Chương 27: Are Illusions Art

It was as Jin got closer to his apartment building, which bordered the inner ring and the forest and the plains surrounding it, that he saw an interesting scene. It was his neighbour Hashimi, who he had gone out of his way to avoid previously. She was standing on the hill next to his apartment building and looking at the inner ring. She stood in front of a canvas held up by an easel, holding a paintbrush in her right hand and a palette in her left. She was painting and looked more serene than he'd ever seen her.

As another one of his neighbours exited the apartment building, which now had four out of six apartments occupied, he gently tapped the man on the shoulder to gain his attention.

"How long has she been at it?" he asked, nodding his head towards the woman on the hill. The boy tilted his head, looked at Hashimi and gave a disparaging chortle.

"Whole day from what I saw," he replied.

"I don't know how she's gonna make good scenarios if she wastes her time on such trivial pursuits. Well, not everyone's made to succeed," he said before walking off. Jin watched the boy leave with a tilted head. What was wrong with being an artist? He wondered. Making Illusion Rooms was just a job, if perhaps already an artistic one. You still needed other hobbies to even out your life. It was this lack of free time and hobbies that probably made cultivators as unbearable as they were, he decided.

Everyone was a bigger asshole when they were stressed, anxious and never rested. He shook his head and took a step towards the apartment building, before pausing. It seemed like Hashimi had not made a good impression on anyone really, which probably meant that she was potentially feeling quite isolated. At the moment she seemed at peace so maybe now would be the time to apologise for the brusque manner in which he'd handled her back then, as justified it had been.

It rankled him that while others were paying inner disciples to have a bad relationship with him, he was creating a bad relationship with other inner disciples completely on his own as well. He thought about that for a second, before turning around and starting to trek up the grassy hill that the girl had occupied. It was as he finished ascending that he managed to glimpse what she was painting and paused in his steps.

It was a painting of the inner ring, as expected but it looked different from what he had expected. He had thought that it would have either been realistic or in the traditional Asian monochrome. However, if anything the painting resembled Picasso. The edges were all fucked and showing the same thing from different perspectives. The buildings were looming over each other in ways that implied emotional saturation rather than architectural design.

"Howdy neighbour," Hashimi said in a quiet voice as she put her brush on the canvas to give the hexagonal clouds in the sky a rougher edge.

"Hello to you as well," Jin replied with a sigh.

"I wanted to apologise for the way I behaved yesterday, but I do have to say that in my opinion, you came on a bit too strongly. You've calmed down since then it seems?" he asked. Hashimi shrugged as she continued painting.

"I was very excited to pass and it is who I am. I'm not willing to change it for other people."

"I agree, if you change for other people then you'll just be sad because you can't be your authentic self," Jin muttered lightly as he stood next to her and looked at the process of her painting. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"You're quite good at abstraction," he commented after a while seeing the structure come together. It was an art form to be able to depict at the same time the reality while also depicting very clearly in what way this reality had been shifted to provoke a different emotion. Hashimi's brush paused as she was adding shading to a corner.

"That's interesting," she said.

"Do you need something?" Jin tilted his head.

"Not really," he determined.

"I'm doing quite well all in all."

"Truly? I heard that there was someone going around giving spirit stones to people so they wouldn't collaborate with you."

"You have very big ears," Jin remarked, impressed.

"You hear more things than me."

"Do you not care? That there are forces working against you, people sabotaging you?"

"Unless people start trying to murder me, success is inevitable," Jin said.

"Also, life isn't too bad even when you have enemies." He'd had business rivals in the past as well and some of the stuff that they'd gotten up to had been quite nasty. But here it was the exact same thing. As long as things stayed simply on the level of social sabotage, not physical violence, he didn't care too much.

"I think that all of those people spending their time thinking about ways in which they can make me perform worse, are themselves not improving the way they should be. In the end, assuming that they are sabotaging me because they cannot rely on their own skills to defeat me, this simply means that the moment the sabotage fails I win regardless.

Sadly, some people are more focused on tearing others down rather than building themselves up, but that's just the truth of life and you will meet people like this everywhere you go."

"Even if you become an Elder?" Hashimi asked. Jin thought about it for a second. Did being an Elder truly mean that one had defeated the darkness in one's own soul? The inferiority complexes, the greed, the hate, the anxiety.

"I don't think you change much even if you live longer and have a higher cultivation level. One man explained it to me quite succinctly. He was 64 years old and he told me that the people he knew now at this age who were stupid, had already been stupid back then. I think most humans lack the ability to self-reflect and to intentionally change their being into something better. Rather, whenever they fail at any given task, they blame the world rather than themselves because it is easier."

"I hope that you are wrong," the girl said to him.

"Do you really like my painting?" she asked, switching the topic. Jin looked at it again. It was beautiful in a way.

"The clashing colour composition is good, and I think that it blurs the line between reality and fiction quite well. I understand the emotion you're trying to depict with it."

"And what would that be?" Hashimi asked.

"I just paint, I don't think about it too much."

"Then it's even more impressive," Jin commented.

"But, reading into it. It's an abstracted version of the inner ring that you have recently joined. You turned it into an effigy of different perspectives and the clashing colour composition of red and blue. You feel not at ease, alienated. You have recently discovered that simply because one progresses on the path of mastery, does not mean that the people one meets there will be any better than the people one has left behind. They'll simply be different."

He hummed thoughtfully, thinking about the lessons about being a good fortune-teller that he'd read about. It mostly boiled down to making general statements. He looked at the painting again. Colours clashed in an intentional manner. Long shadows were thrown in a variety of directions. No people were visible despite the fact that they should have been seen from this hill.

"In essence," he determined, "You feel alone in a world that you do not understand. Perhaps in your eyes, it disappointed some expectations."

"Has it not? I thought that in a sect focused on creating art, people would be different. That they would understand the need to create," Hashimi said bitterly.

"People don't change," Jin decided and glanced at the girl. He felt awkward when he noted that there were tears building at the corners of her eyes.

"Maybe I should stop painting if it means that someone comes so quickly to analyze me just from a glimpse."

"It's the misfortune of the artist. Art requires emotions, and if you're good enough these emotions become vividly perceivable to anyone who sees it. You must create to attain fulfilment, but doing so bares your soul to the world in a manner that can be both exhilarating and unpleasant." He thought back to the Mad Monk Sect where the same misconception had happened with that disciple who had passed the test thinking that Jin must have been a horrible person to create something like Outlast.

Essentially someone had misunderstood his personality based on one of his creations.

"Every act you do, artistic or not, will eventually draw the judgement of your social surroundings."

"Would you say you're good at architectural design?" Jin suddenly asked to change the topic before Hashimi started genuinely crying.

"Yes, it's one of my strengths," she said with a raspy voice.

"But I heard everyone here uses templates, so what's the point?" Jin thought of the zombie game that he would have to create. The level design couldn't really use the Earth-level modern architecture and appliances. The best way to collaborate with someone would be to provide someone who was good with architecture and understood the cultural influences of the Imperium with the level design and the bare bones and let them create the buildings depending on how they thought they should look.

Meanwhile, Jin would work on the characters and interactions.

"Would you be interested in hearing a story?" he asked, wondering if she was willing to hear his vision.

"Sure, I like stories," Hashimi replied, rubbing a beige sleeve over her eyes.

"Then let me tell you a story about the last humans, although, considering we too are humans, perhaps it's a story of The Last of Us."