The Heavenly Martial Empress Returns: An OP Xianxia Returnee LitRPG

Chapter 41: Bing Xue’s Backstory Part 1: A Harsh World

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“Cough, cough… Ugh.”

Inside an abandoned-looking, damp wooden cabin, a young woman in her mid-twenties coughed blood. Surrounding her kneeling body were piles of different grasses, bottles, and a rusty alchemy cauldron. Her hands were bloody, covered by the broken shards of the bottle she had used to drink an Elixir.

“Agh…! Fuck!”

She felt a throbbing pain that started inside her stomach and then spread across the rest of her body. A burning sensation that made her feel like she was about to melt. The sensation only intensified with each passing second. She felt like she was going to vomit her own guts at any moment.

“Hahhh… I can’t die. Mom… Ruby!”

She gritted her teeth as she fell onto the wooden floor. The burning sensation intensified with every moment she gave. She was told that to awaken fully into a cultivator, she’d need to first burn her sealed Meridians with Ki, which was only acquirable to mortals by drinking poisonous elixirs.

The deadly energies that her human body could not handle properly started to spread further, like a deadly acid. It felt like her insides were burning and melting. The agony she felt was nothing compared to anything she had ever experienced to this point.

Even when she was beaten almost to death at the corner of the street for stealing a rice ball to eat or when her left arm was stabbed by a cursed, rusted knife, giving her a horrendous infection and an intense fever that lasted several days.

Tears started flowing from Katherine’s eyes as she experienced the pain. Forcing herself to stand up only to fall onto the wooden floor constantly, blood mixing with broken glass shards and her own tears.

“Mom…”

As she kept trying to remember her family, she couldn’t help but think about the experiences she had gone through after she landed on this strange, alien world.

It happened in a flash; a bright blue light swallowed her whole when she was moving back home after a day of hard work at the office.

She was going to drink a lot of beer and eat snacks as usual; the weekend was coming.

Yet…

“Huh? W-Where am I?”

In the blink of an eye, she found herself in the middle of farmland. Rice fields extended as far as the eye could see, and in the far background, enormous white peaks extended.

However, the most bizarre sight wasn’t this, but the skies!

They weren’t blue like back home; no, they rotated in a myriad of colors.

Sometimes they turned red, other times yellow, then black, green, and blue again!

It was almost psychedelic to watch.

“W-What is this? Am I… am I dreaming?”

“ROAR!”

However, her first experience in Murim was unkind. From the bushes to her left, something roared, and a creature appeared. A gray-colored wolf with a golden horn on top of its head. The golden horn seemed to be producing small amounts of electricity.

“E-Eh?”

Katherine, back then, felt completely paralyzed by the sight in front of her. A wolf as big as two meters with a golden horn appeared!

“Yeah, this is definitely a dream. Did I fall asleep on the bus? Hahh…”

“RAAARR!”

ZAAAP!

Yet the pain she felt when the wolf released a spark of electricity that zapped her away quickly made her realize she wasn’t dreaming.

“Aaargh! W-What?! Ugh…! M-My head…!”

She felt all dizzy; her hands looked burnt. The pain didn’t come right away, as her heart started beating faster. Adrenaline filled her bloodstream, making her blood boil.

Run.

Escape!

Run away as fast as you can!

These three things were filling her mind as Katherine saw the cautious beast slowly approach, sniffing the smell of burnt flesh.

“Ahh…! Aaahhh!!!”

She ran away, screaming in utter horror. The wolf followed her rapidly. She ended up breaking her heels and starting to run barefoot over the hard soil, her feet breaking out and bleeding.

“Shit, shit, shit!”

She kept screaming and running, but the wolf was already right behind her, harnessing Ki to release yet another zap, perhaps the final one to kill her.

“Uwaah!”

BOOM!

As the zap was about to hit her, Katherine jumped off the road and fell through the wetlands where the rice plantations were located, rolling at least a hundred meters down and getting covered with water and mud in the process.

“Ugh…! Agh…! Help…! Someone… Someone help me!”

She screamed as the wolf started slowly moving down to eat her; it didn’t fear the water at all. Katherine tried to stand up but felt one of her ankles twist the other way.

