I stared at the boy.

  The boy stared right back at me.

  The silver eyes reflected my own confusion.

  So, this was my inner world spirit.

  According to Senior Sister Liu, he was equivalent to a very basic AI.

  “Hello,” I said slowly and clearly, the way you might speak to a voice assistant. “What. Is. Your. Function?”

  “My function?” the boy repeated, his expression shifted from wonder to something that looked suspiciously like puzzlement. “Master, why are you speaking in such a strange manner?”

  Wait.

  That was not the response I was expecting from a barely functioning tool that could only follow the simplest of commands.

  “Did something go wrong during the awakening process?” the boy asked, stepping closer. “Are you unwell?”

  Okay, this did not sound like some basic AI.

  There was genuine concern in his voice.

  And the way he spoke, he showed a level of understanding that went way beyond simple keyword recognition.

  Senior Sister Liu had mentioned that stronger souls could awaken more advanced spirits.

  She had also said most people should expect barely functioning tools.

  After everything that had happened to me, it was clear that I was not most people.

  And even though I didn’t know the intricacies behind transmigration, it only made sense for someone who could travel from one world to another to have a stronger than average soul. That would explain why this spirit was so much more advanced than what Senior Sister Liu had described.

  “I'm fine. I was just testing something.”

  “I see. Master was testing my capabilities.” The boy then gave me a small bow. “I apologize if my response failed to meet your expectations.”

  “No, no,” I said quickly. “You’re doing great. A lot better than I expected, to be honest.”

  This was better than I could have hoped for.

  The difference between a barely functional tool and an intelligent assistant was night and day.

  This could be the advantage I needed to survive in this brutal world.

  But first I needed to find out his name.

  Calling him “spirit” or “boy” in my head felt kind of impersonal.

  And considering he was born from my soul, that felt rude.

  “So, do you have a name?”

  “No, Master,” he shook his head. “I was only just born.”

  He stood there looking at me expectantly.

  Clearly, the privilege, or more accurately, the burden, of naming fell onto me.

  I had never been the best at naming things.

  Back on Earth, it took me three days to think of a name for a goldfish before I finally gave up and just decided to call it “Little Fish.”

  It wasn’t my proudest moment.

  But naming a sentient being deserved more thought than a goldfish.

  Now, what could I name him?

  Helper? That didn’t sound like a name, more like a household appliance.

  Bob? Absolutely not. This was a magical cultivation world, not a suburban neighborhood.

  I looked at him carefully.

  The way the boy stood there in the darkness of my inner world reminded me of the first light of dawn breaking through a dark sky.

  It was the moment when the deep blue of night started to give way to something brighter.

  I got it.

  “Azure,” I said finally. “I'll call you Azure.”

  Naming him after the Azure Peak Sect, a place that was supposed to be my new home, felt right.

  Plus, it sounded cool. That was important too.

  “Azure,” the boy repeated, testing the name on his tongue.

  Suddenly, he smiled, it was the same pure, genuine smile from before.

  “Thank you, Master. I will make sure to honor this name.”

  I believed him.

  The serious way he said it made a warmth spread through my chest.

  Before I could reply, something changed.

  Azure’s form began to flicker, and for a moment, I was worried he would disappear.

  “What's happening?” I asked, reaching out to touch him.

  He didn’t respond immediately.

  He seemed to be struggling with something.

  “As part of the bonding process between a cultivator and their inner world spirit,” he told me, his voice strained. “The spirit will look through its master’s memories.”

  My blood turned cold.

  “What?”

  “Your memories,” Azure said again, his voice softer now. “I have some knowledge of cultivation which comes with my creation, but without access to your memories, I won't be able to —”

  “No.”

  I’d said the word sharper than I’d meant to.

  Azure blinked, looking taken aback.

  “Master?”

  “You can’t,” I said, stepping backward even though there was nothing behind me in that small space. “You can’t see my memories.”

  My heart was pounding. This was bad. This was very, very bad.

  If Azure saw my memories, he’d know everything. That I wasn’t Ke Yin. That I was an imposter from another world wearing a dead boy’s face. That I had no clue what I was doing. What if he decided I was a danger? What if he could find some way to send a message to the sect about me? I had no idea what the rules were for an inner world spirit’s loyalty. Were they allowed to betray their masters? Could they operate independently?

