48 Where He Stood

The next morning, in the boy's personal courtyard.

The boy was training his martial arts and exercising the body.

"I'm getting married! I'm going to have a friend for life!" Shura shouted in joy while he moved his body.

In this life, he was still called Shura. This didn't happen out of coincidence or fate, however. Shura himself decided on his name.

As for the story of how he did this, it was a funny one. When his mother gave birth and he was 'present' for a few brief moments, he managed to cry out, "Shura" a few times, so his parents named him 'Shura'.

His parents were surprised and thought that their newborn was a genius and immediately named him. Of course, all the things that happened while Shura was growing up proved otherwise.

Since babies couldn't talk, Shura made the sound with the power of his formidable soul. If his parents didn't take the hint and named him something else, it would've been a wasted effort. Fortunately, his little trick worked and he was still called Shura up to this day.

Shura thought it was important that his name stayed the same. He WAS his name. It was how he can understand who he was. The person with this experience and that experience, the person that did this and then that, it was Shura.

They weren't just things that happened, they happened to Shura. He didn't want to forget who he was and where he came from. All of his successes and failures, they were him, they were Shura.

On this day Shura returned to the invaluable habit of cultivating while he waited for his marriage to happen. He was making the preparation for the marriage, in his own way. The first thing he did on waking up and realizing the limitless things that he could now do, he immediately used the power of his profound soul to excavate the talent and potential of his body in order to create a strong foundation to cultivate strength.

There was a limit placed on 'strength' in this world. Nothing world-destroying and calamity-inducing would result from a wave of a person's palm, but the situation of a one person holding his own in a fight against a hundred was possible. This was an extreme case and the limit of strength. It was also only possible through sheer strength, speed, endurance, and stamina of the body.

People could at most become superhuman in the world of the Empire. People could become stronger, faster, and more durable to a superman degree, but there was no one who could fly or make things appear with a wave of their hands. There were no saints, immortals, or gods either.

Cultivation and personal power was pure physical strength in its myriad forms.

Right now was the most important period in cultivating. The body was still young and pliable. If he acted now he would be able to make a truly sturdy foundation which all successes in his adult life would come from.

This was a perfect time for him to mold and train his young body in energy control and martial arts. By the time of his marriage, anything could go wrong, but he would not accept an accident that came from someone more powerful messing it up. Whatever problem came up then, he would deal with it. But if it was a contest of strength, then the work now was to make sure there would be no such contest at all.

Shura immersed himself in training and he became stronger. No one else knew how powerful the boy was, not even his own family. He had kept everything a secret. The more concealed something was, the more potent it became at the crucial moment.

…

Some time before Shura was reborn.

Something happened when Shura died and was on his way to reincarnate. It was an eye-opening experience. Although he didn't have 'eyes' then and the metaphor wasn't enough. Although he had used metaphors before, he couldn't really come up with one apt to describe how that experience felt. Saying that he was a blind man who saw for the first time couldn't do it justice at all, because it was that, and much much more.

Shura glimpsed at a portion of what he could only describe as 'Profound Truth' of reality and existence. He had seen it with his own 'eyes' as he floated in the void after death and approached his next life. In the great beyond of death, there wasn't ground, sky, or space. There were no plants, trees, buildings, natural phenomena. There were only 'souls' of people, innumerable specks of light in the dark that formed their own constellations like those of stars in the night's sky.

And in that brief period of time where he saw all these 'souls' that were people, something happened. Out of nowhere facts and information became known to him. It occurred in an instant and he understood it all within that same instant as well.

Each individual being had a Truesoul. It was more ethereal and intrinsic than what he commonly knew of as a 'soul'.

Only life was capable of cultivation. Only living beings had Truesouls.

Each of the myriad lives that existed had a Truesoul that they were oblivious to. Their Truesoul limited their maximum attainment in cultivation. There was no need to foolishly try to make a breakthrough when one was old and feeble hoping to transcend to the next level before they bit the dust. If such individuals could see their own Truesoul, then they would know that they were trying in vain.

