Rebirth Online World

Have you ever felt the urge to run away?

To run away from your responsibilities?

To run away from everyone’s expectations?

To run away from a life filled with nothing but boredom and putting up with what you have while dreaming of having what you can’t?

Nevertheless, you know you can’t just run away. You won’t get anything from running away leaving nothing but cold regrets and a wardrobe filled with never achieved dreams.

And do you know why all this?

Because you lack power, the power to change the cards on the table, the power to be the one in charge of your own life, and not merely live up to someone else’s expectations or to pay off debts.

Because, when you have enough power, you are free: free to go wherever you want, free to do whatever you want. With enough power you can turn wrong to right and right to wrong.

However, this is only when you have enough power; when you haughtily believe you have power and are on top when in truth you are neither, there can be only one finale.

Failure, or in my case death.

I believed myself to be superior, to be better than others, to be free and untouchable… man, wasn’t I wrong….

Too bad I understood it only in the end, during the twilight of my life: I had eyes but I did not see, I had a brain but I did not think, I had power… but it wasn’t enough.

And when the last bits of light left my eyes and I couldn’t even feel the pool of blood forming around my frozen body, I finally understood what lack of power meant.

Prologue- End.

 

 

“Today we are going to talk about the principles of thermodynamics, first…”

Man, these lessons are getting more boring everyday. I wish I could just run home and read some dank memes or play pc. Only last month I bought a gaming rig worth a good drooling from every gamer, and where am I? In class listening to an Alzheimer affected prof who was repeating last week’s lesson.

My name is Jorge, 20 years old, single for the moment and in the near future, probably. I’m a physics student, not the best of the bunch but not the worst either. You could call me a slightly above average guy, apart from my laziness and quickly bored attitude, which are (according to me) the reasons why I don’t particularly excel in anything.

You are either like me, uninterested about common life and always living in a separate world of your own, or you just don’t care or think I’m crazy (which according to some of my acquaintances is true.)

Anyway, skipping this sad chapter of my life, the lesson ended eventlessly and I’m finally free to go home. A 20 minute drive and I’m back to my man cave, equipped with all the essentials needed for distracting me from my studies.

Opening my door, one-step later and I was already inside my Livingroom/kitchen/bedroom: because I was too poor to afford anything bigger than a one room apartment with a separated bathroom (thank god for that.)

Nothing much to say about it; it has around 4 pieces of furniture- a sofa-bed, a desk with my beloved pc master, racing console and a tiny circular table equipped with 3 chairs for guests with drawers. My kitchen wasn’t that furnished either, having only the essentials: a stove, an (empty) refrigerator and a cupboard (also empty.)

Approaching the kitchen with big steps I suddenly remembered I had no food or money left for groceries. I cursed lord Gaben and his evil masterplan to kill students through starvation and tried to ignore my stomach’s angry growling by sitting down at my desk.

One push and my gaming rig came to life in 3 seconds and in another 15 seconds I was already on wuxia world main page, scrolling down looking for updates. That yielded no fruits and the hunger made me lose the will to play games.

Tonight I could go to my parent’s house to eat, yeah! Great idea, I could also ask for some pocket money. I am a little ashamed of leeching off my parents, but my pay as a tutor should arrive in around 5 days, and it’s not like I could survive hunger on sheer will for 5 days…

As an attempt to ignore the hunger I tried fantasising about becoming a super cool cultivator, kicking asses right and left, conquering countless hearts while being faithful to my own world-class beauty.

“Man, how cool would it be to be one…”

Then it came to my mind, it was said that by meditating one can ignore any pain and resist hunger. Completely forgetting that  reaching that level will take years of training and boundless amounts of concentration, I decided to try.

One minute later, after looking on the internet for some meditating tips, I was already sitting cross legged on the ground, back facing the wall and eyes closed with my mind focused on a single point of light I could see through my eyelids – probably the lamp on the ceiling.

And so time went by. To pass time, I imagined the point of light being my central core and all the others points appearing were energy that I could absorb to the main core. So imagining the lil points being absorbed and the big one growing, after a while I realized I wasn’t feeling hungry anymore. F*ck yeah cultivation!

After all that cross legged sitting, my legs were missing the sweet taste of blood as I probably blocked the flow by erroneously placing the legs on top of each other’s. My other limbs too were experiencing the same sensation. By keeping the same position and going on to sleep, I could feel a swarm of ants crawling in my skin.

