Jason woke up face-down in what he really, really hoped was just dirty water.
The smell assaulting his nostrils—a pungent cocktail of rotting vegetables, stale urine, and something that might have once been a burrito in a happier life—told him otherwise. The liquid seeping through his shirt was warm in a way that made him want to never think about temperature again.
"Oh, magnificent," he groaned, the words coming out muffled against the cracked asphalt. "I've been reincarnated into a garbage dimension."
He peeled his face off the alley pavement with a sound like velcro being ripped apart, leaving behind a vaguely face-shaped imprint in the accumulated filth. His cheek stung. His everything stung, actually. His body felt wrong—too tall, too limber, like he was wearing a suit made of someone else's skin.
That thought was disturbing enough to file away for later.
Jason sat up slowly, his brain doing that fun thing where it tried to process seventeen impossible things at once and instead just played elevator music. A low, droning hum filled his skull, accompanied by the distant sounds of traffic, honking horns, and someone shouting in what might have been Spanish or Italian or possibly just very angry English.
The last thing he remembered was reading chapter 4,892 of "Supreme Heavenly Monarch Emperor God Cultivation System Revenge Academy" at 3 AM while eating expired cheese puffs. The orange dust had still been on his fingers. His eyes had been burning from staring at his phone screen for six hours straight. He'd been at the really good part too—the protagonist had just face-slapped his seven hundredth young master and was about to break through to the Nascent Soul Realm.
Now he was... here. Wherever here was.
The alley stretched about thirty feet in either direction, bracketed by brick buildings that rose up five or six stories on each side. Fire escapes zigzagged up the walls like metal snakes, their rusty platforms cluttered with dead plants, forgotten laundry, and at least one window-unit air conditioner that looked like it was held in place by hope and gravity. Dumpsters lined one wall—three of them, industrial green, overflowing with black garbage bags that had split open to reveal their treasures to the world.
The ground was a tapestry of urban decay: broken glass that glittered like sad diamonds, cigarette butts in various stages of decomposition, a single shoe (left foot, men's size eleven, missing its laces), mysterious stains in colors that didn't occur in nature, and what Jason desperately hoped was chocolate smeared near his left hand.
Above, the sky was that particular shade of gray that meant either "about to rain" or "pollution has achieved sentience and is planning something."
New York. This was definitely New York. He'd never been there, but he'd seen enough movies to recognize the aesthetic of "everything is slightly damp and vaguely threatening."
A crash from his right made him flinch.
One of the dumpsters—the middle one, the one with the dent in its side that looked vaguely like Abraham Lincoln if you squinted—was shaking. Wobbling. Making sounds that suggested something inside was very alive and very upset about its circumstances.
"I AM THE GOD APOLLO!"
The lid exploded upward.
A teenage boy erupted from the garbage like some kind of trash phoenix, except instead of being majestic and wreathed in flames of rebirth, he was covered in banana peels, coffee grounds, and what appeared to be three-day-old lo mein that had achieved a concerning shade of green. Noodles hung from his curly hair like sad, limp party streamers. A piece of eggshell clung to his eyebrow. His face was a battlefield of acne—red, angry pustules that seemed to throb with their own heartbeat.
He couldn't have been older than sixteen. Pudgy in that "still has baby fat" way, with soft features and eyes that darted around frantically. His clothes—a purple shirt and jeans that might have once been nice—were now decorated with garbage juice and something that looked suspiciously like old marinara sauce.
"Did you hear me, mortal?" the boy demanded, hauling himself over the edge of the dumpster and flopping onto the ground with all the grace of a concussed seal. "I am APOLLO! God of the Sun! Lord of Music! The most handsome deity in all of—"
He paused, seeming to notice Jason for the first time.
They stared at each other.
The teenager's eyes went very, very wide.
"Erlang Shen?" he breathed.
"What?" Jason said.
"Nephew of the Jade Emperor! The three-eyed warrior! He who captured the great Sun Wukong himself!" The teenager scrambled backward, his garbage-slicked sneakers slipping on the wet pavement. "What are you doing here?! Has the Jade Emperor sent you? Is this about the thing with Chang'e? Because I swear, that was a misunderstanding—"
"Your wallet fell out," Jason said flatly, pointing at the ground.
