Chapter 59: Wherever You Go, There Is Jianghu

Chapter 59: Wherever You Go, There Is Jianghu

Hearing the servant boy call out to me as “you there,” I knew at once that my standing here could not be very high.

I glanced down at myself. Sure enough — a plain blue-green Hanfu, cut short in the workman’s style, not unlike the dress of the Song dynasty.

I went over to the servant boy. He was struggling under a large flowerpot, so I helped him lift it, and as we carried it together I asked, “What’s your name? And who’s the young lady?”

He looked at me in surprise. “You’re new? That can’t be right. Song Chenfeng, you’ve been with our sect a good while now. Why’d the person change?”

“The person changed? What do you mean? I really am new. I’ve never set foot in here before.”

“Never been in here?” the servant boy said. “Aren’t you an elite person? Elite people have all been coming in since they were children. You ought to know the rules.”

“To tell you the truth, my family’s marginal, and poor. The adults don’t even have enough achievement points for themselves, so where would the money come from to let us in? This time, the family finally scraped together just enough, and that’s how I got to come experience it.”

“No wonder,” the servant boy said. “Then let me teach you a few things. Everyone in here has a role. The body’s fixed — only the soul can change. Once your soul settles into this body, you ought to be able to sense the memories the body’s left behind. Take you, Song Chenfeng, for instance. Even though the old Song Chenfeng is gone, you should still be able to sense all of his memories. That’s how everyone keeps doing their jobs.”

“How do I receive them? Why haven’t I gotten any of the old memories?”

“That can’t be right. Haven’t you merged your consciousness into this body’s brain?”

“Merge how? Just use my mind to take in all the sensations?”

“That’s it. Don’t resist it — you have to take in all the memories sitting in the original brain. Then you’ll understand everything.”

“No wonder. My consciousness only just parasitized its way in. I didn’t dare merge yet — afraid something might go wrong — so I shielded myself.”

“Well, of course you won’t receive anything shielded. Open up now, and you’ll understand everything.”

I followed the servant boy’s instructions and began merging with the memories of this body. Sure enough, the past came flooding in like a tide. It turned out this Song Chenfeng was nothing more than an ordinary guard of the Ziyun Sect, charged with keeping the peace in this quarter. The great hall from earlier was called Tianmen Hall — the only way through to the Grandmaster Hall.

“Your name’s Liu Tanzhuang, right? Let me ask you something. Why isn’t my role some wealthy lord or high official? Why just a guard?”

“How much did you pay? Pay little, and of course it won’t get you much. Only people who spend more than five thousand achievement points get to parasitize into a Great Grandmaster. The young lady’s role starts at eight hundred points, at least. If you want to become a Great Grandmaster, you can cultivate here, or earn enough points for it. But it’s hard. Very hard.”

“How hard?”

“Well — a Great Grandmaster has immortal pills of his own, so his cultivation runs high. A guard, obviously, has none. But if you’re lucky, and you do something meritorious, you can earn immortal pills too.”

“What are immortal pills good for? Can they be traded for achievement points?”

“Of course they can. You can also swallow them to raise your cultivation — your abilities here would rise to a higher level, and you’d have a better chance to earn more money. If you ever want to leave this place, you can cash them in for achievement points and go experience some other metaverse. One blue-patterned immortal pill trades for ten achievement points, one red-patterned pill for thirty, and one gold-patterned pill for a hundred. Right now you’re a guard, so you only earn wages, and not much of those either. Maybe three thousand yuan a month.”

“And how many immortal…