(A: These wounds they will not heal! (Sorry for the bad joke))

Finally, my interest in the big ball of light in my inner mind faded and I opened my eyes back to reality. A sense of peace and serenity assaulted me. I guess meditation really does the trick in relaxing, huh? Suddenly I noticed something that left me dumbfounded, the room was in complete darkness, the sun had already set as I realized I had remained for hours with my eyes closed and the light was off.

If so, what had I seen to be a ball of light?

I was a little scared, but mostly excited. I closed my eyes again and there it was, a giant ball of white light. I could not understand, why was it here? What was it? These thought flooded my mind causing my newfound peace to disappear, replaced by chaos, and in this whirlpool of questions the ball disappeared.

Again, more thoughts joined the fray, kicking and biting until, only after a long period of internal strife, I was calm again. My hypothesis is that I was actually forming a real dantian (for those inexperienced, a dantian is a centre of energy), but because I lost focus, I lost sight of it.

To sense it again, I re-entered the meditative state. After a while a point of light, much smaller than the previous one appeared and again I started enlarging it. Maybe it was because I had accumulated some experience, the point became a ball once again in a third of time it took me to form the first one.

 

I kept accumulating and it kept growing. However, the moment I stopped focusing it would disperse once again, I needed to make it solidify, or at least remain compact. Finally I had an idea – I could create a whirlpool!

By making the energy rotate like a vortex, the nearby energy would be attracted by the suction force while the internal energy would be used to make the vortex grow bigger and faster. This way, not only the energy wouldn’t disperse, it would even accumulate without my help!

I immediately started my experiment, I willed the energy to spin and it started moving in circles. Afterwards, I kept increasing its speed and finally a vortex started forming. I observed as tiny amounts of energy were sucked in by the vortex, slightly enlarging it, then I looked at the bottom of the vortex – right at the end of it – a small point of light started pulsating.

Fascinated by the unexpected event, I kept observing it. It seemed to be a point of extremely compressed energy, and its colour had changed to a rosy shade. Time kept on passing and the pulsation became faster and brighter while the overall colour darker.

Hours passed and the time from a pulse to another was almost zero. I expected something great to happen and it did! Suddenly the red point stopped pulsating, and swallowing the whole vortex it doubled in size. With a final flash it sublimated, becoming a dark red marble.

Like how one could feel the light of the sun lightly kissing your body, I could feel the power radiating from its small marble-sized body.

This was what I wanted, now I needed to find a way to use this energy. The question now, is how?

While I was thinking about it, a loud noise that sounded like a bank alarm broke my concentration and forced my eyes open. I had spent the whole night meditating and the loud noise turned out to be made by my alarm clock waking me up at 6 am.

I cursed loudly and got up to silence the raving party spouting, disturbing speaker of my phone. Then I took a quick shower and went to university, ready for another eventless day. 30 minutes later I was sitting outside of my classroom chatting with my colleagues.

I had pushed aside the thoughts about the marble in my inner mind, for now I couldn’t be 100% sure I wasn’t just going crazy and so I decided to stick to my usual life style… for now at least.

One of the people I was chatting with, Flora, was one of my best friends. One thing I really liked about Flora was her generosity; every time we went out together she would always pay for me whenever I ran out of money. The bitch came from a wealthy family and loved to rub it in my face, not with bad intentions though.

We had known each other’s for years. We first met in middle school and were always at one or the other’s house to study and play. We had grew up together and formed a real bond, not like any of those BFFs for life shit: ours was real, formed through hardships and fights.

Luckily when I had gone to university, I had found Flora taking the same courses in my campus. So every morning we would meet and chat while waiting for lessons.

While chatting I decided to tell her about yesterday night. Flora loved wuxia novels as much as i did, so maybe she could understand, however unfortunately  I thought wrong; Flora just asked me if I had stopped taking my pills or if she should call an ambulance over, my reply was just a wry laugh.

After a few more rounds of bullshit we went our separate ways to our classes. Entering the class, I could see the few free seats remaining, mostly in the first row. After greeting my peers, I sat and waited for the lesson to start.

After 2 hours of waiting for the professor, to finish talking sh*t with the nearby seated students, I got up and went for the bathroom only to find Flora being harassed. She had always been somewhat weak in physical matters, so he always steered out of trouble’s way, but that did not mean that trouble would do the same.

[Writer note: at first the childhood friend was a male, so don’t come spouting bullshits like: why can’t a girl defend herself? i only changed the name from massimo to Flora because you guys wanted.]

After all, she was quite pretty and uninterested in men, so things like guys trying to hit on her were pretty common events.

One of the things I never could digest was someone being a dick to my friends – you  could do what you wanted to me, i would not give a fuck, you touched a friend of mine? Have you already chosen your burying grounds?