A worn leather billfold had indeed tumbled from the teenager's pocket during his graceless dumpster exit. It lay open on the asphalt, revealing a New York State driver's license, a crumpled five-dollar bill, and what looked like a punch card for a frozen yogurt place (three stamps out of ten needed for a free topping).
The definitely-not-a-god scrambled for it, but Jason was closer and faster. His hand shot out—moving with a speed and precision that surprised him—and snatched the wallet before the other boy could reach it.
"Hey! That's—"
Jason held the ID up to the gray light filtering down between the buildings.
"Lester Papadopoulos," he read aloud. The photo showed the same acne-riddled face, though the teenager in the picture looked slightly less like he'd just lost a fight with a compost heap. "Date of birth... let's see... Height: five-foot-seven. Weight: one-sixty. Organ donor, that's very civic-minded of you."
"THAT IS A CURSE!" Lester-definitely-Apollo shrieked, his voice cracking in a way that undermined any claim to divinity. He clutched at his garbage-stained shirt like Jason had just read his browser history aloud at a family dinner. "Zeus has punished me! Made me mortal! Stuffed me into this... this FLESHY PRISON of acne and body odor and FEELINGS! Do you have any idea what it's like to experience PUBERTY for the first time in four thousand years?!"
"Cool, cool," Jason said, not processing any of this because his brain had officially checked out. He tossed the wallet back to its owner, who fumbled the catch and had to pick it up off the ground again. "I'm just gonna... do my thing over here."
His thing, apparently, was panicking.
Jason turned away from the raving dumpster teenager and tried to take stock of his situation. He looked down at his hands—his new hands, apparently, because these were definitely not the hands he remembered. They were elegant, long-fingered, with calluses in places that suggested extensive weapon training. The skin was a shade paler than his old complexion, and completely devoid of the scar on his right thumb from that time he'd tried to open a package with a kitchen knife at 2 AM.
Okay, Jason, think, he told himself, flexing fingers that felt simultaneously foreign and perfectly natural. You've read approximately eight billion cultivation novels. You've seen protagonists get reincarnated into way worse situations. That one guy got reborn as a sword. Another dude became a slime. That really weird one had the MC become a treasure-hunting shovel. You're at least humanoid. This is fine. This is FINE.
The problem was that every cultivation novel started the same way: the protagonist would find themselves in a new world, discover they had some kind of cheat system or special constitution, and begin their journey to the peak of martial arts. They'd usually get a status screen, or a helpful AI assistant, or at minimum a mysterious jade pendant containing the soul of an ancient expert.
Jason concentrated very hard.
No status screen appeared.
No helpful ding sounded in his mind.
His pockets, when he checked them, contained exactly nothing—no mysterious jade pendant, no cultivation manual, not even a stick of gum.
"Um, Erlang Shen?"
Jason ignored the garbage-covered teenager. He was busy trying to feel for his dantian. That was important, right? All the cultivation novels made a big deal about the dantian. It was like... a spiritual energy core? Located somewhere in the abdomen? He pressed his hand against his stomach and tried to sense something, anything, that might indicate supernatural potential.
His stomach growled.
That probably wasn't cultivation.
"Erlang Shen, I really think you should—"
"Quiet, mortal," Jason said absently, because that was the kind of thing cultivation protagonists said and he was committed to the bit now. "I'm trying to sense the spiritual energy of heaven and earth."
"The what?"
"Qi. Chi. Chakra. Mana. Spiritual essence. The fundamental energy that permeates all existence and can be cultivated to achieve immortality and supreme power."
Lester-Apollo stared at him. "That's not... I mean, in the Greek tradition, we don't really... are you feeling alright? Did you hit your head when you fell from the heavens?"
Jason opened his mouth to respond.
That was when the three very large, very angry-looking guys appeared at the mouth of the alley.
They didn't walk in so much as materialize—one moment the alley entrance was empty except for a stray newspaper tumbling past, and the next moment there were three figures blocking the exit, their silhouettes dark against the gray city light behind them.
