After I talked to master and the small incident that happened after that, master didn’t visit me the next day.
It was understandable. After all, I talked about the future and what happened to him, his apprentices and many other important to him people.
The cultivation world is an unforgiving place. Some people die, other people survive, many many many people have to go through a life laced with betrayal, suffering and parting with those they care about.
Master was already at the Nascent Soul stage. It was, in a way, the stage where one would truly start embarking on the road to the Dao and, at the very least, the people able to cultivate this far could already be considered to stand out from the rest.
The mental resilience of such a practitioner is not to be underestimated but, most of the time, even these people have things they care about, things they fear and things they would rather refuse to face.
Me suddenly breaking the whole story to master was quite cruel because of these reasons. I knew that it was cruel but at the same time one should understand that some things can’t be avoided and should be met head on.
Master was a very gentle and kind person. He likely would not be able to face those things on his own until it would be too late. That was why I selfishly had him face what could very easily come true.
Of course, the future I talked about would likely not happen anymore. Ever since I regressed in time, I already destroyed the previous sequence of things just by the virtue of my own existence.
Every breath I make contributes to a different flow of things than before.
But so what? They happened in the previous timeline and master was aware of it. I didn’t talk about hypothetical situations, what I talked about might as well be considered the truth.
He should digest this all slowly. I hope that this conversation will be useful to him.
…
“Oalus, what are you going to do now?”
Master came the two days after the conversation. He looked a bit more mature than before.
At first our interactions were awkward and master didn’t know how to treat me. But in the end, we somehow found a good balance. Well, things like these take time to get used to.
Anyway, I won’t be showing the beginning of our interaction in order to save master’s face. As for me… well, I’m a millennium-old monster who had gone through many storms. Do you think I would act flustered?
What do you mean “yes”? Shoo, go away.
As for master’s question?
I don’t know, honestly. I think that I’ll pursue my own Heavenly Path of Formations to the limit of my ability but other than that…
First, I will most naturally try to help those to whom I was indebted before I regressed in time.
Second… I don’t know.
I know that this situation is real and that I have gone back in time by a thousand years but it still seems doesn’t feel real to me.
I want to feel sad for the connections that I have lost, the friends and the enemies and just the people I had a short connection too. The achievements I had painstakingly built over a thousand years, all went *poof* and faded out of existence. My lover who had accompanied me for centuries… Or did I accompany her?
I want to feel sad and I want to feel lost. But the moment I try I find that there’s a very big part of me expecting this new reality to melt and for me to wake up.
How can I decide what I will do if I can’t even believe that I’m alive? That it’s my life and my new reality?
Seeing my silence master didn’t speak either.
“Alright, have some time for yourself and think. Just know that thi-, I and your fellow disciples will support your decisions. Don’t forget it”
Master replaced his form of addressing himself “this old man” for “I”. Perhaps he feels that it’s too strange to call himself as such in front of an old thing like me? Indeed, this does seem quite humorous.
“*chuckle* Thank you, master”
Master nodded and stood up
“That’s it for today. Call me if you need anything. I won’t be disturbing you today anymore”
*Creak*
And the door was closed.
“*sigh*, what I will do, huh?”
I dropped my back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. For a little boy even this ceiling seemed tall. I quite enjoy this feeling. It’s much different than feeling that the whole galaxy isn’t large enough for you, but I don’t hate the novelty of it. Though it’s not new at all. It’s just old enough to be forgotten.
Let’s just take it step by step at a time.
First of all, I have determined to pursue the Heavenly Path of Formations in this lifetime. I guess I will start with that.
In order to pursue that Path, I’ll have to cultivate. This sect’s cultivation techniques aren’t bad but they are far from enough for my wild ambition.
Yes, pursuing my Dao is a wild ambition. I always add “Heavenly” before the name of my Path not because I’m conceited but because this Path is meant to dig beyond the limits of human cognition and reach the true source of this Path, the Heavenly Dao.
It’s close to impossible and extremely burdensome but what can I do? It’s the Path I chose and I’ll see through it.
Before starting cultivation first comes the foundation.
Remember the talk I did about spirits and how cultivation works? No? Barely? Good!
Anyway, back to the topic.
It’s believed, I don’t know from when and who discovered it first, but it’s still believed and there’s plenty evidence for it to be believed that any living creature consists of three parts.
No, it should be said that any creature or thing is considered to be alive as long as they have three (with some exceptions but that can come later) parts that they consist of.
Those parts are the body, the spirit and the soul.
First, let’s talk about the soul.
