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

I kept working for about a week straight. Time, effort, knowledge, everything I had into creating something better than I ever had.

The best thing about arrays was that they were mostly thought. The blueprint was the scaffolding. The building part, while tedious, was easier.

Most of it was driven by passion and desire. But a lot of it was driven by regret.

The old array, the one I had made to find peace still hadn't moved.

It felt redundant to remake something, but that array was alive. And it was trapped, staring at the village for a year, at least that's what the Tome had said. I didn't know what that meant exactly, but I assumed the array would be free sometime next year.

It was regrettable, really.

I had made something to serve me. I had made a sentient tool, and there was something nasty about that. I didn't want to cultivate. I didn't want to work, so I threw the burden on another being and now it was stuck in a corner of definitions.

That was my fault.

If I could fix it, I would. But fixing doesn't come easy with living people.

That was a fundamental change in their nature. A flux in what they were. It was… violating.

People, thinking beings, should change themselves of their own volition. It was what it was and changing it would be like performing brain surgery to change the personality of a child. I could only hope that it would grow with time, but just in case, I worked.

And after the seventh day, I was finished. I had an outline. The details would require more work, but this array would be a thing. I would have to remake it every time I grew in power, but that was fine.

That was how growth worked.

My Mind's Eye glowed a bright burning reddish blue.

I looked at the array.

"Oh yeah, that's pretty good," I smiled.

Arrays were all about the little things coming together to form the big ones. They required a bottom up understanding of things.

I had the top down understanding set up. I knew the general mechanics and what every major node would do, but now I had to build the internal ideas. Layers of complicated metaphysical engineering would have to come together to form every single node.

I had the blueprints for the skyscraper, but now I needed to design the hallways. That type of stuff.

And then I would have to scour for ingredients and roam out of the realm again.

I wouldn't go to the Cosmic Forest this time, but maybe to Lynoria or somewhere in the Golden Lands.

But that was a problem for later.

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I had so much to do, but I could go about it leisurely.

For now, I would rest.

"Where have you been?" Chin's voice sounded as he came up to the front of my house.

"Working," I replied.

Chin's eyebrows rose in suspicion.

"On what?" He asked.

"Do you really want me to explain it to you?"

"No," Chin said after some consideration. "Was it hard?"

"Yes," I breathed out. "I am tired."

"That's a rare feeling, no?"

"Actually, I'm tired a lot more nowadays."

"Cultivating?" Chin asked.

"A bit, but I have a few hiccups to work out before then."

The old man walked over and sat down next to me. He looked younger, far more refreshed than ever and while some of the wrinkles on his face were still there, his skin itself had tightened and spots of age had faded.

"How's the second rank treating you?"

"Medin's mad that I got to it first," he commented.

"Ha."

"She says I'll just waste it farming."

"And?"

"I said that wouldn't be a waste."

I chuckled. Chin stood there, his old eyes staring off into the clouds. Clearly, he had something to say or ask but was having some trouble doing it.

I didn't push him. I was too tired to do that, though I suppose I should provide the members of the 'Oasis Sect' some aid in their endeavors. I could tell from his aura that it had nothing to do with his cultivation, at least not directly.

"I outran my son today," he breathed. "Ralnik, my youngest. He's still unmarried and when we were out on the fields, we saw one of the dogs chasing after the chickens. I-- we ran to stop it, but before he had even gotten a quarter of the way there, I was already in front of the dog."

"Good thing for the chickens," I muttered.

Chin shook his head.

"Ralnik laughed it off and so did everyone else out there, but Bill, I outran my twenty five year old son. I left him behind me."

There was a crack in his voice. It was just at the end of his sentence, just at the last syllable.

I got up, dragging my hands off the ground and patting myself down.

"It's a strange moment for everyone. Every cultivator who started from mortalhood experiences this," I finally spoke.

"I- I had this one friend, a kid I'd grown up with for most of my life. We weren't the closest but he was one of the few consistent people in my life. We lived next to each other, ate together, talked about school and chores, and grew up next to one another. One day, we both grew up. He became a pottery maker and I searched for the heavens."

I grabbed two cups out of thin air, already filled with warm tea and handed one over to Chin who took it passively.

"I think I was fifty by the time I came back to the village. I walked around looking for my friends and even though I knew they would be older, even though I was expecting it, I still remember the strangeness of that fellow's old face."

I took a sip.

"He was laughing, you know. We talked and caught up. Overall, he had done well for himself, carving out his name and niche within the village. But he walked slowly, he ate slowly, he slouched, and he had grandchildren. It just didn't seem real at the time."

"Then what?" Chin asked.

"I spent the next few decades in that village, and he died. I went to his funeral. I even helped his children host it, but it never really sinked in until the next one."

"The next one?"

"The next friend or familiar fellow. You see them age, grow old and die over and over and over again."

Chin was quiet for a while.

"That's it then? You just have to live with it?"

"You get used to it," I replied.

"You get used to seeing people die?"

"Yes."

"Why can't they just--"

"They can. You could teach them to cultivate if you wanted to and they were willing. But cultivation isn't for everybody, Chin. More often than not, the longer you live, the more horrors you'll have to witness. Its a hard path forward, especially after the fifth rank."

Chin nodded and took a sip of his tea.

"Then what can I do?"

"Teach them what they're willing to learn. Make the world a better place for them. Look after them and the rest of your family, everything you've been doing until now. Just be a parent. They still have years left and maybe even centuries if they want to try their hand at cultivation. But let them choose and let them grow at their own pace.

Chin nodded.

It was bound to happen eventually. Not everyone could live forever and not everyone should. Forever was an awfully long time, and the longer you lived, the worse the world seemed to get sometimes.