Chapter Text
One day, Ajax transmigrated into a cultivation novel.
A stallion cultivation novel, to be precise – with a name like The Strongest Disciple’s Path to Immortality, there was really no mistaking what genre it was going to be. Centred on an overpowered main character who conquered the cultivation world and the harem of beautiful women he amassed along the way, the novel’s bland characters and blander plot would have made it absolute trash if not for the shockingly detailed worldbuilding, and the contrast was so blatant it was even rumoured that it was written by two authors under a single pen name.
Having transmigrated into this novel, Ajax took over the body of the eldest disciple of Zhongli- xianjun [1], his favourite character and the Lord of the cultivation world's most powerful and influential sect: the Liyue sect. Being both gentle and wise despite his great power, the soft-spoken and patient Zhongli, who was the male lead's master back when he was still a disciple, became something of a breakout character amongst the novel’s readers despite his few appearances.
Ajax in particular grew quite attached to him – something about Zhongli’s quiet patience and understanding whenever he taught the male lead struck a chord in him. When the older disciples, jealous of the male lead for his meteoric rise in cultivation, would attempt to frame the male lead for something and spread rumours to disgrace him, Zhongli never turned on the male lead. He would always find the male lead and ask him for his side of the events to ensure that he made a fair judgement, and maybe it was because he was everything that Ajax had ever wanted and needed in an authority figure when he was young, but he quickly gravitated towards the character and constantly hoped he would get more scenes.
So taking the role of Zhongli’s eldest disciple would have been all well and good – but the problem was that the eldest disciple was a cannon fodder character who died in the beginning of the story!
See, the thing is, the male lead was originally someone with a mediocre cultivation root, which was a core one was born with that determined how much potential talent for cultivation talent one had. This meant that he was never supposed to be able to achieve as much as he did, and the only reason why he got so overpowered was through a string of ridiculous coincidences – which included randomly finding a legendary cultivation pill in a patch of grass, helping an old lady across the street who turned out to be a famous weaponsmith in disguise, and inadvertently saving a skilled female cultivator by crashing through the roof of her bathhouse.
Are you kidding me? Ajax had literally yelled at his phone screen. Who would randomly leave a legendary cultivation pill, which would take hundreds of years to refine even by the best pill refiners, in a random patch of grass? And why was that famous weaponsmith disguised as an old woman in the first place? Just for shits and giggles?
And don’t even get him started on the last one – falling through the roof of the female cultivator’s bathhouse… He could predict the dual cultivation scene as the female cultivator’s ‘repayment’ from a mile away!
Either way, despite those coincidences, the male lead’s mediocre cultivation root meant that the Liyue sect usually would never have admitted someone like him. However, in the beginning of the story, a horde of demon cultivators attacked the sect while Zhongli was away to retrieve an important herb, and the sect suffered heavy casualties. So in order to recover from their sudden loss, the sect relaxed their usual admission standards and accepted more disciples than usual, which was how the male lead slipped in.
And Gongzi, the eldest disciple whose body Ajax took over, was one of those casualties. As the first disciple of the sect leader, he took upon himself the responsibility to protect his junior brothers and sisters, and unfortunately took a fatal blow to the chest when shielding a junior brother from an attack.
Hello? Where is the justice in that? And his introduction and death are only covered in one paragraph? At least give him a page or two, come on!
Still, the absolute worst thing about this shitshow is definitely his rotten system.
[ Beep boop! Welcome, host! System 0720 reporting for duty! ]
Ajax hates that notification sound. He dreads it. He has fucking nightmares about that chirpy beep boop. Because he knows with everything he has, that whenever he hears that ominous sound, he’s going to get Bad News.
[ Beep boop! Please complete the character’s role to perfection according to the script! Completion of the mission will allow the user to return to his home world! ]
And if I don’t finish the mission…? He’d asked tentatively.
[ Beep boop! Failure to complete the mission will result in the user’s total erasure! Please try your best to finish the character’s script to perfection! ]
Well, fuck. Seems like if he wants to go home and not get erased from the fabric of existence, what the absolute fuck , he has to follow his role to the letter.
