Mathematical Bliss (10)
The surprise was because my Sanity Value had actually dropped. As for the admiration, it was because this really did seem to have gone according to plan.
I'd said it a long time ago: getting multiple things done at once was a basic skill for an evil god.
The risk I'd just taken had been meant to achieve more than one thing.
Besides confirming whether death could help me escape, and going against the obvious approach to gather valuable information, there was one more thing I never forgot—
My current mission objective was to see through the cycle of reincarnation and enter the previous Heaven.
The easy way to understand that was to do as Keke and the others in the City of Ultimate Bliss had done: pursue transcendence by exhausting every principle of the Dao.
But I shouldn't think so rigidly. The mission said to break through to the previous Heaven, but it didn't specify which Heaven. Did turning from a nonhuman being into a human count?
Going from the first floor to the second was going upstairs. So was going from the basement to the first floor.
It looked as though even reincarnating as an animal still meant turning in circles within the Realm of Ultimate Bliss, rather than descending into something like Hell.
But since those who hadn't made it through couldn't understand or imagine what lay beyond the previous Heaven, why assume it had to be a physical change?
Could breaking through the constraints of the mind count, too?
What's more, my mission objective had specifically mentioned seeing through the cycle of reincarnation.
Jumping out of the cycle on my own before enduring all its suffering seemed like textbook compliance.
That line of thought might have been a bit much for Keke and