Episode 326
I'd created the Dark Sky Moonward Peak mind method, but things after that didn't proceed smoothly.
Senior Sister Tian hadn't been merely acting as a guide to lead me along. The invisible stairs weren't conveniently connected. Sometimes, the next step was dozens of meters away. At such times, I was forced to take a big leap or unleash the ability of Crowtaker. That naturally led to the consumption of my internal energy and mental strength.
In addition, the little oxygen in the atmosphere made it difficult to breathe even if I stayed still. The cold I felt during my previous fall was still annoying me.
What helped me in that moment was my experience in the north. Maybe I had grown accustomed to the cold that way, as I was able to operate the First Fire Technique in the most efficient manner to preserve body temperature.
The problem was that I couldn't maintain the operation of my internal energy and Dark Qi at the same time. In order to keep myself warm, I was forced to suspend the circulation of Dark Qi. Every time I did so, I became blind and was forced to halt my ascent toward the moon.
Sometimes I thought about merging Dark Qi and Fire Qi, so these problems could be solved naturally.
However, the conclusion that came to me quickly was that I shouldn't do so. For some reason, it seemed that operating these two forces separately would lead to much greater benefits in the long run.
Time passed as I thought about various things. Paradoxically, I nearly forgot the passage of time in this state. Honestly, I was close to a state of selflessness, but I could see that the speed of my ascent was gradually accelerating.
The higher I rose, the more the gray sky changed. At some point, the surroundings felt dark even if I didn't use the Dark Sky Moonward Peak. As a result, the amount of oxygen decreased and it became colder.
Maintaining body temperature was extremely important, so every time I ran low on warmth, I immediately stopped and started internal energy circulation.
"Sigh..."
Once I finished the circulation, I sat on the step I was on, one leg dangling as I looked down. The sight was dizzying. I was high enough to look down at the sea of white clouds. From this angle, they looked like the foam on top of a mug of beer.
In any case, now that I had climbed this high, my fear seemed to have decreased. More than that, it felt like my sense of reality had disappeared.
Still, it wasn't a sight I wanted to see for a long time. My gaze naturally shifted to the sky. It was a spectacular scene in a different sense. It felt like I had literally entered the world of stars, a different world beyond the sky.
The starry sky was dark. Just as night and day didn't seem to exist in Spirit Mountain, this other world seemed to only know night. Nevertheless, I didn't feel it was completely dark due to the starlight that became clearer as the surroundings darkened.
I suddenly understood why the phrase "Silver River galaxy[1]" existed. The pitch-black space was filled with stars, and I could see a cluster of stars flowing like a river.
At the center of that dazzling galaxy was my destination: a pale, pure white disc. It was more eerie than mysterious. The full moon was showing its presence.
In fact, the moon had appeared a while back. I'd forgotten the passage of time, but calculating it with my senses, it must've been three or four days ago.
In other words, I had been climbing toward the moon steadily for at least three days, but I still didn't feel like I was getting closer. I couldn't grasp the distance even when sharpening my vision. The bizarre thing was that the size of the moon was constant.
Didn't she say that it isn't Hell, but the entrance to Hell?
In other words, Hell didn't start when I arrived at the moon. Perhaps the moon was just some kind of device.
I was a bit puzzled, but decided not to think about it too much. That was a question that would be solved when I arrived at the moon.
I took my eyes off the moon and looked inside my body. Over the past few days, my handling of energy had advanced greatly. It wasn't just when controlling Dark Qi, but also when operating my existing energy. It felt like I had broken through to a new realm.
I was calm about this fact rather than surprised. I had felt it to some extent while experiencing various events in the north. I had gained enough experience and insight, and even back then, I knew that if I was given time to refine it, I could make a significant leap forward.
I had thought cold places were unsuitable for practicing the First Fire Technique, but that wasn't true. There were disadvantages when it came to improving the strength of internal energy, but there were also advantages in other aspects.
It was natural. After all, training gave the best results in harsh environments. In order to truly feel that small spark of warmth inside my body, being in the middle of a snowfield was far more effective than being in a desert.
There had been other harvests. The use of Crowtaker was becoming more natural. I thought I finally understood the meaning of the ambiguous phrase "moving with the wind."
That was probably largely due to environmental factors. I was in the air at least thousands or tens of thousands of meters above the ground, so I was bound to feel something that pertained to floating or flying.
Thanks to that, I was able to fly quite freely. My little wind spirit would probably be quite surprised if she could see this.
Of course, the biggest harvest was my newly created mind method, Dark Sky Moonward Peak. Thanks to that, I could now completely control my Dark Qi.
That meant two things: First, the Dark Qi inside the Iron-Blooded Lord could be removed without much risk. Secondly, if I reunited with Verita, I could move without being seen by her eyes. I hadn't accurately grasped the nature of Verita's golden eyes, but I felt it would be the case.