The better quality one's Truesoul was, the higher level in cultivation one could reach. The world was nigh endless and there were countless universes being created and destroyed along the endless river of time. But it was all one coherent system, one involving and dominated by Truesouls.

At the peak, the summit, was the Supreme Truesoul. Like what it sounded, it was Supreme. There could only be one Supreme Truesoul. With a thought, they could create and destroy things and peoples. At this level was true omniscience, omnipotence, and immortality.

They were not considered a cultivator anymore. There were none that was their equal, the Supreme alone stood at the top. They were omnipotent and omniscient. Capable of creation and destruction. To give such a being the appellation of a 'God' would not be in vain.

Below the level of a Supreme Truesoul were the levels of the innumerable life who could cultivate. They were the Great Truesoul, Heaven Truesoul, and Earth Truesoul.

Finally, below them all was the Man Truesoul. This was the Truesoul of mortals who could not cultivate.

Knowing this new information made Shura informed. Rather than blindly doing something out of only hope of it being true, he knew what was true and false, and he could make a decision safe in the knowledge that it was a sound decision based on the truth.

As for the fact that one's Truesoul limited how far one could go on the path of cultivation, to not know it wasn't important. It was still common knowledge that some people just couldn't reach a certain level of cultivation. Some called it a lack of talent, others called it a lack of ambition and drive. Although they might not know what it's called or why it was so, people still knew of it.

It was now that he came to touch reality that his mind became the clearest and most profound it had ever been. He knew he had a Heaven Truesoul: he was average. He did not have equal opportunity with all the great experts of the past, present, and future to become the strongest possible. As for becoming The Supreme, those knowledgeable people with Great Truesouls could try and hope, but Shura could not even entertain the thought.

This was the reason why he had stopped thinking of cultivation ever since he reached the Godly Realms: his Truesoul had almost reached its limit. It was not his conscious intention at all to downplay cultivation or ignore it, It was a spiritual, psychological, and physiological thing that happened automatically.

He could continue to cultivate a bit more, but he wouldn't even get past a major level, and while he could flex and stretch his cultivation and strength a fair bit, he could at most rank below the middle-power experts. He could never touch the top, even though that top wasn't the highest top.

Was there an ancient long-lost or a yet undiscovered or unknown method of increasing the quality of one's Truesoul? To break through the shackle placed upon oneself by fate, and seize one's own fate with their own hands? Perhaps there was. The existence of a Supreme Truesoul hinted as much. There was no Supreme Being, but there was a possibility of one. Was such a being born with a Supreme Truesoul? Or was it more likely that Truesouls could change and evolve, and someone with a Great Truesoul could transform it into a Supreme Truesoul? This hypothesis was likely.

Even if he could increase the quality of his Truesoul and become stronger… Shura was unwilling. Since he knew of all of these, the veil of mystery that shrouded cultivation and the pursuit of power and immortality became known to him. And there he realized that it wasn't as beautiful as he and countless others had dreamed of it.

What did it mean to become stronger? In a world where absolute strength overruled everything else, strength was the most important. As long as one was more powerful than the other, they could force things on the weak. Everyone sought strength in order to force things on others, or in order to defend themselves from others with malicious intentions.

And what was it all?

A never-ending race to be stronger than others to not let them force things on you and suffer. An infinitely long marathon for more, more, and more of everything. A life of better, greater, stronger.

The ultimate destination at the top was enticing. Shura didn't know a single person in his entire life who wouldn't seek it, even if it destroyed them in the process. But he was different. He had tried it, and it wasn't him. He didn't have what it took to be the strongest. But who did? There was no Supreme.

He couldn't reach the top, but that was okay. Shura was fine with what he had.

Disregarding absolute power and capability, A Supreme could live forever. But one didn't need to be a Supreme to live forever. The top experts of the Godly Realms could retain their youth and live indefinitely. This was a widely known fact. But would they really live forever? It was common that these experts would die by each other's hands every day. True immortality doesn't exist.

Although the Supreme was almighty. Who is to say that somewhere out there in the endless place that all beings live in there wasn't someone equal to a Supreme? Living forever is never a certain thing. If the two were in conflict and one died...