In quick strides I arrived near the group of wanna-be bullies. They were pushing Flora around while verbally abusing her, the moment she saw me, her posture changed and tried to push away one of the bullies, if I wasn’t already as enraged as a bull I would have smirked at her attempt to act tough in front of me.

Like a spectre I arrived behind one of them, too distracted by Flora fighting back they din’t notice me until it was too late . With one quick kick from behind to the knees and a pull on his shoulders, one was already on the ground. Before the others could react, I propelled my elbow into another’s jaw and his eyes went white from the pain. However it wasn’t time to yell victory as someone grabbed me from behind.

“Amateurs.”

I head butted the idiot behind and escaped his grab while elbowing his stomach and finishing him off with a knee to the face. A line of red came out from his nose the moment it met Mr. Knee.

Now, don’t get me wrong, usually i’m a peacefull guy, i solve my problems with diplomacy and i love to help people, but god be my witness if i let a few idiots hurt my cute little childhood friend.

I turned around, the last guy a brown haired one was trembling in fright and tried to walk backwards. I slowly approached him while singing “Mr. Knee has come to town, he has come to meet the Brown”

When the word Brown came out from my mouth, he understood what it meant and his body immediately turned to run but Flora was already beside him and tripped him.

His sorry face fell to the ground and I leisurely placed Mr. Knee on his back, after all Mr. Knee wanted to know him, who am I to disagree?

Employing a little force on his spine, his mouth went full “O” and his words were like “AH” while I was like “Touch Flora again and I’ll present you Mr Choke and Miss Mary. Who is Mary you ask? Mary is my dentist, and you will need her to make yourself a new set of teeth. Do you understand?”

“AAAAAHH!”

“Do I take that as a yes?”

“AAAAAHHH!”

“Oh my, what a problem. How can I understand you if you keep saying ‘ahhh?'”

“YESYESYESIMSORRYSTOP!”

Getting bored of this crybaby, I decided to end this little game.

“Good boy.”

I walked away with Flora. She thanked me a few times, saying that I today it was on her. F*ck yeah! A free meal!

 

Part 2 Awake

One month went by and many things changed.

First, I don’t sleep or eat anymore. Every time I start cultivating, the need for food and sleep disappears. I think I’m unconsciously converting part of the gathered energy into the biomolecules I need to live on while sleep was just the mind needing to rest and cultivation is way more effective than sleeping for that purpose.

Second, the marble, I noticed a few changes after a week. After feeding it incredible amounts of energy it started growing something akin to roots, or so I guessed. They expanded my reach. Before I could only absorb the energy in my immediate surroundings, about a centimetre, but now I can sense and gather energy within a one meter radius. No need to guess; I’m getting many times the energy compared to before.

I’m now starting to think of the marble as a seed and instead of water it needed energy. What was going to bloom from something like that I can only imagine. Anyway, I decided to call the marble “spirit seed” and the roots “spiritual roots.”

Third, I think I understand why I can’t see the marble/seed when I open my eyes. The seed and the energy exist on a different plane to our reality; they occupy a different space, but can interfere with ours just like I can interfere with theirs. However, I’m still not sure why…

The rest had been going as always – going out with Flora, university and work (I finally have some money on my person!)

I was sitting cross legged on the floor of my room. With my eyes open I can see the horrible apartment I’ve been living in these past 2 years but when I close my eyes, I can see much more – dozens of small vortexes, gathering and sending energy to my spiritual roots.

The energy was transported to the spirit seed and then transformed into more spiritual roots or stored inside the seed.

I have been observing this process for the past 3 weeks and I think the seed is approaching it’s critical point. These past two days it started pulsating; the last time I saw this phenomenon was when the spirit seed appeared.

I kept on pouring energy in and the pulsation frequency sped up. Even the roots were now glowing in a pinkish light, the excitement almost made me lose concentration!

Then it happened. Everything froze for a second and I could feel everything around me, as if my normal world and what I saw when closing my eyes had fused for a second, and not only in my room, everything in a large area I can see.

Some kids kissing in the room beside mine, flocks of birds flying over my campus, an old man breathing for the last time while a new born child breathed for the first time – but it didn’t stop at living beings. I could also feel the vibration of particles, the exchange of energy between bodies.

I also saw a man beating his wife and children, a starving kid tied in a basement, a man being harassed while sitting in his office, a teenager taking a oath to love his girlfriend forever, a dog jumping in joy the moment his master came home and a homeless receiving a meal instead of a dirty look.

