As reality settled around once more, this ti more blurry as if looking through a dream or a haze, I saw visions of myself. An older walked around myself, a small town made entirely out of the creations of my own self.
This was the world I’d made. In the darkness, in the loneliness of eternity I’d crafted this reality to save my sanity. The crutch of existence that had been left behind, and now all that remained of it was an echo.
I looked at myself, looked at the things I had created and was so desperately trying to preserve at the ti. The older had a small girl on his shoulder. Was that my daughter? Or perhaps grand-daughter?
I did not know. I did not recognize her. I could not even see her face, but I found myself reaching out towards her, a phantom pain echoing in my heart.
The vision lted with my touch, fading into nothingness as the echo ended.
My heart sank. Everything I’d built in here… all of it was gone. All that had once been everything to … it was lost now. And I did not even care. Not outside, not when the mories of this ti were lost to , like a dream that I had once lived.
What did that an? Was I supposed to give up on my reality just like I had given up on this world as well? This was fake and my reality was real… but to the who had spent his life in here… this was as real as Labby and my friends are to . And yet, I had made that choice, chosen to abandon this world and return to them, to the people I truly cared for. To the people I knew were waiting for .
I did not know what the answer was. All I felt was a sense of frustration as I clenched my fists.
The echoes continued and I moved through my life. The mont when I’d found the tree and been united, when completion had first dawned onto and I’d grasped the truth of the world in its entirety, forming Chi and bringing it into this world once more. I moved back through the ti before that, through the places and things that had co before, all the way ‘til I stood at the beginning.
At that mont that had changed everything.
The day I had woken up, and discovered this world anew, and decided to use what I knew to bring change to it.
I’d never for once thought that I’d be able to truly change the world. Back in that mont, when I’d first realized how much could be done if this world was better understood, how much potential there was here to improve people’s lives and the world at large but a part of had never believed that I’d be able to achieve it. Who was I to make such changes?
But I’d walked on my path. Not truly believing in myself. Not truly believing that I could ever make a difference but still pursuing that fascination with all the little things in reality.
It was strange, watching myself now. I’d lived and grown up in this world. To the from before… this had been the norm. This had been the way everything was. But to the who had forgotten it all, who’d woken up with just the mories of a past life? It was like looking at the world with a child’s vision again. Everything was fascinating and new and exciting and the world felt interesting.
When had I lost that? That childlike wonder?
In this life, or my previous one? I’d never truly realized just how fascinating reality itself was. The fact that we exist in this ti and mont, in this space, is truly a marvel that is hard to describe. The fact that I live is weird, and I’d forgotten that fact two tis.
I wondered what that Lu Jie would think if he saw now. Would he be in awe? Would he feel disappointed that I never got to retire in a mansion and just make alchemy pills sowhere with Labby and my friends, living a life of carefree comfort?
I thought about it for a second. What would the from that ti period have said to the right now?
I could almost see myself, standing in front of , so full of myself, so enamored with the magic of this world, so taken by all that could be done. The Lu Jie of the old looked at , at the who ran a sect, at the who had all these ties and burdens and responsibilities and people to protect and care for, mired at the very center of the world he had wanted to run away from so very desperately.
I looked at him, and my past looked back at and then shook his head. “Your shoulders look so stiff.”
I smiled at that. “I have a lot of responsibilities on my shoulders now.”
Past looked at that and grimaced. “Sounds bleh. I hope you’re still experinting and trying to find how all this magic bullshit works?” He asked.
“Sotis, not all that often. I rembered so things and it changed my perspective on the so-called… bullshit part. But I have not stopped moving ahead on what we wanted to achieve,” I said.
“Good, that’s good,” my past self replied, and then he looked up at and asked sothing I did not expect. “Do you like it? The power, the authority? You’re really strong now, right? If you do this thing… if you get the Azure Dragon, that will make you the de-facto emperor. And if you beat Yang Shen, then you’ll have a stronger legacy than the one this empire itself was built on. It’d be a new empire under you. Does that… make you happy?”
I paused at that thought. Did that make happy? It was weird how I did not have to think about it for even a second to answer.
