katherine groaned as she was still undergoing her process of Awakening. She felt two out of five Meridians open, but the other three weren’t opening at all. “W-Who is it?! I am busy! Please… leave for now…”

  “Katheri is me. Shen Xi!”

  Old man Shen Xi, a man in his te fifties who sold all kinds of herbs and ingredients in the small market of the vilge, was well known for being a deceiving piece of sh*t, but as the only supplier of medial herbs, most people still weled him.

  To bee a Cultivator, Katherine learhat she had to create a specific Elixir, ohat could awaken her Meridians.

  The Roots of a 50-year-old Jing Seng.

  The Sap and Leaves of a Lesser Spirit Tree.

  And a chosen material of a special element.

  She chose light, taking the Sunshine Flowers as the cheapest and most avaible material in the market.

  However, to buy all of this, she had to work relentlessly for ten years—almost eleven years, actually. Shen Xi had stantly praised her beauty, and many times he had offered her to bee his wife.

  But Katheried him gently every time, only making them more frustrated. Slowly, she bought all the materials she needed from him and the a week ago.

  Rumors of her undergoing her Awakening have already spread, as she hasn’t stepped out of her house for a few days now.

  And he came to look for her.

  “E-Eh? Old man, Shen Xi? What do you… want?”

  “I heard that you were going to drink an elixir! Please, let me help you.”

  “What? No! Please leave-”

  BAAM!

  Before Katherine could send the man away, the door was smmed open. The old man wasn’t alowo bulky men came with him.

  Hired bodyguards.

  “W-What are you doing?!” Katherine screamed.

  “Oh, my dear Katherine, I simply ’t bid you farewell before I have a taste of that fair white skin.” The man smiled maliciously. “Now, while you’re undergoing yonizih, let me... Give you o gift.”

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  Pach