Author's note
So, I really didn't manage to restore much in terms of buffer chapters. Most of this was because I have been pulling full time at work and also going to school. It is starting to look like I will have to just slow down the release rate to a steady 2 chapters per week. I will be trying to work up a formal schedule at some point, but for now expect the next chapter in around 4 days from now.
Aerien’s POV
“Woooow! I thought so, but still! Wow!”
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on already, or keep freaking out all over the place?” I yelled at Gaerien as my younger self while she flitted about the inside of my spirit. It was always a little strange for me to see her spirit projection looking so much older than her physical age on the outside, although it did seem that this projection was aging in reverse every time I saw her. Right now, she looked about like a 13 year old, although she was still dressed in the same fine white clothes lightly embroidered with violet like an understated display of wealth.
“Seriously Aerien! You have no idea how AMAZING this is, do you!?” She said, having teleported in front of my face. My younger self’s face, the one who had spoke. Meanwhile, my older self simply shook his head.
“Of course we don’t.” My older self said. “That’s why we need you to tell us!”
“Ok, ok, but still! This is just so amazing!” She said, making a sweeping gesture out toward the hodgepodge of floating rock and ice debris intermingled with fire and molten slabs of rock. A hurricane was visible just off to the right, pouring down great sheets of rain on the floating rocks and creating violent reactions with the fire balls that strayed too close.
I had always thought this state my spirit was in was a sign of how damaged it had become after the incident that placed me in my comatose state. However, Gaerien quite truly and honestly seemed to think otherwise, and I felt it was about time to get some answers.
“Are you going to tell us, or not!?” My younger self yelled at her in a cute tone that sounded almost like she was whining. “Ahhh! Don’t have thoughts like that old man!” She yelled at me.
“Like what!?” Gaerien asked, giving me a strange look.
“He thinks I’m acting like a little kid!” I pout.
“Well, you kinda are kid! You look younger than your real body outside now.” Gaerien teases.
“Hey!”
“It’s alright,” I say as my older self. “She’s just letting off steam because she’s still a baby on the outside, don’t let it get to you.”
“Hmm… yeah!” My younger self says.
“Oh, hey now!”
“Yeah, hey now!” My older self cut Gaerien off. “Just what were you trying to imply about me earlier with that look you were giving me?”
“Well… come on! It was a joke!” Gaerien says in her defense “I’m trying to get you to have some fun from your troubles, that’s all!”
“What look?” My younger self asks, and then begins to search our shared knowledge. “Oh my goodness! Gaerien! Nooo!”
“Ahh! Sorry, I guess that joke was a little too much for… you know what? Never mind. I’m just going to be burying myself if I finish that sentence.” Gaerien concludes. “Ok, yes! Moving on! You wanted to know what’s so impressive about this nice little set-up you got here, right?”
“Yes, let’s just move on. Don’t want to have to hurt any sisters here.” I said as my older self. Kidding, of course.
“Anyway, so, you said how your meditation is heavily based on the void as a concept, right?” She says. “Well, congratulations! It’s more than just a concept here. Your spirit, right now, looks EXACTLY like the void space between worlds. Well, the upper and mid parts at least, and of course there’s no giant phantom standing there… unless you count the void creatures.”
“Ahh… Ok. So, I guess that’s interesting.” I said cautiously. Gaerien looked a little exasperated though, as if she were expecting a bigger reaction.
“You REALLY don’t get it, do you!?” She demands. “Of course you don’t” She spits to herself. “You don’t have a clue about this cosmic stuff. Ok, listen. Your spirit has all of the same materials in it that are used to form worlds! It looks exactly like the primordial void from which all worlds are formed! Do you understand now!?”
“Haaaa.” I nodded as my older self. I didn’t really understand, but I was starting to get the picture as to why Gaerien was freaking out so much. It’s starting to sound more like this just might be too big for me to understand and digest this information in one sitting.
“So, does this mean that I can make a planet inside my spirit?” Of course, my less inhibited younger side is able to simply blurt out the first thought that comes to mind.
