Book 1 Chapter 6 Mistaken Identity
…
Han Rowan materialized with the distinct sensation of a damp sock being aggressively peeled from an exhausted foot. One moment, he was in the oppressive, humid depths of a primeval forest, having narrowly avoided being vaporized by a glowing lichen; the next, he was standing in a sun-dappled clearing. The air here was clean, with a sharp scent of pine and something vaguely metallic, and the ground was firm, covered in resilient green moss.
"Okay," he muttered, adjusting the ridiculous, perpetually useless dagger that was strapped across his back—the one he got from the guy who looked exactly like him, whose name he still did not know. "New biome. That's helpful."
He surveyed his surroundings. The clearing was small, perhaps fifty meters across, and was backed by the sheer, imposing face of a mountainside, which towered into the hazy blue sky. This wasn't the deep forest anymore; this felt like civilization's doorstep, or at least, the doorstep of something structurally permanent. He checked his inventory via the floating, 9x9 Strange Bag grid that only he could see.
Inventory Summary:
Malignant Marble A (Indestructible, Stashed) - "Still there, radiating existential smugness."
Malignant Marble B (Indestructible, Stashed) - "Its brother in spherical absurdity."
Shop Reservation: Thorns, Stone Dagger (Unpurchased) - "Waiting patiently for my first real paycheck."
He sighed. He was a non-cultivating mortal armed with two rocks and a strong sense of existential dread. At least he had his Defensive Bracers. They weren't indestructible like the shop items, but they were better than nothing.
Rowan started walking, keeping close to the mountainside, hoping the terrain would lead to a trail. After what felt like an hour—long enough for him to contemplate selling the useless dagger to the shop, only to realize the shop didn't accept external items, thus ensuring its eternal burden—he found one. It was a well-trodden, narrow path carved through the dense scrub, smelling faintly of incense and very old sweat.
Following the path for another five minutes, he saw it: a rough-hewn wooden structure spanning the path, acting as a rudimentary gate. And in front of it, a group of people.
They were dressed in long, flowing robes of a drab, forest-green color. They looked less like fearsome immortal cultivators and more like very bored security guards who had been forced to wear silk pajamas. He counted six of them, three lazily leaning on spears that looked better suited for ornamental purposes, and three sitting on logs playing an intense game of finger-guessing.
The robes... he froze. He knew those robes. They were the exact, distinctive shade of forest-green worn by the twenty-plus corpses he had seen scattered deep in the Unknown Forest, all victims of some brutal, highly efficient ambush. He deduced these people were likely the remnants of the same organization.
He immediately considered retreating, executing a flawless Tactical Disappearance, No Witnesses Left Behind maneuver.
I should go. I should definitely go. Back into the trees, let them be, and find another way around this mountain range. My current life goal is to survive long enough to understand why I have two indestructible pebbles and a floating user interface.
Just as his mind concluded the retreat, a heavy hand clapped onto his shoulder, startling him so badly he nearly dropped his Malignant Marbles from his psychological grip.
"Gong Fa! You absolute dreg of the Green Willow Sect! I thought Elder Ma said you finally managed to get yourself eaten by a territorial badger! Where in the great wide world have you been, you walking disgrace?"
Rowan slowly turned. The man who had found him was stocky, had a face like a grumpy melon, and wore the same drab green robe. He squinted at Rowan's current outfit—a combination of a ripped t-shirt and dirty jeans that somehow survived his transmigration—and then back to Rowan's face, which, unfortunately, was a flawless clone of the deceased person this fellow called Gong Fa.
"And what in the name of the Ancestors is that wretched civilian garb? Did you sell your Sect robes for a bottle of cheap sorghum liquor? You're lucky I found you, you feeble-limbed ninny. Come on, we're already late. We are being called back. I think Elder Ma would want to see you and hear your report about what happened to your group."
The Grumpy Melon, who he later learned was called Cui An, gripped Rowan's elbow with surprising strength, dragging him towards the checkpoint group. Rowan's mind raced through defensive countermeasures. Violence? Absolutely not. His only offensive capability was the Rock of Existential Malignancy, and while he was sure it could shatter the planet, he wasn't keen on testing the theory on a Tuesday afternoon.
