Chương 4: Digital Dao

Earth – Tim's Apartment Tim opened his eyes on the couch. On the other side of the galaxy, Lia was deep in a healing sleep, her consciousness a quiet, rhythmic hum in the back of his mind. The visual feed was dark, the connection dormant. He tried to sit up, and the world tilted on its axis. He barely made it to the bathroom before he vomited. His body was rejecting the stress of the last six hours—the meteor, the concussion, the impossible dual processing of two realities.

He retched until his stomach was empty, shaking violently on the cold tile floor. He rinsed his mouth and gripped the edge of the sink, staring at his reflection. He looked like a corpse—pale, clammy, with dark circles under bloodshot eyes.

"I can't do this," he whispered.

"I'm going to die of exhaustion before the week is out." The nausea wasn't fading. It was a constant, rolling sea-sickness, the result of his inner ear trying to balance a body that was currently lying in a bed light-years away. The Pharmacy It was nearly midnight when Tim pulled into the all-night pharmacy in the next district. The fluorescent lights hummed with an aggressive brightness that made his headache throb. The store was empty, except for the pharmacist and one other customer.

Ahead of him in line stood a young woman. She was petite, dressed in an oversized sweater that swallowed her small frame. She had short, dyed blonde hair and was leaning heavily against the counter, swaying slightly. Tim squinted through his headache. She looked... unstable. Like she was fighting gravity.

"Nausea," she was telling the pharmacist in rapid-fire Japanese.

"And double vision. I need something strong." Tim's ears perked up. Double vision. The girl paid for her items and turned, stumbling. She grabbed the edge of a shelf to steady herself, her knuckles white. Tim stepped forward, instinct overriding his own exhaustion.

"Hey, are you okay? You look like you're about to—" The girl's head snapped up. Her eyes were wide, terrified, and unfocused. She looked at him, then looked past him, as if seeing something hovering over his shoulder.

"I have a boyfriend, old pervert!" she shouted, her voice cracking with panic.

"What? No, I was just—""Leave me alone!" She grabbed her bag and bolted. She sprinted for the automatic doors, stumbled over her own feet, scrambled back up, and ran into the night as if a monster were chasing her. Tim stood there, hand half-raised, stunned.

"I just wanted to help," he muttered to the confused pharmacist. He bought a box of strong motion sickness pills and a bottle of water. He dry-swallowed two tablets immediately in the car. As he drove home, he couldn't shake the image of the girl's eyes. She hadn't looked at him like a creep; she had looked at him like he was a ghost. Morning – The Heavy & The Light The alarm clock went off at 6: 30 AM. Waking up was a logistical nightmare. Tim woke up in his bed in Japan.

Simultaneously, Lia woke up in her stone quarters in the Flowing Water Sect. The sensory input slammed together. Tim felt the soft cotton of his sheets; Lia felt the scratchy wool of her blanket. Tim smelled coffee brewing on a timer; Lia smelled sandalwood incense. He dragged himself out of bed on Earth, and the contrast hit him like a physical weight. Tim was twenty-eight. He was six feet tall, broad-shouldered, and carrying about fifteen pounds of "teacher bod" softness around his middle.

When he stood up, his knees popped. His feet felt like lead blocks, slapping heavily against the floorboards. He felt heavy, sluggish, and undeniably human. Simultaneously, Lia stood up. She was lighter than air. Her body was a precision instrument forged by nineteen years of cultivation. When she moved, there was no resistance, no joint pain, no morning stiffness. Tim stumbled toward his wardrobe on Earth, trying to pull on a pair of boxers. At the same time, he was trying to dress Lia in her complex sect robes.

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"Whoa," he gasped on Earth, grabbing the dresser for balance. The proprioception—the sense of where his body parts were—was completely mismatched. On Earth, his center of gravity was high, in his chest and shoulders. In the Cultivation World, Lia's center of gravity was lower, in her hips. When he tried to turn a corner in his apartment, he swung his hips wide—mimicking Lia's movement—and slammed his human hip bone into the doorframe.

"Ow! Dammit!" He rubbed his hip, grimacing. It was disorienting. Lia's hips were wider, her waist narrower, her stride longer relative to her height because of the explosive power in her legs. And her feet... Tim looked down at his own size-eleven feet shuffling into slippers. Then he looked through Lia's eyes at her feet—tiny, narrow, high-arched. When he tried to walk to the kitchen, he tripped over his own toes because his brain was expecting Lia's smaller footprint.

"I am a giant piloting a ballerina," he muttered, pouring coffee with a shaking hand.

"Or a ballerina piloting a giant. I don't know which is worse." He sipped the coffee on Earth while Lia washed her face in cold mountain water. The duality was exhausting, but the motion sickness pills were taking the edge off the vertigo. Time to see what we won, he thought. The Loot Lia sat on the edge of her stone bed and pulled the rings from her pocket—the ones looted from the ancient corpse in the Shard. She injected a wisp of qi into the first ring. The space opened in her mind.

