28 Chapter 27: Barely an inconvenience.

"Well, so how does this work?" I asked because I wanted to figure out how such a weird thing could possibly work.

"I will imprint the profound formula in your mind; how long it takes you to understand it depends on how fast you can comprehend it," She replied. "Now sit on the ground; we can start now."

"On the ground?" I raised an eyebrow and asked, "Why do I need to sit on the ground?"

But she didn't care about my obviously logical argument: "Because, just do it."

I sat on my chair with a smug smile on my face and crossed my arms. I regretted it instantly when she violently jabbed my forehead and I had a seizure.

Damn spiteful kid, not that I was any better.

I was suddenly inside my own mind, and in front of me stood a glorious-looking... thing?

She called this a formula, but it was an incredibly jumbled mess at first sight. It looked vague, as if immersed in a sea of mist.

"Sixteen-year-old youngster, do you really have the ability to comprehend the 'Great Way of the Buddha'?" An old voice appeared, which honestly, somehow, wasn't the weirdest thing that I had experienced in this world; that still had to be having my blood drank by a little vampire girl.

Great, now that I've got voices in my head, let's add schizophrenia to my list of problems, as if I didn't already have enough.

Won't I know until I try?" I replied tentatively.

Did she implant some kind of magical artificial intelligence in my mind? I really can't see the point in that.

"Then, what is your understanding?" It asked.

Oh Satan, not another mysterious old Chinese dude that talks weirdly, not in my head!

"You have to be more specific than that man; I understand many things." I replied, and the AI in my head was acting mysteriously, as if it wasn't just a bunch of data.

"What is your desire, and why do you seek it?" It asked back, its tone even, as if it wasn't phased by my question.

It probably wasn't. I hoped that I didn't have a magical super AI capable of emotions in my head now; that would be weird.

I might as well reply truthfully, since we were in my head and everything, "I want peace, for myself and for Jasmine; I want the people surrounding me to be happy and healthy; but this world is a truly awful place filled with violent people that don't know better, so I want this Buddha's art power to survive."

A few seconds passed, but in the void of my head, it felt like centuries, especially as I was still trying to see what that formula described, but it was too hazy. "You want the Great Way of the Buddha? Not 'need'?"

I replied nonchalantly, "I probably don't need it; I could just go to some mountain and live there the rest of my life, in peace as I grow in cultivation to save Jasmine while I research in peace," I admitted, and the thought that I could just take up and leave at any moment was indeed reassuring, "but I wouldn't be able to save anyone beside myself that way; I wouldn't be able to change the things that I don't like about this world; my conscience doesn't permit that; that's just not my style."

"I see," the voice replied, "That is a very peculiar understanding indeed, but you are truthful; it is what comes from your soul. However, if you really want to practice the 'Great Way of the Buddha', you must first understand what the 'Great Way is and what the Buddha is. Then, can I ask you to tell me what your understanding of the 'Great Way' and 'Buddha' is?"

What kind of shitty question was that? How would I know what this dude is talking about?

Wasn't the Way a thing of Taoism? What did that have to do with Buddhism? I could admit that I didn't know anything about either of the two religions, but this seemed like a weird mix—first I'm called a fellow Daoist, and now it's about Buddhism?

I sighed, saying, "Those are just words; neither of the two has any inherent meaning. In different languages, they could mean things that are complete opposites, and they express abstract concepts. Different people speaking the same language could understand those words differently."

I obviously tried to bullshit my way through this; that seemed profound enough for a magical Ai to just let me be.

The voice didn't continue speaking, not at all, but my surroundings changed and morphed into a place that caused my heart to palpitate.

It was that hotel room—that same room where I had last closed my eyes in my world.

I was on the bed, lying down with a woman in my arms—my girlfriend.

"I see, it's this nightmare again." I smiled wryly.

"You've had a nightmare, dear." She asked, mumbling as she seemed to have just woken up.

"Don't worry, Erica, it's always a nice dream when I'm with you." I smiled as I kissed her forehead as tenderly as I possibly could.

She giggled, "Hey Enzo, do you remember when we were younger?"

"How could I not? Everything was so easy and fun back then." I replied with a sigh.

I knew this dream was going to end; she was going to disappear, as she always did. Every time I thought I was finally back, she would be taken away from me, and I would once again be confined in that hellish world.

Truly, my worst nightmare

And wake up I did, and she was gone, but the voice was back: "You are here because it is Heaven's will; it is the Great Way; your presence here is a gift that many from your world would kill for, yet you're unhappy."

"And how could I not?" I replied with helplessness, "This world, this Great Way of yours, took everything from me; I only have a purpose, yet nothing to drive me there. That day, on the mountain, when I found Jasmine, I was ready to end it all."

