Volume II : Conception

  Avery awoke with a crippling headache, every inch of his body in excruciating pain, and a profound but inexplicable anguish.

  So disoriented he couldn't even remember why he was in this near death state, Avery tried to stand up, but found he couldn't even raise his head far enough to verify his current condition. He rushed to open the system and reset his body with 5 time warps. Funnily enough, this was the first time he had used them for healing, which was what they were initially intended for, rather than some shady immortality exploit.

  However, all humor was quickly replaced by a burst of anxiety as he realised the time warps did not work their magic in the usual manner. The effects had always been immediate, fully restoring his body to pristine condition in an instant, but not this time. Now he was being healed ever so slowly, and each time warp could only rewind time for a few seconds instead of a full hour.

  Not only that, but for the first time he could actually feel the energy from the system as it worked, and it was being hampered and obstructed. Whatever had devastated his body had left something behind, which was actively fighting against the system’s recovery.

  Worse, it was winning, as Avery was required to spend hundreds of points to offset even a tiny fraction of this pernicious force. He was fortunate to have a fortune in reserve, but to rewind 5 hours and return to his peak condition cost almost 20 000 points instead of the intended 5.

  What had happened to him? How had he encountered a stronger force than the system? Had the dragon woken up? Was it so powerful? And how come he felt that by healing his body, he had an acute sense of having lost something important?

  In a daze and not knowing what to think, he habitually reached out to pick up his writing instrument. The stylus the system had provided, the only thing he had that could withstand the dragon's strength, had a large crack in it.

  This realisation flung open the floodgates of his memory, and before he could panic, the recollection of all that had happened came rushing back, especially of gazing upon the Tao.

  What held his attention was not the phantom pain of having his body wither and collapse upon itself, crushed and suffocated by an inviolable presence, or the knowledge he was being punished for an inexcusable act.

  It was not the realisation that he had abandoned all of his evolutions by using time warps, be it his truth seeing eyes or his ears capable of hearing secrets in the wind. He no longer had all sorts of magical powers, but he would have died had he not restored his mortal body. Besides, he had only lost his super physique and not the most essential transformation of his soul was still there, making it much more suitable to the Tao.

  It was not the disastrous state of his mind and soul, something for which he had no cure, or even the prospect of not being able to engrave runes now that his stylus was broken.

  No, what held his attention were those fleeting moments of being in the presence of the Great Way, the glorious sentiment of unity where he was in harmony with nature, and the subsequent horror of being excluded and rejected. He tried to console and convince himself that the Tao couldn't be unique, and that he must be accepted by whatever had created his home world, but it was not enough.

  Avery went into a daze, reminiscing at the unbelievable experience, until he shook himself back to reality. He knew his mentality and life goals had been fundamentally altered by this event, but even if he wanted to spend eternity contemplating the Tao, he needed to make sure he would be alive first.

  His stylus now had a big crack, and he needed to ensure he hadn't lost his only source of income. He didn't waste time on complex visualization, simply instinctively picturing a simplistic black hole scene and carving a rune to verify his financial stability.

  As soon as he tried to conjure up his visualisation, his whole body spasmed as he was hit with an unbearable headache, and the agony from his soul he had been subconsciously ignoring manifested itself through a whirlpool of torment.

  His vision was splintered in a dozen separate parts, and focusing on any one of these pieces caused him untold suffering. Trying to pay attention to multiple fragments at once was intolerable.

  The only chunk Avery could bear to visualise with only a minimal amount of pain was the central one, a decently sized portion which was held together by the mysterious golden substance it was hosting.

  This golden light had no distinct form, sometimes resembling a fuzzy cloud, a falling teardrop or a coiling dragon. It stood out and demanded attention, as the only spot of color in an otherwise black and white picture. It was without a doubt the most striking and impressive aspect of his virtual world, and it was evident it did not belong there.

  For Avery, this was a huge burden to his consciousness, one he could hardly bear. He neither could nor wanted to get rid of it, as it was a shadow of the Tao, while he was only a poor mortal. They were on a completely different level, and coming into contact with the Tao was both a life changing opportunity and a mortal danger.

