NOVEL NEXT Chapter 37: The Realm of Illusions
Svetavastra got pulled into the rupture in the tunnel of time and space. It happened all too quickly for him to react. Before long, he felt himself on the ground, his mind’s eye couldn’t see anything. He sat down to meditate but as soon as he began to focus on his breath, he blacked out and fell conscious. He recovered his senses after a while and repeated it to find himself falling unconscious again. He got up and walked around - nothing, he could see nothing, his spiritual powers were blocked completely. He didn’t want to risk opening his eyes - his spiritual powers were still buttressed by the spiritual powers transferred by the old blind woman, Irawati. It would take him at least a good number of months with continuous cultivation to raise his inherent spiritual powers. Until then, he would have to make do with the situation of being physically blind.
The force that pulled me into the rupture must be the dark energy, Svetavastra thought to himself. It had manipulated and corrupted the rupture. Either my spiritual powers are blocked or I am made to believe they are blocked. Interesting.
A cold wind blew past him, his robes fluttered in the wind and his body shivered with the cold draft. He walked against the resistance of the wind and felt a gentle incline of the ground. Was he climbing something? Was the wind blowing down from somewhere? He suspected both.
A cold place, possibly the foothill of a mountain, the terrain seems dry, and there’s no snow or moisture, Svetavastra thought to himself. It’s a barren land.
He concentrated on straining his ears to find more sensory information about his surroundings. Apart from the roar of the draft wind, there wasn’t anything else. He continued to walk upward and soon found himself on a steeper slope, his hands felt solid rock formations as he continued to ascend. He searched the ground for any fallen sticks to aid his hiking. His hands stopped as he touched something not quite a rock but still solid.
Bones? He thought and searched around with his hands. A human skull? It feels so real. If they perished climbing the mountain, then am I supposed to reach the summit? Or is it a warning to turn back?
For some time, all he found was more broken skeletons and after a while a wooden staff. He picked up the staff, stood for a brief moment making a snap decision about where to head. Using the staff as a walking aid, he continued his upward journey.
Fear, he thought to himself. The dark energy is trying to instill fear in me.
As he climbed upward, the air started to become thinner and he had difficulty breathing for the initial few minutes. He stopped for a while to acclimatised to the new height and continued to climb. Maybe it was the physical exertion that was taking its toll or maybe it was a simple miscalculation on his part, his feet slipped against the rock he was trying to climb and he rolled downwards bruising his hands and legs, his robes tore in some places, exposing his pale skin to the harsh wind.
He got himself up and began his ascent again, braving the cold winds, navigating deftly through treacherous slips and falling boulders, all his senses highly alert and focused on the immediate task of getting him safely to the next step and the next step after that. He couldn’t gauge for how long he had been walking. It could have been 7 hours or 17 hours or even 7 days. Time stopped making sense and he felt himself slowly getting caught up in the desolateness of the place and the futility of his walking.
The dark energy is trying to wear my willpower, he thought. It has cunningly blocked my access to spiritual powers and is goading me into experiencing physical hardships to weaken my mind. If the body is weak in such cases, the mind would follow suit. I have to stay strong.
Thus, he continued his ascent to the top of the mountain. At times he felt shortness of breath, his heart beat incredibly fast and he feared losing his grip on the ground and another fall, much more dangerous now because of the short cliffs, one fall from these and he would be falling through the air, not knowing where the ground would be. The slope was getting steeper and the falling boulders from the top kept increasing in frequency. He had to take multiple breaks to even advance a few meters upwards.
A monotonous task, imbued with immediate physical peril and no sign of the end - any normal person would be overwhelmed and frustrated by this point. Svetavastra was not immune to these feelings but he could observe them dispassionately from a distance in his mind. If he succumbed, his mind would weaken, the dark energy needed him just once to give in to all the feelings he was feeling. Once he gave in, once he collapsed from fear or overwhelm or exhaustion, it could enter him with ease and corrupt his perceptions.
Had he been able to meditate, this would not have been an issue at all. Cultivation made one immune to physical, mental, and emotional distress. The physical exhaustion of mountain climbing devoid of sense of time, visual cues being removed from his senses and a volley of emotions that come about from isolation for so long threatened to break his composure. He continued to climb, not ignoring them but not giving in to them either, just observing them as if he were a third person.
This is the realm of illusions, he reminded himself. The illusion I need to break is that I’m powerless in this situation.
Svetavastra found himself on the edge of a precipice. Had he reached the top? He extended his staff ahead probing the space in front of him - only air, no ground. He felt a chill down his spine, silence filled the air. The wind had stopped. The abyss beyond his feet seemed endless. He felt a palpable fear to the core of his bone, a paralysing fear that seemed to have frozen him from moving. He was meant to collapse here and be broken at the meaninglessness of it all. He took a deep breath, and let go of the wooden staff that fell to the ground with a thud - he embraced the fear, spread his hands outward, with a smile on his face, tipped forward falling into the endless darkness of the abyss.