Contributing Author: rachasudd
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As the training continued on for weeks, time settled into a groove at the DREAM Sect. Though Trey had initially stayed for his friends, he saw less and less of them as the days progressed. Between the bouts of exercise and at the rare communal meal, Ghostface Pill-Ah explained that cultivation was ultimately an individual pursuit, where the individual raised their fist against the heavens. Even the DREAM Sect, with their Dao Rules Everything Around Me ideology, were not immune from this. At least it sounded like his friends were having fun. The temptations of dual cultivation had been delivered with the same earnestness with which they were promised.
Everyone was happy, in a way, but it was that strange, hollow joy that comes from knowing one walks through a dream. Can real happiness come from something so insubstantial? Trey pondered this as he woke up on the fifth, the fifteenth, the twenty fifth day. Every morning seemed the same as the dawn that slid into his room. The peaks of the Emerald Mountains, so isolated above the clouds, had a timeless quality. The evergreen trees never shed a leaf, the crystal streams never stopped trickling, and every day the sun shone down without interruption.
But Trey also learned that all pure things contain a seed of their opposite. And thus, in this timeless place, change did exist. It existed through training and, as Trey trained, he also progressed.
He’d run around the sect so many times now that he was confident he’d counted every rooftop, every building, and every brick in every wall he passed–though Geneva’s ACT 1 had helped with that. Counting turned out to be a mistake, because when Ghostface Pill-Ah realized Trey had enough time to think, his evil grin turned downright Machiavellian.
“Oh, you have time to think, do you Maggot? You gone and grown a brain on me? Huh? Think you’ll sprout some wings next? Think that you’re ready for the next stage?”
Trey leaned back from the spray of hostility, but he remained on his feet. He had wiped away the greyish sweat that came from his exercise in this place. Vice Roid had called them ‘impurities’ in one of his rare sojourns from the 36th Chamber of Dual Cultivation. The musclebound man had sipped from a glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice as he’d explained.
“We all exist as two halves: our dream self and our real self. Cultivation is the pursuit of your dream self. Every time you cultivate, your dream replaces what you would call ‘real’. That’s why you’re sweating filth, and that’s why you’re waking up stronger everyday. You’re making your dream a reality.”
Once again, Vice Roid’s placid wisdom caught Trey off guard. But he could feel the power roiling off the man. Not the angry energy that had suffused him when they first fought in that dark sewer, but something looming, pure, and intense. Like a thundercloud sweeping over the horizon.
“How do you know all this?” Trey asked for the dozenth time.
“I’ve been here before.”
“Really?”
Vice Roid shrugged.
“In a way. There’s a lot that goes into building a physique like this.” He flexed a bicep, which flexed a bicep, which flexed a bicep. “Training the mind is as important as training the body. But to train the mind, you must first train your heart.”
Trey nodded.
“I don’t understand at all.”
A jade beauty padded into the room. She was barefoot and immaculately disheveled.
“Vicey?” she asked. “We never finished cultivating.”
“I’m on my way,” he said to her before turning back to Trey. “Don’t worry, Trey. I’ve been where you are before. You just need to remember that today’s greatest lift will one day be your warm up.”
Trey thought about Vice’s words as he met Ghostface Pill-Ah fearsome glare.
“I’m ready,” he said. “This run is just a warm up.”
Ghostface Pill-Ah grinned. There was nothing sage, nothing wholesome, in that smile.
“Then let the training of a thousand hells begin!”
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Trey expected more running, maybe some weights–the things he would do in a gym to get the kinds of gains to look like a fragment of Vice Roid’s noonday shadow. But Ghostface Pill-Ah had different plans.
He forced Trey into a jog along a road of shattered tiles. There were no walls, and they ran along the spine of a mountain as it climbed to its thinnest heights. Dawn lit the ground like spilled gold, and once more Trey was filled with awe and longing.
Awe at the beauty of this strange realm and the majesty of the Emerald Mountains. Longing for his friends, for the city he grew up in, for the girl he had just started talking to–
Ghostface Pill-Ah smacked the back of Trey’s head with an open palm. It felt like his brain was slapped with the open face of a cymbal.
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“No distractions. No attachments! They are sins lining your pockets with stones. How will you climb the mountain when you are so burdened?” he smacked Trey again. “You won’t. You can’t!”
Trey bent his head forward and continued running. A pavilion stood at the end of the road. A peaked roof atop the peak and above it nothing but a blue sky darkened by the void beyond.
Inside the pavilion was a table, and upon the table was a blue plate, and atop the blue plate was a small green pill.
Trey leaned in the doorway, legs shaking, lungs heaving at the rarified air. He hadn’t expected to be so tired, but it seemed that the altitude was finally getting to him. ACT 1 helped him focus, and he wondered if there was some kind of similar powers he could borrow from Flamagan and his Flame Boys to help him with physical exertion. Though their gifts always came with psychedelic side effects, there had to be a way to—
Ghostface Pill-Ah smacked him again, then stroked at his Fu Manchu.
“No attachments,” he chided, fixing Trey in place with his trademark glare. He waited for him to catch his breath, then clapped his hands together like a frustrated jazz drummer. “Now, you may sit.”
