Chapter [B4] 4 — Inner World

Chapter [B4] 4 — Inner World

As reality settled around me once more, this time more blurry as if looking through a dream or a haze, I saw visions of myself. An older me walked around myself, a small town made entirely out of the creations of my own self.

This was the world I’d made. In the darkness, in the loneliness of eternity I’d crafted this reality to save my sanity. The crutch of existence that had been left behind, and now all that remained of it was an echo.

I looked at myself, looked at the things I had created and was so desperately trying to preserve at the time. The older me had a small girl on his shoulder. Was that my daughter? Or perhaps grand-daughter?

I did not know. I did not recognize her. I could not even see her face, but I found myself reaching out towards her, a phantom pain echoing in my heart.

The vision melted with my touch, fading into nothingness as the echo ended.

My heart sank. Everything I’d built in here... all of it was gone. All that had once been everything to me... it was lost now. And I did not even care. Not outside, not when the memories of this time were lost to me, like a dream that I had once lived.

What did that mean? Was I supposed to give up on my reality just like I had given up on this world as well? This was fake and my reality was real... but to the me who had spent his life in here... this was as real as Labby and my friends are to me. And yet, I had made that choice, chosen to abandon this world and return to them, to the people I truly cared for. To the people I knew were waiting for me.

I did not know what the answer was. All I felt was a sense of frustration as I clenched my fists.

The echoes continued and I moved through my life. The moment when I’d found the tree and been united, when completion had first dawned onto me and I’d grasped the truth of the world in its entirety, forming Chi and bringing it into this world once more. I moved back through the time before that, through the places and things that had come before, all the way ‘til I stood at the beginning.

At that moment that had changed everything.

The day I had woken up, and discovered this world anew, and decided to use what I knew to bring change to it.

I’d never for once thought that I’d be able to truly change the world. Back in that moment, when I’d first realized how much could be done if this world was better understood, how much potential there was here to improve people’s lives and the world at large but a part of me had never believed that I’d be able to achieve it. Who was I to make such changes?

But I’d walked on my path. Not truly believing in myself. Not truly believing that I could ever make a difference but still pursuing that fascination with all the little things in reality.

It was strange, watching myself now. I’d lived and grown up in this world. To the me from before... this had been the norm. This had been the way everything was. But to the me who had forgotten it all, who’d woken up with just the memories of a past life? It was like looking at the world with a child’s vision again. Everything was fascinating and new and exciting and the world felt interesting.

When had I lost that? That childlike wonder?

In this life, or my previous one? I’d never truly realized just how fascinating reality itself was. The fact that we exist in this time and moment, in this space, is truly a marvel that is hard to describe. The fact that I live is weird, and I’d forgotten that fact two times.

I wondered what that Lu Jie would think if he saw me now. Would he be in awe? Would he feel disappointed that I never got to retire in a mansion and just make alchemy pills somewhere with Labby and my friends, living a life of carefree comfort?

I thought about it for a second. What would the me from that time period have said to the me right now?

I could almost see myself, standing in front of me, so full of myself, so enamored with the magic of this world, so taken by all that could be done. The Lu Jie of the old looked at me, at the me who ran a sect, at the me who had all these ties and burdens and responsibilities and people to protect and care for, mired at the very center of the world he had wanted to run away from so very desperately.

I looked at him, and my past looked back at me and then shook his head. “Your shoulders look so stiff.”

I smiled at that. “I have a lot of responsibilities on my shoulders now.”

Past me looked at that and grimaced. “Sounds bleh. I hope you’re still experimenting and trying to find how all this magic bullshit works?” He asked.

“Sometimes, not all that often. I remembered some things and it changed my perspective on the so-called... bullshit part. But I have not stopped moving ahead on what we wanted to achieve,” I said.

“Good, that’s good,” my past self replied, and then he looked up at me and asked something I did not expect. “Do you like it? The power, the authority? You’re really strong now, right? If you do this thing... if you get the Azure Dragon, that will make you the de-facto emperor. And if you beat Yang Shen, then you’ll have a stronger legacy than the one this empire itself was built on. It’d be a new empire under you. Does that... make you happy?”

