A Writer's Transmigration With A System

Li Jiwen smiled at the man and said, "Fellow Taoist, it’s been an interesting few hours."

The man named Jun Fang laughed and said, "Indeed, fellow Taoist, indeed. Please come in. The heavenly Dao is not something that likes our existence at the moment, and we cannot stay under its gaze for too long."

Li Jiwen moved behind the man. Their steps took them thousands of li in each stride, through the broken archway of the temple, across a courtyard of cracked flagstones, into a corridor that smelled of dust and old incense, and finally into a study room tucked into the deepest part of the half-ruined complex. Old Jun did not fly or use a movement technique. He simply walked, and the world rearranged itself around each step.

Li Jiwen finally stood inside the old man’s study.

It was ancient and old. Shelves climbed the walls to a ceiling lost in shadow, stuffed with bamboo slips, jade slips, paper scrolls, and stone tablets, each layer older than the last. A small stove in the corner. A kettle. A single chair behind a single desk. The room had been lived in for what smelled like a billion years.

But there was something else in the room, something that did not belong. Something that made Li Jiwen’s face go pale.

On the desk, beside a half-unrolled scroll, lay a pen. A mechanical pen. The kind with a click mechanism and a refillable cartridge and a tiny metal tip. The kind Li Jiwen had used in college to scribble plot notes in the margins of his textbooks. The kind that did not exist in any cultivation world.

He had never expected to see something from his own world in this place.

Old Jun noticed where his eyes had gone.

"Well now, fellow Taoist Li Jiwen," the old man said, with a slight smile. "What do you think of my humble room?"

Li Jiwen did not let his own surprise appear on his face. "Interesting, indeed, fellow Taoist. Interesting, indeed. It gives a feeling of an actual ancient room, a room that was built millions of years ago, probably."

Old Jun said, "Indeed, fellow Taoist, indeed it was. Have you ever thought that our own bubble within the Primordial Sea was nothing other than a piece of nothing amidst the grand Primordial Sea itself?"

Li Jiwen said, "Indeed, I have thought about that many times. You can imagine just how big the Primordial Sea is. Some say it is infinite. Some say it is only thirty-five billion bubbles. Others say it has no beginning and no end."

Old Jun said, "You can say that it has no beginning and no end is true, but not totally."

He invited Li Jiwen to sit. Li Jiwen sat. The chair was lower than he expected, and he suspected the old man had chosen that on purpose.

"Have you ever thought about what our world can actually have," Old Jun said, "and why exactly this is the habitat of us?"

He continued, not waiting for an answer. "Understanding every human in the great calamity that was here years and aeons ago."

Li Jiwen shook his head. He did not know the law behind that.

Old Jun said, "The heavenly Dao in this realm is nothing other than a puppet. But of what kind, we do not know exactly. That is where you come into play. I have seen you in every vision, from years ago, eons ago, even. More than a billion years of life, and I have seen you."

Li Jiwen looked at the ancient man. His body was frail, but full of power at the very same time. His wrinkled face was filled with wisdom. His eyes were blue, the color of the infancy of wisdom itself. His hair was white. His beard was long and white, and looked as if it had been groomed every day for the past billion years. A Heavenly Immortal could live almost infinitely, as long as the heavens and earth were still there.

"What have you seen, friend?" Li Jiwen asked.

Old Jun said, "You will stop the calamity. But as to how, why, when, we do not know. Each of us old men in the entirety of the world at the moment knows that you will come one day. But whether you are ready now or not ready, we do not know. Time is weird. Time is not something that we can understand as a linear timeline."

He moved his hand. A spiritual river appeared in front of Li Jiwen, suspended in the air between both of them, a ribbon of pale gold light that flowed without a bed, without banks, without direction. Old Jun began to move the river with his hand and fingers, slow and deliberate. The actual river seemed to look at Li Jiwen.

He muttered, "The river, as you actually think of it... you think it is linear. The past has already happened. The present is happening. The future will happen. But it turns out it is not like that."

He traced a circle in the air, then a line, then a circle again.

"The past, the present, and the future all are happening at the very same time, in different occasions and in different styles. This, as I have heard someone call it before, an old friend of mine, killed by the heavenly Dao long ago, the multiverse, and the multiversal theory, as he called it."

Li Jiwen’s heart did something strange in his chest. He kept his face still.

"It is something that can be said that time is never linear," Old Jun continued. "Time is lines, and time is circles. It is always leading to something, but it is as well not happening or leading to anything."

Li Jiwen stopped for a couple of seconds as he heard the words of the man in front of him.

He said then, "Well, fellow Taoist, what exactly do you mean by ’time is not a circle or a line’? What does that even mean for us humans?"

Old Jun said, "This is where I come into play. The actual timeline where you will indeed defeat the heavenly Dao and the calamity is foretold. But what timeline exactly that was, or, as they say, a multiversal realm, that... we still do not know."

He paused.

"All of us old men have already been longing for freedom from the heavenly Dao. And if you can free us, then that would mean that you are something unique. As well, in all the world lore, it was said that whoever tries to hurt you would face an end that was even worse."

Li Jiwen thought for a couple of seconds. Then he asked, "What do you know as well about the multiversal theory, friend?"

Old Jun said, "Well, I do not know much other than that. But I only want to know one thing as well. The multiversal theory is true, but not true, as well. It is a combination in this realm of ours. And in the Primordial Sea, we still do not know if that actually applies. That, as well, we do not understand, why exactly that entity wants this bubble of a realm."

Li Jiwen looked at the old man for a long moment. The mechanical pen on the desk sat between them like a held breath.

He said, "Well, fellow Taoist, I have another question. How exactly do you know that anyone is coming?"

Old Jun laughed and said, "That I do not know. We were only told that you would end the calamity. As to how, why, when, we would not know exactly. Time, as I said before, is not linear."

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