"I've rested enough," I muttered. I dusted myself off and stood up.
I wasn't sure if I was getting closer to my destination, but I couldn't turn back now. No matter whether the result awaiting me was death or survival, I was forced to keep going up.
***
I was heading toward the moon in a daze when I suddenly had a thought. At least thirty days, or perhaps even fifty, had passed, but my mind was surprisingly fine. It wouldn't have been a surprise if I had gone mad in this environment, but my mind was surprisingly stable. Even so, I hadn't lost my fear, nor had I transcended death.
It was only after I looked inside myself that I understood why: I had gained confidence. Regardless of my condition or the environment, as long as I had confidence in my survival, I could remain calm even if I fell into Hell.
The same applied in the sky, which was tens of thousands of meters away from the ground. I felt that I could somehow survive in this place with no answers. I had no clever tricks, and it could just be unfounded confidence; but as long as my mind believed it, I could remain unshaken and fearless.
Separately, I had one question: Why was my Dark Qi stored in the middle dantian?
The only way I used the Dark Qi was to assist my eyesight and see the invisible staircase, but it was energy that couldn't be replenished, so I saved it as much as possible. Of course, my proficiency in the mind method was still lacking and I naturally wasted some energy.
To be honest, I wasn't sure at first if I could make it all the way to the moon. However, I had made an unexpected miscalculation. To be exact, the rate at which my Dark Qi decreased was much slower than I thought. It even seemed almost inexhaustible.
It wasn't intentional, but I had used the Dark Qi a few times in combination with my internal energy, which allowed me to roughly gauge how much of it was consumed.
The internal energy used by my eye technique was quite high. It wasn't just a matter of focusing the Dark Qi in my forehead. The energy had to be constantly circulated through the meridians.
I briefly wondered if my internal energy had somehow transformed into Dark Qi. Then I checked the total amount stored in my lower dantian and found that wasn't the case. In other words, something was happening inside my body that I hadn't grasped yet.
It was naturally uncomfortable as a martial artist, but surprisingly, my mind wasn't that disturbed. Strangely enough, I was feeling a peace I had never felt before. An environment where I could concentrate on martial arts without being disturbed by anyone else was a blessing in itself.
"Sigh..." I breathed slowly.
Difficulty in breathing meant the air in the atmosphere was thin. In such places, the natural energy of the environment was usually scarce as well. Indeed, this was tens of thousands of meters above the clouds. There was no way such an empty place would be filled with abundant natural energy.
Thus, I had to think of the worst-case scenario, in which all my internal energy was consumed and I had to get through it with only my Dark Qi.
After two more days, the situation changed again.
I blinked and looked around. I'd once thought that the world above the clouds would be warm and pleasant to live in, but that wasn't the case at all. This place was dark, mysterious, and cold enough to numb the body, and there were parts that could somehow consume a person's mental strength.
Even standing still, my thoughts wandered to trivial things. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the moon and stars and felt insignificant.
"It seems like I'm almost there." For the first time in a while, I muttered something that could be called speech.
Just as I said, the moon, which previously hadn't changed in size, was now so close that I could almost reach out and touch it. It was amazing.
The moon I had seen from a distance was beautiful, and it felt like a treasure trove full of secret mysteries. However, I didn't feel that up close. The moon's surface was rough enough to be a bit ugly. At some point, it no longer emitted that mysterious light.
I felt as though I was witnessing the moon's bare face. I couldn't help wondering how many people in this world had seen it.
It wasn't far away. I was close enough that I could reach the moon if I jumped off this staircase. Yet I didn't take that final step. I crossed my arms and fell into thought instead, wondering if this was really the right destination.
I pushed my eye technique to the limit, but I couldn't see anything on the surface of the moon. There were no moon rabbits or anything that could be a living being. If this place was Hell as Senior Sister Tian said, and all Hells were connected, I figured it would have been filled with demonic beings.
I stared at the moon with unresolved questions.
I could either go or not go. Faced with two options, I chose the latter.
I sat cross-legged in a position where I could see the moon and closed my eyes. If this was a problem that required a long period of thought, I would think about it until I got an answer. Fortunately, I wasn't pressed for time.
Before I knew it, I had forgotten the feeling of impatience. It wasn't the same as having a sense of leisure or ease, however. I'd just simply decided to accept everything as part of the process.
This was a place that went beyond silence. It had no day or night, and not even a breeze blew. Once I started circulating my energy, nothing easily broke my concentration.
In the dark sky where no clouds existed, natural energy would be faint. That didn't mean it was absent, though. Interestingly, even in this completely dark space that was close to nothingness, the five elements still existed.
I wondered why. I still didn't fully understand how I could sense the five elements in a place with no fire, rivers, plants, earth, or metal. I took a deep breath while thinking about the reason.
Perhaps it had been too long since I was in a quiet place like this and simply focused on internal energy circulation, so it was almost fun.