I paused at that thought. Did that make me happy? It was weird how I did not have to think about it for even a second to answer.

“No, I hate it,” I said, meaning every bit of it. “I don’t... I don’t want to do any of this. I don’t want to fight a war, I don’t want to... I want to take Labby and all my friends and run away. I want to abandon this whole thing. We could hide, stay safe somewhere out there. Apparently the rest of the world has fallen, but I don’t believe everyone outside has just died. People must be living there. We could live a quiet and peaceful life. Make a farm, grow spirit herbs, make alchemy pills, and I could experiment and grow my knowledge and library and help those around me and slowly create a town. Similar to the one I’d made here. A small haven for those close to me, cut off from the rest of this dark world,” I said, looking down as I felt exhaustion filling me.

“You must be disappointed,” I asked, looking up at my younger self.

He looked back at me, and then shook his head. “No, I get it. I wouldn’t want to do any of this either.”

I smiled, feeling comforted to have someone understand me.

My past self walked up to me, and then put a hand on my shoulder. “But we can’t do that, can we?”

I looked at him and saw myself in his eyes. I nodded. “Yeah. I can’t.”

“We suck, don’t we?” He asked.

“We really do. So selfish, so afraid, always wanting to run away. But not selfish enough... because that would not be a life worth living. I would not be able to face my friends again if I did that. Even if they agreed.”

“I hate this,” my past self said.

“Yeah, me too,” I replied.

“I hate that you sacrifice me over others. I hate that you have to make these difficult choices. I hate that you cannot just give up and live your own life. That you can’t just let things be. That you always have to go out of your way to help others,” my past self said, showing anger and I let him speak.

He clenched his fist, standing there, but then, the anger faded.

“But I can’t hate you. Because if we were not this way, Labby would not look up to us. Sheldon would not follow us, Yan Yun would not rely on us, Zhang would not be sworn to us. None of our friends would be there if we were not this way,” he said, and I looked up at him.

My past self had a resolute expression on his face.

“That’s why you can’t give up. No matter how hard it gets. No matter what comes next, and who you have to face. Not for me, not for us, but for Labby, and Zhang, and the Old Man, and everyone else who has helped us become who we are.”

I closed my eyes and looked within myself. The tree, and my own core, and the three laws and their shining spirit rings.

These aspects formed my spirit, and formed who I was. I did not know the answer, but I knew I would find it somewhere within myself. And so I began to let the darkness take me deeper still, into somewhere even closer to myself.

The world shivered, as I sank deeper still.

***

I opened my eyes, finding myself standing in a different darkness. But this one wasn’t quite the same as the one I’d just been. This one was... darker, deeper, the nothingness of it more solid and concrete. The absence of everything more pervasive and ever present. I could feel the nothingness around me, almost feel space and reality itself, with the lack of all that was there in between me and the rest of it.

It took me a moment, a really long and slow moment, before I had a realization.

What I was feeling... was myself. The fluctuations in reality began to settle down a little at that thought. It was difficult to explain what exactly the realization was.

The state of being that I was in right now... I could recognize it. Like waking up and becoming aware in a dream, and knowing it is a dream, and that the reality inhabited in this moment is different from the one present in the waking moment.

It was a sensation akin to being half awake, being in between states. No one realized when they fell asleep, no one could observe the moment of sleep. One moment you’re here, and the next you’re not.

This? This was like existing perpetually in that moment. In that point where you go from being somewhere in between two states of mind to completely into the other. The moment of sleep and transition into the world of dreams.

It was... trippy, to say the least. This wasn’t my first rodeo with dream worlds, but dream worlds mimicked reality. Being in your spirit was a lot like lucid dreaming. It was the most awake part of dreaming, not all that different from being awake itself on its own.

But this? This was... peering into the darkness. No, not the darkness.

Peering into my subconscious. The part of me that I did not control and could not be aware of. It felt like the darkness embodied that. The nothingness here embodied that.

