An Immortal's Retirement: To Achieve Peace [Volume One Finished]

I was in nature ahead of my dao, so the ninth rank was inevitable. But I would need to contemplate and reflect on the growth.

So I sat, not beneath a bodhi tree, but next to a small sapling and started contemplating.

Daos grew as the self grew. My dao was a paradox, and while I had thought that paradoxical nature would stump me, it seemed to not interfere at all.

"Daos are everything. They are an expression of the self, the path ahead and behind."

I stared at the girl, Fey Lin Fo. She was walking with Mei Shan from a distance. She had a unique nature herself.

She had stolen a technique, one that pushed directly against the technique she had mastered. The Void Blade opposed The Eternal Darkness, and yet she had mastered both.

Nothing and everything, a paradox.

I brought out the technique, in its full form.

I didn't care too much for the techniques themselves. What I was interested in was their opposing nature, how the opposites could become one.

Yin and Yang, black and white, freedom and restrictions.

A paradox was a thing of logic.

It was said that when two God-Imperiums convey opposing orders onto a single thing, a paradox was born. There, logic would break and that was common among the Imperium. Mere logic, mere sense couldn't define them.

But this wasn't that type of paradox. It was two opposing natures being used to make one unified thing.

I closed my eyes and thought.

Paradoxes.

What were they?

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"A disagreement of rules."

No, they were more than that.

"A fundamental disagreement of rules. I seek peace and yet have to fight to attain it. I want to create peace but have to allow the struggle of life to give people purpose. I want to give freedom but only by limiting certain people can that be granted."

"Justice deals with this by disregarding freedom, the Heavens deal with this by discarding the struggle."

But my peace was different, not impossible, but different.

To make it a paradox would be to make it self defeated.

My dao was a paradox, but it was only a paradox if I made it so.

It was a tipping point.

I could enforce peace, discard freedom and enforce submission to my moral might.

That would be justice, or it would be my version of it anyways.

I could ensure freedom, ignore my morality and seek absolute power and peace for myself and myself only.

Or I could do both.

I could oppress and set free.

Freedom comes at the cost of justice, and justice comes at the cost of freedom.

I wanted to be both moral and small. I wanted to not lead or controll, but still make the world a better place.

I had to bring those two thoughts together. What was it that Wukong had said?

"Daos are not so small as to be defeated by a paradox. To reach for a dao that folds in on itself is a daring move, but not an impossible one. It will be difficult to tie your existence to it, but it will also be rewarding."

I had to bring those two ideas together.

The problem with daos were that they were absolute, religious almost. They were the entire reason for the first eternal war, the righteous refusing the existence of the demonic and the demonic feeling the same.

I had to accept that, and bind those ideas together.

Peace in the self. Peace in others. Peace in the world.

And peace would be freedom and restraints, in struggles and pleasure, on the summit of the mountain that was defined by the struggle to get there.

It was more than the outcome. It was the contradictory nature of life.

I felt it too.

As much as I disliked the idea of God-Imperiums, and as happy as I might be in my small corner of existence.

I still wanted to help people. I still wanted to struggle. I still wanted to face problems and grow.

That small world I had taken to Nei Lo, the beasts, the Maidens, Fey Lin Fo, Cai Xuin, Gai Jin, Nai, even the villagers, all of them would bring me trouble of some sort.

But that was fine. I would face it. I would find my peace in the summit of those mountains and I would stare at the next one in the distance.

Within the struggle, within freedom, there was peace.