"Wait, wait, my head," Rowan slurred, grabbing his temples and forcing a dramatic, college-level theater performance of severe confusion. "My head is... throbbing. Did I hit it? Who... who are you? And where am I?"
Cui An stopped, his melon-face morphing into a look of genuine, if highly cynical, concern.
"Oh, come on, don't give me that dog-eaten memory excuse, Gong Fa. You're already weak, don't be a dramatic weasel, too. Get up."
"No, really," Rowan insisted, leaning heavily on Cui An, trying to look vulnerable and utterly lost. "I think... I think I've forgotten everything. Names, places, the function of pants... It's all a blur. Who is Gong Fa?"
Cui An paused, releasing Rowan to give him a full-body once-over. The other disciples, having stopped their finger game, were now staring with the detached amusement of people watching a particularly sluggish snail race.
"Did you... actually hit your head?" Cui An asked, poking Rowan's forehead. "You're usually just dull, not clinically vacant."
Rowan blinked slowly, letting his eyes glaze over with a perfected blend of trauma and a lack of Qi-cultivation.
"The last thing I remember... was taking a very important exam," Rowan murmured, pulling a fragmented piece of his real life into the narrative. "An exam about... calculus. And then... darkness. And now... this green fabric. What is 'calculus'?"
This seemed to do the trick. A genuine loss of memory was rare, but not unheard of, especially among the lowest, uncultivating disciples who lacked any inherent mental fortitude. Cui An looked slightly sick.
"Fine. Fine! You really are useless, Gong Fa. It's a tragedy, but at least it explains the clothes. Come on, let me explain things simply, since your brain is now apparently as smooth as a well-polished stone."
Rowan winced internally. Why is he talking about stones? He mentally tightened his grip on the concept of the Malignant Marbles, trying to project an aura of harmless, inert lumpiness.
"Right. Listen up, Amnesiac Gong Fa." Cui An began, drawing a deep, dramatic breath. "You are Gong Fa. You look like Gong Fa. Therefore, you are Gong Fa. We are members of the Green Willow Sect—one of the secretive, minor sects operating in this area, under the noble, if slightly dusty, flag of the Rising Phoenix Kingdom. Specifically, we're part of the Auxiliary Disciples corps. You're... well, you're the weakest. In fact, you're one of the select few who, bless your feeble soul, cannot cultivate Qi at all."
Cui An paused, checking to ensure the humiliation had sunk in.
"A few weeks ago, you and a few other 'non-producers' were sent on a mission to investigate some strange activity deep in the forest. Obviously, you lost your way, hit your head, and suffered some sort of memory wipe. That's the story, understood?"
Rowan nodded gravely. "Green Willow Sect. Auxiliary Dregs. No pants, no brain. Got it. But what do we do?"
Cui An rolled his eyes, a gesture of profound exhaustion. "We go back to the Sect. The main grounds are further up the mountain. Come on, let's get you into a proper robe before someone mistakes you for a street beggar. We need to maintain some semblance of dignity, even if you, personally, possess none."
…
Rowan was led behind the checkpoint and stripped of his strange modern garments (which Cui An promptly tossed into a brush fire, muttering about 'corrupting fibers'). He donned the simple, coarse cotton of the Green Willow Sect's Auxiliary Disciple robe—a uniform that felt less like an emblem of a cultivation sect and more like a glorified penitent's sack.
As they walked the narrow mountain path, Cui An filled the memory-void "Gong Fa" with all the essential details. This part of the journey was long, and Cui An was clearly bored, so the details poured out like a leaky, rusty faucet.
"Now, the Green Willow Sect is led by a Golden Core master," Cui An explained, walking slightly ahead. "And we have about twenty elders in the False Core realm and thirty auxiliary elders in the late Foundation Stage. Our main purpose is... well, it used to be cultivating the Tao and finding immortality. Now, it's mostly about maintaining the illusion of a grand sect while managing our increasingly disastrous finances."
Rowan's internal monologue went into overdrive. Financial trouble? A mystical, immortal sect is worrying about the monthly budget? This place is wild.