A small tear descended from my left cheek. Not only had I been able to see them, I also felt what they felt, happiness, anger, love, hate, sadness, joy, an overflowing river of emotions that even I wasn’t able to contain.

When my brief  period of omnipresence ended, I returned to my room. I had lost concentration, however, something felt different, I couldn’t really put my finger on it but… the air, it felt strange, and not only the air, the walls… the ceiling, it all felt… different.

“I see…”

Closing my eyes I understood what had happened, the seed had bloomed and had become an eye, and through it I could see, the place where I had cultivated in darkness, gathering and concentrating energy had finally took shape and revealed itself to me.

My theories were finally confirmed, my spirit world and my normal one coexisted in the same space, I could see my room in a 360° angle view. Even objects not in my line of sight. It could be compared to watching a 3d model of my room from a third person point of view, probably my new eye was able to see behind material bodies.

Another interesting thing I had developed was something like a sixth sense. By watching the surroundings I could understand how much energy they contained. I only had to observe their vibration and the information kinda comes to my mind.

Now, I wanted to try. I controlled the energy like the time I created my spiritual seed, focused on controlling the vibration of particles around. By making an area vibrate slower the surrounding particles would vibrate faster… Of course! Energy can’t disappear, it gets transferred or transformed.

In this case when I stopped the vibration of a group the surroundings received the extra energy, let’s experiment a bit…

15 minutes later-

Just a little bit and…. BOOM!

Sheisse!

In the centre of the room a tiny ball of plasma formed. However in the next few moments, it started to vibrate and exploded, charring the floor and burning my GTA V poster hung on the wall.

My experiment could be counted as successful. By concentrating most of the room’s energy to a point I wanted to form plasma, which is the fourth state of matter reachable when air reaches a high enough temperature to self-ignite.

At first, even after concentrating all the room energy nothing happened, so I tried using a tiny amount of the spirit energy contained by the spirt seed (I guess I should call it a spirit eye now…) The result was that spirit energy had been way too powerful; that tiny amount ignited the air by itself and created a ball of plasma.

Understanding the danger of free floating plasma, I reabsorbed most of the energy, but by doing so it became unstable and a fraction of its original power exploded, luckily it was only a very tiny amount of it.

Had it exploded right in front of me…

I didn’t even want to think about it.

Anyway, for now, I need to find a new place to test my powers; I don’t think my small room will be able to withstand any more explosions.

Standing up and straightening my back, I went to take a shower. While the hot water poured over me, I felt ecstatic. I had earned the first fruit of my hard work, the control of the energy I could perceive around me.

the first thing that came to my mind was to call Flora, i could finally prove that i wasn’t crazy! In the last few days she was getting apphrensive.

“nah, i want to surprise her”

Suddenly I remembered something that cooled off my ecstasy; today was my father birthday and I had to attend together with my family – all of them: aunts, uncles, cousins and probably my brother.

Donning a casual attire, I went to my car and unwillingly drove to my father’s house. Within almost an hour I arrived, a small villa, around 11 rooms distributed between 2 floors plus an ample garden on the front and back.

My parents had always lived here and for a most of my life I did too. With quick steps I reached the front door and knocked on the massive door. After a minute, a man in his fifties opened the door. It was my father.

My father was a self-made man. At 21 years he inherited grandma’s mattress shop and turned it into the first computer centre of our city. With the passing of the years, his sense for business earned him great reputation and large amounts of money.

In our family, he was surely the most respected member. Whenever someone had problems he would always find a way to help. He was that kind of man.

If I had to be honest, when I was a kid he was the kind of man I wanted to become, and he too wanted me to succeed him and take over family business. But as I grew up, the idea of becoming the copy of someone else started to become repugnant.

I wanted to live MY life, choose MY job, take MY decisions, MY path made by ME. If you live your life following the steps of someone’s else, you are not living your life. You are living his.

Took me 16 years too long to understand. At the time I had almost lost my will to study electronics, but decided that I would end high school and then follow my own road. Naturally my father was against it and when I choose physics instead of pursuing economics or engineering, he threw me out.

A few days after he changed his mind, but I wasn’t going back home. He threw me out, I would live outside. Luckily I had a few savings then so I rented a house, bought a computer (my beloved) and lived alone till now: only visiting my pop once or twice a month when I was lacking food or money.

I could see him pretending to be happy with my life, but I could see behind his mask. It was obvious he was disappointed in my life choices. That’s one of the reasons I barely made any contact with him.

“Happy birthday old man.”

“It’s nice to see you kid.”

