The Foldable Cultivator [High School DxD]

[Boroda Orka]

"My stomach hurts," I told the guy across from me. I didn't get so much as a shred of sympathy.

"You piece of trash… How dare you…"

He never got to finish. It's hard to hurl abuse at someone when you've got a knife sticking out of your throat. Not a combat knife, either, just a perfectly innocent tool for peeling and chopping roots. Still capable of doing irreparable damage to a body, though… given its current location.

"I said my stomach hurts." I kicked the still-breathing lump in the face as it dropped to its knees, clutching the wound. "I'm in no mood to listen to the same thing for the twentieth time today."

Fucking cultivators, fucking traditions, fucking cookie-cutter morons everywhere I turned. Any second now, some piece of pig shit among the senior disciples would start throwing his weight around.

"Junior Disciple! You… you killed Junior Brother Pun!"

Right on cue. A fairly pretty girl, one of the senior disciples. She'd watched quite calmly as some self-important son of a bitch tried to grind a harmless junior alchemist into the dirt. Now she was choking on outrage while my victim choked on blood. And that little twat in a senior disciple's robes had damn well seen what he'd done to my pill.

"That scumbag's no brother of mine," I said, wincing again. "Besides…" I stared into the girl's green eyes. "My. Stomach. Hurts."

"And you killed Sun Pun over that?" Oh, just listen to all that righteous indignation. Not a hint of judgment in her eyes, though. The senior disciple was just going through the motions. She didn't give a damn about me. Sun mattered a little more, but she didn't give a damn about him either.

"I'm ready to kill on an industrial scale over this," I growled, making my way gingerly toward my cell. If I was going to croak, I'd rather do it in my own bed than curled up on the floor, howling.

My gut felt like it was being torn apart. Fucking pill, fucking dying bastard. How could I have missed that son of a busted condom and a half-witted donkey slipping something into the cauldron? The fucker had done a beautiful job of sabotaging it, too. The extra ingredient hadn't caused an explosion or disrupted the reaction. It had fit perfectly into the refining process, but completely fucked up the result. Which meant I'd be dead soon. Well, at least I'd have company.

A vicious smile broke through my grimace of pain as the twitching body on the floor went still. Pun had played his last prank. Fucking bastard… That pathetic imitation of the Weasley twins had driven every junior disciple up the fucking wall with his "jokes." Me included. And he'd gotten away with all of it because his father was a practitioner. Not an elder, but still more than a match for us juniors. Except that funny little shit hadn't considered that a dying rat could still tear your throat out.

"God, it hurts," I whimpered, taking tiny steps down the corridor. If I could just make it…

The pill… That beautiful, wonderful, magnificent pill. One of the jade achievements of my past lives (even after so many reincarnations, those names still made me laugh). A miracle drug—there was no other word for it—meant to completely rebuild my body and energy system. A leap forward. A breakthrough. In life after life, it had let me skip the early stages of cultivation. A cheat code for a newbie, a simple exploit for a veteran practitioner like me.

But rushing things… Never a good idea. Neither was getting cocky. I wanted to put my days as a junior disciple behind me as soon as possible. I'd been in a hurry, so I'd joined a sect for its resources. Faster than tracking down rare ingredients on my own. And safer, or so I'd thought. It was a road I'd traveled in life after life. Grit my teeth and put up with it, then "brew" myself a booster and become just another toad in the swamp. Then, once I had access to even rarer and more valuable resources, become the fattest toad of them all! And after that, move on.

Use drugs to get close to my old level, then keep cultivating, pushing higher and further, toward godhood and beyond mortal existence. But… I'd royally shit the bed. And what really stung was that I hadn't been brought down by some ancient practitioner, a demonic or divine beast, a god or a demon. Just an idiot. An idiot who'd been lucky enough to catch me tired and distracted, and in the end…

"Uuugh, suka…" I howled in Russian, bent into a pretzel. My energy system was going to shit, and so was my body. My dantian blazed like a star called the Sun, burning out the surrounding energy channels I'd spent two years preparing for a breakthrough… I could feel my guts tying themselves in knots. Only dozens of lifetimes of experience and more than a few torture "events" with me cast as the victim kept me from curling into a ball and screaming loud enough for the whole sect to hear.

How much time did I have left? Fuck if I knew. However long it took for the pill to finish me off or the dead bastard's daddy to find me. Did I regret killing him? Not one fucking bit! This was a goddamn cultivation world. People would rip your throat out for looking at them funny. Everything came down to personal strength. Literally everything!

