AIR 125-127

Chapter 125

The old man sat by the river bank, his hand holding the rod and his arms still with patience. He was old, far too old for a God-Imperium. His skin sagged slightly and he was short with his back hunched over in age. 

On his head was an old bamboo hat. It was weathered and brown, having lost its yellow shine and distinctive circular shape a long ways back. His clothes were the same. His green pants were held together by a frayed string and his shoes looked like they had walked a hundred thousand steps. His coat was stained but clean and his eyes were closed, but he missed nothing for them. 

The river was rushing, running, boiling, and chilling all at once. It was still and freezing, large and small, flooding and yet nothing but the smallest of streams. It was all things Yin and Yang. 

He pulled back the reel. The fish had seen it for what it was and they would never bite on bait they knew. He changed the bait to something new, something they’d never seen before, and moved himself a good distance over. 

A good fisherman was a consistent fisherman. He had to accept when the fish were biting and accept when they weren’t. 

He pulled back his rod and cast. A good distance away, the still river rippled with his hook and instantly, he had a bite. 

The fisherman reeled and pulled, yanking the small fish out of the river. The fish remained in the river but was also taken out of it. A piece of its qi was caught on the fisherman’s hook, but that was all he needed. 

That was all he sought. The fish in turn had taken the bait and swam forward against the stream, joyful in its newfound treat.

A good distance away were three old ladies. To them, the river was an endless ball of string, ever growing and twisting into itself. One of them struggled, parting bits of string from the giant ball of eternal yarn, she pulled and measured and cut. She had a mouth and arms, but no eyes. The other wove the string in a loom, weaving a tapestry for the ages. She had eyes and arms, but no mouth. The last one stared down at the tapestry after it had been weaved, giving meaning to the strange image. She had eyes and a mouth, but no arms. 

One to gather but not to weave, one to weave but not to speak, and one to speak but not to gather. 

“Anything good,” the speaker asked. 

“He caught something?” the gatherer added. 

The weaver looked curiously in tandem. 

The fisherman stared at the fish, and for a moment, the fish stared back. From the river, deep from the river, a dragon looked at the fisherman. The fish was her child, a small carp on its way to jump over the Dragon’s Gate. A God-King attempting Imperium. 

It would fail, everyone knew this except for the fish. The fish, the real fish was rushing now, trying to leap over the waterfall and free itself from the river, while also binding itself to it. 

The Great Dao, the River of Fate, the Expression of Existence. The fish didn’t know that above the waterfall was just another body of water, the spring from which all water arose. 

It clashed with the gate along with many others and not one could clear the gate. 

The dragon below didn’t seem to notice. The piece of the fish that was in the fisherman’s hands turned still. The dragon stared at him with hatred. 

“Do you want it?” The fisherman asked, ignoring the dragon in the water. 

“Yes,” the gatherer replied. 

“Indeed,” the speaker added.

The weaver looked curiously at the dead thing. 

The gatherer took the fish from him. 

“It’s dead,” she said with a grimace, but the fish now turned to string was handed over to the weaver. The weaver silently weaved and handed over the finished tapestry to the speaker, and the speaker frowned. 

To call them one woman would be a mistake, but to call them three would be a lie. 

They were like him and a few others. A small number of Imperiums who gazed into Fate. Their numbers were few and sacred and most had risen in the early days of existence as few of their kind got this far nowadays. 

The three and one gathered, weaved, and saw. 

Then all three looked towards the dragon, even the one without eyes, and frowned. 

“You would bring death,” they all spoke, even the one without a mouth. “You would bring destruction. You would bring hell and suffering for only this?”

The dragon roared in indignation. It wasn’t over the matter of its child. It had far too many and cared far too little for its spawn to care about the death of one of them. It was mad over another thing. It was mad over its secrets. 

These beings, these watchers of fate stood above existence and cast their hands to all. And all that took it would be known. 

