Chapter 114
History's Buried Secrets
Leo and Azariel walked in silence, weaving between the trees, escorted by wind alone.
Though the man had already said he'd only be able to read one of thirteen, Leo still decided to take him there, for no other reason than to perhaps trigger another phenomenon. If not, then stretching their legs was as good a reason as any.
He walked at the front, with the man lagging three paces behind no matter how Leo himself moved; it wasn't something that a person was born with, or a natural talent, but a habit picked up over years and years of being in someone's shadow, scurrying about, following them, trying to match their pace.
Leo was hardly a psychologist--though the years of privilege taught him a lot when it came to how people behaved in those circumstances. As such, he could only make vague guesses, most of which were likely wrong, but beyond all that, his gut feeling, as it were, told him that Azariel, even if a bit skeevy and shifty-looking, wasn't a bad person.
Someone being 'bad' or 'evil' was sort of quantitive in Leo's eyes--one action made person a neither... up to a point, of course. However, in his experience, saints and sinners alike danced the fence the best they could, trying to navigate life's river just like everyone else. Azariel may as well have done some dubiously evil things in the past--he may as well have participated in that war that haunted Leo's dreams, one that he had to revisit every night, though, from the sounds of it, it was a bit before his time.
Even still, no one's soul was clean; Leo would not judge him based on that, as he knew well enough how it felt to be judged. Back on Earth, it felt that no matter what he did, in the eyes of the world he would always be the person he became in his teenagehood--reckless, angry, bitter, drunkard, spoiled. There was a time in his life where he tried to rehabilitate his image: he stopped going to the parties, stopped showing up drunk in public, stopped spending, but it didn't matter. It never does.
"What was your guys' goal?" Leo broke the silence as they made it halfway through. "If I hadn't shown up, I mean."
"I'm not sure," Azariel replied. "As I said, we woke up too early. We had to restart our cultivations anew, but because of the Qi's scarcity, none of us would have gone beyond Fusion Realm, I imagine. Noor Bai was the leader, so I genuinely don't know what their plan was--a wild card, that one was. Possibly to stay hidden, try to locate the source of Primordial Qi and feed from it directly, or try and 'tame' as many Spirits as possible to act as a buffer."
"How did you guys survive for thousands of years, anyway?" Leo quizzed. It was one of those questions that he just had to ask.
"By dying."
"Huh?"
"You know how some animals hibernate through winter and such?"
"Yes."
"It's something like that," Azariel said. "We discarded everything non-essential, tapering ourselves off until there was but a smidgen of a soul left. That smidgen couldn't think, feel, or process anything, of course, but it contained all that we were. Things were put in place to reconstruct our bodies around it and, well, that's how. It's a rather ugly experience, somehow worse whilst being reconstructed than deconstructed. Then there was the Seal... I, uh, I don't know anything about it, honestly, just that it was functionally the core of what kept us alive."
"Sounds like hell." Leo rolled his eyes gently. Just how many people back on Earth would have paid literal hundreds of millions to 'suspend' themselves until tech could give them immortality? Anyone who could afford it, Leo garnered.
"Can... can I ask you some questions?" Leo glanced back at the fidgety man, smiling faintly.
"Fire away," Leo said. "Though, I must warn you, I'm not the right person to ask."
"Why?"
"I haven't left these woods since I was born," though a lie, it was technically the truth. "So, my knowledge of the outside world is as fleeting as it's barren."
"Oh, that's alright. I, I don't really care about the outside world," Azariel said. "Rather, I can probably imagine it."
"How so?" Leo quizzed.
"There are perhaps one or two Earthly Immortals among humans," Azariel said. "Heralded by everyone as the strongest. In reality, they're probably stuck in the In-Between, living out their hell, day in and out. Everyone else, False Immortals included, basks in whatever tiny bit of cultivation they managed to achieve. Technology has barely progressed, we still cling to the Hidden Realms for most of the 'exotic' things, we are still wholly ignorant to the world outside the Ashlands." Leo didn't know how right or wrong the man was, though he was curious as to why he felt that way. As though reading his mind, Azariel continued.
