"What was that?" Tang Ze asked. He was lying on the floor, face and body coated in sweat.
He had thought that the Grimoire of Heaven would help him along his cultivation journey - that he might even end up jumping a minor realm or two. Either that, or he would get a deeper understanding of himself.
Instead, it felt like going through all of his nightmares, but dialed up to eleven!
If anything, he felt even more confused about himself than when he had walked in.
He couldn't make heads or tails of some of the things he had seen that were not related to his earlier life, but what he did understand didn't exactly give him any tranquility or inner peace like he would've expected.
If possible, he would've asked for a refund for his ticket, or would've gone back in time to stop himself from ever coming to use it.
"I take it that the wisdom ingrained in the Grimoire of Heaven was too much for junior to handle?" the sect elder asked, seeing Tang Ze's bewildered expression.
"You could say that again," Tang Ze said, wiping the sweat from his brow. The guy who was lined up to go after him now gave the book an apprehensive look as he saw what it had done to Tang Ze.
Tang Ze was left to go back to the sect, wondering all the while what that book had been trying to tell him.
The man who had stabbed his brother - okay, he had had a terrible childhood, so what? It didn't make Tang Ze have the slightest bit more sympathy towards the man, if that was what the Grimoire of Heaven was trying to say.
What really unnerved him was that… thing he had seen wrapped around his body. Even now, he shook himself, wondering if it was somehow still clinging to him, invisible to his eyes for now.
As Tang Ze continued to contemplate this over the coming days, it was Zhang Long's turn to use the Grimoire of Heaven.
He had been a bit apprehensive about trying the thing after what it did to Tang Ze, but he wasn't going to back out now.
A white light flashed over him much like it had with Tang Ze when he started, and Zhang Long found himself back in his village, looking at another version of himself, though maybe four or five years younger than he was right now.
"Hello other me!" Zhang Long called out, though this other Zhang Long did not respond to his voice. It did not look like other-Zhang Long could hear him. "Hmm… so I'm just here to watch things then?"
Zhang Long watched as this other version of himself looked kind of worried, and he was clearly waiting for someone - who turned out to be Jin Zhen.
Jin Zhen had a cold look on her face that Zhang Long was not familiar with. He initially thought that perhaps something had gone wrong, but he couldn't recall anything like this happening in his memories. Not to mention that Jin Zhen didn't look worried - and it wasn't just her facial expression, but her entire demeanor that had turned icy. Where was the warm and bubbly childhood friend he'd known for so long?
"Listen, Zhang Long," this Jin Zhen said. "I… can't be with you anymore."
"What!?" both Zhang Longs shouted out simultaneously.
"It's just, your cultivation level is trash," Jin Zhen said. "I've been supporting you for so long, but my parents don't think that you're going to amount to much - and, I, really can't say 'no' to them any longer. I'm sorry, Zhang Long, but they're cutting off our engagement. My parents have found a new match for me. From now on, this is goodbye."
While the other Zhang Long was still flabbergasted, the real Zhang Long stroked his chin as he felt that several things were off about this whole scenario. This Jin Zhen was behaving completely abnormally - but what was the Grimoire of Heaven trying to tell him here?
The other Zhang Long began pleading, even crying, though Jin Zhen simply turned around and walked away, his pleas falling on deaf ears.
Zhang Long saw this other self of his then ran towards the river, where he completely burst into tears.
Zhang Long couldn't help but think that this other version of himself was kind of pathetic. That said, he wasn't sure how he would've reacted if Jin Zhen actually said those words to him, mainly because he was sure that she would never do so. He did think that he would take it better than this, though.
Other-Zhang Long, once he was done sobbing, decided to head back home. As he was trudging along the road though, a carriage came out of nowhere and nearly crashed into other-Zhang Long, who barely avoided it.
The encounter, though, caused the carriage to swerve off the road, and someone emerged out of it, glaring angrily at other-Zhang Long.
"You dumb peasant!" the man yelled out at him. The real Zhang Long frowned, he had never seen this person before - he was wearing elegant robes and seemed to come from at least moderate wealth. "How dare you obstruct this young master's carriage?!"
Other-Zhang Long was then forced to kowtow fifty times while apologizing, and when he got home, his parents disowned him.
"Zhang Long, we heard what happened with that young master, and this village can't afford to be enemies with him," his father said with a sigh. "We can't be associated with you anymore."
