Chương 97: Chapter 96: Introspection

Yang finished his breakfast and took his leave of Ye Xuan, who caught him before he could head out.

"What are your plans for the day, Brother Yang?"

"I am going to check the lecture schedule," Yang said.

"I want to see when Elder Fu Ming's next talisman class is. I have a few questions I would like to ask him." Ye Xuan looked at him with an expression of mild commiseration.

"I do not envy you, Brother Yang. You are always busy with one thing or another." Yang smiled.

"What are your plans for the day Brother Ye Xuan?" Ye Xuan's expression shifted into something more serious, "Honestly, I have been playing around too much these past few days. Too much time with friends, not enough cultivation." He shook his head.

"I can feel I am close to the second stage. I want to push hard over the next few days and try to break through."

"You are going into closed cultivation?" Yang asked.

"For a few days at least. You probably will not see much of me." He brightened slightly.

"Although Brother Hao next door has promised to bring me meals from the food hall on his way back, so at least I will not be surviving on dried provisions the whole time."

"Best of luck," Yang said.

"I look forward to seeing you come back at the second stage, Brother Ye Xuan." Ye Xuan grinned.

"Thank you for your good wishes, Brother Yang." Yang set off toward the outer sect hall. Ye Xuan had been his longest companion since the day they met on the ship to the sect. Even during the times when Yang had not been especially open, Ye Xuan had always been welcoming, offering a seat at his table at the food hall, keeping Yang in mind when Senior Brother Jiang Zhen Hao's banquet came up. Small things, freely given.

Yang, after his time in the Cardwright World, was all the more appreciative of them for knowing what their absence felt like. As he walked, he found himself thinking about the Cardwright World, as he had been doing on and off since returning. Not with any emotion but rather more as an observation, turning his own memories over and over again to make sense of things. Coming back to his own body had made one thing apparent that had not been clear while he was living through it.

Something had been off about him in Markech. Wrong in a way that went deeper than his circumstances. He had always been solitary. Even as a child he had been mostly attached to Grandpa and not especially close with other children in the village. But he had never been incurious.

Curiosity was perhaps the thing most fundamental to how he moved through the world, the reason he had spent hours in White Cloud Sect's library, the reason he had thrown himself into card creation, the reason he could not encounter something interesting without needing to understand it. That was who he was. He may delay somethings due to lack of access or due to being occupied by other interests, but he always kept it in mind so he can later come back to it later.

But in Markech, he had not once wondered about the world around him. He had never sought to understand Reylan's culture, its history, its cities, its people. He had barely thought of Lucien's mother. He had been dropped into an entirely new world and had felt not a single flicker of curiosity about it beyond what served card creation. When he looked back at it now, it felt like watching a life through a blurry lens, or like watching a black and white film when he was used to seeing in colour.

He remembered events but felt no real attachment to any of them. Since returning, it had been the opposite. Hundreds of questions in his mind about that world and its countries, its traditions, its history, things he had never thought or bothered to look into while he was living there. But after coming back to his own body, he now felt like himself again. He had a few theories about this.

The first was that being pushed into a dead body in another world had affected him somehow, making him detached from the world he had entered. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. The second was that it had been Lucien's own brain chemistry working against him. Lucien's depression had a far stronger effect on how he lived his life there than he had realised at the time. He leaned toward the second theory.

He has no way to prove one right either way but he had experience with his adult soul being reborn in an infant body, and he remembered what that was like. The inability to fully control childish impulses, the intense need for Grandpa's presence, the grief of losing him that had hit with a force his adult understanding could not fully buffer. His mind had understood those feelings as disproportionate even while he was feeling them but he could never really control them fully.

He had been living through them rather than consciously choosing to act on them. The Cardwright World had felt the same way in retrospect. Card creation had been engraved into Lucien's body and mind, a life's obsession imprinted so deeply that once Yang occupied the body, he had simply been pulled along it. Everything else, his family, the world around him, his own nature, had been suppressed beneath that. Yang had spent almost two decades in that state and had not fully noticed.