“You can’t be serious right now; I can’t die… My mom, my sister! F-For fuck’s sake! I don’t want to die!”

As tears flowed from her eyes, someone came. Farmers—many of them—noticed the wolf approaching and immediately started screaming loudly.

“GO AWAY!”

“CHOO! CHOO!”

“Throw stones at it!”

A group of five farmers threw stones at the wolf, which whimpered and started running away once a stone hit its head, making one of the beast's eyes bleed intensively.

“H-Huh? People… People! Please help me!”

The farmers slowly approached the woman. Katherine noticed that all of them looked very Asian, more Chinese than Korean, but there were also some with more Japanese faces.

They looked at the strange woman who had fallen off the cliff, glancing at her weird clothes and the bag she was carrying.

“Who are you?” One of them asked a tall, muscular pain, pointing his hoe at her.

“I-I am K-Katherine… I got lost; I don’t know how I got here. Like a flash of blue light ate me and…!”

“What?” The man squinted his eyes. “You must be some beggar, huh? You twisted your ankle. My wife could heal you if you got something to pay.”

“P-Pay?” Katherine felt taken aback by the question.

In the world of Murim, nobody was going to do something good for you without payment. The people here didn’t pity her; they had gone through so much shit themselves, and they only focused on protecting themselves and their families.

“I-I got… alcohol to pay. This is beer; it is inside this metal can.” Katherine said, offering the beer cans. “And these are salty snacks. Can I pay you for this? I got these coins…”

“Metal cans with alcohol and weird bags with snacks?” The man analyzed it all. “Oh, is that bronze?”

He quickly snatched the coins from her hands, smiling.

“Okay, come then.”

“E-Eh?”

She slowly followed the man, barely able to move at all. Nobody carried her; she had to crawl her way behind him like a dog. This was tremendously humiliating, and even when she asked someone to help her carry her, nobody said anything.

She entered a small village, children laughing and pointing at her ridiculous walk as she reached the small cabin where the man lived with his wife.

“Shen Xie, there's someone hurt; can you heal her ankle?”

“What? You brought another beggar again because they gave you some coins, my stupid husband?”

“Come on now, woman. I am busy; I’ll get going.”

The man left without saying another word. Katherine could describe this world with a single word...

Too rough!

Everyone was incredibly blunt with their words; there was barely any respect. They were also very cold; nobody ever had empathy, and they offered help if they could get something in return.

Although Earth was also like this in many places, there were also incredibly kindhearted people who would always offer help to the poor for free.

“Let me see your ankle- Ah, this is not so bad.”

The woman who greeted Katherine had one of her eyes burned and had a slightly cute face, looking to be in her early twenties, with long black hair and sharp eyes.

She checked the paralyzed Katherine’s ankle and then brought a mix of herbs and oils, gently placing it on her ankle while twisting it back to its former shape.

CRACK!

“AAAGH!”

Katherine screamed loudly. There was no warning; the woman just did it!

“There, it’s done. It’ll heal in a day or two.” The woman said, “Now… Sigh, I’ll give you something to eat; these bronze coins are not that cheap to get.”

She gave her some water and two rice balls, which Katherine ate without thinking twice. She hadn’t said a word since she entered the house, still thinking and baffled about everything.

Her body was just moving on its own at this point, acting by instinct.

Eventually, such a particular ability would become one of her greatest strengths.

“T-Thank… thank you.” Katherine sighed, looking at the woman. “Could it be possible to… Could you tell me where I am? Is this in China or somewhere else? Weirdly, you all speak English, though.”

“English?” The woman wondered. “Our language is Xing Shu; it is the language spoken in the Eleventh Venerable Era.”

“Eleventh… Venerable?” Katherine only had more questions than anything. “This is not Earth, isn’t it?”

“Earth?” The woman tilted her head. “You must have been hurt very badly... You can stay a night with us; your payment should be enough to secure that. But after tomorrow, you must leave this house.”

“A-Ah… Okay, thank you…” Katherine cried. “But what… What am I going to do now…”

“That is not my problem.” Sighed the woman, without batting another eye at her.

