For a time, his attempt to focus solely on the Tao worked. With his world providing him with an endless quantity of insights, he was improving at breakneck speed, easily dozens of times faster than before.
There had been no massive change to the number of time warps he had bought, so he wasn’t really sure how long this productive frenzy had lasted. It could be anything from a few weeks to a few years.
At this point, the passage of time was inconsequential to Avery. He used to place a lot of importance on the number of hours, days, weeks, months and years that passed, counting them and trying to estimate how much longer he would be trapped in this hellhole.
However, now he was starting to find all of those worries ridiculous. What truly mattered was not time, it was his comprehension of the Avenue. As the years flew by, his mastery of the subject greatly increased, but he gradually became aware of just how deep and complex the Tao was and how far away his goal of becoming an immortal was. Many things that looked simple would take weeks to understand, while others could be grasped in an instant.
He was trying to swim across an ocean. His goal was to reach the continent on the other side, but he had no idea of how far it was. He had a very limited vision, and could only see what was coming up a tens of meters ahead. He had set a shorter goal in reaching the islands of immortality, but he also had no information on them, other than they definitely existed and that they were a lot closer.
Not only did he not know how far away his destination was, even his swimming speed was inconsistent. According to his mood, he could be as fast as a speedboat or as slow as a turtle. It was even technically possible for him to lose ground and regress if his spirit got damaged.
Exploring various Dao’s required every bit of brainpower he had. He was aided by a stupidly overpowered cultivation treasure in the form of his inner realm, but it was still up to him to use it. Since the amount of help it could provide was far above what Avery was capable of accepting, it demanded absolute concentration to use. He had nothing left to spare on counting meaningless numbers.
All of this led to Avery abandoning his habit of making useless predictions. He was content with doing his best every day, measuring his observable progress rather than the time he had spent working.
His body was protected by time warps and his mind was anchored in his inner realm, so the passage of time alone would not leave much of an impact on him.
At this point, being trapped a century, a millennia or even a million years would not make much of a difference. They were just meaningless numbers. The only thing that mattered was his self-improvement.
However, while the passage of time in the outside world, which he had taken to calling the Greater Timeline, was irrelevant, the same was not true for the timeline of his inner world. His inner realm was the only thing that often changed, and that was capable of evolving with time.
While the two timelines were linked, their relationship was complicated, and inconsistent. For example, the decade of adventure the Owner had gone through had only translated to a few weeks for Avery, but the latter's recent dive into the intricacies of the Tao had only taken about forty in-world days. In short, time was confusing, and keeping both timelines straight was not worth the trouble.
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He was content with keeping track of the in-world time, which in theory was easy. With his partial omniscience, he could just know how long it had been since the beginning of the world.
The problem was that even if the inner timeline was still important, it was very hard to control. Once, Avery had been resting his mind idly watching the Sil’piceus shenanigans, when he had been momentarily distracted.
In a passing thought, he wondered about the total size of his world. Sensing his thoughts, his perception sphere had then automatically expanded to its maximum size, informing him of its exact measurements. However, that had come at the cost of pressing a super-fast-forward button.
He had reacted almost immediately and refocused on the Owner’s journey, but those short moments had been enough for multiple months to pass. If he was not careful, he feared a small mistake made in a moment of inattentiveness would show him the end of the world.
He only controlled the speed at which time flowed, and he did not have the ability to rewind it. He had no second chances, so he had to make sure he was not missing anything important.
This was one of the many worries that he kept in the back of his mind, hoping that he would eventually find an opportunity to clarify his doubts and fix the potential problem. Fortunately, his worry about this particular issue was soon shown to be unfounded.
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He was focusing all his attention on the Tao, abiding by his decision. The only distraction he allowed himself were his trips to the real world. He made sure to return to the real world often to take some time out to admire it through his Dao sight. He was hoping that this would slow his assimilation into the mental world.
Even then he wasn’t really resting, rather he took this opportunity to try and find differences between the Dao’s of the real world compared to those of his inner realm. It was just another form of study, one that brought him many benefits.
He was returning to his mental world, planning to once again wholeheartedly dedicate himself to the Truth when his attention was forcefully diverted. No matter how much he focused, his attention was inexorably drawn to the Owner's journey.
The latter was finally nearing his goal, and the entire world was anticipating his meeting with the Elder. That would be a momentous occasion, and it was an event that could not be missed.
The world somehow identified how significant this event would be, probably by using the obscure power of fate. It designed that as an important historical event, one that would severely impact the advancement of the world.
It wasn’t like something was physically forcing Avery to pay attention to it, rather he was feeling a profound desire to see history unfold, and witness the development of his world.
If someone presented you with the most delicious meal ever made, you would see how appetizing it looked, and how divine it smelled. In these conditions it was almost impossible to concentrate on the homework you were supposed to be doing, no matter how interesting it was.
This was what Avery was feeling, except it was his soul that was being tempted. He was filled with an irresistible urge, an urge he did not even really want to fight.
His rational mind might be warning him that this was not a natural craving a normal human would feel, but this in no way diminished the desire he felt. This was an event that involved the development of his inner realm, and there was nothing more important than that.
For once, the Tao would have to wait.