Tower of Heaven

After the battle with the bull beast, Atlas didn't immediately challenge another enemy. He left them alone and returned to the main palace where he could practice on his own.

After gauging his strength, Atlas deemed that combat wasn't what he needed at the moment. It was better for him to focus on himself in other ways.

He wanted to practice the Grand Arsenal, and he wanted to learn more about his own qi usage. For the next three months, he spent most of his time meditating rather than doing hard training.

He only stood up from his meditative position when he wanted to test the moves of the Grand Arsenal that he was learning, but even then his actions were like those of a puppet. He moved with precision and a lack of emotion that made him seem less than human, but through this kind of attitude, he was able to make the most progress.

In the Tower, he rarely had to deal with it. It just happened occasionally and when it was over, it was over. "Sleep" became something almost unfamiliar to him.

However, in these three months, as his mind fatigued itself over and over again for the sake of improvement, he experienced the human feeling of being exhausted and passing out multiple times.

It was then that he started to experience something strange.

That first day, Atlas used all of his energy practicing the Fist of the Mountain King and collapsed. He had the pagoda spirit quickly create a bed for him, as he could feel his consciousness slipping, and he passed out on top of it.

He expected his mind to go into a world of blackness where it rested and recuperated before he woke up again, but that did not happen.

Once again, he experienced something he'd already forgotten.

Dreams.

He dreamed for the first time since he regained his vision, but those dreams were not anything he could understand.

He saw the scene of a man sitting peacefully in an ornately decorated room draped in red and gold. He sat before a small table and sipped tea while reading the papers in front of him. Atlas was seeing the scene from the man's perspective, so he could also read the words present on that paper.

On the first day, all Atlas saw were the man and his paper. He woke up in confusion, but didn't question it too much. There wasn't enough context for it to believe it to be anything but a dream.

Then, he passed out again. He passed out and he saw the same scene of the man reading the words on the paper, but it had become somewhat clearer.

The words were more legible, and Atlas almost felt like he could sense the man's thoughts.

'This world needs change.'

'I must change it.'

'This nearly impossible thing must be done, or else nothing will ever progress.'

He was a man with deep thoughts and even deeper plans, evidently. Atlas was curious about why he was seeing from this man's perspective, but there was nothing he could do but observe as the man spent hours drinking tea, thinking to himself, and reading through documents.

The third, fourth, and fifth time, he saw the same man. However, the documents he read were always different. Atlas could tell that this dream was progressing through time, but he wasn't being shown anything of note.

He could only infer about the man's identity through the thoughts in his head. He could also only infer about the state of this world that the man loved so much.

He spent his waking hours training, but it felt like these dreams were consuming his thoughts more and more.

Who was that man?

What was he doing?

Why was he appearing in his dreams?

As Atlas pondered over these things, he dreamed again.

He dreamed a dream where the man finally stood up. He walked across the ornate red room without windows and placed his hands on the door.

'The moment I leave this place…'Nôv(el)B\\jnn

His thoughts were complicated, but he mustered his courage and turned the handle.

'...I will overturn the Heavens and return them in their perfect form.'

He made a preposterous claim and put strength into his arm, pulling open the door.

And…

Atlas' eyes shot open.

'What?'

He immediately questioned it. Why was he awake? That was clearly the most crucial moment of the dream that would answer his questions, so why would it end there?

Unable to handle the curiosity, Atlas finally raised a question to the pagoda spirit to see if it could tell him anything.

"I have been having strange dreams recently. They seem to be more like a memory than anything else, so it is confusing. Do you know anything about it?"

The pagoda spirit materialized. For Atlas' convenience, it had taken on a humanoid appearance like an old senior cultivator from the mountains.

It looked at Atlas for a moment with its brow raised before smiling.

"Yes. I believe I am aware of what is causing your dreams."

Atlas was surprised already. He didn't expect such an easy answer, especially when he barely gave context. Nevertheless, his surprise didn't end there.

"There is a very powerful seal on your soul that I detected when you first entered. As you are spending some time within the pagoda, I have allocated some resources to eroding the seal. The visions that you saw are most likely a result of this."

The pagoda spirit spoke these words.

"...!"

A wide-eyed reaction did follow those words. To hear that these sudden dreams were a product of that seal, meaning that they were probably related to him in some way, struck him with a wave of shock that he was forced to quickly overcome.

"I see… A seal, you say…" Find your next adventure on empire

After all, Atlas already knew about it. It was the same darkness that Mireiya told him about. He did have an inkling that the visions would be related to it, but still, to hear it be mentioned again by a different entity…

"The pagoda can remove the entire seal on its own?"

If so, it would make his life more convenient. He wouldn't need to go around searching in the Tower for clues. The seal would be undone on its own, and he would receive the answers he sought.

"Yes."

The first part of the pagoda spirit's answer made Atlas elated.

"At the given pace, it will take one hundred years to completely remove the seal, but it is possible."

However, the second half immediately made him deflate.

"Haa…"

Sighing to himself, Atlas was forced to shrug helplessly.

'Well, it is a good thing that the seal is being passively eliminated, but I cannot stay in the pagoda for one hundred years without leaving. Even in the outside world, that amount of time is closing in on a decade.'

He could only be grateful that anything was being done at all. In the end, though the visions didn't give him any useful information, Atlas could at least be certain that they were the products of his own past.

These memories that he'd never seen before were more than enough for him. The "context" that "defined" them would follow when more of the "seal" had been undone.

"Alright. Sleeping will be added to the routine, then. Other than that…"

Atlas stretched his body.

"Are you aware of the source of the seal?"

He knew he probably wouldn't get an answer, but he asked anyway. The pagoda spirit only smiled and shook its head.

"Who knows? Perhaps I know, and perhaps I do not. Perhaps I know even more about you than you ever could have known about yourself, or perhaps I know nothing at all. If you wish to know these answers, you must properly claim ownership over me."

"That is the only way?"

"That is the only way."

"Then there is nothing left to be said."

It was a piece of good news he'd received, but that was the end of it. Atlas didn't react any more than he had to.

In the end, undoing the seal was also a matter of self-improvement, so it could also be called training.

But, once those first three months had passed, more tasks were added to Atlas' agenda.

It had been two weeks in the outside world.

It was about time for him to start acting again.