I could picture it here and now, in this moment, if all of my self was a sphere, a ball of light and energy, then the thoughts and everything that was me were merely fluctuations of that sphere. Additions and changes of states in the moment.

Falseness.

Just being here felt like I was having a breakthrough. Even before I realized I found myself crossing my legs and meditating in the darkness, observing emptiness. Observing the void, absence of all that I clung onto into life.

Even death was not still, in death you have the absence of self. But in life, you create the absence of self by existing only in the present moment, only in the thoughts, the words that continue to pour into your mind one after the other, a stream of existence, a stream of thoughts. One thing into the next, like a river that began to flow somewhere in your childhood and never stopped outside of those moments when you close your eyes, and let the darkness embrace you and become nothing.

And so I stopped.

...

Things began to melt.

My sense of self began to dissolve itself.

Some questions arose from within the darkness. Within myself. Who was I?

Was I an alchemist? No, no, that was merely the path I’d chosen. Something akin to a job but not even that. A tool, a method, a source of information and knowledge to use.

Was I smart? No, I knew and had known in both my lives people much smarter than me. Yin was smarter than me, understanding so many different concepts, translating things from a language she used only with her grandfather. Researching and helping her village in her own ways and constantly seeking more. Liuxiang was smarter, aware of the world, aware of the politics of the empire and able to swiftly and deftly handle situations and keep her calm in all those moments. Qiao Ying was smarter, without that man I would not be able to even be a sect elder. I did not have the training or qualifications, things had moved far too quickly to even settle into the role and without his immense support to make sure everything that I wanted to do could actually happen, none of this would occur. Names upon names came, of people smarter than me. But the fact that others could do more did not change what I was, and so I thought over the question again.

No, the answer was still no. In this darkness... in that ball of light that was my soul, my essence being distilled down to the most bare minimum bar nothing else... it had no inherent trait that could be compared. It simply was.

Was I Lu Jie? I then asked myself.

I remembered my mother’s face... the mother from this life. The mother I’d never gotten to know as well as I would’ve liked. My memories of my childhood were particularly vague, the split memories and dual perspectives did not help with recalling past events either, but I felt the love I held for her, the grief I had for her loss. It was like I’d lived my life having lost a part of myself that I hadn’t even realized used to be there.

But still... despite her, despite my family and the name they had given me, despite the attachment and the fact that this was the only identity I had any longer was this name... I found an answer that surprised me.

No, I was not.

The name... my name... it was a way to call me, a way to reach for me and a way to refer to myself. It was a name, in all the worth that a name has... but it was not me, it could never be me, it represented a fluctuation, a part of myself, that sliver of light, the self that I was distilled into a fractional thread. Like reality collapsing down to a single point, so you saw the one point and thought it was everything the thing was, when in reality, it was simply just a tiny representation of the whole.

I felt another part of myself break away from me. It melted into the darkness, dissolving into the nothingness... into myself.

Who was I?

The one answer that left, when all else broke away, when the darkness consumed it all, was...

Me. I was me.

There was nothing that could describe all of my existence in this moment, as I sat and looked upon my soul. As I close my eyes and just sit, and look inwards, I find the me that is indescribable, that exists in this moment, observing, existing and living, the part of me that is alive. The part of me that is the self that defines who I am, the immortal soul which can have no words.

The sphere of light settled, and then began to collapse into a singular point. Into myself. Like a star failing to support itself once the forces keeping it stable end, the trappings of my reality fell apart as my soul collapsed into itself.

And then, when it formed that singular point containing not just one piece of me, but all of myself, then the three spirit rings of my soul began to resonate through the darkness. Unity, Genesis and Harmony birthed something anew, a fourth, something unnamed, something that was not yet defined, and with that collapse came an explosion.

A big bang exploded in my soul, and in the blink of an eye my soul expanded to consume me, and not just me, but all of my reality as well. It spread outwards and outwards, continuing to flow before soon it consumed all of the reality in this space.

And just like that, my inner world manifested once more.