But it was only the beginning.
'Lightning and Ice, one falling upon the other to birth arctic sparks, the Everfrost Lightning, the bridge from the frozen lands to the unfathomable void above. A pillar fallen from emptiness, connecting life to death.'
Arcs of crackling dark lightning erged around Caine, swimming and coiling around him like fish in water, the air around suddenly slowing down, as if ti itself had been lagged.
The dark lightning reflected runes of blue and gold that moved in straight yet sharp lines vertically and horizontally, like code on a screen.
Atmospheric qi fell and rained around Caine in frozen shards of starlight as he himself released a steamy breath that created vapor, carried by a gentle breeze.
Just like with his True Primordial Bane fla, an Everfrost Lightning star fused into his second Dao Heart, infusing terrifying power into its fabric.
The two elents harmonized, and his Dao Hearts settled down into a calm lullaby, powerful and stable.
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Caine exhaled a breath, the arcs of lightning and tongues of fire flickering around him slowly fading away. Standing up, his gaze imdiately sharpened, ready to go.
There was no ti to waste.
[Find the Island of Split Ti.]
These were the only directions he received, and imdiately, his attention turned to the garden.
Specifically, he turned to the bloody roses filling this garden, the sa roses that had contained the illusory dream worlds his mind shards had fallen into.
His True Will seeped into them, digging into their fabric and unravelling runes deeply hidden in their depths.
These runes shot out and into the air, madly swirling into a tempest that swallowed Caine whole, but he remained calm.
His mind split in hundreds of ways, each analyzing segnts of the storm of runes and using his Will to pull them in one way or another, dissecting them layer by layer.
The storm rapidly subsided, each rune encasing into the other and assembling into a spherical three-dinsional formation.
The sphere landed on Caine's palm, and with a tug of his qi, all its runes lit up, activating the formation.
The sphere exploded into a mist of broken runes, and imdiately, he felt a rush of information flooding his mind.
'Coordinates.'
Nodding to himself, he swept the garden one more ti. Not noticing anything else worth spending ti on, he shot off and toward the expansive and endless ocean of gold surrounding the garden, his steps rapid as he sped across it as if it were solid ground.
***
Caine ended up being wound into the sort of ga he hated the most—maze puzzles.
He was forced to jump from one end of the golden sea to another, repeatedly returning to the bloody rose garden and having to run countless calculations to deduce more coordinates and uncover more puzzles.
The entire space seed to be a maze, a maze based on spatial coordinates where one could only reach the exit by following a specific route.
Essentially, via his steps, Caine had to draw a rune in space itself, which would trigger the opening of whatever place he was supposed to go to.
But it was also a puzzle. The layers of space in the golden sea seed to constantly shift and move, sothing that made absolutely no sense.
The fabric of space remaining in constant movent was akin to having an endless amount of blades, the sharpest blades of all existence, constantly flying and swimming around oneself.
It was a death sentence and should've made this world look like a chaotic ss of broken space, chaotic void storms, and twisted qi streams.
And yet, it all looked normal and stable.
'Tricky.'
Due to the endlessly moving layers of space around, Caine was forced to constantly recalculate all his previously made progress, then once again retrace his steps, rearrange the drawn rune, then start it all over again and again.
While each ti, having to go against complex tid challenges to get more and more coordinates.
For soone like Caine, it wasn't necessarily hard, but it was painfully tricky and botherso. But most importantly, it was frustrating.
It felt like he was being played with, and he hated it. This entire ordeal had a mocking undertone that left his guts churning and his True Will simring with wrath.
He felt like a mindless beast running after a piece of at hung on a branch, being swayed by the hand of its master, made to run circles as the master laughed at the creature's idiocy.
He felt like a jester, endlessly whipped and forced to dance in front of his king and entertain him.
He felt like a whore being stripped naked in public, shad for circumstances out of her reach.
It was humiliating beyond belief and only served to feed the bubbling hatred that'd been festering and brewing in the depths of his heart for the past few years.
***
In the end, it took Caine an entire three months to complete the maze puzzle.
It had taken three entire months for perhaps one of the world's greatest minds to complete this maze puzzle.
Three entire months. Three entire months backed by a gift that gave one an unmatched affinity to space and ti.
Three months.
Fate just had its way with things, a way that constantly managed to slowly but surely crush all that Caine was, in the most inconspicuous and perverted of ways.
Each second felt like a spit on his face, each day like a slap to his face, each week like a stain on his pride, and each month like a dagger pressed against the fabric of his oh-so-mighty Dao Heart.
Pure and utter humiliation.
***
Caine stood on the green grass of the bloody rose garden, his steps having led him back here.
Of course it would. A stupid ga that'd end up where it started, like the final slap to an already purple and bruised cheek.
Caine chuckled, his gaze almost empty as he pressed a palm against the grass, and he completed the spatial rune.
RUMBLE!
The ground shook.
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