Silent footfalls met skirts of denuded mulch, their soundless patter ushering Karma through deadened terrain. A nebulous orb floated beside him, mimicking chords of speech through its masterful control over spiritual energy.

"An Earthly Domain is an impossibly intricate refraction of one's Dao—an imperative of such import that it rests in the confluence of one's being: the soul," explained Anlîthëma.

Humming with clouded eyes, Karma unassuredly replied, "So the soul is a ward for one's Dao, and an Earthly Domain involves transforming that ward into a series of mirrors?"

Anlîthëma whirled to face him, or so it seemed, its globular form more turbulent than usual.

"What?" asked Karma. "Was there something wrong with my answer?"

"No, there was not. That is what disturbs me. Your jovial attitude, quite frankly, often belies your station."

"Was that all just a roundabout way to call me stupid 99% of the time?"

"Indeed."

Karma squinted somewhere between mirth and danger.

Cough—"Back to your answer. Yes, you've hit the nail on the head. To refract the Dao warded at one's core, the soul assumes a kaleidoscopic configuration. However, this presents an issue: the Dao is potent—"

"And the soul is weak," finished Karma.

"Precisely, the soul is weak. If the soul is too weak, rather than refract the Dao, it shatters."

"So the soul must be strengthened?"

"Therein lies the problem. Yes—the soul must be strengthened, but none hold the requisite understanding to achieve such a feat. Is soul-strength determined at birth? Can soul-strength be developed? If so, do hardships, knowledge, and experience factor into its development?

"Learned men and women have debated these questions for epochs. Guess, what do the best of them claim?"

Karma unconsciously thought back to his own soul apotheosis.

Ever since I saturated my soul via consuming golden threads, I've never hungered for another—

His eyes abruptly widened.

Why is that? One of my very first memories was hunger—indomitable, insatiable hunger. Does that mean I now hunger for something else?

"I ... don't know."

"Yes!" blared Anlîthëma, their sonorous cry echoing far and wide. "The sharpest and most erudite of scholars take pride in admitting as such. Sage Archanian Daedalus famously stated:

To make generalizations of the soul is to liken yin to yang.

The soul, to mortals, is an infinite set of disjoint elements. Only those above duality can fuse that which is inseparable.

Duality binds us all, for we are mortal, and transcendence forever remains our dual.

I choose not to mock transcendence. Souls are souls. I dare not presume more."

Neither spoke further, lost in the same contemplations that had plagued countless minds before them: the soul and her many mysteries.

Maybe, all had once wondered.

Maybe they would be the luckiest as of yet? The answer, after all, was no different than a lottery whose odds proved woefully slim.

Maybe.

**

Anlîthëma stowed back into Karma's spatial pouch, the grounds they walked having shifted from mulchy flatland to dune-strung sand.

Knoll after monotonous knoll carried Karma deeper still into the desertland.

Only when he crested his hundredth hill did monotony make way for its much-preferred antithesis: something new, taking the form of a half-buried ziggurat framed by encompassing yellow. The crumbling temple, whose step upon massive step had once assembled in a pyramidal dais, now sat level with the earth.

"Quandaries of Unsung Philosophers," Karma read aloud. "Little birdies whisper in my ears; they assure me you possess the object of my desire. Let's hope that truly is the case."

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

**

Zip.

"Extinguish the giant," instructed a chorus of eclectic, disembodied voices, "before it extinguishes you."

Karma's skin prickled, assailed by a searing heat. He found himself dining on the edge of a cliff, elbows resting on a table of unadorned silverware. In front lay an expansive canyon, its precipitous chasms as empty as the dishes before him.

Save for the incandescent titan, orbited by celestial rings, lumbering toward Karma in an earsplitting march.

Its gait, though ponderous, brought Karma no comfort.

"One step. One step and this thing travels more than 10,000 of my own."

Chortling bitterly, he continued, "And you give me plates to extinguish that? An ocean would fail, and you give me plates. What, am I supposed to throw them at it? At that walking sun—"

He froze.

"Oh. Fucking philosophers."

Radiating discontent, Karma grabbed a silver platter and waited.

The titan grew closer, closer.

And yet, he waited.

...

Should be close enough.

Like throwing a frisbee, Karma hurled the platter at the approaching titan.

In spite of—nay—trampling upon any notion of logic, the disk did not melt as it soared nearer and nearer to the flaming giant.

Instead, it successfully made contact.

And, as requested, snuffed out the titan's light.

**

Dwelling in the shadow of a faraway, silver circlet, Karma brooded with his arms crossed above his chest.

"I don't get it," transmitted Anlîthëma. "What just happened?"

"A solar eclipse," snarled Karma. "Some genius philosopher concluded that any round object can blot out the sun, no matter how small. It's all a matter of perspective."