True immortality doesn't exist.

Shura was fine with not being the most powerful and immortal.

He didn't want to become the strongest being lording above the myriad universes. He didn't need to be an omniscient and omnipotent god, fully capable of endless creation and destruction. He couldn't either anyway.

Then if he couldn't reach the end, the top, then what was he to do? He could continue to cultivate and cultivate and cultivate, but the fruit of that endeavor would never be his. Cultivation only meant strength in this world. It meant nothing else but a stronger fist since no one could truly be immortal.

But Shura wasn't after strength for strength's sake either. If today he could waste a continent, tomorrow a planet, after that a solar system, maybe some time longer and he could destroy a galaxy. And maybe, maybe, if he was still alive by then, he could destroy a realm and later a single universe. The inverse was true, today he could survive a continent-destroying attack, tomorrow a planet's, and after that a solar system's, etc.

That was all that it was, and from all that he experienced up til now, he wasn't interested in it either.

He had a choice. He felt he did, or else why was he here now? He wasn't interested in the race for the ultimate peak anymore. He didn't want a senseless slaughter for strength either. But he didn't want someone showing up on his doorsteps one day and ruining his life just because they were stronger or had a Supreme Truesoul. That might not really happen, but a wave of a Supreme's hand might have epic effects and what if he were caught up in it? Shura didn't think a Supreme would care about weak and insignificant beings that were no more than ants to them.

Since he couldn't be part of the race for ultimate power or simply more and more strength, and he didn't want to anyway, he would reincarnate to some remote and peaceful mortal world without cultivation and live the rest of his life in peace.

Then he saw it. A collection of many lights, a collection of many souls nested together. He saw it, and just like how knowledge suddenly poured into him before, he also knew that this was a place he could reincarnate to. A 'place' or a 'world'. It was special, but not unique, there were other worlds out there just like it.

Even if there was a Supreme in the future, he would not be able to affect these worlds at all. There were no worries of powerful foreign cultivators invading either. For one could only enter it with their soul, they couldn't force their way in.

Within this world at most a person could become physically stronger, and that was it. You could fight tens of men at once. But the next guy who cultivated was as strong as you. An army of the strongest people would still die like dogs when they fought each other. No one could really reach a point where their power overwhelmed and overawed everything and everyone else. In such a world strength really didn't mean everything. Spiritual energy only nourished the body, and not to an insane degree that made theatrics of the Godly Realms possible.

Suddenly the greater picture became slightly clearer in Shura's eyes. Existence and the world were great and boundless. It was unfathomable.

The Supreme really wasn't that supreme. There was nature. A natural order, a system, that was in place that dictated everything. And this was only from what he could sense and extrapolate from.

There was a wonderful system for people who sought more and more in life. The ranking of Truesouls with the Supreme Truesoul at the top was that system. There was also this world. A world where there were limits on strength. People could become stronger and cultivate, but there was a limit and strength wasn't everything, unlike the world he had been living in.

There was a place fit for those who wanted ultimate power. A place fit for the simplicity of life. And a place that had the 'best of both worlds'.

One was ignorant of the others. There was no right or wrong. Only people couldn't choose, they were born into what they were born into.

But Shura was here and by dumb luck or a miracle all of this was exposed before him and he could think and choose.

Seeing this, Shura didn't feel like being unable to cultivate was odd or strange anymore. It was a matter of opinion and choice.

Shura felt like that moment was the single moment in his life when he was confronted with a choice that would define him and his entire life. He made his choice.

Although he really didn't want all of those grand things. He wasn't comfortable with a world where his efforts didn't matter and he was as weak as the person next to him. He knew cultivation and he was good at it. If he was reborn in a mortal world, what use was in it? He wanted his knowledge and experience to translate into an advantage to secure a good life, and he didn't mind living a few decades more either.

So that was why he chose an 'in-between' 'world' rather than a 'mortal world'.

He could never return to the void between life and death. He had let go of desires for the ultimate power and eternal life.

Simple was good. Shura was a simple person.

Shura's Truesoul entered that 'world' and he was reborn.