Ascension is a Terrible Goal!
Cai Delan had finally cleared a portion of his schedule, allowing himself this small luxury with a sigh of relief as he entered this secluded cave on the mountain, he'd been here many times before. As evidenced by the many long cuts carved into the far wall and the well worn path to the his meditation rock.
With the grace of someone who'd stumbled through the dark cave enough times to know everything about the path in front of him he sat down on his favorite large rock and began to speak to nobody.
"Why does everyone talk about Ascension?" He himself asked aloud, "They have to know they won't actually achieve it, nobody has." He kicked a pebble and listened to its echo when it struck the back of the cave as a sigh of satisfaction.
"Are they delusional?" He wondered aloud, "Is one's cultivation improved if you set yourself against an impossible goal? If the Sage Kings themselves haven't ascended then it seems plainly obvious that none of us will ever even come close."
And yet everyone still said it, 'We shall defy the heavens.' They said, like any of them would even reach even five proper steps up the ladder, even the most talented of them would likely reach the Realm of Core Lord and then stop.
There seemingly just weren't enough resources to sustain more than perhaps two Barons and expanding further was… well he didn't actually know the details but he assumed it would be incredibly difficult.
Perhaps it was a fear of death? A delusion of the self that one could escape mortality if they simply trained hard enough.
If so it should have been thoroughly disproven by the event that had robbed the sect of their Baron, his heir, half of the elders, and extracted the same price from almost every other Barony in the area.
Cai Delan held no illusions about his chances, if he was exceedingly lucky he might reach Core Lord but beyond that? There was no doubt he would fail to progress further and eventually die. Probably in battle considering his most recent performance in combat with another cultivator.
Ascension, he concluded, was truly a terrible goal, utterly impossible for anyone not the disciple of The Emperor Himself.
Why then, he asked himself, did he still want to try for it?
Sorry for how short this is, I just kinda had to get it out of my head.