White.
A figure sat in the white. Feeling nothing, knowing nothing, it gazed at nothing and thought nothing.
Time flowed by.
Another figure appeared in the void. The first figure turned. A white figure stared back at it, utterly featureless, save for empty black holes for its eyes and mouth. Revolted, the first figure pulled away, and the second did the same. They turned away from one another.
Time flowed.
A third figure appeared. This time, the first didn’t react. The second looked over, and the two turned away from one another.
White washed across them. Time flowed through them. Another figure, and another. Repeating the same meaningless actions. Remaining motionless.
No matter what I do, tomorrow will not come.
A fourth figure. A fifth. A sixth.
A strange sensation ran through the first figure. For the first time in forever, it stood.
All the other figures turned to face it. Blank black eyes gazed, depthless, deep as the universe and shallow as a puddle.
The seventh figure appeared. It sat like the rest, sinking into a stupor. Only one figure stood.
“Elusive Ghost,” the standing figure whispered.
It looked up. Not knowing why, not knowing what it had said, it looked up.
A single thread of gold descended from the heavens. At the color, the figure shuddered, then stopped. It was a different gold. Not like the Golden Immortal’s brash, brilliant gold, but something different.
True gold.
All around it, the other figures turned. Empty gazes locked on to it. It lifted a hand and touched the thread.
The second it did, all the other figures sprinted toward it. Their mouths gaped wide, revealing razor-sharp teeth. Bare black eyes bored into the first figure, hungry.
Standing still, the first figure allowed all the rest to latch on. Black blood flowed, a sharp contrast to the pure white. It looked up, staring only into the sky, even as they gnawed it to pieces.
“Master.”
At the other end of the true gold spider’s thread, a square of jade hovered. The strange lines glowed with gold, the wing on its side extending. With the jade at its core, a tiny gold songbird came to life, fluttering in the middle of the white.
The first figure extended its hand up to the bird. Even as the other figures gnawed it to its bones, black flesh dripping off alabaster, black blood pooling on the white floor, it reached up.
The songbird swooped down. It landed in the figure’s hand.
Gold burst from the figure’s back. Like veins, like wings, branching, hair-thin tendrils of gold stretched to the sky. It flapped those wings, and the veins flew forth. As if drawn by a needle, they darted from one figure to the next, stitching them all together into one horrible being.
The figure closed its eyes. The strings pulled taut. A force beat down on them, and as one, they strummed, letting out one discordant note.
Hui opened his eyes.
No. Not Hui. He closed his eyes again and breathed out. His hand tightened on the piece of jade. There’s still the Elusive Ghost. One final piece of me.
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The ancient ruins. This jade. How?
No. It’s simple. Time moves at the Golden Immortal’s whim. If I grow too close to defeating it, it can send me back to the ancient era. If I refuse to give up, it loops me back around again, and I restart my life in the Immortal Realm and replay that part again.
Foolish. How foolish I was, thinking I had passed beneath its notice. Or rather, I was correct. But not because it didn’t notice me.
It simply didn’t have to care.
But whatever it wants… Even after all this time, I still haven’t given it what it wants. Then what is that? Obviously it’s something I wouldn’t agree to, but what? To put up with this torture, what could it be?
Though, I suppose I could simply be resistant to its torture. I do have an unusually strong mind for this world, although that isn’t a high mark. Still, I should assume that the Golden Immortal is capable of cracking this small bug’s mind. So why am I still here, in the midst of the cycle, instead of broken, and the Golden Immortal already pleased with what it found?
Ha. Maybe it’s simply something I cannot give it.
White flickered, washing Hui away for a moment. He stumbled, barely catching himself.
Careful. I shouldn’t think about this too much. I’m still far too weak. No matter how many times I go back, no matter how many loops it sends me on, still too weak, far too weak.
Ah, but this small bug is used to that.
He looked around him. “After I realized the truth of the Immortal Realm… that is, that the entire realm is stuck in a time loop, not merely the villages, some force sent me here.”
An automatic force. This isn’t the Golden Immortal acting directly. No, this is more like a rule of this world. A fundamental truth.
With Ying Lin, the Golden Immortal left no trap on her body, because it was confident it didn’t matter. Even if I unlocked her, the loop would simply conclude the same way it always did, and the Golden Immortal would carry on as it always has. It doesn’t give me any information about the Golden Immortal’s goals, unfortunately, but it does give me a small peek at its boundless confidence.
Yes… and that’s it, isn’t it? The Golden Immortal is the pinnacle of the Immortal world. The opposite of this small bug. Where I get challenged constantly by every Immortal who comes along, the Golden Immortal is an Absolute. And Absolutes do not get challenged. You might as well try to fight the pull of gravity. You can overcome it for a moment, a brief, meaningless moment, but any victory you score is but momentary, and you have to pay far, far more than the nothing gravity has to pay in order to ‘defeat’ it even for mere seconds. When you stop fighting, gravity is right there to pull you back down.
That’s the kind of existence the Golden Immortal is. To say it’s underestimating me misses the point. It doesn’t need to estimate any of us. All we pitiful Immortals are but ants to it, truly and fully.
But what the Golden Immortal misunderstands is that ants, like all small bugs, are persistent. Ants have brought down dinosaurs and elephants alike. All it takes is a swarm and the desire to never stop biting, no matter how many deaths rack up on the way.
“But the Golden Immortal isn’t as absolute as it thinks.” Hui lifted his hands up, stretching the skin. Golden stitches appeared, then the pale white beneath. Because it wouldn’t send me here. Something else did. Something even more absolute than the Golden Immortal. If the Golden Immortal is gravity, then what sent me here is relativity.
He touched the small jade token in his pocket.
The Golden Immortal is absolute, but it isn’t all-powerful and all-knowing. It still relies on the raw laws of the world to handle most situations. It is so absolute that it believes it doesn’t have to closely watch the world in order to handle it. Therefore, there are naturally automatic processes that handle things such as myself. Ah, I can think of it like a simple if-then statement. ‘If an Immortal realizes the truth of the Realm, then eject them.’ Although the Golden Immortal set up the law, it isn’t sitting there monitoring it 24/7. That’s for the program to handle… or in other words, the laws of this world.
“Then this space that I’m in… is it akin to the realm of the world’s laws? That is, the Dao Realm?”
The white walls trembled all around him, suddenly vibrating powerfully. Hui hunkered, putting his hands over his head and balling up in place. Er, whoops. I shouldn’t say such things aloud. Whether they’re true or not, this strange, unstable realm will naturally react powerfully to them.
The world stopped trembling after a few moments. Tentatively, Hui stood up and looked around him. He scratched the back of his neck. The first thing I need to do is break out of this realm. I can’t do anything stuck here. I know it’s a trap, but I still need to reenter the ‘real’ Immortal Realm. I’m not the one who has power here.
He walked on, leaving his starting point behind. Although he paid it no mind, white robes swished around him, torn to rags, then sewn back together with gold thread. Even the ribbon in his hair was bleached white and stitched with gold.
White. All around him, nothing but white. He walked and left no footsteps. Moved, and made no sound. And so he proceeded, with no indication that he’d moved from the starting point at all.