The first one was built like a professional linebacker who'd decided that being merely huge wasn't enough and had devoted extra time to getting huger. He wore a leather jacket that strained across shoulders that could have their own zip code, and his face looked like it had been assembled by someone who'd never seen a human being but had one described to them over a bad phone connection. His features were too flat, too wide, with eyes set slightly too far apart and a mouth that seemed to have too many teeth.
The second guy was taller but leaner, with arms that hung down past his knees in a way that violated several laws of human anatomy. His skin had an odd sheen to it, like oil on water, and when he smiled, his teeth were definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent pointed. Not "could use some dental work" pointed. "Had evolved specifically for tearing flesh" pointed.
The third was the smallest of the group, though "small" was relative—he was still well over six feet and built like a Greek statue, if Greek statues were made by someone who thought classical beauty should include scales along the jawline and fingers that ended in what were very clearly claws.
"There he is," the first one growled, and his voice sounded like gravel being fed through a wood chipper. "The fallen god."
"Told you he'd be here," the second one said, cracking his too-long knuckles with sounds like snapping branches. "Could smell the divine stink a mile away."
"Who's the pretty boy?" The third one's yellow eyes—yellow, with slitted pupils like a snake's—fixed on Jason. "Didn't know Apollo had friends."
"I don't know him!" Lester yelped, holding his hands up. "I've never met this Erlang Shen in my life! Well, I mean, I've MET Erlang Shen before, at a party on Mount Kunlun about three thousand years ago, lovely fellow, excellent singing voice, but THIS Erlang Shen—"
"Wait, wait, wait." The first thug held up a hand the size of a dinner plate. "Erlang Shen? The Chinese guy? Three-eyed warrior, nephew of the Jade Emperor, that Erlang Shen?"
All three monsters turned to look at Jason more carefully.
Jason, for his part, was experiencing a moment of profound realization. He'd caught a glimpse of his reflection in a puddle at his feet—his new face, the face he hadn't really looked at until now.
It was NOT his face. Gone was the average, forgettable mug he'd spent twenty-four years carting around, the face that was perfectly serviceable but had never launched any ships. In its place was something that looked like it had walked straight out of a Chinese mythology textbook or a particularly high-budget period drama.
High cheekbones that could cut glass. A jawline that seemed to have been engineered for maximum aesthetic impact. Eyes that were sharp and intelligent, the kind of eyes that saw through lies and pretense. Long black hair—really long, past his shoulders—that flowed like it had a personal stylist made of wind and good life choices. His features were aristocratic, refined, with a slight otherworldly quality that suggested his family tree contained at least a few gods.
And there, in the center of his forehead, barely visible but definitely present—a faint mark, like a vertical scar or a tattoo, right where a third eye would be.
Oh, Jason thought. Oh no.
"He does kind of look like..." the second monster said slowly.
"Nah, can't be. What would Erlang Shen be doing in a New York alley?"
"What's Apollo doing in a New York alley? Gods are weird, man."
"You're not wrong. Remember that time Dionysus—"
"We're getting off track. The boss wants Apollo, so we grab Apollo. If the Chinese guy gets in the way..." The first monster cracked his neck with a sound like a tree falling in a forest. "Well, I've always wondered what warrior-god tastes like."
Lester made a sound like a balloon slowly deflating. "Oh no. Oh no no no. These are definitely monsters. I can tell because I used to be a god—"
"Still not buying it, dude," Jason muttered.
"—and I have divine knowledge of such things! The scales, the teeth, the general aura of malevolence—these are almost certainly some form of dracaena-human hybrid, or possibly empousai who've gotten really good at disguising themselves, or—"
"Do you ever stop talking?" the third monster asked.
"I'm the god of poetry! Talking is literally my—OOF!"
The first monster moved faster than something that large had any right to move. One moment he was at the mouth of the alley, the next he had crossed twenty feet of distance and driven his fist into Lester's stomach with enough force to lift the teenager off his feet. Lester folded like a lawn chair, all the air leaving his lungs in a single explosive wheeze.
"LESTER!" Jason shouted, more out of reflex than genuine concern for someone he'd known for approximately three minutes.
