The Blindfolded Emperor: I Only Wanted a Quiet Life

Chapter 6 The Deepest Abyss

Jasper read the runes on the Mind Incense Runes carefully before using them, and as he did, something he remembered from earlier made him pause. The system had said he awakened his mind sea, so he opened his dashboard to check his status again.

The Blindless Sovereign System 

Host: Jasper Stonehart

Rank: Mortal Phase

Realm: None

Mind Sea Realm: None  

Techniques: None

Weird. The system said it awakened his mind sea, but the dashboard showed none. Jasper stared at the screen for a while before letting out a sigh, because it would have been better if he could see his mind sea the way the story described it.

He tapped the mind sea icon on the screen. Everything around him changed. He found himself standing in a vast and empty void of nothingness, and below him stretched a black ocean of water. Jasper was stunned by what he was seeing and realized immediately what it was. He was at the outer boundary of his body, and below him was his mind sea—but the sea was black and devoid of any light.

Jasper was still lost in his surroundings when he thought about the mind sea. If he was correct, below this water would lead to his chaos world, the world every cultivator tried to create inside their body. As he looked down he wondered why there was no light in his ocean, which was strange because at birth was when you awakened your mind sea.

Just then Jasper realized something, and as he did, the water rippled as a small light began to shine in the not-so-deep water. Jasper was a transmigrator, meaning when the original owner of this body died, his mind sea collapsed. But when Jasper entered the body, the system helped him restore his mind sea, yet still, with his experience on Earth, he should at least have a few stars and be at the first realm of mind sea.

Before he could think of how to leave, his surroundings changed back. He sighed and looked at the Mind Incense Runes, then tapped the use button on the screen for the item. As he did, a warning sign appeared.

Host is about to open his mind and will feel a lot.

Jasper placed the bone-white incense tablet on the stone floor in front of him. The moment he ignited it, the Mind Incense Rune bled an ash-colored, bitter smoke that pooled around his knees before creeping upward toward his face. It was not gentle. The cold, icy smog hit his nostrils and rushed straight into his head like liquid frost, tearing through his mind with violent force. Every stray thought, every lingering memory, every flicker of human emotion was stripped away, frozen mid-air, and shattered into dust until the noise of consciousness fell completely dead.

Inside his chaos world, the sky above his barren lower realm was supposed to be a sky, but Jasper was a transmigrator who carried the weight of two entire lives—two worlds of experience, suffering, and perception. Because of that vast, unspent mental weight, his sky did not contain clouds or stars. It was a massive, infinite void of sheer nothingness waiting for a container.

The bitter ash-smoke seeped through the barrier of his mind and poured directly into that endless black space.

Ancient cultivators believed thought was the ultimate impurity; the ancient truth of the rune echoed through his fading human ego. Not flesh, emotion, and thought itself.

The void in the sky trembled. Because Jasper was not a child born into this world with a single lifetime of simple thoughts, the sheer volume of his accumulated existence was immense. The moment the incense stripped away the clutter of human noise, all that vast, accumulated mental mass collapsed under its own weight.

It did not form a trickle of water. It did not form a tiny pool. With a deafening, silent impact, an entire endless black ocean manifested across the heavens of his chaos world.

Normally, a cultivator awakening the Still Water Realm begins at the Shallow Stage, learning to quiet the mind step by step while struggling to keep their focus from shaking under pressure. But Jasper’s mind did not just quiet down.

Under the violent washing of the Mind Incense Rune and the sheer depth of two lived lives, his mental surface froze into absolute, unshakeable glass.

There were no ripples, no waves, and no hesitation. The black ocean suspended in his sky was so completely still that it reflected the infinite darkness with terrifying precision.

Panic? Foreign. Doubt? Cut away before it could form. He had skipped the shallow edge entirely. The sheer scale of his transmigrated soul and the cold, unyielding clarity of the rune had anchored him directly into the deepest abyss of the realm.

The Mind Sea had awakened.

Still Water Realm — Deep Stage.

The cold, ash-colored smog of the Mind Incense Rune still lingered in the air, swirling around Jasper in silent currents as he slowly opened his eyes. The chamber was silent, yet everything felt different. Jasper could feel it immediately—lightness. Not in his body, but in his mind.

The noise was gone. The endless stream of fear, anger, regret, and panic that had constantly clawed at the back of his thoughts had disappeared like mud sinking beneath clear water. Everything was still.

For the first time since transmigrating into this world, Jasper felt truly awake. He lowered his gaze slowly to his open palms as the memories of his previous life surfaced naturally. Bright lights. Screaming fans. Cameras. The bitter taste of alcohol. The cold, motionless face of the woman he loved lying on the floor.

“You killed her, Jasper! You ruined everything!”

The voices of the crowd, the flashing news cameras, the absolute, soul-crushing betrayal. He could still see his closest friend’s sneering smile right before driving a blade into his chest. Before today those memories had felt like a suffocating weight, a burning fire in his lungs that made every breath a struggle. Now they felt distant. Small. Almost childish. Not because they did not matter, but because he finally understood something profound.

I was a fool, Jasper thought, his gaze unblinking. The old me lived entirely at the mercy of emotion.

Praise had controlled him. Fear had controlled him. Love and hatred had driven him to ruin. His mind had been a stormy ocean, violently churning at every stone thrown into its depths.

“Look at you,” a cold whisper echoed inside his own head, born from the fading ash-smoke of the rune. “Does the memory of betrayal still burn?”

Jasper did not answer with words, and he did not react with rage. In the black glass ocean of his newly birthed Mind Sea, the thought did not even cause a single ripple.

“No,” Jasper’s mind answered in absolute, chilling stillness. *“A sword trembling in every direction can never cut anything cleanly.”

He slowly exhaled, and suddenly his eyes widened slightly. The Silent River Breathing Method—the technique he had failed to cultivate over and over again. He remembered the worn parchment and the ancient ink written within the manual: “The river does not resist. The river does not chase. It flows because flowing is its nature.”

Before, those words had sounded like meaningless poetry. Now he understood.

The technique had never been about breathing, Jasper realized, a small, cold smile touching his lips. It was about stillness.

He took a deep breath, and this time, as he drew air into his lungs, the chaos energy in the stone chamber did not thrash or resist. Guided by a mind that had reached the Deep Stage of Still Water, the raw energy around him folded like silk as it flowed smoothly down his throat, sliding effortlessly into his dantian and tracing the vessels of his body with absolute, flawless precision. No waste or turbulence. Pure, undisturbed absorption.

Outside, the bitter smoke of the incense tablet burned down to its last ember. Inside, Jasper sat like a statue carved of ice, completely detached from the ghost of his past and finally ready to build a world.