Chapter 146 - Realms Beyond Mortal, Knowledge Beyond Man

  The library’s third and fourth floors were stunning.

  One shelf was sparse, only a single scroll or bamboo slip marking its importance. Then the shelf next to it was overflowing. Sheets of paper and leather-bound books pack to the edges, front and back, spilling over the top onto the tables next to them.

  Hao could tell from the first page he flipped that they were not organized in any order. Certainly not of importance, he found a dozen strategy books for war between two scrolls that held basic instructions for talisman refining and formation creation.

  It was nothing like the floors below. The first floor had every book on every subject a mortal may have concerned themselves with, common herbs, trees, even human anatomy, alongside basic training techniques.

  The second floor held all those techniques and more. They were once precious to Hao, though their scope was limited to things like ‘Chain-Breaking Sword’ or ‘River Splitting Spear’ and so on.

  He spent days in the library trying to learn many of those before the Secret Realm. His talent with sword and spear proved lacking. But he filled his mind with whatever he could, back then getting little out of it other than the knowledge and experience.

  It was an unarmed technique that he learned last time. The basics that paired with Water Breaking Fist. Five elements, five techniques he learned and put together that helped him develop his Cultivation Technique, which showed him colors, if not an entire journey, when he practiced it.

  Hao thought he was getting his hopes too high for the third and fourth floors.

  Yet his curiosity and haste drew him to find something of genuine interest. He had to find something after finishing five books; their content was useful but unimportant. Boredom turned him into a child in a candy store for the first time. Checking at every step, his hawkish eyes were sharp enough to peel the ink from tags, labels, and book covers as if he was trying to remember the name of every sweet and the place they were in.

  He ran between floors and shelves. He read any small scroll that would take no longer than five minutes; there was no point in missing the chance.

  Then he found them, pedestals carved with ghostly flowers, not hidden, but tucked away in the back of the fourth floor.

  On each stood a single page. Torn, tattered, and aged, with just a few lines written in a near-perfect hand, and diagrams only a master could draw.

  They were pure insight. Explanations, ideas without technique, or self-praise of how grand this or that thought or action was. Words of Cultivation, plain and simple.

  Once they caught Hao’s eye, he couldn’t look away. “Reclamation. This one…”

  He read the second page, which held three titles: “Cloud-Forming, Five Divides, Spirit Sea.”

  Then the third, but not the final. “Divine Reunion…”

  He gulped; he thought he knew what they were. Even though they were incomplete, the third read more like speculation.

  “Divine Reunion, soul power. Is this the realm Senior Guan is in, or the Elders…”

  Hao set it down. Careful with the parchment, thinking it would turn to dust between his fingers at any moment. The information itself was of little use. He could say the same for the one with three titles.

  If nothing else, they gave him direction, motivation, a fire even, as hot as the sun, rekindled with more than hatred, but the thought of it again, like when he first discovered legends of Immortals true, flying, and the joy of it.

  Yet when he stepped to the first pedestal, the first page.

  “Reclamation,” he whispered, the stage he was in, the eighth layer, now knowing the World like he didn’t before, its energy, pure and impure—the thought of more than flight, but the power along with it. Domination, not dominion, he cared not for groups, but just to keep those dear safe, and if he so willed, take some he wanted, even if that be true immortality, or a piece of the world itself.

  He glanced at the third page again. In the bottom right corner, half torn, the diagram of a man sitting in meditation, under his navel, a small, undetailed island with what seemed like life sprouting on it.

  Hao shook his head, though he let his hand rise to the bag on his chest. The space within was vast and growing with life. But he had to turn away, setting the Reclamation page down after one more read.

  “Upon the Ninth, that which they call the peak, one leans less on flesh, and towards the spirit. Yet some argue, Reclamation never ends. Whether that is philosophical, or claims of layers above, Ten, Eleven, and Twelve from stories of the ancient past is true, is for future generations to find.”

  He read it out, mimicking the voice he expected the writer to have, though not every hand that left a note was the same.

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  To the shelves again. Away from the pedestals, Hao read book after book, anything that caught his attention. Bland words and plain instructions. They read like recipes, which made him almost miss the riddles of the people like Li Tuzai, or Senior Brother Que; even those enigmatic pages on the pedestal.

  “Perhaps my hopes were too high…” he muttered as he held a book with a black cover up, laying down his head on the floor, icy wind blowing through the great windows of the tower.

  He could have been out there all this time. Flipping the earth and nailing wooden boards into the shoddy buildings, he was trying to turn it into a home.

  Hao landed on the last page of the final book on a shelf labeled ‘weather and cultivation’. Overall, it was useful. It had shifts and patterns of weather along with the expected rise and set of the sun; The same for the moon.

  All the actual cultivation beyond what was factual knowledge was almost entirely useless. Any instruction was shallow. Then, on occasion, some sections pointlessly questioned the process of Cultivation in a way that only led to pitfalls a fool couldn’t see.

