Chapter 87 - Smoky Thing (2)

"Am I Dead? Now that I feel no pain, I think I'm dead. Hmm... Where is this place?"

In half of his speech, Asil had his eyes closed, in the other half, he had opened his eyes and encountered a rather unexpected sight and was stunned. It was surrounded by green grass and many flowers of different colors. This field of foliage extended to places that one's eyes could not reach. With the wind blowing silently and calmly, the fragrances of the flowers spread around. Animals were grazing a few hundred meters away. But none of these animals seemed aggressive. The sky was home to flying birds singing happy songs. On the left, there was a stream lying as calm as a millpond with water so clean that its bottom could be seen. This stream was ten meters wide and it seemed as if it had an unlimited length to it. From time to time, fish were coming out of his clean and still water.

With bewildered looks, Asil slowly looked around, and then unconsciously thought that this might be paradise. He was just face-to-face with death. He was sure he would be dead in a few minutes. The last thing he remembered was that he was unconscious and then he opened his eyes here. He couldn't think of any logical explanation except that this was heaven.

At that moment, Asil's gaze, watching the environment, turned to his own body, and there was another surprise to his eyes. He had not looked at himself before by the influence of the environment. But now that he was looking at his own body, he realized that his skin was purple and that purple had slowly but surely turned black. His body clearly resembled that before he died of poison.

"What's going on? Am I not dead? If I'm not dead, what is this place? My body is starting to turn purple or even black because of the poison, but I don't feel any pain..."

When Asil just said that he did not feel any pain as he thought to himself, severe pain from his abdomen spread throughout his body, causing him to fall onto his knees. The pain had only appeared and disappeared for a moment, but it had prevented Asil from even breathing.

When the pain passed, Asil was sweating cold and his throat dried up. He was in shock right now. Now that he thought logically, he had realized that when he came to this peaceful place, his body felt nothing that was bad at first. No pain, no thirst, no hunger, no evil feeling... He had felt none of it. When he first came here, what he could feel was peace because of the bird's music, relief because of the sound of the stream, happiness because of the smell of beautiful flowers spreading along with the wind, and so many good additional feelings.

But the moment he thought he wasn't feeling any pain, he felt severe pain in his body, and after that, he felt a thirst he hadn't felt before. The pain was short-lived, but the feeling of thirst was still lingering. Right now, it's like he is thirsty enough to think that if he can't drink anything, he could die from it.

Asil, with a feeling of severe thirst in his throat, quickly ran towards the nearby creek and when he came to his side, he crouched down to drink water and joined his hands and bring it closer to the creek's water. But the moment his hands touched the water of the creek, the clean water of the creek changed color as if it had suddenly deteriorated due to something very dirty being thrown into it. Just a second after Asil's hands touched the stream, all the water in the stream became black and began to smell nauseatingly bad.

When Asil saw this, he immediately pulled his hands out of the water. He couldn't understand what was going on right now. How could this stream, which a second ago was cleaner than all the water he had seen before, change completely in just one second? This was a change that could completely destroy common sense and not be explained logically.

Asil, suddenly realized, while dazed because of the changes in the stream, that the feeling of thirst in his throat had completely disappeared. In fact, it was not like something that disappeared afterwards. It was as if the feeling of thirst had never actually existed.

Asil noticed another strange thing in disbelief as he put his right hand down his throat and tried to realize what was going on. There was no profound energy in his body! There was no profound energy even in the vicinity. It was as if this world was a place without profound energy. But as far as Asil knew, profound energy was part of the world and could not be a place without it. In some places, the energy might have been too little to be felt, but it would still be found. However, there was no profound energy in this place that broke the rules of logic!

Another thing caught his attention as Asil was trying to figure out what was going on.  Far from where he was looking, a small spot appeared, and this spot was gradually approaching to Asil. After a few seconds, this point got so close that it became apparent that it was actually a human silhouette walking slowly. The clothes of this human silhouette were still invisible. It could only be seen that it was walking. But with its slow steps, it was as if it was progressing rapidly.

About five seconds later, this human silhouette came a few meters ahead of Asil. At that moment Asil was able to see clearly what this human silhouette actually looked like. It was more like a transparent, white-hued smoke with human contours with no apparent gender. Its eyes, nose, ears, and rest of its body with no apparent gender was completely covered in smoke. One could not tell if this weird thing had hair. But the smoke was slowly rising from its hands, shoulders, and head towards the sky.

When that strange thing came a few meters before Asil, it first looked at him and then looked at the contaminated creek. It shook its head slightly after looking into the stream and then turned towards Asil.

Asil felt remorse when this strange smoky thing returned to him as if he had done the worse thing in the world. This feeling of regret was so strong that it completely suppressed all other feelings. Now he could not feel the wind blowing slowly, nor could he smell the flowers, nor could he hear the birds...

Asil looked at the smoky thing that stood before him with a feeling of intense remorse in his heart. He didn't know who or what it was. Likewise, he had no idea if it was weak or strong. He didn't even know why he felt so sorry right now. All he could think about was regret.

The smoky thing moved by slightly opening its mouth, which formed from the smoke, after staring at Asil for a few seconds. Asil heard a voice echoing all over his mind as it moved its mouth. That voice was neither violent nor oppressive. But still, Asil clearly felt that this voice had reached every point of his mind.

"With so much evil in you, you will pollute the purity here, so I ask you not to touch the things that are here. I don't want to see this place get so dirty, even though it's easy to fix what you've contaminated."

This voice echoed in Asil mind, which sounded both very ancient and younger. He could think of no possibility of either the age or gender of the owner of the voice.

"With so much evil in me, do I pollute the pure? What does it mean by evil? Even my senses are too unstable. I just felt an incredibly intense regret, and now it's like it never existed... I really don't understand what is happening."

Asil through it to himself for a while, while the smoky thing remained silent. Asil understood that this was not going to go anywhere, asked at the end while he kept on thinking. "Where am I and who are you?"

After Asil's question, the smoky thing stayed silent for a few seconds and looked at Asil. After a few seconds of staring, it turned around without saying anything and slowly started to go in the direction it came from. It seemed to be going tens of meters with every step.

When the smoky thing took its second step, Asil called out again. "Hey! Where are you going?"

After Asil's call, the smoky thing did not return to him, but in his mind, the echoing voice began to be heard again:

"You must introduce yourself before you ask someone their name.. In addition to the evil in you, the way you talk is bad."