Outside of the Palace of Supreme Wisdom, the chief elders were all tense until the last circle of light disappeared. If the demonic cultivators had wanted to attack during the opening of the array formation, that would have been the moment. Some stayed ready just in case this was a tactic to let them relax and then attack. But in the end, nothing happened. All the new fourth-years were back in the Wubei Sect and everything was fine.
The chief elders still waited the entire day. Then, they literally played rock paper scissors to decide who would be the first one to guard this place. It fell upon Chief Elder Tingyu, Chen Rao's master. Obviously he wasn't pleased as he had a lot of work to do in his forge. But the game had been fair. Each chief elder would guard the array formation for ten days before another one would take his place. Once more, rock paper scissors would decide on the order of the guards.
That was rather funny to see these Spirit Warriors hiding above the clouds and playing rock paper scissors. Moreover, each result made them very excited...
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When he opened his eyes, Cao Yun was in a perfectly white space. The first thing he did was obviously to look around him. Beneath his feet, above his head, all around him, there was only a white empty space. In fact, he couldn't even feel a ground under his feet. But there was air all around. No wind was moving the air though. Without Cao Yun's presence, it would have been perfectly still. But because he was breathing, there was a subtle movement in the air around him.
In the same way, this empty space was permeated with Qi, but way thinner than in the Hongchen Kingdom. In fact, it was completely negligible. But just like the air, by his mere presence Cao Yun was causing it to move around. Without him in this place, the world would be perfectly uniform. There was no way to indicate a direction. In fact, there was no way to even get a sense of what space or time were because absolutely everything was perfectly uniform in all the directions as far as Cao Yun's eyes and senses could perceive.
Sensing no threat at all, Cao Yun put his spear back in his spatial ring. Until now, he had kept his spear in hand to keep the facade. But within the Palace of Supreme Wisdom, he knew for a fact that no one was able to monitor him. As such, he had no reason to keep hiding his cultivation. And now that he was comfortable using a spatial ring, taking the spear out of it was as simple as thinking about it. There was thus no reason for him to keep it in hand.
For several minutes, Cao Yun tried many things. He tried to rotate on himself and realized that there truly wasn't any sense of up and down. When he stopped rotating, he even wondered whether he was still moving without being able to notice it himself. By screaming or sending surges of Qi, he was able to disturb this place but it quickly came back to normal.
Even the light was uniform. As far as he knew, there was no source of light, everything was just lit with a white hue from nowhere.
According to Elder Tang, each world was created specifically for the needs of the person within. But it was up to everyone to understand what the world truly was and what was expected of them.
Thinking about it, this place was clearly not meant for anything physical or related to Qi. Quickly, Cao Yun wondered whether it was some kind of illusion. Maybe this place was supposed to test his perception or his mind, maybe even his soul. In any case, he was failing to see what it could be otherwise. Even with all the knowledge he had, he had no idea what was going on around him.
The young man was not comfortable delving directly into his sea of consciousness, in case something happened outside. At all times, he kept his focus on his environment. That being said, he started to revolve his mind cultivation. At first, he only activated his Five Agents to increase his own senses.
Suddenly, something changed. There was someone in front of him and he could feel someone else behind him. But that wasn't right. Because both the man he was seeing right in front of him and the one he could feel both the Qi and the breath of were just too familiar. They were him. And each one was also looking at another Cao Yun in front of him and feeling another one behind him.
In front of him, the other Cao Yun slowly turned his head and looked at him in shock. Farther ahead, another Cao Yun turned his head all of a sudden and yelled. Another one even took out his spear. Then, more and more screams could be heard. Some were yells of surprise while others were full of anger and even pain.
Looking above him, Cao Yun saw an infinite column of Cao Yun. In fact, above and below each one in his row, a similar column had appeared. And it still did not stop. Each Cao Yun in his row saw another row appear on their sides. Soon, the entire space was full of Cao Yun. And each one was behaving slightly different. But Cao Yun stayed calm and observed.
Was he the real Cao Yun though? How could he be sure? Wouldn't all the other Cao Yun think the same?
"I'm the real one!"
A panicked voice echoed. Then, thousands of small echoes with slightly different tones reverberated from everywhere. Some distance away, a Cao Yun let his Qi run wild. The yell of a dragon erupted as he took his spear out.
"You're all fakes! What do you want? Answer me!"
Yet another one was sitting cross-legged meditating, while a Cao Yun above had changed. His eyes were completely red with blood. Suddenly, he began to attack all the other Cao Yun around. But they wouldn't go down without a fight.
The one with the blood injected eyes had lost all rationality. That meant that he also had the Drop of Wrath. Although Cao Yun had never seen himself lose control from the outside, he was able to understand it immediately with one look. Many more Cao Yun had also lost control. Some had given in to the Drop of Wrath. Others had taken out their spears, ready to defend themselves. Less patient ones had decided to attack first.
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This quiet world had turned into a complete mess. Most of the Cao Yun were calm and composed, although troubled. But the sheer number of them made it so that the small fraction that had turned aggressive was enough to disturb everything. If all had started with his mind cultivation, just stopping it might solve the problem.
"Why isn't it working?! Am I not the real one?! No! I am! I am!"
"I'm a fake! I don't want to disappear!"
"If I kill you all, I'll become the real one!"
