Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

Chapter 434: Meditation

The area near the Vortex was forbidden to the Black Hole People. They were too weak to stay here for extended periods of time. As a result, it had grown deserted.

In Jack’s eyes, however, it was a great cultivation spot. It could even be called perfect. An artificial black hole hovered right in front of him, letting him perceive it freely, while the darkness and lack of sound calmed his mind.

For a while, he could even forget about Eric, imagining himself in a different world where nothing mattered. He was alone in the darkness. Just him and the Dao—his greatest lover and most noble pursuit. The meaning of his life.

Time flowed like water. Jack isolated himself, resolved to stay there for as long as needed. He had nothing to worry about in the Black Hole World. No responsibilities, no family, no concerns. He was alone—and, though that did not bring happiness, it did bring freedom.

He relaxed. All his troubles merged into the background. He surrendered himself to cultivation, even forgetting about his cracked Dao Tree.

Life and Death. Space and Time.

Though his Dao had cracked, that didn’t mean he couldn’t keep pondering, only that he couldn’t translate his understandings into more power. In truth, he had many things to meditate on.

Spacetime was the most obvious. The realm heart inside him and the artificial black hole before him were both holy objects in that respect, a wet dream for even A-Grade cultivators of spacetime. He had two of them—his progress could be maddening.

However, to cultivate was to follow one’s heart. Jack temporarily put the Spacetime Dao aside. His heart wanted to focus on its other duality. Specifically, the concept of Death.

Jack’s thoughts were tender. He gently reached into the back of his mind and let his emotions resurface, doing his best to keep the grief under control. It wouldn’t go away until he comprehended and embraced it; and there was no better place to do so than here, in the darkness, where he was alone with infinite time.

Tears flowed freely. He no longer tried to restrain them.

I’m sorry, Eric…

This was different than the mindless wallowing he’d indulged in when he first lost his son. Some time had passed now. Not nearly enough to recover—but enough to regain his awareness.

Jack was a man of strong will. Moreover, he had never jailed away his emotions before. He recognized that he felt guilt, pain, suffering. At the same time, he knew that, eventually, he would have to move on. No matter how hard the things that happened, no matter how his heart was torn apart by pain, life never stopped. He still had reasons to live—he wasn’t ready to throw in the towel.

He would need to move on, and the greatest obstacle to doing that was his own grief.

How can I get over my son’s death? he asked himself. That was my mistake. It is my duty to mourn, the only way I can atone for my sin. If I don’t, won’t it mean that I don’t care?

These were not the thoughts he hoped for, but the ones which bubbled out of his mind. He let them come, doing his best to perceive them calmly. His guilt was evident—it was the most striking emotion, though not necessarily the greatest. It was the easy first resort.

He had failed to protect his son. It was a massive failure, and the way his brain tried to handle that was to blame himself. He felt that he had to.

Jack sighed. Consciously, he knew that getting over this self-blaming would be the first step, but knowing something and actually doing it were two very, very different concepts. It didn’t matter how strong Jack’s mind and heart were—such terrible grief wasn’t something that could be overcome in a short amount of time. Even working through the edge of his feelings was an exhausting and difficult process.

He’d taken a small step today. He’d realized that self-blaming was the first obstacle to overcome. Only then would he able to genuinely consider his emotions, see things for what they were, and try to repair his Dao crack. However, though he saw that first step, he could sense that he wasn’t yet ready to take it.

That’s okay, he thought, loving himself as he would love another. This cannot be rushed. I will take my time. When I’m ready, I will know.

Time was necessary. The best way to handle this was to embrace his feelings as much as possible without losing himself. Gradually, he would become familiar with those feelings, and then he could begin to unravel them.

Death… What is death?

The Dao of Death was one he cultivated. However, up to now, he had only had two viewpoints on death—inflicting it, and studying it on the death cube. Both were useful, but he’d always lacked a more personal viewpoint. He’d never actually experienced death—the only time he had, when his father passed away pre-Integration, he hadn’t been a cultivator yet.

The current situation was the personal experience he’d been missing. He didn’t even have to try—the insights rushed into him, part of the grief he couldn’t shake off.

Death was painful—far more so than it seemed from outside. Only now that his son was gone could Jack begin to comprehend how brutal and merciless death was. It had erased a life with the flick of a switch. All the dreams, experiences, friends, lovers, pains, wine under the moon… All of that was instantly gone. Life was an orderly, gradual process. Death was an instant, world-shattering one.

If life was rain, then death was thunder.

And death, like life, extended beyond the individual. Eric’s death was over, but the consequences of that event were still rippling out. They would affect Jack, Brock, Vivi, Ebele, the Animal Kingdom… It could be said that the entire future of the world had been altered because of the consequences of one death—the infamous butterfly effect.

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If life was a lake and its ecosystem, then death was a boulder thrown inside. It instantly and enormously disrupted a gradual process.

Death was a powerful weapon. If life was a carefully arranged chess game, then a well-placed death was the equivalent of adding an extra piece to the board or flipping the table. It could be said that, while death was available, the calculations of life did not matter.

In that sense, death was too powerful. Maybe that was why the cultivation world had gone to shit. Death was just too common. Maybe the only way for life to thrive was an environment like the advanced societies of pre-Integration Earth, where killing another was an absolutely major deal. Only then could genuine progress be made.

It was… It was…

Jack frowned, losing his train of thought. While meditating on Life and Death, he was constantly snapped out of it by a persistent feeling of wrongness. A voice inside him whispered that he was using the death of his son as a tool to advance further. He knew that was not the case but had no way to force his emotions—it eventually reached the point where he had to stop and address that voice.

