Chapter 111: Supreme Power

I let my breathing slow until it was almost nothing.

The bathroom faded first. The cold stone under my legs, the dripping of the sink, the muffled voices of the girls beyond the door, all of it thinned out like mist in morning light.

I did not fight it. I let my spirit be pulled inward, down and down, past the thudding of my heart and the thin cool thread of my spiritual power, into a state of deep cogitation.

My Spirit Temple.

The stillness settled over me, and then the door opened.

I stood on the holy symbol of a hand, carved into a floor that was not quite stone and not quite light.

Around me, an endless fog rolled in every direction, soft and silver, drifting without wind.

Above it, the impossible sky glittered with stars of every color I had ever seen, and several I had not.

Some burned the red of old embers. Some were a green so deep it felt like a taste. A few were colors I had no word for, and I knew that if I stared at them long enough, they would start to stare back.

Enormous pillars rose around me in a wide circle, towering into the dark, ancient and patient. I stood at their center.

I had no hands. I had no feet. And yet I remained aware of myself, aware that I was standing there, small beneath something vast.

Spiritual power radiated from everywhere. From the fog, from the pillars, from the stars. It pressed against my consciousness like warm water against a swimmer’s skin.

’Good. It is steady.’

’Begin.’

I composed myself, and I started the experiment.

First, I split my attention. It was not like cutting a rope. It was more like opening my hand and letting a single finger drift away from the rest. A part of my consciousness slid off the holy symbol and sank gently into the fog.

The fog responded.

It bent toward me, curling around that small part of myself like a cat around an ankle, and it bent exactly as I willed it to.

I tested it, drawing my thought left. The fog flowed left. I pulled it right, and it followed, obedient and strangely eager.

Then I felt it.

An immense amount of spiritual power, packed inside that one drifting fragment of me. It was not a trickle or a stream. It was the whole sea, held in the palm of a hand. My consciousness tingled and trembled under the weight of it.

’So this is what has been sleeping here the entire time.’

I stirred the fog.

It was a small motion, only a slow circle, the way you would stir a pot. But the response was immediate. The whole Spirit Temple shuddered. The pillars hummed in a low note I felt in whatever replaces bones in a place like this, and the stars overhead flickered, as though a great wind had blown across them.

’Careful. This place is not a toy.’

But I was not finished.

I held my main consciousness steady above the holy symbol, a bright, quiet point at the center of the temple. Then I drew the fog toward it.

At first, it came slowly. A pale silver ribbon unwinding from the distance, curling across the floor.

Then faster, and faster still. The fog quickened, rushing inward from every direction, no longer obedient but hungry. It wanted to merge with me. It wanted that so badly that the air itself began to hum.

And that was when my spiritual intuition screamed.

It was not a thought. It was a flat, absolute certainty, the kind a person feels when standing too close to the edge of a cliff in the dark.

’If it all reaches me, I die.’

There was no doubt in it. A body of my rank, a consciousness of my size, could not withstand that supreme power. The sea was trying to pour itself into a cup.

I did not hesitate.

I tore more than half of the fog away from my consciousness, pulling it back with every ounce of will I owned.

The silver tide shuddered and dragged to a halt, resisting, and then it retreated in long, reluctant waves.

What remained was a thin, bright current, still dangerous, still enormous, but a portion my spirit could hold.

’Almost.’

My thoughts were burning. Sweat that did not exist rolled across a face that was not there.

The remaining fog hovered around me, trembling, ready to surge.

’Now. Slowly.’

I injected it into my Core.

Zweeeek!

An irregular sound ripped through the Spirit Temple, a high, thin, strange note, like a bowstring being plucked inside a bell.

The whole space shook.

The pillars flared with light from base to crown.

The stars above blazed brighter than I had ever seen them, every color deepening, every point sharpening, until the sky looked like a ceiling of spilled jewels set on fire.

The fog deepened.

It rolled thicker around me, darker and heavier, moving this way and that in restless, curious waves.

It wanted to merge with me still. I could feel that wanting, patient and enormous, brushing against the edges of my mind like an animal that had decided to trust me.

And a strong spiritual sense bloomed through my part of consciousness that had merged with the fog.

It was clear and sharp and cold, like the first breath after surfacing from deep water. I could feel the edges of the temple. I could feel every pillar. I could feel, somewhere in the distance, the faintest hum of the red palace above my sleeping body, as if the stone itself were whispering in my ear.

Then the temple let me go.

I opened my eyes, and I was sitting on the floor of the bathroom.

The damp stone pressed against my legs. The sink dripped steadily into its basin. The dented bottle sat on the edge where I had left it. Everything looked the same.

Yet I knew it was not.

I was physically here, breathing, blinking, with sweat cooling on my neck.

But at the same time, I was not fully here. A part of my consciousness was still standing in the Spirit Temple, among the fog and the pillars and the burning stars. It was not a hallucination or a memory. It was a living piece of me, left behind on purpose, and it was working.

It was constantly supplying a little bit of the endless fog. A thin, steady thread, flowing from that place into my body, like a quiet spring feeding a river.

I pressed my hand to my chest. Beneath my ribs, my spiritual power was no longer the thin candle I had known. It was warm, and thick, and steady.

Then the system spoke.

[Immense Increase In Spiritual Power!]

[Talent Rank Increased!]

I stared at the words for a long, silent moment.

Then a smile slowly spread across my face, wide and crooked and entirely unlike Peter’s.

’It worked.’

The experiment had succeeded.