The heavenly thunder strikes down on the ground, leaving a deep crater.
For thousands of miles in all directions, there’s nothing left but stones and dirt. All vegetation, all buildings and all life have fallen under the heavenly might.
The only thing that is left is a flickering light in the middle of the crater. A light so weak and feeble that it might seem that it will go out in a second.
That light is me.
All living things have to suffer under the Heavenly tribulation if they wish to attain the Way.
I have been struggling to attain the Great Way through following the path of formations for a thousand years until I reached the Third Celestial Cycle stage and tried to open the door to the Immortal World and ascend.
And now I am about to fall under Heaven’s wrath.
It’s simple. A very neat and predictable conclusion to my story, the end of my Path, isn’t it?
My mortal body has been destroyed, not even ashes are left. All the tribulation arrays have been broken by the Heavenly pressure alone and all I have left is my primordial spirit with a pitiful amount of immortal essence.
There’s really nothing I can do.
Some things just need to be accepted.
*Rumble*
The heavens are shaking and the sound of the coming thunder alone is enough to shake my soul. Maybe it’s because I have accepted my fate, a part of me can still be calm.
I remember the times when I was a child who had yet to even find out about cultivation. There was once a time when thunder was especially strong outside and I, a small lad that I was, would wrap myself in the blankets and hide inside my bed. I would close my eyes and not dare to open them, as if closing my eyes would make the thunder go away.
“Haha”
It was fun. Living was really fun.
*Boom*
Painpainpain
“Aaargh!!!”
The heavenly thunder hurts more than anything I have felt in my entire life. Indeed, ever since I was a child, I and thunder had bad fate between each other.
*Rumble*
So soon? I guess I am on my last breath already and even heavens themselves aren’t willing to spend to much time on me…
Well, I have followed my Path for a thousand years and since it’s going to go with me, the least amount of respect I can do for it is follow it to the end.
The heavenly tribulation is both a big danger and a big opportunity for the Heavenly Way becomes especially clear when it tests the practitioners.
*Boom*
Spending all of the immortal essence left tune myself into the Grand Path of Formations. If the thunder strikes hurt me before, they feel like nothing now. The problem is, once I run out of the essence, I’m a goner.
The principles behind the Heavenly Tribulation become clear and I can hear the sound of the Great Way itself resound inside my mind
The balance between the yin and the yang becomes obvious and even the most esoteric meanings behind the five elements of Water, Earth, Metal, Wood and Fire seem absolutely natural and perfectly simple.
I dig deeper…
I see pure blackness. This blackness represents complete emptiness. It can only be described as quintessential nothingness… This is the yin.
There’s nothing that’s completely yin. Even my awareness of the yin tarnishes its emptiness and non-existence. Through the realization of the lack of emptiness, I realize the yang, brightness, vibrancy…
I can’t understand the true meaning of the two concepts for that cannot be put into words and neither can it be realized with conscious thought. It can only be felt and accepted, not seen and understood.
I realize that what I see is but the very edge of the Way and yet this small part of the edge is already too much for me…
Through the revolutions of the yin and the yang, the five elements are born. They exist in harmony and their harmony allows the world to be born. In the world time, space and nature are born and beneath time, space and nature exist living things.
Amongst countless and endless living things there’s me but as I realized that all things are born from the ying and the yang I realize that all things are equal and all things are the same. I see through myriad of mortal thoughts and rise above all things mortal, rise to the source…
What is I?
A conscious thought, a slight bit of a dying mind that was able to rise above all things material… I am not something that can exist, therefore I don’t exist.
I feel myself disappearing.
The Way is merciless and the Heavens are ruthless. There is no place for mortal thought in the throne of Heaven.
A mortal mind cannot transcend time, this state is beyond time, so that thought can only never be.
But am I truly beyond time?
Aren’t I thinking? Aren’t I perceiving? Thinking and perception exist within the confines of Eternity. Wait, that was not my thought…
So, do I exist within time? Or outside time?
One moment it goes and the next it comes. I can’t tell whether I am myself or if I’m already beyond the previous existing state. That which cannot be grasped shouldn’t be grasped.
The Way’s nature is active, that is why we follow the Way but the Way’s nature is still and to follow the Way can also lie in non-action.
The past is the same as the future and is all but an illusion. For those who transcend the myriad thoughts the world is absolutely simple…
I exist at the present, therefore I exist everywhere and at any point in time.
This is Eternity
That wasn’t my thought.
My, mine, myself, I… I remember!
I died under the heavenly tribulation!
Neither my mortal body nor my primordial spirit survived.
But I still live.
What’s going on?
And why am I in the body of a child?