I am not using anything, he told himself, trying his hardest to remain rational. It is the only way forward. I… What else can I do?

Wallow, came the voice. Mourn. Resign yourself to suffering because you deserve it.

Jack found it hard to argue. He disagreed with the voice, but how could he defend himself when he’d sinned that heavily? He shook his head. Conflict was not the way to go. He opened his mind to the voice, letting it speak. He needed to understand it.

But god was it painful.

His heart was shaved by knives. Accusatory words flooded his mind. The grief was attacking him, hidden behind a shield of guilt he couldn’t bear to break. All the while, he endured, picturing himself as a stone in an ice-cold lake. The pain and despair washed over him. He was one entity, and his heart was another—no matter how the latter suffered, he would remain in control.

He struggled to keep making progress.

Hour after hour, Jack grew more aware of his feelings. His understanding sank deeper into the unlit areas of his mind, cataloging and interpreting the angry shouts which dominated that space. He grew closer to himself, moving towards resolution with tiny, tiny steps.

It would be a long process.

In the meanwhile, as Jack worked on his heart, his understandings into Death rapidly grew. Grief was the projection of another’s death—he was experiencing a small death for himself, and whether he tried to or not, all the suffering slowly translated into insights.

Over time, his preconceived notions collapsed. He approached the truth—and truth was the core of the Dao.

Jack couldn’t utilize that knowledge right now. Since his Dao was cracked, all the understandings in the world could only increase his power by small margins. However, if he ever managed to repair his Dao and return to his former level, he would be a far stronger version of himself—a completely different beast. His cultivation base wouldn’t have improved, but his understandings would have skyrocketed.

Disaster and opportunity walked hand-in-hand. This experience had a great chance to doom Jack—but, if he pulled through, he would rise to unprecedented heights of power.

It all came down to the person.

Jack didn’t know how long he spent in the Vortex. Time had lost its meaning, and as a high-Grade cultivator, his sense of it was distorted to begin with.

His main task was coming to terms with his feelings. To do that, he meditated on Life and Death, aligning himself with the thoughts of his inner heart as they came. It was a deeply painful experience, but also a profound one. He could feel himself going through a smelting—his level of existence rose, as if he was being elevated from the mortal coil.

As if grief was the hammer, guilt was the wielder, and Jack was a rough piece of metal constantly hammered on.

Throughout that time, he didn’t dare meditate on the Fist. It was the source of his problems, where the crack existed. Until his mind was a bit more stable, he wasn’t ready to face it.

Whenever he grew too tired of Life and Death, as well as his emotions, he would gently push them to the background and work on spacetime. He already had deep enough understandings, but the artificial black hole before him held innumerable mysteries. He had to admit it was intrigued.

This black hole was the incomplete inheritance of Archon Black Hole, while the realm heart inside Jack—as well as his current understandings—was the inheritance of Archon Green Dragon. Between the two, Jack couldn’t tell which was superior, because both were at such a high level that he could only scrape their surface.

However, two was always better than one. Jack could contrast these inheritances, drawing his own conclusions from their disagreements and emphasizing on the things they both agreed on. Even Archons couldn’t grasp the entirety of spacetime—by having two separate views on the same thing, Jack could accelerate his progress further.

Especially the black hole before him. Jack had always been fascinated by the concept of black holes, and it also fit with some of his other skills. Supernova, for example, pulled in the world’s essence and compressed it as much as possible before letting it explode.

In the universe, black holes and supernovas were similar. They occurred from the same origin, which was the collapse of a large star and the creation of a gravitational vortex. The only difference was that the supernova erupted, while the gravitational vortex of the black hole grew beyond a certain threshold to the point where it could no longer erupt. The gravity was so strong that nothing could escape.

Essentially, the black hole was the natural evolution of a supernova. If Jack could comprehend some of its principles and apply them to his own attacks, just what would he achieve? Could he make his fist work like a black hole?

As for creating his own artificial black hole, that was too distant a concept. It drove home just how powerful an Archon was. At his current level, Jack couldn’t even hope to approach them.

Which, incidentally, put the entire Immortal Crusade into perspective. Green Dragon and Black Hole, two unimaginably powerful Archons sitting at the top of the universe, had both made the same decision to seal their descendants and inheritance in a separate dimension to escape the effects of the Crusade.

Just how powerful were the Immortals and Old Gods? Just how world-shattering was the war between them?

A war which had just been restarted.

Time will not wait for me, Jack realized, strengthening his resolve. Even if I manage to recover from this, I will still be nothing but an ant before the major powers of the universe—the real players of this world. No matter how great my talent and potential, they are worthless without real power. If I want to protect my people, my strength is far from enough. I must grow stronger, far stronger, so I can be ready when needed.

Right now, I am not even a chess piece in the grand chess game of the universe. Even if do become a piece, if I reach the A-Grade or even become an Archon, so what? Green Dragon and Black Hole had reached that level and achieved nothing. All they could do in the face of the Crusade was tuck away their descendants somewhere and hope for the best, and how did that help them?

The descendants of Green Dragon ended up becoming beasts. The descendants of Black Hole were stranded for a billion years.

Even as a chess piece in the grand game of the universe, I will have to rely on luck. The only reliable way to protect myself and those I care about is to become a player, then win the game.

But even Archons couldn’t do it—what qualifications do I have to try?

I will try regardless. Because that is the essence of my— He hiccuped, thought for a bit, then changed his words.

Because that is what I want.

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