Mortal, immortal, God-Kings and all. They would offer a trade of greatness for a bit of greatness in turn. Even the children of God-Imperium could accept that trade. That Tome was similar to them, though it sought all knowledge not just fate itself. 

And for that, it saw less of Fate and more of everything else. But these creatures only sought fate. They sent and searched to know the future of existence, to see through the veil of the void and time. 

They knew of all the God-Kings and they knew of a lot of their ends, even if they had yet to happen.

Her child, her stupid, useless, burden spawn had taken that trade. A bit of his fate for a bit of greatness. A fair trade to him, one that had not made a difference in the end.

And of course, she had let. She had freed him from all that was her, from her control, her essence, and her eye. She would have tainted the process otherwise. 

And she had told him, commanded him to not take their deals, regardless of their offers, and yet he still did. He had betrayed her, not that she hadn’t expected him to. 

These watchers would have found out eventually but now was too early. Her child, the other child, that monkey. 

Truly, children were bound to disappoint. 

With a snort of disappointment, the dragon sank from the surface and hid herself from the fisherman’s view. She went back down to her home and settled and her rage shook the Hells once more. 

The Fisherman frowned, but only for a moment. Once more, he cast out his reel and the ladies returned back to their weaving. 

“Do you think it will come to pass? I saw only a piece but I do not know the whole tapestry. The thread was far too small weave for that.”

“You saw it,” the Fisherman replied. 

The Fates for all their fame, were far younger than him. Few knew of him and his nature, and he had outlived most of them. He had lived through this before and he would live through this again. 

The three ladies nodded.

Too many people hated diviners and soothsayers, though the Fisherman and the Fates were far beyond those terms. The Fates sought to control the river by weaving with the small seeds of mortal things.

None made pawns, but if a being was nearly bound for greatness and would be just outside of its reach, they might aid them. Or if a being was bound for greatness but did not meet their values, they might snip him down from afar. That was the Fate’s way.

The Fisherman was similar. He fished for doom, for bound destruction, and he flipped all that luck upon its head. 

He was the Fisher of the Damned, The King of Chance, and Graciouse Fate. 

But he had not given luck to his latest catch. No, that was an unworthy creature. 

The Fisherman sighed. Not all fish were worth the time it took to catch them. 

So he sat there and held his pole still.

Chapter 126

That attack was quick. 

First, feel. 

I triggered the array and that sent an explosion of light throughout the whole of the forest. 

Light pierced through the shadow and the beasts squirmed away. 

The array had been a bomb of sorts. It would be a waste if I didn’t execute it right. You might think that light would cut down the darkness and give me an advantage of sorts. 

But it wouldn’t. The darkness here wasn’t because of the nature of the beasts but the nature of this part of the part of the forest. The trees, the rocks, the earth, all contained darkness within them, and regardless of how big the explosion was, it would only last a matter of seconds before it was devoured by the darkness around it. 

It was like setting off a bomb in the ocean. 

It’d burn, yes, but only for an instant. And most of the beasts had enough sense to stay far enough away from the array so as to not get involved. 

My mind whirled. It was surreal. 

The beasts were so so far away. From a mortal’s mind, they would look bigger than a universe. The space between us didn’t exist. There was just a difference in where I was and where they were, but we were in two different places entirely. 

It was… incomprehensible. Laws made manifest, trees so big they could hold an infinite number of earths. The earth beneath my feet was so real, so solid that it would make Mount Everest look like a horrid imitation. 

When I saw it that way, it was easy to understand why I would be called a god and why immortals view mortals as something less than ants. 

And yet, regardless of the differences, here I was hunting and being hunted. A man in the forest, no different from a mortal in the woods. 

I snapped back into the moment. 

The beast was a raven, thirteenth-rank ninth-step. The illusion was good, but one of these beasts were bound to see through it eventually. I couldn’t rely on my skills to deceive, so instead I used the moment as bait. 

Array masters had a tough time in an unprepared battle, but if we planned for it, then in the best case it wouldn’t be a battle, it would be a trap. 