  “I’m sorry if I’ve offended you,” Azure said carefully, examining my face with those silver eyes. “But Master, this is a necessary component to our bond. Without access to your memories, I’ll be greatly restricted in my ability to assist you.”

  “How restricted?”

  “I would be...” he hesitated, thinking of the best way to express himself. “I wouldn’t able to anticipate your needs, understand your plans, or offer valuable guidance.”

  Just great. Now I had to choose between being paranoid and keeping my secret safe with an incompetent assistant, or risking my life for a capable one.

  This was the exact type of impossible decision I’d been trying to avoid.

  “Can you... Can you keep secrets?” I asked slowly. “If you see something in my memories that could kill me if it got out, will you tell anyone?”

  Azure tilted his head, seemingly puzzled by the question.

  “Master, I am tied to your soul. I don’t exist without you. If you die, I wouldn’t last long. Why would I ever do anything that would harm you?”

  That was a good argument. But paranoia wasn’t built on good arguments and logic.

  “And you can’t be forced to give away any information? Is there some method or technique that could force you to reveal things?”

  “The only way to gain access to an inner world spirit’s knowledge is to enter into their inner world. And anyone capable of forcing themselves into someone’s inner world would be able to read their memories directly. In that case, they wouldn’t need to ask me questions.”

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Another good argument.

  Damn it.

  I looked at Azure, really looked at him.

  He was staring at me with those silver eyes, waiting for me to make a decision. There was no anger in his expression, no frustration that I was taking so long to decide. Just…patience. Maybe a little sadness that I didn’t trust him.

  But how could I? I’d only known him for five minutes.

  On the other hand, he was literally born from my soul.

  If I couldn’t trust a being that existed because of my own existence, who could I trust?

  The answer was probably no one.

  But that wasn’t a way to live.

  More realistically, I needed help.

  I was a college student from Earth. I’d read a lot of cultivation novels.

  That didn’t qualify me to survive in an actual cultivation world, where making a single mistake could cost me my life.

  Azure was offering to be more than just a tool.

  He was offering to be my ally. Maybe even my friend.

  All I had to do was let him in.

  I took a deep breath.

  This was stupid.

  This was potentially suicidal.

  But staying paranoid and isolated in a world I had no clue about was likely far more dangerous than trusting the one being that literally could not exist without me.

  “Okay,” I said finally. “But, Azure, you’re about to see...it’s going to be weird. And complicated. And you can never, ever tell anyone else about it.”

  “I swear it, Master,” Azure said solemnly, putting his hand over his heart. “Your secrets are my secrets. Your survival is my survival.”

  “Right. Okay. So...how does this work?”

  “Just allow me to connect with your consciousness,” Azure moved closer to me. “It may feel unusual, but it won’t be painful.”

  I nodded, trying to calm my racing heart.

  “Do it.”

  As soon as Azure touched my chest with his hand, I could feel it.

  A gentle tug on my consciousness, like someone carefully pulling on a thread.

  It didn't hurt.

  It just felt intimate.

  As I watched Azure's face, I realized something.

  He was doing more than absorbing data.

  He was living through my life.

  ***

  My full name is Kane Walker.

  I had only been twenty-two years old.

  Wow, I died young.

  I had been a college student in my final year studying accountancy.

  I was fairly unremarkable.

  I hadn’t been doing exceptionally well academically, but I also hadn’t been flunking any classes either.

  I was just an average joe with normal career aspirations that would let me live a comfortable, happy life.

  I even had a stable job with pretty decent pay waiting for me post-graduation.

  At college, I had lived with three roommates in a ridiculously small and overpriced apartment (the type where you could hear your neighbors yelling at each other through the walls and the heat worked only about half of the time if you were lucky).

  Despite sharing the space, I had always felt like I was on the outside looking in.

  First, there was Karl – the pre-med student who survived on caffeine and anxiety. He studied constantly and seemed to be always under one stress or another.

  Karl and the others had been friends since their first year of college, which meant that I had essentially come into the group late, filling the vacancy created when one of the previous roommates had graduated.

  Then, there was Annie – the art major whose walls were plastered with her artwork.

  Annie was chaotic and energetic, always dragging Karl and James to weird events happening on and around campus. She invited me along, out of courtesy, but it always seemed like afterthought.

