His head was killing him, which was strange considering he hadn’t had a headache in decades. Raising his hand to cup his head, the Fist King Jin Xia, felt a strange resistance pulling on his wrist. Opening his eyes against the skull piercing light, he beheld a sight that he’d not seen in over a century. He was in a hospital room, with an IV in his wrist. It was also at this moment that he felt the breathing tube in his throat.
Jin Xia had been stabbed, slashed, burned, frozen, electrocuted, had bones broken, and had one time been shot with a cannon at his own request just to see what it felt like. Yet still, the sensation of having a foot and a half long tube down his esophagus was only just below the awful sensation he felt while pulling it out on his personal worst list.
As he pulled the vile tube free, Jin Xia took a ragged breath into lungs he hadn’t used in lifetimes. The sweet chill of stale air in his lungs made stark the truth of his situation. He was home. After over a century spent scraping together power from nothing to fighting opponents who could fell a forest with a single swing of their swords, having to fight and bleed and kill, he was home.
Jubilation filled his heart as he pulled the IV tube from his arm and tried to rise from the bed, only to find that his body was impossibly heavy. It made sense in a way, since he’d had a breathing tube down his throat, this body must have been immobile for quite a time, of course it wasn’t used to moving. Slowly turning his head as if he was turning a boulder, Jin Xia looked around for some kind of remote to contact to contact the hospital staff. Finding a white remote with a big red button on a small table next to the bed next what looked like the remote for the currently turned off TV, he weakly reached over and pressed it with a slight click.
That was the only sound it made. After thinking for a moment, Jin Xia thought it made sense that it didn’t make noise when all it really had to do was make some kind of light come on at the nurse’s station to alert them that he needed assistance, so he settled in to wait for the nurses to come check on him and see that he was awake. Idly, he tried to remember his old name and try to think of what he would say when the nurse did get here. Being here in and of itself was quite a shock, considering Jin Xia had been under the impression that his death was what had sent him to the other world. He idly wondered what was happening to the body he had inhabited as the Fist King, considering it was the presumptive death of that body that had sent him back. At least Jin Xia thought he had died in the other world, the last thing he remembered was going to sleep, which would make him one of the few cultivators in the history of forever to die peacefully in his sleep.
That thought had amused Jin Xia greatly as he waited for a nurse to arrive. And waited. And waited some more. After what felt like some time, he wondered what exactly was taking so damn long. Granted, he had spent quite a time as someone who people jumped to obey for fear of his power, so his patience had likely suffered for it. Yet even still, it had been at least a decent amount of time and he was beginning to have some concerns.
Deciding that it was entirely possible that there was an elderly person on the floor somewhere having a heart attack or something, Jin Xia reached for the tv remote so he could put on the news and get some kind of basic information such as the date or see what kind of stupid thing people were pissed off about lately.
Pointing the remote at the tv, Jin Xia pressed the power button, only for nothing to happen. The TV remained stubbornly off, no matter how many times he hit the button. The remote didn’t have a little indicator light that lit up when someone hit the button, but he could see that the TV was plugged into the wall, so he guessed the batteries were dead. It made sense, changing the remote batteries of a coma patient wouldn’t be high on someones list of priorities at the best of time. Oh well, nothing for it.
Centering his mind and focusing on his hearing, Jin Xia strained to hear any sign of what was goin on outside his hospital room, only to hear nothing. That’s when it occurred to him that there should probably been a heartbeat monitor hooked up to him. Looking to his side, Jin Xia did indeed see a heartbeat monitoring machine. A powered OFF heartbeat monitoring machine. There was no electricity flowing into his room.
Jin Xia briefly considered that the power had simply gone out, but that didn’t make any sense since basically every hospital should’ve had an on-site generator for that exact scenario. Which meant something was very very wrong.