Are you strong? The absolute strongest in the sect? So strong that you're stronger than literally everyone else in it? Then it's yours. All its resources are yours. All its female cultivators, too. Well, if you're a woman yourself or "swing the other way," help yourself to all the men instead. Me, I was as straight as they come, but after so many lifetimes, I'd seen all sorts…

Anyway, are you stronger than everyone in the city? Stronger than the whole city put together, including the ruling family and its guard? Then the city's got a new ruling family. All the old family's wealth is yours. All the cuties are yours. And so on. The country's ruler will just applaud your strength. But he'll start keeping an eye on you, just in case, and getting a bigger club ready. So he can hand out a preemptive ass-kicking before he gets one himself.

Stronger than everyone in an empire, a realm, a kingdom? It's yours. Strongest on the continent? Help yourself. Everyone below you is trash; everyone above you is respected, revered, wise beyond measure. Until they become trash too, of course.

In my last few lives, I'd become the strongest person in a medium-sized country. I never parked my ass on the throne, though; that would've gotten in the way of cultivation. It didn't cost me any respect. The rulers of those countries were wise men, and they showered the Great Practitioner—whose countenance shone with divine wisdom and whose kick packed the power of a thousand dragons—with all the goodies I needed. From rare ingredients to their own daughters, if they had any.

And why not? It suited the ruler, and I was happy with the deal. The girls were usually drop-dead gorgeous. Especially the second-to-last ruler's daughter—just… damn, wow, and a few dozen more along those lines! Besides, her daddy didn't have a male heir. After her father, the Emperor, died, my wife did the ruling and I did the cultivating. Everyone was happy. My boy took the throne when she died of old age. I kept watching over my descendants for a few more generations, until one of my great-great-great-grandsons got too fucking big for his britches.

"Ooooh…" I swore in one long vowel as I lowered myself onto the hard bed in my tiny cell.

Right about now, some xianxia and cultivation fanboy would be screaming that I was stupid, a moron, an idiot—hell, a stool had more brains than I did. You're supposed to be cultivating your way to godhood!!! Jerk off that dantian and hurry up and evolve. Broaden your horizons and all that other bullshit!

And I'd have a question for that smartass: "Know how to say 'It's not as simple as you think, my little buttercup' in Chinese?" He'd ask, "How?" And I'd tell him, "Go fuck yourself, moron."

Cultivation isn't masturbation. Despite all the jokes about jerking it off, a dantian isn't a dick. Cultivation is an incredibly complicated process that takes more than mindless meditation and working out. You also need those mythical flashes of enlightenment. And I… was stuck. No enlightenment for me. My mind wasn't opening onto new horizons, nor was I fathoming the universe in the sound of a single drop of water falling into a lake. Fuck-all. Fuckity-fuck-all. Yep.

And I'd had spectacularly bad luck with those much-vaunted Legacies of the Great Ancient Practitioners. The very first one—the Jade Elder's Ring of Grandeur—just fried my energy channels and blew up my dantian when I slipped it onto my finger with a gleeful "heh-heh." That was my third life among the "culties." Or rather, the end of my third life.

The Staff of the Four Demons… First, it left me flinching at the number four. Second, I never again laid a finger on anything with "demon" in its name. Without me even noticing, that stick and the "guests" trapped inside it had warped my mind so badly that I spent another four lifetimes as a complete bastard. A concentrated, crystallized piece of shit. When I finally came to my senses, I prayed to every god for the health and good fortune of the people who'd killed me in those lives. As for what I'd done while I had the staff, I still try not to think about it.

And no, I don't think of myself as a nice guy. Not by a long shot. Worlds where "might makes right" is the rule quickly beat any naive softness out of you. Even back then, I thought it perfectly normal to wipe out a clan I had a blood feud with, so there'd be no one left to avenge them. And by "wipe out," I mean everyone. Every last one of them. Or snap someone's neck for insulting me. Hell, even beat someone up for looking at me funny. And even I thought the Staff of the Four Demons had turned me into a bloodthirsty, vicious, unprincipled, deranged son of a bitch. Just to give you an idea of how far off my rocker I was back then.

