OldGeek

Jin Rou wanted to be a cultivator. A man powerful enough to defy the heavens. A master of martial arts. A lord of spiritual power. Unfortunately for him, he died, and now I’m stuck in his body. As Jin, I’m a man of the earth. A wielder of shovels and lord of rice and wheat. And sure, I also had to die and get pulled into another universe to end up here. But guess what? I’m starting to think it was worth it. I’ve somehow managed to get away from it all.

Jin Rou wanted to be a cultivator. A man powerful enough to defy the heavens. A master of martial arts. A lord of spiritual power. Unfortunately for him, he died, and now I’m stuck in his body. Arrogant Masters? Heavenly Tribulations? All that violence and bloodshed? Yeah, no thanks. I’m getting out of here. Farm life sounds pretty great. Tilling a field by hand is fun when you’ve got the strength of ten men—though maybe I shouldn’t have fed those Spirit Herbs to my pet rooster.

You're back? And you want to know what happened next? Well okay then, pull up a chair, and I'll tell you what went down in Minot. Yes. North Dakota. That Minot. Just goes to show not all the strange is confined to the big city. We went up there looking for the missing daughter of a friend of mine, and wound up neck-deep in trouble when instead of the missing girl, we found a drug ring. And a mind-controlled cult. Ruse did something stupid, Cougs got jealous, Kahni caused trouble, I got arrested again, and by the end of it, half the town was gunning for my hide.

Grog is a brute (half Human, half Ukar) slave raised from birth to fight in the pits for the entertainment of the crowds. He is content with his role in the city, proud of his barracks, and in awe of his owner, the sour Master Horne. Life, by Grog's reckoning, is good. Then an enigmatic churchwoman enters his life, and Grog finds himself swept from the city which has been his entire world, to travel and learn amid as strange a group as he has ever seen. He knows nothing of the group's mission, just that his skills are necessary and the quest is "a good thing."

Can't win for losin'...As any gambler will tell you, luck runs hot and cold. For my many sins I've been forced to scrape a life out of poker games and side-jobs on the fringes of civil society. I thought I hit it big when I raked 50-grand off the table at a roadhouse in Texas. It is amazing what a win can cost you. Now, on the run from a drug cartel headed by an unstoppable juggernaut, pursued by a shape-shifting killer, and framed for attempted murder, I have to protect a girl with a bounty on her head.