So that means...he has to die just as written in the novel.
Dammit system, have some compassion! The eldest disciple took a freaking blow through the chest, you know? There was literally a hole in his chest! That shit is going to hurt! He isn’t a special ops agent or anything, how was any of that fair?
[ Beep boop! User please rest assured, the system will relieve the user of any pain upon the user’s death scene! The user will absolutely feel no pain, 100% guaranteed! ]
…Alright, then. Aside from sounding suspiciously like the progenitor of a pyramid scheme, Ajax can’t find anything wrong with what the system said.
Screw it , he thinks. It's just a novel, after all. And besides, at least he doesn’t have to perform his death scene immediately since he transmigrated really early on in the novel. In fact, he's a decade early, having crossed over on the day he was admitted into the sect.
“From today on,” he tells Ajax, “you are this cultivator’s [2] first disciple.”
Dressed in light brown robes etched with delicate diamond patterns that gleam in the sun, the immortal they call Yanwang- xianjun – Emperor of the earth and the stones below one’s feet – gazes down at Ajax. His hands are clasped loosely behind his back, his posture that of stately elegance, and his eyes are slivers of molten gold.
He looks almost like a statue, his beauty cold and austere, an immortal who has long ascended from the mortal realm. His gaze should be frightening, or at least intimidating, but Ajax isn’t scared. He looks up at Zhongli, beaming, and misses the surprise that flashes in golden eyes.
“Yes, shizun [3]!”
Thankfully, having only one paragraph in the novel has its advantages: the main one being that he can do whatever he likes before he retires from the movie set, so to speak. You can't get out of character if there's no script to be in character for, after all!
So with that in mind, he decides to just relax and enjoy his decade in this new world. And also use this opportunity to get closer to Zhongli- xianjun , because when else can he get this close to his favourite character? And he even gets to call him shizun ! That's a win for him, he'd say.
“ Shizun, shizun !”
“Hm? What is it, Gongzi?”
Ajax thrusts a fist towards him. Under shizun’s questioning gaze, he slowly unfurls his fist, revealing a pink cherry blossom flower nestled gently in his palm. “For you!”
“Oh? For shizun? ” Shizun says, but does not move to take it. “Thank you, but shizun will refrain. Gongzi should keep it since he likes it so much.”
Ajax pouts – he’s a kid right now, so he might as well do it while he can! “I do like it, but that’s why I wanted to give it to you!”
He stares up expectantly, and shizun stares back at him.
Honestly, he half-expects shizun to refuse again. Even in the original novel, he had always been distant despite his gentleness; he practised the heartless dao, a form of cultivation that required the absence of wants and desires, and so shizun was always calm and distant towards everything and everyone.
But despite his expectations, shizun actually leans down and plucks it from his hand. “If that is what Gongzi desires, then I’ll receive it with gratitude.”
In a flash, he reaches upwards and plucks another cherry blossom flower from the trees, and threads it through the fold of Ajax’s robe where it peeks out. “In return, please accept this gift.”
A bright peal of laughter rings through the cherry blossom forest. “Thank you, shizun! ”
And shizun had even given him a sword, too!
“Gongzi,” shizun tells him one day, “I have something for you.”
Ajax sets down his practise sword and races across the training field, eager curiosity written on his face. “Ooh, really? What is it, what is it!”
He continues to pester shizun with questions, but the older man simply crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow until Ajax calms down. Still, although he finally quietens, he can’t stop himself vibrating with excitement, and shizun sighs in exasperation.
“A lesson in patience would do you good,” he scolds, but there is no heat in his tone. From behind him, he draws a slender object wrapped in silk brocade. He pulls the brocade away to reveal the object, and when Ajax recognises it, he gasps loudly.
“ Shizun ! Is that a sword?”
“It is your sword.” Shizun hands it to him with the hilt in his direction, and Ajax can barely raise his hand to grasp it.
