"The soul?"
Is the end of cultivation not an infinite lifespan but rather an indestructible soul?
If so it made much more sense than the mere immortality of a physical body.
A body can be destructible but as long as your soul is immortal, a body is but a secondary product, and so long the soul remains intact, a physical body can always be reclaimed.
If so…
This is not eternal life.
It is 'Immortality'!
Immortality in the truest sense!
In front of this, eternal life felt like the most foolish goal one could have.
A huge misconception!
Truly!
To think cultivators trained their souls instead of their bodies.
In some sense the goal was equal, the eternity of the sense of self, yet to Qi Chen, the cultivation of soul was much more favourable.
"I see. I see… This is truly…mystifying!"
The words slipped from Qi Chen's mouth without him even realising, he was engrossed in the wave of new knowledge.
Revolutionary. Mind shattering.
These two were the only words he could think of to describe it.
To think cultivators were this fascinating.
It was far beyond what he had thought, after all despite mortals having basic gripe over the ways of the immortal, they were in the end, still mortals, and have no way of actually affirming their guesses.
Qi Chen was more than absorbed in his thoughts, he had almost forgotten the 'fear' he was feeling.
The knowledge was addictive, he wanted to know more, learn more and understand more!
Curiosity often kills the cat, that is a well known fact.
A voice snapped him back to reality.
"Well let's get going."
The smile was still hanging on the guard's face, but in a dimly lit area, it didn't have even a single trace of softness, rather it felt eerie and devoid of the simplest warmth.
Nodding his head, Qi Chen followed the guard, with his mind still on the topic earlier, if knowledge was an endless pit that was bound to bring disaster, it was a pit he was willing to never crawl out of.
The more he walked the more his curiosity grew.
There were no walls, no paths, the only thing consistent was the dimly lit candles that gave the endless stretch of darkness some form of illumination, there was no destination and utterly no direction.
It smelled a weird mix of neutrality and a muslin was of blood, it didn't really smell like much, yet the humid air carried a soft metallic trace that hooked at his nose.
While one should feel unsettled in such a weird place, it somehow gave a strange sense of belonging and calmness.
Out of nowhere, with a flash of white light, they came to an abrupt stop.
"Follow me closely from here on, if you lose me, I won't be able to find you."
The surroundings had yet to change but with the white light, closely coupled with the warning from the guard, even a fool can tell that something has changed.
They were likely arriving at the destination, or at least somewhere close to the heart.
"Understood."
The guard flashed a smile, before pulling a piece of paper from his waist, with a flick of his finger tips, it disintegrated in a wave of flames, turning into dark grains of ash that swirled around his fingertips, closing his eyes, he chanted a few words.
"Seven eyes of the dead shall see through the soul and world!"
Guiding the ash to his eyes, a red eye sigil floated before them, in front of his pair of eyes, before pulsating once and disappearing without a trace, rather than disappear, it seemed as though they had been absorbed into his eyes.
When his eyes reopened, their color had changed to a beautiful hue of red, the mesmerising color of blood and a mix up of crystals shining in his eyes despite the dimly lit surroundings, they seemed to emit light themselves, swimming in his eyes like broken shards of glass.
That would be an understatement, it was a piece of art, reflecting its own style and poise, in some sense, it could be very well the prettiest pair of eyes he had ever seen.
Qi Chen held his breath throughout, this sight was no less eye opening than the previous discussion.
To see cultivators in action was akin to seeing a skillful master at work, while you might be far from understanding what they are doing or what they want to achieve, it is no less beautiful.
Is this the beauty of the immortal path?
He had previously seen cultivators as foolish.
Hermits who would do anything to live longer, was it not better to live a life of luxury, reveling in it before dying in a blaze of glory and be remembered by generations to come?
Yet this scene had shattered his previous thoughts, he felt he was more than foolish.
If this was the charm of the immortal path, he too, would make it the goal of his life, the beauty of the immortal path could not be described by words, only experiences.
They are truly living in another world.
Endless possibilities, countless mysteries. A scholar could spend a lifetime studying the immortal path and leave the world with few insights.
But that was the exact charm of it.
To know that you will never understand anything!
When you understand everything, it is no longer fun, but rather a boring jumble of mess that you have no will to deal with.
To leave the world knowing you still have more to learn is indeed grueling, but knowing that there is always more to know is also beautiful.
The world had never seen larger than it was now, all the previous knowledge he had spent the years of his life learning felt as trivial as dust compared to the vastness of the immortal path.
He had fallen in love with it with just such little exposure.
Despite knowing he was bound to suffer or even die by following this guard he couldn't help it.
A frog in a well they say.
