Cultivation Retirement Plan (BL)

“It’s useless by this point. No one will believe you. And why should they? I’ve given them every reason to doubt your words.”

“There’s more to life than just working in front of a computer screen all day, Yixuan. You should try living it sometime.”

“Well, at this rate...it looks like you won’t have a next time anywhere soon.”

—

SCREEECH!

With a scream, Mo Yixuan’s car crashed through the guardrails and flew over the cliff before it plummeted into the ocean below. Its occupant was still reeling from the last words of the phone call echoing in his head.

Stealing company secrets? Murder of a co-worker? Wanted on criminal charges?

He’d done none of those things, but the world didn’t believe him! Even his mother had a heart attack after hearing the news on television and died on the way to the hospital. The only person he thought to seek help from turned out to be the very traitor who set him up!

He fought back with everything he had—first face-to-face, then in the courts. But everything he used was turned against him, and everyone he trusted turned out to be a ruse, a trick—a farce of a play by Shangguan Yin (上官隱) to toy with him. When nothing worked, Mo Yixuan (陌逸軒) went into hiding, but even there his rival sought him out and pursued him relentlessly. He didn’t just want Mo Yixuan to lose, but to despair.

Water began pouring into the car as it sank into the seas, but the man inside only stared in front of him blankly. And then he laughed—because here it was, the final nail in the coffin! He’d driven off the road himself! Whatever Shangguan Yin had been planning for him next couldn’t reach him now. He was dead—he was free!

Mo Yixuan was still laughing by the time water reached his chin and tears started flowing down his face. What was the point of his life? Why did he bother to struggle for so long? In the end, he did nothing but prolong his misery.

An end was fine. An end was good.

And though the water burned in his lungs, all Mo Yixuan did was bare his teeth in a ghastly grin as he drowned.

—

But death didn’t come as expected. Gradually, the burning sensation in his lungs faded away in place of a pure, refreshing stream that felt like liquid ice. Mo Yixuan sucked in a breath in surprise and found that he was breathing, even though he was still underwater. His eyes flew open in surprise and saw nothing but a clear, natural pool, the bottom lined with glittering stones that dazzled his irises.

He tried breathing a few more times and found the entire sensation completely natural even though he was taking in water instead of air. He might have thought that he was dead already if not for the unfamiliar sight of white sleeves fluttering in and out of his vision. The fabric looked like silk, and was connected to long, flowing robes that billowed about his form. His hair seemed to have lengthened as well, and drifted about his face in waves. He was apparently sitting cross-legged underwater, the streams of bubbles floating past his face the only sign that he was still alive. It was quiet down here and empty; Mo Yixuan felt content to stay forever and soak up the tranquil vibes.

“Mo Yixuan, if you don’t get out this instant, I’m going to drain that pool dry!” a voice rang out in his head.

“Junior brother, you better come out! The sect leader has his sword with him today!” a second figure shouted from above.

Instinctively, Mo Yixuan looked up and saw two blurry figures standing somewhere above the water. Neither voice was familiar to him, but a foreboding rumble through the liquid depths told him that the warning was genuine. Mo Yixuan stirred restlessly. This wasn’t his place, or even his body—there was an airy lightness to it very different from the bone-weary burden that had weighed him down. He tried pushing up towards the surface, and found himself floating quite easily until his head broke through the water.

What greeted him was the cool, sparkling ceilings of a large crystal cavern that seemed to hum and glitter with light. The two white robed figures standing by the shore looked at him with equally intent expressions.

Eventually, the older of the two furrowed his eyebrows and reached out a hand. “Stop this foolishness! Get on shore this instant!”

Mo Yixuan treaded water, comfortably afloat in the liquid. Only his eyes peeked out while the rest of him exhaled beneath its surface. So noisy...

The younger of the two men frowned. “Sect leader, junior brother’s been down there for over half the day. His qi…”

“Absolute foolishness!” the so-called sect leader exclaimed again, and simply made a few hand signals at the pool. Instantly, a whirlwind gathered beneath Mo Yixuan’s feet and propelled him into the air. Before he could react, the same breeze set him gently on the ground, where he stood dripping from head to toe.

“Have you gone mad?” the sect leader approached him, looking furious. “No one’s supposed to stay in the qi refining pool for more than two hours! You’ll risk cultivation insanity in such a potent environment!”

Being barraged with a string of new vocabulary only made Mo Yixuan blink. His mind was quick to catch up though, connecting the dots between the ancient garb, mystical surroundings, and mentions of “cultivation” and “sect leader”  in his head. This was similar to the scores of xianxia novels and dramas that proliferated the Internet. If the plot was anything to go by, he’d just transmigrated into such a setting after his car accident.

Either that or this was a very elaborate hallucination.

While Mo Yixuan was puzzling all this out, the one who called him junior brother had already caught up and grasped him by the wrist to take his pulse.

“How is it?” the sect leader asked anxiously.

The younger man, a figure with piercing purple eyes, simply shook his head in surprise. “Nothing’s wrong. In fact…” his gaze trailed up to Mo Yixuan’s expressionless face with some surprise. “It seems that junior brother has advanced greatly in his cultivation.”

The sect leader’s eyes snapped to the man in disbelief. “Are you certain? Check again!”

“Would I say something without being sure?” the other retorted, but he took Mo Yixuan’s pulse again. Unfortunately, he didn’t get far before Mo Yixuan wrested his hand free and took an elegant step backwards.

That was another thing about this body. No matter what he did, it was always with grace. Even wringing out his wet hair did nothing to diminish the celestial aura enveloping his form—or perhaps his icy indifference was to blame for the mood.

A sect leader and a senior brother. So what did that make him? Mo Yixuan, but nothing else associated with the name came to mind. He found that he didn’t care. Being different was good enough.

