Chapter 137
The rain finally stopped, when the sun came up from the edge of the sky and started warming up the weather as well as burning away the mist and thick clouds in the sky. Throughout the whole night, there was not one person passing by, and the only people who were remotely close to finding Jianmen were a group of teenagers who were driving by the side of the parking lot like crazy and then stopping to drink by the side of the road.
After a whole night of rest and healing, Jianmen was finally able to stand up. He was also finally able to use his Xuanli without feeling a great deal of pain from his meridians and his bones and muscles. By his rough estimate, he was now roughly at the power level of a cultivator at the midway from the second layer to the third layer, which was quite a significant drop from where he was. But that was indeed what was expected to happen when he swallowed the entire jade coin with silver metal frames and consumed it in whole - now he had a powerful seal within his body and soul, which will gradually peel itself away and restore his power in the process while he heals himself.
The only thing that was not impacted as hard, was Jianmen’s connection to karma flows, which meant he was still able to gain knowledge about the world through his usual means as long as he was cautious. And throughout the whole night, besides focusing most of his mind on the process of healing and sealing his own power, he also utilized his connection with Xuanli to learn about the world he was in. But now that he was in a weakened state, this kind of means to gain knowledge about the world also led to quite some cost: his head became cloudy and he started having headache - he knew that he couldn’t use the power again anytime soon.
And the “Fuck your mom” was for a reason - from the information he gathered, he was able to recognize that this was not his world. For one, he did not find the trace of his karma at all - if this is his original world, he would have picked up his own traces of karma flow when he came back; For two, though this world had many similarities to his world before he left, he also picked up some key differences from various points of this world’s history, like how the events of some of the famous wars went, how some of the famous people ended up, which also fascinated him on how this world became so similar to his original world.
The clothes he wore were broken, torn up by the turbulence of energy from his travel, but they remained dry and relatively clean - something perhaps only the best fabrics from the world of cultivation from which he came through the door could do.
Jianmen waddled to the outside of the rundown parking lot, the streets were not busy as it was still relatively early in the morning, but there were already people on the street who gave Jianmen the side-eye and avoided him when he came close.
Hunger struck him as he waited on the side of the road for the light to turn green by himself - a feeling he had never felt in quite a while, when he was at his full power, he only ate for pleasure and not for sustenance. He would love to experiment sealing his power away to feel the corporeal needs of the mortal if he could, yet he just never had the chance to do it, because the world of cultivation was already dangerous enough, not to mention for someone who made his fair share of enemies along the path to where he was. It’s just that now, the feeling came at a terrible time.
“Never thought I’d be troubled by food someday.” Jianmen scoffed at himself and his terrible luck, and when the light in front of him turned green, he walked onto the zebra crossing. His head still felt cloudy, making it hard for him to concentrate and react to things in a timely manner, which was made worse by the sudden hunger.
Loud engine blasts came from not too far away, a sports car with metallic black and yellow paint swirled through the road and sped towards the left side of Jianmen and did not even stop at the red light on its way. Before Jianmen could even realize, due to him being preoccupied by his newfound source of worry, he was sent flying through the air. By the time he realized what happened to him, he was already a few inches away from the cement pedestrian walkway with a rusty old fire hydrant.
“Shit! Shit!” a group of teenagers or young adults in relatively low profile but still expensive looking clothes got out of the sports car, two of them rushing to Jianmen’s side, while the boy driver and a young blonde girl first stopped at the front of the car and checked on the human-shaped dents on the bumper and hood of the race car: “What the fuck! Look what happened to my fucking car!”
“Brad! Look what the fuck you’ve done! ” the boy from the other couple that rushed to Jianmen’s side yelled at the teenage boy who was driving: “I told you not to run the fucking light! I fucking told you!”
“Oh, god, what should we do?” the girl from the couple by Jianmen’s side started panicking: “Are you alright, sir? Do you need to go to the hospital?”
“Of course he needs to go to the hospital!” the boy by Jianmen’s side said loudly: “Brad! Come over and call 911!”
“Quiet, please, my head hurts from all your yelling.” Jianmen was not hurt or injured by the crash, it was just that the impact made him feel a little bit dizzy and his pre-existing injuries started acting up a little bit, and the talking and yelling from these young folks were really making his already bad day worse. So he said, in English, something he just picked up: “And please get out of my way.”
“Sir? Sir? Are you sure?” the driver and his girlfriend finally came over to Jianmen’s side and asked: “Do you need to go to the hospital? How you’re feeling?”
“Better if you just get out of my face.” Jianmen got up and groaned.
“Okay, sir. I am so sorry. Let me pay for your injuries...” the driver and his girlfriend half-assedly apologized to Jianmen: “Can you forgive us and let it go?”
Jianmen was still not entirely aware of the situation yet: “I’m not...”
“Here! Here!” the boy who ran to Jianmen’s side opened up his wallet and took out a few big green bills and shoved them into Jianmen’s hands: “Please, go check with a hospital, if it’s not enough I think Brad has more. Right Brad?!” The last two words were yelled out, as he stared at the driver of the sports car.
“Oh! Right right right!” the driver was pinched by his girlfriend, and he opened up his wallet and took out a bigger wad of bills and shoved it in Jianmen’s hand: “Please take this, and we forget this ever happened, okay?”
Jianmen now realized what was going on, he laughed and accepted the money while rubbing his temple: “I understand, thank you for the payments. I will forget this ever happened.”
“Thank you! Let’s go!” the first boy that ran to Jianmen’s side nudged the driver by the arm: “We should go.”
These young people drove away as fast as they could, leaving Jianmen by the side of the street and some pedestrians on the other side of the street staring and pointing.