The hilt is solid and steady in his hands, a comforting weight that fits perfectly in his palm. The sword itself, however, is a slim, sharp thing, its blade a gleaming white that reminds him of the pale moonlight reflecting on a pond on a dark night. The pure white shade of it doesn’t look like any metal that he has ever seen, and he wonders where shizun had gotten it.
It’s a sword – his sword.
He must have made quite the dumbfounded expression, because shizun lets out a huff of laughter.
“Gongzi should give it a name,” he suggests gently, lips still turned upwards, “so that it belongs to you.”
A name…
Ajax’s reflection stares back at him from the reflective surface of the sword’s blade. It is not a perfect reflection; the blade distorts it ever so slightly, warps his features in a way that renders his own face unrecognisable.
It is his face, and yet not his face. Just as how this body is his body, and yet not. A perfect contradiction.
“离思， [4] ” he says finally, after an eternity and a second.
离思。Memories of Separation.
Shizun is silent for a few moments. When Ajax looks back up, his expression is neutral.
“...An interesting name,” he comments, “what prompted it?”
Ajax grins. “Dunno, I just read it somewhere. It sounds cool though, doesn’t it?”
Shizun raises an eyebrow again, but doesn’t retort. “Indeed.”
His voice is dry as he turns away to leave, and Ajax laughs. He waits until he’s sure that shizun has turned his back, and looks back down at the sword in his hands.
Faintly, his eyes dim, and an unreadable expression crosses his face.
But when the moment passes, he sheathes the sword at his waist and runs out of the training field, grinning.
“Wait up, shizun !”
Separation, the sword of moonlight white that cuts through the night.
I name you Separation, as a reminder that no matter how long I stay in this world…eventually, I will have to leave.
And…
The cool night breeze blows through the willow trees, and they sway gently in a dance of their own. The still surface of the pond ripples slightly, warping the bright full moon reflected in its depths, but that does not make the moon any less beautiful.
Ajax watches it, mesmerised, and almost misses the question shizun asks him.
“Why does Gongzi wish to cultivate?”
Across from him, shizun takes a sip of his tea, perfectly poised as he sits by the porch of their residence. Ajax hums in consideration as he takes his own cup of tea from the low wooden table between them, taking a drink as he ponders the question.
“I don’t know,” he says, because it's true - the novel hadn't said the original body's reason for anything. “I’m still finding my reason. What about you, shizun? ”
Shizun doesn’t seem surprised that he’s thrown the question back at him. He sets his cup down onto the table, turning towards the open view.
The moonlight is bright tonight. Under the pale light, shizun’s eyes glow a soft amber, brighter and more beautiful than the most precious of gems. His dark hair frames his face delicately, and the rest of it, pulled into a low tail – Ajax sees the amber clasp he’d used to keep it in place when he tied shizun’s hair this morning – cascades down his shoulder.
明月装饰了你的窗子，你装饰了别人的梦 [5]。 The poem line flashes through Ajax’s mind. The bright moon adorns your window, while you adorn another’s dream.
“I used to cultivate because I wanted to know more about the world,” shizun says, still gazing outside, “I was a young boy ignorant of reality, but that curiosity has always spurred me forward in my cultivation, that thirst for knowledge to know more and be more. But now, it is not so.”
Ajax tilts his head. “Does shizun mean that is no longer his reason? What is shizun’s reason now, then?”
Shizun turns back to face him again. Just then, the wind blows a little more harshly, and a leaf drifts from one of the trees outside onto the porch. It lands clumsily on Ajax’s head, and he almost goes cross-eyed trying to get it off.
A shadow crosses his face, and a slender, fine-boned hand plucks the leaf from his hair. Shizun’s fingers card through Ajax’s curls, steady and warm, and Ajax reflexively closes his eyes in contentment.
He wonders what expression is on shizun’s face right now.
“To protect,” shizun replies softly.
But time eventually passes, even for cultivators. In a blink of an eye, a decade comes and goes, and the day Ajax retires approaches.