  Finally, there was James, who was essentially a golden retriever in human form.

  James played college basketball and was buddies with everybody.

  He was the kind of guy whose laugh could be heard from three rooms away.

  We got on alright, but we never really bonded beyond making casual conversation with each other in the kitchen.

  They weren't terrible people, they just had their own little group, and I was the roommate who paid his rent on time and left them alone.

  As for my family, they lived three states away.

  There was my mom – a high school teacher who called me every Sunday at exactly 2 PM without exception, but it was always more like an inspection than a casual check-in. She'd ask about my classes, but she was really asking if I was keeping up appearances, if I was doing things the "appropriate" way, if I was making connections with the "right" people. If I ever admitted to having trouble with anything, it would reflect badly on how she raised me.

  My old man was a mechanic who was never really around.

  Even when he was there physically, he was distant, always working overtime or fixated on whatever project he was working on in the garage. We didn't talk much. The way he showed love was through an occasional grunt of approval and nothing more. I think it had something to do with the way his own father had raised him.

  As for my siblings, I didn't have any, I was an only child.

  I had always wanted one, someone who might have understood what it was like to grow up in that household, but that never happened.

  During my life, I was never particularly exciting.

  Most of my free time was consumed by reading.

  I saw it as a way to escape from the dullness of assignments and exams.

  My favorite genre of books to read were fantasy and science fiction novels, specifically the ones that featured magical systems and world building that was incredibly detailed. Any given cultivation novel, isekai story, litrpg adventure, odds are I had already read it.

  So, yeah, I was a normal guy living a normal life, planning a normal future.

  And then, suddenly, on a typical Tuesday morning, while I walked to class, I died.

  I never got the opportunity to say goodbye to my roommates. I never got the chance to make one last phone call to my mom. I never got to experience the birth of a younger sibling. I never got to complete my degree, or begin the career I had been working toward.

  All of the things I had been, all of the things I had intended to be, were now gone.

  And I didn’t know why.

  Had it been an accident?

  Had it been deliberate?

  I would never know.

  Instead, here I was, in someone else's body, in a completely different world, with a completely different future ahead of me.

  ***

  When Azure finally returned to himself, he just stood there.

  For a long moment, he didn't say anything.

  He opened his mouth, closed it, then looked away.

  An inner world spirit, a being comprised of spiritual energy, was struggling to find words for what he'd just experienced.

  "Master, I..." he started, then stopped. "That was..."

  He trailed off again.

  I wasn’t sure how to react to that.

  Part of me wanted to dismiss it and continue on with my day.

  That was typically what I did when things became too much for me.

  But looking at the genuine look of compassion on Azure’s face stopped me.

  “Yeah, it wasn’t right,” I said simply. “But I suppose this is my second chance.”

  Azure nodded slowly, seeming grateful I'd moved the conversation forward.

  "Your original world," he said quietly. "It was so different than this world."

  “Yeah, we had technology instead of magic. It was a different way of doing things, but we got by.”

  "Your family and friends." Azure looked at me. “Do you miss them?”

  Did I miss them?

  That was a valid question.

  A lot of the isekai that I had read, the protagonist generally moved on from the loss rather quickly.

  As for me, the answer was complicated.

  Since I woke up in this world, there has been a hollow emptiness in my chest, but it wasn't quite the same as the descriptions of loss that the protagonists in those stories experienced.

  I missed having a home, having people who recognized me, having a place where I belonged. But if I’m being honest with myself, I’m not sure I ever really had that.

  My roommates would probably barely notice I was gone beyond needing to find someone to cover rent. My mom would mourn, but in her own way — possibly more worried about what other people thought, how it appeared, what she’d tell her colleagues and friends. My dad might feel something, but he would never express it, he would simply throw himself in his work as he normally did.

  Honestly, I had spent most of my life feeling alone even when I was surrounded by people.

  Maybe that is why waking up in a new world didn’t seem as devastating as it should have.

  It was just a different form of loneliness, and at least here, I had a chance to build something new from the ground up.

  “It’s complicated,” I eventually replied. “I guess I miss the familiarity of it, But I can't say I had much holding me there.”

  Azure nodded slowly.

