An Immortal's Retirement Chap 34-36

Chapter 34 Insignificant

And there it was. There was my death sentence.

“Oh, pipe down,” Sun WuKong said.

“Pardon?”

“I know your aura and I know your mind.”

I stayed still for a moment, wondering if he was saying what I thought he was saying.

“I won’t kill you, or torture you, or erase your memory or any of the other things you’re thinking of.”

“Thank you for your mercy, Great Sage,” I said with a deep bow.

“You don’t believe me?” He asked.

“I-”

“I know you don’t believe me.” He stated.

My heart beat harder. I felt like a cockroach in the kitchen with the lights on. My mind was scrambling for any surface to hide under, but in front of this being, there was none.

“Why?” He asked.

Because your strength alone makes you terrifying. To you, I am an insect and you hold my very existence in the palm of your hands. One irritated breath from you would send me tumbling into oblivion. And even if you did let me live. Even if by some miracle I gathered your favor and you chose to let me live, it would only take one moment of annoyance for you to change your mind and kill me.

Shit.

All of those thoughts had happened in one sudden swoop of anger, and that anger was quickly followed by regret. If he could read my aura as well as I believed he could then those thoughts would be there, almost written out in the edges of my qi, and I would die.

I readied myself for death, if death was what I’d get. I could only hope for something quick and permanent. I thought back to Ah-Marin, back to Gauntlet and that newborn child sleeping in that room. She would live, but the whole realm of Ah-Marin wouldn’t.

He’d probably take her and nuke the realm on his way out. Chin Chin, the Maidens, the beasts, everything. Hundreds of billions of people… just gone. All because I couldn’t control my own thoughts.

Then, I heard snickering. The snickering grew, turning from a stifled laugh to outright howling.

The Monkey King was sprawled out on the metaphysical ground, slamming his hands against the floor in laughter.

A joke. Ah, okay. Alright. He is Sun WuKong, the mischievous Monkey King who fought the Old Gods out of boredom.

I did my best to not express my current feelings and instead bowed so that I wouldn’t have to look at the laughing monkey any longer.

After what felt like an awfully long amount of time for a place where time doesn’t exist, Sun WuKong finally stood up.

“Ah, we’re almost there, aren’t we?” He asked.

In all of the stress, I had forgotten to use my senses.

I circulated a technique, an old one. One that I had found back when I had just broken into the immortal realm. It was called, Seeing Through The Void.

It was a vision technique, one that turned all of the qi signatures within the void into light, allowing a person to ‘see’ them. It would translate qi into light and allow one to ‘see through the void.’ It was almost useless to me at this point. My own divine senses were more than enough to see all the qi signatures around me, but old habits were hard to break.

Lynoria burst through the void, shining like a nebula. It shone in colors that didn’t exist, burning through the void and bathing both WuKong and me in a beautiful light. The celestial realm lit up through the blackness, like galaxies in the distance. Certain figures could also be seen, wading slowly through the darkness. These were God-Imperiums, most likely of the non-human kind. They rarely bothered to hide themselves, and others even strutted leisurely, like a tiger walking through its jungle.

“Oooh?” WuKong said, staring at the colors like a mystified child.

“What a beautiful technique…” He stated as we approached the nebula. “Where did you find it?”

“Ah-Marin,” I answered. “It’s called-”

“Seeing Through The Void,” he interrupted. “It’s an ancient technique. Nothing powerful, but it is quite valuable.”

“Valuable?”

“Yes,” WuKong answered without elaboration.

The stream of qi we were riding started to merge with other streams as we got closer to the realm, and in the distance, other cultivators and creatures started to come into view. Qi signatures started to pop up from all over, some demonic, some righteous, but most were neutral.

If you were to try and map out the central realms on paper, well you couldn’t because the infinite void of nothingness couldn’t be expressed on a two-dimensional plane. But if you tried to anyways, you’d have the Heavens up north and the Hells down south and Lynoria would be somewhere near the western front. It was the largest celestial realm before you tapered off into the outer void, and was one of the most important celestial realms within existence.

It was an unaffiliated realm and took no sides in any major conflict outside of its borders, making it a refuge for most people, regardless of their previous allegiance. It also enforced its nonviolence rule religiously. Killing here would get you prosecuted, regardless of sect, status, or power.

There was even a time when a God-Imperium had invaded the celestial realm and killed one of their wayward disciples. Once they had done so, WuKong himself had come down and slain the God-Imperium on the spot.

