Volume 10 Bugs Chapter 69: The Surface World and the Source World
"The key is concentration..." Old Carlson's low and hoarse voice echoed in my ears. He stretched out his hand and pointed forward with his dry index finger following my gaze, "...not just your gaze, but also your spirit, your will, your thinking. Focus all your senses on one point - any point, it can be a brick, a weed, a piece of blue sky, a white cloud, a living person, or even nothingness - then penetrate it, tear it apart, and expose it, and you will succeed..."
Listening to his instructions, I cast my eyes towards the moss-covered wall in front of me. Through the cold and damp wall, I could see a tiny crack on the rock wall, which extended from the upper right corner of the wall to the lower left corner. When the crack passed the surface of one of the rocks, it seemed to expand a little, and a dark line that could not be seen extended into the interior of the rock. I stared at this crack intently, imagining that all my spirit could be transformed into two strong arms, deeply reaching into the crack, and then tearing it outward with force, trying to tear the darkness apart, tearing it bigger and bigger, until all the appearances of this world were torn into two pieces, exposing all the most fundamental things in this world hidden deep inside.
I never knew that it would be so hard to maintain an imagination with full concentration. I stared at the crack for an unknown amount of time, and then I felt as if all my brain matter began to churn violently, rushing to my forehead impatiently. My consciousness began to expand, like a tide, repeatedly hitting my forehead, as if it would not stop unless it was stretched to burst. I felt a splitting headache, which was not an ordinary physical pain, but a radiating pain from the inside out - even when I was hit by a warlock or a priest's mental spell, it was not so painful.
Even so, I did not stop imagining. I pressed my forehead tightly with both hands, and squeezed it in the middle with all my strength, trying to use this method to temporarily suppress the consciousness gushing out of my mind. At the same time, I tried to imagine how sharp my eyes were, so sharp that they could cut through the darkness in the crack and let me see what was hidden behind it. I tried my best to immerse my consciousness deeply in that line of bottomless darkness, to explore and search, trying to find some truth hidden by the appearance of this world.
Suddenly, a sharp pain came from the area between my eyes. I felt my consciousness suddenly become violent and sharp, like a chisel, fiercely chiseling a hole in my forehead. In an instant, all consciousness, all thoughts, all consciousness and even all the strength in my body rushed out from here, as if there was a vacuum of consciousness there, trying to drain my soul to the last drop. At first, I only felt the muscles in my forehead begin to twitch slightly, but soon, this twitching spread to my whole body, as if even my bones were spasming uncontrollably. A feeling of numbness and itchiness desperately stimulated all the nerves on the top of my head, making it impossible for me to concentrate my will to fight against this pain.
"Ah..." In a trance, I seemed to hear a shrill cry echoing in the depths of my soul. But soon I found that the sound should come from a place closer to my ears - my mouth.
I don't know how long this pain tortured me - maybe a long time, maybe just a short moment - when I regained consciousness, I found myself back in old Carlson's mysterious stone house. I collapsed to the ground, my clothes soaked with sweat. A feeling of suffocation still choked my chest, making me feel nauseous, but I didn't want to vomit.
"Are you okay?" Old Carlson sat in front of me, looking worried and concerned.
"Old man, can't you see yourself?" I lay weakly on the ground, gasping for breath, hoping that frequent breathing would dilute the congested feeling in my chest.
"Since you still have the mind to argue, it seems that you are fine now..." After hearing my answer, the old troll smiled.
"Just now...what happened to me?" I turned my head and asked Carlson.
Old Carlson smiled bitterly. “I’m just as curious about this question as you are. I only know that you sat there quietly for more than an hour, and then suddenly collapsed to the ground. I’ve never seen anyone in this condition before—anyone. To be honest, if you don’t regain consciousness, I’ll be scared to death.”
"That's such a pity. If I had known you would be scared to death, I should have recovered later." After a short rest, I felt much better.
"Go to hell, you uneducated warrior!" Old Carlson stretched out his cane and hit my butt hard. I don't know what weird method he used, but although it hurts a lot, it won't bleed. "This is to teach you how to talk to someone older and wiser than you."
