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Even the process of getting through the barrier itself came and went without any major events or trouble arising. But while no one came to stop us from crossing—be it guards or the locals—just the act of crossing itself did, in fact, come with its own weight.

"Make sure to keep breathing," Chihiro advised in a half-voice, clearly not too happy with the topics I brought to life at the border yet not willing to let this dissatisfaction affect our passage. "Once you get slammed with the dense spiritual energy on the other side of the barrier, it\'s pretty common for those below the peak mortal cultivation to forget to breathe."

At first, with just a few steps left before reaching the edge of the barrier, I struggled to take his words seriously.

After all, how could a human forget about something as fundamental as breathing?

The very moment I stepped over the small line of absolutely no vegetation on the ground, I learned my lesson.

It was hard to compare the experience of crossing over to anything else. The closest thing I could think of was… falling into a swimming pool. Instead of water, however, that swimming pool… was filled with nothing but pure, raw, unadulterated energy.

When it came to breathing, it wasn\'t about the very act of doing so but more about actually making the effort to breathe, rather than just relying on the energy that the air beyond the barrier was so choke-full of.

This feeling only lasted for a short moment, when my entire body was submerged within the barrier, only for this effect to come to an end when I emerged on the other side.

The difference between the air on the two sides of the barrier was still there, it just wasn\'t anywhere near what I felt as I was crossing over.

But the impression that the spiritual world failed to leave on me when it came to just the energy in the air, it surely compensated when I blinked my eyes a few times and took a proper look around.

The barrier wasn\'t just a physical obstruction to all those who wanted to cross. It wasn\'t even as simple as what I felt back when entering the cultivation district for the very first time.

No, the barrier also served to conceal all that was behind it.

While still on the other side, all I could see was a vast, seemingly unending forest. And while it was certainly a nice sight to enjoy, it was by no means interesting.

As we crossed over, however, the truth of that place revealed itself to our eyes, with what was supposed to be a vast forest now turning into a massive yet extremely weird city.

"This looks like how an uneducated kid would draw a medieval metropolis," I muttered while following Chihiro\'s advice and making sure I was breathing properly.

When it came to the surface the spiritual city occupied, it could easily rival the biggest metropolises I knew from the modern world, stretching as far as my eyes could see and then some. But…

There wasn\'t a single high-rise building in sight. In fact, I could only spot a few buildings that reached more than three, maybe four stories high! And even when it came to those select few, bigger buildings, they were clearly designed to showcase the might and financial prowess of their occupants rather than to house more people than just a small, single-story apartment would.

"What makes you say so?" Chihiro asked with a hint of genuine curiosity in his eyes as he looked over at me.

"The way they use space…" I shook my head, trying not to let my modern way of thinking cloud the picture of the city in front of my eyes. "Isn\'t it extremely inefficient?"

Hearing this, Chihiro smiled a little.

"It would be for the best if you tried not to compare this part of the world to the common sense you are used to," he stated, only to take a big breath while stretching his arms out, looking like someone who finally managed to relax after living in stress for several years. "In a way, this is an entirely different civilization with different paradigms over literally everything," he shook his head before sighing out and taking a first step forward in the spiritual world. "Back on the other side of the barrier, comparison was a killer of joy. Over here, comparison will only serve to further confuse you."

"What am I supposed to do then?" I asked, slightly annoyed by the prospect of just… going ahead and ignoring everything that I knew, my entire common sense… just so I wouldn\'t get confused by a world built on a different set of paradigms than what I was used to?

"Just…" Chihiro hesitated for a bit, "just take things as they go. Or rather," he shook his head, "don\'t judge things you see through the modern perspective."

"That\'s not helping, you know?" I countered, only to then shake my head as I looked over at Claire…

Only to realize that her silence wasn\'t just her allowing me to have a peaceful and undisturbed conversation with her father. It wasn\'t her being so enchanted by the sight of the world her mother was living in that she forgot how to speak for a moment.

No.

\'She\'s still… annoyed by my breakthrough, isn\'t she?\' I thought, fully aware that Claire\'s annoyance was nothing more than a keyword behind which a whole plethora of emotions was hidden.

Right now, however, her emotions appeared to have clarified a little bit, with the chaotic mess from before now boiling down to just a few emotions that prevailed… But in this process of selecting what she actually felt, all of the emotions that remained grew much stronger than before.

\'Should I try to talk to her…?\' I thought.

On one hand, I\'d heard more times than I could count how communication was the key in a relationship. But the border of the spiritual land didn\'t seem like the right place to have an important, intimate, and ultimately private conversation about the emotions troubling her. In all honesty, the timing didn\'t seem to be good for this kind of conversation either, with how Claire likely still needed a bit more time to come to terms with what she was actually feeling, so that she could calmly process it, identify the issues, and then, and only then, have a conversation about it all with me.

With Chihiro already moving, we didn\'t really get all that much time to figure out ourselves—be it me figuring out whether to approach Claire and try talking with her or Claire herself deciding what to do with those emotions that ravaged her soul.

Strangely enough, pretty much as soon as we got on the move and started to follow Chihiro down the road we found ourselves on, the look on Claire\'s face changed, making it seem as if she pushed all those conflicting emotions aside, opting to focus on something completely unrelated to the events of the past few moments.

A look of determination and anticipation that brought a strange shine to her eyes that have now locked on one of the buildings far out in the distance. A look… that I could understand only in one way.

"You are really looking forward to seeing her, aren\'t you?" I asked, eager to start any kind of conversation with Claire, feeling as if I would go insane from worry unless I heard her voice.

Hearing my question, Claire looked over with the kind of look on her face that only by painting question marks all over her cheeks could she make it any more obvious.

"Your mother, I mean," I quickly clarified, lowkey hurt how Claire clearly didn\'t expect me to see through this desire of hers.

Surprisingly, though, rather than brightening up or even relaxing a bit, she just… turned her eyes away, as if this topic wasn\'t something she was ready to discuss either.

"She sure does," Chihiro said, slowing down his step so that he would suddenly appear between the two of us in this crude yet effective attempt to interfere in this clearly awkward moment. "She just doesn\'t know how to feel about it. After all, even if it was never Leila\'s fault…" This time it was Chihiro\'s turn to put on a complex expression on his face. "She still did abandon us."

All of a sudden, the mood took a turn for the worse, even if it was by no means bright already.

"Even if it was never her fault for leaving us," Chihiro shook his head while taking on a somber look on his face, "it doesn\'t make it any easier for us to figure out how to feel about seeing her again."