To say getting out of the bed was incredibly difficult was an understatement, especially since he had grown used to a body empowered by Qi for far longer than he had even lived his first life, but he’d struggled through far harder tribulations than this and Jin Xia would be damned if he let something as simple as getting out of bed beat him.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Using his IV pole to support his weight, Jin Xia slowly hobbled to the door of his hospital room. Luckily, the door opened with a light push on the door bar, revealing an absolute mess. Medical carts were tipped over, papers littered the floor, and everything was covered in a very visible layer of dust.
Looking around, only a single question occupied the mind of the once most feared person in all of the Jianghu. “What the hell happened”?
Making his way to the nurse’s station at the center of the floor, Jin Xia took in his surroundings as best he could with the limited light seeping in from the open hospital rooms, and came to the conclusion that whatever happened had caused people evacuate in quite the hurry and he just happened to have been left behind. Reaching the nurse’s station, Jin Xia looked around for anything that might’ve given him a clue as to what exactly that something had been.
Unfortunately, considering the newspaper had long since died and news had gone digital, the only information he found was off one of those tear away desk calendars, and that information hit him like a brick. “December 2024,” Jin Xia said with a shaky breath. Six months after the accident that he thought killed him sent him to the other world. All the tragedy he had experience in his other life, from being born a peasant in a pre industrial society to having to risk his life cultivating and fighting against those hypocrites of the Orthodox Sects and thugs of the Unorthodox ones for centuries until he presumably passed in his sleep at the age of two hundred thirty seven. All of that, and only something like six months had passed in his original world.
Granted, that was a pretty fuzzy estimation, considering all the dust on everything, but it was clear to Jin Xia that not much time had passed at all. He guessed that was a good thing, considering that meant he could slot into his old life with hopefully little difficulty, natural disaster or whatever the hell happened notwithstanding.
It was at this moment that his body reminded him that he was not some sage who could comfortably subsist off the morning dew and rays of the afternoon sun, but in fact, required such things as sustenance to survive. Jin Xia chuckled to himself, he had long forgotten what hunger had felt like. He started looking for some kind of navigation sign that would point him to the cafeteria where he might be able to find something to eat that hopefully hadn’t spoiled when he saw it.
Shone upon with a ray of heavenly light, as if he was being directed there by god themselves’ was a vending machine. A fully stocked vending machine. Resisting the urge to fall to his knees and weep with joy, Jin Xia hobbled over to the glorious dispenser of sugary and fatty garbage as fast as he could to lay his eyes upon the mundane sight he had missed so dearly. He was not ashamed that before he had found himself in the other world, he had quite the taste for all things sweet or fatty. In fact, he had been quite out of shape because of it, but the silver lining of having been in some kind of coma for at least six months had caused the pounds to melt right off of him. If anything, Jin Xia was currently rather emaciated, which meant that he could indulge himself with impunity. He had just started to look around to see if anyone had dropped there wallet or even a few dollars when the crushing weight of reality fell upon his shoulders. The power was out. It didn’t matter if he found any money because the damn thing wouldn’t work anyway. Jin Xia was about ready to curse fate itself when he realized that there was nobody around. Therefore nobody to stop him from getting a five finger discount.
Gripping his IV pole with both hands and standing well to the side of the vending machine, Jin Xia carefully steadied himself and swung has hard as his weakened body could. Now, he was nowhere near full condition for even a normal person, but he’d had literally decades of experience breaking things, so the glass didn’t stand a chance.
Collecting his delicious treasures, Jin Xia made his way back to his hospital room to have a well deserved feast. Sitting on his bed, he slowly held his first prize up to the light, and was eternally grateful for the gift he had just received. A lukewarm bottle of coke and a bag of barbecue chips. If his past self could see how he was looking at a soda, he would’ve been deeply confused. Yet considering the only things sweet that he had tasted in the other world had been sweetened with honey, the bottle of high fructose corn syrupy nectar was worth a carriage full of gold.
With some difficulty, Jin Xia opened the bottle with exceeding care, being sure to not spill even a single drop. Bring it to his lips, he took a small sip and felt the carbonated waters of nirvana fill his mouth with the taste, the ultimate proof, that he was finally home. For the first time in over fifty years, the Fist King Jin Xia, no, Arthur Meadows wept.