The light blinded the raven, but it flew still, aiming its beak directly at my chest. 

Fights were complicated. When you plan to fight, you should have more methods of escape than more methods of combat. That was how Dane thought, and I agreed.

Fights grew increasingly complex with martial arts. What moves would the opponent use? How would they strike you next? How should you dodge and redirect? 

But with power, they somehow grew easier. The raven had a few methods of attack, but the first one would have been a surprise to me because it would assume that I was not expecting it. It would also assume that I had some kind of protection, which was the exploding array. 

So it would raise its defenses and take me down with one quick swoop as any smart beast would. 

It probably expected the explosion of light. Using something with a light law would be the best-opposing nature to use on something with a dark law after all.

But the raven forgot one thing. It was not alone. 

Just as the raven attacked, so did a snake from below, and badger from beneath, and a leopard from the side. They had all expected the light attack and the defense and had lowered their senses and pounced on me with full force because of it.

And I stepped away as they did so. The rest of the beasts had turned away at the explosion and I created another illusion in an instant. 

The central point of the plan depended on inciting all four beasts at ounce. And that had been easy enough. 

I had made my hiding spot with purposefully faults. If I did the best I could, they would have just searched harder and found me eventually, but if I purposefully created an illusion of lower quality, I could entice them bit by bit.

They had heard my conversation with Forn. They weren’t deaf or stupid. I had all but told them how to break through my illusion. It was controlled via outputs from me. There was no qi connection, but rather minute fluctuations in the environment surrounding my real body that the illusory array would read and respond to. I was the broadcast station and the array was the radio tower. If it weren’t for Forn’s curiosity, it might have taken the beasts far longer to see through this plan. I could have been here for days, but thankfully, I wasn’t. 

So all the beasts had to do was look for the source of those fluctuations and they would find me. But the signals they had found were a red haring. I’d doubled every transmission with false meaningless singles that were far more obvious than my real ones. 

I had sent out the transmissions in an untraceable method so far, setting up small arrays that transmitted the signals for me before dissipating. These beasts must have been trailing after those signals for a good minute now, pouncing at every transmission thinking they barely missed me. 

Another point of failure was their doubling up on a false signal. If two or three of them attacked at one false transmission, then they might have kept cautious of each other, remembering what had happened earlier when I entered the forest. This was the same strategy after all, just far more complicated. 

So each false signal transmitted a different set of false transmissions. I had about five different sets of false signals, each transmitting whenever the illusory puppet moved and of the five four had been discovered. I kept up the transmissions and eventually each beast believed they had cracked the pattern and then, eventually I transmitted all of that one point and they had attacked. 

It was also possible one of the beasts could have seen through me earlier, but even then I could hide via the explosion. 

I barely stepped away as all four creatures clashed. 

I spat out a shielding array once again and while the explosion blinded all other creatures, four dark beasts clashed. 

The snake lost a fang, the badger lost a few claws, the panther lost his ears, and the crow lost its life. 

I grabbed them as they fell and ran. I had to get out quickly before any of their senses started prickling at the scene of the battle. The explosion helped offset the attention but I wasn’t about to wait for all the other creatures to turn their eyes towards me. 

The crow weighed me down a bit. It was more than me, relatively speaking. It had died but its corpse was fresh and its nature was strong. I felt like I carried the whole of the night on my back. 

Thankfully, it was the same rank as I was and that meant that’s quality was a similar level to mine. It couldn’t overpower me or shape me with its mere presence. 

And if it was a whole rank above me it’d have absolutely no reason to hunt me. I would provide it with nothing useful for its effort. 

I ran through the barrier and back out into the Grove of Life’s territory. The barrier allowed me to drag the crow’s corpse out but held back all the other beasts who had arrived at the sight of me. 

I sighed and quickly put the corpse in my strongest sealing containers. Forn came out from the dark forest completely unharmed and wide-eyed. 

“Wow,” she mumbled. “I’ve never seen anything so…”

“Don’t hold back,” I pushed. 