I'd learned my lesson. I wasn't some xianxia protagonist with plot armor and plot conveniences growing on trees. But I kept looking for something to make me stronger anyway. Fat lot of good that did me. The golden veins of an ancient practitioner killed me when I tried to graft them into my body. The God Pill just burned through my stomach, and I croaked from internal bleeding. And when I put on the Heavenly Dragon Pendant… it summoned a fucking dragon that ripped me apart like a dog with a rag doll.

And the last one, the Ancient One's Ring of Wisdom, which I'd found three lives ago… contained the spirit of some practitioner weaker than me, who tried to take over my body. That was when I lost it—and let him have it. Eyes bulging and foam dripping from my mouth, I beat the shit out of that bearded old fart until he dissipated. And the whole time I was screaming: "You motherfucking bastard, get over here, you piece of dog shit! You thought you could fuck with me, you stinking shithead, you motherfucker, huh? Come on, then, try fucking with me! I'll fuck you up myself, you bastard, you goddamn jerk-off, damn you…" Yeeah… I really went off the deep end that time.

After that, though, I quit hunting for cheats and stuck to making my own. If something falls into my lap, sure, I might give it another shot. Luckily, there's no life counter; I just get reborn with all my progress reset to zero. But running myself ragged across continents in search of yet another brutal, horrifying death? No, thank you. I'd rather work on myself and try to finally make a breakthrough.

Besides, I know a hell of a lot of ways to cultivate. You can spend years meditating under a waterfall, level up by stealing your enemies' life force, or absorb energy from all sorts of celestial bodies, the Heavens, Hell, the Planes. And there are a hell of a lot more options. But! All of it, every last fucking bit of it, comes down to enlightenment. Even demonic practices, which I'm frankly not a fan of, require you to understand the "darkness and hell" within yourself.

The first of my burned-out energy channels snapped with the phantom twang of a breaking string. Not long now. I stretched out on the bed and stared at the ceiling, waiting to die. For one thing, my corpse would look dignified. I'd even made sure my mug looked suitably stony. For another, I always try to feel every moment of my own death. There's a faint hope it might help me make a breakthrough, but I'm not about to off myself just for that kind of meditation. So I seize the moment. Oh… Here comes the darkness… Well, hello, sweetheart. I've actually missed you. What's the next challenge going to be? Who will I be this time? A poor fisherman's son? An Emperor's grandson?

---

I have a theory that my cycle of reincarnation is broken. How does it work for normal people? You kick the bucket, and that's it. Game over. The loss to end all losses. Me? I croak, and blissful darkness and nothingness settle over my consciousness like a soft blanket. It's like sleep, only deeper. Hazy images flicker through that thick blanket, along with distant voices and my own cries as a baby. None of it disturbs the sleep of death—just memories that will surface once I wake.

Then… it's like someone flips a switch. I wake up at different ages. Sometimes I'm three, sometimes twelve. But never older than fifteen. Maybe I've even lived entire lives without ever remembering who I used to be, but that's just speculation.

This time, I was eight. As soon as I woke, I absorbed my new self into my old one, assimilating the knowledge, language, and habits of this new life. I became both my old self and my new self at once. Except… what percentage of our combined memories could an eight-year-old possibly account for? That's right. A tiny, almost imperceptible fraction of a percent.

But this time, when I woke up on the couch in front of the TV and took in my surroundings, I got one hell of a surprise. First, this world had never heard of cultivators. An eight-year-old would've known about them. Second, I was in Japan. Third, this was a technologically advanced world, and right now I was… watching Sailor Moon!

Okay… okay… OKAY!!! Fuck all that! I'll think about it later! It's been an eternity since I last stared at the idiot box, so I officially declare this my luckiest rebirth yet. Long live normal books, not all that pompous pseudo-Chinese prose! Long live anime and manga! Long live Hollywood and Soyuzmultfilm*! Time to cultivate in comfort!!! And I won't have to worry about some Enlightened High-and-Mighty Prick showing up to beat the shit out of me, saying, "You motherfucking piece of trash, get over here…"

---

Parents… You know, they really get on teenagers' nerves. Of course their kids love them. But they still get on teenagers' nerves. I should know. I've had kids, and I got on their nerves. Hormones, stupidity, idiocy, and all the rest.

But a kid's irritation doesn't even come close to that of an ancient cultivator whose mom won't let him stay out late. It's fucking surreal. Things are a lot easier in cultivation worlds. You're seven, but you've polished up your dantian and advanced through a few stages of cultivation all on your own? You can walk on water and snap century-old trees in half with a punch from your tiny fist? You're a prodigy. Your parents are proud of you, and no one would even dream of telling you no. After all, you're a genius, a talent that comes along once in a thousand years! Your father respects you and brags about you to his friends, while your mother cries tears of joy and basks in her friends' envy.

