Stuck

"Wow," Wei Sha breathed out as he dropped himself against the soft cushions of his bed.

'I've never had so much fun.' Wei Sha recollected everything his day as young-him had brought.

Reminiscing with a smile, Wei Sha fell asleep.

X

'I'm still here?' Wei Sha had assumed that when he woke up, he would find himself back in the room with Lin Siniang.

Yet, in reality, his body hadn't moved an inch during the night.

Wei Sha scratched his black hair, confused.

He pondered for an answer, but no solution came from it.

Even after an hour of contemplation, he had no inkling of the severity of his situation.

'Did the machine fail? Did Lin Siniang forget to tell me something? Do I have a task here?' Countless ideas came and went out of his mind. Still, none of them made actual sense to Wei Sha.

Before finding a reasonable explanation, his peace ended.

"Son."

"Coming, mother." Wei Sha jumped off the bed and raced to the door.

Whatever the reason was, he didn't want to cause a scene. 'Better to keep acting.'

X

A week had passed since his arrival to this 'flashback'.

Right now, the demon replacing Trainer Sen lectured him and Wei Xiaodan. Weng Tonghe, a demon from the Fifth Layer. A hideous-looking demon. But Wei Sha didn't think about vocalising those opinions.

"The moment you bond with a creature or a being in the Awakening Pool, you'll be able to cultivate." Weng Tonghe's job description might be the same as Trainer Sen's, but Trainer Sen couldn't achieve Weng Tonghe's level of insight in a lifetime.

Similarities between Trainer Sen and Weng Tonghe ended at their origins. Both were outsiders to the Fourteenth Layer. Though again, Weng Tonghe come here paid and protected by the Wei Family, a vast difference to Trainer Sen who didn't have a say in the matter.

"Teacher." Wei Xiaodan's tiny hand shot up. "How does physical cultivation differ from cultivation?"

Weng Tonghe's body stayed in place while the eyes located around his shoulders moved towards him. "Can Wei Sha answer?"

Wei Sha shook his head. "No, I can't."

Weng Tonghe's eyes enlarged a bit. "No one has told you?"

"No."

"Not even your mother?" Weng Tonghe turned his box-like body to face him. "I have heard of your mother's tales. She should have told you, right?"

"She didn't." Wei Sha didn't deliberate more; he couldn't. Many times he asked Li Li to tell him, yet the subject of cultivation was a subject which Li Li didn't disclose.

"Teacher." Wei Xiaodan raised her voice.

"What is it?"

"The issue is, Li Li comes from the Li Family."

"Right!" Weng Tonghe snapped his fingers. "How could I miss such a detail?" He smacked his forehead with a palm. "Li Family's traditions keep her from revealing such information to anyone not a Li by name."

"What?" Wei Sha cocked his head. He hadn't learned of such a tradition.

Weng Tonghe's focus came back to him again. "Guess I can tell you. Your mother hails from a family not much talked about in Hell, a so-called 'reclusive family'."

"What's a reclusive family?" Why hadn't Li Li told him about this!

"Wei Xiaodan?"

"A reclusive family," she began. "A family like every other, though vastly smaller than a non-reclusive family like the Wei Family, Suar, Xiro, or the Kong Family. They keep to themselves and play a minimal part in the matters of their Layer. However, one shouldn't mistake this as weakness, for when they act, deadlocks, sieges, and even wars turn on their heads before their opponent knows of them."

'Indeed, with a better teacher come better results. No doubt.' Every lecture given by Weng Tonghe was a feast of knowledge and learning for Wei Sha. None could disagree as one just needed to point out Wei Xiaodan, a two-year-old who knew a lot more about Hell than the fourteen-year-old Wei Sha did.

"Correct." Weng Tonghe nodded. "Now, back to the matter of cultivation," he said and turned around.

Weng Tonghe's muscular hand drew a rough sketch of a demon onto a whiteboard with a piece of chalk.

"The creature you bond with in the Awakening Pool will 'nest' in your soul space." He drew a circle onto his demon drawing's abdomen — the spot where one's soul space would be.

"When you are not in combat or have your creature called out, you can cultivate it." Weng Tonghe scribbled more meanings onto the whiteboard.

"Every being." Weng Tonghe spoke about creatures and beings interchangeably, as most people did. "Has a limit to how far we can cultivate them." As he spoke, he drew six horizontal lines.

"Empyrean," he said, pointing at the highest line.

"Azurean." he poked at the second-highest line with the piece of chalk. "You might see one of these in your lifetime."

"Terrenean. Wei Dai has a Terrenean Hell General as his bonded being."

"Aquan. I have an Aquan Giant Tortoise."

