Chapter 508 - The One Path (II)

Chapter 508

The One Path (II)

If hell existed, it was this.

An unending parade of horrors sung by things that cannot be seen. Over and over, I had to watch frayed and fragmented reflections of who I thought was me be torn and ripped and shredded, with red blood dotting the canvas of nothingness with my misery.

I've long since stopped screaming, but I wasn't numb. I couldn't be. If, for a moment, the pain began to turn me comatose, it would suddenly jolt and wake me up, like a needle straight into my brain.

It happened again.

My sight twisted over and around and through, folds of space collapsing unto themselves until I caught a glimpse of... something. I wasn't even certain what; there were shapes like buildings and ashen smoke in the sky above them. It ought to have been a city, but not one I'd ever seen.

Sometimes it was mountains.

Sometimes it was people.

Rarely, it was me.

And sometimes it was simply nothing, just an endless stretch of dark and silence that was like a grater to my sanity. Bit by bit, I felt it slipping; more than once I had to forcibly remind myself not to give into it all, to endure, to remain.

It was an hour--no, I think? I don't know. The concept of time had ceased to exist at some point, but it had been a while, at least. It was after that a while that my physique was unable to keep up as much any longer--I saw my body give way to the torrent of destruction, corralling around and cradling only the most important organs.

Within minutes, it felt, the twist of space rolled about once more, and I caught sight of... something in the mirror. It approached human, or it was human, once. What it was now, however, was hard to say.

There were no limbs, there was no skin or much flesh left, and even the bones had been torn cleanly as though with a surgical saw. But, within that mass of flesh, there was a heart that beat quaintly, and there was a mind teetering on the edge of collapse.

Within that thing in the mirror, there was me.

I blinked, and we swapped places. From within the reflection I looked back and over and saw the demure thing slipping away. Cascade of images forming an array, like a stuttering movie.

I blinked again and was back, staring into the haunting image of parts of me mangled together.

Reflections of things sprayed out like a bird unfurling its wings, each feather a glimpse into something different. Any time I blinked, I'd find myself there, looming; I couldn't stay long, not even long enough to properly blink, but I was there.

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On a mountain summit where a weathered oak bore six blood-stirring fruits.

On the surface of a lake as white as snow, where someone stood at the opposite shore. But they never arrived.

In an old, cozy room with a window overlooking a daisy-filled slope, where a chair rocked in an uncomfortable stagger, as though at two positions at once.

Down in a canyon buried under the weight of time.

On an old, rocking boat sailing over an open ocean, caught in the middle of nowhere and everywhere.

Every glimpse was a fading picture I barely caught, but I was there.

I blinked again and found myself reeling back and forth between realities. Space inverted, folds of dimensions twisting outward rather than inward. They intersected, bleeding into one another like watercolors on a canvas, but never making a cohesive whole. As soon as they 'merged', they collapsed, as though unable to coexist beyond that singular point.

How long has it been? A year? Ten? An eternity?

I noticed something odd some time back--the walls, if there were such things, were closing in. The reflections in the folds of space and time were growing larger, broader, and more distorted. And with them growing closer, the ravages of spatial torrents and storms increased further.

I could hear them--like iron poles. I could hear my bones bending and creaking under the pressure. My blood had completely stopped circulating, frozen still in my veins. My chest had caved in completely, folded over my ribs. My face had turned gaunt, eyes held close to the sockets by a pair of strings.

I was fading, like something reality had started erasing.

But I held on.

Stubbornly.

Out of spite.

Out of anger.

Out of primal, human desire to live.

I watched the walls that were not walls intersect, edges of space crash through one another, dimensions unfurl and fold back in, pressing closer and closer, tearing into me, breaking me, destroying me, and squashing me.

It was no longer pain of either body or mind; no, it was not pain as I understood it at all.

It was simply terror beyond terrors bursting and coursing through whatever was left of me. With every attempted heartbeat, rather than blood gushing out, primal dread begot my whole self. Each beat was a pulse of dismal horror that existed in some interdimension I was never supposed to glimpse.

Breathless.

Thoughtless.

Boundless.

It was death, a chilling call of unchanging apathy.

Until it was now.

I gasped like a drowning man rescued, my lungs expanding like a newly born universe; opening my eyes, I found myself back in the room of white, shorn of horrors and dread.

I was covered in sweat from top to bottom, my heart racing at speeds that would likely result in some kind of an attack were I not a cultivator, and I couldn't stop myself from heaving. My knees gave out as though someone took a bat to the back of them, and I found myself kneeling and shivering.

Why?

Why did I ever decide to embark on this godforsaken journey?

... no, the kids.

How the hell will the kids fare against this? How did Lao Shun? How did everyone else?!

Will every breakthrough be like this? Where I get so close to death I'm practically fondling its goddamn balls before I'm yanked back to the land of the living, still vividly recalling every single sensation that will linger in my nightmares 'till the day I finally croak?

I shuddered... yet, none of it mattered. Not my anxiety, not my dread, not my near mental collapse. I'd made it, however pathetically, and I'd broken through. Even though the system was yet to inform me, I felt it. Reaching out with my hand, I twisted my fingers in a motion and curled space with them, transposing myself about ten feet forward in the blink of an eye.

It was so... simple. So casual. Like taking a step.

I did it again, this time twisting with harsher motion, and, instead of 'teleporting', I ripped open a tear in spacetime, hollowing out a hole between two points that spun with uneven, shaky edges. A pair of portals stared at one another for about ten seconds before they collapsed.

... the scariest bit?

I didn't use any Qi to do it. Just the fading, fractured glimpse of Dao of Space that was practically carved into my bones through nightmares and horrors.

I know for a fact this is not normal. How abnormal, though... I guess it's time I found out.