The second monster was on Lester before he hit the ground, grabbing him by the collar and slamming him against the dumpster hard enough to leave a dent. The metal rang like a gong, and Lester's head snapped back, his eyes rolling wildly.
"Where are the Oracles, little godling?" the monster hissed, his too-long face inches from Lester's. "Tell us what you know, and maybe we'll make this quick."
"I—I don't—I just got here—"
The third monster's clawed hand raked across Lester's arm, leaving three parallel lines of red. Lester screamed—a very human, very mortal scream of pain that echoed off the alley walls.
Okay, Jason thought, his mind racing. This is the part where the protagonist's hidden bloodline awakens, or a mysterious old master appears, or a system notification pops up. This is where the cultivation cheat activates and I save the day with some impossibly powerful technique that I shouldn't know but do because of my special transmigrated soul.
Nothing happened.
The monsters hit Lester again. Blood splattered on the pavement.
Any time now, Jason mentally pleaded. Ding? Hello? Is there a ding? I'd really like a ding. A ping would also be acceptable. I'm not picky.
No ding. No ping. No nothing.
But something was building in Jason's chest—not cultivation energy, nothing so mystical. Just good old-fashioned adrenaline and the growing certainty that if he didn't do something, he was going to watch a teenager get beaten to death in an alley, and he was pretty sure that wasn't the kind of character development he wanted.
"HEY!" he shouted.
The monsters paused, turning to look at him.
"Erlang Shen wants to say something," the first one noted, almost politely. "Go ahead, three-eyes. We'll get to you in a minute."
Jason had no plan. Jason had no weapons. Jason had no cultivation base, no special techniques, no jade pendant containing the soul of an ancient master who could guide him through this situation.
What Jason had was approximately eight billion chapters of web novels rattling around in his brain, and a growing suspicion that if he acted like a protagonist, maybe—maybe—reality would play along.
He sat down cross-legged in the middle of the alley.
"What are you doing?" the second monster asked, still holding Lester by the throat.
Jason closed his eyes, arranged his hands in what he hoped looked like a meditation pose (he was mostly copying something he'd seen on the cover of a yoga book once), and tried to remember every cultivation novel he'd ever read.
The key was breathing. All the novels agreed on that. Breathe in the spiritual energy of heaven. Breathe out the impurities of the mundane world. Feel for the qi that permeated all existence. Ignore the fact that you had no idea what qi actually felt like and were probably about to die.
"Is he... meditating?" the first monster asked.
"I think he's having a stroke," the third one suggested.
"Should we... wait for him to finish?"
"WHY WOULD WE WAIT FOR HIM TO FINISH?!"
Jason ignored them, focusing harder. In the novels, protagonists always talked about drawing in the energy of heaven and earth. He visualized it: golden light streaming from the gray New York sky, verdant power rising from the dirty alley pavement, both streams flowing into his definitely-real dantian and mixing into something powerful and world-shaking.
He visualized his meridians—the energy channels that crisscrossed the body according to cultivation theory. He had no idea where they actually were, but he imagined them anyway: bright lines of power running from his core to his extremities, waiting to be filled with the infinite potential of the universe.
He visualized a breakthrough—his first step on the path of cultivation, the moment when a mortal became something more, when flesh and blood transcended into legend.
Come on, come on, COME ON—
Something twitched.
It was deep in his gut, below his navel. A spark of... something. Heat, maybe, or pressure, or just the desperate hope that he wasn't about to die in an alley that smelled like garbage and broken dreams.
"I'M DOING IT!" Jason shouted, not opening his eyes. "I'M CULTIVATING! I CAN FEEL THE DAO!"
"What's a dao?" Lester wheezed from somewhere to his left.
"I HAVE NO IDEA!"
One of the monsters lunged.
Jason felt it coming—not through any supernatural sense, but through the vibration in the pavement, the displacement of air, the instinct of prey that knows the predator is pouncing. His body moved before his brain could process what was happening, rolling sideways with a grace that definitely hadn't been his in his old life.
The monster's claws scraped the pavement where he'd been sitting, sending up sparks and leaving gouges in the asphalt.
