Chapter 75 – Purifying Light
The group gets back on the eelhounds and sets off again, there’s only another 2 days until their estimated arrival time in Omashu. Aang enters the lotus position to go into the Spirit Realm while on Appa, then he looks at Katara. “Want to come with me?”
Katara is about to say ok, but Nuwa shoots down their plans, “The lion turtle is pretty shy. I think he’ll only want to meet Aang.” Katara humphs and sits back down grumbling about how she never gets to go anywhere or do anything fun ever since she became pregnant.
Aang smiles at Katara apologetically before closing his eyes and focusing on his connection to the Spirit Realm. He feels a familiar sucking sensation and reappears in a grassy knoll. There are strange stones arranged in a manner similar to stonehenge, but when he looks closer, he realizes that it’s the gate of a city.
Entering through the stone gateway, Aang feels increasingly unnerved by how deserted the city is. The buildings are almost unrecognizable since they are overgrown by various foliage. As Aang continues deeper, he tries to figure out what is making him unnerved. Then he realizes! There’s not a single animal in sight!
In the Spirit Realm, strange and interesting flora and fauna are everywhere. Even when they manifested Raava in as deserted a place as they could find, there were non-sentient spirit animals watching them in the vicinity.
Here, there were none! It was as if this city was cursed! Aang shudders and leaves the city area as quickly as he can. He continues walking and reaches the edge of the landmass that he arrives upon. Looking down, he can see waves crashing against the shores. He is about to leave until he sees an image of Avatar Roku standing on a rock near the shore looking back at him.
Aang jumps in surprise and slight joy. This is the first time that Roku, his immediate predecessor, has reached out to him, since he met Nuwa. It also greatly helps calm his nerves by seeing another person here, even if that person is a spiritual projection. Aang jumps off the cliff and uses his airbending and waterbending to stabilize himself before reaching the large rock that Roku stands on.
“Hey Avatar Roku! How’s it hanging?”
“Err.. Aang, show some propriety in front of the revered Lion Turtle. He’s the last of his kind.”
“Huh?” Aang looks at where Roku is pointing to see that the small cliff he was standing on earlier was actually the nose of a titanic beast! Higher up on the cliff, eyes that are 10m in height opened to look at Aang.
It’s a good thing that Aang is the Avatar and he can sense from Raava the deep respect and veneration she holds for the Lion Turtle, otherwise he would be bugging out. Aang quickly bows with a cupped fist, “It is an honor to meet you Great Lion Turtle.”
As the lion turtle rouses from its slumber, Aang feels the spiritual suppression in the surroundings ratchet up. He feels as if his chakras have been mired in slime his entire life and that slime is currently being burned away. However, there is no burning sensation. There’s no feeling of heat at all. There is only an overwhelming feeling of purification. Aang hardly gets a chance to speak before he hears the Lion Turtle begin.
“Outsiders, you have contact with, young Avatar. Darkness sways your heart. Seek the Will to be true to Oneself.”
“The true mind can weather all the lies and illusions without being lost; the true heart can tough the poison of hatred without being harmed; since beginningless time, darkness thrives in the void, but always yields to purifying light.”
“In the Era before the Avatar, we bend Not the elements. But the energy within ourselves. To bend another's energy, your own spirit must be unbendable, or you.. will be corrupted and destroyed.”
The Lion Turtle slowly places two gigantic fingers from its claws on Aang’s Third Eye and Heart chakras as it transmits the method of energybending into Aang’s mind. Chakra Manipulation is a spiritually taxing skill and a type of energybending that requires absolute focus and partially merges one’s chakras with another in order to bend the other’s chakras.
Just as the Lion Turtle says, if Aang’s spirit is not steadfast, then attempting Chakra Manipulation on Ozai could lead to absorbing part of Ozai’s personality through the chakra merger. However, this is a worst case scenario that fate itself will actively prevent. Aang will instinctively know if he’s up to the task or not when the moment comes.
The true use that ancient humans had for energybending was to bend one's own chakras. Nuwa would clearly recognize these ancient human energybenders on sight as cultivators! They would be weak cultivators, but even weak cultivators can overpower elemental benders. It remains a mystery to this day why there are only elemental benders and no modern energybenders.
