The First Transmigrat

Three years passed, and when I finished drafting the basic framework of my cultivation system, something shifted.

It wasn't a boom of power, no blinding flash, no mysterious ancient entity whispering in my ear. Just… something quiet. Subtle.

I gained authority from the language itself.

It sounds absurd, even to me now. But in that moment, it was real. The moment I finished laying out the structure of my system, carefully scribbling every step and possibility on a scrap of cheap leather with diluted ink, I felt it. A weightless clarity, like a veil lifting.

Whatever I said—it was.

Not because I was some chosen one or some heaven-defying genius. Just because I had defined it. Named it. Given it shape. I didn't even notice at first. But when I muttered a random phrase I hadn't written yet—and it fit, perfectly, almost naturally, like it was always meant to be there—I knew something had clicked.

That's when I blacked out for a few seconds. Or minutes. Hard to say.

When I came to, the ink was dry, my room smelled like old paper and fresh obsession, and the foundations were there. Real. Rooted. Almost breathing.

I was pumped. Not from arrogance—but from the thrill of creating something real.

The language I was forming wasn't just for speaking or chanting some fake spell in a half-baked MTL novel. No, this was different. I didn't want a tool.

I wanted a mirror of reality. A reflection of how the world worked—or at least how we understood it. A language that wasn't just made for communication, but for learning, comprehending, defining.

It wasn't even really "my" language.

I left it open. Undefined in the right places. Loose around the edges. It had no name. It didn't need one. For anyone who touched it, it would simply be… understanding. The world's comprehension of itself. It wasn't a secret code or a divine tongue—just truth, scraped together with cheap ink and stubborn clarity.

And when I declared it to the empty room—this is the language that defines the world—I felt it again.

No surge of power. No sudden control over time and space.

Just… understanding. A terrifying amount of it.

Clarity.

I ran out of material the next day. All my paper was covered in half-baked glyphs, concepts, broken runes, diagrams, and corrections. I hadn't eaten properly in two days, and even my dreams were just looping geometric patterns muttering half-formed words.

So, naturally, I went to the grocery store.

I must have looked like a madman—hair unwashed, eyes bloodshot, arms cradling rolls of parchment, boxes of ink, stacks of supplies that no normal person would ever buy all at once unless they were opening a low-budget printing press.

Which, well… I kind of was.

On the way back, I ran into Old Dao.

He looked at me like I was a ghost.

Fair enough. I hadn't interacted with anyone much since I started trying to bend reality into coherent cultivation logic using cosmic energy and stolen metaphors. Old Dao was probably the only human being I had talked to more than twice in the past year. And even that had stopped ever since I locked myself into the world of ink and glyphs.

"You look like a scholar who forgot what day it is," he chuckled.

I laughed. "I'm just trying to rewrite the laws of reality with calligraphy. You know, normal stuff."

He invited me to dinner again. I declined. I was close. Not to the end. There was no end. But I was close to a foundation I could build on.

The house I lived in had changed. It didn't feel like a place anymore—it felt like a furnace. There was ink on every wall, scrolls stacked like bricks, a constant low hum in the air, like the paper was murmuring to itself.

And yet… I was far from done.

Aside from the cultivation system and the language, I'd also been sketching out some minor inventions from Earth. Just for utility.

A toothbrush. A draft for a simple airplane (won't fly, but still). A basic printing press. Even some musings about steam, pressure, combustion. Gunpowder—I had memorized a few things with Sam back when we were bored. Not enough to start a revolution. But enough to make something go boom, if needed.

Still, none of those things excited me like the cultivation system.

I had spent months refining it, and I was finally at a point where the base was sturdy enough to stand on.

I started with the runes. Letters. Definitions. Concepts.

A rune wasn't just a letter or symbol. It was a compressed thought, an intention, something that made the formless, form. Language made of reason and instinct. When drawn properly, they could act as tiny anchors—grabbing onto pieces of the world and pulling them closer to the user's intent.

Of course, I wasn't drawing mountain-crushing sigils like in those over-the-top novels. Nothing flashy. Nothing wild.

I had: mist. Rain. A small pull of gravity. A slight shift in temperature. After three years of obsessive trial and error, I could make a single talisman that could make a room slightly colder. That was my win.

No realms. No lightning dragons. Just… slight discomfort.

But it was real.

Formations came next. Basically runes stitched together across surfaces—paper, wood, metal, even leather.

A pain to test. But doable.

Alchemy was the one that drove me crazy.

You know what sucks? Medical science.

Especially when you're trying to reinvent it from scratch, in a world where supernatural healing doesn't exist, and you're working with dried herbs bought from shady street vendors.

I had no mentors. No Qi. Just books, experiments, mistakes, and a dwindling wallet.

I destroyed a few gangs—yes, real ones. Looted a few corrupt officials, and used that money to buy every herbal book I could find. The categorization alone took months.

But slowly, I figured out the basics. Not magical pills. Just efficient medicine. Pain relief. Sleep-inducing herbs. Wound treatments. Then enhancements—herbs that stimulated blood flow, increased stamina, cleared toxins. Real stuff. Harsh. Crude. But real.

My self-proclaimed disciple, the kid who got dragged home by guards all those years ago, helped me build the library.

Well, "help" is a strong word.

I leeched off him.

I told him it was a trial. A rite of passage to become my disciple. And he believed it. Earnestly. Bless him.

He organized, carried, categorized, even memorized a few of the books. He funded me too. Sometimes I think he just liked hanging around me because I talked like I was on the verge of insanity.

But I appreciated him. We had a healthy bond. I used him. He let me.

Give and take.

Mostly take.

So now, after years of obsession, starvation, enlightenment, trial and error, debt, theft, invention, half-insanity and a surprisingly effective toothbrush—

—I had a foundation.

The system was crude. Clunky. Not user-friendly. I wasn't sure if people could even cultivate with it. But it was real. Grounded.

Not some copy-paste garbage from an MTL site.

Not some stolen wuxia cultivation realm nonsense.

Mine.

The runes, the formations, the language, the path. The rituals of borrowing energy from cosmic forces through my golden eyes. The idea of body refinement, spiritual opening, the embryonic formation of divine abilities—it was all here.

Raw. But alive.

So the next question was:

Should I start spreading the path?

Let others walk it?

Let them borrow my image, my energy, my route?

Let them expand it, deepen it, deviate from it?

Maybe. Maybe not.

But I had laid the first brick.

And I was starting to think...

I really might be cut out for this ancestor thing after all.