That itself was a ridiculous concept, but that death set an example for eternity to come. To this day, feuds within Lynoria never resulted in anything more than lost limbs. And unless those fights were sanctioned duels of some sort or internal clan dealings, people being killed within the realm was practically unheard of.

That made the place a major trading center for everyone throughout the multiverse. Almost anyone who had anything to sell could be found within the gates of this city. Everything from spiritual herbs and alchemy pills to ancient cultivation skills could be found here. The only things you couldn’t find here were things concerning slavery or demonic techniques.

If existence had a capital, then this was it. Here you would find members of every major force. The guaranteed peace made it the most attractive place for talks between any groups and parties, and the guaranteed peace and loose restrictions made it the perfect spot for merchants who found the tight rules of the righteous sects unappealing. And eventually, the celestial realm gained a nickname, the Realm of Merchants and Ambassadors.

Along with all of that came untold trade and imports. Every celestial sect worth a damn had a base here. Even if their wares were demonic or banned within this realm, just having a representative here would open them up to many contacts. Which, ironically enough, made it both one of the safest places in the multiverse and one of the most dangerous.

Safe if you were planning to live for the rest of your natural existence, dangerous if you ever planned to leave. Within these realms were the most powerful groups of people throughout existence and while they couldn’t hurt you here, they could certainly hurt you outside of the realm. So everyone here had to be careful of how they acted, aside from the natural denizens.

“Seven,” WuKong suddenly said. “I’ll give seven favors as a gift.”

I looked over at the Monkey King, unsure if this might have been another one of his jokes.

“I’m being serious,” he commented.

“Can I ask why Great Sage?”

WuKong’s head turned curiously.

“Isn’t it obvious? Three for each time you made me laugh, and four for showing me something interesting.”

I was quite flabbergasted at that comment. Was that all it took to get these? A few chuckles and spars? I had been actively trying not to die, not curry his favor.

“May I ask what those four things were, Great Sage?”

WuKong smiled at my confusion.

“Sure, and I can answer it as a favor,” He answered.

I thought about that for a moment and shook my head.

WuKong smile got even wider at that. I would have liked to imagine it was a smile of wisdom or satisfaction that implied that I had made the right choice. But instead, it was a mischievous grin, something you’d see in a cartoon.

I still didn’t really know this man. I mean, I knew the stories, but myths and legends were just that, myths and legends. At this point, there were so many realms with so many versions of Sun WuKong’s story that having a reliable and consistent image of him was utterly impossible.

On Earth, he had been a powerful being who tangled with The Jade Emperor and Buhdda himself, but aside from that, almost every aspect of the story differed from realm to realm. Some said he was an evil devil who had eventually gained redemption through the means of finding Buhdda, others claimed he was a virtuous monkey seeking his own path to righteousness and strength. Bits and pieces could be verified for certain, some of WuKong’s fights and conflicts were known to be absolute truth, but the details had long been forgotten to the annals of time, and all those who remembered didn’t really care to retell the story.

“Oh, alright then. Since you have such trouble choosing what you want, I will pick out the favors for you,” he replied.

Shit.

“Oh, there’s no need to trouble-”

“Nonsense,” WuKong cut in. “It’d be a waste to let you decide as it is.”

Wukong’s hands suddenly went down, one by one, until his hands stood closed and he had only a smile remaining on his face.

I gulped.

“You may now use you’re last favor as you wish.”

“May- may I ask what these specific favors were?” I asked meekly.

“Tell me,” WuKong said with that still sly smile. “What do you think a God-Imperium is?”

Shit. Was this going to be one of those long-winded answers masked as sagely-

“Just answer the question,” WuKong said, interrupting my thoughts.

“I don’t know. I suppose a God-Imperium is the peak of the cultivation world,” I responded.

“Such a lazy answer,” Wukong said while shaking his head. “But yes, it is the peak of the cultivation world, and it is the highest peak that most beings can ever achieve. God-Imperiums, no matter how weak they are, carve their existence into reality. They’re so vast and powerful that reality struggles to copy their form. So immense that even in the furthest reaches of reality, you’ll still find bits and pieces of their qi moving and infecting everything it touches.”

Talk about an ego.

“Do you know the difference between a sixteenth-rank God King and a God-Imperium?” Wukong asked.

“It’s said to be bigger than the difference between and God King and a mortal,” I replied.

“That’s one of expressing it, but that’s not quite accurate. It fails to show the true difference between those two ranks,” Wukong said as he looked at me. “No the true gap between those two ranks is that of one and infinity.”

