CHAPTER 49: Alive!!
Jin "opened" his eyes, or at least that's what he thought he'd done.
For a few moments his mind was total chaos — scattered thoughts, overlapping memories, and the uncomfortable feeling of having been thrown against an invisible wall. And though it took a while to sort his ideas out, to be honest it didn't help at all, because when he finally managed to focus on his surroundings he saw nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just absolute blackness without depth or light. No up, no down.
Frowning — or performing the mental equivalent — his voice echoed strangely in the void as he muttered, "What the hell is going on...?"
A second later a terrible idea crossed his mind, and he whispered in disbelief, "Don't tell me I've died again... Nooo, I finally reincarnated into a cultivation world!"
Floating there in the dark, he milked the drama a few seconds longer than necessary, as if the heavens themselves might feel guilty, until he sighed and told himself, "Okay... calm down. If this is the afterlife, it sucks. They could've decorated it better. A couple of clouds, a tea table, something..."
Silence offered no answer.
Trying to look around again, he realized he wasn't even sure how — he felt no cold, no heat, no pain, and not even the wound that, by all logic, should have killed him.
That was when he decided to use the only thing he had left: his brain. All those cliché-filled novels he'd read came rushing back — floating souls, mental spaces, liminal states between life and death, suspended consciousness, absurd divine trials.
Slowly a hypothesis formed in his "mind," and he murmured, "Mmm... looks like... I'm not dead." The idea didn't exactly calm him, but at least it stopped him from complaining about the afterlife's interior design, for now.
Narrowing his eyes — or the mental equivalent — Jin reasoned that if his hypothesis was right, this place didn't follow normal physical laws. No body, no direction. So in theory, he thought, "if this is mental, I should be able to move just by intending to."
Focusing not on a foot or an arm — he couldn't feel either — but on the pure idea of advancing, on the feeling of motion, he felt it happen: the "space" responded.
His consciousness slid forward as if floating through the black abyss. No resistance, no rejection. Eyes widening in amazement, he murmured, "Oh... it works."
More confident the second time, he sped up, turned, rose, dropped — or so he believed, since direction there was debatable at best. Excitement took hold.
"Ha!" he thought, buzzing with energy, "Look at that! Mental flight unlocked!"
Soon he was tearing through the void at full speed, an invisible lightning bolt cutting through nothing — faster, freer, bolder — until a sharp pain exploded in his "mind."
"Agh!" he yelped instantly. "What the hell?! Who's trying to crack my brain open?!"
The sensation was strange, like someone pressing directly on his consciousness with invisible fingers. Not physical pain, but intense enough to paralyze him.
Taking a deep breath — or simulating one — Jin grumbled, "Alright, alright... I get it. No playing flying immortal."
As he calmed down, letting his mind stabilize as the pressure faded, he felt something else — a vague presence, distant but undeniable. He couldn't see or hear it, but he perceived it clearly, as if an invisible thread had tightened in the abyss. Something was calling him.
A shiver ran through his soul. "I don't like this," he thought. "This sounds dangerously like an 'important plot event.'"
Pure instinct made him try to resist, but before he could do anything his consciousness began to move — not because he'd chosen to, but because he was being pulled. The black abyss distorted around him as he was dragged toward that unknown presence without even time to complain properly.
Advancing — or being advanced, he couldn't tell which — he saw ahead, in the middle of the abyss, something different. It wasn't light, had no shape or color, and yet the darkness there was darker, as if even nothingness itself refused to properly exist in that spot. It made no sense, and precisely for that reason he got very nervous.
"Great..." he thought ironically, "premium darkness. That's never a good sign."
Drawing closer, an uncomfortable feeling washed over him, a visceral intuition, that inner voice screaming that something bad would happen if he kept going. That was when he heard something — very far away, so distant it seemed to come from another space, another plane. Voices.
"Will this young man survive...?" The voice was old, tired. Then others followed, smaller, trembling, overlapping: "Will Big Brother recover, Grandpa Pi...?" "He will... right?" They were children, nervous, scared, and Jin's heart skipped.
The voices continued, a little clearer now. "The way he killed that demon..." said another, firmer voice, "without a doubt, a hero like him will not die, children."
Each word echoed in the void, and with each phrase Jin felt something shift, because the force pulling him toward that deep darkness began to weaken, as if the voices were anchoring him and dragging him the opposite way.
The abyss began to tremble. Invisible cracks formed in nothingness itself, and the dark space began to collapse, fracturing like a broken mirror.
"Ah..." Jin murmured as mental clarity returned, "so that's what this was..."
The pull vanished completely, and in its place a heavy, familiar sensation slowly returned — the weight of his body and the sweet taste of pain. Darkness shattered, and Jin felt his consciousness shoved backward, falling from a great height.
The world returned in blurry colors, muffled sounds, and an uncomfortable pressure on his chest. Regaining consciousness, Jin slowly pushed himself up. The first thing he saw was a blurry smear of light and shadow, with an unfamiliar ceiling stretching above him.
A strange smell filled his nose, sweet and bitter with a herbal note that felt vaguely familiar. "What the hell...?" he murmured in a dry voice.
Just moments ago he'd been floating in a black abyss listening to distant voices, and now here he was, awake in a place he didn't recognize at all.
With a stifled groan, he pushed himself up in the bed. The movement sent a stab of pain through his whole body, from shoulders to legs, as if every muscle protested at once.
"Tch..."
Sitting up, he drew a deep breath and began to survey his surroundings. It was a kind of room, simple but clean and tidy, with a nearby table covered in ceramic and glass jars, some open, some sealed, all labeled with handwritten tags. In the corners and by the window, several medicinal plants grew. It looked like a healing hall, or something very similar.
Sensing no immediate danger, Jin turned his attention to himself. He looked down and fell silent.
"...What the hell...?"
Bandages covered him — arms, torso, shoulders, even parts of his legs. If anyone saw him right then, they could easily mistake him for a poorly wrapped mummy.
Carefully bringing a trembling hand to his abdomen, right where he clearly remembered there should have been a huge, bloody hole, his fingers touched the spot and froze. He felt pain, but not the cavity that should have been in his stomach.
"...This... doesn't make sense."
The wound that should have killed him was now just a scar. The hole had closed, and his organs didn't seem damaged.
Leaning back against the bed, frowning deeply, Jin murmured, "Definitely... I'm not dead. But someone's going to have to explain how the hell I'm still alive."