He gets out of bed hours before he usually awakes in order to send shizun off. The sky is dark; the sun has not yet risen. Still, Ajax wants to say goodbye in his own way to the person who had taken him in and taught him for ten years.
“Gongzi did not have to send me off,” shizun murmurs. He leans down to smooth a random cowlick in Ajax’s hair, a product of rolling out from bed without combing his hair. “It is early.”
“I wanted to, shizun. ” Ajax just smiles, leaning into his touch. Shizun smiles – the barest twitch of his lips, but Ajax has long learnt to read his microexpressions –, pats his head, and turns to leave.
“I will be back by the evening.”
Ajax nods. His smile does not falter. “Okay, shizun. Safe travels!”
He doesn’t stop waving until he can barely see shizun, a speck of brown against the horizon. Only then does he lower his arm and allow his smile to fade into something a little smaller and a little sadder.
“...Goodbye, Zhongli . ”
He races out when the first screams ring across the mountain. The demon cultivators are here, having broken past the sigils of protection on the sect’s gates. Already, he can smell the metallic scent of blood in the air, thick and heavy, and he takes a fortifying breath as he draws Separation from its sheath.
When he gets to the sect entrance, the mountain peak is already in chaos. The demon cultivators swarm the mountain in one large horde, overwhelming Ajax’s junior brothers and sisters quickly. His senior brothers and sisters are already rushing forwards to support them, but in the end they are only young children barely reaching adulthood – so are you, flashes in his mind –, and the demon cultivators are bloodthirsty and cruel.
The glint of a blade flashes in the corner of his eye, and he whirls around to grab a junior sister by the collar of her robe, tugging her towards him and saving her from the swing of a demon cultivator’s blade that follows a split second later.
“Go and call the peak elders,” he orders, even as he blocks another attack, “ now! ”
The peak elders live within the sect, but decently far away from the main peak. Even if the junior sister goes to find them now, it will take around five minutes for them to arrive and assist them. They are also the only ones with the means to reach shizun, but even if shizun comes it will already be far too late.
Five minutes is a very long time on the battlefield.
The junior sister is pale as a sheet and her lips are trembling, but she nods sharply and immediately disappears.
Good girl.
Ajax grips Separation harder and grits his teeth, hurling himself further into the battle.
But what will come, will come.
He sees the attack before his junior brother does, sees the glint of savage glee in the demon cultivator’s eyes as he lunges. His junior brother’s eyes are wide and glossy with fear, large on his young face.
He can’t be older than twelve.
Ajax will not let another child die on his watch.
With a strength even he hadn’t known he had possessed, he leaps forward, knocking the junior brother out of the way and throwing his own attack at the opposing cultivator.
He succeeds in decapitating the demon cultivator, but the gaping hollow in his chest that follows tells him he’s a moment too late.
He barely hears his junior brother’s cry as he collapses to the ground. The taste of blood gathers at the back of his throat, and he doesn’t resist it when it splatters from his lips.
“Gongzi- shixiong!! ”
Damn it, so this is how he dies. He coughs again, grimacing when the warm wetness trickles down chin. He’d always known what would cause his death, but to think he would get it from protecting a junior brother…
Oh well. It is what it is. Better him than that child, anyway.
As the sounds of the battlefield fade away into darkness, he laments silently. Ten years he’s spent here, and yet he still wants more time. Seems like he’s really gotten attached, huh?
Damn, now that he’s actually going to leave, he suddenly wants to do so many things. He wants to eat one more meat bun that the kitchen aunty would make especially for him. He wants to see the friends he’d trained together with, his cute junior brothers and sisters, and reliable senior brothers and sisters. He wants to see the cherry blossom trees on the mountain peak bloom one more time. So many things, yet so little time.
And…
“From today on, you are this cultivator’s first disciple.”
Too bad, he thinks as he closes his eyes, I wanted to see him one last time...
[Script anomaly detected: Sending user back to point of anomaly.]