NOVEL NEXT 232. Tribulation Clouds (Book Four)
I honestly did not expect that from her, but after giving it some thought, why not? Why couldn't she come with me? There was no reason for me to say no, so I told her yes. She did not appear particularly happy or glad about me saying yes; she simply nodded and asked for a time and place.
I told her I would let her know since it was not quite set in stone yet. That was the last thing we discussed before hanging up. I suppose I will have a plus one, which will be interesting.
After that conversation, I went back to my meditations, making sure Infernal Qi continued to flood the volcano for Lidaz while simultaneously focusing on my own cultivation.
Although I believed I could reach the next realm before I was ready to leave, that was not an actual guarantee. But I was not in a rush, so I continued to sit there undisturbed for another two years before the mermaid Immortal appeared next to me abruptly.
I did not even get a chance to greet her or ask what she needed before she started talking, with a bit of a serious tone in her voice.
"Patriarch Raizen, I think it is time for you to leave. Whatever it is you have been doing here has accelerated the Immortal process for the man in the volcano. Tribulation clouds will soon descend on this planet, and I do not think the surrounding areas will survive the wrath of tribulation clouds, which of course includes you.
"Of course, I do not know all that you are capable of, so I will not, nor can I, force you to leave. It is only my recommendation."
Of course, I did not doubt her words, nor did I think I was bigger than these so called tribulation clouds. So, I immediately took her advice and departed from the volcano, reappearing in the Infernal District.
She was there alongside me, so I took the chance to ask her a question. She mentioned tribulation clouds, and while I do not consider myself the most knowledgeable when it comes to cultivation novels before the dawn of the System, I had heard of tribulations and lightning striking someone from the heavens because they dared to cultivate against it.
I wanted to know if it worked the same way. Her answer was not quite what I expected.
"The heavens attacking for daring to go against them? Well, I cannot say that is something I have not heard before, as that is typically how tribulation lightning is perceived by those who do not know better.
"Although I am quite interested as to why you perceive them as such when your planet should not have had access to them prior to your Tutorial.
"But to answer your question, I suppose it is not quite far off from that. What is actually taking place here is that whoever seeks to become Immortal is not defying the heavens, but they are going against the natural laws that are in place for their particular race.
"There are some races out there and certain things in nature that live forever, as that is how they are naturally formed. But for most of us, we are not Immortal by nature. We are not designed to live forever or to stop aging.
"That process to reach the state where our existence defies natural law will, of course, be met with resistance. It is not the heavens, as you call it, that are rendering punishment for those who go against it. It is simply the rudimentary laws of nature that are seeking to correct something they deem an error, to fix what they perceive as a knot in the timeline.
"The laws of nature will attack this perceived error for some time, and if the perceived error survives this attack, they will gain the right to become Immortal. For you have to prove to the laws of nature that you are not a mistake, that you are not something in need of correction, and you will reaffirm your place in the laws of nature.
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"There is a bit more to this explanation, but it is not my place to explain these things, for the repercussions are not something a non-immortal can bear. I hope you can understand."
I thanked her for answering my question and asked her how long she thought the tribulation would last. The answer she gave was that it depended on Lidaz and specifically what law or laws he was trying to comprehend, and she stopped her answer there.
That led me to assume I was not strong enough to hear the rest or the details of how exactly that worked, so I left it alone.
Looking back at her explanation, I am glad the reason for tribulations was at least rooted in logic. Of course, I no longer looked at this world as a big fantasy filled with magic and wonder, which is still true, but when over a decade has passed in this new reality, that is what it becomes, reality, not fantasy.
It made me happy that there was some logic, or at least explainable logic, behind the fact that powerful lightning bolts would descend from the sky.
And it only took a couple of hours for that to happen. Even from where I was, I could see in the distance massive bolts of lightning descending from the sky, or the heavens as the books called it.
What appeared to be strikes of anger and wrath itself manifested for mortals to witness. If they looked so devastating from where I was, I could only imagine how they must look up close in person, something I hope to experience at some point.
For now, I will just observe and believe in Lidaz, and that he would make it out.
Well, I observed for 10 straight days before deciding I was better off doing other things with my time. I still believed in Lidaz, but the lightning had shown no signs of stopping. Over the past 10 days, it had not fallen repeatedly, one strike after another.
No, it was initially a strike every couple of hours, then a strike twice a day, and now we were at one strike a day. It was slowing down, yes, but it was still ongoing.
I was not going to go leave and begin a new adventure on Earth, I just decided to check in on a few things before I went to meditate again. Of course, I had already had a few different meetings and set the ball rolling for myself and my Infernals to leave this planet, the planet I was born on.
But the biggest things that came out of those meetings were the steward that would take the place of Ozal and my partnerships with the merchants tied to Earth. The reason we received favorable deals was because I am the Planetary Lord, and my presence played a large role in that. I wanted to make sure those deals would stay in place even if I was not present. Thankfully, that was not very hard to accomplish.
Even with the scare of the rat people, it was still quite easy to do. I do not think it would be as easy on a normal Earth, but when you counted the length of someone's life not in decades but in centuries, millennia, or even millions of years, it became very easy to make sure things would stay in place for some time.
Of course, that was only for now. Five hundred years in the future, the people who made these deals with me could be dead and gone. Perhaps they would die of old age, perhaps in battle, or perhaps their businesses would fall to competitors.
Things change, and that is all right. But at least for the next couple of centuries, as long as Earth was still here and I was still officially the Planetary Lord, things would not change too much.
Hopefully.
As for the matter of a steward, that one took a lot longer to solve. I had not interacted with the people of this planet for ten years, so I did not consider myself the perfect choice to select a worthy replacement. Ozal, on the other hand, had been interacting with the people of Earth in my place and had built very professional relationships with the members of the Council. So, I left it in his wise hands to decide.
He did something a bit surprising. It was not another City Lord. Instead, it was someone I had met before, the assistant of the City Lord in the North. She seemed a very competent woman in the brief interactions I had with her, and I suppose I agreed with his assessment since he chose her to be the new steward.
Of course, that would not take effect until it was time for us to leave, but she was already being briefed on all her soon to be duties, not that she was unaware of them.
At this point, there was really nothing else for me to do. I had lost enough of my people already, and although I had reached the point where it did not bother me or affect my day to day life, I was also at a point where I refused to leave any of my people behind.
Perhaps it is a sign of the true state of my mental wellbeing.
I am not oblivious to how the deaths of my people affected me, and I understand that there is a real reason why the memory of those events was wiped from my head. While my Infernals were informed not to tell me, likewise Richard and, likely, the rest of the humans on this planet do not remember a thing.
I know my mental state is likely not as firm as it once was, but for now, I will fake it until I make it as I travel the Multiverse with my people.