He spat.

"I threw a moon at the sun, obscuring and thereby extinguishing it."

"Oh."

...

"Whoever came up with that is an idiot."

**

Zip.

Amid a carousel of knobbed, wooden doors, Karma bent down and retrieved an onyx-colored ingot.

Adding this to the Kronoseum-granted portion, I'd wager I'm 2/3 through my Promise.

"You are surrounded by one thousand thousand doors," came the eclectic voice from earlier, "only one of which promises salvation. Choose."

Karma, chuckling self-deprecatingly, mused, "Can you guess which door it is?"

"Is it ... none of them?"

"A thousand thousand points for correctness, Anlîthëma!"

Trotting forward, Karma grasped a wheel-shaped doorknob. Instead of twisting it, however, he began walking clockwise.

Click-click-click.

Bringing the door with him.

Click-click-click.

Until he'd completed a full circle.

EEERRRR.

And felt a visceral, falling sensation.

**

Zip.

Blanketed by a field of clovers and now 1/6 of his Promise richer, Karma awaited the next clue with a downcast frown.

"The room was a doorknob?"

"The room was a doorknob."

"Disgusting."

"To leave," announced the familiar amorphous voice, "find the clover with the most leaves."

"Ughhh," groaned Karma. "A pun!? This is the bottom of the barrel. The lowest of the low. The bowelist of bowel movements."

"Is it what I think it is? The leave-leaves—"

"Yup, you got it!" Karma buried his face in his hands. "'Leaves' is an incorrect plural of 'leave.'"

Picking a clover at random, Karma resumed, "Rather than search for the clover with the most leaves, you make any one of them the only clover."

An acrid aroma wafted as bleached-white flames erupted from Karma's feet, swiftly blooming outward. Soon, naught but shriveled plants, plumes of smoke, and Karma's disappointment remained.

**

Zip.

Returning to the sandy ziggurat exterior, Karma unhesitantly fused the final piece of Temporal Ore with his previous accumulation. A resounding clink announced the brick's completion.

Without skipping a beat, invisible currents gathered from Schrödinger's Crucible and claimed its Promise.

Immediately following, cool streams of phantom-black energy gushed into Karma's meridians, elevating his cultivation and Attunement to unprecedented heights.

Sixth level of Qi Formation and quadruple linearity acceleration to boot! It almost makes those dross "quandaries" somewhat sufferable. Almost.

Inhaling a mouthful of humid air, Karma forlornly sensed as the Crucible's presence receded into the unknown—of course, after it had dispensed Karma's subsequent Promise.

A handful of ... Cosmic Fairy Dust? I don't know whether to be intrigued or frightened by the implication.

"Excuse me, Mr. Tathāgata, was it?" Karma suddenly shouted. "Would you happen to be acquainted with any Cosmic Fairies?"

A compassionate sigh undulated over the surrounding ridges as a haloed monk gradually came into view.

"Namo Buddhaya," drifted Tathāgata's profound tonality, "Benefactor's senses are as sharp as his butcher's blade."

Quirking an eyebrow, Karma adopted a comically aggrieved cadence. "Was that an accusation? I'm innocent, I say, innocent! You dare slander an upstanding individual without evidence?"

With a soft shake of his head, Tathāgata replied, "The Dharma is my evidence. The Dharma testifies your wrongdoing, judges you guilty, and through me—"

He paused aloft the tallest sand dune encasing the ziggurat's mud-brick walls.

"Through me, the Dharma decrees your execution."

"With just you?" Karma bared his teeth in a savage grin. "Then there has been a mistake."

"Which is?"

"The one the Dharma seeks to punish is not me." A crimson-black flash shepherded Karma inches away from Tathāgata's flank. Pressing a glowing red palm on the small of his back, Karma growled, "It's you."

BOOM.

Tongues of pallid flame trailed the monk's comet through the open air. Undaunted, Tathāgata raised a single, outward-facing palm moments before his head-first slam into a temple wall.

"Yield."

The thunderous splat transposing man to bloody stain never came to pass. Instead, even more egregiously, both monk and wall remained unmolested, the former performing a one-handed plank on the latter.

Disembarking with a feather's grace, Tathāgata smilingly quipped, "That—yet remains to be decided."

Karma regarded the haloed monk from his perch, offhandedly noting their symmetrical positions to instants prior.

Tathāgata did the same.

Both men stood in the tracks of the other.

Stared the same evaluating stares.

As if mirrored.

The Dao is potent, inwardly recited Karma, and the soul is weak. I wonder: is this Tathāgata strong enough?

"Interesting," Karma said at last. "You've embarked upon the path of transcendence?"

Or will he shatter?