Chapter 92
Primordial Qi
Darkness receded and light briefly blinded him, prompting him to open his eyes.
Leo was back in the forest, slumped between the trees, watching a translucent figure slowly fade like a dying screen. It was yet another painful excursion into the forgotten history, one overwhelmed with death and rot. The first night that he was alone, he journeyed out toward the wails, quickly encountering quite a few. It almost felt like with animals, where the 'word' spread out, and those in the distance slowly converged toward him.
He chose at random, having no heart or mind to make a proper selection, all while butchering the Itsy-bitsy spider classic.
As the translucent figure faded, so did the other apparitions--however, they simply faded further back into the forest, likely awaiting the next night, wondering if they would be chosen next.
He sighed, standing up and stretching. Even if it still hurt and cut as deeply as any blade could... it was easier. With ever so lighter steps, he returned to the longhouse just before dawn. He quickly put on pots and kindled the fires and tossed in the ingredients, in time for animals to slowly start trickling out from between the trees.
For a while now, he realized, his solitude was interrupted rather frequently--in small ways, he missed when he first appeared, when everything was strange, alien, and unknown. Every day felt as long as a lifetime, every new discovery as grand as the sky itself. All of that had diminished, as he knew just enough to be discluded from the wonder, but not enough to truly know anything.
Alas, he tried, for once, not being the sort to hang himself on the loose thoughts of a wanderer. What he used to drown with unhealthy amount of booze, he now settled deep and away, dousing himself in the pleasantries of this world.
"Hm? There's not that many of you today," he spoke after a quick look around. Whereas, at this point, there were usually close to seventy or eighty animals, only about a quarter of that number showed up. Even if a few more would appear a bit later on, it still seemed strange. "Is there something wrong?"
Only Milky responded to his voice, sauntering over and jumping into his lap, looking up. Though he'd shelved his appearance (as well as appearances of all other animals) in the back of his head as just 'curiosities of this world', every once in a while, when he'd pause and take a deeper look, he'd find himself... struggling, almost, to move on.
The young(?) little panther stood as though sculpted from the dreams of starlight itself, his alabaster fur shimmering with an almost otherworldly glow. A cascade of purity that was his silken coat was only ever broken by the delicate, ink-black rosettes that rippled like whispers of shadow across his body. The pattern was precisely symmetrical, splitting at the mid-point, forming a rather bewitching and beautiful arrangement. His luminous sapphire-blue eyes, deep and unyielding like frozen glacial pools, held a quiet wisdom, their depths teeming with secrets, the ilk which Leo had thus far wholly ignored, mostly for his own sanity.
Even when Milky moved, he moved with a certain grace, his padded paws scarcely disturbing the dirt beneath them. There was an unmistakable majesty in his bearing--a quiet nobility, even, but the ilk that shot past the 'rare' and 'exotic' attribute of an animal. He wasn't alone in it, as he shared the commonality with most other of Leo's furred friends, which was why Leo did not want to stare at them for too long, lest he got lost in their splendor.
The little thing purred and whined for a moment, closing his eyes and nestling his head against Leo's chest. Though no words were spoken or exchanged between the two, somehow... Leo understood. Or, at least, he thought he understood. It wasn't precise communication, so much so as words or thoughts or even images could be; it was more akin to intent, a concept, a fractured tonality of an idea too abstract to be put into words. Sort of how people tried comprehending existence of higher dimensions beyond the mathematical equations.
Leo gently patted the top of the panther's head and ran his fingers down his back several times, contemplating. It was entirely possible that he simply 'imagined' what he was 'told', but it was also a chance to, once and for all, discover whether these animals truly possessed intellect beyond 'clever for a beast'. That, however, was also the crux; Leo lived within that denial rather happily, as he didn't have to ponder upon the implications of, well, everything, it they were true. If he were to break the blissful ignorance, he had a feeling that nothing truly good would come of it. And yet... he stood up.
Milky skillfully and lithely ran across his chest and over onto his shoulder, sprawling lazily and even closing his eyes. A moment later, low-humming snores echoed beside his ear, prompting Leo's eyebrows to twitch for a moment. Apparently, he'd become a bed, too, to these little things.
The two headed westward, once again past the pond, and over toward where he cut all the rotten trees. Surprisingly, there were already stumps slowly jutting out from the dirt, barely visible beneath the crowding grass, seemingly ready to be reborn. It hadn't been that long, still, but the nature was correcting the course of time, tenderly swaying it toward itself.
