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Chapter 268: Still Confused With Everything
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Just how hard is the Triple Flower Meditation?
First step required complete and “true” imaging of one’s current body state.
Anybody can imagine themselves in any form and condition but not everyone will be serious enough to produce the ‘image’ of their true selves in their true state and current bodily condition.
In the practice of the Triple Flower Meditation, this step is the gateway and the very important part since while it is not that really hard, being able to picture one’s self in their minds in the current and truest state and condition is still a challenge to many so this was a dividing factor to those who’re able to isolate their large egos from their system.
Second step is to “feel” the entire health of the body and picture it to the projected first step’s self-body image.
Practicing Martial Arts improves health but it also needs a certain ‘healthy state’ of body and mind in order to fully unleash one’s limit and potential.
After projecting an image of one’s self into one’s own mind, the second preparation step should be easy and should come as natural as the first step.
But more than that, the more accurate and more sensitive one’s ‘image’ of his health is, the better will be the meditation’s results after practice.
Why?
How?
Because on the third step, sensing the ‘Mana’ in one’s own body, if successfully accomplished, will enable the practitioner to control his Life Force and make it behave in a way that is beneficial to his own Martial Arts path —be it the path of fists or the path of weapons— even to the point of being able to heal wounds faster than normal rate.
After all, if you’re able to control your Life Force, then you can control how your body behaves at least to a certain extent.
It was this “benefit” that drives practitioners to the extreme when practicing Martial Arts.
The good thing about the Triple Flower Meditation is that unlike specialized methods on sensing and taking control the Mana in one’s own body, whose effects are particular only to their specific Martial Arts, the Triple Flower Mediation Technique is a method that encompasses and fulfills all kinds and levels of Martial Arts requirements, meaning, it can be used by anyone —Martial Arts practitioner or not— and is like an all-unlocking key that can open all kinds of doors of opportunities to the technique’s practitioner.
Even normal people, if they luckily encountered and learned this technique will surely have some benefits in their life’s careers.
In short, the Triple Flower Meditation Technique is applicable to use by all kind and type of people.
But…
Finding it or finding someone that will teach you this technique is one thing; learning it is another; and what more, practicing the technique required one to have extreme amounts of humility, focus, imagination, the basic structure of a human body, sensitivity to one’s own health, and more than that…
It needed either talent or extreme dedication in just finishing the three-step preparation, before one can even officially begin practicing it.
This 3-steps preparation part before practicing the Triple Flower Meditation technique may sound complicated when seen in the surface with all these requirements, but in the actual run of it, it was easy… only elaborate. (guys ya’ll can also practice this at home. It’ a very safe technique ;])
Hard?
Perhaps to some.
Easy?
Definitely to the hard working ones.
Well, this level of difficulty is just quite normal.
After all, if it was really easy to train in Martial Arts, then the world wouldn’t have any need of guns and nuclear weapons.
*****
Rex knew all these fundamental information when practicing this technique. He knew it all pretty well.
And although he was an academic prodigy in the real world, he was just an average ‘genius’ in the world of Martial Arts.
Before, he was only able to practice the first part of the preparation and even that, he has already taken at least four hours in his first attempts.
His best performance yet ever since learning this meditation method was just two weeks ago where he spent 3 hours reaching the second part of being able to accentuate details on his ‘health’ imaging portion.
For the twins, this is already a big progress and is a clear sign of talent on the kid.
Heck they even praised him before and wanted to personally teach him the Martial Arts the two of them are practicing.
But then again, Rex Kingsley is just not any ordinary kid they could just teach on whim…
He was The Father’s pawn and AG’s investment.
As strong and capable as these two masters were, they are still living in a world run by the threat of guns and missiles. Even if the two of them could survive in the jungle by relying on nature’s help and their trained martial bodies, they are still humans made of flesh and bones, susceptible to damage from the weapons used by humans.
They can’t just snatch Rex Kingsley away to be their cute little disciple.
As such, they had to give up and just do their jobs as best and as accurate as they can.
*****
“You were already able to sense your Mana in just two months after learning the technique?”
Frank and Hank exchanged looks as the latter asked this question. They were still skeptical by the whole shebang about him being able to do it.
Because… according to The Father’s plans, if Rex Kingsley is able to change his body, then they will be moving ahead to the next phase of the Project Salvation.
Graham, who was the one who were aware of the whole thing between The Father’s and AG’s conflicting plans, couldn’t help but feel disputed on who to follow between the two.
