Chapter 323: A Mortals Perspective

Chapter 323: A Mortals Perspective

Sam had been nothing but a simple village boy—born a mortal and raised on a farm a mountain range away from Darklight City. As a child, he was told stories of the elusive cultivators that lived on the mountain peaks. How they could fly through the skies and effortlessly slaughter the monsters the mortals were so afraid of with a finger flick. They sounded like unbelievable fairy tales to the young Sam until he grew old enough to join his old man on a trip to Darklight City to sell their produce to the millions of mortals there.

Passing the mining area, he laid eyes on a man who looked too perfect. His skin was flawless as if crafted from porcelain; his eyes were sharp, and the immaculate white robe carried a sense of majesty. The difference between this man and the line of mortals before him was like the gap between heaven and earth.

"Father, who is that?" he whispered to his old man, who was controlling the horse and drawing their cart loaded with vegetables. "Is he a noble?"

"Don't point at him," His father hissed back with a grave look on his tired and sunkissed face, "That is a cultivator."

Sam's eyes widened as he looked back at the white-haired man. That was a cultivator? Sure, he had this aura around him that showed he was different from the common man, but he still looked human. In his mind, cultivators were giant ethereal beings from the tales—not handsome humans.

"Mortal, did you think your tricks would escape my notice?" The cultivator casually told the man standing before him with a half-filled dusty sack clutched in his callous hands.

The man gulped, "Whatever do you mean, my lord?"

"You are trying to smuggle spirit stones in your clothes without paying the tax," the cultivator said, looking down his nose at the mortal.

"L-Lord Winterwrath, it was an honest mistake," The accused man dropped to his knees on the rough stone and groveled at the cultivator's feet. "I ran out of space in my bag, so I used my pockets to carry the excess spirit stones! It was not my intention to question your rule—"

White flames wreathed the cultivator's hand, and with a simple tap on the man's forehead, he was flash-frozen into a groveling ice statue.

"Mortals should learn their place," the cultivator lightly kicked the ice statue in the face, shattering it into a million bloodied shards that showered the line of mortals waiting behind.

Sam felt his heart freeze in his chest. What just happened?! He turned to his father to share his utter shock but was met with a disinterested stare. Sam's father didn't offer any commentary; instead, he shook his head and pulled on the reins to quicken the horse. Once they were halfway down the road with Darklight City dominating their view, Sam was finally able to suppress the tightness in his chest and stutter out.

"He really killed a man."

"That he did," his father answered bluntly as if they were discussing the weather.

"Shouldn't the cultivator be punished for that? How can he just kill someone so casually like that?"

His father stopped the horse and slapped Sam so hard it shocked him awake. "Don't you ever have such useless thoughts again, my son," he said in a grave tone his usually cheerful father had never used before, "We toil away on the lands and the mines for the cultivators, and in return, they protect us from the beasts. When it comes to the cultivators, there is no law—they are the law. If they wish to kill you in the street for looking at them funny, then they can do so, and nobody will dare to stop them."

"Not even the other cultivators?"

His father looked at him as if he were stupid, "Why would they? To them, we are no better than rats. Have you ever thought twice about killing the rats eating our crops?"

"No..." Sam admitted. In fact, he liked to kill those disgusting creatures after hearing them scampering through the ceiling at night.

His father pulled on the reigns to continue their slow journey toward Darklight City, "Now you know how cultivators think about us."

That day, Sam learned the truth about cultivators and has been fascinated by them ever since. He would take every opportunity to visit the city to catch a glimpse of them. Soon, he learned there was a difference between cultivators, just like with mortals. The noble cultivators lived atop the mountain peaks and lorded from above, while the rogue cultivators, who seemed far more human, roughed it with the mortals in Darklight City.

"Father, why can't I be a cultivator?"

His old man leaned on his shovel and wiped his sweat with a hole-filled rag, "Only those chosen by the heavens can be cultivators."