The soul is a very mysterious thing about which we know very little. There, as far as I’m concerned, exist no spells or magical means to use or interact with the soul. The soul is an immaterial thing that doesn’t exist on the same layer of reality as we do, neither does it exist in the same way we do.
The soul is completely immortal and indestructible. It possesses no will of its own and neither does it have an ability to possess a will.
And that sums up about everything known about the soul. Except, maybe, one thing but that will also come later.
Next is the body. The body is a material object that exists in the known to us physical world. The body doesn’t have any strict requirements apart from that which we (all cultivators in this Galaxy) are aware of.
Well, bodies tend to consist of flesh most of the time but that is also not constant.
And, finally, the spirit.
Do you wonder how we are aware of the existence of the soul if we can neither use nor even interact with it?
Well, I kind of lied. WE can’t interact with the soul but that doesn’t mean that the soul can’t interact with us. In other words, there exists a one-directional method of interaction between the layer of existence where the soul is and the known to us physical world.
And that method is, you guessed it, the spirit!
As it’s not a formal lecture, I will not explain the theory behind it through logical reasoning. Nor will I give strict definitions to the things and phenomena that I will describe and leave it to you to interpret what I’m talking about.
I will do so as doing otherwise would take far too much time.
Anyway, as the soul settles inside a body, a living creature comes into being.
How do we know that a soul is settled inside a body? Because the body begins to possess a spirit.
A spirit is not a strictly material object and it’s much closer to the origins of the world and all being than the physical body that is limited its physical reality. At the same time, it’s not immaterial as it has direct methods of interacting with the physical world. Therefore we call that state “hypermaterial”.
A spirit is something every living being has. But not all spirits are equal.
Among humans, for example, some are born with spirits that are touched by the Heavenly Dao. They are favoured by the heavens and have a chance to surpass the ordinary and, perhaps, eventually escape the boundaries of the mortal coil.
Well, that’s one way people look at it. Another way to look at it is that those people have mutations in their spirits because of the various factors between the body and the soul.
Well, it doesn’t matter.
What matters is the way the spirits of those people are different from others. And the difference lies in the fact that those people have spiritual roots while others don’t.
A spiritual root is basically a spirit’s affinity to an aspect of the physical world that allows the one that has it to perceive and interact with that aspect. It also gives a person a kind of sixth sense that, when trained, allows one to perceive the aura between Heavens and Earth.
The aspects I was talking about are the five elements that the physical world is made out of. Earth, Metal, Water, Wood and Fire. It doesn’t mean that there exist only five kinds of roots, but those five elements lie in the foundation of all theory behind the utilization of the roots.
Since a long time ago, people with the spiritual roots have used them to gain power and knowledge, reach far beyond what an ordinary mortal could even dream of.
There have been countless ways of using them. The way that is common in this Galaxy nowadays is the way of spiritual cultivation. Or simply cultivation. Well, they stop being that important during later stages, but at the beginning they truly are crucial.
In order to step on the path of cultivation one has to build their foundation first.
Well, there’re stages below foundation building, such as aura sensing, when one learns to sense the aura between Heavens and Earth, aura synchronization, when one learns to disturb the aura, qi refinement, when one opens up the meridians that appear inside the body during the stages below and learns to refine qi inside one’s body…
To be honest, all of those stages are parts of the Foundation Building stage. It’s just more convenient to think of those steps in building the foundation as stages, that’s why we refer to them as such.
Anyway, a foundation is a construction necessary to be able to take control of one’s spirit.
A foundation is also a part that determines how far and how the practitioner will cultivate.
We build a foundation by using the spiritual roots. Or it should be said that the spiritual roots are used to build the foundation.
There’re meditation techniques and exercises that allow a person to affect their roots and change them in order to reach the spirit and build the foundation.
But building a foundation poorly will affect a practitioner’s ability and potential.
For example, I have seen a planet on the outskirts of the Galaxy where there were no cultivators before. There happened a natural phenomenon that had to do with mass enlightenment and it caused a large majority of the population to create their own foundations. Even many mortals did so instinctively, despite the lack of spiritual roots.
Because of failure, most of the people there transformed into cannibalistic monsters that the population there called “zombies” and some people who build a foundation successfully didn’t do it with a proper systematic method and made poor foundations, capable of using only a limited amount of abilities. They were called “ability-users” and “superheroes” by the way.
A proper foundation, on the other hand, will let a cultivator utilize the full potential of their roots and let them use an infinite variety of magical powers, limited only by one’s knowledge, creativity and the limitations on the roots.
I intend to create my own cultivation technique suitable for seeking my Path that fits my natural talents.
Yes, let’s do just that.
As for the questions it may cause… I’ll let master handle it. He did say that he’ll support me, right?