  Although he had only recently been born, he demonstrated more compassion than many humans.

  We stood in silence for a little while longer, processing our feelings our own way.

  “We should probably figure out how this whole cultivation thing works,” I smiled, changing the subject to something a little less depressing. “I didn’t come all this way just to have an existential crisis in my own soul.”

  That got a small smile from Azure.

  “Yes, Master. What would you like to know?”

  “Can you create some kind of status screen?” I asked, thinking about the stories where characters had game-like interfaces that tracked their stats and abilities. It always seemed like a convenient way to keep track of progress.

  “An inner world spirit is meant to help manage the inner world and track their master’s cultivation,” Azure replied. “A visual interface would simply be a different way of displaying that information.”

  With that, he closed his eyes and held out both of his hands.

  The air around us shimmered and wisps of white energy began to gather, twisting and weaving together, solidifying into something that looked almost like a screen. Soon, characters appeared, written in the same language I had been speaking since arriving in this world.

  Cultivation: Qi Condensation Stage 1

  Inner World: Radius of 2 meters

  Soul Essence: 100

  Spiritual Essence: 10

  Physical Essence: 12

  I stared at the screen.

  A basic screen that was easy to read and understand was exactly what I had in mind.

  Essence was the measure of my main attributes.

  Soul Essence represented the strength and resilience of the soul.

  From my current limited understanding, it affected my ability to comprehend high-level techniques and the development of my inner world spirit. But a figure of one hundred seemed higher than I expected.

  “Azure, what’s the average Soul Essence for a Qi Condensation Stage 1 cultivator?”

  “Eight.”

  Wow. Eight. And I had one hundred.

  No wonder Azure was more advanced than anything Senior Sister Liu had mentioned.

  The only explanation I had for such a high number was my identity as a transmigrator.

  The process of travelling from one world to another either required a powerful soul or strengthened it during the journey.

  I then focused my attention on my other stats.

  Spiritual Essence was only at ten.

  It measured the spiritual energy reserves and affinity for cultivation.

  The higher the number, the more qi could be absorbed, stored, and manipulated.

  “Master, the average Qi Condensation Stage 1 cultivator would have a Spiritual Essence of ten,” Azure answered before I could ask.

  That made sense.

  It seemed my Spiritual Essence wasn’t affected by what my soul had experienced so I was like any other Qi Condensation Stage 1 cultivator in that aspect.

  As for Physical Essence, it represented strength, endurance, and overall physical capabilities.

  Azure went on to explain that the average Qi Condensation Stage 1 cultivator would have a figure of twelve. The early stages of Qi Condensation focused more on enhancing the body, so that explained why it was higher than Spiritual Essence.

  All in all, the only advantage I currently had was my overpowered soul.

  In most cultivation novels I had read, soul cultivation methods were usually portrayed as incredibly rare. Most sects focused on spiritual and physical cultivation, with soul cultivation being something only specialized or ancient sects practiced.

  A part of me hoped that the Azure Peak Sect specialized in the cultivation of the soul, but the more cautious side of me hoped otherwise. After all, I didn’t know if some soul expert could detect that I wasn’t the real Ke Yin. I didn’t want to take that risk. But it would be a good idea to see if they did have some soul techniques, I didn’t want to waste my one real advantage in this world.

  The path to godhood wouldn’t be simple.

  And even though it was unlikely that I would reach the peak of the cultivation world like the isekai protagonists that I had read about, I could only hope I would gain enough power that I could protect myself in this dog-eat-dog world.

  Right now, my inner world was a tiny void, but one day it would grow into something magnificent.

  But first, I needed to leave and officially start my journey as an outer disciple of the Azure Peak Sect.

  “So, how do I get out of here?”

  “Your consciousness is currently projecting into your inner world, but your body still exists in the outer world,” Azure explained. “Focusing on returning should pull you back.”

  That sounded pretty simple.

  "Oh, and Master," he added. "If you need to speak with me while you're in the outer world, all you have to do is think my name. I'll be able to hear you, and we can talk that way."

  “Okay,” I took one last look at Azure, at this spirit who now carried all my memories and seemed determined to help me survive this world. “I'll be back soon. Try not to let the void swallow you while I'm gone.”

  Azure smiled at that.

  “I will try my best to remain un-swallowed, Master.”