Chapter Seven

With what seemed to be an inverse of agonizing slowness, as opposed to the lightning fast closing that locked me into this shadow hell, the walls slowly inched higher. Kneeling down like a toddler trying to peek under a door to spy on their parents. I tried staring under the walls to get some idea of my surroundings. Was I still on the California coast? How much time has passed? Desperate for answers I narrowed my eyes, silently urgering the walls to retreat faster. A ridiculous move, like staring into the sun after being trapped in a cave for days, I see nothing. Immediately I try shutting my eyes to prevent myself from going blind. Standing back up slowly, I try taking another tack and I decide to go with the superhuman instead, sending my senses out. I notice that everything else is still trapped, frozen like a mosquito in amber, seemingly lifeless. I make a quick guess that it will remain like that until the walls finish their march to the sky, retreating back to whatever merciless hell that they came from. As I move my mind past the small herd of mule deers, still stuck in various poses of grazing. I see waves of chaotic Qi swirling over and around them, like a snowglobe being shaken furiously by a toddler, until my thoughts reach the wall. I see the Qi of the dark walls, with its symmetrical channels still jagged like lightning, despite their removal from the ground and start to begin observing what is happening underneath.

What I see worries me immensely, the turbulent Qi of our hell ball is staying completely separate from its counterpart beyond the gate that is slowly rising beyond my spectral head. Sending my Qi sense closer, I try to observe this new foreign Qi, anxious to gain any ideas as to what is waiting for me now that escape is finally within my grasp. Frantically my mind churned, how long has it been? Everything else in here has been frozen, and while my body hasn’t seemed to have aged, is that because no time has actually passed, and my thoughts have just been magically speeded up? Or is it because despite the freedom of my mind and the slightest movement I have been able to grant myself; the chaotic Qi of the ball is still surrounding and running through me, preserving me like a honey from the pharaoh's tomb, still edible thousands of years later? More questions that I had put off continue to shoot through my head. As the specter of freedom finally begins to become real, with more and more of the wall continues lighting up, as the gates of freedom continue to retreat higher into the sky. Finally unleashed, the hamster in my mind seems to make a mad dash for the corner of its cage. Where from underneath its pile of ‘dirt’, it pulls from its emergency stash and with a giant snort, it leaps back to its wheel. Where with only the frantic energy that someone with ADHD can know, it starts shooting out a stream of unending questions, some repeating themselves as it spirals in its junky madness that it had been kept from for so long.

How long has it been? Am I still in California? Will there be Qi on the other side of these walls when I get out? Was I captured for a purpose? Or was I just caught up in a bid to catch something else? Was this ball sent out on purpose? Or, was it instead just a hazard floating through the universal space or time, looking for something to trigger its closure? Did I do something to cause it to close, like a greedy rat, stepping into a trap searching for cheese? Or do I merely have supremely bad luck? Or, instead do I have supremely divine luck? Is it an immense good fortune that has struck me, to make up for the pain and suffering of this eternity that I have been trapped in here, learning to manipulate this chaotic Qi? Will I, when these walls open, be able to use my new (what I can only assume to be) God-like powers to quickly consolidate power? To rule the world with my children by my side, using my powers to create some fantastical utopia where everyone is amazingly happy while all hunger and greed are wiped out by threat of my wrath? With an imaginary snort, I shake my head and quickly give a blast of narcan to the crazy gerbil running wild. As I see that the wall is nearing its halfway point to the apex. I quickly conclude that I don't have time for the fantastical delusion that an outside force can impose happiness and selfishness on the entirety, or even the minority of the world. I have only a short time left remaining to try and experiment, looking for any clues to help me in my bid for survival and returning to my family.

Getting my vision self as close as I can to the event horizon, I stare more deeply into it, trying to find the exact border between light and darkness. I quickly realize that I am lucky that I had no time to come here physically as my true eyes would have undoubtedly caused me to waste time that I seem to finally be growing short on. Unable to be blinded by physical light I soon realize that my initial analogy was spot on, although inverted. Unlike a black hole, sucking down and trapping light into its center, expelling it from our universe like a toilet swirling its disgusting mess away. The event horizon here, is much like how I imagine it would have looked to an observer when I sent my consciousness towards the tiny black speck in the center of my core. As I grew closer, the harder it pushed me away.

With an inner glare at my hamster, I indicate to it that it can step back onto the wheel for a couple of seconds to spin out a few more questions, but not to over do it. Will this new barrier remain after the wall is gone? Forever keeping us trapped in this chaos Qi removed from the world like a ghostly snowglobe paradigm shifted to be slightly out of phase with the rest of time? Not worth wasting the energy on going down that road until I know for sure what is happening. I will find out for sure once the dark walls finally reach their apex above us and leave us surrounded by light for good. With a tightening of my eyes, I indicate to the hamster it quickly better send out something useful or the wheel would quickly become locked once again. Instantly the wheel shoots out: Can you interact with the barrier without being hurt? Finally, a useful question from that despicable little rodent, whose only real purpose before had been to test the bounds of my ability to pretend sanity in a world of normal people.

Reaching my hand closer to the invisible barrier that was keeping the Chaos Qi from the light. I quickly realized that I had never tried to manipulate the Chaos without my mind being bound in my body before. With no time like the present to begin learning a new skill, I quickly think back to my experiments with Order and Chaos. I quickly settled my astral body into the lotus position, where I began trying to sink into my core and the apparent time dilation that came with it. Trying to greedily snag one last benefit before the gates finally opened. Where I finally will break into the next phase of what awaited me, finally finding out if I am being released into a dream or nightmare.