Aang opens his eyes and the entire island in front of him is gone. He’s on a different rock looking out into the ocean. Behind him is a beach from which he can hear the sounds of shallow waves rolling into the shore.
Aang sits down and tries to comprehend the wisdom imparted on him by the Lion Turtle. “Raava, what did the Lion Turtle mean by Outsiders?”
Raava replies, “The souls of both Nuwa and Dan were not born of this World. For us Spirits, it is easy to tell they are visitors that mean no harm. Despite this, the Lion Turtle disapproves of you spending too much time with them because you may slowly lose touch with the world you are tasked to oversee if you immerse yourself too much in the culture of the Outsiders. *cough* Too much sex.”
Aang suddenly feels embarrassed that the Lion Turtle knows so much about his proclivities, and he’s also slightly stunned that Nuwa and Dan aren’t from this world originally. Then again, they do give him a feeling of being culturally disconnected. Shrugging, he continues onward to analyze the next line.
“By Darkness swaying my Heart, does he mean that I have too much sex again?”
Raava replies, “No, Aang. He means that despite you being a symbol of Light, you subconsciously acquiesce to some of the Dark methods Nuwa uses to accomplish her goals.”
“You are against killing personally, but you allow Nuwa to do so and order others to do so. If you want to follow the path of Light, then you must be true to your Heart in all things, without making exceptions for your friends. Being true to your Heart will then make your spirit unbendable.”
Aang gasps and hardens his face to a grimace, “I see. I was too wishy-washy. How naive of me.. thinking that as long as I alone follow nonviolence, the world will somehow change. I have to proactively convince the people around me and society that my Air Nomad way is right! Haaah, life for an Avatar sure is tougher than I bargained for.”
“Wait a second, Roku said that was the last Lion Turtle. It uses fire and Nuwa told me the story of Avatar Wan. That must have been the same lion turtle that punished Wan into exile, putting him on the path of becoming the Avatar! That city.. was Wan’s hometown from 10,000 years ago!”
Raava sighs and says, “You’re right, Aang. Ever since the humans and the Spirits went to war during the time of Avatar Wan, humans no longer made their homes atop Lion Turtles, fearing the same guardians that had protected them from dangerous Spirits for eons. In a short 20 years, all the lion turtles save for one were hunted down by the humans.”
“Fearing that the worst would come to pass, Wan used my power to overpower both sides in the war and after a forced migration, sealed the Spirit Realm from the Mortal Realm. Now Spirits and humans rarely interact.”
Listening to Raava’s words closely, Aang is stunned by the historical significance of the matter that came to pass and power. His own past life, Wan, had stopped two entire armies in their tracks and did something incredible like seal off the Spirit Realm!
It is also a sobering lesson on the brutality of humans. Now Aang knows why the city is deserted. The last Lion Turtle doesn’t let anything but plants live on his body because of its mistrust of animals and humans! The only reason he talks to Aang is because of Raava and the inherent goodness in Aang’s spirit. He would never have taught energybending to Avatar Kyoshi, who had killed others all throughout her life.
Aang pulls himself back to the Mortal Realm and wakes up his body. Katara looks at him with worry and asks, “How are you feeling, sweetie? Did you find the Lion Turtle?”
Nodding, Aang pulls himself up and gives her a kiss. Then he tells the group on Appa the story of what happened while leaving the lines the Lion Turtle gave him deliberately vague. He didn’t want to tell everyone that he found out Nuwa and Dan are Outsiders or explain to them his moral quandaries.
Nuwa, of course, senses something off about his explanations and feels like the Lion Turtle probably said something about her indirectly. She’s curious, but she doesn’t pry.
Aang turns to Nuwa and asks her if they could talk privately with Katara in the Spirit Realm. Nuwa nods and all three enter the Spirit Realm while touching so they don’t get separated. They arrive at Xai Bau’s grove, a normal meetup spot that Nuwa likes to use.
Aang looks at Nuwa with a serious face and says, “I don’t want you to kill or order killings anymore or else we can’t be friends!” Katara gasps. She also knows about the shady business that Nuwa does, and couldn’t imagine herself doing it, but she tolerates it. However, there’s no way she would stake their friendship on it!
