~~~

The jungle is silent save for the crackling campfire. There are no birds or squirrels moving about. Not even a lonely cricket to serenade him. The trees do not rustle in the wind. That sort of unnaturalness is the norm in this place.

There is never anything until there is.

The sun is up. It has been a long time since he saw it last. Perhaps two or three months. There is only so much one’s internal clock can do to keep track of time when even the sun won’t cooperate. It had been so well-behaved during his first few weeks, but it got unruly soon after, rising once every two days, then once every hour, and so on. One day, it blinked in and out of existence every other second. It was so annoying he had to walk around with his eyes closed until it stopped.

He grunts. The meat he spent so long cooking is greasy, tasteless, and sticks to the roof of his mouth. Fitting, considering the beast it belonged to was a gross, foul-smelling purple monster the likes of which he had never seen before he was trapped in this place. Oh, what he wouldn’t give for something sweet and fresh! He’s surrounded by lush, green trees, but not a single one of them bears fruit. He’s lucky these ones haven’t tried to kill him yet.

The sun and the lack of fruits and vegetables are far from the only oddities of this place. There are no moon or stars here, and not a single person other than himself. He has looked. Heavens knows he has. He has traveled across deep valleys, wastelands, and marshes. There are never people. Never any sign of civilization. Not even a single fresh apple. Nothing other than mindless beasts that want to kill him. Nothing other than fighting and struggling and loneliness.

It took him a long time to understand what sort of place this is.

This is a different spatial realm.

He has never found people here because there are none. This is a created space, one that seemingly goes on without end. Or perhaps he just keeps going in circles.

He had not taken the realization well. He’d raged. He’d screamed. He’d roared his defiance at the Heavens. His Qi and Dao lashed out against the walls of reality, trying to tear his way out of this forsaken place.

It was for naught.

He grunts, crunching down on a large bone to suck out its marrow. It tastes no better than the meat, but sustenance is sustenance. Some bits of bone splatter over his bare chest, but it hardly makes a difference. He hasn’t had a good bath in weeks, and using Qi to burn off the filth from his body would be a waste of energy. He doesn’t even have good clothes to stain. He wears a loincloth made of animal fur and a little else. Only his hair and face are neat and tidy. It is the one bit of vanity he allows himself.

He might be trapped in an odd spatial realm full of beasts, but this place will not make a beast out of him.

“You disappoint me.”

He freezes. The world goes still. Even the fire seems to have stopped crackling.

That voice!

He roars!

Everything within hundreds of yards is blown away by the sheer force of his Qi as he launches himself at his hated foe. Thousands of exchanges happen in the span of a single breath. Countless dazzling and devastating techniques are unleashed one after the next. Qi clashes against Qi. Dao clashes against Dao. The heavens cry. The earth trembles in fear. The terrain is so completely devastated that any maps of the area would have to be redrawn.

It ends as it always does

He loses.

“Is that all you can do?” His hated foe asks. He looks at him with dispassionate eyes, his sword held loosely in his hand. “Even after I gave you the privilege of being in the Sacred Bottomless Pearl for so long?”

“Privilege?”

He laughs, not even bothering to rise from the ground. Bitter as defeat tastes, the fights always bring him some clarity. Being able to work out stress through violence is a skill he vastly underappreciated before being trapped here.

“What an odd way to call incarceration.”

“The Sacred Bottomless Pearl is an outstanding training ground,” his foe tells him. “Here, you have no end of powerful foes to fight and no banal distractions. It is a suitable place to hone your cultivation and sharpen your mind, yet you’re still only in the Heaven Realm. Have I perhaps misjudged your potential?”

Only in the Heaven Realm? He laughs once more. To think someone would have the nerve to utter such words. He wants to fire back that his foe is also in the Heaven Realm.

But he is no longer sure that is the case.

No matter how much stronger he gets, the gap between him and his foe does not seem to diminish. Even now that he is close to the limits of the Heaven Realm, the swordsman still matches him with ease. There is something else at play. Perhaps his foe is hiding the true depths of his cultivation. Perhaps there is a truth to this pearl that he has not yet uncovered.

Regardless, he cannot defeat him. Not yet.

“I’m torn. Should I be flattered that my continued imprisonment is due to my talent being recognized? Or should I be insulted that you think me stupid enough to venture into the Renegade Realm without assurances?”

“That you need assurances is nothing but a sign of fear.”

“Fear is necessary to survive.” He grins. “Since I plan on surviving for a long time, my fears and I are quite comfortable with each other.”

The swordsman does not grin with him. His face does not even twitch.

“You will enter the Renegade Realm,” the swordsman tells him with finality.

“Oh?” He raises an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

“If you do not enter, I will make you enter.”

No menacing intent accompanies those words, yet the power behind them is almost tangible. It deposits itself on his shoulders and drags its nails across his skin.

Blood flows from his cheek as if he had been cut by a blade.

“Why?” He asks, some tiredness entering his voice. “Why do all of this? You could have killed me a long time ago? Why keep me here? Why make me stronger? Is torturing me really so amusing to you?!”

“Torture?” His foe blinks, perhaps for the first time. Alas, he is too tired to take advantage of it. “This is no torture. This is all for the sake of a much higher goal.”

“Oh?” He raises an eyebrow. “And what is that?”

“The preservation of humanity.”

~~~