"HA!" Jason crowed, scrambling to his feet. "My cultivation has enhanced my reflexes!"
It had not. His new body was just apparently much more athletic than his old one. But the monsters didn't know that, and confusion was a weapon all its own.
"Get him!" the first monster roared.
All three of them turned on Jason, apparently deciding that he was now the priority target. Lester slumped against the dumpster, bleeding and barely conscious but no longer actively getting beaten, so that was progress.
Jason ran.
He ran deeper into the alley, away from the monsters, his new legs carrying him faster than he'd ever moved in his old life. The alley twisted, branched, opened into a small courtyard filled with more dumpsters and a fire escape that led up into the gray sky.
The monsters were right behind him. He could hear their footsteps—too heavy, too fast, too hungry.
"ERLANG SHEN!" one of them bellowed. "THE JADE EMPEROR CAN'T PROTECT YOU HERE!"
I'm not Erlang Shen! Jason wanted to scream. I'm just some guy named Jason who reads too many web novels and definitely can't fight three monsters at once!
But he didn't say that. Because cultivation protagonists didn't deny their identities—they wore them like armor. They let their enemies underestimate them, or overestimate them, or just generally estimate them incorrectly while they prepared to turn the tables.
"Your Emperor has no power over me!" Jason shouted back, because it sounded like the kind of thing a mysterious warrior would say. "I walk the path of the Supreme Dao! I have transcended mortal limitations!"
"Then why are you running?!"
"STRATEGIC RETREAT IS ALSO PART OF THE DAO!"
He spotted a gap between two buildings—too narrow for the bigger monsters, maybe narrow enough for him. Without thinking, Jason dove for it, squeezing his new slender body through the space with inches to spare.
The first monster slammed into the opening, too wide to follow. His clawed hand swiped through the gap, missing Jason's face by centimeters.
"You can't hide forever, three-eyes!"
"I'M NOT HIDING! I'M CIRCULATING MY QI IN PREPARATION FOR A DEVASTATING COUNTERATTACK!"
Jason had no idea what circulating qi meant. He assumed it was like... spinning it around? In a circle? That's what circulating meant, right?
He pressed himself against the wall of the narrow passage, breathing hard, and tried to feel for that spark he'd sensed earlier. It was still there—faint, uncertain, but definitely present. A tiny ember of something in the center of his being.
Okay, he thought. Okay. I'm in a cultivation novel. Sort of. I'm in SOME kind of novel, with monsters and gods and people who think I'm a Chinese deity. The rules are different here. The rules are...
The rules were whatever he believed them to be.
That was how it worked in the stories, right? Cultivation was about will. About belief. About imposing your understanding of reality onto the universe until the universe gave up and agreed with you.
Jason believed.
He believed so hard.
The ember in his gut flared, just slightly. The mark on his forehead tingled, like pins and needles in a limb that had fallen asleep.
And then—
"THERE!"
A voice, female, young, coming from somewhere above. Jason looked up to see a girl on one of the fire escapes, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, with dark hair cut choppy and uneven, wearing a green dress that looked like it had been through several wars and lost most of them. She was pointing at something behind Jason.
"Peaches! Get them!"
Something exploded out of nowhere—a blur of motion and fury that resolved into a creature that Jason's brain refused to process. It was vaguely humanoid, about three feet tall, with skin that was a mottled greenish-yellow and features that looked like someone had tried to carve a face out of fruit and given up halfway through.
"PEACHES!" the creature screamed, which was apparently its name and also its only word, and hurled itself at the monsters with the fury of a tiny, produce-based berserker.
The monsters scattered, suddenly faced with an enemy they hadn't expected.
"Erlang Shen!" the girl shouted down at Jason. "Come on! We have to help Apollo!"
Jason stared at her. "How do you know—"
"Three-eyed warrior, nephew of the Jade Emperor, captured Sun Wukong, I KNOW WHO YOU ARE! Now COME ON!"
She was already scrambling down the fire escape, moving with the practiced ease of someone who treated New York's vertical landscape like a jungle gym.
Jason could have corrected her. Could have explained that he wasn't Erlang Shen, that he was just some random guy who'd woken up in this body, that he had no idea what was going on or who these people were or why monsters wanted to beat up a teenager who claimed to be Apollo.
