Time in the valley was not measured in years, but in sowing cycles and the depth of the wrinkles on one's hands. For Aethel, the transition from a world of asphalt and noise to this corner of earth and silence was, at first, a haze of confusion that dissipated under the relentless sun.
He woke up at the age of thirteen in a small hut of wood and stone, with the smell of woodsmoke and dried herbs steeped into the walls. There were no luxuries, but neither was there the absolute despair of the battlefields. His grandfather, a man of few words with skin like old parchment, received him with a bowl of hot porridge and a gaze that asked no questions.
"You've slept a long time, lad," was all the old man said.
For the next three years, Aethel lived in the old man's shadow. He learned to read the sky to predict rain, to prepare the soil with an ox that seemed as old as the world itself, and to value silence. Often, while repairing a fence or cleaning grain, Aethel would lose himself in his own thoughts. His memories of Earth were still there, but they felt like a novel he had read a long time ago; reality now was the weight of the hoe and the morning chill in his joints.
His grandfather died shortly after Aethel turned sixteen. There was no drama or tragedy; the old man simply didn't wake up one autumn morning. Aethel buried him under the great willow behind the cabin, marked the spot with a smooth river stone, and returned to the house. Solitude did not weigh on him immediately; rather, it settled over him like an old blanket. He was at peace. He had enough food in the pantry, a roof that didn't leak, and the prospect of a long, predictable life. He could have grown old there, becoming a man of stone himself, until the earth reclaimed him.
However, upon turning seventeen, the nature of his existence decided to change.
That day began like any other. The dawn chill seeped through the cracks in the door, bringing the scent of pine and wet earth. Aethel rose from his straw pallet, feeling the familiar creak of his joints. He took his time stoking the embers of the hearth and heating some water. There was something deeply meditative in his movements; four years of peasant life had filed down the edges of his old modern-man impatience. He was no longer rushing anywhere. In this world, time was not something to be gained, but something to be inhabited.
He spent the morning in the garden, pulling weeds and checking the vines his grandfather had planted decades ago. The sun rose slowly, bathing the valley in a heavy, golden light. Aethel paused for a moment, leaning on the handle of his hoe, and looked toward the horizon. Beyond the mountains, they said the world was on fire, that emperors fell and cultivation sects tore out each other's hearts for a piece of spirit stone. But there, in his small plot, the only war was against the birds trying to steal the seeds.
It was at nightfall when the veil tore.
Aethel went to bed early, lulled by the sound of the wind through the willow branches where his grandfather rested. But the sleep that claimed him was not rest, but an immersion.
He found himself in an expanse that defied description. It was not a place, but a condition. An absolute darkness, yet endowed with a density that made the vacuum of Earth seem like light air. He could not see his hands, but he could feel his spirit. There was no light, no stars, no sound; only a current. A vast, invisible tide that dragged him with a terrifying gentleness toward a center that had no coordinates.
As he was carried by the flow, Aethel felt a transformation that chilled his very essence. His identity—the man from Earth, the grandson of the peasant, the seventeen-year-old youth—began to unravel. It was not painful in a physical sense, but an existential one. It was as if every memory, every atom of his will, and every wisp of his consciousness became an infinitely fine silk thread. These threads stretched and vibrated, being irresistibly drawn toward a point of absolute collapse.
He felt the immensity of that force. A darkness that devoured the very notion of "being" to turn it into something simpler. He failed to remember what followed, for he vanished along with everything else.
I woke up with my body feeling as if I had been beaten while I slept. That dream... it was like falling through a bottomless hole until nothing was left of me. But nightmares don't take away hunger. I sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, waiting for the dizziness to pass. My heart was slow, I suppose because of the early morning cold. It doesn't matter. If I stay here listening to my own heartbeat, the goats aren't going to milk themselves.
Aethel stood up with an effort he attributed to the valley's humidity starting to seep into his bones. He didn't stop to think about why the cabin's wood seemed to groan more under his weight, or why his hands, when brushing against the stone table, felt firmer, denser. To him, the body was a tool, and tools sometimes change with use.
He spent the first week after the dream busy repairing the shed roof. It was monotonous work: climbing up, securing the beams, laying the new thatch.
I've noticed I don't get tired like I used to. Perhaps I've finally gotten used to the hard work after four years. The sun rises and falls, and I'm still up here. Sometimes I forget to eat until my stomach gives me a serious warning. Time seems to slip through my fingers; I start working in the morning and, before I know it, it's already time to light the lamp. I suppose when one is alone, the hours weigh less.
In the village, an hour's walk away, life continued its slow, dusty course. Aethel went down once every two weeks to exchange some wool or vegetables for salt and oil. The villagers nodded to him, noticing that the old man's grandson had become a quiet, sturdy young man. No one saw atoms; no one saw spiritual cores. They only saw a peasant who was becoming as silent as the mountains surrounding him.