Sam frowned, "So I wasn't chosen?"

His father shrugged and pulled his shovel from the dirt. "Who knows? I never got your spirit roots checked at the academy, but you haven't shown any signs of detecting the whispers of heaven or absorbing more Qi than the rest of us. If you were born to be a cultivator, you would have developed faster and wouldn't be so scrawny."

Sam narrowed his eyes, "Why didn't you get me tested to be sure?"

His father laughed as he dug the shovel into the ground and threw up dirt in a swift motion, "Because then you wouldn't help me on the farm, and those evaluations aren't cheap, ya know? Cost an arm and a leg."

Sam begged every birthday for a chance to be tested, but he always received the same answers:

His father would say, "It's too expensive. Now go work in the fields."

"The chance of a farming family like us producing a cultivator is one in a million," his mother would repeat with a tired smile while ruffling his hair. "It's not even worth the journey to the academy, Sam."

They treated him like an ignorant child.

"I hate living like this," Sam muttered to himself on one fateful rainy night as he was outside toiling the fields alone. All that was on his mind was wanting to leave behind his mortal life as a villager and join the ranks of the cultivators. It was his dream.

"What are these monsters we are so afraid of anyway? I have never seen them, yet we cower behind these walls and give half our money to the cultivators." Sam ranted as the rain roared in his ears, soaking him down to the bone.

His whole life felt like a lie.

He was just supposed to shut up and accept being nothing but a farmer until he died at the ripe old age of a hundred and twenty?

That was when he made a life-changing decision to venture into the woods in search of one of these monsters.

The dense canopy gave him some respite from the rain, and before long, he found himself lost in the darkness. That is when he encountered that thing in a clearing—an insect larger than a hut with razor-sharp claws dripping with rain. He turned and ran. It hunted him for days, and as Sam hid shivering under a rock in a puddle of mud, he swore if he survived somehow, he would return to his life as a farmer boy and work hard for the cultivators. The monsters were far too terrifying!

If so, just how far did her plans go?

The stench of impurities became overwhelming, and by sundown, the villagers emerged with grins. They had stepped on the path of cultivation and were eager to let him know about it and beg him for guidance.

"Son, thanks to the All-Seeing Eye's benevolence, things are about to change around here," his father patted him on the back as he stood before everyone wearing the provided black cloaks, "Cultivators have always been heavens' chosen—it was unheard of for a mortal to dare walk their path. But now, with the All-Seeing Eye watching over us, we too can challenge the heavens." His father stepped forward and raised his arms triumphantly, "If every other village also accepted the All-Seeing Eye's benevolence, then we must work hard to stay ahead of them. If everyone is special, then nobody is!"

A cheer rang out through the village.

***

Days passed, and the night of the All-Seeing Eye's service dawned. As twilight turned to dusk, portals rippled into existence across the land. In every single village, town, and city surrounding Red Vine Peak, streams of mortals dressed in matching black robes embroidered with red eyes made their way through the rifts and spilled out onto floating islands.

Sam led his village through their portal.

"Welcome to tonight's service," a man whose features were obscured by the cloak hood said in a pleasant tone, "To survive the experience, everyone is required to take these pills."

"To survive?" Sam asked as he was handed a handful of multicolored pills.

"Yes, the presence of the All-Seeing Eye can be rather intense on the untrained mind," the man gestured for him to move along and repeated the same words to those behind him.

Sam shrugged and followed the rest of the worshipers down a stone path that snaked through towering black stone spires encrusted with glowing red gems polished into the appearance of eyes that gave Sam an unsettling feeling. Rounding a corner, his breath was taken away by the breathtaking view of nine giant moons that dominated the sky from the horizon until the peak.

Where the hell are we? Sam wondered as he paused beside many other people and strained his neck to take in the otherwordly spectacle. Why is one of them purple?

With nobody around to answer his question and eager to not have to stand alongside his family and village during the service, he disappeared into the shifting crowd and took up a spot behind a fence.