But that would take time he didn't have, and honestly?
Honestly?
Being mistaken for a legendary warrior-god was kind of cool. It was exactly the sort of thing that happened to cultivation protagonists. The hero arrives in a new world, everyone thinks they're someone important, and eventually it turns out that they really are that person, or they become that person, or something equally narratively satisfying.
Jason could work with this.
"Lead the way!" he called up to the girl, and started climbing the fire escape.
Behind him, Peaches was doing... something... to the monsters. The sounds were concerning—a lot of screaming, some squelching, one monster yelling "NOT THE EYES! NOT THE EYES!"—but Jason decided not to look.
The girl—Meg, Apollo had called her Meg—reached the top of the fire escape and waited for him, bouncing impatiently on her heels. Up close, she was even more disheveled than he'd first thought: dirt smeared on her cheeks, leaves in her hair, fingernails black with soil. She smelled like a garden that had been left to grow wild for several years.
"Apollo's hurt," she said as Jason hauled himself up beside her. "We need to get him somewhere safe."
"Where?"
"I know a place. A friend of his. Come ON, Erlang Shen!"
She was already running along the rooftop, jumping the gap to the next building with a casual disregard for gravity that made Jason's stomach lurch.
Right, he thought. I'm a legendary warrior deity. I can definitely jump that far. Probably. Maybe.
He jumped.
He made it.
He didn't scream.
(He might have squeaked a little, but that didn't count.)
They made their way across three more rooftops, Meg leading with the confidence of someone who knew the city's skyline intimately. Jason followed, his new body handling the jumps and climbs with an ease that his old self could never have managed. Every time they landed, he tried to feel for that spark again—that ember of potential cultivation—but it seemed to have retreated somewhere deep inside, dormant and unreachable.
Finally, they dropped down another fire escape into an alley where Lester-Apollo was slumped against a wall, looking like he'd just lost a fight with a garbage truck and several of the garbage truck's friends.
His face was a mess of bruises. His arm was still bleeding from the claw marks. His designer clothes—if they'd ever been designer, which seemed doubtful—were now completely ruined, stained with blood and alley grime and what might have been monster drool.
But he was alive. Breathing. Looking up at Jason with eyes that held a complicated mix of gratitude, confusion, and something that might have been recognition.
"Erlang Shen," he croaked. "You came back."
"Yeah," Jason said, because what else was he going to say? Actually, my name is Jason, I'm from a universe without gods, and I'm just as confused as you are?
No. That wasn't what a cultivation protagonist would say.
A cultivation protagonist would look mysterious. Would hint at hidden depths. Would let others fill in the blanks with their own assumptions while he figured out what the hell was going on.
"I came back," Jason agreed. "You look terrible."
"I feel terrible. Being mortal is terrible. Everything is terrible." Lester tried to push himself upright and failed, sliding back down the wall with a groan. "We need to get to safety. I know a place."
"Percy Jackson's apartment," Meg said, nodding. "Apollo told me about him. Son of Poseidon. He'll help."
"Percy Jackson," Jason repeated, the name tickling something in his memory. It sounded familiar, like something he'd read about once, maybe in a book or—
A book.
A book.
The realization hit him like a truck, or like a cultivation breakthrough, or like finally remembering where you knew someone from at three in the morning when it was way too late to do anything about it.
Percy Jackson. The Lightning Thief. A book series about Greek gods being real, about their demigod children attending a special camp, about prophecies and quests and—
And Apollo. The god of the sun. Who at some point in the later books got turned mortal as punishment from Zeus, and had to go on trials to earn back his godhood.
Jason was in the Percy Jackson universe.
He was in an ACTUAL BOOK SERIES.
And everyone thought he was a character from Chinese mythology who had somehow wandered into the wrong franchise.
This, Jason thought, a slightly manic grin spreading across his new face, is either the best or worst thing that has ever happened to me.
Probably both.
"Percy Jackson's apartment," he said, trying to sound like he knew what he was talking about. "Yes. Good idea. Let's go there."