They did not stop there either, however, moving further and further west. Leo 'felt' it would be a long trek even when he 'learned' what Milky was 'saying', so he was already mentally prepared. However, after walking for two hours uninterrupted, even he had to sit down; even if he wasn't that tired physically, mentally, he needed rest.
Milky opened his eyes for the first time and yawned, jumping off his shoulder and stretching. Neither the trees nor the flowers changed much despite the distance traveled; if there was one slight change, it was that the canopy above became ever so scarcer, allowing more and more sunlight to pour through. As such, though the flowers were familiar to him, most were slightly larger than the ones further east.
He grabbed a waterskin of fruit juice from the spatial ring, a convenience that he was now certain he'd never be able to live without. It was sort of like a phone back on Earth, except perhaps even more convenient. It wasn't just that he could store things in the ring, it was also that their properties didn't change--so, if he could ever figure out how to produce ice, he'd be able to make iced drinks and keep them that way effectively indefinitely.
Leo didn't meander for too long, and neither did Milky. The little pup explored around for a couple of minutes before returning and hopping onto Leo's shoulder. This time, however, he didn't fall asleep, purring instead as he observed the surrounding trees.
Moving onward, the canopy grew scarcer and scarcer once again, though never to the point of opening up like a dome toward the clear sky. Once he came across the rushing river, he knew that he was close--the river itself was further sublime, as though of beyond this world. It was about ankle-deep, rapid yet slow, about forty feet across. It turned sharply southward where he found it, which was why he didn't need to cross it.
The river had a celeste shade of hue, timidly transparent, guzzling white foam rushing over the protruding rocks. Leo bent over and grabbed a handful, washing his face--it was shockingly cool, far more so than the pond of water back home. Taking a sip, he realized that, unlike the pond, it did not seem to possess any of the 'otherworldly' properties--it was an ordinary body of water, if ever so slightly colder than most others. While making juice with it would likely have diminishing effects, the taste itself would probably improve, especially on hot days like this one.
Luckily, due to the sheer size of the spatial ring, he'd packed quite a few 'extras' just in case he needed them, and that included almost twenty extra barrels that he'd made. However, as he had a place to be, he decided to swing by on his way home and fill them up.
Furthering west, he mentally prepared for the truth--whether he truly could understand the animals or not. In just about twenty minutes, if he could, he'd emerge upon a massive opening where he was to witness... something. Milky never said, or if he did, Leo never understood.
However, if he could not understand them, he'd at least put down the idea that he could to rest, and move on forever.
He understood them, he realized as soon as it came into view.
A body of water just shy of the size of a smaller lake stood still within a cirque. At the edges of the steep stone, thousands of animals gathered, sitting in silence. In fact, it was so silent that a pin drop could be heard, and so silent that Leo dared not make a sound despite being quarter of a mile away from it.
The body of water itself was wholly black--rather, it was so black that it resembled a hole that no light could escape. The only reason that Leo even knew it was water that, every once in a while, a black mote of light would surge from it, rippling the surface ever so slightly in the process. The animals observed these motes of light as they seemed to escape into the atmosphere, almost as though they were being evaporated.
Beyond just the appearance, Leo caught another oddity; just breathing seemed to churn Qi within his dantian and slowly increase his cultivation. In fact, a single breath seemed equivalent to him meditating nearly twenty minutes. Furthermore, staring at the fading, black motes of light invoked an eerily nostalgic feeling of want within him; there was a deep-seated yearning inside his soul, as if it was stretching out for a part of him that had been missing all this while.
The closer he got, the more intense the feeling became--as he came upon the edge, mingling with the animals who all seemed to ignore him, he felt his very blood boil under the inflammation. He couldn't put it into words, the desperate yearning just to reach out and touch. And yet, he knew that he would never live to look back on that feeling. There was a reason nobody was moving from the edge of the cirque or trying to 'take a dip' in the water.
Leo recalled Yu Minge and his state of being when he appeared; the sensation he felt from the cracks in the man's body that were bleeding black smoke was similar, if greatly diminished, to this one. One way or another, they were linked.
Something within the earth was waking, and though the row stood silent at the moment, Leo felt it would not be so for long. Whether good or otherwise, however, remained undecided.
He felt a lick of a tongue on his cheek suddenly and glanced to the side where he saw Milky. The little feline was all but glowing in a faint golden, his sapphire eyes alight with stars. Once again, he spoke. Not a word, not a thought, not an idea. A fractured concept of something intangible. And yet, for some reason beyond his comprehension, Leo felt like he could put into words.
"Primordial... Qi?" he mumbled the words into the wind, stirring the voices buried for eons of time, awakening the derelicts of the ancient.