“I bet you probably could, if you want to take your cultivation in that direction. It would be a SERIOUS upper end cultivation if you did! Inner world is usually just supposed to be a metaphor, but actually creating an ENTIRE world inside of your spirit, that’s just crazy! But you could probably do it!”
“Would it have people on it?” My younger self asks. My older self feels like I am getting a headache just thinking about that.
“Well, I don’t know.” Gaerien responds. “I mean, it’s likely possible, you would really have to form it perfectly to do that though. There couldn’t even be the slightest error. But, if you really could, you would ascend instantly into godhood and not even need worshipers in the real world, all of your godly powers could come from within your own spirit! It would just be completely insane as a godly power! This is just an absolutely AMAZING meditation you’ve got here!”
“Ok, ok.” I interrupted as my older self. “You’re talking theory and possibility here, right? ‘What ifs’ and ‘could bes.’ What are the chances all of this is really possible?”
“I really don’t know, but even pursuing it ought to be a very good way forward for your cultivation. Actually, considering this IS pretty much the primordial void exactly, bringing order to the chaos of the void is probably about the only viable way forward. I mean, unless you actually LIKE the inside of your spirit looking like this.”
My younger self looked to my older self, completely swayed by Gaerien’s words. Of course, for matters like this, it was always my older side that did the thinking and made the difficult calls.
“Fine,” I said. “So, what will I need to do?”
“Well, the first thing you will need to do is arrange the elements. Preferably, they should be arranged into a world flow map design. That is, mimicking the way the elemental energies flow around a world. Actually, you’re already half way there with the way the charged energies are near the top region and then they degrade as they move lower. I’m certain the reason is because of this meditation of yours, it’s mimicking the natural flow of energies through the void, which is also probably why your spirit wound up looking like this.”
“No!” Gaerien suddenly stopped and directed an almost manic look at me. “No, no! This HAS to have been the intention of this meditation from the start! There’s no other explanation! You said your meditation focused on the four elements in addition to pulling energy through your spirit, right? This… this principle is EXACTLY why your spirit wound up like this! That’s such a perfect formula to create this situation, there is NO WAY it wasn’t on purpose!”
“Ok, Gaerien, calm down.” My old man self said. “I get that you’re excited, but you are REALLY starting to rile yourself up a bit too much.”
Seriously, I’m really starting to think she might have been better when she was just making rude jokes at my expense. Unfortunately, it looked like she was completely lost in a state of obsession. She didn’t even seem to hear me, and only continued to ramble.
“The energy flow method, that ‘void vacuum’ as you called it, that creates the flow of energy. Then, the elements meditation splits the energy into the constituent elements. It only needs the basic four, because the flow is handled by the up-stream and the down-stream of the flow. You don’t even need to think about the sub-elements like lightning and ice, those just form on their own as a consequence of the flow map and the interaction with the four. The up-stream acts as positive energy, the down-stream acts as negative energy. It really is the makings of a complete flow-map.”
After saying a bunch of absolutely incomprehensible words, she directs her manic gaze toward the large spirit body in the middle almost in a state of awe.
“There!” She says, pointing at the spirit giant. “You make THAT the center. Form the flow-map around that, and then you can make the world in its hands or something like that. No… wait! What if! Is it even possible!? Can you make a world in the chakras? That would be…”
“Gaerien! Wake up!” My older self had to actually go and grab her by the shoulders and shake her in order to snap her out of it. Seriously! I don’t think I’ve ever seen her like this before!
However, her crazy eyes only wound up getting directed at me. She suddenly lunged at me, throwing her arms around my neck. “Oh my goodness! You are ABSOLUTELY the best sister EVER! This is just FANTASTIC! You’ve got the PERFECT meditation!”
Mine is perfect? But didn’t she say she had the same meditation the angels used? She’s still completely out of it. Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder.