I closed my eyes as I focused. Then when I opened them, I looked at the moon.
At first, I spent most of my time devoted to internal energy circulation. Gradually, that became unnecessary. There was no need to move, and thus no need to consume internal energy.
From then on, I started fully observing the moon. The moon's bare face was uglier than I thought, but I gradually got used to it.
Honestly, I hadn't been very interested in the moon until today. I had always been more interested in the sun, which had the greatest influence on my internal energy. Yet I realized that if the sun was in this position, I wouldn't even be able to look at it. My whole body would've been incinerated already.
So, I thought that the moon was a relatively merciful ruler. Meanwhile, the sun was a tyrant that didn't allow anyone to look at it.
Of course, the moon was two-sided, just as Senior Sister Tian had said. It outwardly seemed gentle or compassionate, but it could inwardly be scheming something different.
Once, I stared at it for days in order to get a glimpse of the moon's true nature. When my eyes ached, I closed them and focused on internal energy circulation.
It was such a quiet place that I was able to focus not only on internal energy, but also the movements of Dark Qi and the resulting reactions and changes in my body.
One day, I was observing these movements when I had a strange realization. My body didn't tire out and the environment didn't change, but my energy didn't circulate consistently. It was abundant some days and sparse on other days.
If I were to think of the reason, it was most probably due to my thoughts and mindset. Sometimes the moon felt mysterious, and other times it felt a bit scary. There were times when I felt nothing, and times when I was lost in thinking about the moon's appearance. Unlike when I was on the ground, the appearance of the moon was always constant.
So maybe it was a simple misconception that the First Fire Technique was more efficient when practicing in a hot place. Perhaps it wasn't that I drew more power from Yang Qi, but that the sheer enjoyment of the warmth enhanced the efficiency of my internal energy circulation.
I wasn't a hundred percent certain, but I didn't think it was wrong. If so, the five elements weren't the source of the power itself, but merely part of the flow.
Suddenly, the idiom "flowers in a mirror and the moon reflected in the lake" came to mind. I wondered if it meant that the moon I saw now was an illusion.
No, that wasn't the case. The moon was definitely real.
However, the longer I looked down, the more the idea of going to the moon faded. And yet sitting here until I died wasn't the right answer either.
I'd thought I had only two options—going to the moon or not—but that wasn't right.
I rose from where I was sitting, turned my back to the pale moon, and started descending the invisible stairs. My long ascent had ended, and the descent had begun.
Of course, going down was much faster than coming up. If someone were watching from below, they might have misunderstood and thought I was just falling.
The dark night sky and the galaxy that stretched out beyond it started to blur. The sky turned gray once again. My body fell through the clouds and I once again heard the cry of a monster. Looking down, I saw the rocky mountains again for the first time in a while.
In truth, among the many mountain ranges, I couldn't tell which one was the peak of Spirit Mountain. After all, the rocky mountains lacked distinct features. Viewed from above, each mountain looked like the others.
That was why I had to use the stairs to go down. At the very least, the staircase was connected to Spirit Mountain.
I'd often rested on the way up to the moon, sitting cross-legged to circulate energy or simply gazing at the sky or the ground. Meanwhile, on the way down, I didn't pause even once.
I was very experienced in going down. Thanks to my previous training with Senior Brother Arang on Spirit Mountain, I had developed a sense of it, so I could maintain my energy while moving.
Then for the first time in a long time, I felt the solid touch of ground instead of the invisible stairs. I had reached the peak of Spirit Mountain—no, I had returned.
It struck me again how grateful I was for the ground. It was unshakable and fixed in place. It was the best stepping stone that supported everything. In the end, I realized that all aspects of human life were possible due to the existence of the ground.
It really is an obvious thought.
I chuckled before looking back. There, Senior Sister Tian stood as if it was natural.
I asked casually, "How long has it been?"
"Today marks ninety-one days," Senior Sister Tian replied. Then she asked in return, "Why did you want to come back?"
"Senior sister, you disappeared and couldn't be seen even on the moon. I thought it was strange."
"Is that all?"
"There was an incident. The more I thought about it, the more I found many strange things. I realized you were giving me clues all along." I recalled, "When we first talked about the scenery from the peak of Spirit Mountain, you said it looked like Hell. More than that, you said that the moon is an entrance, but for most people, it is just an entrance. I thought that if that was applied to the entrance, it could also be applied to the exit."
It was absurd, but that was the conclusion I had come to.
I stared Senior Sister Tian in the eye as if seeking confirmation. Then I asked, "So this place is Hell, right?"
"Yes." Senior Sister Tian nodded. "Luan, it is exactly as you said. Another name for this place is the Primordial Martial Hell."
I was silent as she concluded, "Spirit Mountain is also a part of Hell."
1. The East Asian name for the Milky Way. ☜