Someone who is stuck at the bottom of the barrel, seeing only nothing but the smallest part of the world.
When their eyes are truly opened, the beauty beyond the well, the sight of the endless world is more than enough to overwhelm, to drown in.
The frog, leaving the shackles of the well, experiencing the vastness of the world, has thus utterly fallen in love with it.
Like a moth drawn to flame, he was attracted to this pit of knowledge he will burn to death in.
The ending of the immortal path is always death.
Immortality is naught, and none has achieved it throughout history.
Cultivators are moths drawn to the allure of immortality, burning to death turning into fertilizer for those who come after.
Cultivators in some sense are the most foolish beings in the history of mankind.
Men die for many things and cultivators are the ones that die in the endless search for more time.
Ironic how the fear of death inevitably leads you to death.
But the main cause of death, in all life, is greed.
A plant can die from too much water, a fish can die from eating too much food and humans die in search of a remedy for their endless greed.
The insatiable greed of wanting more despite having what is enough.
The yearning of knowledge was growing more and more fervent in his chest, it was suffocating, he wanted to learn more, know everything, yet the limitations of reality remained there.
He no longer feared death, yet only wanted to know more before his death.
Death was a thought at the far back of his mind, in front of the mind boggling knowledge was nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Knowledge is the forbidden fruit, the forbidden dew, a drop of it is like water to a thirsty man, it holds everything, and compels everything.
They will always come back for more.
Knowledge is a drug, the more you get the more you want.
To a scholar, knowledge is their natural bane.
Their natural drug, the single taste of it will make one never go back.
Following the steps of the guard closely, the surroundings began to change.
The previous endless void began to have some sense of twisted direction that went all over the place, roads started to appear all over the place and the area was a mash up of random roads and paths making it particularly confusing.
It was hard to follow the guard due to the mist covering his back, sometimes even obscuring it completely.
"Stop!"
His voice cut through the mist, echoing sharply.
The mist started disappearing as the guard's figure began entering his sight.
The guard turned around, seemingly relieved to see that Qi Chen was still there.
"Good, you managed to follow."
A small smile tugged at the ends of his lips, etching a small smile on his face, despite that the paleness of his face and sweat trickling down his forehead betrayed his composure.
He was certainly exhausted.
He moved his hands upwards into the air before a black crack appeared, swallowing his hand, from there he pulled out a bunch of items.
A copper pill cauldron, a wooden plaque and a bottle of an unknown liquid in a crystal flask.
He set the pill cauldron on the floor before moving exactly five steps north in order to place down the wooden plaque, moving clockwise duel east, he placed down the jade plaque from his waist and walked straight to the middle, back at the cauldron, forming a triangle shape between the three items.
Opening the cap of the cauldron he opened the crystal flask and poured a silvery blue liquid into the cauldron.
The substance hissed viciously the moment it touched the cauldron, releasing a faint vapor that was akin to a living thing, cooling around the cauldron before settling as covered the top for good measure.
He once again reached out to the crack, retrieving a tiny dagger, running his palm against the blade, blood began to flow, yet his face did not show any signs of pain, aside from the trace of fatigue it was as if nothing had happened.
The moment the blood touched the ground, the formation immediately ignited as the place began to rumble, sending vibration up to his shins.
Immediately balancing himself, Qi Chen shot another glance at the guard.
His voice was clouded over the loud noises created by the vibrating surface, yet Qi Chen could clearly see he was chanting something as the blood was siphoned out of his body.
The mist collapsed into a colossal rectangle, roughly ten times the height of Qi Chen before slowly, imperceptibly giving way, from what seemed to be nowhere, a majestic gate appeared.
The gate was simply beautiful, adorned in simple yet regal designs, yet the door was stained with a crimson liquid seemingly fresh, making the wondrously designed gate feel more sinister.
Qi Chen's breath was caught in his throat, his mind constantly opening to the mystics of cultivation, the air was heavy, naught with the lingering scent of incense, the ash rubbed against his eyes, yet it did not make them watery, they were almost as if illusionary.
The gate was inanimate, yet the feeling it gave off pulsed, as if a heartbeat, it directly struck his soul.
It was beautiful.
Simply beautiful.
While Qi Chen dared not call himself the most experienced man under heaven, he had prided himself in his knowledge and grasp in many fields.
He has found few things to truly be beautiful aside from his childhood crush.
Beautiful was doing it no justice.
It's weight wasn't from the fact it was well designed.
But from the fact it was a gate to a whole new world.
A ragged voice disrupted his near cult-like obsession with the gate, it was weak, yet tinged with a hint of pride and the weighty feel of lethargy.
"Welcome to the Rebirth Pavillion."