Ball of Nothing

When Zero came to, half a day had gone by. The look on Hua Tuo's face wasn't pleasant and the boy panicked. Had he done something wrong?

"Zero," Hua Tuo started, shaking Zero out of his thoughts. "Did you know what you just did?"

The brunet's memory was fuzzy at best. He remembered burning heat in his body and a power that went out of control but other than that, everything else was unclear.

"You fainted," Mii kindly supplied in his mind and Zero blinked. Why would he faint? Then, he remembered.

"I meditated..."

Hua Tuo inhaled through his nose deeply and reminded himself that Zero did not understand the consequence of his actions.

"Zero, that wasn't meditation. What you did was forceful cultivation. If I didn't tell you to stop, would you have continued despite your body's warnings about doing so?"

"Warning?"

Hua Tuo didn't know where he should start his explanation. After Zero fainted, Hua Tuo took them to a shady part by the river to tend to Zero. The brunet was sporting a terrible fever and Hua Tuo had to get to work immediately, in fear of losing his apprentice. While Zero's body could possibly be recreated, the damage done to one's cultivation could leave more than just a permanent physical mark. Zero's very soul could be affected if Hua Tuo didn't act fast enough.

Luckily for Zero, he had a very skilled doctor and teacher to rescue him from himself. Still, it didn't make Hua Tuo any happier to know that Zero didn't value the meaning of his own existence.

"Did you feel an excruciating pain? Didn't you feel the violent power struggles inside of you? That heat... the burning heat from within that no longer felt comfortable. The heat that caused you pain... those were all warnings from your body. There were so many warnings, why did you ignore it? Did you know what could have happened if you went on for even slightly longer? You wouldn't be able to cultivate any longer and you would have lost your body. I don't know about our existence but that could be damaged as well."

Zero didn't know what to say. It was true he'd experienced those warnings. However, he didn't think that it would be serious to ignore them. He thought that Hua Tuo would know what to do if anything happened to him and Zero placed his trust entirely on his teacher.

"But you were there so I thought..."

"You thought that I would be able to save you if something happened? Zero, as much as I would love to, there are things that even Gods cannot do. We cannot bring the dead back to the world of the living. Transferring souls is one thing. However, once the physical body passes, that cannot be brought back. Also, once the soul is lost, it can never be recovered. Zero, I was so close to losing your soul. Do you understand the seriousness of what just happened?"

Zero didn't know much. The word dying didn't mean much to him but after seeing death with his own eyes back in the forest when he ran away from Truen, he came to understand that some things can never be the same again. Death is one of those things that Zero didn't like. There was no going back when it happened and there was no way to stop it from happening either. According to Mii, all living creatures will die one day. According to En, their souls will be transferred to a new body for a new life like Truen. However, this was the first time Zero heard that death was permanent. That made Zero feel fear for the first time. A genuine fear for not only himself but those around him.

Shocked and scared at the truth, Zero cried and Hua Tuo quickly held Zero close to his chest. If he'd been any younger, he would have cried tears of relief alongside Zero. However, he was now Zero's teacher. He couldn't cry with the boy, he had to teach the boy a lesson. Death was something permanent no matter what anyone says about the cycle of souls. To Hua Tuo, the life he lived as a human and the life he lived as a Sage God were two different lives. He died once and retained those memories but it didn't change the fact that he was dead. Hua Tuo couldn't go back to becoming human and this change was permanent. Death took away things permanently and it usually hurt the people left behind. He didn't want Zero to do something this reckless again because if Zero died, Hua Tuo knew that there will be many who will cry for him now and more who will cry for him in the future. Zero had to learn how to value his existence.

Once Zero calmed down, Hua Tuo had the boy wipe his tears and wash up. The village wasn't very far from here and there will be travelling on some narrow paths from now on. Hua Tuo decided to teach Zero one last thing before they made the last lap of their journey tomorrow.

***

"Zero, do you know what this is?"

Zero looked up from the fire he was starting. "It's a knife?"

Puzzled, Zero frowned. The knife was the same old hunting knife that they used to scale fish and disassemble fur from small animals they caught before preparing their meals. There was nothing special about it and Zero knows what it is. So why was Hua Tuo asking him such a fundamental question?

Hua Tuo nodded in approval. Zero was thinking and that was exactly what he wanted. he meditation did some good and Zero was more mature now, taking a step further than seeing things at their face value.

"That's right, Zero. It's an ordinary knife used for hunting and cooking on the field. Do you know what it is used for?"

Zero didn't miss a beat and answered almost immediately.

"Scaling fish, disassembling fur, preparing animals for cooking..."

"That's correct. Now, what can it be used for?"

That question stumped Zero. Wasn't Hua Tuo asking the same thing?

"It can be used for the same things?"

Hua Tuo's eyes glinted and Zero was completely unprepared when Hua Tuo threw the knife in his direction. The knife zipped past him and grazed his ear but landed with a thunk behind him. Hua Tuo's eyes were trained on something behind Zero and the boy turned around slowly only to find a bear frozen in mid movement. The boy yelped and scrambled backwards when the huge bear came falling down in front of Zero. It was only after the bear had fallen that Zero noticed where the knife had landed.

In between the bear's eyes was the small knife that Hua Tuo threw. He glanced back at his teacher wide-eyed and confused. What was Hua Tuo trying to say?

Instead of explaining his actions, Hua Tuo calmly walked over and pulled out the knife, cleaning the blood off it before sheathing it.

"A knife has many uses, Zero. How one chooses to use it is entirely up to them. The same knife can kill and heal in the hands of different people. The same applies to everything. Meditation is good. It helps to clear the mind and allows for deeper understanding. Cultivation is good, it allows for better health and longer life. It makes one physically stronger too if practiced diligently. However, too much meditation makes the body weak and the mind lost. Too much cultivation will impede growth and in turn cause internal harm from forcing the physical limits. You may not realise this but over the past week, you've grown both mentally and physically. A knife has many uses, be careful of how you use it or it may just end up hurting you."

As they turned in for the night, Zero was left to ponder over the meaning of those words. Hua Tuo didn't comment any further and it troubled Zero. A knife had many uses, what did Zero want to use his for?