Chapter 261 - Ripples in a Pond

In the physical world, Nilya’s body remained in a meditative lotus position. The guru-chi assumed the same posture, facing Nilya as he closed his eyes and concentrated.

From a casual outsider’s perspective it would look like the two were meditating. The dome of light had faded after Nilya entered the spirit realm, leaving only the candles flickering softly around a circle of quartz dust to indicate that something mystical was underway.

To Yuzu, though, something very strange was happening with Nilya’s fate string. The ritual which the guru-chi had performed had caused Nilya’s silver string to split in two!

One thread remained around Nilya’s body in the physical world. Yuzu clearly understood this represented Nilya’s physical body. The other thread rose into the air, where it disappeared.

As Yuzu focused on the string, her perception of the world around the pair changed subtly. It felt like her vision was expanding, her awareness stretched to not just encompass the physical plane, but capture the layers of the other three planes simultaneously.

At this moment Yuzu realized something fundamental about her Exalted powers. She came to an epiphany about something that she had already subconsciously understood for a while.

The past few weeks were full of similar realizations. Many of the training methods that the guru-chi had guided Nilya through were ones which Yuzu could emulate. Meditations and visualization exercises were the foundation of deepening one’s connections to their pathway. Qi, the life force which flowed through all humans, could be generated, stored and manipulated to accentuate Exalted powers.

When an Exalted used their spirituality, they were directing their qi. Using powers consumed qi. Resting and consuming special herbs and medicines replenished qi.

Through following the simple breathing and awareness exercises Yuzu’s efficiency in interacting with fate threads increased.

Not only this, but the guru-chi was quite generous in sharing his knowledge with Nilya, imparting sagely wisdom to his new pupil which Yuzu learned for free. One of the big epiphanies was the realization that Yuzu’s pathway didn’t just grant her supernatural abilities, but they also expanded her cognitive ability as well.

The fabric of Fate was not only complex, but the intricate weave of threads was constantly changing and flowing through time. Even a small change on a single thread could cascade into wide ranging consequences across tens of thousands of lives. Whenever Yuzu made an adjustment to the tapestry of fate, she wasn’t just affecting the thread she touched. This was a given.

The astonishing thing though was that as Yuzu advanced and grew stronger, she found herself naturally understanding and predicting the consequences of her actions. She saw patterns play out on the threads and felt the intrinsic nature of the tapestry.

A stone dropped on the ground bounces a few times then settles. A normal person could follow that stone across its trajectory. If the stone and the path was simple, a particularly skilled observer might even be able to predict the bounces.

A stone dropped into a pond forms a ripple. That ripple is simple to grasp at the point it originates, but could a normal person hold the whole lifetime of that ripple in their mind even as it reflected off of the edges of the pond and other ripples? A breeze across the pond causes waves. Could a normal person comprehend how these waves formed?

This was something Yuzu could now do.

The fabric of fate itself was not alive. Although it was composed of the threads of living beings, those beings were not even aware of it. Even those that were aware of it, they couldn’t affect it.

Each person was like the water droplets that formed the surface of the pond. They ebbed and flowed according to the forces and laws of nature, only aware of their immediate circumstances.

But Yuzu could see a portion of that pond, and she could dip her finger in and cause a tiny ripple, and grasp how that ripple would affect the water in that small piece of pond.

Coming to this understanding, Yuzu did not feel a sense of power or grandiosity. Instead, she felt her perspective widen, gaining a deeper appreciation for the world which she lived in.

Over the past month she had not only observed Nilya’s training but also gained a deep understanding of the people in this village. The secluded village was like a puddle next to the pond, shallow and tiny enough for Yuzu to grasp in its entirety.

Nilya, this ten year old boy in a no-name, dying village in the middle of a swamp, had been destined for a normal life. In his original fate, his latent Exalted powers would likely have never manifested.

Following the natural flow of fate, she saw how his future would have been. His sister would have died from the devil eyes, and his mother and a few of the other villagers would have succumbed to the disease as well. The village would carry on as Nilya grew into a young man, continuing his family’s specialty of gathering herbs. He would have been taken in by the village healer and care for the health of his fellow villagers. He would marry the sister of his best friend Taylor. Mikas and Pip would be his lifelong friends. He would die at an old age surrounded by his grandchildren.

