Yin & Yang Pleasures of Cultivation

"Uuugh….shit. That at-argh! My head…." Groans of agony and anguish uttered out from Darcel as his consciousness came back to him. 

But he wished he was still knocked out now.

The pain he was going through wasn't anything like he experienced before. An equal agonizing soreness spread in his body and soul, making it difficult to just stay up.

It felt like his head was split open, and someone had violently shifted all of his organs. 

In a vain attempt to counteract the pain, Darcel tried to muster up any semblance of Spirit Qi.

However, more dread filled his mind as he barely had any Spirit Qi running inside him now. The only thing Darcel could do was wait and hope for the agonizing pain to clear up a bit.

Lying still on some hard cold surface, Darcel's mind began to drift. 

As his senses slowly came back to him, he quickly realized the lack of two distinct scents that was always by his side.

'Aniela….Masami!' The thought of the girls somehow filled Darcel with a bit of life. 

Burning pain ablaze his body, but Darcel still struggled to move. His eyes began to squirm, and after minutes of struggling, he could just barely open them.

"Tsk….tsk….tsk…."

"Hey….hey…." 

It was very faint whispers that slinked into Darcel's ears. While he was slowly opening his eyes, these soft whispers abruptly began to slither into Darcel's ears.

Darcel couldn't identify the gender of the voice nor even tell where it was coming from. But he pushed those whispers down in his mind temporarily as his eyes cracked open.

'Wh-what the?' 

Darcel already felt a small panic in his mind at the first image he saw when coming to. As his eyes open wider and wider, Darcel fully identifies what he saw as that same damn gray energy!

The gray energy that destroyed him and forcefully transported him to wherever this place was. Just seeing that gray energy-filled Darcel with a sense of failure and anger.

Failure for getting caught in the energy and anger at the Scientist for causing this whole mess, but muddling over these thoughts won't get him anywhere. 

So Darcel attempted to move his body only to feel acute pain assault his senses. Just trying to move a little bit, felt like he was moving the fractured bones in his body. 

'Not even when I got chased by that red creature did I feel so much like total crap.' Darcel wearily thought, but he still pushed on. 

After a couple of minutes of groggily moving his body, Darcel had managed to sit up. 

Sitting upright, now even more confusion swirled in Darcel's mind.

His eyes gazed up at the ceiling, and it was a gray rocky cave roof. Numerous gray stalactites dangled from the roof. Some form of a liquidity gray substance dripped from the stalactites' tips. 

"Where the hell….wait. Aniela! Masami!" Darcel forced himself to shout. 

But he received zero response. 

The lack of response forced Darcel to quickly sober back up. 

His vision became more transparent, and Darcel's eyes searched around the cave-like place he was in.

From in front of him, there was that eerie gray energy. And all around him was the structure of some ordinary cave. Although everything here was in the same gray color.

But, barring the samey design here, Darcel's eyes got more desperate while searching around. 

Aniela and Masami were nowhere to be seen! 

Immediately, Darcel tried to spread out his Spirit Sense. 

"Ah!" 

But he instantly stopped when his migraine only worsened when using his Spirit Sense. 

A severe sense of depression and loss rocked Darcel like a mountain.

Not having either girl at his side was something that hurt Darcel the most more than any physical pain. Always, no matter what situation they encounter, Darcel always expects Aniela to be right by his side.

And with his new relationship with Masami, he had always expected the same would go for her. 

But now, all alone, in some dank gray cave, Darcel was feeling an emotion he rarely felt ever in his life.

The gripping emotion of fear. 

Because of their last battle, Darcel could only rely on his Darkness Soul link to try and vaguely tell if the girls were alive. But in his state, everything was too muddle and confusing to rely on his Darkness Soul link.

What stung the worst was the fact that if they would've handled that fight differently, then this unknown situation wouldn't have happened. 

With the abundance of talisman and the Elusive Feather Spirit Artifact's broken abilities, they could've efficiently won that battle without getting blindsided.

The shame of failure didn't sit well at all with Darcel. 

So to distract himself, he slowly turned his head backward as he did feel one other familiar presence with him in here.

A familiar presence that he didn't want to see at all. Just mere feet away from Darcel, slouched against a large gray boulder, was the bloody and battered Scientist. 

When he had turned around, Darcel's hatred filled eyes met with indifferent ones of the Scientist.

"Come….Come….Come now!" 

The whisperings Darcel had heard before was coming back at a greater volume suddenly. A magnetic pull almost made Darcel turn around his attention to the gray energy.

But Darcel couldn't just let this rat scientist go. Another emotion he barely felt surged up inside him. A genuine hatred crossed his eyes, staring into the hazy, unfocused eyes of the Scientist.

"You….argh!" Darcel coughed up a batch of blood while groggily standing to his feet. His legs felt like it was shattered all over while standing on them. 

And at this point, Darcel was seriously wondering how he could even stand at all.