I saw Wukong grow and felt myself shrink. Everything shrunk around me and for a small desperate moment, I thought I had died. I couldn’t feel my qi or my strength and everything but Wukong faded away into nothingness. He had broken past my Void Walker technique, letting his qi and identity invade mine.

No. Not invade, just exist. I wasn’t being attacked by the qi. It had no ill intentions of its own. This qi was like an ocean, uncaring and immense, and I was drowning in it.

I thought back to earlier in our meeting, back when I felt like I couldn’t circulate qi or feel my own techniques. At the time I had assumed that Wukong had been restricting me, pushing the qi out of my body with some powerful technique.

It was only now in my struggle to exist that I realized, he hadn’t been restricting me. No. An ant doesn’t grow weaker in front of a bear, it just realizes how weak it truly is.

Then I passed out.

Chapter 35 Bureaucracy

I woke up standing on the outskirts of Lynoria. It’s multilayered membrane glistened with energy in front of me.

It took only an instant for me to regain my composure, and even then I was still a bit dazed. I slept on occasion, just for the fun of it, but I couldn’t remember the last time I had ever passed out.

It must have been eons ago, and even then. I had passed out due to exhaustion, not… whatever Wukong had done.

But regardless of all of that, his message was pretty clear. He had told me what his favors were as I was passing out, but I was too delirious to comprehend it then. But now, now it all made sense.

I was weak. I had been moving around, doing things while thinking I understood the abilities of those above me. I had been wrong. Wukong’s six favors could be summarized in two words. Cleaning up. The man had cleaned up all of the trails and hints I’d left behind along the way, four separate times. The first was at the fight with Kin Jey. The second and third were at Ah-Marin and the fourth right as I met Wukong. Traces of qi, no matter how unimportant they seemed to me, were left behind at each of these spots. There were things I couldn’t see, concepts I couldn’t imagine. It was childish of me to think that I could hide my presence from a God-Imperium.

I turned to look at the tail behind me. That was where the fifth and the sixth favors took place. Wukong had hidden us, both me and the child from further divination attempts, and he had even given me a false identity to work with. The tail was a bit of his qi, and it would make divination almost impossible for anyone below a God-Imperium’s rank, or at least I assumed that was the case.

And that thing at the end, that was my seventh favor. It was a wake-up call. He was telling me to keep my head low and stay the hell away from God-Imperiums. I was nothing compared to them, and I was a fool to even think myself capable of hiding from them.

They were inconceivable from where I stood, absolutely unfathomable.

Even Wukong, as benevolent as he had been, was terrifying. Not terrifying in a living way. It wasn’t his actions or intentions that scared me, no it was the sheer scale of him. It was like staring down the edge of a cliff, or the idea of floating untethered in outer space.

I pushed away the thought, not willing to contemplate it any longer, and I stepped through the realm membrane and entered Lynoria.

Light shone down on me at the entrance and as my voidwalker and voidseeing techniques fell, the light of Lynoria shined.

Lynoria was a collection of celestial realms, having hundreds of thousands of higher realms wrapped through and around it to create the core of the place and an infinite amount of lesser realms blossoming in between.

Of course, infinite universes filled with infinite space meant the possibility of infinite souls would arise, and for security reasons, that was generally a frowned upon thing within any celestial realm.

So they managed it through a bureaucratic system that threatened my own arrays in complexity. A web of rules and enforcers, trained directly by Ma’at herself, were present everywhere within the realm, making sure the rules were followed and that order was not disturbed.

It was quite taxing actually. Governing over infinite realms meant you needed near-infinite personnel. As for the three main celestial realms, each of them was governed by the factions that ruled over Lynoria.

That was to say, entering this specific realm meant that there would be a decent amount of paperwork and questioning.

I was in a room, one that didn’t look too large, and in front of me sat a little stone monkey at a desk. The desk looked far too big for the creature and its head barely peaked over the edge. It must have been the size of an Olympic swimming pool, and the little monkey’s small pebble of a head peaked right on over it at its edge. The entire table was full of jade tablets, each of them about the size of a man’s palm and some floated in the air, interacting with the stone monkey’s divine senses as they did so.

“Please provide the reason for your visit, as well as the estimated length of your visit, and possible enemy forces you wish to avoid. Also, please make sure to mark which realm and/or service you plan to visit.”

A jade tablet flew towards me and hovered in front of my face. Ah yes, the bane of traveling, whether on earth or in the cosmos, customs.