“Ow! Gaerien! What!?” I pushed her off me and rubbed my shoulder. She actually bit me! And hard enough to draw blood too! It was healing almost instantly due to this being a spirit form, but what in the world is she even doing!?
“Sorry! Sorry, I got a little too excited! My instincts from my old life must have taken over. Hmm… I wonder if I can still use my old godly powers, now come to think of it.”
Wait, what!? Instincts? Godly powers? Wait…
“Come to think of it, you’ve never actually told me what kind of goddess you were in your last life.”
“What!? Wow! No, that’s… I’m sorry, please, forget all of this, alright? I didn’t mean to bite you like that, I just got too excited. So, just forget it, please. It doesn’t really matter.”
I sighed. She’s right. It really doesn’t matter. If she wants to leave her past in her past, then that’s her business. Since my granddaughter's alive and unharmed, I have no regrets and no dwellings on my own past life. So, we are both ourselves in this life now. In a way, I had just broken an unspoken rule we had shared since our birth, that being that we have never really asked about each other as individuals for our past lives. Well, I suppose she had a bit of an advantage there though, she had been secretly watching me for God knows how long.
“Alright, fine.” I said, letting it slide. My shoulder had healed anyway, although this gave me some fear as to what teething might look like for her. “Anyway, there was something else I wanted to ask you about. It’s about my younger half. Her spirit was completely destroyed before, I had to rebuild it from scratch in order to revive her. However, now, she can’t run her meditation through it anymore.”
“Huh? Oh! Ok, let me see it!” She said. “I think I might know what’s happening here too, but of course I gotta see it first.”
Well, I suppose that’s somewhat assuring, considering that presumably she was right about my spirit assuming she wasn’t just BSing me this whole time. Well, she’s never given me reason to doubt her before. At any rate, both of my selves teleported to the left palm of my giant spirit manifestation. The little one’s manifestation was standing on the center of the upwarf facing palm, the blue of the child spirit almost vanishing in the same shade of blue of the giant spirit. However, somehow we were able to tell exactly where it was.
Gaerien followed behind us a moment later, teleporting in behind the child manifestation. “Ok, let me take a look.” She said, and then began levitating and hovering in a circle around it. “Hmm… yep, looks like all the chakra vessels are in the right place. You did excellent work for such a short time! I guess you must have gotten a lot of practice in with the big guy over there. Hmm...” She reached out a hand to it, hovering over the smaller spirit. “Wow! No way! You even properly tuned the energy already! I was half expecting the energy to be masculine since it was made by your male half, but… wow! It’s already showing feminine energy! This is some fantastic work here!”
I stared on with both my manifested personas as she kept hovering about the child spirit. Finally, she seemed satisfied and came back to meet us. “Yep! I found the problem!” She reported in a tone I thought was a little too happy. “The big one is your spirit,” she said, pointing to my older self, “and the little one is your spirit.” She concluded with the obvious, pointing to my younger self.
My two manifestations looked at each other, and then back to her.
“Ummm…” My younger self began.
“Is that all you’re going to say?” I addressed her in a stern voice with my older self, clearly prompting her to elaborate.
“Ok! So, the problem is that you are the one who made all the advancements in your cultivation.” She said, pointing to my older self. “You!” She said, pointing to my younger self, “have not made any progress in your cultivation at all. It’s probably a good thing you brought this up, because this is going to be another major issue you need to address. Right now, your cultivation is completely unbalanced. She’s also going to need to advance to the same stage that you are at! The reason she can’t get the energy flow for the meditation working right now is because she has done absolutely nothing to progress through the stages like you have. Don’t worry though, I’m sure she will pick it up quickly with you as her guide.”
“Well, that’s good to know, but… you’re refering to my other half in the third person again.”
“Whatever, you’re too stuck up about that.” She replies rather dismissively. “Anyway, what I’m saying is that her spirit being gigantic like this big one here before was not natural. This, right here, is the natural and balanced form her spirit should have. The state it was in before was the result of your two spirits being merged for the beginning of your life. The reason her spirit crumbled during your advancement before was because it was trying to advance both of you at once, and her spirit simply was not prepared for it where yours was.”
