novelraw Chapter 1349 - 1348 - Present Trial
Chapter 1349 - 1348 - Present Trial
Lind awoke in a forest glade. Sunlight bathed him and he felt refreshed. His foundation was a bit unstable but he quickly consolidated his foundation after only a week of cultivation.
He had no idea for certain what had happened in the last trial but he felt like his body was in far better shape than before. He also noticed some oddities he could not fully explain.
His elemental nodes and harmony seemed to have advanced! How in the Hell had that happened?! It was not part of the Foundation Trial!
He could not make head nor tails of it so he simply set it aside and enjoyed the benefits as his body was refined even more as well due to that! His soul was now in perfect sync with his harmony once more.
The difference was night and day. His harmonic Qi actually seemed to flow more smoothly and far more powerfully than before.
"I would have missed that if I had not been able to refine my soul like that. Still, the soul techniques are one thing but the cultivation realm refinement will not work for many others. That was the true meat of the trial." Lind found that 6 elementals might benefit from portions of that in the early stages but the diverse paths could struggle in the latter cultivation realms.
Combat harmonies would have the easiest time of it but Kexin with her Domination Dao would face serious obstacles trying to refine her cultivation realms like that.
She would have to study her harmony far more than she had but she might not have to in her case due to her Dao.
It was hard to say without data. Fortunately, he could pass on insights at least and see if that would produce results.
He finally felt at his full peak and stable. He stood up and felt the forest around him. It was actually quite pleasant but as his senses stretched out, he felt oddities.
The biggest was the animal life around him. Birds nested, flew, or simply chirped but while that seemed normal, he felt the colors, type, and features changed constantly.
The plants were not so obvious but his expertise as an elixir master let him see how even the core of the plants shifted. The elemental alignment, poison, or any aspect shifted as he delved into it.
He let his harmony flow outward and projected his soul. The changes were far more apparent as his soul seemed as solid as his body! A fully scaled emerald dragon that seemed more impressive than his physical body transformed looked around and finally narrowed in on the greatest oddity.
Time was not passing!
{Forest of the Now is the place of the Present Trial}
{All conditions met to begin.}
{Seek the Truth of the Now.}
Those were the only words Lind got when pain lanced his very existence. A cacophony of voices washed over him but they were not unfamiliar. In fact, he had spent several thousand years with them!
He had faced his origin but that was not the only thing trying to overpower him. James' life was stronger than before but he could still distinguish his own current self from the rest. His core was stable but it was not certain what he was supposed to do.
Why was his past coming to haunt him in a trial called for the Present?
He tried to think but it was damned difficult with all the voices. It was only when he tried to pick out what they were saying that he noticed an oddity.
"The day they died. It is all the day they died." He heard cries of mercy, denial, and even acceptance. James' voice did not need to be there as he recalled his death after saving the woman from the street.
Yet, he slowly began to sift through it all and understood what was going on.
It was not that he was being assaulted all at once but that Time was happening all at once! The present now incorporated everything!
It was no longer a flow of events from the past to the future but all of it going on at the same moment. It was not the dead he was hearing but the present!
The only way for him to hear them at all was on the day of their death for his soul to exist! The present was happening for all of them, the last day they ever had.
It was not just them either, but the entirety of the forest! What was the point? What was he supposed to do with that knowledge?
The words came back to him at the final instruction. To seek the truth of the now. What did that mean?
The truth of the now could almost mean anything to anyone. Letting go of traumatic pasts to move forward was common for instance. The past could not be altered so facing the fact the present was there in front of them to be embraced was transformative.
Still, he highly doubted that applied across multiple lifetimes. He also knew what he was experiencing was a side effect. He was facing a trial that made all life in all its iterations exist at the same moment.
What truth could possibly be divined by that?
The present was just the present. It was the current moment in time the conscious mind occupied and forged the future that the past helped create, wasn't it?
Lind was trying to think more deeply but the incessant voices kept distracting him. Why were it always their moments of death? Could they not have been other slices of their lives?
He focused externally but the shifting lives around him held no hints. The dance of life and death seemed normal but it was that very fact that made his eyes narrow.
He was in a Divine Inheritance and the lifeforms around him seemed to be on par with that level of existence. So why were they acting like mortal creatures?
He actually looked and saw the natural life cycle all around him. Insects pollinated plants. Birds and other animals ate them as they could or other ground based creatures like worms.
Deer and other herbivores took in plants and the predators struck them down brutally. It was perfectly normal if not for the constant shifting of fur, scales, and other features.
Lind felt his crystal creak suddenly. Why was it straining all of a sudden? He tried to understand but the horror of it became clear.
The more he exerted himself in the frozen time, the more strain he put on his dantian!
What was causing that strain?! He analyzed his meridians and dantian for what was going on and quickly found out his harmony was trying to move time forward! What was going on?!
He was trying to impose the normal flow of time?! He tried to stop it but it was like his harmony was not listening to him!
Desperation made him try to use his elements but they were unresponsive! Nothing he normally relied on worked at all! He racked his brain but the mental stamina had been exhausted by his previous efforts.
Blood began to leak from his nose, ears, eyes, and all his pores. He fell to his knees as the peaceful glade fell away from his mind. The voices also began to fall silent as he realized he was losing consciousness.
What truth could he find in such a place? What was the point of it?! It was just the present. Why was it a trial in the Reincarnation Inheritance?!
His body was being torn apart by the forces inside him and the ones without clashing.
Truth of the Now. That was what he was charged with understanding but he had tried to analyze his body, soul, and other aspects to see what was going on in the glade. He had focused on the minutiae rather than the phenomenon.
The Forest of the Now was the name of the place and its effect. He had focused too much on what was in front of him and not the point of the trial! He was tasked with learning the truth of the Now, not the actual present!
His mind dredged up the last of his strength and rather than trying to see the living creatures, he looked at the flow of Time. He looked at what it was doing and realized the strain was weakening.
He focused more on the actual flow of Dao and began to understand. It was not about the effect but about the Dao.
Time had many aspects to it but the most ephemeral was the one many took for granted. The Dao of Now. The moment to moment sliver of time that all life existed in. It was also something that directly related to the flow of reincarnation!
Lind's eyes snapped open as his harmony shifted. It was no longer trying to strain against the Dao but to join with it. The voices in his mind began to go silent as he repaired his body.
Space Dao was still far beyond him but a massive step forward in Time Dao was made at that moment. Lind looked around him and felt shocked to see it was not a loop around him but literally the present.
No past, no future, but just now. His soul began to change as the refined power improved as he more firmly grasped something he had taken for granted.
"I exist here and now. I am me and I will always be me. I am both Immortal and yet an eye blink." The sound of glass shattering was heard as the pressure vanished.
He was gasping for breath as his head throbbed with pain. His dantian was completely drained and his harmony a flicker in his crystal.
"Wha–what just–" He had grasped something important but it was like his mind could not hold onto it. His soul felt stronger but he was damned if he could recall it.
{Acceptable conditions for passing the Present Trial. Dao of Now glimpsed and soul refined further.}
A clue was given but he was too exhausted to try and comprehend it as darkness closed in. He could not even cultivate to recover but he felt no danger. He hoped when he awoke, he would get a break as he felt like touching on Time was far more dangerous than he had ever realized.