More and more Cao Yun were panicking. And all of a sudden, every Cao Yun disappeared but one. Cao Yun had finally stopped his mind cultivation altogether. He had not just stopped his Five Agents. Just to be sure, he had forced all his thoughts to be silent. Each and every one of those Cao Yun were questions he was asking himself, behaviors he was thinking. They had all been possible Cao Yun. Just thinking about different possibilities had created them and from them even more had appeared until all the possible actions he might have taken were indeed taken by an infinity of Cao Yun.
Now, he had understood what this place was. But what was the goal?
Just as he thought about the questions, new Cao Yun appeared once more. This time it was even faster than the first time. As he had asked himself a single question, the entire white space was filled with Cao Yun. Each one had a slightly different answer or reflection. At least, it answered a part of his question. This splitting of himself was not dependent on his use of his mind cultivation. Just thinking in itself could cause this to happen. In fact, each time he could have different thoughts or reactions, all of them happened all at once, quickly causing a domino effect producing always more versions of who he was. There was no reason for it to stop, so this space had to be infinite in all directions.
Now that that was resolved, it still didn't tell him anything about what he had to do.
Very quickly, he heard infinite Cao Yun asking billions of slightly different questions while others were giving different answers, contradicting each other. And inevitably, at some point arose conflicts of any kind. Now Cao Yun wished there had been no air in this place. It would have been better to hold his breath rather than to hear all of his copies. The very moment he thought that, he heard many Cao Yun claim that they were the original. To be fair, he had no way of knowing that for sure. Yes he remembered having been the original but most likely every other Cao Yun also remembered the same thing. And this space was so uniform it was impossible to be sure he was even at the same spot he had been before.
No matter what he would do, he would always believe himself to be the original. For now, the only thing to do was to quieten down all of his thoughts. That way, all the copies would disappear. But if he was a copy he would disappear as well. Maybe he had been the original but he was now an independent Cao Yun and he would be gone when the real one decided to suppress his thoughts. Was it what happened to all the thoughts he suppressed every day? Were they conscious in some way? At least, they were the potential for a different him who would never exist?
"Enough with the existential questions!"
"No! We're all real! We can all survive together!"
"Put an end to it! I need to know if I'm real or not!"
"If you stop thinking, I'll cease to be. Please, don't!"
Then, everyone disappeared once more.
Because thinking created infinite versions of himself, Cao Yun was now certain that this place was about his mind cultivation. But what was the goal?
And once again, the cycle began anew. With each possible answer to this question, a slightly different Cao Yun appeared. Some fell into despair almost immediately while others degenerated into violence faster than ever before. Clearly, the situation was exerting a toll on Cao Yun and he was able to see it as an outside observer. But again, he might not even be Cao Yun at all.
Besides the uniform space destroying all sense of physical orientation, only his hunger and thirst could tell him how long had passed. But because he was a 1st-grade Mortal Warrior, he could go several weeks without eating or drinking, or sleeping for that matter. Still, he had largely enough resources in his spatial ring. Even with the Supreme emblem on him, he had taken no chance at all. He had thought about putting his emblem within the spatial ring, but then he wasn't sure whether that would allow the Palace of Supreme Wisdom to transport him, or if it would only transport the ring.
As he had those random thoughts in his mind, even more Cao Yun appeared. And utter chaos emerged as each one had thoughts about anything. Some had thoughts about Feng Yingyue, about his brothers, about his family, about anything. Some were coherent and others absolutely absurd. But all thoughts were there.
He had to discover the goal of this place before being driven mad. And it could take a lot of time before he lost it, thanks to his mind cultivation.
Violence didn't seem to be the solution. He had thought about fighting himself but just stopping his thoughts made everyone disappear. So they were not really physically there. They were just reflections of himself in slightly different mirrors. His best bet was that he had to think without causing any new emergence of himself. However, that was basically impossible. As much as he could control his conscious reflection, he simply could not control random thoughts appearing in the back of his mind. And as soon as he would start pondering over the situation, he was certain that he would have conflicting thoughts on the matter.
The only way to control his thoughts was either to quiet down completely or to try and think about them. But thinking about his thoughts was also thinking...
Because the noise was getting too out of hands, Cao Yun decided to take refuge in his sea of consciousness. In theory he could still keep his attention on the outside world at least a little bit. But no, he had decided to completely immerse himself in his sea of consciousness.
Finally he had peace and quiet. But outside, it had to be even more chaotic. Some Cao Yun were now as lethargic as he was, lost in their own sea of consciousness while others were shouting, crying, laughing, attacking.
Protected in his sea of consciousness, Cao Yun started to think about what this place was expecting of him. Was it that he had to accept the reality of all those thoughts? That every single one of those Cao Yun was indeed the real one, or at least a possibility? Would the test be deemed passed once he had accepted that truth? No, because he had. Of course, those were all possible thoughts that could have come to his mind. He had already accepted them. But then, what made him him?
If he could behave so differently based on so few thoughts that in a matter of seconds he could go from peaceful to depressed or violent, then what did it mean to be the real Cao Yun?
Doubts began to emerge in his mind as he thought about the situation. And he recognized the doubt and indecisiveness he had thought he had gotten rid of. Even with the Chamber of Heavenly Court, there was still room for doubt in his mind. And now the doubt was not about his actions but about his very existence. Realizing that fact gave a blow to his confidence. He had been convinced that he had gotten rid of his self-doubts without external help.
By using the Chamber of Heavenly Court, it was however possible to extinguish this doubt. Was it the right answer though?