Tower of Heaven

The first experience was a proper one only because Atlas happened to encounter a God whom he was somewhat related to.

Purgatory was never meant to be a place where one could experience any kind of emotion, including suffering and misery. Entering the afterlife was never meant to be a calm or exciting experience for a soul, especially not for a living one.

When Atlas was swallowed by the jaws of Ammit, the darkness around him became physical. A ground appeared below him, which was the only indication he had that he was back in that place.

And in that place, there was nothing he could do but wander aimlessly, trying his best to keep his mind together.

This time, it was different. The emptiness of this realm couldn’t impact him as strongly because there was a clear image in his soul grounding him in reality.

It was the image of Anubis using his power. The sensation of Godly Power against his skin and soul was not easily forgotten.

The gold and black energy in Atlas’ mind seemed to light up the darkness around him.

It seemed to do so, but only for a moment.

Purgatory was a land without time. It was a land where there was no difference between a single second and a million years. The conscious mind was never meant to experience such dissonance.

The fact that he was using the image of a Divine to uphold his mentality gave him more time than he would have had otherwise, but did that matter when time was a nonissue?

It was as if only a single second passed before the consciousness he easily maintained started to slip from him.

"Hmm…"

Atlas wasn’t sure if he vocalized the sound or not, but he heard it clearly.

His head was spinning. He was woozy, his body threatening to fall away from him at any moment.

There was nothing around him anywhere. No white doors appeared to take him into other Underworlds. He was left alone with no support and no path forward.

’Thoughts. Thoughts are necessary.’

Even if he couldn’t find it in himself to think coherently, he had to keep thinking. If he didn’t keep his mind active with something, he would be lost to this space.

He almost couldn’t believe that he had only just met with Anubis.

Wasn’t that something that happened ages ago?

’No, ages ago, I was a different person.’

He had only lived for thirty-odd years in this life. It was a period so significant that some people would still consider him no different from a baby.

The time ages ago that he remembered was not the life he lived as Atlas Vaun.

’What was my name?’

It was the fact that concerned him most. He knew that Kallos said it in that recording crystal, but what was it that he said?

He was the Heavenly Emperor and only the Heavenly Emperor. What reason was there for him to be anyone else?

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’What kind of nonsensical thought is that?’

It was the kind of thought that served no purpose. It was nothing more than an excuse.

’I had a name. I had a life outside of cultivation that has been kept from it entirely. The entire time I spent with Artemia and Horus, I never saw Sylvanus once for a very obvious reason. The events related to my past are a heavily guarded secret that cannot be spoken about by even those who wish to do so.’

But, was he truly such an important character?

’As the Heavenly Emperor, I stood in a position where the world adored me. However, the world I lived in was too small. It was too insignificant. If the Heavenly Emperor existed in today’s Tower, what would he have been?’

He would have been nothing more than an ordinary World Core Realm cultivator. He would have been on the fiftieth floor along with everyone else, doing the same things everyone else was doing.

There wouldn’t have been a single unique thing about him.

’No. There is one.’

His hand went to his own chest.

There was a single thing that set him apart from others in both that life and this one.

Subtly, a stellar blue hue responded to his call.

’What are you?’

Was it the reason for all these mysteries?

’What am I?’

Who was he to attract such a thing?

Atlas never thought about his past life seriously for obvious reasons. He had goals he needed to achieve and a path he needed to walk. He couldn’t allow himself to be dragged down by unnecessary thoughts.

’The effects of [Perfect Adaptability] allow me to completely isolate such thoughts.’

Even when he wanted to think of them, [Perfect Adaptability] rid him of the majority of his emotion.

How was he supposed to process it properly if he couldn’t connect to those feelings?

His mind wandered to those days. When he thought about the full context of his life, everything was vague and foggy. However, in reality, he’d seen a lot of his own memories.

The number of days he could recollect was not small. There were thousands of years’ worth of memories in his mind.

Those days, fighting in endless wars across the continents of the Mortal Realm, ascending through the ranks with perseverance alone and gaining talent along the way…

That kind of life was miserable to live, but there was also something enamoring about it.

It was thrilling to live on the edge of death.

However, the edge of death could not be walked easily. As he teetered the balance and barely scraped through, the people around him fell off the edge one after another.

As he stumbled through the darkness, hazy figures started to appear around him. Their appearances were hazy and indistinguishable, but they were all shaped like humans.

Men and women alike encircled him, walking alongside him on his journey.

His groggy eyes glanced between them, trying to peer into who they were.

Because those faces…

No matter how indistinguishable those faces were, there was something about them that he remembered.

There was something about them that felt so familiar that he had to reach out and grasp at their misty figures, trying to bring them into tangible reality.

Whoosh!

There wasn’t a breeze in Purgatory, but it felt like a cool wind brushed across his face.

Atlas’ eyes opened wide.

"I am…"

A semblance of clarity returned to his gaze. He looked at the figures around them, but they didn’t become a single bit clearer.

’They weren’t a hallucination.’

He thought Purgatory was causing him to see shadows, but it was not.

These spectres were present in his vicinity, and without a doubt, they were calling out to him.

He kept his arm outstretched. He tried to call upon the qi in his body, but he couldn’t reach it in this plane. Still, he needed an energy to respond to him. He needed an energy of the world to ground these spirits so their forms could become tangible.

They needed some kind of medium to communicate. He needed some type of medium that could connect him with them so he could finally hear their cries.

He willed it with everything he had. Qi did not respond to his will, nor did Astral Energy.

However, his call did not go unanswered.

It responded to his mentality. It responded because he decided to finally acknowledge its existence and attempt to communicate with it.

A stellar blue light left his soul once more. It traveled up his arm and snaked through the misty shadows that surrounded him.

They could not become any more tangible than they already were. This was a plane where souls wandered until they were destroyed.

However, if all Atlas wanted to do was connect to them…

Well, at the very least, that much was more than possible.

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