novelraw Chapter 328 - 327 - Denial
Chapter 328 - 327 - Denial
Lind lifted the fool, Nathaniel, but only using one of his arms. The man groggily woke up and seemed to be lost before he began to twitch. The pain in his meridians would be like a million tiny pricks all at once beneath the skin.
It would be tolerable if it was short lived but Lind could see it was only getting started.
"W–what is going on? Did the program finish?" The familiar words in English would have been welcome but Lind had been burned by another Earth person already so he was not as troubled this time around.
"How many?" Lind's voice was lethal but he curtailed his bubbling rage to not lose control. "How many lives were worth your selfish and reckless choices? How many dead would please you?!"
He made a point of also speaking English which made Nathaniel snap out of his partially awake state. The man had pale blue eyes but they looked at Lind with an intensity that stunned Lind.
He could feel the power of Dao in them! He wondered if he ever looked at Wyndam when he made Arts back in the Moebius Sect.
"You are from Earth too? Is this some kind of government simulation? Is it cutting edge technology?" The joy of that possibility made Lind sick. He knew the man in his hand had not met any higher cultivator and was just reborn by chance or due to some unknown conditions.
"People have died! They have been dying for thousands of years, all because you cannot accept reality!" Lind did not know where he got the strength of will to not snap the man's neck but he only squeezed it.
The pain finally made Nathaniel realize his situation. His first reaction was panic but then the pain in his body began to skyrocket.
"AHHHH! What are you doing to me?! I am out too early! Put me back in!" Not even a single sign of grasping the words Lind said. The anger all fell away from Lind at that moment.
There was no evil in the man. There was no maliciousness nor was there even an understanding. He blinded himself to reality that did not conform to his definition. His accidental progress was just that, an accident.
The Dao was not so limited that conscious comprehension was needed. Devotion to Buddhism can make one an amazing observer of mankind and oneself but it did not require actively working on it to exist.
A natural. A human can have gifts that no words can convey to others, but they just do it. Nathaniel had said he had not needed school the first time, which meant he never really grew up.
He defined his life and he was the only real thing aside from one other part he included. Science. The man was a savant of science as demonstrated by the Dao acknowledging his purity of his pursuit by raising his cultivation.
Lind had seen cultivators like him but none as idiotic. The trouble these cultivators had was when they hit a bottleneck, they did not know how to proceed. They had no experience in actually pushing their cultivation forward on their own effort.
Despite having a talent in a similar vein, Lind had to fight to temper his cores for so long that he was intimate with his dantian and cultivation far more than normal. He was, in a sense, the exact opposite of Nathaniel in his cultivation progress.
Did all reborn or reincarnated have special gifts like that? The sample size personally was small but the records that revealed quite a few more would indicate the chance was high.
Something that a few shared were similar to Nathaniel. An initial refusal to accept their new reality. There were likely more but Lind realized they may have hidden those initial reactions to save face.
"Listen to me, your meridians are not tempered to handle Sky Realm Qi nor is your dantian properly forged by tribulation lightning. You are, at best, a pseudo Sky Realm but that is all." Lind understood what Nathaniel was going through. A tribulation was not simply a test from Heaven and Earth but also a boon.
The qualitative step between World and Sky Realm needed a boost from what he had understood in his research. If you survived the trial, then the final bolt would reforge the dantian and meridians to accept the new level of Qi.
Having experienced up close an aether beast ascension tribulation, Lind had a very clear idea of the kind of power needed for that step.
Nathaniel had tried to bypass that part and was not paying the price. His body and cultivation was demanding energy he did not have. Further, without the tribulation, he could never fully become a Sky Realm.
"Idiot! Don't go native! Backwards religions have held back the world for too long! Science is the only way!" Lind suddenly was blown back but a massive aura. It was a Sky Realm aura!
Clearly, on the subject of science, Nathaniel instinctively utilized his cultivation. That, or he was simply so deep in denial he refused to acknowledge what he had learned to do over the years.
"You can believe that if you wish, but do not ignore how many people you have killed!" Lind projected with his Qi a display of what he saw outside. It was not as pristine or lifelike as the Divine Realm aether beasts, but it got the point across.
