The Circle Of The Qur'an #2[The Arkaan Series|Book One]

14 |The Marabout's 1000 Profound Steps.[Land Of Death]

"From the greatest of voluntary acts through which Allah's Love is earned, is reciting and pondering upon Qur'ān." - Ibn Rajab

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AsSalaamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh, treasured readers! :D I hope you're all doing well.

Recently I've been drowning myself in reading more than writing, laziness and procrastination-and there's these vacation online classes too, that's why I've not uploaded in a while. I'm very very sorry. When I saw the interest and love people had for the story and the requests to update, I was riled up and couldn't help but complete a chapter today.

(NB: Majority of today was just spent writing, I'm yet to even eat:'( but I am kinda glad I completed it, Alhamdulillah.)

Without much ado, let's dive into the world of Arkaan and the Five Quraa' and adventure with them in the land of Voices that evoke contemplation!:)))))))

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Abdul Bâqi quickly climbed up the steps, one after the other. However, no matter how much he moved, the gap between he and the others only remained the same, if not increased. His opponents on the paths were moving up quickly, as the time neared to the completion of the 1000 Steps Quest. This was the last third of the race to complete the quest, and the final Incense stick was already burning itself down.

Prince Reyaz was keeping a steady lead, and as long as the others had to stop momentarily at each archway to decipher inscriptions and write down ãyaat, there was no way anyone was going to surpass him now. It seemed he'd take the lead till the end of the quest.

It seemed all the possible occurrences had already occurred, and all the possible results of the quest could now already be forseen and calculated.

However, that was until Abdul Bâqi reached the 70th archway.

The vibrant voice of the Doyen Sheikh Tariq rang through the crowds,"It's time for the Sheikhs to ascend and check their answers."

At this, a hubbub of noise arose, even as six Sheikhs from down below took to the six archway paths the five Mureeds and the Sayyid chosen in the beginning to traverse.

The sounds were boisterous!

"What!? So soon!"

"Someone is clearly going to fail now! There's no way that Al Aswâdi can miraculously flip over the results of the quest now and make an unforseen comeback!

Even if he solves all five inscriptions at each archway, the most he can reach is the 100th archway before time is up for this official quest! That means a total of 500 ãyaat at most..!

There's no way he'd win with just that much." Someone said amidst the crowd of students.

"Elder brother, it was obvious from the start that he was going to fail; he has no prior knowledge reserves like his opponents after all." A fellow added,"Have you forgotten that he even moved up several of the archways without waiting to write a single thing down?!"

Another submitted,"Moreover, he spent more time at particular archways.

It's obvious that, he had probably found difficulty solving the inscriptions on certain archways, and thus, had to leave them quickly for easier ones. When he had later noticed the accumulating number of archways left behind with blank parchments, he was then forced to spend more time at the others, just to come up with ãyaat to make up!"

The students around nodded, as they turned to one another, murmuring in agreement.

The speaker, seeing his influence over the dense crowd of students about him, continued,"My guess is that, even if he reaches the 100th archway by the time all this is over, he wouldn't even score the 500th ãyaat mark!!"