Today at the market, the butcher tried to cheat me on the weight of the salt. At another time it would have bothered me, but I just stood there looking at him and, for some reason, he lowered his head and gave me the fair amount without a word. People are strange. They look at me as if they expected me to say something important. I just want my salt. I made it home before it started raining. The sky is gray, that kind of gray that promises a week of water. Better that way; it'll give me time to organize the seeds in the cellar.
What Aethel ignored, while focusing on the texture of his boot leather or the taste of stale bread, was that his presence was beginning to "anchor" the valley. It wasn't something he could see. He couldn't notice that the flow of Qi—that energy cultivators seek frantically—avoided his cabin or swirled slowly around it, trapped by the invisible gravity of his soul.
To him, life was simply the present.
Weeks later, the event that would truly break his peace did not come from within, but from the forest path.
Aethel was crouching near the stream, trying to clear a blockage of branches and mud that prevented water from reaching his small irrigation canal. His arms were buried up to the elbows in the cold water.
This branch is wedged in an impossible way. I've had to pull with force, and for a moment it felt as if the ground beneath my feet was giving way, as if I were too heavy for the stream bank. Nonsense. I must be losing my balance. I'm almost finished when I feel a shiver. It's not the cold of the water. It's as if the air has suddenly become too clean, too pure. I looked up expecting to see an animal, but what I saw made no sense in this valley.
A few meters from him, on the opposite bank, a woman was watching him.
She didn't look like an inhabitant of this crude world. Her skin was perfect, without a single sunspot or scar from work, and her clothes, of a color Aethel only remembered from museums in his other life, seemed to glow with their own light. She didn't speak. She just watched him with an intensity that seemed to want to pierce through his flesh and reach his bones.
Aethel simply dried his hands on his coarse linen trousers and stood up, feeling the annoyance of being interrupted in his task.
Aethel froze in place; if he were any ordinary mortal of this world, he probably would have thought he was hallucinating or having a vision of a goddess.
By the clothes and that "I've never broken a plate in my life" face, she has to be a cultivator. They're supposed to be like gods.
Aethel's heart tightened slightly, feeling the tension.
The cultivator did not move. Her gaze remained fixed on Aethel, but it was no longer a gaze of inspection; it was one of absolute bewilderment.
"The current is strong today," she said. Her voice was not powerful, but clear as crystal, vibrating with a harmony that made Aethel feel strangely conscious of his own dirtiness. "You have worked hard, young man."
Aethel blinked, surprised by the normalcy of her words. He finished drying his hands with a blunt gesture.
It's strange. I should be trembling, or perhaps on my knees as the stories say one must do before these people.
Despite encountering what others consider a god on Earth today, he didn't feel as perturbed as he expected; he felt a great peace in his heart, though he didn't know why. Perhaps it was the woman's aura that calmed him?
"I only do what needs to be done," Aethel replied, trying not to let his voice sound as rough as his hands. "If you've come by the north path, you'll have realized there isn't much to see around here. Only stones and mud."
The woman let out a small smile, one that didn't quite reach her eyes.
"Sometimes, what looks like stone is gold, and what looks like mud is the foundation of something greater," she commented, crossing the stream with a step so light she barely seemed to touch the surface of the water. She stopped two meters from him. "I have walked a long time; would you invite me into your home?"
Aethel looked confused for a second, unable to understand or believe what she said.
A cultivator wants to enter a mortal's house?
No matter how much he thought about it, the situation was completely out of place; he didn't believe there could be any good reason why someone of such a level would want something like that. Without being able to understand much, he decided to bite the bullet.
Aethel looked at her with suspicion, but the calm remained there, firm in his center. He didn't know where he found the courage to speak to a cultivator in that tone. Any other mortal would have crumbled in bows or been struck dumb by terror, but his words came out with the same naturalness as if he were asking to borrow a tool.
"If you're looking for an inn, the village is an hour away," he said, pointing vaguely toward the path. "Here, there is only my cabin."
The cultivator looked toward the small construction of stone and wood, where the smoke from the hearth rose lazily toward the gray sky.
"The village is noisy," she replied with a serenity that matched Aethel's. "I seek simplicity. Would you be so kind as to invite a traveler to sit for a moment under your roof? A bowl of water and a moment of shade is all I ask."
Aethel sighed and picked up his hoe. He didn't feel he could refuse, but neither did he feel she was an immediate threat. She was simply another part of his day that he had to manage, however out of place it might be.
Water and shade. I still don't get it. There's no logical reason for someone of her level to want to enter a place where the floor is packed dirt and it smells like old wood. But if she insists on seeing how a mortal lives, I suppose I can't stop her. I just hope her "search for simplicity" doesn't include staying for dinner; I don't think my turnip stew is worthy of someone of her caliber.
"Come then," Aethel said, turning and starting to walk toward the cabin. "The water is fresh and the roof doesn't leak. It's all I can offer."