Hugs

Lee was about to march as best as he could over to the manor to apologise for the office supplies that he had stolen when the God of Strength's hand, still firmly planted upon Lee's shoulder, jerked his entire body around to move towards the edge of the lake instead, dragging Lee's body towards where the water front had once been.

"This is the reason that I shouted at you earlier. I was wrong to have acted in such an aggressive manor towards you," the God of Strength declared, pulling Lee along with him, closer and closer, towards the glowing beam of light.

Looking upwards into the night sky, Lee felt his eyes track the path of the light, trying to determine where the mystical energy ended and where the darkness began. Closer up, he saw that the white, glowing beam was more cone shaped than Lee had seen from the entrance of his base, the old woman's apparent storage room.

There were much smaller wisps, strands and threads of light and power, all swirling around within a limited space, reaching outwards, before pulling back in, spinning around and around, their movements hypnotic and never ending.

Lee was about to reach further upwards, wanting to at least place his hands out to create shadows, hoping to bask in the glory of the beauty of the display in front of him, when his body was abruptly swung around and pulled completely out of the water.

Lee looked away from the light, and found himself looking at the God of Strength's chest, suddenly becoming very, very aware of the firm muscles that cradled him against that hard wall of sinew and flesh, toned - underneath those clothes - after a lifetime and more of hard labour and determination.

Lee could only dream about the process that had led to this, and tried with extreme prejudice to not think about what exactly he was pressed against.

"What- What are you doing?" he asked, stumbling over his words to get the question out.

The God of Strength looked down at Lee with a wry face before answering," carrying you," cheerfully, as if he had no idea what was happening to Lee.

Lee closed his eyes and groaned internally at what was happening, as he was carried towards the lake and towards the beam of light, feeling vaguely exploited and brushing the too familiar feeling off again.

He was used to having his trust decimated and then going back to a supposed normal again. He had a lifetime of practice, regrettably.

Lee took a deep breath and looked forward.

The water that had once sat as still and calm as if it was one solid, uniform being, was now completely absent from the lake, content with flooding the town rather than sitting in the hole in the earth designated for it.

The underwater hotel was no longer underwater, and arranged exactly as it was in Lee's dream, completely decked out in lanterns and with the scents of perfume wafting from the building's many balconies.

From above, Lee spied down on the various flower girls who stood leaning over the railings with painted colours of red, orange, purple, and pink on their blue tinged skin, as they dropped the petals of bluish roses down onto the crowd below.

The hotel was the only building decked out in red, contrasting with all the others which glowed blue and green. And it was also the only building that did not rest upon stilts. All the buildings were stood on those legs, with several buildings existing as part of one continuous column, only differentiated by a differing style of architecture and the various ladders between their front doors.

There were ropes attached in some places, with small children attached to those older than them for rides through the rushing air to get from platform to platform. There were rough bridges between adjacent buildings and platforms, connecting them with basket carriers and messengers using them to ferry goods and secrets across.

At the bottom of the lake, there was a hole from where the light escaped from.

Lee wanted to get closer.

He wanted to climb down there, down the scaffolding, down the ropes, down to see what was there.

Almost as if he was reading Lee's mind, the God of Strength tutted a few times and lightly bonked Lee on the head.

"No going down there unless you want to die and enter the underworld," he declared out, keeping his feet firmly planted on the edge of the lake, above the roof of the hotel.

"What!? Wait, no! I mean... that's the entrance to the underworld, for real?" Lee vomited out in his fascination, eyes wide and gleaming as he tilted his body to be slightly closer to the opening.

He didn't see the God of Strength blink in surprise at Lee's excited reaction and mutter something incoherently under his breath.

"Yes. That's the entrance to the underworld. The town is named after it. Souls, if without any remaining attachment to the earth, enter the underworld upon death. The souls are then sorted with those to be punished, those to be destroyed, those to occupy the underworld as one of its denizens, and those to be reincarnated sorted out.

The souls in this town are those to be reincarnated. They are here, separated from the rest of the world in this place, to wait until they meet their fate.

There have always been spaces carved out for the souls of humanity to wait to be reincarnated, but never before has there been one on Earth itself.

Wei Lee, Shen Lan, I deplore that you are successful in your quest towards finding the Elder God of Reincarnation and convince him so to increase his pace and the process of reincarnation, for the sake of humanity.

There may not be any such tangible, visible effect yet, but there will be consequences if you do not succeed.

I beseech you, as the former cultivator Ran Ling, as the current God of Strength, to complete your mission and save this Earth."