in the middle of the vast garden was a big pyramid, just like the ones the maya built, and his intuition told him to walk up the stairs and enter it.
As soon as he reached the top, there was a big stone door, the Avatar took a deep breath, and started bending air from inside the temple to the outside, causing an opening big enough for him to enter, and as soon as he did, the torches that were hanging on the walls lit blue, and the door closed shut, all that was in front of him was a line of stonified people, were they people? no one knows, probably not, but what was certain is that they were guards, Yin came to that conclusion after seeing their swords, what were they guarding? probably the throne with who's apparently the king on it, but the king wasn't stonified, he was decayed, just a skull and some ribs, and a scepter with a big shiny ruby on top of it, which hasn't withered like its owner.
but,
the torches weren't the only things that lit up, the eyes of the guardians did too, and their swords turned into snakes hissing at Yin, which was quite shocking, but at this point he's seen everything, and the scepter flew right into him, with the ruby hitting his head so fast and hard he had no time to react and got knocked out right away,
when he woke up, he wasn't in the same place, he was in the sky, above the clouds, when looking down, all he saw was a giant beam of light generating, then he felt a presence of someone next to him, and it was no other than avatar korra
"you know, during the end of my fight with kouvira, I didn't just open new portal to the spirit world, I opened my brain and heart to a deeper level of understanding of how our brains work, and I truly understood with kouvira, she wasn't evil, she was just broken
all of that resentment and anger she was internalizing started leaking out and manifesting in her dominating the earth kingdom in name of "union", the more you work with "evil" people the more you sort of get them, understand their perspective and mindset, and I just want you to know, never, ever, lose hope in someone converting into the right. most people aren't evil, they're just broken, but kouvira hurt and ended a lot of people along the way, and that isn't fair to those innocent souls, and just because you're hurt doesn't give you the right to inflict harm onto others"
and Yin did sort of have a similar understanding to what korra said, when creating the glassbending scrolls, and when deciding to mirror the opponent's actions as an attack/defense, he needed to study the opponent, and while doing so he got a lot of flashbacks of hiroku's mom, her daughter's loss and the damage humans were causing to the spirit world were probably the top reasons she hated that the portals were open, her reasons weren't bad, the way she went about it was.
then when he looked down again, it wasn't Republic city, it was the southern air temple, blimps were passing through, and yet another beam coming out of them, but this time it was fire, looking besides him, Yin's jaw dropped, it was avatar Aang, he wanted t say something but all that was able to come out of him is inaudible mutters. Does this mean his connection to his past lives was finally restored? or is this just a parallel universe thing?
"all of them, all o them were killed, not a single one left, other than me, the fire lord was captivated by the idea of ruling the whole world, he didn't kill a person, 10 people, a hundred, a thousand, but way more, and let's not forget the ones who were left emotionally scarred for life, humans have always been destructive, doing anything to assure dominance and superiority, why do you think avatars distance themselves from humans and become more entuned with spirits? because you reach a point of knowledge where you realise humans are bad, evil, wicked"
Yin could hear the pain in Aang's voice, it seems even after about 150 years he's still not over what happened, and from what Yin understood, it's not that Aang is still holding a grudge toward that specific incident, but the idea that corruption and distortion of peace are the only ways to assure submission is repeating throughout history
after blacking out again, he was finally now on land, near a volcano
"you're probably wondering why we're here, said avatar roku, this is where I died. the same person who destroyed the air nomads, firelord sozin, betrayed me. this island was mine, and it had people living in it, during the eruption of this volcano, I was evacuating the place and trying to bend the lava, something you're thankfully better than me at, and that made me absolutely drained of all energy, Sozin left me there to melt, grinning like the filthy shameless narcissist that he is, that made me realise something, and taught me a valuable lesson I wasn't able to really follow since I died, but take advice from me, and believe me when I tell you
loyalty has an expiration date"
Avatar Roku then morphed into Avatar Kyoshi,