  He had no clue of what to do about his ruined mental world, so he just ignored it, restrained his vision to the central fragment and continued on to engraving.

  He was immensely relieved to discover that the crack had had no effect on his painting, but when he finished the rune, there was a faint whining noise and the crack on the pen grew slightly.

  Avery became concerned that the pen had been too severely damaged and that he would only have a limited amount of uses before it broke completely and became unusable. He couldn't predict how long it would take; it could be broken by drawing just a dozen runes, maybe it would take millions, or perhaps his hasty guess was incorrect and it would never break, but he wasn't willing to bet his life his luck.

  There were more than a few replacement styluses in the system shop, some seeming more advanced and refined, but it was of no use. The novice gifts from the system were evidently special. They were given out only once the first time he transferred to the profession, and they had a mysterious quality that rendered them immune to the harsh environment.. Anything he could buy would only be a common spiritual item, which wouldn't last a day under the dragon’s influence.

  Regardless, there wasn't much he could do. He could get lucky, master mana and become immortal with the finite amount of practice the pen could still provide, or he could fix the pen and take his time.

  He had no idea where to start repairing the pen, and achieving ascension didn't seem feasible.

  He would not only have little practice, but he would also have a limited amount of time. If he was frugal with his sketches, he would lose his only source of points and would have to make do with the 270 000 points he had previously earned, which translated to about 31 years of time warps.

  30 years was a significant amount of time, more than his entire life so far, but he had never heard of anyone becoming immortal in less than 1000 years. He wouldn't say it was impossible, as he was on an entirely different cultivation path after all, but he still doubted an ignorant hermit would be faster than a sect patriarch aided by a systematic cultivation technique, a legacy of thousands of years of insights and an incalculable amount of resources.

  Avery had a much more sensible plan; he would learn to draw the runes without using the pen. He had previously been curious about the pen's purpose and discovered that it was actually very straightforward and easily replaceable. The stylus did little more than to compress and concentrate his intent until it was capable of transforming into spiritual ink.

  In principle, there was no obstacle to him doing it himself, because he knew exactly how to do it, and the only issue was skill. There was no novelty, but he had to have such a strong artistic conception it became semi-physical without the aid of a tool. In short, he just had to do what he was doing now a million times better, or have a million times more control to compress it. Perhaps he would stumble on a method to repair the pen halfway or realise the threshold to immortality was below that, but sticking to what he knew sounded like his best bet.

  If everything else failed, he would set aside enough points to switch jobs and find another way to earn points. It served as a safety net, but he was afraid that the skills he had acquired would be hard to carry between jobs, losing him decades of progress.

  Suddenly, something occurred to him, and he checked the list of available jobs, finding a promising entry. He knew that buying a new stylus from the system would only end up wasting points, but he was hoping that by transferring to an adjacent job, he might be given another stylus.

  Most jobs had nothing to do with writing, but Avery had high hopes for the one titled “Talisman master”, and he immediately transferred jobs to test out his hunch.

  Unfortunately, the Talisman master's tool was a brush, coming in the novise package a bottle of beast blood and a stack of yellow paper. Despite the difference in shape, Avery nevertheless tried to paint a rune with the brush, but it did nothing.

  Disappointed by this, he immediately changed his job back, deciding to hold off any other experiments. It was not only a waste of precious points, but even if he found a promising occupation with which he could earn points, he wasn't certain that it would provide the same opportunity to touch the path to the Tao.

  In the end that was what mattered to him, having a path to the Tao.

  However brief they had been, the instants where he had felt loved and included in the great tapestry of the cosmos were the happiest moments of his life, and he would do anything to relive them.

  He might have been rejected by the Tao, but that just meant he needed to work harder, prove his worth and get accepted,like a foreigner acquiring the local nationality. He would never give up his quest for unity, and would never let himself die before he was certain he would be reincarnated as a child of the Great Way.

  To prevent drifting off into his bittersweet dreams or succumbing to the overwhelming sense of disappointment and wretchedness compared to the Tao, he did not dare to reflect on the unexpected calamity caused by his recklessness, but instead returned to work immediately.