I first met her when I was… I think it happened when I was four hundred years old.
Our meeting wasn’t the best.
Before I get to that, I’ll remind you of one thing:
About every million years the Aura between Heavens and Earth begins to wildly fluctuate, making cultivation very hard, if not impossible, so pretty much every cultivator unfortunate enough to be born during such times dies of old age, unable to cultivate or use their spells, no matter what Realm they have.
The longest lifespan one may achieve with cultivation is 10.000 years. If they push it with various techniques and methods of survival, it would be ~30.000 years at most. I’m talking about the Cultivation Realms one can achieve in this Universe, of course.
In order to break through this limitation, one must break through the shackles of this world and reach the Immortal World.
But ten thousand years is an insignificant amount of time in the grand scheme of things. It’s not enough to last through the period of fluctuation.
Let’s call every million years where the Aura is stable an Era.
Every million years, an Era comes to an end. By the end of an era, its civilization advances to its peak, usually. Obviously, such a civilization can leave its traces behind even if it fades.
There are countless ruins scattered around the Galaxy. They have all kinds of things inside them: artifacts that we are yet unable to analyze, materials we can’t produce, knowledge, we would have to spend thousands and thousands of years to develop.
Little of it is intact, but even the remnants are precious.
That is why many cultivators flock to ruins whenever they find one. Who knows what kind of miracle one can find there? Who would resist such temptation?
I wasn’t somebody who could when I was four hundred years old.
It was at that time that a crack in space was detected in the star sector I was in.
Cultivators starting at the level of Nascent Soul and ending at the level of Mind Manifestation all rushed towards that crack. I did too. I was a mid-level Nascent Soul practitioner back then.
The ruins were ridiculously dangerous.
If it was any other Nascent Soul practitioner, they would die. At least, in my experience, I was the only one at that level who was able to survive. Barely.
The ruin had several connected pocket dimensions inside. We called them floors. There were as large as a mid-size planet each and were full of fun things inside. Overall, there were 60 floors to the ruin.
The floors were connected, but in order to get from one floor to another, one needed to spend quite some time to understand the way they are connected and cheat the system guarding the floors in order to open a space corridor from one dimension to another.
It was a lot of labor, especially when you worked alone. I have said it already, but the cultivators of our Galaxy have only a rudimentary understanding of space.
Things like the most primitive teleportation gates, spacial storage, vehicles that just travel faster by utilizing the basic laws of the Way of Space… Nothing much.
It was a worthwhile trip for me to visit that place just to understand the methods of the people of the previous Era. They were so much ahead of us… I personally benefited greatly as I mastered their spacial technology, or what survived of it anyway.
From floor 1 to 20, there were only dangers. Traps, animated puppets, mind-controlling devices, poisons – a great variety of deadly challenges awaited. There were no rewards. Just planet-sized dimensions of death.
I don’t want to brag (I do, I slightly do), but it was fun to me. Somebody with Supreme-quality roots like me is leagues above everybody else and while everybody else struggled with their lives, I was having fun while overcoming the challenges.
From floor 21 to 40, there were a few artifacts I found. I can’t remember what they were, I lost them all in the end anyway and the shock of what happened after overrode many of my memories anyway.
The floors just had more traps, more exquisite challenges, more people died, leaving just a small bunch. Nothing notable.
From floor 41 to 50, there were still deadly things everywhere, but they were sparser.
It was because the builders weren’t expecting many people would survive getting so far, for one, and it was also because many things couldn’t stand the test of time.
On these floors, there were many precious things to be found. Only a handful survived coming that far, so we challenged each other in a competition over the goods.
I was the lowest in terms of cultivation but I was a very famous Demonic practitioner, and to survive that far, I wasn’t without my own card up the sleeve.
That section was still the second place among all the most dangerous floors in that place for me.
But I survived, reaped a lot of benefits, found a way to the lower floors and went on my way.
The dangers on the previous floors had tempered me, and floors 51 to 59 were free of dangers completely, so I had the time to cultivate and I was able to reach the peak of my cultivation realm at that time.
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When I was on the 59th floor, I broke through to Soul Formation at last.
I haven’t told of it, but every major realm, starting with Foundation Building, a cultivator has to go through a tribulation from the Heavens at each breakthrough.
It didn’t matter where I was, the tribulation would get me anyway.
Even if it was a separate dimension, I was still hit hard by it.
But I wasn’t the only thing it hit.
You might be wondering, why did I remind you of the whole change of Eras every million of years?
Well, think about it: if you are living during such times, would you not try to somehow survive through them?
The people of the previous Era did try. They attempted to seal their most promising and their most influential people inside separate artificial dimensions all over the Galaxy.
The sealed ones would be put into hibernation, in hopes that one day they would be able to awaken and revive their Era’s glory.
Except for one notable exception, every project failed, however. The sealed ones all died, their dimensions shattered, everything eroded under the persistent power of time.
