Master of The Azure Palace Chapter 3: The Beggar, The Monk and The Courtesan (2)

Read chapter 3 of Master of The Azure Palace by AzulConVerde on NovelPedia.

Lán sat cross legged on the floor of his room, he was focusing his breathing the way the manual of the Azure Palace described. He let his body slowly relax as he allowed his spirit to wander yet kept his mind in place and slowly began to build a beautiful blue palace next to a lake, he focused for hours, and slowly, brick by brick, the palace began to take shape. More time passed until eventually Lán felt the palace was ready. He opened his eyes. He was standing on top of an endless lake. In front of him, The Azure Palace sprung up just as he had imagined it. Lán felt as excitement rushed into his throat, he took a hesitant step forward. He could walk, there was no fatigue in his muscles and no pain in his bones, tears began to form in his eyes. Even though he knew the Azure Palace existed only in his mind, he spent hours jumping, running, and performing the countless martial forms and techniques he had studied. Lán lay on top of the lake, its cool surface relaxing his back. “Alright, time to get to work” he chuckled to himself as he stood up. Lán entered his palace with eager anticipation, and just as he had envisioned it, a giant spiral staircase connected two floors, a waterfall, flowing in reverse, raised from the middle. Even though the manual described many more floors that could be built, Lán had only managed to build two floors before his concentration began to waver and with it the palace seemed in danger of collapse. “Surely with more time and practice, I can build more floors, but these two will do for now” He walked through the first floor, it was called the Hall of Worlds, countless empty bookshelves filled this floor. In the middle there was a simple wooden desk, paper and quill at the ready. Here, by lightly skimming any book, a perfect copy would appear in one of the bookshelves, he had tried it before entering his meditation and quickly read a medical journal. He thought about it for a second and the manual appeared in his hands. He read it enthusiastically and found that not only was the book a perfect copy, but he understood the book’s concepts completely. Thoughts and ideas quickly filled his head, and here he could see them so clearly, the words existed in physical space and he could visualise and organize his ideas in real time. He sat at the desk and began to write. A few more hours passed before Lán wandered into the second floor, The Hall of Mirrors. A perfectly blank room met him at the end of the stairs, he walked to the middle of it and concentrated. The room filled with blue tiles that started twisting, moving, and changing until the room had become a perfect recreation of his own bedroom. Lán walked in his room, feeling the things around it, they had substance but they were lacking in texture, he walked outside his room into the Lúse’s family estate. He walked over to a pair of attendants that were talking as he was returning to his room. They were frozen in place, he could clearly see their faces but he could not make out what they were saying even though he stood right next to them. Lúse pondered for a while “It seems like I need to better train my senses in order to make the most out of this floor” Lúse thought to himself “Right now the Hall of Mirrors records everything I see, but eventually I could maybe make it record my other senses as well” Lúse experimented and played with the palace some more before deciding to check on one last thing. He opened his eyes, this time in the real world. He felt a bit dizzy as he became sharply aware of the pain his body was constantly in. He looked outside. Even though he had spent hours inside the Azure Palace, in the real world, a few minutes had passed. He smiled, got comfortable, and retreated back into his mind.