.
Grand masters of Huajie had seen vistas like this, in astral visits to the Fundamental Realm. They spent most of their efforts after returning on imparting as many revelations concerning spiritual matters as they could recall, but sometimes the only memories they retained after passing through the Great Barrier were glorious images such as this, which were nonetheless recorded for posterity as precious treasures.
Yet here I floated, witnessing it myself, the grand sky spread in all directions, even straight down. If I came at night, I would see the sphere of heaven become a sea of stars, as if the garden pavilion sat in isolation, in the deep void far beyond the planets.
I floated up over the rail of the observation deck, now functioning as the wall of a pool. After crossing the daylight sparkling on the water around the wide island where the visitor sat, I stepped off my lotus blossom onto pure white jade. In front of me, a face from long ago looked out from under her parasol, where she sat cross-legged on a meditation cushion, beside a tray bearing glasses and a crystal decanter filled with pale amber liquid. She already held a glass filled with the same liquid.
Without a visible sun and light coming from all around, I was uncertain how the parasol was creating the shade that it was providing her. Probably, it was an effect she created for herself.
As I hurried to kneel and bow, in order to bring my head lower than hers, I heard a slight ‘tsk’ sound from her.
“This small junior Fan Li greets the immortal senior,” I declared, cupping my fist in greeting. “Should I address you as a senior or as a goddess, as you are known in this world?”
She gave me a slightly narrow-eyed look, then pooched her lips slightly.
“Senior would be far more than sufficient. You are wearing the form of one of your many incarnations, as I understand it,” she stated, as a simple declarative sentence. She used a somewhat harsh tone.
“It is so, Senior. The hero was in critical need of knowledge possessed by this incarnation. The environment fortuitously permitted this small one’s incarnation to manifest.”
She sighed. “Can’t you just use the knowledge without engaging in costume play?”
“My deepest apologies, Senior. That is beyond the capacity of my current incarnation. Except for remembering her prior life as Robert, she can only clearly recall one life at a time. To do so, she must assume that character.”
“Why not assume the character of Senhion, then?” she asked, sounding annoyed.
“Becoming Senhion is also currently beyond her, Senior,” I explained apologetically. “The spiritual vessel is still insufficient. Likely, by the time it is possible, she will have assumed the fully integrated personality that recalls the lives of all incarnations, instead.”
“Is that so?” she responded, her voice suddenly sounding much more gentle. And possibly with a hint… of sorrow? The one known in these times as Gaia was a hard, prickly personality, so it seemed a bit out of character on the surface, but I knew from Senhion’s memory that she was actually a deeply caring individual, worthy of the epithet ‘Earth Mother’.
“I apologize, Senior.”
“Do not,” she stated, the hardness in her voice returning. “It is rather obviously not your fault. And, Little Sen, for heaven’s sake, raise your head! Aren’t you tired of addressing the floor?”
I bent my neck slightly to look up at her, but retained my crouched position.
Sighing again, she pointed to a spot on the floor closer to her, and a second meditation cushion appeared. “I admit that I rarely acknowledge it to your face, but I have never denied your position as a family member. Please sit with me properly, as fellow wives.”
I felt I was being presumptuous, but I stated, “… then I shall not be polite,” and stood, meekly kneeling upon on the cushion.
“Hmm,” Gaia pondered while looking at my posture critically. “Still too stiff, but better.”
Letting go of the parasol, which remained mysteriously in place over her head, she reached over and flipped a glass upright, then pulled the stopper from the decanter.
I reacted immediately, hastily trying to stop her from pouring for me, but she raised an imperious eyebrow at me and I meekly settled back on my haunches. Slightly mortified, I watched as a senior of at least three realms above my Mortal Realm self poured a drink and served it to me.
“Thank you, Senior.”
“Two realms,” she corrected, with her voice still hard, as she set the decanter back down and stoppered it. “I am from the Second Harmonic, and, regardless of the memories you retain, you are still Senhion, my long lost junior wife from the Fundamental Realm. You have forgotten the reasons we welcomed you into our family, but we have never forgotten them. We are looking forward to the day you remember those reasons. In the meantime, you remain our wife no matter how long we must wait.”
I lowered my eyes. The idea of claiming to have any familial relationship with this exalted being was a bit too daring for my heart, but I replied again, “Thank you, Senior.”
She sipped her beverage lightly while contemplating her words, then grew cross and commanded, “Drink, Little Sen. I didn’t pour it to admire the color.”
When I raised it to my lips, I tasted strong alcohol and a familiar flavor.
“Meijiu?” I exclaimed, reverting in my surprise to the language of the Da Long Empire.
She chuckled. “It is actually bitter cherry wine, a local beverage of Relador. But the fruit from which your world makes your plum wine is of the same clade.”
