[MA] 175. ...It Was (Patreon)

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[A/N: We did it, Reddit! I'm now only three chapters behind schedule!

Chapters this week: 2/3

Late chapters: 1/4

Next release: Saturday ]

Who was Feng Shen?

Beyond borrowing Concepts from the Laws of Reality and being led by honor, what else could be found in his Path?

He didn't know, and although he believed he could kill Yinhu Shuzui, he still felt like he was the man's lesser.

But how could he think about that now? He was in the middle of the battle. He had to focus on the here and now—

Shen stopped himself from following the line of thought.

Shen...

Shen was spending his qi like crazy while ignoring that the War part of his Path kept telling him this couldn't be all; the gnolls couldn't be this weak yet still be willing to invade the world. They couldn't have raised three thousand D-ranks if they were this suicidal.

He was also doing his best to ignore the ten thousand cultivator arrivals being killed by the few gnoll D-ranks who had recovered in time. They weren't any better than the many E-ranks already in the army, getting equally thrashed. They also wouldn't be able to resist the few hundred thousand E-rank gnolls still in the rift.

He was ignoring the two gnolls floating midair on the portal, wearing impressive armor, which his Path told him would be impossible to cut through without investing a lot of his qi into it.

Worst of all, he was ignoring the two thousand other D-rank gnolls coming from afar in the rift and the fact that the gnoll with white and golden armor—one of the two strong ones—seemed about to step on Earth.

Earth...

Earth had already lost this battle.

And Shen...

Shen wasn't even sure if he wanted to fight to the death here.

Yet if he didn't leave, he would die indeed—for no good reason.

His glorious, honorable death would serve no one but himself. In trying to make up for his sin and help everyone, he would only be helping himself massage his own ego.

He was his Path, yet why did he ignore War screaming at him to temporarily retreat so humanity wouldn't lose their strongest warrior?

He was more than his Path, yet why did he ignore the fear he felt for having almost lost Alicia for the "greater good" of slaying the gnoll aura user just now?

The gnolls had revealed surprise after surprise to deal with him; it was a matter of time until they succeeded. His safest bet was to get out of the battle's epicenter and fight them where he could escape if needed. They had shown they were willing to sacrifice many if they could lock him down.

Shen felt torn and frozen by indecision for a split second.

Then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

His entire body relaxed.

He didn't know exactly who he was, but he knew that he was all those things he had been ignoring. He also knew that right now, when he took the time to listen to himself, he found he was also the part of his heart telling him to fight to the end.

He wasn't entirely certain of everything he was, wanted, and should do, but he didn't need to be. Human existence was confusing; it wasn't so easily classified and understood.

And Shen was human.

Yes, he was human.

He didn't care much for modern humanity. Their deaths wouldn't be the end of their race because the Immortal Emperor was out there somewhere. Yet, they were also humans.

He would help them to his last breath not because of honor but out of something much simpler: empathy and egoism.

His mistake was seeking perfection in an imperfect being. He failed in always thinking he would do his best all the time.

It was alright to feel bad because humans died; it was okay to show weakness now and then.

It was also alright to die because he wanted to prove to everyone that he was morally better than then; so what if he couldn't be the best version of his idealized self all the time but an arrogant, egotistical prick now and then?

It was stupid to die out of his recurring arrogance, maybe.

Yet alright all the same—at least to him.

His Path didn't need to be perfect; it only had to fit him, and he was far, far away from perfection. For him, honorable stupidity was better than smart cowardice.

Shen might not know everything the Path of Feng Shen was, but he was sure that decision was part of it.

He accepted everything he was.

The strategy of War and the strong-headedness of his folly; the bloodlust of Combat and the fear of losing Alicia if he lost himself in battle; the offensive power of Sharpness and the defensive weakness of fearing death.

The carelessness of the Flow that didn't care for the destination and the anxiety of being in a world of unknown culture; the lightness of Zephyr and the weight of taking lives; the swift, bright explosion of Arc Flash and the slow stability he sought in rebuilding his clan.

The freedom of living Boundless and the shackles of honor.

He was a Guardian and a cultivator, a spear and a spearman, his Path and a human with undesired feelings and thoughts, a lost soul from ancient times and a social media star, a murderer and a protector, a cripple and a mighty aura user, a boy and a man.