  He looked at the shelf apologetically. “I am looking for a way to catch the eye of the most powerful in the sect, not a way to become an average cultivator cut from the same cloth as every other.”

  His thoughts may have been overreaching. After all, he was just a boy from the island; perhaps these books were written by a Senior with one hundred years of cultivation and endless study, but the occasional wine stain on one of the first ten pages told him otherwise.

  Hao stepped back from the shelf, expecting he would have to find his own way.

  There was still time left. He sold a three-beast worth of parts for this; he wasn’t going to waste it.

  He found himself wading towards the pedestals again. From the side, they lined up poorly. The walls they leaned against curved. They followed it despite the awkward gaps it left between them.

  One made him laugh when he looked at “Longevity over virility.” He read the title aloud as he chuckled. Its topic seemed nonsensical, but it had more substance than the average book on morality, which tried to apply math to who to spare or kill.

  The insights on the old pages were at least insights. Not lectures that had no bearing on the actual fate of the world or the person reading it.

  Even the page of virility mentioned things that made him think or wonder.

  Just one of many thoughts. “The sudden accumulation of primordial Yin or Yang upon reaching the apex of pubescent development can affect potential beyond just aptitude and physical characteristics.”

  If that were true, then would his potential have been suppressed and destroyed by tradition? It was long held and practiced that people are unstable before adulthood on islands, and to prevent any children they could care for, poisons were fed to newborn males such as himself.

  Is this why Cultivators have never come from an Island, or the Islands don’t practice cultivation? Only after completing the breaktide can a boy be considered a man and given an antidote on his wedding day.

  Hao read about the poison they get the creature from on the first floor, the ‘Taliff Fish.’ He got the poison out through early reclamation, when impurities left him, but if those suppressants were never in him, would his aptitude be anything but abysmal?

  That was just one of the questions from the page with the most ridiculous title. Whereas the hundreds of books behind him would have little use for his mind, other than to reassure him he had something to wipe his ass with.

  Did those useless practices cripple me in my cradle… It seems Great Uncle has done me a bigger favor than I knew, throwing me off that island back then. I failed my break tide. I would never be a man, let alone a cultivator there.

  Not that most of them consider him much of a human on the Island. He was an abomination, a half-blood, but there, here, that hadn’t changed. Here, he could change his fate at least; the last thing he feared now was the lashing of a fishing rod or a superstitious, starving old man trying to rip out his golden strands of hair.

  One page made him think about all this. So, he read and reread. Over and over until he saw their pattern, all seeming to fit together.

  From the lost art of Body Tempering, to methods of condensing World Energy to Spiritual Energy and Qi, the word Mana repeated a few times as a general term, like fish, or tree.

  So much was lost on him, but he kept going. It was like looking at the Bone-Shaking Bell again; he could tell it was profound, and his fingers were on it, but it was hard to find the countless meanings in the pictures.

  The bell itself was imprinted on Hao. Ever since he rang it, he knew its shape and carvings deep down in his mind and soul, its appearance impossible to forget.

  “Five rivers, a sea,” he repeated one of the page’s words, comparing it to the image of the bell he had. It had intent, the blue-purple rust peeling away as he stared at the carved images of countless beasts running and flying above a sea of waves rushing from the human without a face that sat indented at the bottom.

  Get close to the form. Complete human, claw above earth while seeking Heaven: Making the World, and the Worlds Above, Myriad Streams, Five Rivers, an Endless Sea.

  Hao put down the pages and looked up at the ceiling. “Complete human…” It had something to do with reclamation, that was his only guess; everything else was like a puzzle missing pieces.

  He walked out of the fourth floor, closing the door behind him. The third floor too he locked. Down the stairs, he carried himself, staring up, muttering.

  “Myriad streams, five rivers, an endless sea…”

  At the bottom, he stopped, leaning against the curved stone wall. He muttered it a few times, juggling the words on his tongue, “Complete…”

  “Martial Brother, can you please quiet down?”

  Hao looked at the voice that called to him in a whisper. A group of dusty disciples sat in silence, each with a book in hand, their wide eyes on him, as if he were a bald, bare, hungry ghost.

  “Mm…” That was all he responded with.

  He bowed to the old woman at the front desk, setting the key down in front of her.

  “Are you done early? Wait, wait,” She called. Her groan made the creaking chair her husband was in go silent. “If you like, I can try to get you some Sect Points back.”

  Hao looked back, “Don’t worry about it, perhaps reserve it for another time.” He went outside and stared up, processing the thought until it hit a wall.

  “Complete…” he muttered, feeling exhaustion wash over him as he turned, “Do you know the quickest path from here to the Forging Hall?” he asked a fellow disciple passing by.

  “Sorry, Martial Brother.” The short land-dweller man said, shaking his head.

  Hao returned a nod in thanks and turned. If there were no shorter path, he would just have to take that long walk through the courtyards and paths until he found the Forging Hall, filled with fire and screaming red metal.