Chapter Nine - The Seeds of Life

Boredom! I’d been stuck in this mansion for nearly 50 years all by myself, unable to leave! At first, the mansion fascinated me. It was even larger than the courthouses, with innumerable rooms, and means of entertainment. At first I wondered, "What the hell does Yama need with a house even bigger than a Courthouse that served trillions of souls a day?" Then I realized it, Yama is a hoarder. You don’t realize it until you really delve deeply into the dungeons, vaults, and trophy rooms, but he hasn't thrown away a damned thing in his life.

The first thing I did was check out his vault; in my past life I had stolen plenty of treasures and cultivation techniques from people, and there was no way I was going to let this opportunity pass. Of course, I forgot to take into account that stealing from Yama is not a good idea; especially when he has his eyes on you. I opened the door to his vault and stared in wonder at the unending treasures. Innumerable divine equipments hanging on the walls, with row after row of bookshelves covered in cultivation techniques, martial arts, and spells. Of course, the moment I went to touch a book his voice rang out in my head yet again, “HAHAHAHA, I forgot to tell you that if anyone other than me touches a book in here his soul will be sucked into a gem until I get around to punishing them and reincarnating them as slugs… HAHAHAHAHA”

‘Fucking Dwarf!’ was all I could think as I scampered out of the room before my greed took the better of me. Instead, I decided to explore the other rooms of the mansion

The trophy room truly fascinated me. It was filled with the heads of giants, dragons, and gems that seemed to give off an otherworldly glow. As I got close to each gem, Yama’s voice would ring out again reading the plaque in that otherworldly, indecipherable text. “This is the soul of the betrayer; a fallen god who nearly destroyed the southern essence pearl. For his punishment, he was given to that bitch downstairs to play with for 50 million years, and I’ve had him for a couple more million. I might reincarnate him sometime in the future… maybe...” And, so it went, a never ending litany of damned and punished souls.

Eventually, I grew bored of hearing tales of how some idiot gained power and then abused it. Later on though, I was thankful for the experience. Every time I began to feel truly powerful, and it started getting to my head, that litany of fallen god’s and goddess’ as well as their punishments would run my head as if it was engraved into my soul. Everyone gets judged eventually. Some unsolicited advice... Try not to break the Laws of Heaven.

It was after the trophy room that I neared the kitchens. In keeping with the humongous mansion, they were overwhelming. I think you could’ve served millions of Gods and Goddesses out of that place with ease. The best part of all was the pantry. As a soul I didn’t really need food to maintain myself; just essence to maintain my form, but I still had the base desire to eat. During my exploration of the pantries I found one that was larger than all the others put together. I couldn’t understand it at first, but it was stuffed with apples.

'Why would you need so many apples?'

Intrigued, I pawed one over to me and took a bite. A kaleidoscope of colors erupted from my mouth as my tastebuds were overwhelmed by the explosion of flavors. Just like when I was in the spirit plane, the apple disintegrated in my mouth turning into every kind of essence as it flowed through me. I had to be careful eating them, the earth essence had to be spit back up in the form of the apple’s core since it still refused to join with me. But, other than that it was the most delicious thing that I've ever eaten to this day. Just that one apple contained more essence than I had absorbed during my entire stay on the Elemental Sea. I should’ve stopped after having one, I mean it's obvious that something containing that much essence can't be normal.

Since then, fifty years had passed and I had long since explored every nook and cranny of the mansion. Bored! That's the only way to describe my feelings, as for the last 20 years I’d done nothing but laze around and eat apples. That nearly endless supply? I just finished the last of them. Every single day I would eat until I was so full that I would explode if I ate a single bit more. My limit started at one a day, but slowly over the last 50 years of my limit expanded. If I had a body, I’d long since of become a big, white and purple furball from all the apples I'd eaten. Thankfully, I was just in my soul form so all I had to do was learn how to concentrate the energy better and now I was back to looking like a sleek, noble muntant-fire-wolf.

That was the day. The day that Yama finally came back, and the day that I learned of his wrath.

From the front of the house, I heard him laughing, “HAHAHHA” to himself about something. At this point, I was so bored that I actually sprinted through the house to the front door as fast as possible, meeting him there.

“So, the place didn’t burn down yet! I was half expecting it to be gone.”

I was feeling great, his arrival meant that I could finally get out of here! “I didn’t burn it down, but I did eat all the apples.” I said while grinning.

“Apples? What apples? Wait, you don't mean…” He rushed into the mansion and flew to the now empty pantry.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” He screamed with such force that his precious mansion broke apart around him, torn into pieces.

“You...You...You! Do you know how much these were worth?!?!?!” HE screamed at me while holding he final remains of the apples, the cores of earth essence.

I just stared at him dumbfounded, “I thought they were just really tasty apples?

“Apples? Those were seeds from the tree of life! One of those has enough essence in it to create a fucking world! What kind of monster are you?!?!?!”

I was going to respond with something witty like, “You’re the real monster.” Or, “If they were really important why didn’t you put a trap on them like you did the cultivation manuals?” Instead, I went to open my mouth… and burped. I’d swallowed the earth essence of that last seed by accident and it chose that moment to work it's way out.

I think the image of me standing there, coughing the stem and core of a seed of life was just too much for him. Yama stood there, fuming. Divine power was literally leaking out of his ears while his anger built, and build, and built… “Enough!” He screamed out then punched me so hard that my soul flew through the remainder of the mansion, through the portal to his office, out of the courthouse, and through the gates of reincarnation.