"This, uh, this is something my mother told me, in absolute confidence," he spoke rather awkwardly and slowly, as though he were revealing the world's greatest secret. "According to her, there were about five people alive at the time who knew, and none who were heading into the 'future'. According to her, it was a secret everyone wanted buried, but... not her."
"Suspense properly achieved, tension is there, get to the point already."
"Ah, sorry, it's a--"
"--habit, yes, I figured. But here, and now, you're not a bard or a storyteller in want of attention, and I'm not a hulking mass of flesh that won't give it to you unless you entertain me."
"... harsh."
"But true?"
"Mostly harsh," Azariel shrugged, letting part of his true self slip for a moment, prompting Leo to grin.
"Continue."
"I imagine that the standard tale everyone believes is that the Demons subjugated us, enslaved us, and exploited us until we were barren of flesh and weak in our bones. That they used the Spirits to torture us, and that they laughed at our peril."
"Something like that, I hear," Leo said. Lu Yang, certainly, seemed to have deeply believed one version of that reality.
"You don't believe it?"
"... I don't know," Leo shrugged as he slowed down, forcing Azariel to finally join him, the two walking side-by-side. "I caught a glimpse of a world long-gone, and it didn't seem to me like you were being exploited. Nobody else seems capable of seeing or hearing them, but, at night, apparitions and ghosts come out into the woods, wailing--wailing for me. And I meet them, in all their grief and pain, and I offer them a respite. In return, they let me catch a glimpse of the past forgotten--armies of men, thousands strong, marching and burning. Could be that I was just shown selective bits, but it never seemed like it was a march of desperation, but rather a march of conquest."
"It was," Azariel said; whether the man believed Leo or not (when it came to ghosts), he didn't let it show on his face either way. "March out of conquest, I mean. While it's true that we weren't abused, and that we were generally looked after, we were decidedly not the Demons. Even if it was silent, it was still a form of discrimination--they believed so, at least. Any time they asked for more, they were given half of what they wanted. But, you know people..."
"It was never enough?"
"They wanted everything," Azariel said. "The gold, the gilded palaces, the fertile lands, the massive castles and forts, the pretty dresses, the bejeweled blades and shields, everything. The way my mother told it to me, they started off small--pretending to be hurt in front of the Spirits, having injured themselves beforehand, but 'offhandedly' mentioning that the Demons probably didn't mean it. Bit by bit, the Spirits grew restless. Though they are smart, incredibly so, they are still, at their hearts, animals. They have no concept of deceit, false intent, or trickery. So, they believed the humans. The entire thing was decades in the making, but, according to mother, it would not have truly mattered."
"How so?"
"How strong would you say you are?" Azariel suddenly asked, prompting Leo to fall silent. How strong was he? Far weaker than the man was imagining, most likely. Leo himself knew that he was probably stronger than his cultivation realm implied, but not by much.
"Not that strong," Leo said vaguely. "Why?"
"Oh."
"Expected something else?"
"Most cultivators of your strength cannot wait to revel in sharing the soul-exhausting depths of their strength..." Azariel muttered, seeming even a bit disappointed.
"I'm the strongest man around," Leo sighed. "I can flick a finger and kill everyone in fifty miles around me."
"That's more like it," more and more of him was coming through, Leo mused silently. "The reason I asked is simple: even if you truly were the strongest human in the Ashlands, even stronger than the scant few Earthly Immortals, it would not have mattered. Per mother's words, humans had nearly a hundred Earthly Immortals, but one Demon alone was enough to kill them all, and do so without much struggle."
"Then how?" Leo frowned; though the ghosts in his visions were impressive, and clearly far stronger individually than any of the people, they never seemed 'godly', as it were, which was what Azariel was implying.
