The stars were shining overhead.
The sky was especially clear, the stars dotted out the infinite expanse of darkness, creating a breathtaking and mesmerizing scene.
There was a hill down on the land. It was overgrown with weeds and an average person would have a hard time walking as the weeds entangled their clothes and scratched their skin.
Around the hill there was a plain the end of which fled beyond the horizon in every direction.
Standing on the hill and looking into the distance would give the observer a strange feeling when faced with the impeccable flatness stretching out so far. It was a truly incredible sight, though it would also be quite frightening as most would feel insignificantly small in this large plain and under the infinite skies.
There were no sources of water for hundreds of kilometers around. The skies were always clear and not a drop of water would fall upon this oasis for years on end.
Despite all these reasons, the place was thriving with life. Plantlife. There were no animals, no insects. Birds would never fly above and ants would never crawl on the ground.
It was a very mysterious place.
On top of the hill there sat the only non-plant living being that could be found around - a young-looking man in a white daoist robe. His appearance was perfect, as if a master sculptor spent their whole life shaping it. His hair was long, its color was silver. It looked as if it was knitted out of moonlight. His eyes were also of silver color and they shone in the night.
The young-looking man could be mistaken for a statue. He never blinked, he didn’t breath, there were no signs of life coming from him.
He’s been sitting in the same position, in the same place for a hundred years.
It was during this night that he moved at last. He looked underneath, with surprise flashing in his eyes, despite his face staying the same.
The air around the hill grew restless and space itself seemed to stretch and bend, as if it was holding down a chained beast from hell. The plants swayed and one could mistake them to feel fear, excitement and awe, as if they were subjects greeting their sovereign.
The stars in the skies literally flew in circles, creating a colorful vortex.
As the tension in the air was growing by the second. The young man stood up, lightly tapped the ground and took to the sky, as if gravity didn’t exist. He turned his head towards the vortex in the sky and then towards the ground, where the hill was. Despite his face not changing expression throughout the whole time, it was obvious that he was lost deep in thought.
The hill vibrated and then shrunk. As it vibrated, the air distorted and soon it was hard to tell what was going on as even light bent its trajectory, creating a very distorted depiction of what was happening.
The air lit up with small lights all over the place and horrible nightmarish sounds came from everywhere in space, as if Hell itself opened its doors.
The young man floated amidst the chaos. To him, everything was perfectly clear.
He floated in a sea of strange string-like lights that came from nowhere and went nowhere. His body was nothing but a crystal ball with cryptic glyphs, colorful lines and many chaotic geometrical shapes that made no sense at all. All of it intertwined into weird collections of forms that seemed to betray concepts of logic, geometry and space.
The weird conglomeration of forms moved and the forms shifted with a strange preciseness.
Space inside the sea of strings meant little and everything was confusing. Physical sight was but a hindrance there too. It was like a different reality altogether from the plain where the young man’s body was.
There was only one place that stood out, stood out for the fact that it was a place in this strange chaotic sea where even space was confusing.
It was like somebody erased a part of the sea and stuck a part of the physical world in it instead.
That place was the hill and the vortex in the sky above it. The hill continuously shrunk and grew smaller and eventually turned into an egg-like shape made of very dense rock that was as smooth as jade. The vortex above looked still and resembled a round golden plate.
The egg cracked. It cracked again. And again. Something inside was desperately trying to break the shell.
Eventually, the shell gave in. The egg broke in half and then burned to nothingness. In its place a small bird made out of burning flowers and vines hovered in circles. It faced the golden plate above and screeched at it, firing a laser beam from its mouth.
The plate apparently wasn’t pleased with the bird’s sudden move as it’s surface boiled, with bubbles popping on it.
The bird fired another beam and the plate broke into countless drop-like particles that showered the bird like a rain made of gold.
Each time a drop hit the bird, a burning flower wilted but another one grew in its place. It still seemed to hurt the bird badly, as it’s flying gait was less vigorous then it was at the beginning and the bird was trying to escape the drops with all of its might. Each time it flapped its wings, a lotus bloomed from nothingness under the wings and there were tiny human-like figures with halos around their heads and flowers growing out of their mouths and eyes sitting in each lotus, singing incomprehensible things.
The rain hit the tiny creatures, they died and evaporated in a firework of red flames.
The bird evaded a drop of the deadly rain each time a tiny being in a lotus flower was hit.
At last, there were no drops left to fall upon the bird.
But it was not the time to rest, as in the place where was a giant gate made out of dark marble. Incidentally, it looked just like the night sky, if there were no stars on it and it was a gate.
The gate opened a tiny sliver, exposing a terrifying landscape, not unlike the one where the bird and the orb were, full of floating shapes that seemed like were not created by the existence of space and logic and colors that seemed like were forced into existence and not created by the nature of light and sight.
Wicked-looking chains grabbed the bird and dragged it towards the gate. The bird screeched and struggled, it was obviously in a lot of pain. Despite all the struggle, the bird was brought towards the gate and pinned onto it, with small vines piercing its body. The bird was obviously in a lot of pain and it couldn’t move down, so it struggled to go through the gate, but the gate slammed closed the moment it tried.
Then, everything became normal, the incomprehensible sea of colors and strings stopped resembling the physical reality and both the orb and the bird faded amidst the chaos…
The young-looking man was floating above the ruined ground. He was in a bad shape, his daoist robe was gray from all the soot on it and his body was full of injuries.
Despite all this, his face stayed the same, but his eyes revealed fear, awe and curiousity.