We hugged each other, no matter what, he was my father and I loved him. I knew everything he did, he did it because he wanted me to live a happy life and I respected him for this, even if it meant that he constantly tried to manipulate me.

We went inside at once, he kept me asking about my university life and related matters, but mostly asked me about girls. About whether I had a girlfriend yet. Then he started to tell me about how many women had fallen for him and how he pleasured them. Truly an old perv if you ask me.

After a few minutes my mood made a complete U-turn. My cousins had arrived. This was the part of my family I hated the most, every one of them adored my father like a god while hating me to the bone. The first to enter was the oldest, Robert, 4 years older than me and national Muay Thai champion.

Behind him, his brother Paul. 2 years older than me and the old regional Muay Thai champion and last was Marcus. He was 1 year older than me and the new regional champion. The three of them had always loved to bully me when I was younger and when they weren’t bullying me, they fought against each other, usually ending with Robert kicking some asses.

To defend from them was my reason for learning MMA, but even so they were far better than me, I could hold myself against Marcus, but the other 2 were way too strong.

If i had to tell the truth, the moment they greeted me with smiles and cheers i felt the urge to blast them away with my newfound ability, so what if you are stronger, let’s see what can you do against a plasma bomb to yo face.

After them came their parents. My father’s brother Vincent and his slave/wife Rita, like father like sons. Whenever the poor Rita tried to speak up for herself, her husband would usually beat her and no one dared to say anything. He was a chief in the police force and loved to hunt. You can’t just go to someone like him and tell him what to do. I am pretty sure my 3 cousins had inherited their violent personalities from him.

Then came my cousin Luke, a huge nerd, even more so than myself. 22 and jobless, living off the money he earned playing World of Warcraft. I always liked Luke, he was one of the cousins I could still speak and play with.

People kept coming, in the end the crowd reached around 30 people. The one I tried to avoid the most was my aunt Rose; she was bat-shit crazy and the reason I was afraid of the dark. When I was around 4 years old, she barged into my room while wearing a giant tribal mask and wielding a machete while screaming.

My family was really an odd one, violent and compassionate people all eating beside each other, all thanks to my father’s influence.

The party lasted for a few hours and somewhere around halfway Robert bitch-slapped his mom for something she told him. I muttered a “disgusting bastard” and I guess he heard it, because he threw me a gaze like “imma fucking kill you.” However, since he couldn’t make a scene in front of my father and bit his tongue.

as little payback, i kept cooling down his plate and heating up his water and when icecream came, i melted his by locally increasing temperature in his bowl; i just realized my first time using my powers was to make a prank….

Apart from that, between my aunt Rose pretending to die as a joke, my lil 6 year old cousin playing the xylophone on the bones of a fish and Luke leaving early because he was going to miss a raid; it was a relatively nice and calm party.

After the party I went to the back yard and walked to the forest behind, following a path. After a few minutes I reached a small pond, and beside the pond… a grave.

Tears accumulated in the corner of my eyes as I approached the tombstone, a fresh bouquet of flowers laid elegantly on the white marble pavement of the grave – an intermingling between roses, lily and chrysanthemums emanating a strong and sweet scent.

Encased in it, the photo of a blond woman in her thirties and a short epitaph. I had read those words hundreds of times, but they had the same effect as always.

Big beads of tears fell on the flowers covering them like how dew covers grass stalks moments after sunrise. My knees felt weak and I was forced to kneel down on the marble, I tried containing my tears but the memories of that event were still burning with pain in my heart.

Two pairs of slender arms hugged me from behind, the tears stopped flowing for a second, giving me the chance to see Flora’s face wearing a concerned expression.

“How?”

My trembling lips managed to blurt out a word. Clearly I was confused on how she had managed to find me.

“You always come here when you visit your father, and since today was his birthday I was pretty sure you would have come. This time I wanted to offer you a shoulder to rely on.”

The tears were about to come out again, having been extremely moved by Flora’s friendship, however, I managed to hold them back. I couldn’t cry in front of her, showing others my weaknesses was something I didn’t like.

“Thanks Flora, but I’m okay now…”

She let out a sigh.

“You know, even if you cry in front of me, it’s not like it would change anything. Besides, you are always there for me, so just for once, let me be there for you.”

My body turned and my arms coiled around her slim body like snakes, and placing my head against hers, a few strands of hair brushed on my face and their fragrance of honey penetrated deep in my nose.

——-

For every comment you leave I will write a new page and 2 fans of JB die, so if you enjoyed it and/or you hate jus, leave a comment. (Mori: Gio, honestly, capital the start of your sentences. Are you that lazy??? I had to edit your posts as well!)

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