“Cowerdly.”

I chuckled. 

“It works,” I said. 

“Yes,” she nodded. “I suppose it does. But what if it hadn’t?”

“I had other plans of escape. Most would have forced me to abandon gathering any spoils but I would have made it out.”

“And you would have done so with no cost to yourself? With no risk? Was that even a real fight?”

I smiled. 

“Yes, it was. I already lost the light array and the material it took to make that. The same can be said for all the other materials I used to set up the fight. And no matter how well you plan things out there’s always a risk.”

“But you wouldn’t have died?” She asked. 

“I could have.”

“You didn’t even fight. You didn’t attack a single thing you only used their own forces against them.”

She sounded sad, almost disappointed. I suppose this was the point when the rich kid broke open the fancy new toy, figured out how it worked, and felt sad because the magic was nothing like they had imagined. 

I think she wanted me to be stronger, something more than a trickster. She was waiting for me to reveal myself as a person worth her interest.

“And you didn’t even hide,” I replied. 

“That’s different. They weren’t after me.”

“And why do you think that is? It's your blood that gives you talent and your grove that they fear. I understand it wasn’t a battle for the ages, but this wasn’t one opponent and this wasn’t a fair fight. I’m sorry if that disappointed you, but I have to make do with what I have, and what I have are my little schemes and traps.”

I shouldn’t have said that. Dane wouldn’t have. Dane wouldn’t have talked to this girl if he could help it. 

“I am my own,” she muttered. 

“And I mine.”

There was a tense moment between us before she slowly sighed. 

“I…apologize, again. I do not know if I could have fought the same enemies and survived myself. It’s just that the method of battle seems rather strange to me.”

“You were hoping to see something dazzling?” I asked. 

She nodded. 

Again, I couldn’t help but think of her age. There were cultivators below the immortal rank older than she was. For all her age, she was still a sheltered child. I had shown up out of the blue like a magician at a birthday party and now the birthday girl was sad that I couldn’t throw out a fireball. 

She was decent, but she was also spoiled. 

She had brought that dragon to me instead of running to her Grove, if for nothing than her own pride. She had followed and prodded me while I was hunting and even though she was easy to talk to, she was still spoiled. 

And now that she saw that I didn’t have what she wanted, she was irritated. 

“Well, I am sorry to disappoint.”

“It… it isn’t you. It's my father and the Grove, I wish to venture into the deeper parts of it and they won’t let me. Ever since I could remember I’ve always been growing, increasing my strength bit by bit, but lately… I feel stagnant. I’ve been meaning to go deeper into the forest to search for stronger opponents, but my father won’t let me. I suppose I was hoping you’d be able to provide something.”

I smiled enviously. She was stagnant? Not growing? Was she experiencing her first-ever bottleneck at the thirteenth rank? Had she never had to struggle to reach beyond her limitations before?

I tried to imagine it, being born to such a sect and strolling your way to this level of power. 

“Why the forest?” I asked. 

“The stronger the danger the stronger my growth. I need to push myself and strike out, to be tempered underneath the fire of the forest. If I were to leave our territory and its adjacent neighbors, I’d be able to find true adversaries, enemies that wouldn’t avoid me for my blood.”

“You’d die.”

“It would be a risk but-”

“No, Forn, you would die.”

“I could hold my own,” she spoke indignantly. 

“Maybe, but not for long. Your blood would entice any beast with a decent nose. You have a bloodline that comes from a God-King. Many beasts and men would jump at the chance to eat you.”

“Not if I had a bloodline hiding technique. I could do it. I could take all the proper precautions and head out into the forest.”

It took all I had to not yell at her stupidity. Everything I did to stay safe, from the way I traveled to the way I fought, was developed out of fear of the world and all the dangers that it held. She had that safety, that security I sought so strongly, and yet she was so eager to be free from it. 

“Why the forest? Why not a city or a tournament? Why not sharpen your abilities through other means?”

“I am wild, the forest is where I belong.”