I moved my senses through the jade tablet, only to find it full of thousands of questions, each requiring detailed answers, and sighed. It wouldn’t take me time to complete it, not at my level. But still, nobody enjoyed paperwork, unless you were one of those bureaucratic gods or something.

I finished my filings and the jade tablet went floating back to the stone monkey.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” the monkey replied with a monotone voice.

“Tough shift?” I asked, feigning sympathy.

The stone monkey nodded with feigned emotions in response.

“A couple more centuries and I’ll be done though. A whole million years of vacation. Might even go up a realm.”

“Oh wow, fourteenth realm?” I asked with genuine surprise.

“Indeed. Then I’ll be free of this post and moved into the inner dealings. Something nice and cushy.”

Normally cultivators wouldn’t be so open about their ranks and planned improvements, but this was a native of Lynoria. It was an understandable sentiment for their kind. They rarely had threats and death was as rare as primordial qi for someone as strong as him.

“Plan to leave then? Explore what lies beyond.”

“By the Virtouse Ape no,” snorted the little stone monkey.

“A year here is like a month out there. I waste the entirety of my vacation in an instant.”

I nodded understandingly, as he finished reading through my paperwork.

“Makes my time in here a whole lot more enjoyable though,” I replied.

“Indeed. Well, here’s your pass. Make sure to meet your exit crew at the proper exit point and do well to respect those around you. Have a nice visit.”

“Have a good vacation,” I replied as slipped out of his room and into one of the many higher realms in the place.

Chapter 36

I navigated through the place as best as I could. Traveling through folds of space and layered universes was as boring as it could ever be without worrying about some asshole tracking you down to rob and pillage you.

There was no worry here. Even the void within this region was well-patroled. With soldiers being seen in the distance, each of them armed and ready for conflict. I suppose to them, this was their city, and the void was merely one of the small alleys that divided the neighborhoods, and most of the higher realms had direct portals that connected them to one another.

Only when navigating to the lesser realms would you find yourself leaping back through the void and wading through a sectioned-off part of nonexistence. The creatures here were many, most were humans of one kind or another, some beasts, few insects, and rarely, you’d see a few angles and eldritch making their way around one of the higher realms.

Those ones were dangerouse. Beasts would behave if their lives were on the line, but insects were risky and more machine-like, and angles and eldritch beings were even worse.

But they would behave, at least while in Lynoria. It would be a different story outside of these realms, but while they were here, or floating through the void that encapsulated Lynoria.

That was also a weird concept. Privately owned pieces of the void. Nothing, contained inside of something. I didn’t really understand the concept but realm engineering was far beyond me.

I traveled through the infinitely folded realms, like a man wandering through an unfamiliar building looking for that one specific room meant for him.

Now infinity was a weird concept, but it was everywhere within the grander multiverse. And the more you grew in power, the more you grew to understand it, and yet never fully grasp it.

It was like Plato’s allegory of the cave, except you never truly reached the end. Each realm one reached revealed even more truths about the universe and hinted at more profound things, and you’d think in that moment of enlightenment that you had seen it all. You’d look and see the edges of a universe, a realm that had infinite space and infinite mass and you’d see all of it at once and think, Ah yes, I have it now.

And then you’d see the void, then the wider multiverse, then a celestial realm, one that contained infinite lesser realms around it, constantly growing and spreading out further than you had ever imagined. And then, finally, you’d think you’d seen it all.

Then you’d see the Sea of Death or the Realms of Imagination, or the Dreaming. Realms so vast and infinite that you wouldn’t even dare to enter them because you could never find your way back out. Infinite realms so large that just glancing at unprepared could cripple your soul and mind into nothingness.

But for this type of infinity, there was a way to navigate it. You had a point to reach and you aimed for that point. It was like taking a walk down an endless hallways. If you were trying to reach the end of that hallway, you’d be going forever, but if you were just trying to get to one specific room, you’d find it eventually.

No the true gap between those two ranks is that of one and infinity.

Wukong’s words echoed in my brain. I wondered which infinity he was talking about. The one I could flip through like a book or the one so big that I couldn’t even look at it without preparation.

I moved, pushing myself through the nothingness. Eventually, I found the room I was meant to visit, or the realm, in this case. It was a lesser realm and once I entered it, I realized there was only one occupant.

A fifteenth-ranked World King sat in the center of a white space. Now a lesser realm was still an infinitely vast universe, meaning it could harbor stars and galaxies and even life. Earth had been located in a lesser realm of sorts, and this universe was similar to that one, except for one major difference.

There was nothing else here, only the World King and his belongings occupied this space. A whole universe had been turned into an empty office.

