A long Vacation

by Jim McKellister

Bai Qiuran has decided he needs a vacation. It has been countless years since his last one, and he wants this one to be special. Arriving in the Special Region, he begins his vacation only to be rudely interrupted by the fighting between the JSDF and the Empire. "Oh what am I to do?"

-Teaser-

It was finally time to breakthrough yet again. Bai Qiuran sat on the top terrace of the Celestial Jade Palace and looked out at the universe that unfolded before him and the countless others above and below.

It was the nine hundred and ninety nine thousandth level of the Qi Refining stage, and the Foundation building stage was nowhere in sight. Tribulations no longer came to him, as even the very Tao itself could not compare to the absolute power that Bai Qiuran had become.

"This is all so tiresome" he complained to the heavens, yet he got no response, for there was none that could help him residing there.

He wanted something new. Something exciting. Something that posed a challenge to him for stimulation.

His disciples had all become true immortals and created their own domains long ago. Too many millennia had passed since the last time he visited them, and they were surely quite busy.

He wasn't quite sure what he wanted, and there were so many options.

He could meet the immortals in the seventh dimension, or perhaps meet the elder beings in the fifth.

No. That was always too troublesome for his more laid back tastes.

The third dimension was where he would go. There were countless universes, each with countless timelines branching into countless more every second that went by.

He would have to hold back his existence to an unfathomable degree in order to not destroy all of creation, but it wasn't hard for him. He had been doing such all this time already, so continuing to do so was a given.

Holding himself back to the five hundredth level of Qi Refining world be sufficient for the future. Besides, it wasn't as if he couldn't use more power if he felt the desire to.

Suppressing his existence was always a strange experience, even after all these millennia. He felt smaller, slower, weaker, and lesser when he arrived at his destination. A cluster of universes in a quiet corner of reality.

Arriving gently in the middle of a great summer woodland grove, Bai took the form of a young child, no older than twelve, and donned a simple white robe. This was the form he would use for the next few months.

It wasn't the first time that he had done so, and likely would not be the last.

While he could have used his divine senses to look at everything in the universe all at once and become omniscient, he felt that that would devalue the purpose of this vacation he had decided to take.