Chương 164: A Goodbye Gift

The moment had arrived where I needed to tell Han Renyi the truth about everything, but how do you even begin to describe an entire world to someone who has spent their whole life only ever knowing a small piece of one? I could feel his curiosity so I just started talking and tried to keep my own secrets out of it as much as possible.

"Think about this realm," I said, "and then make it much, much bigger than that. Instead of a handful of major sects, there are thousands of them. Instead of one cultivation system, there are hundreds of different ones. Every sect and every school and every individual cultivator is working toward understanding and mastering the fundamental laws of reality but all of them are doing it in their own way and getting to different places."

"And they all use what you called... qi?"

"Yes, the difference between qi and rouqi is more than just power levels, it's about what the energy is actually for." I thought about how to explain it.

"Rouqi in this realm is used to make yourself stronger and faster and harder to kill, it's about enhancement. But qi is about creation."

"Creation?" He frowned.

"Like making physical things?"

"More than that, much more. Every cultivator in my world has to develop their own inner world, which is a space inside their own soul where they have the ability to shape reality according to however they personally understand the Dao. The stronger you become, the larger and more complex that inner world becomes." There was a pause and then he breathed out slowly.

"That's incredible. And you have one of those? An inner world?"

"I do, though it's still early compared to the one we're inside right now." Another pause, longer this time, and then I felt it when it hit him.

"Wait. When you say the one we're in right now you mean my world is..."

"Yes," I said, keeping my voice even about it.

"Your world is the inner world of the Celestial Sovereign. He reached a level of power so far beyond what most cultivators ever achieve that his inner world became a full realm in its own right, one capable of sustaining life and developing its own entirely independent cultivation system over time." I could feel his mind struggling to work through that.

"And Astralis..."

"Is the spirit of the inner world itself, a consciousness that was born from the realm in order to maintain and protect it."

"So my entire world," he said slowly, "is just someone's cultivation?"

"Not just someone's cultivation, no. Think of it less like a technique and more like a garden that grew into its own complete ecosystem over a long enough time. The Celestial Sovereign built the foundation but everything that developed from that foundation, including you and your cultivation and everyone you've ever known, is genuine and real. Different from the main world yes, but not less than it." He was quiet for a while after that and I didn't push him because there was a lot to deal with.

"I used to think getting to Tier 2 would be an achievement worth being proud of," he said eventually, "and that maybe, if everything went perfectly, I might one day reach Tier 3, but now..."

"Now you know there's more than that," I said. He nodded slowly and then after a moment he said, "Is that why you have something for me?" That caught me off guard.

"How did you already know about that?"

"I can feel it," he said, touching the side of his head.

"There's something waiting at the edge of my thoughts, like knowledge that's almost there but not quite." I'd been planning to bring it up more carefully than this but since he'd already noticed there wasn't much point in waiting.

"Yes," I said.

"I have a technique for you, but before that I want to remind you about the Rouqin Gathering Circle we left back in that storage facility the night everything started, it would be worth converting that space into a proper training ground for your family to use." The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"Thank you, Master."

"As for the gift I'm giving you, it's a cultivation method that I think fits your path well."

"Better than what the Three-Leaf Clover Sect was teaching me?"

"Different from it," I said.

"Not better or worse, just more aligned with where you're actually going." I could feel his curiosity sharpening and rather than spend time trying to describe it in words, I just let the knowledge flow from my consciousness into his directly, carrying with it a level of understanding that words would have taken much longer to build and probably done a worse job of anyway. The Nine-Life Immortal Tree Technique.

I felt his consciousness open up around the information as it arrived, the basic principles unfolding in his mind one layer at a time, the cycle of growth and renewal that was at the core of it all, the way wood energy moved naturally toward rebirth, the relationship between physical form and spiritual essence and how to hold that balance without losing either side of it.

"This is..." He stopped.

"Where did this come from?"

"I developed it," I said, and felt a small and familiar twinge of guilt about not mentioning Azure's very significant contribution to that process, but talking about my inner world spirit would mean explaining things I didn't have time to explain right now and wasn't even ready to share. The shock that came back from him was strong enough that I felt it physically.

"You created an entire cultivation technique? You just made one?" It wasn't quite as simple as that, and Azure had done the heaviest part of the work by combining everything we knew about wood-based cultivation from both worlds with what we'd understood from Astralis's crystal, but none of that was a conversation I could have right now, so I kept it brief.

"It's still early in its development," I said.

"Don't go expecting to come back from the dead anytime in the near future."

"Come back from the…wait, what exactly are you saying?"

"At higher cultivation levels the technique should allow you to regenerate from injuries that would otherwise kill you," I explained.

"Actually, returning from death is a completely different thing and would require developing the technique far beyond where it currently is."

"But it's theoretically possible?"

"Theoretically, yes. Though you'd need to reach the main world and work on the technique significantly before attempting anything in that direction."

"Until Tier 7," he said, nodding to himself like he was filing it away somewhere to come back to.

"At minimum. The technique will carry you well until that point but beyond it, you'll need to find what works for where you're going on your own."

"Thank you," he said suddenly and his voice had something thick in it that made me slightly concerned he was going to cry, which was a situation I was not prepared for.

"For all of it. If you hadn't been here my family would be…" He didn't finish the sentence, but I could feel the rest of it.

"I fulfilled the promise I made to you," I said.

"The promise?" He actually laughed at that, a real surprised laugh.

"You gave me techniques, improved my body, helped me get justice against Elder Zhou, got me accepted into the Three-Leaf Clover Sect, introduced me to a divine messenger, and completely rebuilt how I understand reality itself, and you're calling that fulfilling a promise."

"Well, when you say it all at once like that..."

"I won't forget anything you've taught me." He straightened up and I could feel the determination coming off him like heat from a fire.

"And someday I'm going to find my way to the main world and get strong enough to actually pay you back for everything." Before I could reply, I felt it, a pull so sudden and so strong that everything before it felt like it had barely been a suggestion, the Genesis Seed was done with waiting and was making that very clear.

"I have to go," I said, and tried to keep how hard it was pulling out of my voice.

"Your body is yours again now, take care of it."

"Will I be able to tell when you're actually gone?"

"You'll feel the difference," I said.

"Your soul is healed now; you don't need me there anymore."

"Master," he said, and his voice caught slightly, "it's not about needing you. I'm going to miss you."

"I'll… I'll miss you too," I told him. I wasn't saying it to be kind, I meant it, because even though by any objective measure I had only been in this world for a few days, it felt longer than that when you spend that much time inside someone else's head, and in some ways Han Renyi was the first real disciple I'd ever had.

The separation happened gently, my consciousness lifting away from his gradually rather than all at once, and for one brief moment I had access to both perspectives at the same time, his eyes watching my spiritual form rising up out of his body and my own awareness feeling the last connections between us dissolving one by one.

Then the pull took over completely and I was moving upward and then faster than upward, through layers of reality that felt like passing through something very large one page at a time, and the last image I had was Han Renyi's face looking up with an expression that was somewhere between grief and wonder.

As my consciousness stretched across the space between worlds, I found myself thinking about the whole situation, that I'd arrived here because of a last-minute change in plans and ended up in Han Renyi's body out of pure necessity, then somehow changed the destiny of multiple lives by accident. Maybe one day Han Renyi would actually manage to break free of the Starhaven Realm. I'll have to keep an eye out for him when I got back.

Assuming of course that the Genesis Seed hadn't already finished annexing his entire realm into my inner world by the time that became relevant. On that note, I wonder just how much time has passed in the Cultivation World since I've been gone…