Okay, the moon was one thing, but this...

He stared at a living tower of pulsating white flesh that vaguely resembled a tree with a canopy of bare-bones wreathed in a golden aura. An uncountable number of slits flickered open and closed like eyelids, with each one concealing numerous eyes that rolled in their sockets and made Sam's skin crawl.

Surrounding the tower of white flesh were dozens of floating islands, much like his own, wreathed in a purple hue.

I didn't think I would need these pills after all of my training, but if the service hasn't even started and this is what I have to look at... Sam found himself humbled real quick and downed the handful of pills without a second thought.

To his surprise, the air began to shimmer as the pills took effect, and soon, he was looking around like a lost child at the streams of Qi rushing all around him. Vivid greens, deep blues, bright purples, and murky browns all intertwined into spirals of color.

When I cultivate, the Qi streams are disorderly and impossible to separate. I never realized it could all be so clear. Sam felt a newfound appreciation for the All-Seeing Eye due to this experience. Even if he couldn't get a hold of these pills again, he felt enlightened to the truths governing reality.

Curious, he leaned on the fence and looked down. Encircling the tower of living flesh was a forest of creepy-looking trees fed by streams of gold that flowed out of the base of the white flesh tower. A blood mist shrouded the whole thing in mystery.

How is this place real? Sam bit his lip as he took it all in. I thought I was closing the gap as my cultivation advanced, but this is on another level of unfathomable. Is this something a mere cultivator can achieve, or is it reserved for the realm of the gods?

A gong sound shook Sam to his soul, followed by the sky tearing apart. An impossible-to-describe eye of godly proportions peered through the rift, and Sam felt his whole body freeze. He had never felt so small and insignificant before.

"We will now begin the very first service to the All-Seeing Eye!" A woman's voice, carried by Qi, reached everyone's ears as a black rock ship nestled in the canopy of bone emerged and took center stage, lording over all the other islands.

Standing on its bow was a purple-haired woman wearing the same black cloak as everyone else but had its hood down. "My name is Elysia, and I am the Vice Leader. Here to my left is the Head Priestess Stella."

Sam could not see the woman's face as she was wearing a black mask with a giant red eye painted on it.

The taller person beside Elysia took down her cloak hood, and despite also wearing a mask, Sam narrowed his eyes. That short blonde hair and red maple leaf earrings. I recognize her. But from where... His eyes widened in shock. It was his master. She was the head of the All-Seeing Eye?

"Now we can begin the ceremony to honor the All-Seeing Eye's generosity to you all," Elysia announced. But a wave of confusion rang out as multiple cloaked individuals soared into the air from every island on swords and encircled the black rock ship with a red-leaf tree growing on it.

One of the cultivators floated slightly closer and pointed toward Sam's master. "Stella Crestfallen! We have traversed across the realm and searched high and low for you with the intention of bringing you home. However, in light of what you are doing here with this accursed abomination pretending to be a god, by command of the highest chair in the Celestial Order, you are hereby sentenced to death."

Every one of them drew a sword that shone with golden light and pointed it toward Stella. An overwhelming pressure flooded the land. These guys were powerful.

"Any final words?"

Stella stepped forward, "Yeah, I have one."

"What would that be?" the leader asked.

As Stella raised her arm, Sam saw a section of the flesh trees below wither into dust. A moment later, a purple hue ballooned out, encompassing everything.

"Perish, under the wrath of a supposedly fake god," Stella said simply, pointing at the accuser. Pitch-black lightning silently arched through the air, instantly striking every one of the cultivators and reducing them to nothingness. Their now ownerless swords fell like rain to the forest of flesh below.

Silence from every island followed as everyone tried to process what had just happened.

"Anyone else dares to question the legitimacy of the All-Seeing Eye?" Stella's voice boomed across the land. Receiving no takers, she quietly stepped back and let the service continue.