But here, I don't want to stand out too much! Cultivate or not? There's only one answer: of course I will! But in a world where we don't exist (at least officially), I need to be careful about it. I fully intend to live here as long and as peacefully as possible. Not because I'm tired or anything, but because I'd rather not run from armies, conquer countries, or end up with a tactical nuke dropped on my head. I'll live the quiet life of an ancient cultivator, and my reward for keeping things quiet will be lots and lots of entertainment—the kind that plain old Earth, where I was born the first time around, has in spades.

Yes, it's that simple. No, I'm not an idiot. It's just that when you're reborn into some version of the Middle Ages, life after life, you start desperately missing things like Sailor Moon, game consoles, Brazilian soap operas—even commercials! Especially Japanese ones! The stuff my fellow Japanese come up with just leaves me speechless.

But hey! I still have to cultivate! Progress matters. Maybe this will be the life when enlightenment finally comes to me and I make a breakthrough? But without the right pills, that'll take forever, and it won't be easy! Tracking down the plants, minerals, and other ingredients I need takes time, too. Some have to be gathered at the stroke of midnight by the light of a full moon. Others need to grow where a childless widow's corpse was buried—or meet some other ridiculous requirement.

Once I've leveled up, I'll be able to find energy-rich ingredients easily enough, of course. For now, though, I have to stick to the rules. What I've managed to find so far is incredibly weak compared with the ingredients from the "cultie" worlds. And I often have no idea what any of it does, so I'll have to experiment…

So I ended up looking like a kid playing at being a naturalist. In middle school, I even joined the nature club and went on every field trip. I wiped out every mouse and rat in the area testing potions and pills. And I did it all while sneaking around and hiding what I was up to. That's hard to pull off when you're a kid. Plus school ate up my time, plus kendo practice, plus wushu practice, plus yoga.

After all, I needed a cover story for a body far too developed for a kid, not to mention my strength, my flexibility, and all that meditating. That left me barely a couple of hours a day for the entertainment I'd been missing. But I wasn't complaining. Those were the two hours I savored most.

Eventually, I got used to my parents getting in my way and on my nerves. They couldn't get used to the way I lived.

At first, the adults in the Chiba family couldn't get over what a great kid I was. I was the kid every other mom compared her own to. I played sports, got straight A's, didn't waste time on stupid crap, and never got caught doing anything I shouldn't! But that was only at first. Then it started bothering them that I… had no childhood. I get it, but I couldn't exactly tell them I didn't need the damn thing, could I? I'd had plenty of childhoods already. I was sick of them!

Mom and Dad started trying to make me take breaks. Sometimes I even let them talk me into watching cartoons instead of meditating… But that was nothing. Then Grandpa came to stay and rolled into our already tense household like a tank. The old man fired his main gun with a prediction that horrified my parents: if I kept being such a raging workaholic, there'd be no girlfriend for me and no grandkids for them. Me, I didn't give a damn—I had plenty of time. It would all happen in its own time. My folks, though…

That sly old coot probably wanted to see his great-grandkids himself. And he knew his son—my dad—inside out. He knew Mom pretty well, too. His little bombshell went off with a bang, and Mom and Dad decided to take action.

For ages, I dodged introductions to the daughters of Mom's friends. I didn't have time for that right then. Especially not for a platonic relationship. And that was probably a mistake. Because Dad pulled a fast one—he swapped the high school I was supposed to attend for this…

"A thorn among roses, huh? Well, damn…" I muttered, taking in the buildings of Kuou Academy in Kuou. The former girls' school had only gone coed a couple of years ago, so there were far more lovely young ladies here than boys. And that was going to cause me a hell of a lot of trouble…

---

Notes

* Soyuzmultfilm is a Soviet and Russian animation studio founded in Moscow on June 10, 1936.

---

Original Russian story

You can find more chapters on my Patreon.

The translation of new chapters will also be published here—but with a bit of a delay.

 

[NuclearBirb]

Peak. Can't wait to read more. Im sure im missing something about what foldable means, but it's a very enjoyable premise.

 

[Tomato]

Do you have permission to translate and monetize from the original author?

Looking forward to more, but not if it's plagiarized.