An Immortal's Retirement: To Achieve Peace

Her name was Gmphf, at least for today. The baby looked up at her captor and communicated her decision.

“Ha!” the man yelled. “No, way kid. Think of something better.”

“Agou wag aoo!”

“I don’t care if that’s the longest word you can say! Gmphf isn’t a proper name. Think of something better.”

The baby frowned and crossed her arms. The capitor truly was ruthless. Why did she need a name anyway? She had her qi, didn’t she? And anyone worth talking to would be able to identify her aura. She had no use for mortal grunts!

“Gifftholog,” she mumbled with an abhorrent amount of effort.

“Maybe if you were an eldritch being,” the captor replied.

Again, the baby frowned.

The captor reached down and picked her up, hand gently cradling her belly and raising her to his shoulders. She grabbed onto his head, still frowning firmly at the situation.

She was tired of not walking. She had been alive for a month, a whole month, and still, she had to crawl to get around. She was fast of course, lightning fast. She could crawl faster than the wind and outpace the sound of her thumping limbs.

But still, she crawled. She yearned to run, but that seemed to be a harder thing to figure out. She couldn’t understand why. Her instincts let her understand certain laws and dao immediately. She could channel qi into natural techniques that would allow her to top any fourth-rank cultivator and she was even born with an innate knowledge of reality itself.

Yet she still could not walk. Oh, she would try. She would rebel against the ground and reach for the heavens, only to fall back and tumble down a hill and then she’d hear a howling laughter from her captor, somehow seeming to always be there when she fell.

The man laughed at her! Her of all people!

And then there were the mortals, oh they would come rushing around, huddling and helping her up and inspecting for wounds. The old farmer man had thrown a fuss the first time she had fallen.

That was until she crawled away from fast than he could blink, letting out her bowls in the process. That had made her captor laugh even more.

“Awoo ugh,” the baby spoke to her annoying hide.

She didn’t really need to speak. She communicated through her aura and he did the same with her. But she wanted to practice the words. The sooner she could use them the sooner she could insult him.

“Yeah, we’re going out.”

“Awoo ow?”

“No, not the village.”

“Awoo?”

“You’ll see,” he replied.

The baby smiled. Finally something new, she thought. This place was small, egregiously so. She was meant to roam the cosmos and see the stars, not be tied to some backcountry realm. Would she finally be able to leave this small place? Would she meet her father? Would she meet her mother?

She was practically vibrating with excitement.

Then he started walking. The baby frowned once more.

Walking? They were walking? Why? Shouldn’t they be flying or piercing through the very cloth of space-time itself and seeing higher things? Where were they going?

Then she noticed something, a technique. With every step the man took, they both shrank in size. The sun seemed further away. The sky felt bigger. The trees and rocks grew into huge mountains. She knew it wasn’t real. She knew that, and yet.

It was terrifying to be so small. The technique wasn’t just shrinking her body but also her senses. Grass eventually overwhelmed them, blocking their site like trees in a forest. The shade of foliage seemed to shift into strange and unknown depths.

Suddenly, this small place that she had grown weary of seemed to swallow her whole in rebellion.

I am here, it seemed to say.

I am vast. It was not me who was small but your eyes that were too large, the forest whispered.

She shook.

A calm hand touched behind her back.

“It’s okay. You’re alright kid.” A voice said to her.

“We’re fine, okay.”

The baby nodded. He was strong. They would be fine. She knew this to be true, but she didn’t feel this to be true.

Then, they walked. The world was familiar but different. Small things had become big and big things had become even bigger.

She told herself that this was a lie, a mere illusion made by this technique. But she knew it wasn’t true. What she was seeing was real. The small forest she had grown tired of was real, but so was this vast abyss of wood and greens. She could sense animals in the distance, the dull qi-less kind.

A deer wandered by, an animal with little mind. And yet it was magnificent.

Its hooves moved the wind and its walk cut the earth. The dull white spots on its chest seemed to become the very sun and the mouth that mowed on the grass turned into that of a dragon, feasting on the earth beneath.

She felt awe. It was simple. It was stupid, yet she felt in awe. The world was beyond her.

For the first time in her short unnoticeable existence, she felt small.

This deer, as small as it was, was beyond her. It had lived before her.

Something churned within her.

There was more to the world, more than she could possibly know. There were more deer than she would ever meet, more skys than she would ever see. The immortals were great but they too were a part of nature, merely a stop at the cycle.

The baby turned and looked at the ant in the distance. From here they appeared to be huge, the size of dogs. They thrumped lightly on the ground with more purpose than most beings she had ever seen. They gathered for their young and all walked to serve the colony and die for it.

And the trees, the trees breathed. They gave shelter to life, letting all the rodents and insects of the world hide beneath their shadow.

She wondered how many animals had fed on their leaves or hidden in their wood. How much had they done for the world? How little was she compared to the trees of the forest?

“Calm down kid, it’s a little too early for enlightenment,” the cultivator said, shifting her off of his shoulders and into his arms.

She said nothing and she nodded.

They walked for a while. They walked for a long time, staring at the animals and the plants and shuddering at the insects.

The thought was strange. In the mind of a cultivator, value was relative. Things only matter because they were rare or necessary. The greatness in a shiny gem wasn’t because of its beauty, but rather its allure. Everyone wanted the gem, therefor the gem gained value.

And in that same way, she knew she was more valuable than this forest. She was rare, talented, and blessed with a powerful bloodline. A strand of her hair was worth more than a realm full of forests.

But for some reason, she could not understand, she felt a sense of insignificance here. She was a godling, a daughter of one of the fundamental beings, a child of Beast, far more powerful than this forest before her, and yet it didn’t care.

The forest didn’t care for her. The world didn’t care for her. In the eyes of existence, the difference between her and a pebble was unnoticeable. Pride was a thing of thinking beings, a delusion of the soul.

The self was the cage and the mind was the door. No, she could not be so stupid. She could not be so arrogant. She was small.

She was insignificant.

It wasn’t worth her time-

“Hey!” The cultivator snapped, pushing away all of her thoughts with his words.

“I said it’s too early for enlightenment,” he spoke sternly.

The child looked up at him with fear in her eyes.

She had almost died. She had almost perished and turned to dust. She sought too much and thought too much.

Then she cried. Not out of annoyance or irritation, but out of helplessness. A child who did not know the world screamed up into the skies. Arrogance crumbled and left only fear.

She cried and cried and the captor held her, comforting her in his arms.

The world was scary. The world was terrifying and as great as she was, it did not care. It existed before her and would continue to do so after. Existential dread had filled her very soul.

“You’re alright,” the captor muttered into her ear.

“I gotcha. You’re fine kid, you’re fine.”

The words soothed her. This person was strong, but more importantly, he was old. He could keep her safe. He would keep her safe. She mattered to him, even though he hadn’t sired her, she mattered to him.

The world didn’t care, but he did.

She sniffled and hiccupped and sneezed out a glob of boogers.

He didn’t care. He wiped them away with his hands and tossed them aside, as he held her up into the light.

“There there kid. You’re okay.”

She nodded and he cradled her into his arms, and they walked through the forest, this vast and uncaring world.

But she was fine. He cared and that was all that mattered. He cared and the world dimmed again. The deer became a deer and the night became a mere shadow. The world was uncaring and terrifying but he wasn’t.

Then after a few minutes of sniffling and crying, she slept and dreamed of nothing.