Meg was already helping Lester to his feet, bracing his weight against her small frame with surprising strength. Peaches reappeared from somewhere, looking immensely satisfied and covered in golden dust that Jason suspected used to be monster.
"Can you walk, Erlang Shen?" Meg asked. "You looked weird back there. Were you actually trying to meditate in the middle of a fight?"
"I was cultivating," Jason said with dignity.
"What's cultivating?"
"It's..." Jason paused. How did you explain cultivation to someone who'd never read a single xianxia novel? "It's a form of spiritual practice. I was drawing in the energy of heaven and earth to strengthen my body and prepare for battle."
Meg stared at him. "Did it work?"
"Not exactly."
"Then why did you do it?"
That was actually an excellent question.
"The Dao works in mysterious ways," Jason said sagely, because that was the kind of non-answer that cultivation experts gave when they didn't want to admit they had no idea what they were doing.
Meg didn't look impressed. "Whatever. Come on, we need to move before more monsters show up."
They moved.
The journey to Percy Jackson's apartment was a blur of side streets and subway platforms and a cab ride that nearly killed them all because the driver apparently believed traffic laws were suggestions. Lester spent the entire time alternating between groaning about his injuries and complaining about his mortality.
"I used to be able to heal instantly," he moaned as the cab swerved around a double-parked delivery truck. "One thought and any wound would close. Now I'm going to have SCARS, Erlang Shen. SCARS! On this face! This terrible, mortal face!"
"You could see it as building character," Jason suggested.
"I've HAD character for four thousand years! I don't need more!"
Meg, sitting between them, looked like she was developing a headache. "Can you two stop talking? I'm trying to think."
"About what?" Lester asked.
"About why the Jade Emperor's nephew is in Manhattan helping a Greek god who got kicked out of Olympus."
That was also an excellent question.
Jason decided not to answer it, mostly because he couldn't. Instead, he stared out the window at the passing city, watching the gray buildings and gray sky and gray people going about their gray lives, completely unaware that monsters and gods walked among them.
I should be scared, he thought. I should be terrified. I'm in a fictional universe with no powers, no system, no cultivation base, and everyone thinks I'm someone I'm not.
But he wasn't scared.
He was... excited?
This was the kind of thing he'd been reading about for years. Adventures. Magic. A protagonist thrown into an impossible situation and forced to become something greater. Sure, he didn't have the typical cultivation cheat, but he had knowledge—knowledge of this world from the books, knowledge of cultivation from the novels, knowledge that neither Greek gods nor Chinese deities seemed to possess.
That had to count for something.
The cab pulled up in front of an apartment building that looked fairly ordinary—red brick, white window frames, the kind of place where middle-class New Yorkers pretended they weren't paying way too much for way too little space.
"This is it," Lester said, peering out the window. "Percy Jackson's residence. If anyone can help us, it's him."
"Because he's a son of Poseidon?"
"Because he's saved the world approximately four times and owes me several favors, none of which he's actually aware of because gods don't typically explain our divine assistance, but morally speaking—"
"Just get out of the cab," Meg ordered.
They got out of the cab.
The driver sped away without waiting for a tip, which was probably fair given that Lester had spent the entire ride bleeding on his upholstery.
"Erlang Shen," Lester said, turning to Jason with an expression that was trying for commanding but mostly achieved 'desperate.' "I know we have not always been allies. The competition between the Greek and Chinese pantheons has led to... tensions. But in this moment, I ask for your aid. Help us reach Percy Jackson's apartment. Help us explain our situation. And if possible, help us not die in the next few hours."
Jason looked at the god-turned-mortal. Looked at the fierce little girl who commanded fruit demons. Looked at the perfectly ordinary apartment building that apparently housed a demigod hero.
He should correct them. Should explain the misunderstanding. Should admit that he was just some guy from another universe with a face that happened to match a Chinese deity's.
But where was the fun in that?
"Very well," Jason said, drawing himself up to his full height and letting his new face settle into what he hoped was an expression of noble solemnity. "I, Erlang Shen, shall assist you in this matter."
I have no idea what I'm doing, he thought.
But I'm going to cultivate my way through it anyway.
They entered the building.