Transcending Evolution Chapter 4: Unusual Fate
Note: I’m about 1 hour late. Sorry, this one took a while.
Took me 7 hours. I guess I am not getting as skilled as I thought at this.
Giving a shout out to SnowTime for Advising.
Also, if you are not viewing this novel on Fantasy-Books.live, it has been stolen :p
Suddenly, rays of light flashed from all the stars, like a blazing sun high up in the s.p.a.ce of Gu Yue’s mind. Like a premonition, Gu Yue’s state of mind began to fluctuate. The s.p.a.ce trembled and turned violent, as if it was driving him to leave from meditation.
But it was too late! As if Judgement Day (like in christian eschatology) was descending, all the stars exploded open like a roiling flame, leaving Gu Yue no time to respond. He felt as if his sense of being was being broken down like a thousands of knives shredding him into pieces, leaving nothing but pain which penetrated every corner of his very soul.
A blood-curdling screech ripped from Gu Yue’s throat, and suddenly a burst of pure light filled the room… The room in front of him appeared before him, and he dropped to the floor.
“Ah ah ah!”
Tightly clinging to his head, he felt as if his consciousness was breaking, and it took effort to keep himself sane. The pain was piercing… so bad that he could not wait to take a hammer, and crack his skull with it.
Countless images exploded out and spread. They resembled something akin to watching countless films. Gu Yue was greatly confused. He felt like he was breaking, and yet, his mind was within a mysterious golden light that was always being protected by t before it could completely collapse. That way, he was always in extreme pain, but his mental faculties were still able to endure and continue.
He did not know how long this kind of torture continued. Only, the feeling began to fade, and Gu Yue grew limp. Every bit of muscle and flesh twitched; and he was drenched in sweat, the salty fluid dripping on the floor, generating a large puddle. There, the puddle was mixed with a black-looking liquid. It had an unpleasant smell, enough to make people want to vomit.
“That was horrifying. Was that a dream?” Gu Yue mumbled to himself as he shook his head. He knew though that it was not a likely probability. To be dreaming with that kind of pain?
After a long time, the more Gu Yue began to sense his body in order to relinquish that pain he felt earlier, he began to feel giddy and refreshing.
A good while afterwards, Gu Yue became fully aware of his body, and how it came to feel relaxed compared to that painful experience earlier.
His perception had even became more keen.
This kind of outcome made him impatient to rush to the bathroom, and quickly rinse himself of the filth and get rid of that fishy smell. He even suspected that if he delayed for a moment, he’d die from the pungent smell.
“Is it possible that this is the legendary ‘remodeling of oneself”, to wash the marrow? This is an enormous opportunity, ah! Could it be? I have already been reborn (shed one’s mortal body and exchange noe’s bones (idiom)), and completed my an evolution?
Thinking endlessly, Gu Yue suddenly threw a punch against the wall.
“Aaah!” he wailed. An acute amount of pain split his right hand as he hit the wall, and he took it back only to see blood oozing from the split skin. His strength had clearly remained stagnant, still at his second refinement.
“It seems I over thought it,” he mumbled as he painfully brought out a thumb-sized canister filled with a compound in its fluid state. He sprayed a bit on the wound. This was a healing spray of the new era of invention (after a second industrial revolution), and for internal injuries, it even acted as a great source of first aid.
Practicing the martial arts (military arts) was always accompanied with getting injured, the shedding of blood; it just could not be avoided. And if you didn’t take care of yourself, and let your body suffer wound after wound, without handling it properly in time, it could leave for hidden dangers. Therefore, healing sprays were almost essential, and so, under normal circ.u.mstances, Gu Yue was very reluctant to use it.
Especially since they was so d.a.m.n expensive!
For a small bottle of healing spray, it required around a thousand credits. One bottle had about hundred doses. That meant one dose would be around 10 yuan (I believe it is interchangeable with credits), which was equivalent to a meal. So, to Gu Yue, given his financial situation, he was naturally not willing to use it often.
One dose of the spray, and Gu Yue suddenly felt the wounds on his fist burst with a searing pain, mixed with an itch as if ants were crawling around his skin. This was an effect of the chemical compound.
“You really get what you paid for. This healing spray is expensive and a product resulting from advances in genetic technology, so it just goes to show the quality really does match.”
Afterwards, Gu Yue couldn’t find the disk. Although he was certain it was on him, no matter how much he looked, he just couldn’t find it, as if it had never appeared. He once again mediated and a s.p.a.ce of dark nothingness appeared in his mind. The star filled galaxy he saw before was gone as if it were but a dream.
It seemed after waking up, everything returned to normal.
Except, he found the results from meditation unexpectedly improved.
When one is sleeping for a period of time, if you look at the brain’s neural activity, you’d find it is still active, still working, which means that while it is difficult to perceive the subconscious, that does not mean there are not countless thoughts flickering by.
The human consciousness is like a seemingly calm sea where every idea is the tide. The rise and fall of the tide is like life and death, to be born but to be extinguished, an endless cycle. Abandoning distracting thoughts may keep a slight tranquility on the surface, but below, the undercurrent will still surge.
The essence of meditation is to first remove those distracting thoughts and calm the mind. Meditation is barely capable of perceiving the conscious mind, much less the subconscious, which was a lot more difficult to handle. There was a saying in the common era, an ordinary person’s brain could exploit up to 10 % of their brain at a time, while 90 % of would always be in a state of sleep.