If he could have a choice, he’d just get his little brother out of the radar of The Family, or at least, perhaps, get the protection of someone stronger or in the same strength as The Family, all for the sake of protecting his own family.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
When Rex nodded on Hank’s question, Frank also followed with a redundant question just to at least wash away his skepticism about it.
“And when you sensed your own Mana in your body last night, you practiced until this morning just before I actually snapped you out of your tranced state?”
Rex thought for a moment before nodding again.
Martinez looked at Graham and the twins glanced back at him as well.
Graham wasn’t a Martial Artist of a specific type for he was just a normal military-trained personnel.
He doesn’t believe in the miracles of Mana or the Human Body. He just strongly believes in Science, and on the fact that if you cut the skin with a knife, it bleeds; if you shoot someone in the head, they die; if you punch someone in the face, they sleep.
It was how he was trained. It was how he had lived his life until now.
As the leader of the three adult men, answering to two bosses with conflicting yet relatively the same kind of desires, Graham was in a conflict on how actually handle this situation ‘based’ on who’s plan between his two superiors.
If he reports this to AG, knowing that there are 24/7 surveillance system installed in this house, he already knew what had happened here during the time when they brought in the NanoMechs.
Augustus would probably look calm but he would be furious. Very. And for sure, not only would he lose his job, he would also lose his life.
Not only that, if he reports to AG first and The Father later on, then The Father would only give him a smile before killing him and his brother.
After all, The Father specifically instructed that he should report to him anything first before reporting it to Augustus.
So, although it would seem that reporting to The Father was the more feasible step to do, he don’t want to die before making sure that his little brother was safe from The Family.
Graham wasn’t afraid of death, he was afraid of not leaving something behind to protect his family.
When stared at by four pairs of eyes, Graham’s stiff sunglasses-expression remained unchanged, perfectly hiding his chaotic mess of thoughts.
Graham walked close to Rex who became stiff and filled with alarm.
His towering hulking frame like that of a gorilla is just too large when he stood threateningly in front of Rex.
The latter began to frown at Graham’s silence but it was only until Graham opened his mouth and asked him a different question.
“If you have power, what will you do?”
“Me? Power?” Rex asked in confusion. “What kind of power are you talking about?”
“The power to save your brother, of course.”
Behind his sunglasses, Rex could tell that Graham was frowning and it was the frown that’s giving him the impression of the big man being irritated.
Rex, for some reason, found courage under the pressure of Graham’s frown and he grits his teeth and frowned in turn. It was a frown of defiance.
“Of course I’m going to protect my brother!” he said with anger.
“How?”
“How…” Rex became lost now that he thought about this.
How indeed?
Possessing power is one thing but saving and protecting his brother was another… and let’s just say that he did saved his brother from that place, what then?
For sure, AG would still find a way to suppress his avenues of escape and drag him back to fulfill the end of his bargain. Perhaps even adding more shackles to tie him down to the deal. After all, he himself knew that AG had invested quite a lot just for the sake of H-Class information on a game.
This was still one of the biggest questions Rex has on AG’s sudden proposition that day.
Even if Rex was able to harness support from the world via the help of the Media, AG was still someone living in the dark side of society. Yes, the media people could dig in their noses with the protection of the light of day but when it turns into night, the devils go out and will play with them.
He at least knew this much. He wasn’t ignorant on the underground world after all since he had been punching his way out of it ever since the game was launched globally.
“You may get the ‘strength’ in your fists to save your brother out of this place but you don’t have the ability to protect him after.”
These words struck Rex like a lightning bolt, hitting him where it hurts the most.
Rex lowered his head, thinking, realizing all of his lackings, and clenching his fists as soon as he had found out just how helpless he really was.
Graham kept on looking at him. The twins and even the four-eyed doctor could only shake their heads and look at the scene. Graham wasn’t even trying to hide the fact that he was making the boy lose all hope of saving his brother. But at the same time, they also knew that there was a weird intent on the reason why Graham did that.
“Become strong.” Graham said and turned his back against the four to go back to the car. But just before he actually went outside the garage gate, he topped and turned to the three adults.
Lowering his sunglasses and revealing a sharp and glaring gaze he asked them, “Did he just say he could feel Mana already? I didn’t hear it.”
After speaking, he went outside and closed the gate.
Frank, Hank, Martinez, and Rex… they all heard it but they all thought differently on why he said that to them.
