63 A Nasty Little Joke of Epic Proportions 7

She saw a forgotten world, a desolate plain that stretched to the frontier of eternity. The endless span of green, dull vitality, the indefinite area of land that possessed both life and stillness, vibrance and disruption within one.

In the center of the plains was a small, white lotus. The tiny flower struggled to thrive in a monotonous sea of grass, the sole exclusion of the world.

Grass grew with the anticipation of another's accompaniment, whereas the lotus bloomed for nobody.

Not even itself.

The petals of the lotus glare at the unforgiving sun, the white petals of the flower blooming and withering, flourishing and simultaneously decaying with each passing of time. The grass remained stagnant and frozen, and the single lotus flower was the only existence experiencing change.

She saw a forgotten world. A world that had frozen in time, and yet was spiraling headlong towards its unending destination.

A world that refused to transform regardless of the outcome.

The grass had yet to change, but the lotus had experienced countless, indefinite cycles of time underneath the scorching sun.

She saw that within the plain, lonely lotus of white, was a young woman dressed in white robes. The woman's features were truly indistinct, and the only attributes of her appearance that could be defined were flowing black hair, a robe of white fabric trailing behind her feet, and a veiled hat.

Within the eternal, frozen plains, the woman was within the lotus. Within the field of change and stagnation, the woman was the solitary lotus, experiencing the shifts and tribulations of the world whilst the world experiencing an absolute tranquility and peace.

The woman saw her, she saw the woman. Towards the uninvited guest, the woman offered what could be merely called a smile, a smile obscured by countless, innumerable layers of truth and falsehood.

"You shouldn't have come."

The plains were silent, not a single blade of grass swaying or trembling. The sun remained fixated within the atmosphere, unceasingly glaring at the earth beneath its radiance.

The woman's mouth moved, but not a single sound was transmitted within the field of peace. However, she could hear the words spoken by the indistinct figure of the woman of the lotus, and the words rang directly besides her ear.

"The bearer of the Sanctum must not be tainted by the mortal."

The woman spoke once more, the words ringing like bells, each syllable enunciated with absolute precision and accuracy, yet the contents were similarly, absolutely incomprehensible. She saw the woman stand and stretch her limbs, before stepping forward to perform a blurry, awkward but elegant dance in the endless plain of vitality and death.

A step forward with the right foot, a sweep of the arms to the right.

"The bearer of the Sanctum must not be tainted by the mortal."

A step forward with the left foot, reverse the motion of the arms.

"You shouldn't have come."

A pivot on the right heel clockwise, extending the arms towards the sides.

"The bearer of the Sanctum must not be tainted by the mortal."

A step back with the left foot, before repeating the entire process once again.

"You shouldn't have come."

The actions of the woman couldn't even be called a dance, and only resembled that of an awkward set of incomplete actions, forced to repeat in an infinite cycle.

A silent dance by the solitary, a lament towards the unforgiving world that both punished and condoned change. The lotus' dance of eternity, an awkward dance of a single performer that represented neither a beginning nor an end, but an indefinite, infinitely yet infinitesimally long cycle.

She saw tears drip down the woman's face, soon followed by blood and sweat.

However, the woman said not a word, but continued to perform the never-ending dance, the blurred countenance changing not a single iota. The woman danced without an audience, the lotus swayed without a spring breeze or gale, and the world remained silent and frozen.

All of this, experienced by her. All of this, witnessed and observed by her. All of this that combined to form, her.

Within the woman was a broken and complete cycle that precipitated and eradicated the concept of existence; the single lotus in the plains both presented nihility and removed it, defining and refuting the existence of the grass, the sun, and the lack of transformation.

She saw that within the woman was creation and destruction, and neither at the same time. The lotus represented change but experienced a cycle of death and life.

Possessing everything whilst possessing nothing.

Possessing nothing whilst possessing everything.

