Incorporating Grzegorz’s mind and memories into his own was easy enough. The only thing Eugene had to watch for was the remnants of Grzegorz’s consciousness unwantedly influencing his own, which he guarded against by putting mental barriers in place.
Satisfied that he could imitate Grzegorz well enough, Eugene turned to his next goal. While in the timeless realm, he wanted to ascend a tier in cultivation.
Once he left the timeless realm a high-tier Eugene-ranked cultivator, no time at all would have passed in the real world. Czeslaw would see his “son” advance a tier right before his eyes. Eugene would then explain that he had been advancing through the ranks the entire day, because he had a sudden Hibiscan revelation that no cultivator had ever understood before. But Czeslaw would know virtually everything that Eugene knew about cultivation and more. So how could Eugene come up with a revelation that would plausibly have allowed him to have ascended so quickly?
Kevin’s License Plate. Eugene’s explanation would be that he had just discovered something about the most discussed mystery in Purple Hibiscology. For when he removed the license plate from the Holy Book, Purple Hibiscus was permanently damaged. But it was not just that fact that made Kevin’s License Plate such an enduring mystery. Every mention of the plate was removed from Hibiscan writings, and every cultivator except for Eugene had their memory purged of it. No one even knew what it was that Eugene had stolen, only that he had stolen something, and that it was somehow related to Kevin. It was for primarily this reason that Eugene was the most reviled cultivator of all time.
The imperceptive cultivator might think he discovered a flaw in this plan. After all, if Eugene was literally the only person who knew what Kevin’s License Plate actually was, how could he pass off the discovery of information about it as the work of Grzegorz Bielszowicki? The answer lay in the fact that the removal of Kevin’s License Plate from Purple Hibiscus didn’t actually remove Kevin’s license plate, the concept, from Purple Hibiscus.
The easiest explanation for this was that the Holy Book was like an infinitely repeating self-similar fractal, in which every part of it contained the whole. Thus, each individual letter of the Book contained an infinite number of nested copies of the Book. This idea was only discovered a few years before Eugene traveled through time. From what little he had read of his history books, the Dark Age and Demon Age of Hibiscan history saw barely any research into this topic. It was unfathomably esoteric and difficult to comprehend, much less immediately useful than the practical knowledge of how to fight the legions of demon cultivators. But when the Tortoise Age began and the Five-Headed Tortoise Sect reigned supreme over the Hibiscan world, research restarted in earnest. The existence of the Hibiscan Fractal, which previously had only been conjecture (albeit one almost certain to be true), was proven using Hibiscan mathematics. Still, studying the Fractal was of the utmost difficulty, and other matters typically occupied the attention of the greatest cultivators. There had only been a few insights into it, with most not having much practical application. Of course, the true extent of how much was known about the Fractal was unclear, for the masters of Hibiscan cultivation were never eager to share their secrets.
Eugene’s excuse for his seeming absurdly rapid advancement in cultivation would be that he had used fractal math to find out what Kevin’s License Plate was. However, Czeslaw would surely ask how exactly Eugene had figured out the plate. And Eugene needed to have an explanation, else he was cooked. He needed to come up with a way that Grzegorz could have plausibly figured out Kevin’s License Plate through fractal math.
The only thing to do now was study the Hibiscan books he had brought with him. His task was to understand all important Purple Hibiscologist research in the last seven hundred years, with a focus on the Fractal.
Eugene read the books and pondered Hibiscology. The time passed agonizingly slowly and yet very rapidly. While absorbed in this process, a question often floated to the top of his mind: Which would he accomplish first, a plausible understanding of the Fractal, or ascending to the high-tier of the Eugene rank? After what felt like months, he had his answer. Eugene was enveloped in a warm glow of Hibiscan energy as his Hibiscan essence changed to that of a high-tier Eugenian cultivator. Eugene was overcome with both joy and sorrow at the same time. For if it was that comparatively easy to advance in cultivation, then the task ahead of him with the Fractal was truly monumental. But Eugene still pushed ahead.
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The revelation came as he tried to link the Three Kevinian Facts with the Six Kevinian Conjectures. The Facts were the major things about Kevin that could be entirely confirmed, and were as follows:
1. Kevin was the Achike family’s driver, and did “chores” for Eugene.
2. Kevin had a dagger-shaped scar on his neck, ostensibly got after falling from a palm tree.
3. Kevin was fired by Beatrice after Eugene died.
Such was the scarcity of certainties about Kevin that those were the only confirmed facts! On the other hand, the Six Kevinian Conjectures were commonly believed to be true, but had not been proven. They were as follows:
1. Kevin’s story of how he got the scar was false.
2. Kevin was opposed to the Big Oga government in some important way beyond just disfavoring it.
3. Kevin had ties to Eugene’s past that went beyond simply his employment.
4. Kevin was employed by Eugene to carry out tasks of far greater scope than just being the family driver and doing chores.
5. Kevin was fired by Beatrice for a reason connected to one or more of conjectures 1-4.
6. Kevin continued advancing Eugene’s goals after he was fired.
The thing that made the Conjectures such a paradox was that if even one of them were to be proven, the rest should be easily provable as well. However, the key to all of this was Kevin’s License Plate. The Hibiscologists were oh so close to proving the Conjectures, but couldn’t. Extensive research into the Fractal had yet to reveal what the carved out piece of the Holy Book actually was.
But because Eugene knew, he determined how exactly to find out Kevin’s License Plate within the Fractal. His reasoning was something Grzegorz could have plausibly discovered, to the extent that a supposedly Father Amadi rank cultivator could discover it. Grzegorz did have a particular interest in the Fractal, and had a remarkable understanding of it for someone just in the Blue Realm, so it wasn’t outside of possibility.
It was time to explain his discoveries to Czeslaw.
Eugene slipped out of the timeless realm.
Czeslaw took a step back. To him, no time at all had passed, and it looked like his son had gone from mid Eugene tier to high Eugene tier in an instant.
“Father,” said Eugene, “I unraveled the mystery of what Eugene stole, and with it proved the Six Kevinian Conjectures.”
Czeslaw regained his composure.
“What was it?”
“It was Kevin’s license plate, number ENU-506OB. License plates were mentioned in another part of the Holy Book, that being the government license plates of the minions of Big Oga that attempted to bribe Eugene.”
“A Fractal dive?”
Eugene nodded.
A Fractal dive was when a cultivator immersed themselves into the Fractal, “swimming” deeper and deeper. Navigating the depths was difficult, even for experienced cultivators. It was just repeated copies of the Holy Book, but being able to tell what part you were delving through was near-impossible. In addition to that, a novice cultivator like Grzegorz would almost certainly not be able to escape the trance that Hibiscologists fell into when diving past shallow “waters”.
“How did you succeed?”
“The simple truth is that it was pure luck. I accidentally went deeper than I ever had before, and stumbled across it. The license plate numbers of the federal agents were not directly written, but could be deduced from context. Then I dove deeper into those numbers, and determined what Kevin’s license plate number was.”
“When I found it, everything clicked. I meditated for hours straight, as my cultivation ascended.”
Czeslaw paused to think.
“You’ll come with me back to the Dawn and Dusk Sect. There, you’ll go through the process of becoming a Sect Elder.”
Eugene nodded in assent.
Czeslaw tore a purple hole in space and walked through, Eugene following soon after.