The Laws of Cultivation: Qi = MC^2

I walked around the library, picking book after book before starting to look through each one. There didn’t seem to be any logical sequence in which the books themselves were arranged, with all sorts of different books distributed around at random.

The funniest part? Everytime I picked up the book and looked at the memory within, it would shift and alter ever so slightly, adjusting and shifting. Nothing important, or nothing that would impact the events within the memory. But if someone wore green clothings, it would change to blue.

Strangeness of this place aside, I continued to walk around, guided by my gut feelings. Although this place had no order, it was still my own spirit and will. As long as I moved with a purpose in mind, I didn’t really need to know where I was going, and I’d arrive at the place I needed to be.

This time I was searching for memories of my time in school. The studies that I did, and the courses I read. A part of me wanted this place to just give me perfect recollection of everything. That would’ve been so easy. I could’ve just thought of exactly what I wanted to remember and would remember it.

Sadly, nothing was ever that easy. And if it was, then there was going to be a catch.

And so I wandered the aisles, until one of them caught my eye. Reaching out I grabbed the book, adding it to my pile. After I’d gotten enough, and my arms began to feel sore, I found a nice table to sit at, before I began to go through the books one by one.

The experience of reading really wasn’t like what reading normally was like for me. Instead, it was a lot more like the feeling of suddenly remember an old memory you’d forgotten, starting to return to you piece by piece when you heard or saw something familiar.

It was hard to describe… but each turn of the page would bring back a sensation, feeling or image to my mind as I went through the moment once more. The tapping of the pen as I sat in the class played through this one as I wasted my time, waiting for the class to end.

But as I moved through the book, I held it on the page, looking at the book I was reading. The words were not completely clear, but I could see enough of them to make out what they said.

I began to read, and as I did, new memories began to unlock themselves. I could see the library lighting up from the dark aisles of different portions of the library. This time, I did not walk, instead, I simply willed my spirit and mind to focus onto those corners, as they came into light, and the books within them flew out of their shelves landing next to me.

Ironically enough, what happened after this was something I struggled to remember. I entered a trance, my mind sunk entirely into the memories I was looking through and the topics I was reading. Moments of my lives, both lives, surged through my mind.

If people talking about old friends and reminiscing about the past was walking down memory lane, then someone had just given me the keys to a sports car and told me to go ham.

The sensation was oddly cathartic, each new memory eliciting joy within me, as it was rediscovered and relived, and each successive memory brought with it, other ones.

Time slowed down to a crawl. Or perhaps it sped up. It was hard to tell either way, as I simply went through memory after memory, learning and relearning every little thing I had forgotten and every little thing I had lost somewhere in the dark aisled of my own mind.

As I read through the pieces of my own life, I began to focus on the things that had revolutionized the world first.

I read the history of the industrial revolution, the rise and fall of an era marking the beginning of change as the world began to be shaped by machines, industries and factories. The pages flipped, a class in school teaching of the steam engine. I was fascinated by it, but the droning words of the book killed my attention at the time.

Now instead, from a world across, I read through those texts intently, reading carefully about each line, and each word, going over them multiple times. I read of the laws of thermodynamics, the discoveries that propelled great changes in time. The ways they were developed. I read of the printing press, a simple yet key part of spreading knowledge and education that was necessary. I read of gears and turbines and motors, and telephones. Oh electricity and light bulbs.

An entire other world sat in front of me, and I was a visitor, watching through the lens of my own eyes and mind. An entire world’s history, technology, and development were laid bare in front of me, like secrets to the cosmos and I devoured through them all. My hunger was endless, the burning desire to learn more only served to propell me to find more, to seek more, to search more.

I felt my soul thrumming, the Laws in my soul were merely two truths of the world around me. But here? Here the entire tapestry of the fabrics of reality were laid bare, unfolding like an endless fractal, growing more and more complex recursively within itself.

What truths did I know? My revelations were like a child’s drawings, whereas here I saw true art, revealing a deep and unbending understanding of the world inhabited around me. And yet I knew that all paths that led to this were standing upon the shoulders of those that came before me. And though these giants had shoes I could not dare fill, I did have a new purpose of my own here. To become the shoulder upon which the generations after me would stand. To end the cycle of stagnation and rot and get the cycles spinning again, and life, moving on.