"Because humanity lucked out," Azariel said. "Unbeknownst to them, the reason why they were never incorporated fully into the Demons' lives, is because, elsewhere, there was a war raging on. While the humanity was concocting ways to crown themselves, the Demons were fighting a war of survival--not just for themselves, but for the entire Ashland." Leo's ears perked up as he listened to something that likely only one or two other people in the entire world besides the two of them knew, if that. "Mother called them the 'Outsiders', beings beyond this realm. The truth is," Azariel added with grave weight in his voice and tone. "There is no world beyond Ashland. The dark oceans surrounding the landform go on forever. Rather than part of a greater world, Ashland is all there is to it. It's a Hidden Realm, a pocket dimension, an inconsistency existing between the worlds."
"..." though Leo was shocked plenty of times since coming to this world, this was perhaps the first time he was ever shocked into silence. He didn't know what to say, professing deep within that, perhaps, Azariel's mother was just making it up. For what reason? He couldn't even pretend to care.
"Hah, I know," Azariel scoffed. "Don't think for a second I believed her. It made no sense. But... it did. That's how the humanity, ultimately, emerged victorious--all of the strongest members of the Demons, those who have transcended the Immortality itself, had perished in the war, defending this place. Those left behind were 'children', effectively, and with enough bodies and enough time, and with a lot of help from the Spirits... the humans, just barely, emerged victorious. That was when they learned everything. Fortunately, the war was over--the Demons 'won', if you could call it that. They repelled whatever invaded us, and for the time being, we were 'safe'. But they knew it wouldn't last forever. There would be another invasion, and the next time, there would be no Demons to shelter us.
"All of this was ancient history even by the time I was born," Azariel said. "So, how much of it is true, I honestly don't know. My mother seemed convinced of everything, and when I asked her how she knew, she wouldn't tell me. The Well," Azariel said. "You know the horror I mentioned others said existed there?"
"Yes?"
"The rumor was that the Well held an Outsider," Azariel said. "Even though we have never witnessed one."
"That's... complicated," Leo exhaled, having unconsciously held his breath for a long while now. It truly was, far more complicated than he expected. The more he learned of history of this place, the more... layered it appeared. Lies on top of lies, all confounding the truth that wasn't even truth, just bits and parts and pieces Frankenstein-ed together in a desperate attempt to create a cohesive narrative.
"Anyway, as for why we decided to put our hopes on future," he said. "It was mostly a theory, a hope, if you'd believe it. No matter how hard we tried, there has never been a human who broke through Earthly Immortal Realm. In fact, if we didn't have first-hand accounts of Demons doing things that even Earthly Immortals cannot, we'd probably profess the Earthly Immortal Realm as peak and move on. But it's not. There's a mountain taller, a sea deeper, and a greater journey. But, for one reason or another, it was unachievable for humans.
"By the time I was born, Primordial Qi was practically gone. There were faint traces of it in specific hot-spots, but most kids trained using ordinary Qi. The theory set in motion was simple: one had to marry themselves to Primordial Qi from the cradle, use it to reshape the body over and over and over again, until they forged a vessel capable of transcending the Immortality. And hope, desperately, that one of the top cultivation methods of the time had the capacity to lead us there, even if by accident. It was already common knowledge that Primordial Qi was not static--but in constant flux. It would come and go, almost like a tide, though never in a predictable pattern. So, we buried ourselves until it came back again.
"There," Azariel said, taking a deep breath. "Now you know practically as much as I do. Do you feel better?"
"Of course. A headache is good for you, right?"
"Ha ha," he laughed, rather unrestrained, at Leo's little joke. "If it's just a headache, you are doing great. I had a panic attack, and wouldn't leave my room until we were set to 'depart'."
"We're here," Leo noted, wondering whether he was even ready for any more 'bombs' to come. Parts of him hoped that there would be no resonance, and that his learning for today was over. Then again, there was that gut feeling--and it was telling him that it wouldn't be so simple...