Shen was the power of his Path, the fears in his soul, and the mortality of his body.

And it was alright.

He relaxed even more. His shoulders dropped. His muscles, which had always been ready for a fight even while sleeping, found complete rest for the first time in months.

The smell of blood and metal overwhelmed his sense, yet he just let them go over him. His aura told him another D-rank was approaching, yet now he was taking a moment for himself.

His hand almost dropped his spear. He almost fell asleep.

Shen accepted himself with all his strengths and weakness, dreams and disappointments, hopes and failures.

Shen accepted everything he had been, was, and any changes that might come.

Shen accepted himself.

He took another deep breath.

When he opened his eyes, he discovered a whole new world.

= - = - =

Liya instantly recalled her master's words when she witnessed Shen's change.

"There comes a day when we understand that our fate is both in our hands and beyond our grasp," Eren had said under a tree that humans would mistake for a cherry tree.

"But, master," Liya had interjected. She had been stupid and impatient back then, as was the prerogative of the young. "We trust no one. We obey no one. We are the masters of our destiny." She quoted the drow core belief, repeated daily to every child. "We control our destiny, our fate. There's nothing beyond the drow grasp."

"We are not omnipotent, omniscient, or omnipresent," Eren had replied, though it didn't look like an answer at first. "We're limited by spacetime and understanding. Right now, I can move in any direction I want, yet the movement's origin will be this place, no matter how I might want to change that. Everything I did until today, everything I experienced, everything I avoided, how I reacted to it all, and what I took from it—all that put me right here, right now. An unexpected slap to my face will change me no matter how I react to it. The slap is beyond my control but not my reaction."

Liya had frowned. "I don't get it, master."

Eren never showed impatience or belittled Liya for her slowness. The kindness in her red eyes was the closest Liya had ever felt to a mother's love. Liya was among the last drow to receive the privilege of personal affection and treasured it dearly.

"The True Enemy plotted against us," Eren explained. "We had no control over it. How we react to his deeds, however, is for us to decide."

"We must kill him," Liya replied what everyone knew.

"Must we?" Eren replied.

That had been the very first time a drow belief was questioned before Liya. She still recalled the shock of realizing people could think outside the Path laid before them. She had only frozen, barely capable of understanding the question.

"Tradition," Eren said after a long silence, "honor, common good, greater good, love, hatred, feelings, logic, orders, rules—everything will infect and change your Path. That is no problem.

"But it becomes a problem when such notions start determining our actions, thus infecting our Path, without our conscious permission—or regardless of it.

"Our Path is also what we feel, think, and do. Feelings create thoughts that turn into action. Thoughts make us feel certain ways that affect how we act. Actions are validated or not by how we feel and what we think about them while performing them. You were taught to bring retribution to the True Enemy. Is that something you truly desire, or are you just obeying someone else—letting your Path be dictated by external factors?

"There comes a day when we understand that our fate is both in our hands and beyond our grasp," she repeated. "Some things will always be beyond our control. Yet, we do control what we do in the here and now, even if others might not like our choices when they go against their beliefs, rules, or Paths. Your fate might not be entirely yours, child, but it partly is.

"Accept what you can't change, but don't change yourself unless you want. To accomplish that, fully understand everything that being you implies. Shed away any infecting belief that doesn't reflect your true self.

"Such is the True Path.

"Any other Path is but a fleeting illusion walked by the blind.

"If you forget everything else I ever taught you, remember this only."

That had been the last lesson Eren ever gave her, just before leaving to fulfill her scheduled obligation to the Alliance on the front lines against the Void.

She had never returned, and the cherry tree had soon turned into lumber to fuel the drow war machine.

Liya hadn't understood the lesson for years after that. Today, however, she knew that a True Path was supposedly essential to reach A-rank—though no drow had ever accomplished it.

Unfortunately, it was merely the easiest part. Knowledge of it was widely spread, especially because it separated the chaff from the wheat, as humans would say. No self-respecting organization or group accepted anyone that didn't walk the True Path.

That was doubly true among the Observers. No race was stupid enough to send a blind Observer to a newly integrated world.