"Oh!" I immediately jumped up, holding my butt, grinning, and then replied with resentment, "If you didn't know these strange spells that made it impossible for me to hit you, I really should teach you how to show your respect to a hero who saved the world."
Old Carlson swung his cane again threateningly, and I quickly jumped back further, glaring defiantly out of his range.
Then, as if we were suddenly infected by something, we burst into laughter at the same time.
"...I really didn't feel the 'energy of consciousness' you mentioned at all. At that time, I had already concentrated all my strength to imagine it. I imagined it as a sharp blade, trying to cut through the false appearance of the world; or imagined it as a hand, trying to tear it apart; or a sharp arrow, trying to penetrate it... I tried everything I could imagine, but the result was just as you can see, nothing changed, this world in my eyes is still the real and irrefutable world, I can't see anything else..." After a moment, I told old Carlson how I felt at the time. I told him truthfully.
After listening to my story, old Carlson fell into a brief contemplation, and then said to me: "You know, although we are both awakened volunteers, there are still many differences between you and me. For me, seeing through the colorful appearances and revealing the truth of the world is just my instinct after waking up, as easy as talking and walking. I can only tell you some of my feelings and let you try it yourself. As for why this happened to you, I can't explain it myself. But no matter what, our attempt was not in vain. At least, we still know a little bit..."
"What? What did you know?" I met the old troll witch doctor's face full of traces of time, stared into his wise eyes that seemed to see through everything in the world, and asked with curiosity and respect.
"At least we know... uh... this method doesn't work!"
…
Even though he just came up with a stupid idea that almost cost me my life, why do I feel that this conclusion is even stupider than that idea?
I must have been possessed by a demon just now, because I couldn’t see any bullshit wisdom from that long blue face full of wrinkles and those eyes that were obviously suffering from late-stage cataracts!!!
…
We all know that the old troll witch doctor, Old Carlson, has a special ability to see through this colorful world and restore it to a flat character world composed of the accumulation of two characters, "1" and "0". He calls the world visible to our naked eyes the "surface world", and the character world the "source world". He believes that the "surface world" is a form of existence built on the "source world", which is the reality that we can see with our naked eyes; while the "source world" is the true law of the gods' creation of the world. Its expression is more direct and basic, with strict and profound laws. The endless digital code composed of '0' and '1' is the language of God. In this sense, the "source world" should be the world in the eyes of the gods, a reality that transcends reality. Before the undeniable and irrefutable truth of the "source world", everything in this world is just a superficial appearance.
As the only life in the world whose soul is connected to his, he hopes that I can also learn and master this ability, and use it to observe, discover and study more truths in this world, perhaps make other more amazing discoveries, and maybe even find a way to communicate with the gods.
I once thought that he was so eager to teach me these things because he hoped that my discoveries outside the Stone Fortress would help him find a way to free his imprisoned soul and gain complete freedom.
However, when I asked him this question, he just laughed and denied it:
"Everything is not as you think, my young friend..." Old Carlson looked at me frankly and meaningfully and said, "...I don't deny that I am curious about the outside world, and I admit that I have a certain curiosity and eagerness about the world outside this fortress, but I am not looking forward to going out as much as you think - no, it's not like that. In fact, if one day I really walk out of here, I might stop in my tracks because of fear. For me, the world inside is vast enough. Just everything in this fortress is enough for me to observe and study for a lifetime. For me, the outside world is too big, just like the scenery seen from the window is beautiful, but the inside of the window is my home. I am not just imprisoned here - I belong here! I hope to teach you this ability because I think you may need it; and I also hope to have an extra companion on the road to exploring the origin of the world, that's all."
"But what about freedom?" I was very confused and puzzled by his attitude. "Complete liberation, complete freedom, everyone longs for this kind of happiness, and don't people like us long for it even more?"