"look down, avatar, look at that lost scared little girl. That's me, I was homeless, my father and mother were both criminals. When you live in the street, not acknowledged as the avatar, or as a human, you realise how cold hearted people are, my stomach growls would be louder than my sobs at night, and no one, absolutely no one would try to help me, until Kelsang did, you'd think it got better from there on, hah, he got killed trying to save me. I learned to grow a thick skin, isolate emotion from logic, which is a mistake, I admit that, but it was like a fight is going on inside my body, my brain telling me to kill the evil, and my heart telling me to follow less ruinous ways, I lost hopes in humanity a long time ago, I've always been looked at as the tallest oldest one of the strongest and most intimidating avatars, do you think I wanted to be famous for that? it wasn't my choice, it was out of obligation" the pain and aggression in her voice were felt by Yin, and so were those few tears running down her face "before I go, I wanted to congratulate you for how well you mastered earthbending, at 27 you're better than most of us, ad I like that about avatars, they always evolve, congratulations" then Kyoshi bowed down to Yin, which left his shocked brain even more shocked, but he didn't have the time to freak out, Kuruk was in front of him
"as a punishment for my stubborn childish behavior, ummi, my fiance, was pulled into the spirit world and got her face taken by Koh, I was mad at Koh, but never sat down and reflected onto myself and rethought of my actions, I was the one to blame, spirits stole nothing from me, I was the one who stole from them"
Yin started to get what the avatars wanted to make him understand, why the parallel universe even existed, to be as far away as possible from humans, his dosappointment in the amount of combustion his species caused was immeasurable, but that wasn't over, as Avatar Yangchen and Raava came, Raava spoke first
"I can tell hearing all of this misery is touching you a lot, do you wish to continue learning from your past lives, is it too much? if you continue, you'll be hearing from avatar Yangchen, Szeto, Salai, Imiq, Jamphel and lua, all came before Kuruk respectively"
"no matter how much wisdom and knowledge I draw from others, it will never be enough, and there's always room for improvement, thank you for your concern Raava, but I'd like to continue"
and with that Raava vanished and Yangchen started talking "I'm glad you decided to go all the way,
a long time ago, When the spirits still roamed the earth freely, General Old Iron, a giant human like spirit resided on the seashore, near where centuries later the city of Yu Dao would be erected. He protected Lady Tienhai, another spirit. Lady Tienhai was a really kind hearted spirit, when humans came to that island to live there, General Old Iron wanted to wipe them out, since humans built a reputation of killing spirits, but Lady Tienhai protected them, and argued with General Old Iron to leave them alone, they were left alone, but that costed Lady Tienhai and the General their friendship, and he left the island. Years later, General Old Iron felt Lady Tienhai exhale her last breath, he thought humans killed her, so he starting heading to the island to kill all of them, what really happened was that Lady Tienhai fell in love with the people's prince, later on king, and in order to stay with him she gave up her immortality, all of this was something General Old Iron wasn't aware of, I tried to stop him, and we had a really big fight, he was strong and persistent I'll give him that, and during our fight, we destroyed the city, by sunrise we talked and communicated, as we were supposed to from the start, and we agreed that he would never take his armor and attack humans as long as the Island was free from humans, and I also built a memorial of Lady Tienhai that me and my people visited every year. General Old Iron cried, he realised humans ae evolving and becoming stronger and stronger by the day, and decided there was no reason for his kind to stay"
then Yin met all the other avatars that Raava told him he's going to meet, and after that everything went black, and he woke up in the temple, there were no snakes or moving scepter, however there was a firefly that kept circling around the avatar, then it headed to the outside, the door was now open again, Yin understood it wanted him to follow it, so he did. Although the amount of morbid information the other avatars gave him, walking in this vibrant path was sort of refreshing, it gave him time to reflect on what he learned, and understand it more, not only that, he also kept thinking about whether he'll be able to connect with his past lives outside the parallel universe, where the firefly is taking him, and other things.
While lost in his thoughts, he snapped out of them when he noticed the insect stopping, raising his head, he observed a humongous tree, then he heard Raava inside of his head saying "this, avatar, is the tree of life, it's the first thing created in existence, and the last thing to disappear, it gives live to the parallel universe, spirit world, material world, and every place. if something exist, it's because of the tree of life"