And for that matter, looking at the dried up blood on his clothes, Darcel wondered how he even managed to wake back up.

The only way to ease the pain was already shattered before Darcel's eyes. Darcel had trailed his eyes over to his spatial ring and saw it was utterly cracked and broken! 

To completely crack a spatial ring actually requires far more power than one would even expect.

All spatial rings that are worn have unique soul defenses properties that get empowered by wearer souls. And unless one is proficient enough in soul attacks, it's exceedingly difficult to crack a spatial ring.

But, that damn gray energy somehow did. With a crack spatial ring, the measly bit of Qi left in Darcel is now utterly useless. 

It didn't matter how much energy he poured in now; the spatial ring won't open up now.

Everything, down to his talisman, weapons, resources, and healing items, was all rendered entirely useless to the current Darcel. 

Even more rage to the rat scientist filled Darcel's bones.

His fierce gaze snapped back to the Scientist, and Darcel began to hobble over to him. "You….just what the fuck did you do?! And….and where are the girls?"

As Darcel slowly approached the broken Scientist, he finally showed a different expression on his face. Through the blood, the Scientist's lips curled up into a terrifying smirk.

He didn't care in the slightest about Darcel's hatred. In fact, he was almost revealing in everything that just transpired. 

"Who knows where the girls are? Maybe the-"

The Scientist went dead silent. As he talked, Darcel's expression contorted into something that even he didn't know what to call it. 

It was a frightening look, something that looked like it was born from the depths of hell.

During his time at the Parasol Organization, the Scientist for sure encountered many horrendously chilling experiments. There was horrifying human turned monsters there that would give any average cultivators nightmares for years.

And yet…..the Scientist felt none of that could match up with Darcel's expression. If he were to even finish implying those girls are dead, the Scientist could tell then he'll experience a real hell.

Losing his wit, the Scientist didn't bother with his original statement. 

He quickly said then, "You should know that you're actually truly special for me to end up with you. Don't know about your girls, but you're the prime reason why we're here."

Now that got Darcel to pause for a moment. If there's one thing he recalls from that cruel Parasol Organization was that all of the Doctors and Scientist there regularly go against the common grain.

Anything they research isn't normal, and rarely would they call an experiment special, no matter how out of this world it was. 

With a rising curiosity, Darcel couldn't squash; he simply said, "Continue to explain."

"Heh….continue to explain what? In just a short amount of time, I will die. I severely underestimated everything, which led to my untimely downfall. I'll leave you with this though, you have no other options but to go through the gray energy. I mean….you hear whispers, right?"

Darcel froze entirely then. 

For every slow step he took up to the Scientist, those low whispers indeed haven't stopped at all. In fact, the longer he stays conscious, the stronger the pull he feels to go towards the gray energy.

Darcel tried to calm his mind and run through the possibility of why any of this is happening. But, no matter the train of thought, nothing about this situation just made any lick of sense.

With one last thought, Darcel asked the Scientist, "You…, you sure did throw away everything for this. A crafty rat like you would never take such unnecessary risks like this because of this kind of situation. This….is this a treasure from the Realm of The Gods?"

The Realm of The Gods.

Even just hearing the name would cause a visceral reaction in any Mortal realm cultivators. 

But for the Scientist, his smirk didn't change. It even grew a bit disdaining at Darcel's bold claim.

"Re-realm of The Gods? Heh….don't think so narrow-minded. This….this right here….is something beyond. But….no matter how special….you are….you will die without my help…."

The Scientist managed to squeeze out of his final breath. And then, utter silence. The Scientist went utterly limp, becoming a bloody corpse right before Darcel's eyes.

Darcel seriously thought about what the Scientist said.

He barely has any knowledge about the Realm of The Gods and only heard it in passing from the special Scientist and Doctors at the Parasol Organization.

But what he had heard, he came to the conclusion that whatever that place was, it's something far beyond the understanding of Mortal Realm cultivators. 

Not even for all the high and mighty arrogance those Scientists and Doctors had would they look down on the Realm of The Gods.

Yet….he was just told he was thinking too small about whatever this gray energy was. 

And he was also told he would die if he went through it, but simultaneously the Scientist contradicted himself, saying he has to go through it. 

However, as Darcel glanced his eyes around the gray cave, he noticed he was literally trapped here. The cave wasn't large at all, and there wasn't any exit in sight unless Darcel made one.

The problem with that being, Darcel couldn't gather Qi strong enough for that, his body was broken, and his spatial ring was cracked. 

Plus, he had no way to regenerate from his injury or regenerate his Qi in a timely manner.

If he does nothing, Darcel knows he will just die a slow and painful death. So had finally turned his full attention to the gray energy. 

The whispering got louder, and the magnetic pull was intense.

'Haaah….I have no other options.' Darcel resigned himself and gathered his courage. Slowly, Darcel weary hobbled over to the gray, with the intent of making it out alive.