"That, and your talent is trash. We can't be seen continuing to support you," his mother added.
With those cold words, his parents threw other-Zhang Long out.
Meanwhile, the real Zhang Long watched this all happen with a perplexed expression on his face. Why was everyone in his life in this weird alternate reality acting so differently than they actually did? And how did these two events - Jin Zhen breaking her engagement with him and nearly getting run over by that young master's carriage happen so close to each other on the same day? It was like this version of him had the inverse luck of Leonald the Lucky Leprechaun.
Not to mention, as he thought about it, why was that young master's carriage going through his village in the first place? Their village was a backwater and not really connected to any important areas. It made no sense whatsoever.
Still, even as he thought this, other-Zhang Long was left to wander the wilderness, not a penny to his name, and enduring the wrath of the wild animals and the elements until one day, near a different village, someone walked up to him.
"Tang Ze?" Zhang Long muttered to himself - though there was something off about this Tang Ze, namely in the fact that he was about two hundred pounds heavier than his real-life counterpart. Not to mention this wasn't how he had met Tang Ze in the real world, and overall, this scene didn't line up with events that had happened like Tang Ze helping him save Jin Zhen.
However, he supposed that he couldn't have met Tang Ze the same way given what had just happened to him earlier.
"Hello, friend, are you lost?" the overweight Tang Ze asked this world's Zhang Long.
"Ah, yes, I don't even know where to start with things," the other Zhang Long said, a despondent tone in his voice. Other-Zhang Long then explained what had happened to him.
This other world's Tang Ze said, "In such a case, if you need a roof to sleep under, you can come with me."
It seemed that this other Tang Ze didn't have his actual talent for copying strengths based on costumes, but was somewhat wealthy instead. Also, from the conversation going on between his other self and this other Tang Ze, Zhang Long deduced that this Tang Ze had always lived in this place close to his village.
Again, this contrasted greatly with reality where Tang Ze claimed to come from a very distant land.
The scene shifted to the next day, as this other Zhang Long decided to go for a walk, and somewhere in the woods, tripped over a root, and then found a small ring buried in the mud.
Upon wearing this ring, a voice called out to Zhang Long.
"Hello!"
It turned out that this ring contained the soul of an Eternal Soul cultivator who had passed away several decades ago, and as this other Zhang Long wore it, this old cultivator could communicate with him and started to give him pointers on cultivating.
"Thanks, gramps!" the other Zhang Long said as the two of them started training.
First off, this old grandpa's soul helped Zhang Long find a couple of inheritances hidden in secret realms, and unlike the book he had gotten in real life which gave out a single technique, all of the inheritances that this other Zhang Long found were heaven-defying treasures which took almost no effort to get once he had found then.
If the inheritance that Zhang Long had found in real life had been a two out of ten on the difficulty scale of inheritances, the ones that this Zhang Long found could charitably be given a difficulty rating of zero. He was basically just handed several relics and pills that allowed his cultivation to skyrocket, jumping up four minor realms in under a month's time.
It would be incredible for even someone who had the full backing of the Imperial Family to accomplish something like that, but this world's Zhang Long's luck didn't stop there.
Time was flowing at varying paces while Zhang Long watched this - all of the 'boring' parts were skipped to get to the more interesting bits.
One month after he had been kicked out of his parent's house and was still living with an obese and wealthy version of Tang Ze, this Tang Ze told him of a way that they could get back at the young master who had face-slapped him earlier.
"So, I know that his family has this rare treasure, and word on the street is there is an entrance to their house that isn't that secure," Tang Ze said. "With grandpa's help, I think we could easily break in and take that treasure. Just think of it as 'compensation' for all that he did to you."
"Alright," the other Zhang Long said, agreeing to this act of brazen theft rather easily.
The two of them broke into the noble family's house, and stole the treasure in question - which turned out to be some kind of odd sphere.
The two of them took it back, only for it to turn out a few days later that it wasn't some kind of sphere - it was actually an egg!
It began hatching, and out of it emerged a tiny dragon with snow-white scales. It looked at this world's Zhang Long with adoring eyes, likely thinking that he was its mother.
"I will call you - Xiao Bai!" other-Zhang Long said. The dragon let out a happy growl as it nestled in his hair.
Dragons were very powerful creatures which were in the realm of phoenixes, basically, in real life, Zhang Long would've been lucky if he ever happened to lay eyes on one, let alone being able to raise one as his pet.