Chapter 341 - Truths and Lies (XXVII)
Chapter 341
Truths and Lies (XXVII)
She took charge and led us to the city's outskirts, its northernmost end and beyond, where plains extended into a distant haze. The lake's water had calmed down, with the soft glimmer of the rising moonlight bouncing against its surface.
She stopped, at last, once we came upon a rather inconspicuous stone, shaped oddly and unnaturally.
"This is where I buried my son," she said rather suddenly.
"Ah, I'm sorry."
"Life being cruel is one undeniable truth I've known all my life. In the endless pursuit of dreams, we find ourselves staggering through an ever-rising sea of corpses. White sparrows of light turn crimson and dark, the flap of the wings akin to a banshee scream." Uhm... w-what? "I have only killed one person in my life." She turned toward me, her expression somewhat complex. "The one who took my son away from me. I've killed her over the course of eight days, starting with peeling her fingernails off one by one, shaving off her eyelids, digging out her vestigial organs, ripping up her meridians, and breaking her bones, one by one. By the third day, she was begging me, with all she had, to kill her.
"She was wallowing and apologizing, her spittle of blood shamelessly wetting the dirt beneath her. I then cut off her tongue, as I felt my heart wavering. I've not known peace within for so long that I'd forgotten what it felt like to live that way, not until the day you gave me that art."
"..."
"Today, I have decided to end my oath."
"Uhm... w-what do you mean?"
"I've killed all those who've run off to report on you," she said. "And force-fed everyone else memory-altering herbs. Come dawn, nobody will remember what happened here--there will only stand a city in ruins, drenched in blood."
"..." Hmm. Alright. I'm officially considering pissing myself for the first time since coming to this world.
"I've always thought myself above it all," she continued. "That my aversion to killing, somehow, made me better than everybody else. I'd thought that way for so long that it was carved into my bones. Something will become apparent to you as you wander the world: mortals accepting death and their finite existence come to be far wiser than us, who spend hundreds, if not thousands, of years feeding our own egos and running away from death. Today, for the first time in my life, I've realized my folly; your art made me see the light, and, for the first time in over half a century... I made progress in my cultivation. There's hope, yet, for me of reaching Nirvana."
"..."
"Here," she procured something from seemingly nowhere--a tome. "A few notes on cooking. That brat--no... that thing you call a disciple has been begging me to teach him some tricks. Ah, but he did ask me not to tell you. All your Disciples... no, perhaps the reason they are that way is precisely you."
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"W-why, why are you telling me this, if you don't mind me asking?" I said, taking the tome and stuffing it away.
"... consider it an old woman meddling," she said, smiling. "And expressing her gratitude. There's a secret realm opening in just over a year's time," she added. "You should come," she procured yet another item, a rather familiar-looking token, tossing it over. "Though your Disciples are talented, they are lagging behind the true chosen of the Holy Lands. Even if I very much doubt those mountain hermits are doing it out of good intentions, the fact that they've invited all the Holy Lands means at least they won't do anything openly. Head north along the lake's shore, and then east. The border between this region and Imperial Jade Province is the Heavenly Void Range; you can cross it by simply following the lake's shore eastward. On the other side is Spirit Vein City, where you can use the first teleportation array to reach the Jade Blossom City.
"There, you can take the second teleportation array to the Eternal Mountain."
"... thank you." I didn't reject the token, even if I already had one. "But, uhm... w-what exactly is the Eternal Mountain?"
"I can't very well tell you everything," she smiled rather wryly, looking away toward the distant horizon. "Just that it's a place where even someone like the city lord would have barely qualified for a disciple." Oh.
... maybe it's best we don't fucking go, then?!
"Your Disciples belong there," she said as though reading my mind. "And they are more than qualified. Besides, don't you have one of the most talented alchemists of the Tower with you? You should go. They're waiting for you."
"Thank you," I bowed toward her deeply; I am terrified of this woman, but she did us such a monumental favor that I honestly don't know how I'll ever repay it. "For everything."
"Good luck," she said. "Let us meet again if fate permits it."
I spun around and left, though I did catch the glimpse of her figure simply vanishing into thin air like smoke.
It was only then that I let myself begin to sweat; the way she talked about it all so casually... was terrifying. Just how many people has she killed? How many memories has she 'altered'? There were tens of thousands of people in the city--even if a couple of thousand had died, comparatively...
Wow.
Let's not think about it.
Let's just consider it a fairy's blessing, and never, ever think about it.
By the time I came back, everyone was already waiting, ready to go.
"Where were you, Master?" Dai Xiu was the first to ask.
"Just took a walk," I said. "Everybody ready?"
"Right, a walk." Nobody seemed to believe me, but... well, they'd believe me even less if I told them the truth.
"Okay, let's go north."
--the most depressing part was that we had to walk. Though I scavenged some Spirit Stones, I couldn't find spatial rings on either the Sage or his kid. 'Their' tower was demolished during the battle, and though I did dig a bit through the ruins, I found... nothing. As though all their possessions had gone away with the two of them dying.
A neat trick--insanely annoying--but neat.
As such, I had nowhere near enough Spirit Stones to use the chariot--hell, I didn't have enough stones to give to kids for cultivation.
"My second uncle once mentioned a place," Long Tao's voice broke the silence as we left the city's outskirts, passing by a grave--nope, it was now gone. Did I hallucinate the damn thing?! "Hidden in the mountains that cleaved the world. He said that there was once a Spirit Mine there, but a fight between immortals caused it to cave in. But my second uncle's third cousin survived and managed to run away, leaving records of how to get to the mine in his diary."
"..."
Wow.
Who would have thought silence could be so fucking loud?
END OF VOLUME IV