The return trip was quick and extremely peaceful. I wondered if it was Nei Lo’s doing, but the Tome refuted it. It was just good luck and quick timing apparently.

  The void was sparse of life and outside of certain areas, it was just empty.

  Ah-Marin was located outside of the central realms and finding my way back was a bit of a tough task. Retreading my old path would have forced me to go back near Aftol and nearly double the length of the trip, so I decided to chart a new way from where I originally was.

  Charting the path from the Heavens also came with a bit more peace of mind. It was sort of like walking near a police station or jogging through a very well-off neighborhood. It wasn’t completely insulated from violence but there were more deterrences here than anywhere else.

  Outside of the central realms were a few other clusters of realms with their own names and lore, but I kept away from those, avoiding all celestial realms and their groupings.

  Eventually, after hopping from one near-abandoned world to another, I made it back home.

  It had been only an hour in Ah-Marin. In my mind, it had been days of travel and navigation. I hadn’t stayed long within the Cosmic Forest or near the low Heavens, but the travel itself was time-consuming.

  Not that time existed within the void.

  There was the general sense of time kept by the Second Keepers. They were responsible for inter-realm consistency. They were the reason why you could leave a realm in its entirety, yet still remain within its timeline when you return.

  If they didn’t do their jobs, reentering a realm might mean entering at any point on the realm’s timeline. There were questions as to how they did what they did, but most believed that the law of time itself was interconnected. The Keepers of Time served the God of Time and he worked with them to keep the causal chain of existence together.

  Lynoria was at the center of existence, so most beings referred to Lynorian years to measure time. Everyone knew how many Lynorian years passed relative to their own realm.

  Which reminded me of something else I had to do.

  I sighed and stepped foot back into my home. No one had known I had left, except for the maidens and Gauntlet.

  I took a moment and breathed in the existence of space again. This was home. I was different, very different, that hunt and healing of my soul had changed me but in some important ways, I was very much the same.

  I went out to a hilltop and sat. It was one of the furthest hills from the village and from here, I could see just about the entire village. People were walking, celebrating, talking, plotting.

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  I could sense numerous fifth ranks hiding among the caravan. I saw Nai parading around with a large amount of animals. Chin was by the silos and food sheds, checking if they had enough to feed the cultivators.

  Off in the distance was construction Bri Lou and a few rogue cultivators had gathered and started expanding the area near the camping cultivators. Temporary structures were set up and beyond those were permanent ones, made for Madam Rose’s people and any other cultivators that might want to settle down. It was currently being called, Cultivator Town, and many trading sects and other groups were already asking Chin leasing to housing and shops. A few of them had even threatened him.

  Rin Wi then proceeded to nearly kill them and shatter their cultivation, which sent out a clear message to any others who tried to negotiate with Chin.

  The village was growing. Already I saw new hands working the fields and new crops being grown among them. These were quick-growing crops straight from the Hidden Viper sect. They had been augmented to grow faster and they were certainly living up to their status.

  But there were problems here too. Too many people were coming in to fast and the village just didn’t have the infrastructure for them. Chin was trying his best to take care of everyone here, but he couldn’t be everywhere at once.

  I headed over to where Rin Wi was working.

  “Rin Wi.”

  She quickly turned on me with her knife held out.

  “Mister Bill, y- you’re back,” she said, quickly putting away the knife and replacing it with a bow.

  “Sorry about that,” I chuckled. “But here.”

  I held out a bag of holding filling with about ten thousand fourth-rank spirit stones, all charged and full.

  “What for?” She asked me.

  “The village needs to develop faster. Hire more merchants and builders and gather more field workers if possible.”

  “Chin won’t like this,” she said taking the money from my hands.

  “Tell him it’s my part of the work. Since I’m not out there tilling the fields, I can pay someone else to do it.”

  She weighed the gold in her hands for a moment.

  “I’ll give it to Medin and Renk first.”

  “That’ll work too,” I replied.

  Chin wasn’t one to take handouts. He would take labor, favors, and even equipment, but never money. Unfortunately, money was what the village needed now more than ever. And if Renk was involved half of it would already be spent before Chin ever heard a word about it.

  It was why he didn’t ask me to do many things. He knew I could and if it came to a matter of life and death, I certainly would help them without any hesitations, but at the end of the day, I was a friend.

  I was the old hermit atop a hill in the forest, not a fellow villager.

  But maybe that was about to change.

  I was teaching Chin how to cultivate and Medin was learning from Rin Wi. Nai was here and the girls really cared about this place. And the more I changed and grew, the more my dao developed, the harder it was to just let things go.

  I had power after all. I could end this whole realm in a single instant. I could dominate it.

  But that would be wrong. I didn’t want to rule this realm, no I didn’t want to rule anything. I didn’t want to grow in power or force people to bow down to my desires.

  I just wanted to have peace.

  My dao broke into the seventh rank. I felt it churn change and settle. I knew myself now better than I ever had.

  Dane was apathetic, content to let the world go by and rot while he protected himself. And I was still the same. I would protect myself, but that wasn’t enough anymore.

  The itch came back.

  I had to be better. I had to help them. It was the same feeling I had when I picked up that realm and brought it to the low Heavens. It was the same reason I gave Forn that speech about her dao. Why I had quenched that thirst underneath the desert. Why I had saved the girls instead of tossing them out, even back then. Why I couldn’t cut down Nai’s unhatched egg.

  To achieve peace.

  END OF VOLUME ONE.

  Well, its been a journey but we have hit a road stop. And with this, I would like to apologize to you guys for the various breaks I've taken over all these years, and to the patron who are now only twenty two chapters ahead. It has been great writing this but now it seems like the prologue to the whole story has finished.

  I will not stop writting but I will take a small break, about five days so that the patrons can have their extra eight chapters next week.

  I hope this ending is a satisfying one and that you stick around for the rest of the journey we have planned out.

  Thank you for reading.

  Oh... And also check out my other story. Its really good, I promise.