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I think it’s a good time to discuss more clearly how the cosmology of Substitute Hero actually works. Actually, it was a good time at the end of Volume Six when I originally wrote this appendix, but stuff happens, and I lost the originally text, as well as quite a few chapters. I’ve been doing good just to stay ahead of the posting schedule ever since that happened.
The in the vast landscape of this story, our universe is just one of hundreds of millions (possibly more) of universes. The Immortals generally call it in terms of the Trichiliocosm, an Eastern Philosophical term that roughly means ‘third order universe’. It comes from Buddhism, and describes a universe made of clusters of worlds. One thousand worlds makes up a first-order cluster, one thousand first order clusters make up a second order cluster, and one thousand second order clusters make up the Trichiliocosm. Translators into English therefore also translate this term as the “Billion-fold Universe”.
However, the definition of ‘World’ used by the Buddhist did not originally mean our entire universe but simply a world, somewhat larger than our actually globe but in essence our planet. Today, I imagine they see ‘world’ as being equal to this universe, and that is the way that the Immortals see it. Our planet lays in a galaxy that is one of trillions in a universe that is only one out of a billion.
The Immortals don’t consider the billion universe number literal, though. I’m not sure if Buddhists do, either. For the Immortals, that number is simply considered to be the largest number the most advanced Immortals of the Fundamental Realm can clearly grasp within their mind as a literal concept (the way a mortal can clearly grasp, upon seeing three apples, the number three. Not as a concept but as a physical thing.) What they are actually saying is that there are more than a billion such universes, probably many times more.
The Trichiliocosm, or Mortal Realm, is the reality composed of mortal substance, the world of physical being, of aging, death and rebirth. In exceedingly ancient times (trillions or possibly quadrillions of years before the Big Bang that began our universe) early Immortals reached beyond their mortal worlds to discover the Spirit Realm, the plane of pure Spiritual Force from which Mind and Life organize in opposition to the Entropy that is the final law of their worlds.
They discovered they could not exist there without abandoning their bodies and it was dangerous to simply cast their bodies away and dwell there, so they could only visit as detached spirits. They explored its many facets and special immaterial existences. And eventually they discovered Heaven, the region beyond it, and somehow (by means known only to the ancientmost ancients who now dwell in the far reaches of heaven) they either organized it in the first place or cooperated with the mind or minds that already dwelt there it reform it. The truth of the matter is lost to time, at least for the lower-level Immortals who interact with the Mortal Realm, but it is certain that they shaped it in its current organization so they could live there.
In the Immortal Realms, Immortals and Spirits wear bodies of Immortal Substance to live insulated from the tyranny of Entropy and the Law of Mortality. Immortals are ascended mortal beings (or sometimes, like Senhion’s origin, the children of ascended beings) and Spirit Beast are ascended Spirits. The vast majority of Spirit Beasts are animal and plant level only, but unlike in the Mortal Realm, they have unlimited time to gradually grow into the equals of Immortals in intelligence and power.
Rather than being a vast field of parallel existences like the universes of the Trichiliocosm, the Immortal Realms stack, starting at the bottom with the grand Fundamental Realm, ascending from there in the Harmonic Realms, in an unknown number of levels (possibly ever-increasing, because the math does not set any limit upon it.)
Because they and their world are not mortal substance, a hard dividing line stands between the Mortal Realm and the Celestial Realms (upper realms) which prevents immortals from directly visiting the Mortal Realm and makes bringing mortals into the Celestial Realm almost impossible. Immortals like Senhion had to give up immortality and become “non-mortals” in order to enter Huade’s universe and directly work there.
About the various structures of the Immortal Realm:
The ancient-most ancients formed the important structures that act as aids to their former brethren back in the Mortal Realm, including the Sea of Knowledge, the Wheel of Samsara, and the vast organization of junior Immortals called the Afterlife, that works to prevent the Wheel from becoming a random lottery or a soulless, uncaring engine and helps guide developing souls through their lives. The Immortals of higher realms also organized their junior brethren into a workforce that aids those souls while they are trying to live their lives in the Mortal Realm.