I went ahead and took another sip, relishing a flavor I had not tasted in decades. No, certainly longer. During my closing years on Huajie, lasting more than the final century of my life, I lost the ability to consume all mortal foods. The mortal portion of my physique had already mummified and begun decomposing. Rather obviously, my simulation here reconstructed my body from several centuries before that happened.
After noticing Gaia measuring her next words, I placed the glass on the floor and respectfully waited.
She took another contemplative sip, then declared, “I’m sure that you are aware that when we lost you, our exalted husband took a small action in defiance of heaven’s law?”
“Are you referring to how Oranos somehow kept track of my journeys through Samsara, and perhaps even influenced where and when I was reincarnated?”
“Quite,” she stated, tapping her finger on the stem of the wine glass. “If you or I were to place a tracer upon a departing soul, our device would certainly be destroyed during its passage through the Great Barrier. I have no understanding of how he managed such a feat, but of course, his realm is well above mine. And perhaps he had the help of the upper realm entities who tasked us with the rescue of this world. The three immortal patriarchs of the Tutelary Council are higher realm beings with powers far beyond what you and I can guess. We, the remaining nine of the twelve, are merely their lower-realm family members.”
“Did he do so in order to accomplish this?” I asked, indicating myself as ‘this’. “I am not the only incarnation of Senhion who brings Mortal knowledge not known to this world.”
“Mmm,” she pondered again, tapping her wine glass stem harder. “It is likely, but I cannot say it as a fact. I truly cannot tell you anything other than speculation, but I have speculated for some time on this. The following is simply what I believe. Our husband is, in his own inscrutable Upper Realm manner, an emotional being. It was not only you for whom he mourned. He took the loss of all the Elder Race deeply to heart. That much I can tell you as fact. I suspect he tracked not only your soul, but the souls of all the thousands lost.”
A sip, then a continuation. “However, you, as a beloved family member, were his priority. I can see the nature of that otherworldly physique you currently wear. I am certain he selected it to nurture a soul up to the minimum necessary to occupy an Elder body as speedily as possible. He may have even arranged for you to have the training you received in that incarnation in order to fully exploit that physique.”
I tipped my head. “Then why send me to Earth, where I lost all my spiritual energy?”
“He did not send you to Huajie to accumulate spiritual energy,” she corrected. “He sent you there for completion.”
I blinked. “Completion, Senior?”
“You, like all the Elders, were injured nearly to the point of your soul’s destruction. None of you had more than fragments of souls remaining. Only many lives nurtured in the vessels of lesser beings would suffice to repair them. You will never remember your first few incarnations after Senhion, because you lived as lower beasts in those lives. Your subsequent lives grew the parts missing in your soul as you progressed upward. Your time on Huajie, surrounded by a rich spiritual environment and wrapped in this remarkable vessel, removed the very last voids and fractures, to restore your soul’s immortal purity.”
“Then, Earth…”
“Your time on Huajie also rendered you impossible to smuggle into such a low energy world as Huade. He had to strip you of all your spiritual energy to render you fit for entry here. For that reason, your passage back to Huade passed through the spiritual desert of Earth.”
She sipped again, then stated, “This is all my speculation. Our Exalted Husband refuses to answer my queries or confirm my suspicions. He has also remains mum on the mystery that I have investigated ever since your return brought it to my attention.”
Placing the cup on the floor, she folded her hands and stated, “Little Sen, I understand you already know that you returned to Huade to fulfill a heroic destiny.”
I nodded. “I was told so before I arrived.”
Circling the rim of the cup with her finger, she continued, “You were to reincarnate about three years from now, as the baby of a certain great granddaughter of Senhion, sired by the Second Prince of Huade. You would have faced the demon king about twenty years from now, once he revealed himself. That job was yours. We never planned for your kingdom to summon an otherworld hero.”
I grew a slight frown, the emotion coming from young Tiana, whom it seemed even the gods were determined to hook up with Prince Roderick. But my attention was mostly on the other thing she said.
She nodded. “The heroic destiny which brought you here is the same destiny for which your hero was summoned. Things did not go as planned, however. The fact that you could still come here means that he, somehow, did not properly receive that destiny.”
“But there was an oracle to hold a summoning, though…?”
“Indeed,” she nodded. “And the spell that your Mother cast in response to that oracle operated correctly because a real heroic destiny existed. And if things had gone as the sender of the oracle intended, a human hero would have received that destiny decades too early. As a result, the door would have been closed to you, as a hero of the proper age, and your hero would have faced that destiny as a warrior well past his prime. It was only through luck, or perhaps miscalculation, that it did not work.”
“As the sender intended…?”
Those words gave me a very cold feeling in my stomach.
“The summoning of your hero was the act of a saboteur, Little Sen. The oracle did not come from us.”
