Geraldine screamed, her voice lost amidst the fire and smoke of a dozen machine guns. The gunmen laughed maniacally as their shots aimed true, their bullets scything across Hong’s body in a fatal wave of iron death.
Hong’s ancient robes were shredded instantly, much to his annoyance - he’d only just changed them. Now he’d need a new pair of old robes. Those weren't easy to get - they had to be properly aged like wine in a barrel, and let out to bleach in the sun. That took Hong time, time he could have spent repairing noodle shops. (Alas, the things we do for drip.)
If the bandit gang was hoping this would kill Hong, however, they would find themselves sorely mistaken. The absent-looking cultivator continued to walk forwards, straight into the gunfire, bullets bouncing off his magnificent pecs. Their firearms no more affected him than might a particularly irksome pebble.
The bandits stared on in horror as Hong continued to advance, whistling all the while. Their leader - a thin, cocky youth with black hair - was especially surprised. His jaw had dropped, his eyes were bugging out of his head, and his gun tipped down, the weapon nearly falling to the ground as his hands loosened on the grip.
“You… but… how…” he just barely managed to stutter out, his voice breaking in terror. “You… you… you… you shouldn't be able to do that…”
“Of course I can do that. I'm a cultivator,” Hong observed casually, and sent the man flying. He slammed into and through the next wall… then through the next… and the next… and the- oh, you get the point.
The rest of the fight cannot rightly be called a fight. Even a slaughter would, perhaps, be too strong a term. In truth it was much like how Hong repaired a noodle shop, only in reverse: instead of repairing the shop and then cleaning up, Hong cleaned up the mess prior to doing any repairs. He whistled while he worked, figuring that if nothing else he might at least enjoy the labour.
“Well, I'd say that was a pleasure, but that would be acting with insincerity,” Hong declared laconically when finally he had finished, slapping his hands together.
His compatriots were less enthused. Geraldine was the very picture of horror, her wide mouth matching her eyes, every nerve of her body stretched taut with terror. Mu tried to keep himself from vomiting, internally groaning all the while. He knew Hong was habitually brutal with those who disrespected noodle shops, but did he have to be so heavy-handed in front of a lady? And what had these people even done to noodle shops?
Trying to distract himself from the intermediate mess Hong had made and was presently cleaning up, Mu vocalised these concerns. Hong simply pointed in reply.
Mu had been rather distracted by the bandits - a gunman can do that to you, even when he poses no threat whatsoever - and as a consequence had failed to take in much if anything of the town.
The village - Mu still didn't know its name - was in a sorry state. There were multiple dead upon the ground, including, from their appearance, both the Baron and his son. The town hall was all aflame, as was the bank (freshly burgled) and many of the houses.
Of the town's inn there was no sign, merely a remnant; rubble upon the ground, with only the remains of a tankard to mark where once it had been. Under one of the collapsed door frames could be seen the legs of the innkeeper, crushed as he tried to flee.
All of a sudden Mu felt an awful lot less sympathy for the bandits.
Finally, Geraldine found her voice. “You… but… how…” she said, parroting her dead former classmate.
Hong and Mu looked at her in confusion, and finally she found her voice. “You were hit by d-dozens of bullets. How are you still standing?”
“I’m a cultivator,” Hong casually returned, as if the question was nonsensical. “All cultivators can pull off a minor feat like that.”
***
“Mmmmm,” said Ping Fu, smacking his lips. He licked each one of his fingers with meticulous care, accentuating just how tasty and delicious his snack was and just how much he’d enjoyed it. “Mmmhmmm. Mmm mmm mmm. Oh boy is this good. Why, it’s so tasty I think I’ll have another piece.”
And so saying he reached into a bowl on the nearby ledge, removing another fistful of nails and glass. He stuffed the crunchy treat into his mouth and chomped down, his jaw contorting into weird and fantastical shapes as it sought to break up the delightful delicacy.
“Oh man, this is so good. It’s just so tasty. Man, I bet you wish you could eat food half this delicious,” he observed, reaching for more nails and glass. The mortal bathhouse attendant stared at him with impotent rage, utterly incapable of doing anything to the cultivator who was cruelly rubbing his greater gastronomic capabilities in the man’s face and equally incapable of enjoying the cultivator’s crunchy culinary canapé.
