“So...What do you guys think? Do you love it? Or do you love it?” said Jack. Smiling in anticipation, looking surprisingly like a housewife who was hoping to reap some good compliments on the home she’d had laboriously, had renovated, cleaned, and decorated. Which made me a little confuzzled because last I checked I was the one who did most of the work. At most, she picked out a few of the interior furnishings and outdoor environmental layouts.
“.....”
“....”
“....”
“D-, Do you not love it?” said Jack. Sounding weirdly hurt and disappointed, in a way that made me feel even more confuzzled.
I found myself staring at Trefor, like ‘dude why are you upsetting my wife’. Unfortunately, we apparently weren’t good off bros to have bro-to-bro telepathy, so he just sort of stood stared at us looking blank-faced and kind of tired.
“You prepared an entire planet for us?!” said Hong Soomin. Our talented junior who’d managed to catch up to her seniors in time to ascend with them and the rest of the Sect.
“Huh?” said Jack. Taken aback by the statement.
“Uh….No, this is a...This is just a mountain we were given by the Empress of the Dragons. We’re just you know...Offering you a part of it...if you want,” I said. Slowly sensing where the misunderstanding was coming from.
“Empress of the Dragons?...." Muttered Miya. Her brow furrowed as she rocked a sleepy, cranky, and fussy, baby Vayne. Now grown into a toddler, since we’d seen her last. Her species and high cultivation paradoxically had slowed her physical development a little, as nature suddenly found itself with a but-load of supplies and time to get certain things “just right”.
“So, you guys, own a mountain two to three times larger than the entire Shattered World…” said Trefor. Still seeming like he was having a hard time wrapping his mind around the situation.
“Uh, what’s the big deal?...I’m pretty sure the Empty-Dream is an entire universe,” said young, or maybe not-so-young Yoshino Yuki. Who’d come with the rest of the juniors that we counted as friends.
“Oh...Right, shit...But it’s like a part of my mind still kind of thought of it, along the lines of the Empty-Dream was...at least originally supposed to be ‘virtual’? Or illusory...Or whatever, and this is clearly reality and you’re still just as insane as we remember...Anyway, don’t mind us...Apparently, ascending leaves you super “jet-lagged”, and we still need to adjust to the laws and energy flow of the heavenly realm...so if you could just point us to wherever is fine to crash in, I’d like to pass out for a couple of days…” said Alina. She and Sigi had ascended alongside the rest of our friends, since our company and the sect had very close ties.
“Oh...Oh! Right, uh my bad, guys. I got carried away with showing off and forgot you guys would probably be exhausted. Uh, just pick whichever building catches your fancy...They’re all pretty much the same inside in terms of size and furnishing. They’re yours for keeps if you want them, but since you might still want to take your time choosing exactly which residence you want, you can just crash wherever and we’ll talk when you guys are feeling up to it,” said Jack. Blushing and looking sheepish. Realizing she’d been trying to show off to people who were basically zombies.
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The next couple of weeks, things on our “Empty-Mountain” were pretty quiet. Or at least as quiet as they usually were. Apparently, the process of being destroyed on a molecular level, and then reborn, as a new unique form of life was an exhausting, and jarring, process. Go figure. Maybe Jack and I were too used to being abnormally adaptive, and bouncing back from our own moments of weakness like it was nothing. Or rather, now that I think of it, there ‘was’ more than one period in the Chaotic Sea that was full of suck. Sometimes, it slips my mind that we were immortals before we ever got to the place where most of the immortals live.
Anyway, we weren’t just waiting for our friends during this period. We’d also invited the rest of the Forest of Life and Death, and the Tree of Passionate Verdance, to come stay on the mountain with us, while they were figuring out what they’d do with the rest of their eternity. Since the Forest Life and Death had a lot of subordinates, and it’d be a bit awkward to leave them out in the cold, we’d invited them too.