He again thought of Lucien's mother. He still could barely picture her face. He still felt grief for her, but the surprising realization was that the shame at having not thought of her was far stronger after returning to his own body, than it was when he was reminded of her in Lucien's body by Lord Ardeth. He hadn't realized how muted his feelings had become while living as Lucien. He had no desire to return to that world.

The state of living in that world in constant depression was no small matter, and beyond that, he did not fully understand how it worked. If he went back, where would he end up? Lucien's body had certainly been destroyed. The card he had activated in the mines had been strong enough that anyone close to him in that chamber, himself, Lord Ardeth, the guards nearby, would have died instantly, even if there were contingency cards in place to prevent anyone from blowing the whole mine up.

There was no body to return to. Would he be pushed into another dead body? Or would he find himself a floating soul, unable to affect anything, unable to act? As for the Cardwright World door still sitting in his Sea of Consciousness, pulsing gently on the web of threads, he had a feeling that whatever he thought or wanted, it was a path he would eventually be made to walk again. He was reminded of a quote he remembered from his first life. The willing, Destiny guides them. The unwilling, Destiny drags them.

He did not particularly relish the idea of being dragged and recognised the feeling of inevitability when he encountered it, but for now, he was at liberty to ignore that feeling. Only the future will tell what will come of that door. He wiped the thought aside as the outer sect hall came into view and filed it away with the other things he was not yet ready to deal with. Inside, Senior Brother Bo Yu was nowhere to be seen. Senior Sister Wei Wei was behind the desk and greeted him as he approached.

"Junior Brother Yang. What brings you here?"

"Two things, Senior Sister. I am looking for the schedule of upcoming talisman classes from Elder Fu Ming, and I wanted to ask about Jade Spirit Tea."

"Both are well within the scope of the outer sect hall. Give me a moment." She searched through a drawer and produced a sheet of paper listing talisman classes for the next two weeks across various teachers.

"Elder Fu Ming does not have any classes scheduled in the next two weeks. He has been occupied with inner sect commitments. We do not know when his next classes will be held, but the list covers all current talisman classes being offered in the meantime." She paused.

"I have heard from Senior Brother Bo Yu that your skills have improved considerably. You should look into the more advanced classes as well. You may find the basic ones no longer suit your level." Yang accepted the sheet and thanked her. She reached under the desk and produced five small pouches, setting them in a row.

"These are the available grades of Jade Spirit Tea. Which were you looking for?"

"I have not tried it before," Yang said.

"I was looking to keep some in my cave for visitors." Senior Sister Wei Wei looked at the row of pouches and picked up the third one.

"This one. It is two grades above the basic, which is good enough to show proper appreciation to a guest without being extravagant. Anything higher than the third grade from an outer sect disciple would be excessive""Then this would do, Senior Sister." Yang bought the pouch, already planning to try a cup himself. He thanked her and turned to leave.

"Junior Brother Yang," she called after him. He paused.

"I have heard about your remarkable improvement in your talisman skills from Senior Brother Bo Yu. I look forward to seeing your improved talismans." He looked back with a small smile.

"I will keep some on me when I next come to the outer sect hall, Senior Sister. I would also like to hear what you think of them." He made his way out. He had walked the path back to his cave residence from the outer sect peak dozens of times without paying attention to what grew alongside it. Today he looked. It took him less time than he expected to spot them. A tight spiral of leaves, unmistakable now that he knew what to look for, growing at the base of a large stone a few paces off the path.

Then another, further along, planted in a sunny gap between two cultivated beds. Then several more as he looked beyond the immediate path, scattered across the mountain slope. Spirit Spiral plants. Everywhere he looked, once he started looking. He had simply never noticed them before. Plants had not been a particular interest before, and since joining the sect, he had not needed to forage or identify anything, so there had been no need to pay attention to what was growing.

He looked now at the mountain slope with something like new eyes, realising how little of what was planted here he could actually identify, and made a mental note to look further into the different types of cultivation plants common to this peak as he walked back to his cave residence.