Fate was not stagnant. This was not the only way the future could progress, but it was the most likely way. The ripples in a small puddle separated from the world were possible to grasp in isolation.

But Yuzu had dipped her finger in that puddle and disrupted the flow of fate. The future that could have been was forever changed.

And those ripples that Yuzu created had caused changes beyond the puddle, though she could not foresee what those changes were. After all, at her current level she could only grasp a small part of the tapestry. A puddle was fine, but she couldn’t yet comprehend a pond. And beyond ponds there were lakes and seas and oceans full of life and mystery. There was still a long way to go.

But Yuzu could see the subtle shift in the flow of the tapestry. She saw the ripples caused by a breeze that blew across the pond, a breeze that had started blowing because she dipped her finger in.

Through Yuzu’s actions this tiny village was now connected to the world, and its future was in flux. Though she still could only see a single day into the future in the strings, the ripples told her that people were coming, and those people brought change and opportunity.

If she were stronger she would be able to see farther with her powers, but almost more importantly if she advanced then her grasp of those subtle patterns would also expand.

Yuzu had spent a lot of time in the past few weeks reflecting on her new knowledge. She currently lacked the ability to solve her current situation of being stuck in the wastelands, but with the guru-chi’s “instruction” she was starting to see a way out.

Furthermore, she was starting to understand the depth and complexity of the Exalted world that she was now firmly a part of. One that apparently made her somewhat more poetic and flowery than she was used to being— or maybe that was Li Ru’s influence rubbing off on her.

Now, observing Nilya’s string split into two parts in the ritual, Yuzu had another epiphany. From her previous understanding, every person had four bodies that each corresponded to the four planes of existence: Physical, Spiritual, Astral and Aetheric. When an Exalted is in the physical world, their physical body shelters their other three bodies. This was the natural state for most living beings, because the physical body offered the best protection.

When an Exalted enters another plane, such as the several occasions when Yuzu entered the white world, the body of that plane takes over and the other three bodies are stored within it.

However, there had also been situations where Yuzu’s physical body had remained in the physical world, but her consciousness was within the white world. In other words, a person’s bodies could be separated from one another, but since they belong to the same person, they ultimately maintain a strong connection with each other.

Hence, when a person’s bodies are separated from each other, their fate string splits. Or rather, when a person’s planar bodies are contained within their physical body, they all share the same fate, and so they appear to be one thread.

“So that’s how it is…” Yuzu muttered to herself in the darkness. She shifted on the cushion that she had set up in the center of the abandoned house on the village’s west outskirts. The place where Nilya and the guru-chi were meditating was within her range, thus she could safely observe the whole process from afar.

Nilya’s consciousness had left the physical plane, leaving his body behind. His spiritual, astral and aetheric bodies had followed his consciousness, the corresponding silver thread faded into the air above Nilya’s head.

However this wasn’t all. The guru-chi’s thick silver string had also split and accompanied Nilya into the spiritual plane.

I thought Nilya was supposed to go alone. Yuzu grinned to herself. Looks like this guru-chi isn’t afraid to cheat.

Careful as always not to contact the guru-chi’s string, Yuzu held her hand above Nilya’s thread and followed it to the current location of Nilya’s consciousness.

This place was not in the physical plane, and it wasn’t nearby either. Nilya’s other bodies were currently in the spiritual world in a dimensional pocket that existed separately from the rigid confines of the physical world.

Yuzu’s consciousness expanded to take in Nilya’s surroundings, finding herself looking down upon a misty, cold forest blanketed in snow.

Ancient evergreen trees surrounded Nilya on all sides and rose into the sky, fading into the mist. Near to the ground their branches had fallen off, leaving plenty of space between the trunks for travel.

The snow covered ground was unimpeded and pristine. From Nilya’s point of view the forest continued in all directions, with no distinguishing feature pointing in any particular direction.

He shivered as he looked around in confusion, not sure where to go. He started walking, feeling the brisk wind cut into his exposed skin, which was not protected by his light summer clothing.

He trudged through the snow for a while, but no matter where he went the scenery was still the same. There was just him alone in the forest, leaving a lonely trail of footprints as he wandered aimlessly in the endless, empty forest.

After observing for a while Yuzu suddenly laughed to herself, her eyes glinting in amusement as she saw what was happening.