The sun did not move, the grass did not tremble or quiver, and the wind did not blow through the eternal plain. Only the lotus experienced withering and resurrection, destruction and creation without pause, purpose, or ending.

Though the woman danced and moved, the actions were repetitive and unchanging regardless of the passage of time.

She was an uninvited guest, yet she was an integral component of the world with the eternal plains of green.

Perhaps there wasn't a beginning in the first place.

"You shouldn't have come."

"The bearer of the Sanctum must not be tainted by the mortal."

The world remained frozen, the grass remained still, and the woman remained unchanging and mired within an unbreakable cycle. Even she, the uninvited guest, did not experience change.

"You shouldn't have come."

The lotus crumbled into ash, the gray dust scattering across the fragmented world without the concept of time.

"The bearer of the Sanctum must not be tainted by the mortal."

A plain white lotus burst from the ground to vivaciously bloom against the unfeeling sun. The ground, the grass, and the sun did not change, thus the lotus and woman similarly remained stagnant and frozen.

You shouldn't have come.

The bearer of the Sanctum must not be tainted by the mortal.

She, the uninvited guest, shouldn't have come to the world containing the eternal plains, but was an integral component of the timeless world from creation.

Outside existences were not permitted.

Neither were those already native to the world of decay and vitality, the world where creation and destruction were not mere sides of a coin, but instead the core compositional element forming the coin itself.

[You shouldn't have come.]

-

"…this marks the passing of the fourth incense stick…" Wei Xuan muttered to himself, his eyes anxiously examining the body of the girl sitting before him.

However, the minister couldn't help but possess a thread of pride as he stabilized the girl's relaxed body with his right palm.

The girl's bodily functions had dropped to the absolute minimum without forcing the consciousness to enter a slumber, indicating that she had successfully entered the initial meditative state of cultivation. Since then, two full hours had already passed, causing a great warmth to spread throughout Wei Xuan's chest.

It was common knowledge among cultivators and a fundamental aspect of cultivation itself that upon entering a new Realm, the cultivator would enter an initial meditative state, one of which the soul departed from the body to interact directly with the spiritual qi drifting in the atmosphere. The longer one remained within the initial meditation, the greater benefits reaped whilst cultivating within that Realm.

A full two hours of the initial meditate state was sufficient to identify the girl before him as possessing great prospects as she cultivated, yet Wei Xuan was happy due to a different notion.

The longer An Fei remained in deep meditation, the greater probability she had in surviving against her innate defects and illness.

Though Wei Xuan was unsure whether it could completely remove the malignant, the minister hoped that with future advances in cultivation, the girl could retain a significant portion of her original lifespan.

"A sichen is perfectly acceptable," the minister muttered to himself, adjusting the position of his palm to better support the girl's limp body.

"If only, she could persist for another hour, then we might not need to search for the Eight-Petaled Violet Yin Herb aged a millennium or older…"

Lighting another stick of incense with his unoccupied left hand, Wei Xuan closed his eyes as he concentrated, focusing his spiritual perception into that of a thin, imperceptible needle. Guiding his perception to travel alongside the length of his arm and enter the girl's body through the palm placed against her back, the minister slowly began to inspect the girl's physique.

A normal, if not slowly stagnated collection of meridians. The meridians and spiritual channels within An Fei's body were slightly clumped together and entangled in awkward clusters, constructing a slight disfunction that obstructed the body's vitality from flowing properly.

The blood vessels could be considered acceptable, but the heart…

Gritting his teeth as he stared fiercely at the weakly throbbing heart, Wei Xuan slowly began to retract his perception from the girl's body, following the pathway he had utilized to enter. Before he could pass by the central meridian of An Fei's Governing Vessel, the girl suddenly lurched heavily, a stream of black and putrid blood spraying from her mouth and scattering over the floor.

A string of melodious bells filled the interior of the study, yet the clangs were akin to death tolls in the minister's ears.

[You shouldn't have come.]

[The bearer of the Sanctum must not be tainted by the mortal.]