I furrowed my brows in annoyance at her continuing to talk to only my older self about my younger self right to my face. I could understand that the language was a little difficult to handle at times, but it felt like it was discounting half of myself.
“So!” Gaerien continued. “What this means is that the more the kid is in control, the more she will be able to develop her cultivation. According to what you’ve told me about it, she’s going to have to go through all the same training you did in order to develop her cultivation. The ‘feel of the elements’ and the other aspects of that combat cultivation method of yours. Might be a good opportunity to train the boys too! Although, I’m not really sure they are quite coordinated enough for any complex movements yet. Well, you can have a head start on them. She’s probably going to advance a lot faster than them anyway with the teacher built right into her head.”
I sighed deeply and decided to just let it go. She was in no state I could talk to her seriously right now. I would just have to get a calm word with her later.
“Ok, so, should I train myself first?” My younger self asked, kinda passively-aggressively emphasizing a point.
“Or should I align the elements first?” My older self asked.
“Well, I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t do both, although you should probably not take the next step after arranging the elements until the kid has progressed a little.” Then, Gaerien suddenly snaps. “Oh! That’s it! Maybe if you work on gathering the same element the kid is working on, it might speed both of your efforts along at the same time! Build some synergy between the two of you, it should really work out well!”
I heard her language fluctuate toward addressing us as the same person for a moment there. I guess this is going to have to be my method moving forward. Have both of us talk to her at once. That way it will seem more natural to think of us as the same person. She probably addresses my older self as the main person because that’s the side that’s mostly doing the talking. I will have to fix that.
Subscribers' comments of the chapter
"It's a good thing Aerien has Aerien to guide her through her cultivation. Otherwise Aerien would be totally lost in Aerien's spirit."
-Vorquel
"I used the Aerien to train the Aerien"
-NohVoha
"Turns into some old kung fu movie with the old master "When you truly know yourself only then, may you begin to know others."
-Roy
Well, ridiculous comments aside, Roy's statement is one that's true to an extent that I have absolutely no idea why that would be something isolated to martial arts culture. Shouldn't everyone be aware of that one? I don't really know, I grew up in a martial arts lifestyle. It just seems alien to me that this wouldn't be common wisdom.
So what if the world they're on is inside a god's spirit and they make a new world inside their spirit with people on it and someone on there finds out how to make their own world in their spirit...
Like in the movie a dream between a dream between a dream until reaching the limbo
Then the universe'd be like a Russian nested doll and funny enough it's true IRL in every aspect. Small example, an atom, the electrons live at one level, the nucleus with protons and neutrons then below that quarks. I'd love to go on and make this the longest comment everr but I'd just ask yall to watch a documentary somewhere online and be done.
Madness.
That is what happens.
I think you're right about the common sense of Roy's comment.
Martial arts of the east tend to dip into Buddhist and Tao philosophy. Which has components on building the self through knowing ones self. Western religion and as a consequence philosophy is mostly external. Praying to an outside force for guidance. Reliance being built in to the belief system instead of self actualization.
One is built for community strength and often abused for wealth and power, while the other is built for individual strength and often trampled by the communities. No man is and island vs build yourself into a mountain.
There are pros and cons to both ways of life, so I won't judge either as innately better than the other. I just know I'm quite introverted, nehilistic, and distrustful so I prefer Zen over gods.
love the way that your handling Gaerien talking to Aeriens manifestations as separate people and how that annoys Aerien
"It's a good thing Aerien has Aerien to guide her through her cultivation. Otherwise Aerien would be totally lost in Aerien's spirit."
-Vorquel
give this a like for me haha.
MAerien and FAerien need to toss out that past not mattering stuff, what if she was some crazy god of cannibals or something? She just bite one of them ...
Well, we know she was a goddess of a species that bites when excited, so what species fit the bill of play biting when excited while having a mostly humanoid form?
Vampire? That could probably work...