I could feel something in my spirit shivering, shaking in fear or excitement I could not tell, as the things I read rekindled flames I’d long forgotten of: the pure joy of learning.

Each word drew me closer to something, each sentence bringing back a new insight I’d lost to time. The imperfection of my memory made me curse out loud as I put together pieces like looking back at things through a particularly blurry lens where someone had taken pieces and ripped them out.

But as I ate through the memories, devouring them endlessly as the knowledge settled and gathered within my chest, I began to feel a heat rising inside of me.

Here, I did not tire, did not need sleep, did not need to eat, and it was only when I could no longer keep any more information in my head, did I finally remember that I existed in a physical world with a body, and needed to return to it. There was a sense of danger, of treading grounds where I would be lost to time, losing myself in the pursuit of those memories and conflating my own self with the one that existed in them.

The thought gave me pause. I needed to be careful. This place was as much of a boon as it was a trap. Sink too deep, and I would begin to lose sight of who I was anymore.

I stood from my table, trying desperately to keep a grasp on all the memories in my head, almost like clinging onto spilling water, overflowing form the edges of a cup. As I stood, finally gaining awareness of where I was as I began to take note of the library. It was larger now, brighter perhaps in some ways, and looked subtly different, but in what way, I could not tell. There would be a lot more uses of this place to come, but I knew, it would not be so easy to find this place once more.

It was an ethereal location, and though I’d formed an anchor in this mind palace, I had not yet mastered it. My spirit contained many aspects, and for better or worse, I was more than the sum of my own parts, and that vastness came with a price as well.

But even then… this was enough. The things I had gained from this place, the knowledge and memories it had imparted upon me would be the flames which I would spin into an inferno.

Closing my eyes, and sorting the memories I had remembered once more, I went through everything one last time. After I was sure I had most of what I needed, I looked at the library one last time, and then for some reason on a whim I gave it a bow, before making my way out.

The world settled around me with a familiar ache that came from having sat in one place for too long. The sensation faded as I cycled my Chi once before standing up.

Old man was no longer here, and I looked outside to see the sun slowly setting down over the horizon, beckoning the stars onto the sky. I walked, feeling almost possessed with a fire burning in my mind, ready to overflow.

Before I knew it, I had broken into a sprint, Chi pulsing beneath my feet and I Stepped, moving faster than I ever had as I rushed to my room. Entering it, I found a brush and my books, and then with a grin like a mad man who’d finally lost it, I began to scribble down everything onto the paper.

The words flew out in a rush, like a dam overflowing. In my rush, I forgot to change the words to english as I wrote like the muse had possessed me and should I take a second longer than needed, the flames would vanish.

And flames they were indeed. Though I did not notice at the time, each word I wrote began to glow and crackle, as the Chi around me began to shiver and twist.

But I did not care. I could not care. I was Prometheus and I stood here holding the flames I had stolen from gods, ready to blaze a new era into humanity.

The words continued to flow, the draw from their Chi enough that soon people began to take note. The letters lit up with light, each word I wrote breathing power into existence. Had the heavens still held power over this place, tribulations would’ve struck me dead ten times by now. But instead, the words I wrote took seed into reality, becoming a part of the cosmos as they began to shiver and shake.

As I wrote the last words, I looked down at my creation and saw it take a life of it’s own.

Chi swirled into it, an enormous hurricane, flowing into the book. The book rose into the air, flipping over as the words swirling around, glowing with light and power. They crackled in fury, and for a moment I felt as if the book itself would catch on fire and explore.

The rising torrents of Chi soon collapsed into the book, sending a powerful pulse traveling across the entire seventh peak as the book tumbled back down onto the table.

Every living creature had felt what had happened there. Not many would know what exactly it had been, but all would understand that something had changed.

But I knew. I knew what had happened. I knew the power words had, that knowledge had in this world, and as I looked at the book glowing, as the words began to write themselves upon the cover, forming “The Laws of Nature Part - 1,” I knew that I had bridged a gap between worlds today.

And yet the words did not stop. The fire in my mind continued to burn, and there was not a moment to spare.

So I picked up my brush again. And began to write once more.

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