“Before we go any farther,” said John, “You said that you’d offer proof. I think I’d like to see that proof now. If you can do that, then we’ll talk. Otherwise, you’re just a crazy man trying to claim credit for a natural disaster that happened when you were still in kindergarten.”

Zhao Gang nodded. “I’ll offer three pieces of proof. First, I told you that I am immortal even though this body is not. I’m going to prove that by abandoning this body and making a new one. In essence, I am going to die and resurrect myself. Please don’t be alarmed.” John laughed at that last statement but let it pass.

“Second, I’m going to take you to another plane of existence. It won’t be terribly different from this one, but it will be different enough that you won’t be able to deny that it isn’t here. It will have ten suns and four moons. The grass will be purple. Other minor details will likely stand out. The journey will be a little uncomfortable but will cause no harm, I promise.” Zhao Gang waited for John to nod again.

“For the third proof, I am going to commit an act of destruction, one large enough that you won’t be able to deny that a normal person couldn’t do it. Specifically, I am going to sunder a mountain cleanly in half. Don’t worry, the world I have in mind for that doesn’t have any people on it. My demonstration won’t hurt anyone.”

“You,” John said slowly, “Are proposing to cut a mountain in half.” His disbelief was obvious. Forget dying and resurrecting, that was something too unbelievable to truly wrap his mind around. Leaving this plane of existence for another one was something that he simply didn’t have the frame of reference to appreciate. But he could imagine the power it would take to cleave a mountain.

“Yes,” said Zhao Gang. “It’s not all that hard. I could have done it even before my breakthrough.”

“Not that hard, you say,” said John. “I’ll just have to believe you on that.”

“You will,” said Zhao Gang with a smile. “Let us not waste time. The first proof then. It shouldn’t take more than about five minutes for me to make my new body, but do try to be patient. I’ve only actually tested this a couple of times, so I’m not exactly an expert with the process yet.” With a wave of his hand, Zhao Gang summoned up a bed and moved to lie down on it.

“How do you do that?” asked John, staring at the bed. “I mean, I get being able to sunder mountains and travel to different planes. All of that is at least theoretically possible. But how do you make something from nothing like that?”

“Ah, a parlor trick.” Zhao Gang held up his hand and tapped a ring on his finger. “Space is malleable, yes? It bends and flows. Earth science has discovered gravity is a result of this fact, but you don’t have the tools to take advantage. Cultivators do. This ring contains a space within it, a space large enough that all of these items I’ve summoned fit inside. With a minor effort, I can withdraw the items from that space. When I do they appear here.”

“That… makes some sense,” said John, a little dumbfounded. Then he looked at Zhao Gang. “You carry around chairs, a table, and a bed?”

“Why not? The ring has plenty of room for them. This way, I can be comfortable anywhere.” The two looked at each other for a long moment then John burst out laughing.

“I need to get me one of them,” said John through his laughter. Zhao Gang waited patiently while he got control of himself.

“Alright, I’m going to die now. See you in a few minutes.” The comment, despite being morbid, got John to laugh again. His face sobered up instantly when he saw the life leave Zhao Gang’s body.

“Holy shit,” he said, rushing to the bedside. “Holy shit, holy shit.” Frantically he felt for a pulse, first at his wrist then his neck. After confirming the body lacked either he rolled the body off the bed onto the ground and started attempting to do CPR. His first push down on the chest nearly broke his wrist. “What the fuck? What are you made of? Steel?”

He tried pushing more tentatively until he had his whole bodyweight leveraged over his arms. The chest hadn’t compressed so much as an inch. Despite that, John could feel flesh, real and actual flesh, beneath his hands. If this was a mannequin, it was the best damn mannequin he’d ever seen. Maybe Zhao Gang was a robot AI that just loved fucking with people? That would explain why he couldn’t do CPR - the body was metal inside.

John spent several minutes trying in vain to come up with a way to perform CPR for his fallen friend, but nothing he could come up with worked. He tried his phone but, perhaps unsurprisingly, there was no reception. He’d even tried to lift the body, intending a fireman carry to hike back with Zhao Gang draped graceless over his shoulders. The corpse was heavy enough that he couldn’t even get it off the ground.

Deciding to try one more thing, John stood up, braced himself, and stomped down on the corpse’s chest with every ounce of strength in his body. The chest didn’t compress; his foot did.