“Yes?” The cultivator said with a questioning tone.

He was draped in a dazzling blue robe, one that shined and glimmed with starlight. No, not starlight, but actual stars. His robe was an entire realm all its own. It had stars and clusters of galaxies, planets, nebulas, and even life.

I could see little dragons and men, they were too small for a mortal eye but I noticed them, fighting and battling.

The dragon was lizard-like and had large leathery bat wings, and the man wore a knight’s armor. He was barely at the fifth rank and the dragon itself was similar.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

I raised my head, looking up from the clothing and towards the man’s face.

“Yes, Honored Master,” I replied.

“It’s a gift from Athena’s Grove, woven by a grand disciple of Athena herself.”

“A magnificent gift.”

“Indeed it is,” he replied. “Now, why have you come?”

I presented the man with my jade piece, sending the thing floating over to his side and furrowed his brows.

“I see, then this is a serious transaction? I assume you have the funds for such a request?”

“Yes Honored Master,” I replied.

The man reached into his robe and pulled out a large and pointy wizard’s hat, one that was every bit as spectacular as his robe. It too was made out of a realm, one filled with giants and faeries and things of the fey.

The man walked a few paces and grabbed a hold of an intangible door handle and opened it. Suddenly a portal appeared, one that led to a celestial realm. The man walked through it and beckoned for me to follow, and I obliged.

I felt the change as soon as I’d stepped through. The air, realm, qi, and even the Dao of this place were entirely different. Shelves surrounded me, ones that towered infinitely above me, layered with unending knowledge.

“Welcome, young one, to the sect of the Eternal Tome,” the man said without turning towards me.

“Here, I will guide you to what you desire, but first the payment,” the man said with practiced ease.

I looked around, still slightly transfixed on the place. My senses spread far and wide, trying to find an end to the collection of knowledge and yet, there was nothing, only shelves and shelves of information.

The realm itself was too large for me to see, too big for me to truly comprehend.

This was the home of The Keepers of the Eternal Tome. Three different celestial realms made up the core of Lynoria, the first and the most important one was the Sect of WuKong, the second was the Sect of the All Blade, and the third group was The Keepers of the Eternal Tome.

All three of these forces, led by their respective leaders, had come together to establish Lynoria ages ago. Wukong lent his name and reputation and the Sect of the All Blade gave it an immense workforce and regulatory committee, and finally, there were The Keepers of the Eternal Tome.

They were probably the most unnecessary piece of the three Celestial Sects that ruled Lynoria, but they were also the most valuable. The Keepers were one of the ancient Sects, a group so old that no one really remembered a time without them. And throughout all of existence, they had only desire. To record and catalog all that was, all that is, and all that could be.

The robed wizard cleared his throat.

“Ah yes, my apologies,” I replied.

The man nodded. “It is understandable. The tome is vast and unending in beauty.”

I nodded. Again, I spread my mind out to the outer edges of their limits, trying to just glance at the edges of this place, and again I failed. It was too much, infinite infinities were there, one layering over the dimensions of the other.

I retreated my senses.

“Sorry,” I commented with a half-hearted apology.

I’d normally be worried about insulting the man but the fact that he was both a Lynorian native and that my act of observation had been more of a complementing act instead of an insulting one assured me that I wouldn’t be struck down.

“Yes, yes. Look and see as far as you can and know that what you see is only a piece of a piece of things,” The wizard said with a slight smile. “That’s what we keepers say after all.”

Then the man walked and I followed. The gaps between the shelves were stationary and regular, each book, scroll, and jade perfectly placed based on whatever order it was that ran this place. I could feel the very realm itself wanting to sort me out, put me in a book somewhere.

Celestial realms were strange things. Higher realms had will and tribulations and some lesser realms did too, but celestial realms were practically sentient. They had their own rules and reason, and things would go the way they pleased.

It was like gravity. If I had a book in my hand, the realm would probably yank it out of my hand and teleport it into one of its shelves, documenting and sorting the knowledge as it did so.

Finally, we seemed to be approaching a building, one that was the size of a large house. It was plain white in color, much like the realm that I had found the wizard in.

Ah yes. The dealing room.

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Hey all. Again, sorry for the long gap between chapters. 

Long story short, work and adhd. But I've recently found some success in self medicating with caffeine now so I'm hoping to make this worth your while. 

I'm going to try to religiously write as much as I can in my free time and put the Patreon at least 10,000 words ahead of the Royal Road releases, and I hope we can get there soon.