Partly, this is to serve the grand design for which Heaven was organized in the first place, to foster and cultivate the souls doomed to continuous rebirth to instead mature and advance, eventually becoming immortals themselves. And partly, this is to do what they can to protect those souls from evil immortals and their demonic minions, who use the Mortal Realm as a playground, to play cruel games for their own entertainment, and prey upon mortals as fodder to feed their own development.
Back in the Mortal Realm, the universes are parallel, but not equal. They drift in the Chaotic Sea, which insulates them from each other and separates them into many variations. They differ not only in structure but vary in size from grand spaces of trillions of galaxies down to miniatures having little or sometimes no apparent size at all. The lesser universes can be controlled, their rules rewritten by connecting them to larger universes as ‘pocket universes’ that Immortals can use for special interactions with denizens of the Mortal Realm.
Because they are not equal, they vary in the strength of their spiritual force, from extremely weak places like Earth’s universe to extremely strong worlds that approach the strength of the Fundamental Realm. If the reincarnating souls were to be left to random chance, very powerful souls would be marooned in powerless places and very weak souls would live like lower animals in higher worlds when they could have been advanced intelligences in a better place. The purpose of the Wheel of Samsara is to sort reincarnating souls, sending them to the best choice for their current state of development. The purpose of the Afterlife is to monitor the Wheel and to intercede, routing special cases to places where they can accomplish particular goals. The purpose of the Sea of Knowledge is an aid to shorten a mortal’s journey through repeated reincarnation, and if mortals would just use it that way instead of trying to get information about their own futures on their current world, they would find it much more effective.
Huade is somewhat higher in hierarchy than Earth, and thus receives souls from lower order worlds, and has more souls reincarnate back to Huade for second or third lives than happens on Earth.
Earth’s universe is one of the lowest in the hierarchy, so it is a generator of brand new souls. Souls from prior lives on Earth or from higher order spaces can be reincarnated there, but the vast majority are in their first lifetime. And bear in mind, this fact doesn’t apply just to Earth but to Earth’s entire universe.
As the Celestial Beings have informed Tiana, the fact that Robert was reincarnated there was an aberration. An ancient soul such as he should never have been reincarnated there, and even if he had, it should have been in his file. Instead, he mysteriously had a fresh file. We have now determined that this was due to the meddling of Oranos (the chief supervisor of Huade and a being from much higher in the Celestial Realm than the HR Manager.)
We have briefly visited more appropriate places for Robert to have reincarnated, places like Fan Li’s world. In fact, all the other worlds mentioned in Senhion’s reincarnation journey were much higher than Earth. We actually traveled downward from the highest, Fan Li’s world, to the lowest (of the ones we visited), Daq R’mion’s world.
About the Celestial Maidens: The Afterlife personnel, and the ‘gods’ (Huade’s supervisory team) tailor their appearance to the expectations of the individual. They have personalities that are real, so they take on an image that suits themselves within the individual’s gestalt. That includes the mortal’s world, culture and religion. They do take on real interests in the worlds they deal with, so affectations such as the HR Manager’s interest in Romance may be real. However, it may be a mapping of her actual, immortal realm interest onto Robert/Tiana’s gestalt.
So, these will change to suit the worldview of the mortal they are dealing with. The images we have been seeing were chosen to suit Robert’s worldview, and they have stuck to them for Tiana just because these are the ‘characters’ she already knows. The personality of the actual immortals behind these personas do color the ‘character’ they put on for Robert or Tiana, but as was mentioned in a recent chapter, everything they do and every prop they use is a symbol representing the reality behind it, rather than being the reality itself.
So are they actually angels? Celestial maidens? Heavenly office ladies? Something else? The only legitimate answer to this would be “yes”. We can only say that they are the reality behind these concepts.
