84 Potential 4 (1/2)
POTENTIAL STAGE
It wasn't a space that Mao Lu could describe, there was a nothingness surrounding him. There was no light yet he had the strange sensation that he could see, there was no darkness yet something blocked the light. There was nothing surrounding him yet on his fingers he felt the sensation or rather energy buzzing around him. He was surrounded by Essence.
There were only three types of Essences here, the Creation Essence, The Destruction Essence, and the Time Essence.
They were like babies, small creatures that took up all the space around him. They nipped at the skin on his fingertips, he felt emotions of curiosity and confusion coming from them. In this space, he felt connected to the Essence in a way he'd never felt before, as if they were a hive mind and he was the queen bee. He could hear all their thoughts, they all felt like extensions of his limbs, their sight was his sight, their power was his power, their thoughts were his thoughts.
Mao Lu no longer felt like Mao Lu, he was the countless essences in this room. He felt his sense of self-dissipating as he drowned in the collective consciousness of the Essences. From their minds, he could feel how they were slowly developing.
From the perspective of the Essences, Mao Lu realised that for a long time they had been isolated and alone in this emptiness, simply existing with no purpose and no sense of being and now that Mao Lu had appeared, they felt energised, they felt reason, and laws applying to them, they looked at Mao Lu dotingly, waiting for his instructions.
No longer was Mao Lu thinking about creating this world for himself, actually the objective had left his thoughts. All he wanted to do now was feed his Essences. He wanted them to grow, he wanted to give them purpose, he wanted to give them roles, he wanted to satisfy the latent power they had by giving it direction.
In this nothingness, Mao Lu opened his eyes and they glowed brightly with power like neon lights in the dark. He didn't use words, he didn't need to. They understood his intentions, his wishes.
The first thing Mao Lu wanted was light, as he thought about it the small-baby-like eel Time Essences began swirling around the green flower-like Creation essences. They spun around each other faster and faster. The red dust Destruction Essence began to spin anticlockwise around the Time and Creation essences. Mao Lu felt a growing tension as the energy around him buzzed. This tension was a knot in Mao Lu's throat, the feeling was similar to a wave when the waters receded at the shore, pulling back to create a large wave. Mao Lu felt a similar apprehension. A wave was coming.
His body was flung like a ball as the Essences imploded and then exploded outwardly. He flew further and further for what felt like miles before he willed himself to stop. His skin glowed red from the explosion but surprisingly he wasn't hurt. The energy from the explosion simply buzzed and became kinetic energy that quickly tempered out. Mao Lu's hands buzzed for a while but overall he was fine.
When he finally regained his bearings and glanced around himself, he was shocked. He had witnessed a birth. Now there were more than just Time, Creation, and Destruction Essences. Now there were light essences, celestial essences, heat essences, gravity essences, and so much more.
The gravity essences held the heat essences and celestial essences together. The heat and celestial essences revolved around each other creating nuclear fusion processes, proton to proton fusion processes, chemical elements had been made for helium fusion, and there was carbon. Now there were several stars drifting in this abyss. The stars emitted flame and light essences that illuminated the abyss. These light essences were like small yellow-coloured robin birds. They tweeted and sang as they flew around.
Time, Creation and Destruction is the basis. Mao Lu understood. Time propels the reaction, creation starts to create these other essences and destruction destroys the creation essences to create the other essences. Birth from destruction, it all goes full circle. All the elements back in his own world, all the materials, all essences were mainly made from this process. Mao Lu had been told this, but it was one thing hearing about it and another thing seeing it for himself. He now understood how fundamental Time essence was.
With such a powerful tool at his disposal, he wondered how he was going to use it. As he thought about them the Time Essences swam up to him, they were still small, the size of his pinky finger. They nibbled at his fingertips and swam around him excitedly.
\”How do you want me to use you?\” he thought, the Time Essences simply swam around him, not giving him an answer.
Now that I have light, what should I make now? Mao Lu glanced at the stars and thought about solar systems, these stars need planets.
The moment he thought of planets; the destruction, creation, and time essences went to work again. This time they were not just spinning around each other, they were now rotating around several of the freshly made stars. Mao Lu again felt that all too familiar feeling of tension, he knew what was about to happen. He braced himself, and sure enough there was that perfect moment of stillness again, and then the explosion.
Since he was prepared this time, Mao Lu was able to keep himself rooted to the spot, the energy of this explosion wasn't as intense as the last one but it still caused his entire body to reverberate. When he opened his eyes this time he was in the middle of a dust cloud. The dust was so thick that he found himself coughing on it. Around him, there were all these new essences made from the explosion, all these new small children. And all these new essences were making reactions, chemicals and new elements. The blank slate he'd started with was now filled with colour.
Creation, he'd always thought that someone who created had such immense power, but the creator wasn't the one with the power. The Creator was simply the one with control, and it was the creator's tools which had the power. Mao Lu was simply a conductor at an orchestra guiding his musicians into making music.
He only had to picture what he wanted to create and the essences would use their functions to make what he needed. One had made the 400 realms with the same template: stars, solar systems, nebulae, planets, and life forms etc. But Mao Lu was the Creator here. Did he have to keep to all these old templates? Wasn't it boring?
From the exploded star and dust clouds and gravity, planets were slowly clumping together. The process was awfully slow, but the moment Mao Lu wanted it to speed up the time essences whirred around him and these planets were forming in seconds.
Mao Lu remembered a documentary he'd seen in the past, it had been about the Creation of the universe. This entire process took apparently billions of years, yet in religious texts, they recorded creation as taking merely seven days or simply just moments. What if they were both right? The science was right, that it did take these immense amounts of time, but from the perspective of a God, it was simply a moment. In the minutes that Mao Lu watched stars be born, stars explode, nebulae to shape, and planets to appear, retrospectively he was also watching billions of years pass him by with no effect.
This….this was power. No wonder Gatekeepers were so powerful, once one truly understood the concept of Essences and creation, destruction and time than there really was no limit. The only thing holding back a gatekeeper was the limits of their imagination, their will and their ability to truly understand the essences.
When this thought occurred to Mao Lu he paused, this test was supposed to test his potential, his imagination, his will and his understanding. Any Gatekeeper with basic understanding could do what he had just done, any of them could create stars and form planets. Mao Lu was using One's template, he was just making his own creation resemble his own universe. This wasn't imagination or creation, it was imitation, sloppy imitation. If he wanted to make this world if he wanted to truly create his own space he needed to \”STOP NOW\”.
His thoughts paused…his mind rumbled. The entire universe around him had paused, a stillness enveloped everything.
\”I need to start again,\” he concluded. As he stated this the Time essences began to buzz and started spinning anti-clockwise. The Destruction essences followed suit and began to float around the time essences, the Creation essences idly stood by them. Mao Lu witnessed as the forming planets exploded, dust dispersed, the stars that had exploded reformed and then disappeared. As all the reactions and processes reversed and stopped, yet again there was only Mao Lu standing in an empty abyss.
His eyes glowed again as he opened them, like neon lights in the dark. \”This time this world will be made to my design.\”
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REALM 145
Chàng Bo's reckless driving had caught the attention of the police. As he accelerated out of control and only narrowly avoided ploughing into a row of vehicles, sirens blared in the distance as three police vehicles followed him in hot pursuit.