“O-Oh…” Katherine muttered meekly. “Sorry…”

It was a harsh world, full of mean people. Although they would do nice things if paid, many would deceive her. Katherine slept the night there, and then she asked the family if she could work for them as a farmer.

She didn’t have anywhere to go, was in a strange alien world she didn’t know anything about, and didn’t have any money, proper clothes, or even a house. Her instincts as a salary woman quickly told her one thing: she needed to work!

Her adaptability was incredible, but it was mostly due to the shock value she had and the adrenaline that was still pumping through her blood. Katherine, above all, wanted to survive first and then think later.

And like that, she worked and worked and worked. Every day, without a break, for ten whole years. She learned many things, such as that this village was simply named “Rice Village,” which belonged to the Yeng family, one of the three families that governed the Green Fields and White Peaks sect.

The sect city wasn’t located here, though, but above the peaks she had seen before, where only people known as cultivators could enter, powerful people that had awakened their Meridians and the ability to control Ki.

Everybody in this world was often born a mortal, but those with great talent could awaken their meridians naturally. The worst and weakest families, however, ended up becoming farmers, farming rice and other vegetables for the sects, while the sects offered them some protection.

For these farmers, becoming a cultivator was nothing but a fleeting dream, something impossible. They had seen countless youngsters die trying to awaken their Meridians, crafting shitty potions that ended up killing them.

In this village, the women that Katherine often talked with always told her, “You’re pretty, Kat. Find yourself a fair man and marry him, so you can spend the rest of your days as a housewife and not as a farmer.”

The only good thing these women could think of was marrying a man and becoming a housewife. There was nothing else—no traveling, no cultivating, no learning. Nobody here knew how to do math, read, or anything.

Katherine, however, was different; coming from another world, she had a different set of values. She wanted to meet her family again and find a way to go back to her world.

And for that, inevitably, she’ll have to awaken as a Cultivator.

She worked hard, enough to earn herself three rice balls and a cup of water a day, along with some meat from the little rabbits she hunted sometimes.

After ten years, she managed to afford a small cabin, and after having been deceived and almost killed three times, she had become sharper and didn’t trust just anybody with a smile on their face.

Because she learned that those who smile in Murim are either psychopaths or bandits. Nobody will smile at you, ever.

She grew bitter, but as a lesbian woman, she couldn’t fall in love with a man or accept becoming their wife either.

There were candidates, but she always rejected them.

And this eventually made it so someone really started to grow obsessed with her.

Knock, knock.

“Ugh…” Katherine groaned as she was still undergoing her process of Awakening. She felt two out of five Meridians open, but the other three weren’t opening at all. “W-Who is it?! I am busy! Please… leave for now…”

“Katherine, it is me. Shen Xi!”

Old man Shen Xi, a man in his late fifties who sold all kinds of herbs and ingredients in the small market of the village, was well known for being a deceiving piece of sh*t, but as the only supplier of medicinal herbs, most people still welcomed him.

To become a Cultivator, Katherine learned that she had to create a specific Elixir, one that could awaken her Meridians.

The Roots of a 50-year-old Jing Seng.

The Sap and Leaves of a Lesser Spirit Tree.

And a chosen material of a special element.

She chose light, taking the Sunshine Flowers as the cheapest and most available material in the market.

However, to buy all of this, she had to work relentlessly for ten years—almost eleven years, actually. Shen Xi had constantly praised her beauty, and many times he had offered her to become his wife.

But Katherine rejected him gently every time, only making them more frustrated. Slowly, she bought all the materials she needed from him and then left a week ago.

Rumors of her undergoing her Awakening have already spread, as she hasn’t stepped out of her house for a few days now.

And he came to look for her.

“E-Eh? Old man, Shen Xi? What do you… want?”

“I heard that you were going to drink an elixir! Please, let me help you.”

“What? No! Please leave-”

BAAM!

Before Katherine could send the man away, the door was slammed open. The old man wasn’t alone; two bulky men came with him.

Hired bodyguards.

“W-What are you doing?!” Katherine screamed.

“Oh, my dear Katherine, I simply can’t bid you farewell before I have a taste of that fair white skin.” The man smiled maliciously. “Now, while you’re undergoing your agonizing death, let me... Give you one last gift.”

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