Immortal Connections - Chapter 6 preview

Author Note: Preview chapters are rough/first drafts. These chapters have not been edited, expect that there may be errors - however, feel free to point out consistency issues!

Chapter 6 - Wu Ying

Life was a circle, a rotating venue of change and return that brought one back to familiar - or close enough to be familiar - situations. In this case, after the extensive overview of the Lesser Harmonies palace, a guided tour that had brought him brushing alongside other ascended but never actually in contact with them, Wu Ying had been deposited here, in these rooms.

Better appointed than those he had received as a student in the sect. He neither had to share them, nor were the beds but bare planks of wood overlaid by cotton mattresses. In fact, decades ago as a farmer he would have considered this room massive. Large enough to fit his family's entire residence within, with a greeting area and a separate bath area. Bare wooden seats, certainly, but carved with such exquisite detail and care that sitting upon them was both comfortable and comforting.

Draperies embroidered with stylised scenes and paintings and carvings whose quality and quantity would not have shamed an Elder of his own sect. A tea set and snacks set aside for his use, the food stuff within of sufficiently high quality that Wu Ying would have no complaints.

No, the surroundings themselves were a luxury. But the shunting of himself to be set aside, the deep immersion in a world that he barely grasped the social niceties and mores and the overpowering thrum of power, barely contained? That was all too familiar.

Also, the lack of a friendly face in all this.

Loneliness tugged at his heart, the lack of companionship. Strange to think, for one who had wandered through forests and plains and the deep wilds of the Middle Kingdom, to feel the ache of loss companionship so keenly. Perhaps it was the knowledge that it might be months, maybe years before he could see his friends again that dug the pit in his stomach. Or perhaps, it was that before, he had not as much to lose.

Parents, certainly, but you were expected to move away from them. To live your own lives. Though they might live in the same household as you, life could and did move on differing tracks. Certainly, as a cultivator, as one who had left the family home, that loss had been grappled with and accepted long ago.

That of a lover, of companions in battle and cultivation?  Harder still.

Crossing over to the closed windows, he threw them open, one after the other. The wooden shutters let in the breeze, removing some of the old, stuffy air in rooms that had not seen an occupant. Standing by the windows, Wu Ying let himself feel properly, relaxing his guard on soul and aura.

Ever since his arrival, his ability to draw energy in from the wide surroundings had been cut-off. The Dragon’s Breath technique utilized the broader reaches of the wind, turning ever so gently the circles of chi and drawing it in a spiral into its nexus point – Wu Ying. It concentrated the energy and made it easier for him to cultivate and supplement his reserves by the simple act of breathing.

At least, it had until he ran into more powerful, more all-encompassing daos that surrounded these palaces. Formations that blocked conceptualisations and the gentle extension of will also blocked his technique, though it did not the flow of immortal chi.

Now, for the first time, he had time to study this impediment and his own technique, to feel rather than react to the pressure all around. It staggered him, the density of energy held at bay by the formations, by the guardian daos that allowed him to exist in this heaven. In that, he was grateful.

After all, his ascension from mortal to immortal had not been easy. The tribulation he had shed with ease, but the injuries he had sustained from his attempt, from his own cultivation technique to become immortal had injured him body and soul. Some of that had healed – the gross wounds, the portions that had not fit or been carved away to allow one or the other to join together – but he was littered in minor and trivial wounds. So many that he felt like his body had been scraped raw on the inside.

Only a history of violence, of injury and pain and a long year plus of living with a more seriously injured body had left him able to hide his pain, to function. Now, though, he took hold of the small dregs of chi that he had managed to cultivate and poured it through his wounds, feeling the healing process speed up.

Immortality did not mean one could not be injured or die. Just that the aging process stopped, that one gained the ability to regenerate to an ideal form, one drawn from experience and the conception of dao that had brought one so far.

How that played into those born into the life as immortals, those who were naturally part of the Three Realms, who lived lives in the realms of Desire and Form, he knew not. Now, he wondered, why the stories were so disjointed. When thousands, millions worshipped the immortals above, why it should be so hard to conceptualize the world after.

Why had he never paid attention to study it himself? To get a better grasp of the world he sought.

A failing in foresight, a narrowness of vision. His goal – all their goals – had always been so clear. Become an Immortal, join the Jade Emperor and his Heavenly Palace. That was the goal, for the orthodox sects at least. The heretics or dark sects might not even bother with the Heavens - or intend to overthrow them.  Even so,  they had never sought to seek further information, what the world above was like beyond the unending bureaucracy, the disparate groupings of immortal beasts and men. 

So why the lack of clear information, why so many contradictions, if so many were so focused on such a distant goal?

How could so many others who were so wise and visionary not think ahead?

That was the kind of questions Wu Ying found himself asking, as he stood at the window, pulling at the immortal chi that streamed within, attempting to nudge at his cultivation technique to draw in further energy to speed his healing.

Whatever answers he found, he found both disturbing and shameful.