Eli Bartok had lived a long, drab, unfulfilled life. Now, here he was at 89, laying on his death bed. The only person that had bother to show up was his hospice nurse that was paid to show up. His children had abandoned him years before. His eldest daughter had cut ties after she went public with her public and started making a few hundred thousand a year. His son hadn't spoken to him since he married a successful woman and joined her family. His youngest daughter had stayed the longest. She had stayed with him after Eli had been diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer. She stayed through most of the chemo. Hell, she even helped him with rehab. Yet, the moment that he had been bedridden and unable to work, that was when her husband had threatened to divorce her and take the children away from her if she didn't cut ties.
Eli didn't blame any of them. After all, Eli hadn't amounted to much. His best salary had only been $60,000 a year. However, that company sold out to another company that had simply fired most of them, a mere 2 years after achieving that salary. He had been living paycheck-to-paycheck most his life. He had never really indulged in any hobbies except for reading on various topics online. He hadn't really even gotten out since his wife left 50 years ago. He had become reclusive even from his own children. So, it was only fitting that they also abandoned him as well.
As his breath started to slow and his vision dimmed, he began cursing himself. All this time, wasted. If only I had a chance to do it all over again. I would actually do things I wanted instead of watching life pass me by. In his final moments, Eli saw a tunnel with light at the other end. He felt as if he was being pulled towards the light without any ability to resist.
As he passed through the tunnel, he felt as if his body was being slowly sanded and compressed. The pain started lightly, but began to build until he was screaming. As he was hurtled into the light, his eyes snapped shut from the brightness as his body began to feel so small and weak. The pain finally began fading away, as his weird sounding wails faded with it. Damn. I didn't know that death was going to hurt that bad, even after I haddied. It was at this moment that he started hearing weird voices. Struggling to open his eyes, he realized something deeply unsettling. He wasn't dead, he had been reborn as a baby and wherever he was, it wasn't somewhere that spoke english.
***
Three years had flown by as Eli was getting used to the world. Only a few months after being born again, his mother had given him away for money, scampering away with obvious glee. Well, guess I'm going to be getting nowhere in this life either. No way am I going to be getting any real opportunities as an orphan. It was at this time that Eli began noticing more of his surrounding as his vision developed. It seemed like the technology of this world was woefully behind compared to his previous life. Yet, medicines were a juxtaposition in this regard. They seemed to be rather crude in the manner that they were produced. However, the variety and range of effects and potencies spoke of a level of development that met or exceeded that of his previous life.
Slowly, he began to understand the language spoken around him, opening him up to even greater knowledge. He now knew that he resided in a town called Tranquil Acres, in a place called the Knowledge Sect. Eli found the names quite fitting for eachother. Although, he couldn't verify if the city or sect fit their names just yet. He also learned that either his name, if he'd been given one, wasn't passed on, or simply was ignored, as they referred to him as 'the child'.
However, none of this shocked him as much as the knowledge that this world was a world of cultivation. One could learn martial arts that would transform ones body and extend life. It was like one of those novels people read in his previous life. When he heard about that, he felt a stirring of interest that he hadn't in a long time. Now, he just needed to find some way to join a sect so that he could learn techniques to cultivate with.