I might not have made a big thing of it, because the Chaotic Sea had screwed up my sense of scale, but the Mountains of the Prism Spine were kind of huge. Trefor must have seriously been out of it, because our Empty-Mountain wasn’t just 2 or 3 times bigger than our originally Shattered World. It was closer to being 20 or 30 times bigger. Meaning we had plenty of space to accommodate those we trusted not to turn into a pain in the ass for us later.
We were also surprised to find the former-Sect Master Yang Shichao speaking up for his old rivals, the sect-masters of the Thousand Winter Sect beneath them. I guess it makes sense, I can’t really remember any instances where their sect and ours were seriously hostile to one another. Even when we did clash, we generally didn’t clash so hard that it created indelible grudges.
Besides the Thousand Winter Sect there were a few other groups, who reached out to us, seeking a safe place to recover, without being unduly influenced, or controlled. I let Jack handle those issues, because I’d been a little disturbed by that big play to try and enslave a bunch of newly ascended immortals.
Normally, I’d look away from this sort of thing, because I was just one guy, and I wasn’t out to save or change the world, but it kind of felt like there was an easy fix to stop that kind of thing, so for once “I” was the one reaching out to big nobs in the community, because I felt like I should probably ask for input first lest I make too many enemies for our Calloway clan and our allies.
My idea was simple. It wasn’t hard to calculate the areas where new immortals would appear. So it wouldn’t be hard to set up golems and security spells to protect those areas from others who’d have ill-intent. Of course, there were some objections. There were arguments for leaving things as they were because that was the way things had always been done, but well...it’s never a good idea to try and make those arguments with someone who was nigh-omniscent.
It wasn’t hard for me to bring up numbers and proof showing that a lot of loudest detractors were all in some way profiting from the enslavement of new immortals. There were few, old-school, might-makes-right, War-Gods who genuinely believed new immortals should be able to fend for themselves from the very beginning and thus opposed the protective measures on that basis. However, as was often the case for public safety like this, the loudest voices for the opposition were those who wanted to exploit the situation for their own gain. Beings that were directly, or indirectly, profiting from the predation of new immortals.
I was surprised to find that the demons and devils were kicking up too much of fuss, but then one of the older demon-lords came over to me and confided,
“Well, it’ll be a shame to lose all that free labor...but our hells have been guarding the areas of ascent for our most promising new devils and demons for ages now...It was fun watching the hypocritical, so-called, forces of light purposefully leave themselves vulnerable, so they could exploit one another...but someone was bound to think of this sooner or later.”
The Demon didn’t just walk over to blow smoke and pretend to play nice, naturally, he also wanted something. Apparently, amongst the demons that ascended elsewhere in the Shattered Heavens due to the darker, yin-heavy, nature of their ascents, there’d been a few beings that had gotten some ample use of my Empty-Dream. He was curious as to whether I’d given thought to expanding the Empty-Dream to other worlds and dimensions, like say the shallower hells, where the more “mortal” demons lived.
That demon wasn’t the only immortal to come asking about the Empty-Dream. There were a number of gods, spirits, and fae who’d come with questions because there were plenty of folk from the Shattered World who’d gone elsewhere after they’d ascended. For instance, a number of people who’d been part of faiths, or religious orders had gone to the territories of their gods and goddesses and had naturally told their fellow worshippers, and the deities themselves, how they’d managed to enter the heavens so early. Similarly, the fae and spirits who were treated as treasured juniors, would of course explain their journey to immortality to their seniors.
Fortunately, I’d already sort of been considering expanding the user-base for the Empty-Dream. So, I didn’t mind allowing entry for more beings. What I “didn't” want was for some of these immortals to start getting ideas about wresting control of the Empty-Dream from Jack and me. I was pretty sure it wasn’t even a thing that would be possible, so I wasn’t really concerned about that issue in and of itself. What I was concerned about was the tiresomeness and perils of dealing with people who’d try.
Which was why I was kind of relieved when the tiny winged-squid robot showed up with a letter signed by a certain “Mister Gray” of the House of Antipodes. It was a letter from one of the big bosses of the House of Antipodes. A letter from one of the irrefutable administrators for our entire section of the Cosmos. For once, I didn’t need Jack around to know when I should speak up a bit more and try to be friendly.