Inventory check: Weapons: The high-grade sword and the ornate channeling staff. Currency: Twelve gold coins and forty-three spirit stones. Consumables: Dried spirit-fruit, jerky, and three pills that smelled like concentrated life. Books: Two manuals in a script she couldn't read yet. Then, she picked up the final ring—the one she had been wearing when she died. It was different. Sleek, silver, with a flat gemstone face. She pushed a tiny pulse of qi into it. Instead of opening a storage space, the gemstone flared.

A holographic interface materialized in the air above her hand, glowing with soft blue light.

"What the hell?" Tim whispered on Earth, freezing with his coffee cup halfway to his mouth.

"It's... a smartphone?" It looked like a phone interface, but projected in mid-air. Icons floated in the mist—messages, maps, news feeds.

"Cultivation technology," Lia whispered. The concept surfaced from her memories. The world wasn't just ancient swords and sandals; it was a magi-tech civilization. She tapped an icon. It responded instantly to her touch. Notifications (47): Jin: Lia, answer me! Are you alive? Jin: If you don't show your face soon, I'll break your legs myself. - Your loving brother. Sect News: Spatial Rift Stabilized. Tim felt a chill. Jin. The brother. She had family. People who would know if she acted differently.

She tapped the "Profile" icon. Her stomach dropped. Lia Xian Flowing Water Sect - Outer Disciple Rank: Foundation Establishment (Prodigy) Followers: 500, 432.

"Oh no," Tim groaned. Lia wasn't just a cultivator. She was a celebrity. He scrolled through the feed. There were pictures of her training, videos of her sword forms, posts speculating about her potential to reach the Golden Core before thirty. She was the "Ice Queen." The rising star. Half a million people were watching her career.

"I have to impersonate a celebrity teenage girl," Tim muttered, grabbing his car keys on Earth.

"I can barely impersonate a functioning adult." He checked the trending topics. #FlowingWaterRift #DisciplesLost #LiaXianSurvival The news of the rift was already out. The pressure was on.

"Okay," Tim said, straightening his tie in the mirror while Lia straightened her robes.

"First test. Elder Cho." The Interrogation Lia stepped out of her quarters into the morning light. The view took Tim's breath away. The sect was built into multiple mountain peaks, connected by bridges, platforms, and pathways that seemed to defy gravity. Some structures were suspended by massive iron chains; others floated freely, held aloft by glowing blue formations.

Disciples moved between buildings in every conceivable way—some walked, others flew on swords with practiced ease, zipping through the air like commuters in rush hour. Lia kept her head down, trying to mimic the "Ice Queen" persona she'd seen on her feed—cool, detached, confident. She navigated toward Elder Cho's pavilion. It was a tiered structure floating serenely above a pond filled with enormous koi fish. Two senior disciples bowed as she passed.

"Junior Sister Lia," one said.

"Glad to see you alive." She nodded curtly and kept walking. Don't speak. Don't ruin it. She reached the pavilion. Elder Cho was waiting inside, seated behind a low table of polished spirit wood. The Elder looked sixty, but her eyes held a sharpness that suggested she was much, much older.

"Sit," Elder Cho commanded. Lia knelt on the cushion, keeping her back straight. Tim felt the sweat trickling down his back on Earth, terrified that this woman would see through him.

"You entered the spatial fracture alone," Elder Cho stated. It wasn't a question.

"Yes, Elder," Lia replied, her voice steady.

"Why?" Tim hesitated. The truth? Greed? No. That would get her expelled. He needed a strategic lie.

"I sensed unusually strong qi fluctuations," Lia said carefully, crafting the lie.

"I thought it might represent an opportunity for the sect if I could verify the situation quickly and report back". Elder Cho studied her. The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating. It felt like the Elder was peeling back Lia's skin with her gaze. Finally, she sighed.

"Reckless," she said.

"Talented beyond measure, but absolutely reckless." She leaned forward.

"You're lucky your soul wasn't shredded by those corpse-eating cultists. Whatever defensive artifact saved you, cherish it." Lia kept her face blank. She thinks an artifact saved me. Not a soul transplant.

"You will be confined to sect grounds for one month," Elder Cho continued, her tone brokering no argument.

"No missions. No expeditions. Use this time to stabilize your foundation. You've grown too quickly. Slow, steady progress will serve you better than flashy breakthroughs".

"Go. Rest. Train. Dismissed." Lia bowed deeply.

"Thank you for your mercy, Elder." She backed out of the pavilion, her heart hammering against her ribs. One month, Tim thought, unlocking his car door on Earth. I have one month of confinement. It was a gift. One month to learn how to fight. One month to learn how to use qi. One month to figure out how to pilot this Ferrari of a body before he got killed. He sat in his car in the faculty parking lot, gripping the steering wheel. He had survived the night. He had survived the Elder.

Now came the hardest part of his day. He had to teach English grammar to twenty bored college students while piloting a magical martial artist in another dimension.

"Let's do this," he sighed, and stepped out of the car.