“If you want to strengthen your dao, shouldn’t you test it? Explore it? Understand civilization and people instead of throwing them away?”

“I am wild,” she replied. 

“I think you’re just scared,” I said. “Scared of the word outside your forest.”

“I am not afraid of death,” She scoffed. 

“Yes, but you are afraid of control, rules, limitations, and any other set of boundaries. You’re so afraid of losing your wild dao that you refuse to test it. You’re stagnant not because you’re not risking your life, but because your life is all you’re willing to risk. You refuse to change and grow through opposing ideals.”

“I- I am- who are you to speak such things?” She yelled.

“Just an old man,” I answered. “Talking to a young girl and telling her to avoid making the mistakes he made. Growth is inevitable. To try and stay the same is to fight a losing battle.”

She listened and nodded. 

“I will think upon your words,” She finally replied. 

I smiled and bowed, and started to quickly make my way out of the forest. 

Forn just stood there and thought.

Chapter 127

I walked through the silent nothing, staring off into the distance that was not there. Other realms simmered in the sky, blazing off in the distance. I felt a little tired. 

It was a lot. I’d learned and grown and fought but most of all, I had talked. It was such a short period of time, probably nothing more than ten seconds back on Ah-Marin but it felt like a lifetime for me. 

The void felt different. I certainly didn’t feel safe and I was being just as careful now as I was back then. But I was less worried. Caution and fear could be mixed up for one another quite easily and I felt I had more of the first and less of the other. 

I wondered if Forn’s father had somehow impacted me. He was a higher being and that came with a more impactful existence. The thought made me frown for a moment. 

He just advised you, The Tome suddenly spoke. Nothing more.

“I thought you had left,” I muttered. 

The Tome didn’t reply. I had my suspicions as to where it went and why, and its silence all but affirmed it. 

“Is that why you were trying to get me to go through other Celestial Realms? You wanted to use me as an unwatched messenger?” 

The less you know, the better boy. The Tome replied. Knowledge is power but if you can not stand strong, it will crush you down into the earth.

That was Tome speak for ‘You're too weak to know what I’m talking about.’

I silently promised myself I’d be less cryptic with Chin, what could this be if not some cosmic form of karma? 

There was a lot to think about.

Things would be the same, but on some level, things had irrevocably changed. 

I started to make a to-do list of all the things I’d have to take care of once I got home. 

First, I’d have to consult the Tome on beasts developing daos and figure out how much knowledge I could gain from it without having to pay it back. I knew one of the reasons the Tome was doing this was because ‘it owed me.’ The knowledge I had provided was so valuable that the Tome itself felt compelled to let me know of my ailment and how to fix it. 

That was part of the reason it had been so willing to give all that information on souls and guide me directly in fixing mine. It still wasn't a done deal though, and I would probably need to do more to expedite the process. 

I couldn’t allow myself to stagnate with just this small progress. 

I also needed to train and grow, as well as look after Nai and that array, making sure they gained enough strength to defend themselves from the upcoming calamity.

And Chin and Medin-

Would they reach immortality? Would they want to? What about the girls? And the beasts? I couldn’t keep them locked up forever, not when they were growing and developing into actual people. 

But if I let them free, then what? Tai Jey immediately finds me and comes after me.

Problems seemed to come out of nowhere.

“Why didn’t I notice the mistakes?” I asked the Tome. “I am functionally a thirteenth ranker, even without Dane’s ego I should have perceived the possible problems with my actions. How didn’t I see the risks?”

You have eyes but do not see Mount Tai.

“Ha!” I laughed. 

To see is not to know. A man might see a mountain from a distance and think it a hill. And yet he might see a molehill just a sprint away and believe it to be a mountain that pierces the skies. A mortal’s ego is small, it measures everything relative to a mortal’s life. You care for mortals because, in your mind, you are one. You cared about the servants because to you they were people, while to their owners they were nothing more than convenient mayflies. A mortal immortal, a man and a god, an ant and a giant, and you cycled between the two when it felt right. You even shaped your dao in that perspective. 