"Complete freedom?" Old Carlson chewed on this phrase with a big smile, then shook his head and patted my shoulder and said to me, "You are wrong, my friend. No one needs 'complete freedom'. We only want the 'freedom we need'. For me, the freedom within this fortress is more than enough. I may not dare to bear more freedom."
"But..." I was about to protest, but Carlson stopped me by shaking his hand:
"I don't expect you to understand these words now, my friend. But maybe one day you will find that there are some freedoms you dare not touch. At that time, you can understand my feelings. Before that, I hope you can enjoy the freedom you dare to take more. I envy you and wish you all the best, but I don't want to be you. Just think of me as a lonely and eccentric old troll who is really bored and wants to find something to do..."
Although I was deeply confused by old Carlson's attitude towards freedom, it would not stop an alchemist's curiosity and thirst for new knowledge. I thought he would let me study in the sealed space he "created", but he took me to a real fortress copy opened up by some players. We were at the top of a spire, and the stairs from the bottom of the tower had been completely destroyed, so neither the group of players nor the imperial garrison stationed in the fortress could find us. But even so, I was still a little worried.
"Why must it be here?" I asked Carlson. "Wouldn't it be better to stay in your little shack?"
"A small, broken house?" Old Carlson, whose self-esteem was greatly damaged, angrily knocked my head with his walking stick . "You should know that I have arranged at least 276 layers of concealment for that small, broken house, and 78 kinds of targeted security measures. Even if I use divine power to scan it from the outside, I can only see nothingness. Even if the Supreme God searches with all his strength, I can support it to remain undetected for at least one and a half minutes, and its security measures are constantly being upgraded. If you can see through my small, broken house at a glance, then you almost have enough ability to recreate a Falvi continent. Now it's up to you to choose, the small, broken house, or here?"
Even though I couldn't see any difference between the two - and countless experiments over the next few days proved that there was indeed no difference between the two for me - I still followed Carlson's advice and stayed on the top of the tower.
In the following time, I did a lot of training and attempts, trying to reach the realm and state that Carlson talked about. Whenever a group of players were about to finish their journey in this dungeon, old Carlson would immediately take me to the same location in the dungeon opened by another group of players to continue my practice. Although I have tried my best and focused, it is frustrating that my training has never achieved any results.
Carlson may be a learned wise man, a careful scholar, a keen explorer and a researcher with an active mind, but he is far from being a good teacher: from the beginning, he kept repeating: "Concentrate", "Focus your attention", "Don't just look at the appearance", "See the truth behind the appearance", but he never had any constructive suggestions on how to do it. When I asked him: "Should I imagine my attention as a knife to peel the world" or "Imagine it as a spear to pierce it", he would always tell me carelessly, "It doesn't matter, as long as you think it helps you, anything is fine!"
As you can imagine, this method of concentrating consciousness was obviously ineffective - in fact, if it really worked, I would have imagined my consciousness as a pair of pliers and pulled out the two fangs of this crappy teacher.
After countless days and countless attempts, God above, before I completely collapsed, I finally realized a fact: for old Carlson, seeing through this "surface world" is an instinct that he was born with since the day his soul was liberated. Seeing the "source world" is as natural to him as speaking with his mouth and listening with his ears. The more this "instinct" power is, the more difficult it is to teach and learn. Imagine, how can you teach someone to blink or sniff? You simply cannot accurately describe these actions that seem natural to you, and no matter how detailed you explain it, others will not be able to empathize with you.
I wisely decided to give up this exercise for the time being. After all, I couldn't make the exploration of the "Source World" my whole life. In the world outside the fortress, I still had some tasks to complete and many friends to help. Moreover, in my opinion, there was no point in me staying here any longer: Carlson had taught me everything he could, and what he couldn't teach me, I needed to try and explore on my own.
Carlson also agreed with my opinion. He said goodbye to me with regret and asked me to visit him often. I accepted his invitation and said goodbye to this soul friend again and again with reluctance. It was not until he planned to send me off with a bowl of fresh and thick "Teddysino" according to the custom of the troll tribe that I finally made up my mind to step out of the fortress gate without hesitation.
