God Of Crafting

Chapter 219  Budding frustration

The rooms at the inn were just like the inn itself - spacious, comfortable, and full of pieces that, in the modern world, would pass for artsy luxury, while in its spiritual counterpart, couldn't be considered as anything better than just standard furnishing.

The vibe of the room itself was pretty exotic, eastern, full of figures hidden in shapes that told all sorts of stories to a keen-eyed observer.

Once I looked beyond all the elements foreign for a modern human like myself, however, this room turned out to be pretty... standard, if not slightly sub-par.

There was no bed, with merely some comforters stacked directly on the floor to serve as a substitute. The windows, while giving a nice view at the gardens outside, also allowed anyone strolling through them to peer inside my room, robbing me of any sense of privacy.

All in all, if I were to rate this room, it would be a solid five out of ten... That is, unless I gave the restrictions that came with its key absolutely no attention.

As it turned out, it was absolutely forbidden to cultivate within this room, both by Chihiro and the staff of the inn. Apparently, doing so could put a strain on the delicate spiritual circuits of the inn, putting the comfort and leisure of other guests at risk.

No.

If I wanted to cultivate, I had no other choice but to sit tight and wait my turn for the visit in the cultivation room that Chihiro rented... Only to start his occupation of it before he could even set foot in his own, separate lodge.

Deprived of Claire's closeness and now even the ability to make the most out of me being in the spiritual side of the world, I was left with only three things to occupy my thoughts.

First, I could plan for any further crafting projects I would like to partake in the coming days. This, however, greatly relied on how the rest of our visit in this part of the world would go, and even if I found both place and time and then proper materials to craft with... I would still have to keep in mind that whatever I crafted was likely to be yet another bomb easily capable of upsetting the current balance of the world.

With the crafting out of the realistic picture, I had no other choice but to focus on the next two topics I had left to ponder over, the retrospective look into the moment of my breakthrough and then the observation of the spiritual energy all around me in its raw form, while doing my absolute best not to actively interact with it.

The former gave me the shot at crafting a mental ticket that would allow me to buy myself back into Claire's favors by helping her gain the same enlightenment that I did during my unexpected breakthrough. The latter, however, offered to ease me up into the cultivation on this side of the world's barrier before I even set foot in the cultivation room that Chihiro rented!

'Now then, to actually think back...'

Contrary to how easy it appeared while still but a mere idea in my head, looking back into my own experience turned out to be quite a bit more difficult than I thought it would be.

Recalling how my perception of my own presence suddenly expanded was one thing... but it came nowhere close to actually living through it!

Still, the memory of it happening was... just barely good enough for me to start to build up from there.

'What was it that actually expanded, my sense of self... or maybe it was an area that I could perceive that increased to the point my sense of self grew so strained, it felt as if it fragmented?'

Looking back at what happened wasn't the same as living through it again. The memory of the time when I pretty much lost my sense of self was hardly there, with how there was no integrated consciousness of mine to record what happened.

But that didn't mean I couldn't pry the lid of the world's truth just the little bit enough to benefit from it.

"Thinking about this, I wonder how did the reach of my spirituality change..." I muttered to myself, raising my hand to my eyes as if to check for any sign of the legendary aura free-floating around it... Only to see nothing beyond just the skin, slightly bulging veins and the shape of my bones poking out from underneath all the muscle and skin alike.

Unable to cultivate, I couldn't really peer deeper into the secrets of the reality, the secrets of what happened during my breakthrough. In a sense, I felt as if someone robbed me of one of the senses, even if it was one that I possessed only for a few months by now.

"Tsk...." I clicked my tongue, holding myself from outright cursing my current situation out loud in fear of causing discomfort and anger of the guests living in peace beyond the thin walls of my room.

I tried.

I genuinely, without cheating or looking for excuses, tried to look back at what happened. Yet, deprived of my natural right to just drive my cultivation and observe how it changed since my breakthrough, I just...

I just couldn't figure anything out.

It felt as if the answer was there, just an inch beyond the reach of my fingers, ready for me to grab at it with just a little bit of help from my spirituality... Only for the conventions and rules of this damned inn to neuter all of my attempts at reaching it.

'Is this what a creative block feels like?' I thought, gritting my teeth in silent frustration. 'And it's not even my fault! It's all because of those damn, stupid rules! How could the spiritual world have even greater restrictions on cultivation than the modern one?!'

The more I thought about it, the less sense this situation made. And this, in turn, only served to fuel my anger even more.

Soon, I started to grasp my hands into fists, forcibly relax, cast a glance towards the room doors in hopes of hearing a knock... Only for its lack to start the process all over again with me grasping my hands into fists, then forcibly relaxing... and so on.

'Okay, fuck it, let's move on before I actually start smashing stuff around,' I thought, inhaling as much air as I could - all the way to the point where it started to physically hurt my lungs - only to then hold it in - once again, all the way to the point of a physical pain.

'If not the memories of my breakthrough, then maybe the spiritual energy of this place can hold some answers?' I thought, using the momentary clarity from this forced exercise of calming myself down to take another breath before closing my eyes and then opening them up again - only this time, rather than looking at what's ahead, I peered into what was all around me.

At first, I couldn't spot a single difference between the air of this spiritual world and the air of the modern world that I was so used to - save, obviously, for the miraculous lack of all the pollutants that poisoned the air for all the humans living in the modern world.

The more and the deeper I looked however, the more and more differences started to appear.

The flow of the spiritual energy was different here, as if... far more organized than just the natural currents and wisps of mana back home.

It felt as if there was some sort of a greater purpose behind all of the flowing spiritual power, the meaning that I, once again, just couldn't grasp, always merely an inch away from figuring it out only to never be able to make that last, most crucial step.

'Be it my memories or my perception, why does it feel like I'm no longer able to figure it out? Its as if depriving me of cultivation was akin to fucking lobotomizing my brain!'

Before I could even take notice, my anger returned, scrambling my thoughts which only made it all the harder to focus on the topic in question which, in a vicious cycle, only further fueled the flames of my returning anger.

'Thinking about it, isn't this a damn torture?' Soon, I started to arrive at much more brutal conclusions to the situation I was in. 'To bring someone over to the spiritual world and then ban them from cultivation? To stop a genius from discovering the truth by keeping his brain power away from him? To..."

Finally, the sound of the knocking on the doors pulled me out of the hole of my rage, allowing me to put the reins of my emotion as I recomposed the look on my face right in time for the doors to open, revealing Chihiro's figure and then... the dreamy, fulfilled look on his face.

"The cultivation room is now free," he announced before shaking his head and finally restoring his usual calm and stoic smile. "Would you like to..."

Before the man could even finish his words, I already moved up from my kneel and arrived at the doors, passing by him without a word as I hurried down the corridor to the room I've long since wanted to reach.

Pushing its doors open, I could only think about cultivating. Closing the sliding doors behind me, my mind was already pushing my spiritual energy around.

But my frustration, annoyance, anger... They all had to go somewhere.

And in a bid to release them all into the air, I clenched my hand... and just struck down right at the floor, as if I wanted to beat the living shit out of it.

Only for a spider's web of cracks to appear while my knuckles were still a good inch away from the solidified straw-mat of the room's floor!