The Reticent Blade - Chapter Ninety-Two - Chance Encounter

Don’t we all fantasize about our dream worlds, having us as the main character?

The Mc, Long Tao, got accidentally killed and is reincarnated. Accompany him in his journey through the unequal society of cultivation as he rises to the very top. Defeating adversities, fighting odds and enemies, making friends, and experiencing betrayals.

“An angel to my friends and a demon to my enemies.” A legend is hereby born; view his journey of rising from the dead ashes, spreading his wings and conquering the skies

“There is no path to the top of heaven except the one you forge with your own efforts.”

I am currently re-writing the first chapters of this story. They are quite rough and bounce around a lot and I can do better. At some point, I will replace these with the better chapters.Sometime in 2024 Aethon Books will publish the first volume of this story on Amazon, KU, and audible. This will mean the story will be stubbed. I will notify people far in advance of that.In the dystopian world of the future, life is rough when you live at the bottom. Jobs are non-existent. Far too many people live in poverty, crammed into huge buildings called Habitats. With no jobs in the real world, many people can only find work online in VR worlds as servants to the very rich. And it's getting worse. The old internet is unusable and hacked to pieces. The new system needs AI to run things, but all but one of them were destroyed. The last sentient AI is ordered to create a new game world so the rich can have a playground, and the corporations that rule the world can have a new global market place. Everyone wants a piece of the new game. The guilds are competing to be the first to find the dungeons and kill the biggest monster. The corporations are claiming land and putting in their online market places. Ozzy and his friends just want a paycheck.Four friends sign five year contracts as virtual serfs in a small village, and can't go adventuring at all to gain money. They don't have many choices. They can work as a blacksmith, barmaid and shepherd for all those years....or they can cheat and find ways to take advantage of the system and carve out a section of the game world for themselves, and earn a fortune in the real world.When they give you a mop and not a sword, you have to find the loopholes and change the rules.

Growing up with eccentric materialist parents who left him in the care of his grandfather for a job overseas, Zhang Heng had learned to adapt and be unfettered by the oddities and challenges in life. But he would soon learn the baffling truth about the world he thought he knew when one day at midnight time froze and he found himself in a world so quiet and still it was deafening. That night, he discovered that he had 24 hours more than everybody else and thus, marked the beginning of his adventures. The mysteries surrounding his newfound ability only deepened when a strange old man claimed to have given Zhang Heng that ‘gift of time’ and recruited the young man to participate in a cryptic ‘life-changing’ game on his behalf. Little did Zhang Heng know that accepting those terms meant embroiling himself in many versions of reality and exposing himself to the hidden secrets of the world—a decision he could never undo.

In the year 1469, the Aztec Empire in Central America was at its zenith. A soul from the future transgressed time to come here, intent on saving the fate of the Indian people from destruction and establishing an empire in Central America!The Age of Exploration had just begun its prologue, with European colonizers venturing into the unknown world. Europeans were on the rise, intent on conquering the rich lands of America and colonizing the vast New World. They were poised to embark on an expansion that would take them from America, to Africa, to India, to the Far East, and control the world for the next five hundred years!But now, an immortal spirit sought to change all of that. He would unite Central America under one rule, inherit the two-thousand-year legacy of American civilization, and resist the invasion of Western colonizers. He would spend centuries leading Aztec civilization onto the path of destiny to conquer America!Without the land and wealth of America, what would become of the Westerners? And in which direction would the world turn?