Except the new era of scientific research shows that this argument is not accurate; every region of the human brain was always working, and there was no sleeping state, only the subconscious operation of which occupies the vast majority of your body’s resources. This part of these resources, it is difficult to be affected or used by ordinary people.
This was why Ability Users could become so powerful; because they could control their subconscious. The amount of energy their ability has is easily known by how much hold they have over it. Once they use those resources, the spirit would naturally increase sharply and may even give birth to psychokinesis. So, unlike Blood Evolution, a person becoming an Ability User was not impossible [TL: it doesn’t have to be related to potential of one’s blood.].
In the new era, human evolution more or less has three paths to follow.
The first leads to the most common of warriors, where through practicing the martial path, one would polishes their muscles, temper and cultivates their body, and thus, one’s self would evolve to produce Source Energy.
The second is similar to the first, where one focuses on evolving their body, only they focus on evolving their blood, which will a.s.similate the source energy to purify itself and induce a special ability. This was a Blood Evolutionist.
And last was evolution of the spirit. Condensing one’s will to strengthen one’s mind gives rise to pyscholineksis, this is an Ability User. This is the most rare path of evolution. Even for every 10,000, you might not be able to find even one.
Pract.i.tioners of the new millennium were prevalent, but of all of them, 99 % of those cultivators selected the path of a warrior. This is not to say that there were those that did not wish to evolve by become a Blood Evolutionists or an Ability User, it was just that those two paths of evolution had extremely demanding requirements.
He didn’t even need to talk about evolving his blood vessels which was like looking at the sky for a meal. Unless someone had an innate potential in their blood, it was useless no matter how much effort they put in it. The legendary werewolfs and vampires were all blood vessels Evolutionists.
And although Spirit Evolution was not as extreme as evolving the blood vessels, the demand for talent was also just as demanding. Moreover, the cultivation methods for Spiritual Evolution were very scarce, and just to practice it had had stringent requirements, not to mention that even if those methods were not scarce, the big families and forces would keep it a secret and prevent any information from spreading.
Ability users who had a special ability within the new age of humanity had an extremely high position, far exceeding warriors on the same level. As such, even though it is so difficult, there were still countless people that dauntlessly forged ahead in waves to follow this path, spending endless amounts of effort.
Gu Yue was one of them. Although meditation was more reliable than some other methods, it improved his spiritual power by only a small amount. Currently, he had been meditating for years, and so controlling his thoughts was not much problem now, but the real question was of his subconscious, and for that, there had been no effect.
Only this time, when he calmed his mind, and once again began to meditate, he suddenly found that in the originally dark and empty spiritual s.p.a.ce, there was actually a small ray of light that shined through, and like a spark it spread like a prairie fire.
This is was a Spirit Flame, which is the realm of the mind, like a representation of one’s control over their subconscious. For 10 years, Gu Yue had meditated, and in all those years, he hadn’t even dared to dream that he would surpa.s.s the threshold and reach this state.
To be able to see a trace of light, meant his spiritual power had already condensed and was not far from being able to give rise to an ability.
With that, happiness suddenly overwhelmed Gu Yue. He felt unreal, indescribable. He urged the trace of light, and it moved slowly in his mind’s s.p.a.ce. He began to inscribe a strange rune in the flame, and little by little it began to form.
Gu Yue did not know why he could do so much. He had tried inscribing a Frost Rune, and before, with his ability, even if he wanted to just identify it, it would have been difficult. But now, in his eyes, the rune held no mystery. Each line was clear as if if he knew it perfectly.
The process of inscribing the rune went smoothly. And although his urging of the Spirit Flame lead it to be greatly consumed to the point where he was not sure whether to continue, it was eventually completed.
It was like he was the king of the underworld where divisions (of the rune) were clearly made without even needing to think or talk about it. In the dark abyss of his meditation, Gu Yue just flowed through the work smoothly (did it in one go) and carved a complete Frost Rune in his own mental s.p.a.ce.
The completed rune glinted and sent out faint starlight like a within the empty s.p.a.ce as if it came to life. Because of that, the mental s.p.a.ce started to tremble, emitting unusual fluctuations that broke through Gu Yue’s state of meditation and he woke up
His consciousness was as if it had been refined, soaking in hot spring water with a warm energy seeping into his body, his limbs felt limp and numb but also very comfortable.
From the next door neighbor coughing, the sound of children playing and the wind blowing through the window, to the noise of little bugs crawling in the corner, all around, like ripples of a calm lake, were clearly reflected in his spiritual s.p.a.ce.
Gu Yue’s perception had increased more than ten times!
The whole world had a new look. Vivid colors, fragrant smells, the sounds… He felt like before he had been blind, deaf, and with no sense of smell. But now, it was as if those senses had all been freed.
“Is this evolution?” Gu Yue was calm with not one ripple in his frame of mind. But he was aware that regardless he was not up to par. Just reaching the realm of unity of the mind was not enough. His spiritual s.p.a.ce only had one symbol. If he inscribed a few more, and in a layout of a matrix formation (matrix method), he would then reach a new level of power.
Runes, spells, and countless wonders now flowed through his mind. It was like instinct and he automatically understood. It was then that he was astonished to find that in his spiritual s.p.a.ce, it was like a galaxy of great discs that formed a mysterious and unpredictable spell array.
Gu Yue knew that this was an opportunity for him to rise, even if it was by virtue of this mysterious disc that disappeared into his body.
Although he didn’t know it’s origin, he knew that this was fate!