There was no longer a plain beneath him. Only scorched rock with deep cracks running to the horizon, like the plain did once.
There was a very deep, thin crater beneath him, like the opened maw of a giant serpent.
He looked into the crate and, with a single step, appeared at its bottom.
Near him lied a scorched corpse. Its arms were twisted off and lied three meters away from the body and half of its head was blown off. The rest of the head was burned and melted to the point of not being recognizable. There were bones sticking out where they shouldn’t have been and there were places that were too concave for a human body, as if it was chewed by a huge monster and spat out.
The man didn’t seem surprised by the state of the corpse. He simply waved his hand and it flew into his hand, shrank down miraculously and disappeared within the sleeve.
He then took another step into the air and was above a hundred meters above the ground, the crater beneath his feet. He looked at the skies. The stars looked dim, as if they were out of fuel. He took out a copper coin and tossed it in the air. The starlight reflected upon the coin, and for a second it looked like it was made of gold.
He caught the coin mid-air, looked at it as it lost its brief luster and took another step.
…
The young-looking woman with golden hair opened her eyes. The eyes shone with gold too.
She woke up on a richly-decorated canopy bed in a wide room stuffed with all kinds of strange things. There were some kinds of metal fragments charred at the edges lying on the floor, claws of strange animals in glass jars on the chaotically placed on the wall shelves, sheets of paper everywhere. There were some sheets glued to the ceiling even.
It looked like the room was vandalized by a hurricane, then a thief came and tried to find something in a hurry and after the thief the officers came to investigate and made an even bigger mess…
The woman was not surprised. It was her bedroom after all.
She also wasn’t surprised at the young-looking man with an unmoving face in a white daoist robe who stood beside her at an uncomfortable distance.
The moment she opened her eyes, he began taking out all kinds of things from within his sleeve: stone amulets with strange engravings on them, yellow papers with some kinds of drawings, necklaces made out of what looked like teeth – and began putting them all over her body.
She was not surprised.
She continued to not be surprised as he took out ninety nine needles of all colors and hues one could find on the rainbow and tried to prickle her skin. She was not surprised but she did twist his hand in a smooth notion and locked him in one uncomfortable position beneath her bed.
“I haven’t finished the examination”, he spoke in a perfectly natural tone as if the situation was not out of place at all. Strangely, his face didn’t move at all and his voice came from behind it anyway.
“I’m fine, I know my own state better than your… what is it”, she picked up a bright violet needle with one hand, “Phantom bamboo needles? Seriously? These things are so rare that even I have only three dozen!”
“You haven’t seen your own state after the tribulation”
“I haven’t”
“You should have. Then you would let me examine your state all I wanted and then some”
“I can let you examine my state all you want and then some”, the woman spoke with a tone that clearly implied something else
“Vulgar”
“Your wife is a vulgar woman, bear with it”
The man was locked in the same uncomfortable position but he somehow took out some tiny bottles with something that looked like green sand inside them out of his sleeve with one hand anyway.
“Since you said that I can examine your state all I want, then don’t mind if I do so”, he began unplugging the bottles with his free hand and the room was filled with a strong and refreshing fragrance.
“Is it the underworld origin dust? Y-you! These things are so rare that even I have only one bottle of them! If you want to waste them on something unnecessary, you might as well give them to me!”
“I need them for the examination”
“I’m not a child and your concern is unnecessary. You are being too overprotective”
“Your husband is too overprotective, bear with it”
“Y-you! Don’t!”, she could stop the man from sprinkling the precious material all over the place if she wanted to, of course. But if she did so, he might take out some even more ridiculous thing from his sleeve, so she just let him do his thing. Not without tears of regret as she watched every grain of sand dissipate into tiny angels and then disappear from the world though.
“Yes, this is...”, the man’s unchanging face followed the angels as they faded out of sight without any emotional fluctuations. Well, his face never changed in the first place, not even when he spoke, but it was clear he didn’t care for the godly material disappearing just like that.
“Yes, you seem fine”
The woman glared resentfully at the stone-like face of the man, “Weren’t alchemists supposed to be richer than formation masters?”
“I’m the best formation master in the two connected Galaxies”
“And I’m the best alchemist, and I’m also the strongest warrior, so why is it you who’s richer?”
“...Luck? I am the luckiest sentient being in the Universe, considering I was able to marry you”
“...It doesn’t sound touching with that stone face of yours”
…
“Hehehe, then allow me to show my sincerity in a more straightforward way... hehehe, your husband is vulgar, bear with it... hehehe, n-no, not there, hyaa-!”
“You seem to be having a very good dream Oalus?”
“Waaa?! Master? What are you doing here? Where’s Hilda? Why am I so small?”
Oh, I remembered it just now.
My name is Oalur Kang and I am a cultivator who died under the Heavenly tribulation and was transmigrated back to the time when I was 10. I and my master then devised a technique for opening all of my meridians and then I was put into an artificial coma for the duration of the technique…
Wait, does it mean that… all of that was just a memory? WAIT?! Did I just talk in my sleep about t-that?!!!!
NOOOO!!!!
Heavens, you are unkind to this lord!
Shouldn’t I have been enlightened in my dream, developing my path even further and breaking through in my state of mind and getting even more powerful like the protagonist I am? Why did I blabber about t-things in front of my father figure in my 10-year-old body with a lecherous laugh?!
Fuck you Heavens, I shall defy you!
“Oalus, why are you hiding? Oalus, there’s nothing shameful about enjoying your… youth with your loved one- Oalus, that place is too high, even you might break a leg if you fall-!”
*POOF*