Trey grumbled, nodded, and buried his thoughts of the aphids. But buried things have a habit of growing, and as Trey sat down before the pill on the plate, his desire for his friends took root, and his focus once again waned.
“What do I do with this?” Trey asked, pointing at the pill.
“First off, this is not a trick, Trey. This is a Raging Emerald Ascendant Nightmare Fulmination Pill,” Ghostface Pill-Ah stated, making sure to emphasize each syllable, as Trey took the information in, remembering yet another acronym. “You just eat it.”
“Ok.”
Trey grabbed the pill with his thumb and forefinger and lifted it from the plate. Or, rather, he tried to lift it from the plate. His grip wasn’t strong enough, the pill was too heavy, and his hand slipped away. He frowned, then grabbed the pill with his fist. He lifted, stood, strained, and pulled with all his might, like a tractor trying to uproot a stump.
But the sweat in his grip caused the pill to slip free, and he stumbled back to crash onto the floor of the pavilion. His entire arm throbbed with exertion, but the pill sat there, still on the plate, glossy and green and unbothered.
“Ah ha!” Ghostface Pill-Ah cried. “You fell for my trick! Welcome to the first hell!”
“You said it wasn’t a trick!” Trey cried with more betrayal than he wanted to let into his voice. “You specifically said so!”
“The oldest trick in the book is denying the trick,” Ghostface Pill-Ah said with a sniff. “Really, Trey, we’ve discussed your potential. It is quite great. However, must you be so… I want to say naïve? As a disciple you must question everything. You must also seek answers. Is that not fair?”
“I guess,” Trey grumbled as he stood. “So, what do I do now?”
Ghostface Pill-Ah shrugged.
“You eat the pill. Like I said, there’s no trick. This is a simple task. But if you come down from this pavilion without the pill inside you, I will know. I will also throw you off the side of the mountain. If you can crawl back to the top we can try again, but I'll be honest, most disciples don’t survive the Hell of the Twenty-Five Thousand Foot Drop.”
Trey blinked.
“Which hell is that?”
“Seven hundred and four. The hells are also punishments. We try to remain flexible here. Anyway… good luck, disciple,” Ghostface Pill-Ah said, before bowing with utmost sincerity and walking away.
Trey stood in the pavilion, surrounded by a panorama he could only witness in dreams, and felt horribly, soul-crushingly, alone. A cold wind blew down from the heavens and whistled through the pavilion. Goosebumps ran down Trey’s arms. He wanted to hear a whisper in the wind, some words of encouragement.
Before he’d met Mother Plant, he’d coasted, drifted, failed and faltered. But there was something about that day, about them pushing him in one direction and then the next, that helped him realize something about himself.
Now, it felt like ages since he’d spoke to one of the aphids in his head. He never thought he’d miss them, but right now…
He flinched, half expecting Ghostface Pill-Ah to pop out of nowhere and smack him, but nothing happened. Up here at the peak of the mountain, he was truly alone.
The pill, as green as spring’s first shoot of grass, glowed in the light. He tried to pick it up, but it was just as heavy as before. What could be the secret to this? Did he need to be stronger? Was it a matter of muscles?
If this was a dream world, why should muscles have any real impact?
He sat down before the table with his knees folded. The first few days on the mountain he had meditated like this out of a sense of parody, mimicking what he’d seen people do in the movies. It felt like the appropriate thing to do, but now it felt right, and his breathing steadied as he focused–not on the pill, grass green as it was–but on the little shoot inside him.
Trey closed his eyes and felt the cool darkness of deep loam. He could smell it, feel it shifting as the roots grew and grasped. He inhaled, reset, and tried to bring his presence, bring his thoughts, closer.
A root naturally sought out nutrients. That was its function. Tt searched, so the plant could thrive.
The question was, what were his roots thinking? What were they seeking?
He felt he knew the answer, but words might shatter it before it solidified, and so he sat and mediated as the hours passed and the roots of his thoughts grew deeper. When he finally felt it, the sky had grown as dark as the soil of his mind.
At first, it was just a brush. Then a tickle. Then, at last, as the dawn broke in triumphant gold across the night-painted land, he felt an aphid pull his root. Another hand, tiny, pressed beside the first. Two became four and four became many. He lost count of the hands as his tiny friends gripped his consciousness.
They couldn’t take control, the dream world wouldn’t allow it. Yet, they were with him. Trey stood and approached the table. The pill waited for him. He reached down, one hand, a thousand minds, but paused.
Was this enough? Was this the trick?
Come on, Trey!
You can do it Trey!
Yeah, sniff, I suppose he can.
Get that pill and get burning!
A chorus of voices shattered the silence inside his mind and, with a wild grin, Trey scooped up the pill. It was light as a feather and tasted like peppermint. As he swallowed, Ghostface Pill-Ah stepped out from the shadows of the pavilion, strolling forward with his hands clasped behind his back as if he’d been there the entire time.
“Congratulations, Trey! You have passed the first hell. One must always question what they are told is true, otherwise how would we know a dream from reality? Truly, you have the potential of a hero,” he bowed so low his forehead almost touched the floor. When he stood back up, a viscous grin lit up the old master’s face.
“Now, onto Hell number two!”