Chapter 1: Chapter 1: The Blood Moon Sect
"Where is this? I recall working on the monthly report..."
Shen Yuan groggily sat up straight with a sudden throbbing pain in the back of his head. Feeling the pain, he reached out to touch it only to feel a light bump, which hurt more from the touch.
"Did I fall from the chair or something?" He looked around, trying to shake off the uneasy feeling in his stomach. ’Wasn’t it supposed to be a premium product that made it impossible for someone to fall no matter how much they leaned back into it...’
"A cottage?" Shen Yuan’s eyes widened when he realized that he was no longer sitting on his office chair. Forget the chair; he was not even in his office anymore. ’Since when did I start sleepwalking?’
He hurriedly got up from the ground and ran out through the bamboo door of the hut.
The sight that greeted him left him weak in the knees.
There was no sign of his luxurious office, no skyscrapers towering around the city.
Hell, even his secretary, whom he made sit inside his office just to admire her beautiful face as he worked.
’Where am I?’
One side he saw a deep ravine filled with trees and bushes; he could not even tell where it ended. On the other side there were rows of cottages at a short distance from each other, lined up.
’The sun is abou— wait...’ he paused his thought while looking up, and his eyes widened with disbelief. ’Why are there two moons?’
One blue and the other red, two moons hung in the air, shining with all their majesty. Not to mention their size, they were twice the size he was used to seeing.
’I am dreaming?’ He thought, looking around, feeling several gazes locked on him. "Why are they looking at me like that?"
It did not take a genius mind for him to realize that their eyes were unfriendly. Whoever they were, they would not help him even if he rushed to ask them anything. Even their clothes were different, more traditional than he was used to.
So, Shen Yuan did only the thing his instinct told him to.
He returned to the safe embrace of the cottage he woke up in.
Whenever cornered, humans tend to fight back or search for a safe place to hide. Shen Yuan did the same.
If what he was seeing now was not a dream, then either the earth he knew had changed while he was sleeping, or he was no longer on the same planet.
Bam!!!
Closing the bamboo door of his thatched hut, Shen Yuan Slumped on the ground, breathing unevenly.
’What’s happening? where am I? I need information...’ Feeling the cold ground brushing against his skin, Shen Yuan shifted. Running his hands through his hair, he felt the cold touch of the sweat building up on his scalp, running down his face.
!!!
Just then, Shen Yuan faced another alarming truth.
"My hair... why is it so long?" Shen Yuan never let his hair go an inch past his favorite length to make sure his hairstyle remained the same.
But now not only was his hair long enough to be tied in a ponytail, but it even beat his secretary’s in length.
’Not just my hair, everything about my body has changed.’ His hands were shorter and rougher, his height had shortened, and even his clothes were different. He was wearing an outfit that was straight out of some Chinese drama, similar to the ones he saw those unfriendly people wearing.
Shen Yuan looked around and rushed to the first thing closest to a mirror he saw.
A round copper sheet was hanging on the wall, acting like a mirror. Though he could barely see his reflection in it.
His unfamiliar silver eyes had only met the one in his reflection when...
"Arghh!" A writhing pain struck Shen Yuan. His brain felt like it was being filled with something from the inside.
Like a bag of IV fluid was being forcefully pushed down in his veins, but that vein is inside his head.
Clutching his head, Shen Yuan dropped down on his knees.
Swoosh!
’Shen Yuan, you have the qualifications to be a cultivator. Congratulations, your good days are about to come.’
"Everyone here must have been told that they were recruited by the Azure Sword Sect because of their hidden talent, but you see, that is not really the truth."
"Let me introduce you to the new place you will be living in. Welcome to The Blood Moon Sect.’
"You all serve as lowly servants of the sect and also the property of the sect, so you will do what we tell you to do unless you manage to sense qi and draw it into your dantian; you will stay at the same rank."
Voices he had never heard started to assault his mind. Images he had never seen felt like the flashbacks of his past.
At the end of it all, there was a faint voice that called out to him.
’Yuan Er... I am sorry. But giving birth to you was a mistake I should have never made.’
The emotional voice, steeled with coldness, sent a shiver down his spine, snapping him back to reality.
He found himself back in the small hut.
"I thought it was my bp acting up again, but to think..." Clutching his chest, he staggered and swayed towards a single bed in the corner of the room.
"Gasp! Huff! Hufff!"
Slowly the foreign memories settled within his mind, the pain started to fade away, and Shen Yuan finally understood what really happened.
"To think I died and ended up in a different world. I think there was a word for it. What was it... Ah, Transmigration!" He finally recalled what happened in his last moments.
Like usual, he decided to stay back and work late since he became so engrossed in it.
To take a break, Shen Yuan closed his eyes for a power nap, but who would have thought that he would never wake up?
’My heart must have stopped dead in the night, but what can I do now? It would have given up one day or another.’ Shen Yuan shrugged off his death easily; maybe because he knew how fragile his heart was and how much he abused coffee, he saw this day coming from far away.
Or maybe the reason was something deeper.
But part of him was still shaken by the silent embrace of death and how quick it came for him.
"To think that robes of mere temporary disciples would be softer and smoother than some of my most expensive suits." Looking down at his sweat-soaked silky robes, he felt poor for the first time.
His hands were bony, like he had been unable to eat properly for a long time.
And then it hit him.
"How could someone be this naive? But maybe it was desperation on his end." When he finished analyzing his memories, Shen Yuan found out the reason the former owner of the body had died.
The original Shen Yuan was an orphan adopted by a couple who wanted a boy but could not have one despite seven miscarriages.
From childhood Shen Yuan found himself drawn to the stories of immortals and demons.
He wanted to be a righteous cultivator so that he could escape bullying from his stepsisters who were all younger than him.
So when he came across a cultivator in his backward city who claimed to be an elder from the Azure Sword Sect and wanted to recruit him into the sect, he did not hesitate and left with him.
After all, who did not want to be a part of a well-known sect that was ranked in the top ten?
Despite the doubts of his parents, Shen Yuan believed in the cultivator like a naive boy and decided to follow him.
And what did that get him?
Shen Yuan was thrown in an unknown corner of a vast land. A place surrounded by a deadly forest swarming with dangerous beasts.
It was only then he realized that not only was the elder not a member of the Azure Sword sect but someone who was from the demonic sect.
He finally understood what a fool he was to have willingly gotten himself kidnapped.
How he had dreamed of joining the righteous sect that cultivated swords that allowed one to defy the heavens and soar into the skies like dragons who ruled over the world—
But instead, he had been trapped inside A Demonic Sect.
The Blood Moon Sect.
A place full of bloodsucking monsters, as the world knew them.
"To think there would come a day I would be turned into a servant," he muttered, the words carrying weight from the inherited memories.
Among the bad memories, one thought stuck him hard. "Cultivation... it’s maddening."
It defied everything he believed in the previous world.
The power to move mountains and sever the seas and clouds alike. Standing on top of the world, becoming someone the rest could only worship—
A God!
Everything was possible with cultivation.
He did not know if these stories that Shen Yuan learned were true or not, but he recalled seeing a figure flying through the skies above the city where Shen Yuan lived within his memories.
"But why did the original Shen Yuan die?" Shen Yuan tried to dig deeper, but a thundering voice broke his attention, making his ears ring in pain.
"Attention Servants! If I don’t see each and every one of you in the public Square in ten minutes, I will assume you are dead and make sure it stays that way!"