Serpent relation? Possible but not likely.
The chapters are long and thats good but im not going to lie: it feels like there is little progress in each chapter by itself, turning this into a realy slow burn... :. It would feel like a slog to binge through it again. I mean we are ~85 chapters in but still around 6 month of age for our twins. And from what i understand, timeskips are not preferable.
Keep it up and dont stress yourself however, else the buffer turns into a chore wich ultimately could turn your tale into one aswell for yourself.
Yeah, it's tough. I try to pack a lot into each chapter in terms of lore, details, social interactions, and set-up for future events. However, this also means less actual forward progress getting made.
I realized somewhat recently, my writing style seems to be more inspired by and reminiscent of some of the old samurai movies. Something like "Yojimbo," "The 44 Ronin," or "The Seven Samurai." (The old original black-and-white subtitled versions of all of those.) The pacing really is about the same, very very slow paces with a lot of attention to the people and the situation rather than the action. Most of the power of the characters is more wrapped up in their ability to take command of a situation and set up their move rather than an actual show of skill with the blade once the blade is drawn, and the only time the blade is actually drawn is right near the end of the movie. In fact, in the case of "The 44 Ronin," all the actual action takes place off screen and wraps up in the form of a messenger running into a lord's house and giving a report on the results of a combat raid that happened without it ever being shown to the viewer. (I will at least have the decency to show the action when it happens and not do something like that.)
Anyway, a heavily martial arts themed story playing out like an old Samurai movie sounds kinda fitting in a way, even if it's not really fitting the more fast-paced preferences of audiences today.
@Jemini You have actually vocalized the fundamental problem some readers keep complaining about.
The samurai films you list are not actually martial arts stories. They are character studies dressed in the clothes of martial arts stories. If you watch them as martial arts stories, they fail completely. The pacing is bad, the film focuses on details you don't care about and the finale is unsatisfying. Therein lies the major complaint against your novel. It insists that it is a martial arts themed story, but does not conduct itself as one.
Don't get me wrong, your novel is well written, but its content doesn't match what it bills itself to be. There is a distinct lack of action and adventure for instance. Some of this might be down to personal preference, unlike you, I very much dislike Death Mage and find that it contains all the problems isekai novels saddle themselves with.
Another issue (I don't mean to sound too negative here) is that unlike the films you list, this novel has an overall sense of aimlessness in the plot. The glacial pace and lack of progress contribute to this, but a larger problem is how character growth is handled. The already slow plot grinds to a stop for character development moments and this makes readers who came for a martial arts themed story climb up the wall in impatience.
@AweksLear Have to disagree with the aimlessness accusation. I know exactly where the story is going. There are just things that need to be set up first.
Anyway, I always have liked characters. I guess it sorta figures it would have a character study feel to it. Also, as someone who has some real experience in the martial arts, I particularly enjoyed films like the 44 Ronin and 7 Samurai due to the incredible martial arts accuracy in the few fight scenes that were present. Especially the (only) fight scene in 44 Ronin where the guy with the spear attacks the unarmed guy. The unarmed guy uses something we call the "tree" technique using a real tree (it is normally done with a bo staff.) This results in the unarmed guy's victory.
I am sure people without martial arts experience might enjoy people punching each other's lights out, but people who actually do have experience tend to enjoy the more technical fights. In UFC terms, this would be the grapling fighters over the striking fighters. Grapling fights tend to wind up with people getting in the bind and then the fight becomes incredibly technical with them trying to get a positioning advantage over the other, and their actions and counters consist entirely of one guy moving his arms or his feet a little and then the other guy having to re-position himself in order to prevent the positioning advantage. It is a highly technical fight that someone without much training doesn't understand when they are looking at it.
Anyway, for an actual counter to the point, I would point out that most cultivation world novels don't have a lot of fighting action in them either. It is mostly talking about them gaining power through some rituals or such and then launching some energy blasts at each other with some made up reason why one is more powerful than the other. All of those cultivation novels tend to call themselves martial arts as well. If we take that as the standard, I think there might have actually been about the same amount of combat in my story as there is in the typical cultivation novel. Not certain what the real difference is. Perhaps the fact that my fight scenes are over so quickly? Well, real fights are over quickly. Sorry, but that's how it really is.