Nathaniel stared at the display in confusion until he saw the black dome being struck over and over by all 6 colors of lightning.
"What tool are you using to make this? It is a really good hologram." Lind felt his rage return. Emerald light flared but several monitors began to turn red which distracted them both.
"No! No! No! The balance is becoming unstable. I can't get new power sources now." The clicking of the keyboard jarred Lind a bit but then he focused on the data flying across the screens.
Unlike Kora and Tal, he could read it and his cultivation allowed him to memorize the screen no matter how fast it scrolled by.
[Core tubes 10356 - 15897 reacting beyond containment limits]
[Manufacturing frames reduced energy flow detected, efficiency dropped…]
It was mainly updates that showed the Qi was reacting but the reaction was far more than any Lind had ever incited. Normally, a cultivator was needed for him to produce a result but then he remembered where he was.
He was inside the original Relic that Nathaniel had cannibalized and repurposed but the foundation was still there. In a way, the foolish man had extended the reach of the Relic beyond the border of the temple shape.
"Why is this happening?! I refuse to let this happen to me! I am not going to die, I am all that matters!" The truth kept slipping out of Nathaniel's mouth. The man had treated all the people around him as tools.
Maybe he had always viewed everyone that way.
He lived in a constant state of denial. To him, the world was merely something to be used by him for his goals. People were simply a resource or tool to use as their qualities merited.
There was no evil in the man, he simply did not connect to the world at all. Lind could suddenly recall many of his bosses and politicians being much the same. They did not live in the so-called 'real world.'
They lived in the world they wished to see or pretended to understand. The facts did not matter as they would change or adapt the facts to their reality.
"You will not understand until the rug is pulled out from under you, will you?" Lind changed his tactics. Trying to reason or yell at Nathaniel would not help. The man was not capable of understanding what he had done.
He moved to Kora and Tal but then was suddenly flung into a wall. A rabid Nathaniel was staring at him.
"YOU DID THIS! You broke my casket so now you are breaking my machines! I will not go back to that pathetic level of life! I want out of this world! I want my reactors back, I want to make my weapons again! I want to bring proper order to the chaos!" Deranged words flowed like a river from Nathaniel but all Lind felt was pity.
He sounded like a villain from a movie but the reality was he was a child. He had never grown up but when faced with the compromise of adult life, he had retreated into science. He had retreated from growth and change.
He wanted to simply control it all and never let it change ever again.
"You did this, not me. You refused to grow and change. You were even granted the rare second chance but wasted it all over again. You killed an entire nation yet you refuse to face that reality. Heaven and Earth tried to stop you but you did not heed the warnings." Lind then summoned all he had.
His dragon aura canceled out the Sky Realm aura pushing on him. He had been unable to move but only so long as he did not resist. Nathaniel could not control his strength at all.
Lind easily peeled the hands away from him and then moved back to Kora and Tal.
"Stay near me. I do not know what is about to happen." Lind's harmony flared like a wild flame around him. His skin was finally able to transform to give him more endurance with scales covering his skin as his eyes became slits.
"A monster, you are a monster!" Lind had no doubt that anyone that defied Nathaniel was a monster to him. The screens not only turned red but the room began to shake. The dome was designed well, but only from the outer shell.
The inside revealed the weakness he had sought outside. The leaves of each section overlapped like a canvas flap but support was needed to keep it up under its own weight. Those supports were not superconductors.
As Lind felt connected to the harmonies all around him, it was as if for a moment he could hear screams of joy to be free. It empowered him to keep going but Nathaniel had become pale as he held his ears.
"STOP IT! YOU ARE NOT REAL! YOU ARE ALL DEAD!" Lind knew that was true but not entirely right.
Nathaniel had brought it on himself as he maintained the harmony of each cultivator was also their soul. They were both dead and alive so long as the tubes functioned.
At long last the sounds of explosions came to them as all the monitors began to go dark. Nathaniel was wailing as he ran out of the room but Lind knew he had nowhere to go.
Heaven was all around the dome, it would not let Nathaniel go.