And I just happened to bring my tribulation to the Seal of the only survivor of the previous Era.
Maybe it was Fate, maybe it was luck, maybe it was just a coincidence. My tribulation managed to shatter the seal where the only survivor slumbered.
It also managed to awaken the survivor.
Now, I’ll have to ask you to put you in the survivor’s shoes: You awaken after a great amount of time, your whole civilization is all but dead and forgotten, everybody you knew is long dead. You might as well have been transported into an alien Galaxy, left completely alone, without a purpose or a place to call home.
I am not sure I can understand her feelings at that time.
I do know that I did a very dumb thing when I attacked her on reflex when I first saw her.
She should have been approximately equal to me in terms of power, her cultivation level suggested that at least. Yet, she was on a completely different level from me.
It took her a minute to tear both of my legs and my right arm off.
After a second minute, my second arm and my ears and eyes were not mine any longer.
By the end of the third minute, all of my bones were crushed at least in two places and my lungs, liver, stomach, kidneys, intestines were turned into mush. My brains literally exploded and my heart was ripped out.
Maybe getting bored with playing with me, she took off, leaving me to die slowly.
Anybody else below Mind Manifestation would die after receiving so much damage, but the Demonic Path I developed at that time had the advantage of letting me survive in the direst circumstances.
I slowly and painstakingly reconnected my bones, regrew my limbs and restored my internal organs over two decades.
It was I was too busy trying to survive to notice that she returned just a year after she almost killed me and observed me struggling all that time.
So, I wasn’t prepared to have my heart ripped out the moment I finished healing.
That time, she took it out in a way that it was still connected to me on a spiritual level, so I wouldn’t be able to regrow it anymore.
Not only that, but the curse she placed on me was also such, that if she stopped my ripped out heart from beating, I would die.
From that point on, for two long centuries, I became her slave.
I couldn’t oppose her nor could I run away. I could only faithfully follow her orders.
It is slightly ironic how she literally took possession of my heart at that time. I didn’t see the punchline back then though.
She decided to explore the Galaxy after she woke up, and by exploring I mean causing so much havoc that I couldn’t even dream of it.
The entire Galaxy began boiling in rage at that time, the big shots from the very centre tried to destroy her, but, miraculously, she not only survived but came back even stronger every time and she caused even more chaos in turn.
It was because of her that I started learning Formations. We really needed the Formations else we would die. They were also needed for several of her plans and when she found out that I had a talent for them she spared no effort to nurture that talent.
I had mixed feelings about her.
At first, I resented her. But we lived through so much together that I found… a twisted sense of loyalty and belonging. I was alone too at that time. My situation was not as terrible as hers, but I still lacked a feeling of belonging. With her, I grew to have that feeling.
I still hated her, but I would not betray her. It was strange but humans are strange people like that.
But… as we travelled together, as we interacted, I slowly understood her and… I started to feel sympathy.
Besides, she was brilliant, just like the Sun. She was incredibly charismatic and to me, she was somebody I could look up to, rely on. It’s funny how she made me suffer far more than I ever had before I met her but I never held it against her.
I was on the verge of dying so often, that if there were Grim Reapers that harvested our souls to the Underworld I would be on friendly terms with a dozen. Despite this, she never let me die and she never left me to fend for myself.
She was holding on to my life, but she also took responsibility for it. I could respect that.
And, little by little, I started to develop feelings other than respect for her.
She… I don’t think she ever loved me. She maybe loved the feeling of having somebody like me by her side. Somebody who could feel that abyss of loneliness in her heart. When she controlled my life, she also took responsibility for it, and maybe that responsibility was an excuse for her to go on.
Even when she looked happy when she was together with me, I knew deep inside that she was simply escaping the dark thoughts constantly clouding her mind.
I was always worried about her, whenever she got hurt I didn’t hesitate to flip the skies open in order to heal her. But it wasn’t because I was worried about her injuries, it was because I was worried that she would decide to give up trying to go on and choose to succumb to them.
I suffered far more than ever before after I met her. But After I fell in love with her, I suffered to the point where it became a normal state for me.
When she died… I wasn’t surprised. I felt devastated but was able to accept it at the same time.
For me, she will always be the love of my life. She, who was stronger than anyone and yet more fragile than anyone will forever live inside my heart. I was scarred by this love. It broke me several times. Maybe it would be best for me never to have met her. But I do not wish to forget her.
I wonder where she is right now. Is she still sleeping somewhere out there, waiting to be awakened?
I… I will not awaken her this time. She had suffered enough. I don’t want her to experience the pain of losing everything over again.
…
“Why are you crying, Oalus? It’s just a broken leg, I’m sure you’ve been through worse”
“Haha, *sniff* it’s just the body’s reaction. No need to worry, Master”
“I see. Still, I’m sorry for startling you all of a sudden. Also, congratulations! You are the now a peak-level Qi-Refinement cultivator! Though remember not to refine or use any qi until your meridians are fully healed”
“Yes, Master”