“But couldn’t I… outthink it? Even if I am set in my own ways, I can think so much and so fast. I’m an array master of the thirteenth rank. Shouldn’t I see something?”

Do you remember what you said to Forn?

I nodded. 

Dane would have said nothing. Dane wouldn’t have helped the servants and Dane wouldn’t have gone to the Divine Beast Emporium. If he were still alive, he would be hidden up in his empty realm on that small planet, rotting away from the very center of his being. Your mistakes in parts are nothing more than differences. But your broken nature causes you to see from both a mortal and an immortal’s mind, dragging your understanding from one to the other. It is healing and as it comes together so will the person you truly are emerge. You should be safe from your mortal woes from now on, but the healing is far from done. Your soul, while whole again is still a mauled and tattered thing. 

“And how do I go fixing that?” I asked, though I already knew. I knew from reading To Heal the Soul, A Collection of Cures for the Fabric of Your Being. 

That book had seemed almost tailor-made for my condition.

You must cultivate of course.

I sighed. Dane had broken his soul, my soul, in order to avoid needing a dao and had tried to change his nature to something like an insect’s. Gaining a dao was already one of the first steps I needed to take to fix the breaks and I had already done that. So the next step would be to cultivate that dao and raise it up to my own rank. 

“Nothing else?”

You could traverse to certain areas and seek the help of-

“I knew it. You are trying to use me as a messenger. That book only offers solutions that lead me to other celestial realms allowing you to go contact other imperiums.”

We passed by a small realm that was barely holding on. I looked into them and found quadrillions. A collapsing world on the verge of death, full of mortals. A space-fairing group of humans with only about a year’s worth of energy left. 

I saw a swarm of giant ants all around the ninth rank with their queen at the tenth eagerly bite into the still-living realm. They were quickening the decay, cutting into the lifespan of the realm. If I didn’t do something it would crumble and fall, and that small realm would be consumed in an instant. 

The Tome seemed to go silent as I contemplated. Dane would have pushed away the ants and went on with his life. He would have brushed aside the insects and let the realm fall on its own. That was as far as his kindness would have gone. At best he would have relocated the cluster of mortals.

I ached.

This wasn’t Earth, but it reminded me of it. It was a small realm, one that couldn’t support any cultivators so humans were forced to rely mainly on science and push themselves forward.

You heard stories of powerhouses rising from backwater realms all the time, but those realms had infinitely more qi than the one in front of me. True backwater realms like this one rarely lasted all that long. No one from Earth could have cultivated. If you were born in that realm you were cursed to die in that realm, and your people, your language, your culture, your history, everything humanity had accomplished would be forgotten as soon as your realm was destroyed. 

Earth must have met the same fate. I don’t know how Bill’s soul managed to escape it. It must have sunk into one of the rivers of death and somehow popped out near Dane’s realm. 

I was lucky or unlucky depending on how you looked at it. 

I held the realm. It was like a grain of sand in my hand, nothing more than a dust mite. It was quadrillions of people, a near infinite bundle of dreams, hopes, and sorrows and yet it was so small in front of me. 

I pulled at it, separating it from the web of realms and shaking off all the insects trying to devour it. It wouldn’t fill them up anyways, it was like a crumb to their colony. 

The ants ran in response, not bothering to fight me for the small realm. 

I patched up the delicate realm, feeding it, pushing it to grow stronger and willing the fabric of its realm whole again. 

I watched the realm heal and grow. They could do that if you fed them the right way. I watched as people found a second chance at life again. 

And for the first time in my existence, I felt wet tears come down my face. 

I smiled at that. I was healing, becoming less of a mortal man, but I still cared. 

I was afraid that would change. I was terrified of ‘fixing’ myself and becoming more like Dane, but at least that part of me wouldn’t change. 

With a little bit of acceptance, I took a detour down to a place Dane would never have gone to, down to the Gates of Justice at the low Heavens.