The twins exchanged looks and had a wry smile.
Martinez became silent and just fixed his glasses to his nose, the reflection of light hiding his eyes.
Rex, however, stared blankly at the garage gate as his mind spun on the meaning on his words. A look of confusion flooded his countenance and it was only because the twins were proceeding to attach the nodes on his body for the therapy and tests that his mind focused on the tasks at hand.
He even dismissed the fact that he was blank in the span of 12 hours again last night.
He also dismissed the fact that he wasn’t able to accomplish what he wanted to do.
Rex also dismissed the notion of digging deeper on the trouble that began with the Black Stuff on his body two days ago.
Yes, his mind is filled with confusion right now.
There are just too many things that had happened in a span of two weeks.
But of it all, he found one thing that made him open his eyes wide in shock and surprise.
“Wait a minute… I haven’t slept in two days but I don’t feel tired at all…”
Interrupted on attaining his goal, Rex, from start to end, was still confused on everything.
*****
Unlike the time when he had practiced on his own, Rex’s session this day lasted seven hours and just like how the twins reacted in the first place, Rex had indeed been able to ‘feel’ the Mana in his body, thus the scanners recorded him being able to enter the first realm of the three enlightening realms of the Triple Flower Meditation.
And even though Martinez was a son of science, knowing the twins’ monstrous bodies and seeing the result of the active scans on Rex’s body, he was also incredulous on the chart-topping, graph-destroying, and bar-hopping results on his body’s heat region’s fluctuating distributions.
There was the heat’s epicenter on the stomach, just slightly above the navel. From there, the heat travels and expands, distributes, then converges back again on the epicenter as if it was building a round trip cycle in all the parts of the body.
Even an in-depth real-time analysis of the heat’s distribution throughout his body also showed how even up to the tip of his fingers and the tiniest of blood vessels get to have the same amount of ‘heat’ distributed to them equally.
In record, Rex completed 36 circulations of this ‘heat’ using whatever ‘form’ he had imagined him to have in his body.
And whether he wanted this to end or not, his body prompted his consciousness to ‘wake up’ from his meditation, thus ending the session, and giving the doctors some useful data to bring back home to their bosses’ labs.
FLASH!
Siva logged in to Terroa, inside Akhenaton’s silent all-viewing sphere’s inner space.
He swiped the air and checked the contacts list saved on his Auricle Device.
Seeing that no one is online, he gave a thought and his body flashed, teleported, and landed him on top of Akhenaton’s head.
Shizzzzzzz…
Emitting an endlessly undying sizzling sound of grinding metals, the golden crown with a black sphere above his and Akhenaton’s head writhed and twirled, doing its own business.
“Akhenaton.” He called to the black sphere above.
“My Lord.”
Answering his call, an image of a person clad in imperial garb on the image of the giant golden idol that Siva’s feet are standing on appeared to have descended from within that swirling black ball of unknown matter.
This person looked as much as the giant golden idol but while the latter was just a big lifeless and expressionless moving metal, the person that now landed in front of Siva and knelt in one knee is a real person in every sense of the word.
No, not actually a real person, but like an image of Akhenaton; an incarnation of his former self, of the warrior emperor who established his own empire using his mighty spear, trampling foes and vanquishing his enemies, dyeing his imperial path with the blood and bones of his fallen enemies.
The Akhenaton kneeling in front of Siva right now is the immortal prisoner that had sworn complete allegiance to Siva in exchange for the ability to be able to go outside of his cage to see the light of day again from time to time.
For a prisoner of a few years, this might not be a bad thing. But for a prisoner of Eons and Eras that had passed, it was a torment to not see even a single speck of light and always be trapped in an eternal world of darkness.
“I’ve called you here… to ask you a few things…”
With a (invisible) conflicting expression, Siva was thinking if he should ask this question or not from an NPC but even though his self-worth, dignity, ego, pride, and logic were telling, yelling at him that he wouldn’t get any satisfying answer… Siva still had a vague feeling that the enlightenment(s) that he seeks regarding these confusing new sets of memories can only be answered by someone who had lived a long life.
He can’t ask anyone in the real world about these questions since only the game’s creators are the ones knowledgeable about it.
And those creators either hate him to his bones and even plotting to kill him, or, they are dead.
So, he had no choice but to be radical and think outside the box of logic, and ask someone from inside the game.
.
.
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Answers to questions plaguing a God…
In a world only God knows.
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