“Bloody cultivators and their status symbols,” the bathhouse attendant swore. Ping just lifted up a glass of arsenic and bleach in a toast, before reaching for more nails and glass. The Young Master leaned back in his bath of lava, utterly relaxed. Ah, this was the life.
He’d never understand those other Young Masters who felt obliged to derive their face through acts of violence. Why kill the mortals when you could dab on them?
***
“There are some benefits to being a cultivator, you know,” Hong observed vaguely, gesturing off into the distance. “If you don’t believe me, you can just ask Mu - he could do what I did just as well as I, after all.”
Here Mu blushed, unused to being put under the spotlight.
“At any rate,” Hong said, stretching, his back making that weird popping sound as he did, “the fight is done; and you know what comes next.”
And here the Author is in a bit of a predicament, albeit not one the equal of his rational faculties. Does he describe the cleanup process or not? A hard decision, to be sure. On the one hand there lies the risk of boring his readers to death (and thus courting death himself) through tedious description, on the other is the gaping maw of being deemed Not Realistic by his critics, who stand ever ready with their skewers and fish hooks, for the lack of the same.
His critics, or his readers. Who is the more important? Does he inform the readers about how Hong travelled to the regional governor, Geraldine in tow, made a report on the events with her as a witness, and then rescheduled his meeting so he could head back to the town and repair it? Does he bother explaining the repair process, such as how Hong arranged for the next in line to the baronetcy to sign off on the paperwork prior to fixing all the houses (and the inn)? Does he go into detail about how, when at last the repair process was done, the townspeople threw Hong a party? Does he- oh, wait, it’s over.
Phew. That would have been mighty boring. Now, back to the jokes and fighting!
“Wait, hold up,” Geraldine said, interrupting the Author’s narration, “where’d the repair process go? It felt like one second we were standing over the body of my dead classmate, and the next the cleanup process was already complete.”
“Indeed. Time flies when you’re doing paperwork,” Hong observed. “Yet it always seems to drag when you’re in a fight.”
The three stood there companionably for a moment, gazing over the hills as they ruminated about how strange it was that entertaining scenes seemed to occupy more of their time.
“So… what now?” Geraldine finally asked. “What do I do next?”
Mu looked at her sympathetically.
“You said you haven’t registered, yes?” Hong asked calmly. Geraldine shook her head.
“From the time I was born till now, no one told me I should.”
Hong didn’t swear, because that would be immodest, but if he did he would’ve. Rustics. He’d confirmed, during the course of his repairs, that they did in fact have a tradition about never mentioning the existence of transmigrators - which of course meant that the poor girl had never known that there were others who knew of her plight and could help her.
“Then registering should be at the top of your list of priorities. The Bureau for Transmigrator Affairs can help you get settled in - properly settled in; not glomming onto a half-baked prophecy in a village in the sticks (and here she winced) - and provide you with the fiscal and cultivation resources you need to properly thrive.”
“And it won’t be a problem that I… am possessing another person’s body?” She asked slowly. Hong chortled and gave the embarrassed Mu a wry glance.
“You’re not possessing another person’s body. A flesh wearer steals the body from someone already using it, and expels their soul; you reincarnated into it at birth, and displaced no soul. Per current criminal law, this makes you a Rebirther birth-type transmigrator rather than a Flesh Wearer birth-type transmigrator - something Mu should have known.”
Mu blushed, embarrassed once more at having caused an innocent lady to feel emotional distress through a momentary slip of the tongue. Geraldine was just confused. Hong had explained the legal classification of transmigrators to her a couple times, but though she could grasp it in theory the application in practice slightly eluded her - especially as it appeared that birth-type was not the only way they classified transmigrators. Hong had gone through the entire tripartite schema with her, but that had simply confused her further.
Still, those were merely theoretical complaints of hers. In practice, however confused she may be, she knew what she had to do. She gulped and steadied herself.
“So… where’s this bureau located?”