“No, I hate it,” I said, aning every bit of it. “I don’t… I don’t want to do any of this. I don’t want to fight a war, I don’t want to… I want to take Labby and all my friends and run away. I want to abandon this whole thing. We could hide, stay safe sowhere out there. Apparently the rest of the world has fallen, but I don’t believe everyone outside has just died. People must be living there. We could live a quiet and peaceful life. Make a farm, grow spirit herbs, make alchemy pills, and I could experint and grow my knowledge and library and help those around and slowly create a town. Similar to the one I’d made here. A small haven for those close to , cut off from the rest of this dark world,” I said, looking down as I felt exhaustion filling .
“You must be disappointed,” I asked, looking up at my younger self.
He looked back at , and then shook his head. “No, I get it. I wouldn’t want to do any of this either.”
I smiled, feeling comforted to have soone understand .
My past self walked up to , and then put a hand on my shoulder. “But we can’t do that, can we?”
I looked at him and saw myself in his eyes. I nodded. “Yeah. I can’t.”
“We suck, don’t we?” He asked.
“We really do. So selfish, so afraid, always wanting to run away. But not selfish enough… because that would not be a life worth living. I would not be able to face my friends again if I did that. Even if they agreed.”
“I hate this,” my past self said.
“Yeah, too,” I replied.
“I hate that you sacrifice over others. I hate that you have to make these difficult choices. I hate that you cannot just give up and live your own life. That you can’t just let things be. That you always have to go out of your way to help others,” my past self said, showing anger and I let him speak.
He clenched his fist, standing there, but then, the anger faded.
“But I can’t hate you. Because if we were not this way, Labby would not look up to us. Sheldon would not follow us, Yan Yun would not rely on us, Zhang would not be sworn to us. None of our friends would be there if we were not this way,” he said, and I looked up at him.
My past self had a resolute expression on his face.
“That’s why you can’t give up. No matter how hard it gets. No matter what cos next, and who you have to face. Not for , not for us, but for Labby, and Zhang, and the Old Man, and everyone else who has helped us beco who we are.”
“We do not fight for us. We fight for the world that we got a chance to relive, be reborn in, and co to truly love and find loved ones in. And if we have to die fighting for it… that would be a life well lived,” my past self said, as I found my eyes watering. I nodded, my own resolve strengthening, iron will forming in my spirit and solidifying into an unbreaking wall.
I would have to give up on my dream. And perhaps I would not get to live through the happiness I’d found in this darkness… but I had made that choice then and I would make it here again.
I was here because of all the things that had happened before . All the people, and all the choices.
I looked back at the mont, the point of my rebirth, the pain, the confusion, the anger and the loss. All of this, born from that one mont.
In that way… I was glad to have lost. If I had not almost died in that spar… would I ever have woken up to the wonders of this world? Seen reality from the eyes of a child once again? Began walking this path to bring change from the knowledge of my past life? Found Labby, found Yan Yun and all my friends?
In a way, I was almost thankful to Li and Lei.
I felt sothing stir inside at that too. I put a hand on my chest, feeling echoes of their souls from sowhere within the tree that existed inside of . They were there… both of them, despite what had happened.
And if I managed to fix this world… they might be able to live again. Not as Li, or Lei. Those lives were gone. Nothing could bring that back. But their souls would not have to exist in the darkness forever.
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As I felt them, I felt all the other souls connected to the tree. I felt their presences like stars in the skies. I realized sothing else as well.
It was not just for Labby and those who were alive. But those who had died as well. I felt them, echoes in the darkness, connected to the cycle of rebirth, waiting for salvation from this twisted and broken world.
And that choice was in my hands.
The shadow of my past lted, and I began to sink deeper still.
Ti moved in a blur, the world whirring past as I moved through my life. Beyond my rebirth, in the life of this world. My life in the sect, my life before it, as a farm kid with nothing to his na. And then my life before that fateful night, when demons had arrived.
I moved past it all, past even the darkness and then I woke up in a ti I had forgotten almost entirely.
I woke up in my childhood. When I still had my mories intact, and as one.
The world swirled lazily. The mories I had inherited, out of all of them, this was a past that… I did not rember. I had barely been four or five at this ti, and any mories I’d had were gone, especially with my soul situation being so complicated, and so I watched a younger scribbling onto the ground with a stick, writing down so numbers for a math question and being bored.
The kids were nearby, playing with sticks and using them as swords. They played a ga where one boy would be a cultivator, another would be a beast, and whoever the beast touched would get frozen, their soul captured ‘til the cultivator touched them.
If the beast touched everybody, the cultivators would lose. If the cultivator did, the beast would lose.
