Chapter 242: Isolation
In isolation, he found nothing.
In nothing, he found the world.
In the world, he found discomfort.
In discomfort, he sought perfection.
In perfection, he saw himself. In himself, he saw a flaw that wasn’t him. A flaw created by the mask he wore and the discomfort that came with encountering the lady of the Imperial family. Further tainting his soul was the vulnerability that came with no Qi Sense. The silent recollection that he had died to nothing. That he died without knowing. He developed his Qi Sense to prevent just that. Without it, he was incomplete.
The veins in his wrist twisted and writhed. Black splotches appeared in his stomach, his meridians bursting forward. He was failing. He was more vulnerable than ever. The mist was a symbol of absolute nothing. The sky, the soil—it hid everything and brought nothing. The fallen tree sat beside him. Nature watched him like it once did the Enlightened One. The pain and the failure—it shouldn’t have been here. Dasha Pang did not fail.
His intent was not to fail.
Ah.
When did it become that way? Desperate not to fail? Craving power? That should not be.
Dasha Pang was power. He was wisdom. He was almighty. He wanted more because it was what he deserved; he did not crave it like a begger. The mask and the blood of the dead, they were reminding his body of his infallibility; of the death he desperately could not remember. To be enlightened meant not to consider death as an end. To be mighty meant to consider death as merely a state of change. The death he experienced was a death that was supposed to happen. Everything that he built up, everything he had done on Earth, he needed to let go. He was here and he was strong. He was here and he was growing absolute.
Growing but not quite there—and that was acceptable. Because strength did not manifest as mere punches and kicks. Strength came in many forms. He knew this. He recognized this. But slowly, he had been slipping. His mentality became that of an ordinary cultivator.