"It was just a bad dream, I told myself. I could just end it all and see if I woke up, and if I didn't, then I didn't really care. Yet I found her, and the voice in my head told me, What if it isn't?', so I kept going." I continued with my story. I didn't care anymore if there was a magical AI in my head. I felt emotional right now, and I needed to take it out to return to the happy doctor that my patients loved.

I needed to be strong.

"Perhaps this is a trial sent by Heaven's way?" The AI said

"If this Heaven you speak about did this to me, then it is no Heaven; it's Hell," I replied, then took a moment to breathe. "I think I understand what this Great Way that you speak about is; now, it's Fate, or destiny; it's the preplanned path that life is meant to follow, am I right?"

"In a way, yes." It replied; its voice sounded eager, but it had to be my imagination; there was no way that this AI had emotions, and if it did have them, then I would rather not think about the possibility in its entirety.

"It's unfortunate then; I do not believe in fate or destiny; even if I had tangible proof that such a thing had plans for my future, then I would simply have to prove you wrong." I replied that there was no way such a thing existed, and I refused to even entertain the idea.

There was no Fate, no Destiny, no supra-terrestrial hope, or paradisiacal life after death; there was only free will.

"How was it that you realized?" The AI said

"I've known that since long ago; I do not believe in a fate that befalls men regardless of how they act, but in a fate that falls on them unless they act. I believe it was a quote from Buddha or something."

"In the end, I am the only one that makes decisions; the only thing that I can control is my mind. The sum of other people's actions and thoughts is as close to an ideal fate as you can get; you can't control that, but I will control how I react to that. I have once fallen into despair; no more." I concluded with a resolution.

I may never see her again; that was probably true, but I needed to live a life that she would be proud of.

"I understand, you've already known all along, so this is your way, then go ahead, no matter what the world throws at you, react and handle it in the best way possible," it's voice raising, resounding as loud as a thunder, "help everyone you wish to help, deal with the consequences of your actions, make the people of this world love you and follow you on your path, on your 'Great Way'!"

In the real world, as the Doctor's body was slowly sprawling onto the ground as my chair wasn't designed to hold a body that didn't want to be held, a silver pagoda emerged on my forehead before disappearing just as suddenly.

Jasmine, who was still there, said, "Maybe my brother was just untalented and slow, because this is just ridiculous."

But she still let my body crumble to the ground, the spiteful kid.

Back in my mind, the profound formula', which I couldn't believe they had to keep giving such stupid names to this stuff, finally showed itself, and it was glorious, and golden, and nice looking, and...

A whole fucking mess.

Seriously, who designed something this awful? There were so many redundancies that I couldn't even count them, and what was that? A code?

That's actually smart, but inefficient! This wasn't even a hard code to decipher; maybe, I hoped, I really had to make a magical runic computer to help me with this stuff, but that was the least of the shit that this formula contained.

There seemed to be a whole section that was closed off and deactivated; was this the part that created the AI that talked to me?

Because that was simply absurd; that was like a third of the whole thing.

Maybe it was designed to only allow certain individuals to use it, hence the questions on Buddha and Fate.

There had to be better ways, though, and I refused to recognize that making a whole AI just to ask two questions was an intelligent use of space and resources for a Divine Art thingy.

These Gods really needed to study some programming, because calling this thing inefficient was an insult to inefficient things.

First of all, why golden? There had to be a whole part just to make it golden, and why did they have to obscure this thing with a whole fog thing?

Just ask the questions, and if the host is good, then materialize them. All that fog had to be strenuous on the individual since it probably relied on the person's soul, body, profound veins, or whatever it needed.

I kept ranting for some more, then just opened my eyes, irritation evident in my eyes.

"Welcome back," Said Jasmine, who was standing in front of me, now completely crumpled to the ground, but for some reason her expression was even more irritated than mine. "I bet you're going to say something that will cause me a headache."

"Ok, first of all, rude," I replied, my irritation fading and trying to find out the most irritating thing that I could possibly tell her: "Second of all, that was so easy, barely an inconvenience; are you sure it was meant to be a Divine art thingy and not just a walk in a park?"

She looked at me, clearly unimpressed but definitely irritated—good enough.

Fun.

---------

by the way, i'm rereading the original novel, obviously, cause this thing is massive and i can't really remember all the dumb stuff it contains, but just how arrogant is that bitch Yun Che?

Like, seriously, "Because I am my own way of heaven! I do not exist relying on you, or under your grace. In my world, I am the ruler of everything; at least during the time of my birth, everything in the world, existed because of me!"

Really? How can anyone say that he's a good dude? He's a cartoonishly evil villain from a children show, just add a few lightnings and thunders behind him as he says it and an evil laugh after.

Sorry for the rant, leave me stones pls.