I stared at the book and the book stared back at me. It was ancient. It was old. It was a treasure that anyone under the fifteenth rank would covet.

  And it was mine.

  The room was empty. Nai was down in the village. Wriendlier was asleep. Gauntlet was wandering the forest and I was here, with a book.

  I hadn’t touched it till now. I didn’t like God-Imperiums. I didn’t like cultivators in general, not when they were stronger than me. But then, who did?

  They were scary, like wild monsters deep within a forest. It was easy to grow around my weight when I was the strongest one within the realm but now I stood in front of something beyond my comprehension.

  Physical reactions were beyond me. I didn’t gulp or stammer or shift my feet.

  And to anyone else within this realm, my aura would seem as calm as it ever was.

  But that was a lie.

  I was terrified. Wukiong was different in many ways. God-Imperiums had their natures and Wukong had gifted me something and he had even stared into the very core of my being and laughed at my small thoughts. He had laughed at me and gifted me things. That implied favor and favor implied safety.

  But this was not Wukong. This was a thing of a different nature, an unknown.

  There was the promise of peace, yes. My life might not be in danger. But the promise of peace was not peace itself.

  I was nervous.

  I debated opening the book or not, but then someone else seemed to have decided for me. The book opened and The Book opened.

  I was in a house in the middle of the forest adjacent to the village in the valley located within the Great Desert Strip in a small region in Ah-Marin.

  But I was also in front of The Book.

  Fool, it spoke. Why did you wait so long before consulting me?

  It was like the first time I had met with the Monkey King. The suppression, the power, the overwhelming will threatened to annihilate me. A thought from this thing, a passing idea, was worth more than anything I could gather for all of eternity. I could feel my mind ache and my soul tired.

  I could feel myself thinking, staring, studying, growing, changing.

  Wisdom threatened to consume me.

  Wisdom not your own is not wisdom at all, The Tome spoke and my mind quieted down.

  It hurt. Being in the presence of this thing hurt. It made me think. It made me know. And it wasn’t the type of thinking that happened naturally but the type that took effort. It was like doing complex math against your will.

  Everything was and my mind sought to know the heart of existence.

  Study consumed me and curiosity swallowed me whole. Thought, knowledge, wisdom, desire, I must have it.

  Stop, a voice spoke and my mind came to a halt.

  You things are so fragile. All of you, long-lived mortals calling yourself gods. Preposterous.

  There was a common idea that those who beheld the true form of a god would be burnt to nothing. But that wasn’t true. The real consequence was erasure. The God-Imperium whole being rewriting you into its image.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  You’d think they could stop. You’d wonder how omnipotent beings couldn’t just limit their own actions. But it wasn’t their own actions. It wasn’t something they did but something you did in reaction to their existence.

  No matter who you were, in front of a God-Impeirum, you were almost nothing. In their presence, you changed and whatever defined you was forgotten in their image.

  It wasn’t them changing you.

  It was you changing for them.

  That’s why Wukong had to do something to stop me and that was why this person, no this thing had to tell me to stop.

  I wondered what the consequences of that would be. What was the outcome for having talked to these creatures? Each time they touched me and commanded me. Would that twist my nature? Break my soul in some way?

  After all, the only thing God-Imperiums couldn’t do was go against their nature.

  They said all of the Heavens and all of the Hells and everything in between could not make Buddha hurt a child.

  Was that the true meaning of-

  Stop, it repeated.

  And I did.

  It took me an instant to get a hold of myself. An instant for me, an eternity for it.

  The world settled down.

  I still felt powerless, mortal, and empty. Except this time, I could still feel my qi but I could also feel these things.

  Not its qi, nor its outline but the shadow of its existence. It was like being in a pit so deep that when you looked up to the opening, all you saw was darkness.

  I felt smothered and overwhelmed.

  Bill Terrance, I have come to meet with you. You have kept me waiting.

  I nodded. Sorry, mercy, what do you desire? All of those things could be said but none of those things needed to be said. It spoke only for me to understand it. It already understood me. It knew me in ways I couldn’t possibly imagine.

  It knew.

  I was like an insect, aware of the giant human mass above me. It studied me and knew of my inner workings, of the things in my soul, of my karma and power and all things about me.

  But all I could do was stare back at the microscope of its all-knowing divine eyes.

  Be not afraid, it spoke like an angel from the bible.

  Yes, like the turning wheel of eyes and fire from your dead world. I just.

  Oh.

  Laugh, it spoke.

  And for a moment I was filled with fear because its joke wasn’t funny and I wondered if it would kill me for not laughing.

  I will not harm you.

  Oh.

  Think as you are, let not my nature infect you. Keep yourself.

  And I did.

  In an instant, I was back in the room staring at the book in front of me.

  “Why?” I asked.

  To touch you, as Wukong did. You are worth observing. It wrote.

  It was referring to me not like a great hero in the early mornings of his endeavors but like a scientist staring at a beetle he had found.

  I was a curiosity.

  More than that, but not much more, it corrected.

  “Then why? Really why?”

  You are mangled. A molestation of the soul the like of which I have seen before. But few maintained their sanity while in such a state.

  “Dane’s soul manipulation?” I asked.

  Yes, It replied.

  Did you think you could lie to me? That you could bargain with my people with small lies?

  Oh shit.

  Be calm. I am not offended by your attempts at a fib, Do you remember your talks within my halls? The words you spoke?

  Attempts?

  Yes.

  “You mean-”

  Somehow the writing seemed to cut me off.

  Yes. You parade around with the strength, memory, and power of an immortal. But you contain a mortal’s heart. A well-fit piece for a broken soul.

  Then I saw what it meant. That was the best way to describe it. The knowledge and understanding of it all plopped into my mind whole and pure.

  What was sanity, I thought. What was the lens through which we lived? What were the guardrails of the mind that kept the world in place? What was purpose, what was the use of purpose, and what were morals and love? What was spite and hate? What was thought and reason?

  What was the soul?

  That was Dane. Dane the Unravler.

  Dane was insane. He had acted sane and reasonable. He had acted maintained but he was broken. He had broken himself. Immortality had broken him. He had betrayed his nature.

  Words weren’t enough to explain his failures.

  I was though.

  “I…. see.”

  Primordial qi. Reflection of existence.

  Dane was a human. He had rejected not only humanity but everything in pursuit of knowledge.

  Imagine a man looking at his body and ripping away at every part that would age and slow him down. First the limbs and muscles, then the skin and organs, then the major organs and tissue systems. Then the sensory organs, until eventually all that would be left was the mind. The ego, the center of the soul.

  He had destroyed his humanity. He had tried to become a machine of qi. In his desire to not change, he had destroyed the very meaning of his existence.

  He had destroyed his brain, and when that happened, the soul became nothing but an empty husk, waiting for anything to complete it.

  And then I had come along.

  will be 15 chapters ahead at the five-dollar tier(up to chapter 120) and 30 chapters ahead at the ten-dollar tier.

  Patrons will be getting a double chapter tomorrow, but both chapters are in editing jail as of now

  Volume One is finished on

  I will be going through edit suggestions over the next week or so and actually deleting them once I am done. (Unless the edit suggestions say something more than just an edit suggestion.) Thank you all for the edit suggestions.

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  Thanks for reading!