“Mother fucker!” he cursed as he rolled away gripping his ankle. “Goddammit, that hurts. What the fuck are you made of anyways your creepy bastard?!”

“Flesh and blood,” came a voice to his left.

For the rest of his life, that moment was branded in his memory, remaining crystal clear even years later. He screamed like a little girl. Lying there on the ground in extreme pain while trying to avoid the idea that his friend had just willed himself to die, a voice came out of nowhere. Of course, he screamed. Not that he ever admitted it.

His hysterics lasted only a moment before he saw Zhao Gang sitting comfortably in his chair waiting for John to pull himself together. “What the fuck you asshole! You didn’t have to scare the daylights out of me!”

“Sorry,” said Zhao Gang. “You looked like you were having fun abusing my corpse. I wasn’t going to interrupt.” The chuckle he added on to the end told John that he was joking, but he wasn’t willing to just let the comment pass.

“I wasn’t abusing your corpse I was trying to perform CPR!”

“By breaking your ankle on my chest?” asked Zhao Gang with another laugh.

“What the fuck are you made of anyway? Are you a fucking robot or something?” John was starting to calm down but his ankle fucking hurt.

“Here,” said Zhao Gang with another wave of his hand. A pill of some kind appeared there, presumably pulled out of his storage ring. “Take it. It will heal you.”

“Fuck you, you dead asshole. Where did this thing even come from? Your corpse is over there,” he said pointing. “How can you still have your rings?”

“I retrieved them already,” Zhao Gang said with a patient smile. “Take the pill. We’re not continuing until you do.”

“Fine,” said John, putting the pill in his mouth and downing it with a generous helping of whiskey. A tingle started up in his ankle and faded almost immediately, taking the pain with it. Gingerly he put his foot down. “Wow, that worked fast. You could make a mint.”

“Money isn’t something I’m short on,” said Zhao Gang.

“Right. Immortal. Money is no object. Got it.” John’s tone was snarky but he was starting to sound a little more like himself. They sat for a moment and watched the stars while John poured himself another glass of whiskey, downing it whole. “This is going to be one hell of a mind trip, isn’t it?”

“We can stop if you want,” said Zhao Gang. “I’ll erase your memory of this conversation and it will be as if it never happened. I’ll fire you in a couple of days and find you a cushy job somewhere else dealing with normal kids in a normal school where they pay you too much money to do paperwork that a newly graduated high school student could do.”

“What, you can just poof away my memory too?” asked John, a little freaked out.

“Not exactly. Memory alteration is hard. It requires the one doing the editing to vastly overpower the one being edited. Unfortunately for you and everyone else on this planet, nobody has any training. So yes, I can mess with your memories.”

“Alright, I’ll make you a deal. I promise you that I’ll keep everything you tell me a secret and you promise that no matter what I get to keep my memory.”

“No,” said Zhao Gang simply. “That’s not possible. For one, if you can’t cope with what I’m showing you then not wiping your memory would be cruelty, not kindness. Second, you don’t understand what you’re offering. When cultivators make oaths they do so to the heavenly Dao, the rules of creation. If we break them, we die, more or less. The plane itself attacks us until it either runs out of energy or it destroys us. If you were to make that oath to me, it would be the same. The moment you broke it you would die. Third, I won’t promise something I have no control over. ‘No matter what’ means that I’ll be promising to protect you from anything that could potentially alter or edit your memory. I’m not going to babysit you for the rest of your life. If you got early-onset Alzheimer’s it could kill both of us.”

“Fine, jackass. Be technical. I wasn’t asking for some death oath. I just want an agreement between us. As long as I’m not a drooling vegetable you won’t take my memory. In return, no matter what you show me or tell me, I will keep it to myself. Unconditionally. I may disagree with something you say or do, but I won’t rat you out.”

“Cultivators have a saying, John. Call upon those you trust, trust those you call upon. Since I’ve gone this far it means I’ve decided to trust you. So I’ll agree.” Zhao Gang smiled. “Now that you know you’re not going to end up forgetting everything, are you still sure you want to know?”

John looked at him strangely for a moment before he parsed the question. Finally, he said, “In for a penny, in for a pound.” Another moment passed, then his face twisted into a different, equally awkward expression before he added hesitantly, “Are you an alien? I mean, technically you’re an alien because you’re not from Earth, but that corpse isn’t human.”

