For a few moments, I gazed at the night skies where the last flames of the shuttle that was supposed to take my sect members to safety slowly died out.
Pain, it started slow, then it began roiling and coiling around and withing me, like a writhing snake.
The sky took its darker sheet and the explosion seemed like it had never happened in the first place.
The pain began increasing, suffocating me enough that I tried to speak but nothing but incomprehensible words came out, I felt like my whole body was going to burst from this pain, and feeling of utter complete frustration and inability to change an outcome that had just happened.
Suddenly I felt like I was numbed to the world in an instant.
The pain was gone… no, it was still there, muffled and in the background.
The world, for me, all of it, turned gray in an instant, I felt detached, unable to comprehend what just happened.
A coldness never before felt in my life crept up on my back, it was like the hands of the grim reaper grabbing tightly on my shoulders before it leaned next to my ears and spoke.
"Ha, Yes, now you can hear me" I heard the voice of someone who was never even there.
I shook, not in fear but his voice sounded awfully familiar. I shook because I knew who this was.
"See, this is what happens when you put your trust in the wrong hands… for you still believe in the good in Man." The voice said.
I remained frozen unable to move and could only listen. Detached from reality, as if I was at the bottom of a cold dark lake, unable to hear anything but the sound of my own beating heart, and the terrorizing voice of the person speaking to me.
"For you have a past that is most fascinating to see, yet, you still live in it, you still uphold your values to a past and to a world that no longer exists." The voice said.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"Me? I am your past, your present, and your future, I am your ego, I am your arrogance, I am your success and I am your failure. I am what you make, and I am what you destroy. I am you, I am, Larry Hudson."
'Hold up, that's my earth name…Huh, guess schizophrenia wasn't the least of my problems,'
"Jest and joke as much as you want, for it is your way to deal with pain. But do know, that if you keep your head down, bowed against the odds, your back will one daybreak. Look at what your carelessness caused? The death of so many members of the very sect that you risked our lives to save, and now, all gone, why?" the voice spoke this time the words were far colder and I felt the same shiver as before only stronger.
"Because…I allowed it."
"No, it's because WE allowed it." the voice said.
Unable to comprehend what he meant, the voice proceeded to explain.
"I am you," he said.
Which immediately gave me a flashback to a certain dojo with a few characters debating who is who… but I shook the idea away immediately, seems that 'I' was saying something serious. As incredible as that might sound.
"I have told you, I am You, and your mistakes are mine, Where you see reason and opportunity, I see danger and risk, and not warning you with the risks is my own shortcoming." The voice said.
"Don't you mean our shortcoming?" I said half jesting.
"Indeed Our, now what are 'We' going to do?" the voice said.
"I'll need to get to the bottom of this clusterfuck first. And understand why the Black Tower's Shuttle was assaulted, shouldn't they have been a force so strong no one would dare touch their property?" I said
"Ah, once again, reason and goals, objective and opportunity, you see only the positive in a situation, then react to the negative after it happened. For what I see in your request is nothing but the opposite of what you wish to see. The moment you come asking around on why the Black Tower's shuttle was assaulted, do you not think that they will shift the blame first on something else, for they do not wish to have their name tarnished, also, they could easily say that they actually did you a favor for not sending you as they saved your life since you have a token, or even have you by some mean to become the culprit."
"Aren't those all far-fetched scenarios," I said.
"Do you really think that a powerhouse as big as this one will allow their names to be dragged through the mud due to a low-tier sect dying? At most they'll find a scapegoat and blame him for this, then what will you do then?" the voice said.
He is right… I mean why would they even care for what I think or what I don't, now should I just bow down, if I can't do anything, and if they can easily shift the blame for someone else, am I not just as powerless today as I was back in that cave… haven't I promised myself to never be powerless like that day.
"We are not powerless Shen Bao. We never were, it's only that you never allowed yourself to fully enjoy the might of a cultivator that you feel weak."
"I guess you know more since you were the one who beat that soul transformation cultivator.
"There is no I here, it is us, and we have not technically beat the cultivator, it was Y. Still, what I speak of is the fact that you train the sword, yet never use it, you train your arts and never use them, you cultivate not to better yourself, but you cultivate to better the world around you, though the second option sounds far more appealing it is the opposite of what cultivation is."
'This is basically all that Zhang Tian said…only reworded,'
"Indeed, because I cannot tell you more knowledge than you have, I can only reword it, rephrase it and give it back to you from a different point of view, I am not a parasite but I am you, only I see things like a cultivator, while you still see the world as a mortal." The voice said.
'Then help me see the way you see. Perhaps this pain will go away.'
"That pain will never go away, that pain is a reminder of your hesitation, of your mistakes, and most of all, of your indecisiveness. It will always be there, as a reminder, so that the next time you wish to do something, you do it fully convinced in your own action."
"True, perhaps you're right because even the Poison God said that… the first few lines… yes, I should have been more decisive, I should have had them stay here, I knew something was wrong but didn't speak my mind… and this happened."
"It is what it is…and now, what will you do?" the voice asked.
I opened my eyes and found myself back on top of the Black Tower. The guards looked at me, unable to explain or say what's in their minds, they knew fair well who the people in the shuttle were for me, and were waiting for my reaction.
I turned and the two of them immediately took a step back, unconsciously so because they weren't looking at me.
But were looking at the poison Qi that was raging out from within my body, shaped into a five-headed snake that was hissing above me.
I closed my eyes once, then opened them and the poison Qi aura disappeared while I returned to my calm self.
"I'll have a word with Feng Han…" I said.
"Y-yes, give me a moment I'll inform him.." the guard replied.