Ah'Ming woke up in the midst of a battlefield. Harsh screaming and ash filled the air.
He blinked.
Dammit, did he oversleep again?
A system panel popped up.
|Mission: Survive for 8 hours
Cool.
He looked around again, and was delighted to see aliens. It was a weird world, with one faction being Xianxia cultivators fighting with swords and fancy ancient chinese weapons... While the other faction was fighting in ufos with lasers.
Sick.
Ah'Ming narrowed his eyes....
Which side should he join?
Eeny meeny miny mo... And he landed on the aliens. But the aliens were kind of ugly. Ah'Ming didn't really want to join either side... and then had an amazing epiphany. He'd fight everyone :3
Yes, he was very smart.
Ah'Ming took three steps forward before someone noticed.
A cultivator, robes already half-burned, eyes blazing with the kind of conviction that came from believing very hard in a destiny that involved killing strangers. He shouted something about demons and justice and lunged. Ah'Ming couldn't really understand, since it sounded like a fancier, higher form of mandarin.
Ah'Ming met him halfway.
The cultivator's sword screeched as it struck Ah'Ming's chest and… stopped. Not deflected. Not redirected. It simply failed, the blade shuddering as if it had rammed into a mountain that had opinions about being stabbed. Cracks spiderwebbed through the metal.
"…Huh," Ah'Ming said. Yippee, his skin had gotten stronger!
He backhanded the man.
The cultivator exited the fight horizontally, vanishing into a cloud of dust and broken moral certainty. He'd landed with a sick crunch, probably his spine or something.
That did it.
Qi flared. Lasers pivoted. Someone yelled something very panicked in what sounded like alien radio static. Ah'Ming grinned, teeth sharp enough now that it felt like a promise.
He'd punched enough things to make himself a nuisance both times. The other two sides had temporarily unified to try and kill him, but gave up and went back to killing each other.
Claws slid free from his hands with a wet, satisfying sound, bone and something darker knitting into curved talons. He sprinted straight into the mess.
A laser hit him square in the shoulder.
It splashed, light bending and dispersing across his skin like water against stone. Ah'Ming glanced down, mildly offended, and leapt. It tickled!
He landed on the hull of a low-flying UFO, claws biting deep into alloy. The craft screamed. He screamed louder.
"年年有余!"
The sound tore out of him, carrying weight it had no right to. The alien pilot inside froze. The entire craft dipped in midair, systems stalling as the strange skill Ah'Ming had gotten kicked in.
Damn, he really loved this skill. It was so random XD.
Inside, the aliens bowed, clasping their hands like someone does at Chinese New Year.
The UFO crashed.
Ah'Ming rode it down, jumped at the last second, and landed in the middle of a cultivator formation. Spears stabbed at him from every direction. They snapped. Talismans exploded against his back, painting him in fire and frost and lightning that slid off uselessly.
He laughed, breathless, exhilarated.
Claws rose and fell.
He tore through robes and armor alike, slashes leaving crescents of red in the air. One cultivator tried to form a hand seal. Ah'Ming grabbed his wrist and headbutted him hard enough to reset his understanding of physics.
Another UFO strafed the ground, lasers chewing through earth and bodies indiscriminately. Ah'Ming sprinted alongside the beam, outrunning it, then jumped and punched straight through the cockpit.
Glass. Sparks. Silence.
He landed again, rolling, coming up already moving as a cultivator descended from above, sword blazing with a thousand years of lineage.
Ah'Ming looked up and shouted again.
"万事如意! 长命百岁!"
The cultivator froze mid-strike.
Then, trembling, bowed.
Ah'Ming took the opening and removed him from the narrative.
The battlefield slowly adjusted around him, both factions backing off just enough to realize something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. Lasers and qi still flew, but now there was a wide, instinctive gap where Ah'Ming stood, ash settling around his feet like reluctant applause.
He wiped blood from his cheek, eyes bright, grin feral.
"Eight hours," he muttered. "Plenty of time."
Seven now.
The system panel just sat there, done with life.
This was meant to be a punishment instance... and the stupid jerk was using it as a free for all play time. It was about to bring in more panels to warn the broadcaster about the dangers of this alien blood, corrosive... Until half a litre of crimson liquid splashed across the blue screen.
...
The system took it back.
It wished for the stupid bug to be eviscerated.
A few hours later, he noticed that the timer was nearly over.
He pouted, and sunk a claw through the head of the last alien. This one had been hard to get, especially since it was in a camouflaged fighter jet the whole time.
So much for being invisible.
"Hey system, what's my kill count?" He grinned at the air.
Though the system didn't have a face or a voice, he could tell that it was pretty peeved.
|1934 Cultivators, 223 Aliens
Ah'Ming beamed.
"That's what, five a minute? Damn, I could do better."
the system raised two metaphorical middle fingers.
He sped through all of the notifications.
They were mostly all compliments to his fighting, but occasionally there were tips. As in, monetary tips, not advice tips.
Ah'Ming paused as he saw a strange notification.
|Achievement obtained: Temporary ceasefire
|Stop an all out war for five minutes.
His eyebrows furrowed. "When did I do this?" He asked the system.
The system replied dutifully.
|Broadcaster enraged both factions enough that they stopped fighting each other, only trying to fight the broadcaster.
Huh.
Ah'Ming pocketed the items, cash and rewards, and left the instance. He hated the instance settlement space, because it was blinding white and ugly.
The room was unchanged, but the corridors were slightly different. Didn't the carpets used to be orange? He could have sworn they were.
They were all red now.
Weird.
He whistled, and made his way over to the receptionist. He had a massive box of deluxe cookies as a thank you gift for someone who had recommended a splendid hotpot restaurant.