Nuwa looks at Aang with interest and slight amusement at Aang asserting himself. [Acting] produces an expressionless mask on her face as she crosses her arms and asks, “Why? What’s your alternative for evil people who only harm society?”
Aang states, “They should be stopped, but killing them is wrong!”
Katara starts sweating as she sees Aang retort back to Nuwa. ‘You idiot! Nuwa is way smarter than you! You think she doesn’t know that?’
Nuwa returns a slight frown and shakes her head as she explains, “Taking all of them prisoner is too resource-intensive. We wouldn’t have a safe amount of manpower for the invasion force. It would also complicate the assassination missions if we were to instead capture them without anyone noticing.”
“Moreover, the chances of traitors and intelligence leaks increase exponentially if we are seen as ‘soft’ on our enemies. We might even end up facing a fully prepared Fire Nation after the eclipse event ends if our movements are exposed.”
Aang hardens his gaze and says, “None of that matters if we abandon our principles on the first step.”
A few moments pass as Aang and Nuwa share a silent staredown. Nuwa raises her spiritual pressure on both of them. Katara holds Aang’s hand tightly and supports him by glaring at Nuwa. Aang raises his own spiritual pressure enough to defend Katara from the pressure by tapping into his connection to Raava, but without going Avatar mode.
Nuwa gives a wry smile and backs off first by saying, “We can’t just agree to disagree on this one?”
Aang shakes his head resolutely. Nuwa uncrosses her arms and says “Fine, fine. We’ll put them in prisons.” as she raises her hands to the sky in a casual surrender gesture.
In reality, Nuwa always had a soft spot for hopelessly naive protagonists, so she was prepared for this situation ever since she started killing people. Nuwa believed it was definitely for the best that they were allowed to kill people until their manpower expanded enough to cover the potential losses involved in reallocating manpower though.
Basically, she’s agreeing to do extra work just to spoil her cute little Aang as much as she can. And obviously, Aang and Katara did not expect Nuwa to relent so easily on a path she had chosen based on her clear-cut logic, as evidenced by their stumble as the spiritual pressure abruptly disappeared and their dumbfounded gazes.
Nuwa chuckles and says, “What? Did you think I am some sort of ruthless queen that always has to be in control and do everything with full efficiency? Where’s the fun in that?”
Meanwhile, she thinks, ‘Fuck, that actually sounds like it’ll be fun. I gotta try it in another life. Aang can’t know.’
Continuing, she says, “It’s no big deal to take prisoners. We’ll manage. I’ll expect you to put in extra hard work in your Avatar duties though!”
Aang and Katara put on big smiles and cheer, “Woohoo!”
Nuwa smiles and exits the Spirit Realm. She finds it hard to explain how she’s feeling currently. She stopped killing for Aang and Katara’s sake, which implies that she herself has no solid moral viewpoints for or against the matter. Although she senses that it’s not good in the long run for a Daoist to not hold absolute moral beliefs, she likes the feeling of flexibility that her moral relativism allows her.
It helps her to feel free and gives her a license card to do whatever the hell she wants, which is exactly what she always imagined doing when she goes to new worlds. There’s some things that a woman like her needs to experience at least once, even if it would strain her relationships slightly.
Fucking her parents would be one example. She doesn’t want to have sex with her parents in this world, because she finds the Peas to be super fluffy and cute, but she definitely wants to in a later world. Nuwa has incestual fantasies to itch!
Maybe, after she calms down from world travel and finally gets bored after doing everything under the sun, then she can decide on an absolute set of morals to believe in. Now that she thinks of it, wouldn’t it make sense to experience something herself first in order to know whether it’s right or wrong? When she was in school in her first life, they taught her about making her own decisions and not taking second-hand sources of information at face value.
She won’t try genocide, for example, because it sounds incredibly distasteful and would probably fuck her fate over, but assassinations sound like loads of fun. And Nuwa didn’t mean just ordering them to happen. She wants to try them! Especially assassination through sex. It’s a good thing she didn’t wear panties or they would be thoroughly wet right now. The mere thought of going on a hunt with her cunt turned her on like no other.
(A/N: Anyone else feeling Nuwa’s super casual attitude right now?)