Investing in the Reborn Empress, She Actually Calls Me ‘Husband’投资重生女帝，她竟叫我相公

Endure I will, so long as I am able.

How can you know if history is eternal if you're not there to check it? Your legacy might endure... Perhaps for long, inconceivably long. But it is highly unlikely to be eternal.

The best you can hope is what your legacy shall bestow on those who bear it. It might not be forever, but it will do enough. Even if it falls short, you've done what you could.

Until we step on the other side.
Though, don't blame me.
I am curious of this side, and likely won't let go for so long as I am able.

Spoken, I have not — of borders or limits.
Defined, I have not — what entails "natural death".

Stages of immortality, by yours truly

First Stage:

Let's start with the easy case: the frozen river. An "immortal" who experiences no progress or change through the ages. One day shall blend into the next, nothing new, everything boring... Would perhaps... a nap be a good idea?

Second Stage:

You want to avoid blending into nature, in a forgotten to all timeline. The fate of the frozen immortal is not for you. You shall take initiative.

Enter the chess-board assumption: reality is in some ways finite.

You have found all there is to reality's nature: more concretely, you've found everything you could, and you're no longer having any meaningful progress, only more questions. Persist, yet there doesn't seem to be anything fascinating, just a couple more curiosities and knick-knacks here and there.

You play through the game the hundredth time, you have gone through all standard scenarios... Perhaps you should try something new? Something you would have never dared to try before? Just admit it, you're bored.

Perhaps, reincarnate? Let go before you become that which you despise — the frozen immortal.

But reincarnation is no natural death. Congratulations: in death, you know not what awaits ahead, but in reincarnation, you've set yourself up in a cycle. An unbroken cycle in a finite reality becomes stillness. A disguised form of the frozen immortal's fate.

Third Stage:

You know the failings of the first two stages... perhaps, you've been there, done that. You are past the point where a "black hole" could end you... past the time you had to worry about heat death, or other silly things like that. But you didn't forget yourself, you have a goal.

You will take what it takes to break outside this universe and have more interesting knick-knacks to play with. You're bored. But you're patient. Someday, there will be an opening and you will take it.

Interesting scenario that aligns: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVN_5xsMDdg]

The question is, is there an ascension path or are your hopes wasted? Being perpetually patient, is a form of stillness, after all. Or perhaps, you fail along the way, and meet death naturally.

Ultimately, we are discussing here the high-end stages of immortality.

Before you even enter the first stage, you at least have the capacity to live through any challenges that reality might throw at you: otherwise, you're just a long-lived mortal at best.

Long-lived ones might encounter the challenges above in some form, but not truly living up to what I attempt to describe.

Then comes the question: what is immortality? Is the "you" many years later still you? Will you eventually forget who you were... why are you here? Perhaps you will not. It will be achieved in a distant memory you labelled: "Once upon a time, when I was human." — will anything about life and death still hold true when you transcend?

Perhaps, once seen from above, you will suddenly understand that reality is a farce. What it matters, dead or alive? All the same. You will always be and not be. Time was never linear in any way you could've conceived. Nothing you've done or not done ever mattered, there was always a timeline that went different. Perhaps, you will one day arrive at the borders of what you call home, and realize it's a cage, has always been, and will be.

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Death is the discontinuity of life.
Life what you experience in the present.

In stillness, the present blends into the past and the future.
It dilutes until you're not present.

In natural death, your vessel breaks down.
There go your memories; there goes everything that made you, you.

It can't be said how likely it is that anything of you will remain to continue the journey.
If there's no longer a you, death is, in a way, final: "forever" confined to a finite segment in time.
If you're still there, death is not death, just the next leg on your journey.

Believe or believe not.
You don't know.
And that is what scares you.
To ward it off, you hope.

I hope you hope not in vain.