So, they all detected her charge's change almost as soon as she did. They stood straight and looked more interested at the human who had merely been a reckless good fighter and above-average army manager. That might've attracted their attention if he were no cultivator, yet he was.

Now, they started calculating the risk versus potential benefit of snatching him away from the Cultivator's Association. At least one-third of all C-ranks or stronger walked a True Path. Around one in ten D-rank did too. It wasn't that special, except for a simple detail: Shen was a baby barely out of his cradle.

He wasn't the first one to attain a True Path on Earth. The cultivator fighting beside him also walked one. However, Shen wasn't even three Standard years old. All recorded True Path Walkers that attained it at an early age and survived to C-rank stood much above their peers.

Liya was a living example of that, in great part thanks to Eren.

If they knew Shen was a first-class talent, they would understand his accomplishment was almost expected—then, they would kill him on the spot. No one wanted to give the Cultivator Association such a gem.

But they didn't, so Shen survived, and they planned on how to convince him to fake his death—so the cultivators didn't find out he had joined a non-cultivator faction—and work in the shadows.

Liya, on the other hand, was more interested in seeing Feng Shen's True Path.

Who was her charge? What would he do? Could his talent bridge the gap between him and the gnolls and make her estimations wrong? Or would he be one of the rare cases in which walking a True Path temporarily weakened a Guardian, thus causing his death?

But more importantly, how would the gnoll leader react? He was Void-tainted, just like Shen, and thus impossible to predict.

What would he do if Feng Shen stopped the invasion by himself?

= - = - =

Where once there had been weight and countless strings pulling him in different directions, Shen found only peaceful certainty. He sought victory with all he had yet would accept defeat with a smile on his face as long as he was himself.

He had touched on this understanding before. When he wondered whether power might have him become the type of tyrant he wanted to kill, he had been one step away from understanding that ultimately...

...it didn't matter.

Shen could only be himself. Trying to be someone or something else would only hurt him.

Was it better to die now than become an A-rank monster? The Shen from today thought so, yet he had to trust tomorrow's Shen would make the right decisions, even if others perceived them as incorrect or evil. Fearing what power might do to him while seeking it merely proved he wasn't ready for it.

Let the power come. Shen would be its master, not its slave. He had to trust he could do it, or he might as well just give up and die now.

His father was the most remarkable example Shen had been unwilling to see. The man had died with no regrets despite his dishonorable actions.

Today, before Shen accepted himself fully, he would have died with honor, but wondering if he should've done anything differently.

Not anymore.

Shen released his tight hold on his Path. He left his Concepts free to do as they pleased. It didn't matter that Arc Flash and Sharpness opposed each other; there was no need for Flow to smooth things out. Wasn't War and Combat part of him? Why should he prevent his Concepts from fighting—for being like he was? Why should he filter his Path in a way it ended up as something other than his Path?

The moment he let Arc Flash be...

...it was.

He was Arc Flash, its electricity, the arc fault that created it, the arc blast that came from it, the bright light that defined it.

Speed, power, light.

Explosion.

Arc Flashes resulted from a faulty circuit. Therefore, how could it ever be mastered if he controlled the Concept perfectly, making it go against its intrinsic existence?

Shen was Arc Flash, and now, he could say with confidence that he was truly his own master.

So he mastered that part of himself, too.

Knowledge flooded from Reality into his mind. He understood principles that electrical engineers couldn't even dream about. The very electrical impulses of his body improved beyond what should be possible, making his mind and reactions faster. His acceleration reached an all-time high; he would now explode into motion.

And his skin started shining slightly, like some divine entity from a B-movie.

Knowledge from Reality came and went quickly. The D-rank gnoll was still approaching to take advantage of Shen's "distraction" when it was over.

But it wasn't yet the time to deal with that.

The moment Shen mastered Arc Flash, all Concepts of his Path merged into one.

[A/N: I know some chapters about relationships and interactions before the battle were a bit boring and seemingly useless, but they served a purpose.

This is it.

They showed a displaced man having trouble fitting in a strange world—just as all his "sudden realizations" while progressing showed an unprepared boy trying to fit in shoes much larger and deeper than he had expected them to be.]

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