There was a hint of a breeze coming from one of the cave tunnels, so Mo Yixuan turned his steps there next. The sect leader moved to stop him, but his motions were so slow that Mo Yixuan found it easy to maneuver around the man. Although the pair seemed to know him, that was a different Mo Yixuan than the soul currently inhabiting this body. Explaining that would take more effort than it was worth—chances were, they’d simply paint him as a bodysnatcher or insane—and no new memories were forthcoming at the moment, so he preferred to avoid them outright.

“Mo Yixuan!” the sect leader shouted again, but the other held him back.

“Don’t. I’ve read cases like this, where the souls of the bodies using the qi refining pool need time to settle down again. Aggravating him now will only make things worse.”

“We can’t just let him wander off  like that,” the sect leader protested. “We’ll follow him from a distance.”

Before the other could refuse, he was already being dragged along. The two of them chased after the exceptionally quick, sopping wet man as he sped through the tunnels and found the exit via pure instinct.

—

Mo Yixuan paused at the entrance to the crystal cave to take in the sight before him. He was standing atop a mountain overlooking a gorgeous gorge below. Lush forest and plains spread out before his eyes, while a sparkling blue river wound lazily between them both. The skies were a bright, radiant blue dotted with fluffy white clouds. A school of cranes flew past as he stared, followed by a few humans—cultivators riding on their swords. The surrounding mountain ranges were dotted with buildings of the sect, and he could spot more figures dressed in white walking, talking, or training amongst them.

Having worked in an office for half of his life without a single vacation, the sheer volume of nature here made his heart stir. He took a deep breath and drank in the sight with his eyes, deeply content. However, it wasn’t long before footsteps interrupted his reverie, this time from the front. Mo Yixuan turned a disinterested gaze towards the small crowd headed his way: three young disciples dragging a smaller boy in black between them, covered in cuts and bruises. A particularly nasty welt over his right eye had swollen it completely shut.

“Master, we’ve caught the rascal!” one of the white robed boys, a muscular fellow with bushy eyebrows, was the first to speak up.

“And we taught him a lesson too!” the taller, thinner boy next to him exclaimed.

Mo Yixuan stared at them all, then at the injured boy again. As before, none of it stirred any sign of recognition in his head. He assumed these were his disciples, but the black robed boy was a mystery. As he decided to avoid them all—

“Shizun, it’s not true! I didn’t do it, I swear!” the black-robed boy spoke up, making for a wretched sight between his disfigured eye and bruised face. Mo Yixuan’s brows arched up at the words: while the first called him master, this boy had opted for the more formal shizun, or “respected master.”

His gaze lingered on the boy a second longer before sliding away again. Was this one of those typical xianxia bullying scenes? If so, whoever was picked on the most ended up trampling over everyone else in the end. The youth before him now couldn’t look older than 15, but he was in a properly sorry state. Left alone, Mo Yixuan was sure he’d grow to be a powerful, vindictive force one day.

He’d be an idiot if he got involved now. Ignoring them all, Mo Yixuan started walking away, eliciting a chorus of cries from behind him.

“Master, he deserves to be punished!”

“Shizun, it wasn’t me!”

“Have the sect leader deal with it,” Mo Yixuan finally tossed back. He’d heard the steps of the two men coming from inside the cavern, and picked up his pace to leave them behind. It was hard enough keeping all their faces straight without the aid of names. The three white robed disciples obediently redirected their pleas to a new target while their captive stared after Mo Yixuan with an unreadable look.

This was all wrong!

Any other day, his master Mo Yixuan would pity him and take him away, only to torment him in private. Barring that, the man would publicly play the victim act to land him in hotter waters with the sect leader, then trick his sympathy by pretending to defend him from any punishment. Why would he give up an excellent chance to get even with him now?

Has he discovered something?

No, that didn’t make sense. His act was perfect—he’d even allowed himself to be beat up by these weak wretches to make it more convincing. Did his master drop his façade in front of the sect leader? But even then, that wouldn’t have stopped him; everyone knew that Sect Head Fei Chenling (斐塵翎) doted on his youngest junior brother most of all. The peek he’d stolen at the man’s face had revealed nothing—today’s Mo Yixuan was completely unreadable.

Nan Wuyue’s (南無月) eyes narrowed imperceptibly. Not for a second did he believe the man had gained any enlightenment from the qi refining pool. The waters inside the crystalline cavern were famed for their powers to boost cultivation, but soaking in them for long periods of time were deadly. What they required was an absolute release of self—a soul with no attachments to life, who could sever the mortal bonds consciously and physically without regrets. Most cultivators preferred to take the traditional path and gain immortality step by step, either through pill refining or improving their own cultivation. Although the pool offered a shortcut, to enter it mentally unprepared was equivalent to suicide.

And Nan Wuyue knew full well that his selfish, petty, shizun had too many attachments in this life to ever bother letting go.

“Looks like master’s finally gotten sick of you,” the bushy-browed disciple whispered savagely by Nan Wuyue’s ear.

Nan Wuyue hung limply, seemingly defeated. But his mind was racing as he calculated possibilities. Between his master and the sect leader, he still found it easier to predict and manipulate the former. At any rate, his current cultivation level was better left hidden before the leader caught anything amiss. Whatever Heaven-bestowed chance that had sent him back in time wasn’t likely to come twice; better to keep a handle on something he understood rather than venture into the unpredictable.

With that thought in mind, Nan Wuyue broke free of his captors and went racing after the lone figure walking rapidly down the mountain. He caught up to Mo Yixuan easily and wrapped his arms around his waist.

“Shizun, I was wrong! This disciple will accept any punishment you give me!”

Mo Yixuan knitted his brows as he tried to break free of the fingers gripping his robe. What are this kid’s hands made out of? Steel?