Chapter 1: Ken!
"Even the greatest of men meet their doom." A voice, seemingly from a youth, reverberated in a small house.
The room was dimly lit, filled with the smell of incense as a candle flickered lightly on the only table inside of the room.
In the left corner, a young man wearing a plain white robe was in a lotus position, his eyes seemingly just accepting his fate.
A few hours have passed since he woke up, trying to make sense of his situation.
He looked down; the bed, which was nothing but a plank of wood, had patches of dried-up blood, similar to his robe.
Whoever's body this was, he has possessed, seems to have met an untimely death in preparation for his taking over.
No visible wounds on the body and no clues whatsoever as to what could have happened to this poor young man.
Ken, the soul who had just arrived in this unknown world, mused as he dove back into the stream of memories he had long since absorbed.
"A newly recruited outer sect disciple of the Spirit Mountain Sect. To even call this an assassination attempt would be absurd. His background is nothing to consider, coming from an ordinary couple barely making ends meet in one of the cities of this sect's vassal kingdom." He spoke with his eyes closed.
"But from the information I have so far, he doesn't seem to have any terminal illness or anything of the sort." Ken said, and then stood silent for a couple of seconds.
He then traversed all the way to the most recent of memories.
This sect's recruitment was nothing special for its self-proclaimed strongest sect of the continent title; anyone who had as little as a dust's worth of cultivation potential was recruited, so this body, who had an above-average talent, was welcomed with open arms.
Core-talent or spirit roots, as the sect liked to call it, was divided from 10th grade to 1st, and this one was a 7th, good enough to become an inner sect disciple and have a slight chance to make it to the core sect if he was smart enough.
But with Ken's calculations, such a thing would have taken years, if ever, and with the dangers such sect disciples faced, that was very unlikely.
But the matter at hand was how he died.
"I'm lacking information." Having just entered the supernatural world, the original body had little to no information whatsoever when it came to the capabilities of the cultivators.
Ken tried to make sense of what he knew from his own knowledge with the bits and pieces of what the original body knew, but even so, it wasn't very effective.
Thus, he had no way of knowing what could possibly cause the death of the previous Ken.
Then, when he came to the latest memory, he discovered something.
The late body, being ambitious and wanting to take advantage of an opportunity, had gone and chosen a cultivation technique that the elder in charge of the Mountain Scrolls Pagoda warned him against again and again.
"I see." The case was closed.
The young man, having lived his entire life as a poor youth, had his fate change 180 degrees, not only joining the illusory mountain spirit sect but even discovering that he has above-average spirit roots.
This played a bigger effect on his head and confidence than Ken would have allowed on himself had it been him.
Thus, the result was obvious.
Hearing that the sect would allow the newly recruited disciples to join an excavation of a newly discovered secret realm and promising generous rewards to whoever brought more information and loot made him want to go above and beyond and achieve high gains in a short amount of time.
Well, this led to his death in an untimely manner, rather than what he had hoped.
"Judging from that elder's reaction, this seems to be a common event... It's just unfortunate this this young man had it happen to him..." Having come to a conclusion, Ken sighed.
"That is good." He then nodded.
This saved him the trouble of having to be careful against troublesome foes; even more so, this might give him some leeway to remain inconspicuous later on.
Don't take him wrong; Ken just believed that the dumbest course of action anyone could take when they were weak and lacked information was showing off.
Thus, what he wished for now more than anything was having enough time to figure things out before having to dive into danger, and what he hated more than anything was having no control over his own fate.
This was how he did things back then and it worked well enough—well, at least before a truck hit him out of nowhere.
"Thinking back, things seemed pretty strange back on earth when the truck hit me. I even faintly saw some kind of swirling blue energy, like a portal, but that was after I got a direct hit." He said.
Maybe things were getting out of hand back on Earth as well.
That would explain the truck rushing at him out of nowhere, or maybe it was just his time to die.
All in all, the feeling of being torn to shreds after being hit by a truck wasn't pleasing, causing his skin to shiver even now. He couldn't make sense of it, but after waking up, he found himself in this body.
"Whatever had happened back then wasn't normal. But oh well."
"Even the greatest of men meet their doom."
------End------
This is not a cultivation novel. I repeat, this is not a cultivation novel.
Welcome, lads and ladies, to this new and wonderful journey of Ken.
You can expect a story with rich world-building and good enough grammar and an experienced author.
And let's not forget diverse characters with all kinds of personalities.