"You see, Gong Fa," Cui An continued, oblivious to Rowan's internal amusement, "the cost of maintaining a thousand auxiliary disciples who can't even draw a wisp of Qi is enormous. They eat, they need robes, they need beds. It's an astronomical drain on the treasury, especially with the main elder's recent, questionable investment in a 'Perpetual Motion Rice Grinder' which, naturally, broke after three hours and now just grinds our profits into dust."
Cui An leaned in conspiratorially, his voice dropping.
"And that mission you went on? The one where you conveniently lost your memory and everyone else... well, didn't come back?"
Rowan widened his eyes dramatically. "The mysterious non-return?"
"Exactly! The official story is bandits. The unofficial, slightly whispered truth is that Elder Ma, one of the auxiliary elders, orchestrated the whole thing. It was a calculated cull. Get rid of the weakest dregs, the zero-Qi ants, save the sect a fortune in grain and laundry bills, and spin it as a tragic ambush that 'ensures the strength of the future sect members.' It's ingenious, really. Terrible, but fiscally responsible."
Rowan processed this narrative exposition. The sect was essentially an elaborate, poorly managed corporation that executed its weakest employees to balance the books. The auxiliary elders genuinely saw the non-cultivating disciples as ants, disposable labor, and expensive liabilities. This wasn't some grand celestial conspiracy; it was a cheap, bureaucratic murder scheme.
This explains the corpses, Rowan thought, nodding slowly. And it explains why Gong Fa, the ultimate weakling, was on the 'easy' mission. They were just tying up loose ends with an inefficient, but final, ledger entry.
Rowan is not one to avenge Gong Fa. Although it was unfair, the world is already unfair to all its inhabitants. So, fate is something that could only be accepted by Gong Fa. However, this is not Rowan's fate; how he got the strange bag is something he did not know, but he will try to understand things as they go and survive this world.
They continued the winding ascent. The sect grounds soon came into view. It was a sprawling collection of wooden halls, manicured gardens that looked slightly neglected, and, weirdly, a very large, imposing wall built primarily to keep the tax collectors out, not demons.
…
Upon reaching the Green Willow Sect grounds, Rowan was immediately funneled through the lower sect complex. Before he could even complain about the persistent, low-level thrumming of low-grade anxiety coming from the disciples around him, he was summoned to the administrative department.
The room was sparse, dominated by a large mahogany desk where an older, thin woman with an expression of permanent disappointment sat. This was Elder Feng, the administrator.
"Gong Fa," she stated, her voice dry as parchment, not looking up from a ledger where she was clearly itemizing missing uniforms. "Report. Explain precisely how you, the least capable of the group, managed to survive the... 'bandit ambush,' while the rest of the Martial Body-level disciples did not. Speak concisely. Time is money, and we have little of both, thanks to you."
Rowan, remembering his training in high-stakes college interviews and his subsequent amnesia performance, leaned on the desk and affected a bewildered, distant gaze.
"Elder," he began, his voice soft and halting. "I apologize. I... I can't. The last thing I recall is an intense headache and a desire to solve differential equations. Then, there was a flash, and I was being dragged along by... the melon-faced man."
"Cui An," Elder Feng corrected flatly.
"The melon-faced man," Rowan repeated firmly. "I seem to have sustained a severe, yet incredibly convenient, case of Traumatic Memory Loss. I am entirely blank on my life as Gong Fa, my cultivation status, or even where the best noodle stall in Silver Wolf City might be."
Elder Feng sighed, a long, drawn-out sound that conveyed the exact moment her financial planning meeting was replaced by dealing with an existential dud. She closed her ledger with a sharp thwack.
"Another insurance claim, then," she muttered to herself, making a note on a separate slip. "Very well, 'Amnesiac Gong Fa.' You are dismissed for the time being. We will observe your mental acuity. Now, get out. Go to the library. Perhaps staring at words will jog your utterly useless memory. And try not to break anything. The repair budget is currently zero."
Rowan bowed awkwardly, attempting a culturally appropriate kowtow that ended up looking more like a hiccuping curtsy, and retreated.