“Of course it’s human. I’ve just spent a very long time imbuing it with natural energy. There’s so much energy in it that it won’t decay in any meaningful time frame. But, to assuage your worries, watch.” Without a hint of hesitation, Zhao Gang raised a stiff finger and swiped it down at the corpse, which promptly fell into two pieces. John looked at it for a long moment before turning and throwing up.

“You’re wasting good whiskey,” said Zhao Gang without inflection.

“You’re a fucking psychopath,” said John.

“What? It’s a corpse. My corpse, to be precise. If anyone has the right to mutilate it, I do. You’re just squeamish. I got over that a very, very long time ago.” Zhao Gang’s face was stoic when he said it, but John noticed that his voice was colder, harder than usual. If his story was true, John couldn’t deny the necessity of setting aside such feelings. “Would you like to take a closer look at the corpse? It is human. I’m not an alien. Or a robot.”

“Nope,” said John instantly. “Totally believe you. The smell is 100% human corpse.”

“You’ve smelled a human corpse before?” asked Zhao Gang, a little surprised.

“Nope, but that’s definitely not robot smell.”

“Good enough,” said Zhao Gang. He waved his hand and the corpse disappeared.

“What’d you do with the corpse? Did you just put it in your ring? With all your stuff? Isn’t that, I dunno, gross?”

“There’s lots of space in there. It’s not like it’s soiling my pillows. Besides, I can hardly leave it here. As I said, it won’t decompose. I’ll have to dispose of it properly later.”

The sat in silence for a long moment before John spoke again. “So obviously you’re not an alien. But are there? Aliens I mean?” Zhao Gang paused for a long moment thinking about the question before he responded.

“You’ll need to be a little more specific. If you mean to ask if there are other life forms out there,” he said, waving his hand at the sky, “Then I don’t properly know. Earth is the only world I’ve explored on this plane. If you mean to ask are there other, non-human races on other planes, then yes, though they are rare. The Eternal Cycle seems to have decided on 'human' as the default form for sapience during this cycle. Most of those other races are remnants from previous cycles. They tend to have trouble adapting, so they are few and far between. Even if you went traveling across the planes you’d likely never meet one in your lifetime. Mostly it’s just humans and beasts this cycle.”

“Beasts?” asked John.

“Yes, beasts. You would call them ‘animals’ but that isn’t accurate. Animals are what you get when you take beasts and deprive them of natural energy. Animals have a natural capacity to absorb natural energy that humans lack. Basically, the longer they live the more energy they absorb and the more powerful they become. Eventually, if they’re lucky and they live long enough, they can even become sapient. The most powerful beasts can even use their natural energy to assume human forms, though they’re never really comfortable that way. They appear human but they aren’t. Never forget that. A beast can act as human as they like, but at the end of the day they have the instincts and thoughts of a beast.”

“So… animals can absorb enough energy to talk and stuff?”

“Oh yes,” said Zhao Gang seriously. “Never assume a beast is stupid. By the time they gain enough energy to speak to a human they are quite a bit more intelligent than your average mortal.”

“What’s going to happen to the animals on Earth?” asked John. His face was pensive, but Zhao Gang could detect a hint of worry in his voice.

“Well, eventually they’ll start accumulating natural energy. In time there will be some mildly powerful beasts here, certainly strong enough to resist bullets. But that’s hardly a concern for today. There won’t be any real beasts on Earth for years yet.”

“That’s a relief,” said John. “Still, it wouldn’t hurt to be prepared for them.”

“I’m working on that,” said Zhao Gang wryly. “I’m hoping that you’ll agree to help me with it.” That got John’s attention.

“You want my help?” he asked.

“Of course,” said Zhao Gang. “Why do you think we’re having this conversation? I’m talking to you now because I want you to help me raise those children into cultivators. But not just cultivators, not bloody tyrants that see everyone as either someone to be stepped on or get stepped on by. No, I want them to inherit the culture of this world, the morals of this world. I want them to be able to help one another, to lift each other up rather than to see their fellows as nothing more than rivals and stepping stones. But I don’t know how to do that, not really. It’s foreign to me, to all of us. That’s why we need you and the other teachers, to allow them to connect with their own culture. We don’t want to separate them from it, to give them some complex that they’re special. We want them to be as normal as possible for as long as they can be normal.”

That shut down the conversation for a long time. John just sat there sipping whiskey and staring into the deepening night. Eventually, he turned to Zhao Gang and said, “I think it’s time to go traveling.”