Cultivating Chai

66:

Xiao Feng felt his gaze tighten as he stood before the familiar door. Admittedly, he hadn’t been sure what he was supposed to expect from his soul, so it was a bit unfair of him to be unnerved by what he had found.

He grit his teeth and gently twisted a metal knob whose original metallic silver hue had been corroded into a faded, bronzed patina, hoping the door was unlocked.

It was his own soul, after all.

Xiao Feng felt no resistance as the door swung inwards. At this point, any trepidation he felt had been won over by his curiosity, so he stepped into the haze of milky white light that was obfuscating his gaze from penetrating any deeper within.

A few moments ticked by Xiao Feng as he repeatedly blinked in an effort to clear his vision. The first thing that came into focus was an ordinary dining table, translucent black glass on a bed of wood. The recognition came almost as soon as he’d spotted it. His gaze turned, from the dining table to the wall behind it.

As expected, he found a wall-mounted cabinet with glass casing. It was not the cabinet itself that stood out to him, but rather, the framed photos within. Photos of his mother in her younger years, of him as a child, of him in a stroller while his mother smiled for the camera.

A melancholic smile played upon his lips as his gaze refocused upon the dining table, now noticing an open laptop that was placed next to a humble breakfast, a sunny side up egg placed upon a hurriedly toasted piece of bread and a glass of orange juice next to it.

Had the breakfast always been there, or had it appeared after he’d thought about his mother?

He couldn’t recall. Would his mother appear too, if he thought about her hard enough?

He wryly shook his head, though his clenched fists showed that he was far from amused. Of course that wouldn’t work.

His mother was the most hardworking person he knew. After the divorce, she hadn’t tried to find another partner. No, instead she had thrown herself in the deep end of work, taking up two jobs that had her working late nights and the occasional weekends. Even while having breakfast, she made sure to make the best of her time by catching up on her mails.

She had made sure that he would not want for anything. Perhaps that was why he had become increasingly divorced from materialism in his high school years. After seeing how hard she worked to put food on the table, he just didn’t have it in his heart to ask for more.

It was only in his college years that he realised that his mother didn’t actually need to work as hard as she did to pay for his tuition. As much as he resented his father for remarrying, mostly unfairly, he wasn’t a bad man by any means of the definition.

He had been paying for half of everything when it came to his expenses and was always kind to him on their bi-weekly sojourns, even when he didn’t necessarily repay the favour.

He sighed, as he took in more of the familiar furniture within his mother’s dining room.

He wished he had been kinder to his father. He wished he had looked deeper into his mother’s motivations and realised sooner why she had thrown herself into the deep-end of work. Maybe trying to change the motivation of adults was an unfair ask and more than likely, he would’ve failed.

Maybe being kinder to his father wouldn’t have made their family any more communicative. Perhaps, neither would his attempts to convince his mother to start reconnecting with her old hobbies and maybe consider dating again down the line have accomplished anything of note.

Now though? He was forever denied the opportunity to try, separated by a gulf of space and time that he suspected not even a Nascent Soul Cultivator could bridge.

He stepped away from the dining table and turned towards the seating area.

“What in…,” Xiao Feng trailed off, blinking. The well-worn cabriole sofa that was placed facing a thick LCD television was as he remembered it, but the view peeking out from behind the curtains was definitely not right.

His mother’s apartment definitely did not overlook his college campus, yet that was exactly what he was seeing.

Gingerly moving forward, Xiao Feng peeled away the curtains and took a step onto lush grass.

The main campus buildings were an artful blend of modern architecture with historical accents, a red brick exterior balanced by timeless navy-blue tiling. His gaze swept across the campus as he continued walking, noticing the gymnasium to the north-east, an open pitch for football, the cafeteria with it’s all-glass facade, the multi-storey student housing and a few smaller administrative buildings.

At first, he was taken aback by the countless students he could see milling about campus, but as he walked closer and focused, he only found a splash of colours on a two dimensional canvas. It should’ve been disturbing, but it wasn’t. His mind was only recreating a scene from his memories and the individual features of hundreds of students had been lost to his long-term memory.

He continued walking forward, his gaze captivated by the one exception to what he thought a rule.

A man dressed in white robes that were fluttering even when Xiao Feng could not detect the slightest hint of a breeze sat cross legged on the grass, facing the direction of the main campus and well-positioned to take in its view. Curious grass it was, a dark-green in contrast to the otherwise bright, light-green grass that seemed almost artificial in comparison.

The white-robed man angled his gaze in his direction.

Their gazes met.

“You are not dead,” Xiao Feng said, his words not a question but a statement instead.