It was a simple children’s ga. But I found it silly to participate and so I sat in the bushes nearby, scribbling numbers no one else would be able to read and thinking about how I could use my knowledge to get out of this backwater village.
That was when I’d noticed sothing. A shadowy figure moving in the distance. I’d been curious and followed in, despite the warnings from adults. Even at my age, I was aware of the Qi in my core. I was not like the other kids my age. And not just because I had the mories of my past life. I knew this sowhere in the back of my mind. I was different in a more fundantal way, and that made arrogant.
As I moved through the bushes I found what the thing had been. It was a bird with an injured wing. I’d moved closer to inspect it but the bird had hissed at and then, its eyes had lit up with dark wisps and I’d realized sothing.
This creature had been attacked by a demonic beast. It was being tainted by miasma.
We’d been warned that occasionally so creatures like that could wander over and to run and let an adult know imdiately, and for a mont I considered it… but sothing kept where I was.
I gently picked up the bird, moving slowly even as it looked at with anger and hissed in warning, and then I put my hand on the creature.
“Shhh. Stupid bird, let do my thing,” I told it and then, out of sheer stupidity, I pulled the miasma inside of myself.
The bird fluttered its wings in surprise but then stopped as it realized what was happening. The miasma slowly flew into . It burned, like acid flowing through , yet I kept going, and soon it was all gone.
My veins turned black and my arm ached and burned from the inside, but I put the bird down. The creature flapped its wings to test and found itself free. It looked at in surprise but did not wait for to change my mind as it flew away.
I sat on the ground, my body pulsing and throbbing with pain, and so to keep the pain away I pulled the miasma deep inside myself, gathering it together in a small core and then storing it in my spirit.
That removed the pain, removed any hint that the miasma had even been there as the darkness faded and I took a breath of relief.
“Lu Jie! What’re you doing all the way out here by yourself?” My mother scolded as I jumped, I turned and ran back, hoping she’d not seen that.
“Nothing!” I shouted, and returned to my day to day life.
As the vision of the mory faded, and I lived through this lost mont in ti, I found my heart thundering.
I had not even realized it, all the way back then. That was when the seed had first ford. The seed that had caused one hand of my soul to succumb to miasma and turn into a demon… and how everything had happened.
That core of miasma had been the crux, as the seed of the tree that would co to be had been planted all the way back then, and it had wrecked my soul. The split in my soul, the mories of a past life and the Qi mingling with the Gu could not handle it.
And so I’d had to have my soul split.
The one with the mories of my past life slept, the miasma core tied to it, and the one that had been awake simply continued with life, albeit forever cut out from his own senses and pieces of his life with gaps in his mories.
That one mont had been the beginning of it all. The reason why I grew up cultivating slower than everyone else, it was why, when I’d nearly died, one part of awoke while the other, the one with all the frustration and anger, had sank and beco tainted with the miasma, and why I’d found Chi and found the Unity that began the rest of it all.
I felt the souls connected to , as I watched my own life be determined in a single encounter. Had sothing known this would happen? Was it fate?
I did not know, and I did not know what to believe in either. Why was I rembering all this now? What did it even an?
I closed my eyes and looked within myself. The tree, and my own core, and the three laws and their shining spirit rings.
These aspects ford my spirit, and ford who I was. I did not know the answer, but I knew I would find it sowhere within myself. And so I began to let the darkness take deeper still, into sowhere even closer to myself.
The world shivered, as I sank deeper still.
***
I opened my eyes, finding myself standing in a different darkness. But this one wasn’t quite the sa as the one I’d just been. This one was… darker, deeper, the nothingness of it more solid and concrete. The absence of everything more pervasive and ever present. I could feel the nothingness around , almost feel space and reality itself, with the lack of all that was there in between and the rest of it.
It took a mont, a really long and slow mont, before I had a realization.
What I was feeling… was myself. The fluctuations in reality began to settle down a little at that thought. It was difficult to explain what exactly the realization was.
The state of being that I was in right now… I could recognize it. Like waking up and becoming aware in a dream, and knowing it is a dream, and that the reality inhabited in this mont is different from the one present in the waking mont.
It was a sensation akin to being half awake, being in between states. No one realized when they fell asleep, no one could observe the mont of sleep. One mont you’re here, and the next you’re not.
This? This was like existing perpetually in that mont. In that point where you go from being sowhere in between two states of mind to completely into the other. The mont of sleep and transition into the world of dreams.
