Shackles of Humanity

Luo Kai buried his head in the sand, straining with his jaw to drag his stiff body. It might have taken an hour, maybe even longer, but he finally managed to move an inch or so. He tucked his head into the cool shade beneath a cluster of reeds, his face no longer having to endure the sun. He couldn’t care less about the rest of his body.

In his limited moments of lucidity, Luo Kai couldn’t help but reminisce. To be precise, he was recalling his former life. Perhaps everyone reflects on the meaning of their existence before they die, and Luo Kai was no exception. He thought of someone he had met in his youth, a woman of incredible beauty.

It was at a philosophy lecture at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. As a professor from a renowned university in China, Luo Kai had the honor of attending. Back home, not many were willing to devote themselves to a discipline like philosophy, so he was really just there to burnish his credentials.

This type of academic lecture would put any layman to sleep. While Luo Kai wasn’t exactly a layman himself, his mind was completely elsewhere. His attention was utterly captivated by a beautiful woman. In those days, the young Luo Kai had already achieved a status and position that most people could only dream of, and he never lacked for female companionship. Yet, he had never seen a woman with such a remarkable presence.

To a man, an average beauty is pleasing to the eye. A top-tier beauty is enough to make one’s mouth water. But a true goddess is someone to be admired from afar, never to be touched. This woman was such a goddess. She was of mixed Eastern and Western heritage, with a wavy mane of hair like a soft cloud. She possessed the gentle grace of an Eastern woman, yet also the bewitching and Charming allure of a Western one.

What surprised him was her identity: she was the one giving the lecture. This event brought together elites from all over the world; it was arguably one of the world’s Top Level academic conferences. The attendees were all extraordinary individuals, to say nothing of the lecturer herself.

Her name consisted of just two English letters: ”JK.” It was less a name and more of a designation. The lecture’s topic was: ”Spirit.”

Her voice was slightly husky, with a magnetic quality that compelled one to hang on her every word.

She began by reciting a passage from the Bible: ”In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth. The earth was a formless void, a Chaos shrouded in Darkness, and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. God said, ’Let there be light!’ And there was light. God separated the light from the Darkness, calling the light Day, and the Darkness Night...”

’Foreigners always have to bring their faith into everything.’ Just as Luo Kai was starting to get impatient, she finally moved on to the main topic.

The lecture’s topic was the strange-sounding ”Spirit!” And by ”Spirit,” she didn’t mean the ”spirit” of a memo or the general intent of a document, but actual, literal spirit.

”The term ’Spirit’ originates from China. In the ancient Chinese Face Reading Skill, the key is to observe a person’s *jing*, *qi*, and *shen*. *Jing* represents one’s essence or vitality, *qi* represents one’s presence or aura, and *shen* is one’s spiritual verve. These are all rather abstract concepts. In modern terms, someone with vigorous vitality and brimming with confidence is more likely to succeed, and confidence itself is an external manifestation of one’s Spiritual Will.”

”In the West, Freud divided the psyche, or Spirit, into three realms: the id, the ego, and the superego. These represent the stages of one’s personal development and the growth of their spiritual and psychological framework...”

She paused midway through her lecture. A flicker of sorrow crossed her beautiful eyes, and she let out a long sigh. That sigh was filled with an inexpressible melancholy that remained etched in Luo Kai’s memory even now.

After a long silence, her expression was placid once more when she resumed speaking. ”These three realms are all centered on the ’self.’ Humanity’s perception of the external world also originates from this ’self.’ To put it simply, consciousness determines reality. This ’self’ is what created human civilization, but it is also the very shackle Binding humanity!”

...

Academic lectures like this were incredibly dry. If not for such a stunning woman at the podium, Luo Kai would have probably ditched it already.

She then began to share some anecdotes. ”I’ve done considerable research into psychological hypnosis. A few years ago, I conducted an experiment where I hypnotized an ordinary man. I attempted to guide him into the deepest possible dream state. In that state, I told him his house was on fire. He busied himself trying to put it out and, in the process, was badly burned. Then, something incredible happened in reality: his body began to show a genuine burn reaction. His skin reddened, swelled, and even began to blister.”

The audience was filled with leading experts from various fields, and many of them scoffed at such an experiment. Someone immediately objected, ”Impossible! That violates the law of conservation of Energy.”

She offered no explanation. ”What I can tell you is that this is a physical manifestation of the Spirit. Let me give you another example. A terminal lung cancer patient didn’t have much time left. But one day, the hospital gave him a new drug, claiming it could cure cancer. After taking it, the patient actually made a full recovery. That ’new drug’ was, in fact, nothing more than a common vitamin tablet.”

’The anecdotes are interesting, but what do they have to do with Spirit?’ Luo Kai was captivated. He stood up and asked, ”Professor, what’s the reason for that?”

She turned her gaze to Luo Kai and said in a heavy tone, ”This is the Power of the ’self.’ You could also call it an external expression of the Spirit. As long as you believe something with absolute conviction, it will happen, no matter how impossible it seems. Or rather, if you believe in the truth of something, that thing may well become truth. ’God said, Let there be light, and there was light!’ In a sense, that’s exactly what this is.”

”Spirit originates from consciousness, which we can call the ’self.’ When one’s Spirit is powerful enough, the external world will bend to one’s will. This is the true meaning of ’what the heart desires, comes to pass.’”

She slowly lifted her head, her gaze drifting to the sky outside the window. A lost look appeared in her light-purple eyes, and as if summarizing or simply speaking to herself, she murmured, ”I call it the Power of God. It might be... the only way to break free from humanity’s shackles.”

The philosophy lecture had inexplicably turned into one on Xuanxue. Luo Kai soon put the matter out of his mind. He was no longer content with a life in academia and entered the world of business, where he did many things that went against his principles. ’Thinking back now,’ he mused, ’everything I’ve suffered this past year must be a result of Cause and Effect.’

...

Perhaps it was a terminal lucidity, but Luo Kai’s consciousness grew increasingly clear. Memories hidden in the depths of his mind began to surface, one after another. He even remembered the scene of himself as a toddler, learning to walk at two or three. He vaguely recalled the sweetness of his mother’s milk, the warmth of the womb, until his consciousness returned to a Void of utter Darkness.

But Heaven was not ready to let Luo Kai die so peacefully. He was saved by a lame old fisherman—or to be more precise, he was saved by a dog. It was a filthy old dog suffering from severe mange. The dog grabbed him by the hair and dragged him out of the reeds. The blinding sunlight seared him awake once more.

After dragging him out, the old dog scampered off gleefully, much to Luo Kai’s immense frustration. ’It took me forever to get my head under those reeds!’

The Zi Re sunlight accelerated the fading of his consciousness, right up until a pair of powerful arms lifted him up.