@Jemini
Well, i wouldnt say „accusation“ is a right term to use here. Impression would be more correct, as in a sense of feedback from a reader. From my average joe PoV there is indeed little aim to be seen, i mean Aerien is the princess now and has to manage some court case for ether guy... Outside of this it feels like blindly trudging along the plotline rail? I may wonder whats up with Dryards subplot atm or the demons that yet need to become a coincious threat to me but otherwise.. there is the vague goal of gaerien becoming a god wich feels to be 500 chapters away before it gets even realy adressed.
That said, thank god you dont plan to prolonged fighting scenes... they usualy feel like a drag to me as they realy should be short due to already mentioned reasons. There was that one novel where a single fight took 7 chapters... man that was painfull.
Uh, did i mention that i couldnt thank you enough for not rofltstomping the chinese direction? Meaning not all these powerups that are stuff of legends, some unusualy profound and unique techniques/pills/dao/hur dur mambo jumbo that every dude and their mother would kill for with detailed explanations of why its superior only to not matter 1-2 chapters later, till the next valueble and profound powerup, rinse and repeat. Oh! And that not every action and decision of minor pebble characters are explained to death with silly motivations accompanied by background monologue of how and why they are offended and stuff.
Srsly, thank you. That said the slow pace accentuated with the release frequency may not an statisfy up to date readers curiosity, leading to possible frustrations, since it takes months to resolve plotlines unlike movies that conclude everything in 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours as a whole package. I just feel its worth mentioning to may or may not mull as feedback as i dont believe you can pull an azarinth healer on us :)
@KaiKai Oh, believe me. This will come together like a Bob Ross painting in the conclusions of the book arc and the major arc. (The major arc being planned to be a 3 book set-up.) There are a few things that are there just for flavor, but almost every chapter to date has had at least some small detail that is either set-up or foreshadowing to something I'm building up to, and nothing done here is without purpose even if you can't see what it is right now.
And, no, I also have an idea for power scale. There is a principle, you need to establish a power ceiling early on in order to prevent power creep from getting out of hand. The power ceiling has been mentioned in a round-about way already, but it hasn't actually appeared. I know exactly where the power ceiling stands relative to the power scale though, and Oren is already pretty close to it.
Anyway, I can see where it might be frustrating on the release schedule. I am certain the fact that I actually do have a plan, and maybe you can subconsciously sense it and are anticipating it all coming together, makes it even more frustrating with the slowing release schedule. However, I would not be able to really set up the moment as it is planned without establishing everything before hand which does take time. These things cannot be rushed.
HINT: (It is kinda like how everything in book 1 was kinda leading up to Dryad convincing everyone to kill each other at what is currently the beginning of book 2, but will eventually be revised to become the end of book 1 whenever I find the time to make the 2nd draft which seems to be in a state of limbo right now. It won't be as horrifying, but it will be about as much of an "oh shit" moment.)
(As for the pacing, I am sure I could take out some of the flavor details, but then I wouldn't be able to capture the same lived-in world feel. I kinda value that. For instance, Eirlathion's gardening routine may seem supurfulous, but it gives the reader a better sense of what kind of character he is. Someone who analyzes things carefully, is meticulous, and is diligent in his routine. I could say those same things, but it makes more of an impact to show it.)
@KaiKai Also, as for the whole pills and power-ups thing goes, I have more or less forcibly shut that down using the nature of Aerien's meditation. I am sure stuff like that exists in this world, but none of it would work for Aerien if she were to take it. It is one of the draw-backs of her meditation, whatever the pill or elixir tried to do for her would all just be sucked away before it could have an effect.
The only way for Aerien to quickly power up is to actually get into a fight where her life is on the line in order to stimulate her meditation.