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Going instead of to the center of my body, where every cultivation novel told me I should have been able to condense a core. I went to my heart chamber and the small asteroid--sized globe I had formed, with this Chaos and Order Qi still running through the middle of it. I tried to feel the rest of my imaginary body around it while keeping my mind, in the cavernous mountain, that held that black speck in the center of my core. Doing my best to picture the superimposition of the channels running through my body. I focused on feeling the energy running through my astral body. Squeezing my spectral chest tight while tightening my bowels. I did my best to mimic what I had done with my physical body, projecting Order onto the Chaos and trying to braid the river of duel energies through the channels. Slowly… glacially slow like molasses, the rivers began to flow through my astral body. At first, just the main channels of my arteries and veins were flowing. But as the first of the headwaters reentered my heart chamber and were sent right back out again. The flow gradually began to increase and the capillaries got into the action as well, sending their stagnant energy flowing back into the rivers as fresh Qi replaced it. Years or seconds, I still found it impossible to tell while maintaining my consciousness at the level it could manipulate the Qi. With the Chaos Qi flow being relegated to my subconscious, I sent my active focus to the capillaries of my right index finger. While common sense would say to go back to my left index finger. As that had been where I had initially gained the freedom, that had led to the circumstances where I had first started gaining magical powers. I instead chose my right index finger. I Made the choice for several reasons, not the least of which being that I was right handed, so I hoped to have more conscious control over what I was attempting. I am also willing to abandon the finger that had a) gotten me into this mess and b) was part of the demon hand that was primarily used by those awful beings. The ones that had consumed their twins in utero, infiltrating true humanity with their disgusting otherworldliness.

Reaching my mind into the furthest tip of the capillary running through my main index finger. I began the slow experimentation of trying to push the silvery channels that mirrored the circulatory system of my physical body, through the barrier that remained even though the walls had retreated. Still unsure whether I was interacting with the soul of my body and if this was truly a good idea. I searched, once again through all the cultivation novels I still enjoyed as an adult, for any hint of the best way to go about this. Unfortunately, most fell into one of two categories: Either the cultivator had two systems one of body cultivation and one of mystical which he would somehow find a way bring both to the apex through the generosity of the many young masters he would run across who couldn't wait to give multitudes of spacial rings stuffed with the exact unique resource that our mc would happen to need. Further setting up an enmity for their families to come along later with a more powerful member who will undoubtedly decide to bring with them to donate once again exactly what our mc needed. Or while the second version would usually include both a body and magic cultivation system (and would definitely include the much needed idiot young masters with even more overbearing families who can not wait to fund the mc's meteoric rise to the heavens) it would also involve soul cultivation. The Soul cultivator would undoubtedly be the most difficult path to growing stronger but the mc would pass through the rapids with the ease of a salmon swimming up rivers, sometimes struggling, but undoubtedly easier than every other person of his universe, part way through gaining the ability to split his soul in twain to either bringing twice the power in two bodies or having multiple bodies that could each control a singular resource exquisitely without having to struggle to maintain both that mere mortals following him would have to. I hoped that this extended trip outside my body was indicating that I would be following the later path, but several things were telling me that it might just be a pipe dream.

First and most importantly, the exactness in which the chaos Qi was moving throughout my spectral channels, After I had got the Qi going fully and before projecting myself smaller into my index finger,I had first glance back at my physical body and saw the chaos Qi moving in the exact, same pattern. This, instead of indicating that my soul was actually splitting off of my body, made me think that it was more likely this chaos had a quantum mechanic to it and that I had somehow tapped into it. That I was using the Qi to see and maintain it remotely instead of actually having my soul be metaphysically seperated from my body. Secondly and slightly less important was the fact that I was seeing light on the other side of this barrier. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this had to be a construct of my imagination. I was thinking of the barrier like glass because my mind was seeing the Chaos walls retreating back to the sky. My mind was telling me that if darkness was retreating then obviously its opposite must be driving it back. It was an easy assumption to make but there were two problems to that as well. One being, that if the light was driving the darkness away, then the entire ball should be lighting up like a Christmas light, with the wall of black not keeping it out. Two, and the biggest reason, is that light is a wave, similar to sound. If I had ‘observed’ there was a barrier keeping the Chaos Qi one hundred percently separate from whatever its counterpart energy was on the other side, then it would be impossible for me to be seeing any actual light. As the wall was keeping all energy, including light waves out, regardless of the edge of the Chaos Qi retreating. If I follow that thought along that I was imagining the light out there, then it was also much more likely that the astral body I was seeing was just a translation of the quantum signal I was sending out through the Chaos, like the return wave of the sonar a sub sends out, my mind was just translating the signal and throwing it up on a monitor in my subconscious.

One puzzle figured out and either confirmed with the ‘light’ from outside the barrier disappearing as my mind realized it was generating an illusion; or not actually confirmed and my mind was blocking it out in an effort to wrap me in the delusion I was asking of it. I finally turned my mind to breaking through the capillaries and manifesting energy movement outside my body… I'm an idiot. So focused on the problem that I completely didn’t realize I had run past the solution in my effort to do things the hard way. I already had a way to use the chaos Qi outside of my body! If, as I suspected, that my close up view of the barrier and my subsequent vision of my spectral body churning up my Qi was a construct I was using to interpret my remote manipulation then all I had to do was raise my hand up and … Pop!

“This is why you need a proper plan, stupid”, I muttered to myself. Not taking the time I really, really wanted to. Wanting to slam my knuckles into my head, to try for another one of countless times, to knock the stupid out of my brain. I dove onto my pack, clutching it for dear life, as the wall disappeared with the suddenness of a balloon in a three-year olds sharp fingernails. I felt the chaos being ripped out of my mouth as it shot up into the sky with all of the fury of a nuclear bomb.