It was… trippy, to say the least. This wasn’t my first rodeo with dream worlds, but dream worlds mimicked reality. Being in your spirit was a lot like lucid dreaming. It was the most awake part of dreaming, not all that different from being awake itself on its own.
But this? This was… peering into the darkness. No, not the darkness.
Peering into my subconscious. The part of that I did not control and could not be aware of. It felt like the darkness embodied that. The nothingness here embodied that.
I could picture it here and now, in this mont, if all of my self was a sphere, a ball of light and energy, then the thoughts and everything that was were rely fluctuations of that sphere. Additions and changes of states in the mont.
Falseness.
Just being here felt like I was having a breakthrough. Even before I realized I found myself crossing my legs and ditating in the darkness, observing emptiness. Observing the void, absence of all that I clung onto into life.
Even death was not still, in death you have the absence of self. But in life, you create the absence of self by existing only in the present mont, only in the thoughts, the words that continue to pour into your mind one after the other, a stream of existence, a stream of thoughts. One thing into the next, like a river that began to flow sowhere in your childhood and never stopped outside of those monts when you close your eyes, and let the darkness embrace you and beco nothing.
And so I stopped.
…
Things began to lt.
My sense of self began to dissolve itself.
So questions arose from within the darkness. Within myself. Who was I?
Was I an alchemist? No, no, that was rely the path I’d chosen. Sothing akin to a job but not even that. A tool, a thod, a source of information and knowledge to use.
Was I smart? No, I knew and had known in both my lives people much smarter than . Yin was smarter than , understanding so many different concepts, translating things from a language she used only with her grandfather. Researching and helping her village in her own ways and constantly seeking more. Liuxiang was smarter, aware of the world, aware of the politics of the empire and able to swiftly and deftly handle situations and keep her calm in all those monts. Qiao Ying was smarter, without that man I would not be able to even be a sect elder. I did not have the training or qualifications, things had moved far too quickly to even settle into the role and without his imnse support to make sure everything that I wanted to do could actually happen, none of this would occur. Nas upon nas ca, of people smarter than . But the fact that others could do more did not change what I was, and so I thought over the question again.
No, the answer was still no. In this darkness… in that ball of light that was my soul, my essence being distilled down to the most bare minimum bar nothing else… it had no inherent trait that could be compared. It simply was.
Was I Lu Jie? I then asked myself.
I rembered my mother’s face… the mother from this life. The mother I’d never gotten to know as well as I would’ve liked. My mories of my childhood were particularly vague, the split mories and dual perspectives did not help with recalling past events either, but I felt the love I held for her, the grief I had for her loss. It was like I’d lived my life having lost a part of myself that I hadn’t even realized used to be there.
But still… despite her, despite my family and the na they had given , despite the attachnt and the fact that this was the only identity I had any longer was this na… I found an answer that surprised .
No, I was not.
The na… my na… it was a way to call , a way to reach for and a way to refer to myself. It was a na, in all the worth that a na has… but it was not , it could never be , it represented a fluctuation, a part of myself, that sliver of light, the self that I was distilled into a fractional thread. Like reality collapsing down to a single point, so you saw the one point and thought it was everything the thing was, when in reality, it was simply just a tiny representation of the whole.
I felt another part of myself break away from . It lted into the darkness, dissolving into the nothingness… into myself.
Who was I?
The one answer that left, when all else broke away, when the darkness consud it all, was…
. I was .
There was nothing that could describe all of my existence in this mont, as I sat and looked upon my soul. As I close my eyes and just sit, and look inwards, I find the that is indescribable, that exists in this mont, observing, existing and living, the part of that is alive. The part of that is the self that defines who I am, the immortal soul which can have no words.
The sphere of light settled, and then began to collapse into a singular point. Into myself. Like a star failing to support itself once the forces keeping it stable end, the trappings of my reality fell apart as my soul collapsed into itself.
And then, when it ford that singular point containing not just one piece of , but all of myself, then the three spirit rings of my soul began to resonate through the darkness. Unity, Genesis and Harmony birthed sothing anew, a fourth, sothing unnad, sothing that was not yet defined, and with that collapse ca an explosion.
A big bang exploded in my soul, and in the blink of an eye my soul expanded to consu , and not just , but all of my reality as well. It spread outwards and outwards, continuing to flow before soon it consud all of the reality in this space.
And just like that, my inner world manifested once more.
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