"Nadirian. Nadirian beings are usually bonded to a hundred demon commanders."

"Antrean. The lowest of the lowest, but the stage in which nigh all creatures start."

As Weng Tonghe lectured, Wei Sha wrote every word down. He kept a notebook with him because he wasn't the fastest learner, so to remember everything by heart, he would go over them in his free time.

He wrote the last sentence into the book, put his pen aside and asked a question, "What happens if you and Wei Dai duel?"

Weng Tonghe didn't even turn around as he muttered, "I might last five strikes, given Wei Dai doesn't go full force."

"Father strong!" Wei Xiaodan chirped from the desk next to him.

"He isn't one of the Wei Family heads for no reason," Weng Tonghe spoke as he continued to scribble words and pictures onto the whiteboard.

"Let's go over the finer details of 'Grades' as we call them. Then I'll open tomorrow's topic a bit, that'll be everything for today."

X

"Wei Xiaodan." Their lecture over, Wei Sha caught up with Wei Xiaodan leaving the room. "How long have you been under Wei Tonghe's tutelage?"

"He arrived a few months ago," she responded. "Though I didn't hear, he would teach others." Her eyes peered at him with a hint of hostility.

'She's angry?' Wei Sha thought. 'Did my intrusion to her private lectures hit a nerve?' He hadn't wanted to have such an impression on her, and so he sought to remedy it. "We're siblings. We should help each other to strive higher." Doing so by using a tested method.

"Pyh!" she humphed and raced off with her books between her chest and hands.

'Should I run after her?' Wei Sha thought as Wei Xiaodan ran away.

He shook his head. 'Let her be,' he concluded and began to turn away.

He didn't get far, for he bumped with Weng Tonghe, who was leaving the room.

"Wei Sha, you should tread with extreme care," Weng Tonghe spoke from the middle of his chest.

Wei Sha glanced at Weng Tonghe's direction, and this action started a shook which ran through his bones. His eyes had seen Weng Tonghe's mouth, big as his body, open and close right in front of him.

"T-thanks for the heads u-p," he stuttered.

"I wouldn't want my pupils to go missing," he spoke no more before vanishing from sight.

'Life amongst the elite of the family isn't as nice as I imagined.' Sure, he got to learn a lot of new things, but it also came clear to him that his movements were being monitored.

X

"Come here." The moment he stepped to his living room, Li Li beckoned him to sit on her lap.

The first few days here, Wei Sha had been reluctant to do this; however, knowing how mother would become sad if he didn't. . . "Okay," he said, jumping onto her lap.

"Did you learn anything new today?" Li Li asked him questions while her hand began to caress his black hair.

Wei Sha didn't mind her questions, even if this was a flashback. The reactions people showed were too real for him to dismiss as fabricated. Also, it didn't matter if he lived in a flashback. If Li Li appeared sad or lonely, would Wei Sha feel awful, just like in the real world.

X

Wei Sha banged his head against the wall of his room, seeing if doing so would help him realise something new.

It was a long shot, but on the other hand, he had been inside this flashback for a year now. Living every minute, hour, and day. Second by second.

"Lin Siniang," he tried to contact her through words.

'Lin Siniang,' he tried again.

At this point, thousands of theories had been gone over by Wei Sha, nothing having a hint of working out.

"Son."

"Coming, mother."

His days were the same here. He used his mornings to ponder a way out of his predicament. This time then ended when Li Li came to wake him. After that, he would play the part of five-year-old him for the rest of the day.

This would include spending time with Li Li. Training, a lot of training with Wei Xiaodan, who had turned competitive if not outright hostile towards him.

X

Wei Sha banged his toes against the wall of his room, seeing if this would bring light to an alternative way of thinking.

However, it was clear to him that this was even worse of an idea than the banding of his head a year ago.

In two years, Wei Sha spent more time thinking than ninety-nine percent of demons would in their lifetime. Hundreds of thousands of ideas and theories had arrived and departed his head.

To this, the sole positive was how he learned how to think thanks to this and the learning he received from Weng Tonghe.

"Son."

Wei Sha stomped his toe against the wall just as Li Li came to wake him.

"C-coming, mother."

X

Wei Sha was throwing his limp body against the wall of his room. By far, this was the stupidest idea, yet he didn't care.

"Son."

Another year awaited him.

X

Wei Sha wasn't banging anything against his wall anymore. Thanks to his antics, the wall was a touch away from breaking apart, anyway.

Plus, he still got three other walls in his room. So he used those, though not for pain. Instead, as he learned ancient languages from Weng Tonghe, he was attempting to create a ritual which would take him out of here.

"Son."

The line Wei Sha was carving slid off its intended path.

A week of carving gone to waste.

"Coming, mother."