Chapter 131

  Echoes (VII)

  "What is your biggest fear, Master?" His question stunned me into silence for a little bit, as it was entirely unexpected.

  "My... biggest fear?"

  "Hm," he nodded. "Mine is darkness."

  "Darkness?"

  "Chained in a room with no light or sound," he said. "Sustained invisibly. Lips sewn shut. Yet the mind is free to wander in its own sludge of insanity and do so for all eternity."

  That doesn't sound so much like fear as it does like something he'd already lived through once. Seeing as he was strangely honest with me, though, I decided to repay the favor.

  "Honestly?" I closed my eyes for a moment. "I'm afraid of dying."

  "... dying?"

  "Hm. I'm not afraid of death." I opened them and met his gaze. "All that which lived inevitably dies. Death is just an opposite state of life, and one I will be entirely unaware of. Like falling asleep... and simply never waking up. Dying, though, is different. I'd cling to life, but I'd also feel the breath of life escaping me. Dying painfully, over a long period of time, I'd... seen it. And I'd sooner take a dagger through my throat than ever live it. Why are you suddenly asking about my fears?"

  "... I'm curious," he said. "The more I pick up on your philosophy of life, the less I know what to make of you. You are indeed odd, Master. An anomaly in a world that is painfully predictable."

  "... why are we here, Long Tao?" I braved it and asked. "Precisely why."

  "To train the kids."

  "... eh?"

  "You were right; there are no treasures buried in that ruin, no more than there are hiding in the trunks of the nearby trees. But there is something buried within, though I was wrong in my first estimate." Yeah, just stop talking like a teenage kid. I mean, I know we're both deeply aware that the other is hiding something, but at least put in some goddamn effort...

  "What about?"

  "The purpose of the barrier isn't to take in blood to reawaken something," he said. "But rather to save it. My, uh, my mother mentioned it to me once and showed me the runes of the array--it's called the Life-Bonding Array." Yeah, sure, your mother. Haah, at least he's still keeping up with that. "It has three parts--the outer layer that takes in any kind of life energy, however miniscule; the middle part, which purifies it so that it has no blemishes; and the central part, which arranges the energy in a particular manner, giving breath, literally, to whatever is in there.

  "This is why it's taking so long and why it'll probably be much longer than I expected," he said. "In fact, I'm fairly certain even if they culled this entire region of both mortals and cultivators, they still wouldn't be able to gather up enough life energy to break down the outermost layer."

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  ... Hey, isn't that bad? Doesn't that mean they're now, literally, just committing murder for fun? I mean, they were already monstrous about it, but at least they had an 'excuse', a 'reason'. Without it, they're just sociopaths indulging their wants.

  "I can get us in," he said. "Just you and me, however."

  "Why?"

  "Because in case you go berserk, I can cont--help you with a method my father taught me. But it only works on one person at a time."

  This guy.

  He wanted to say 'contain', didn't he? Does that mean that I'm the only one he could contain in case we go berserk? Oi, isn't that just abundantly pathetic? No, seriously, I have to start aggressively cultivating, even if the yields are minimal. It's one thing to be weak; it's another to be a Master whose disciples are so much stronger than him that we belong in different stratospheres.

  "Why do you even want to go in?" I asked. "If it's true, and your mother told you correctly, whatever's in there is barely alive. You said it yourself--there are no treasures, no artifacts, just uncertainty."

  "Curiosity?"

  "..." Should I buy into it?

  Honestly, looking just a tad more deeply into it... I imagine whatever's inside is something he left behind. Or, at least, somebody he knew back in the day. Long Tao, who is usually entirely apathetic to everything going on around us, has seemed quite attached to this place from the moment bandits told us about it.

  Maybe he knew back then what it was and simply spat a story in my face to make me come here, though it's irrelevant; whatever, or whoever, is inside... they matter to him. Why? How? I don't know.

  But the fact that he wants to take me in with him... I'm not sure about that. I don't want to overhear something that I won't be able to pretend I don't know about in the future. Our dynamic works because we're such great actors, but if that barrier breaks, we won't be able to go back to it.

  It's sort of like friendships when one person catches feelings and confesses them--now that it's out there, it's always out there. It becomes like this virus that can never be gotten rid of. The recipient starts pulling back from fear of leading the other person on, and the other person starts pulling back, not wanting the recipient to think there are still feelings there.

  At the heart of it, it's one of those things that cannot be ignored.

  "Maybe you should go by yourself," I said. "I don't know a cloaking art, so I might get us both caught."

  "... are you certain?" he asked, arching his brows in puzzlement. "We may learn some amazing things in there."

  "I'm happy with my ignorance... for now."

  "Hm," he hummed, his lips curling up into a faint smile as he stood up, his frame beginning to almost 'fade' into the surroundings of the tent. "Odd, indeed," he said, his voice fading as well. "I will be back quickly."

  Silence was sudden but welcome.

  I exhaled a rather rancid breath I've been holding in; was it stupid to reject learning more about the world of not just today, but possibly 10,000 years ago? To peek into the deeper machinations behind everything?

  Of course it's stupid.

  I aggressively recognize I'm being a moron--Long Tao has practically all but sworn that he'd protect me and that he had the means to do it. By now, we were both acutely aware of each other's... abnormalities, to some degree at least.

  But this was an issue--I'm a newbie, for all intents and purposes. I know nothing about the world, and less than that about cultivation itself, and somehow even less than that about the history of all this. It'd sort of be like diving straight into superstring theory and skipping all the prerequisites--like learning the freakin' language. Yes, that's how badly I feel out of place.

  And I fear, if I let him drag me into the advanced portions of knowledge, I'd find myself... drowning. That's because I know myself--very well, at that. I know my shortcomings better than anyone, my flaws, and my vices.

  If I'm anxious now, dabbling around the vast edges of the world of immortality, how incoherently rambling would I become if I learned about some cosmic conspiracy that I will have to face one day? Because, I know without a shadow of a doubt in my heart, so long (heh) as Long Tao is with me, I am heading straight for that epicenter.

  Still... I'd like to keep my 'innocence', as it were, just a touch longer. Experience the bliss of magic without the lurking anchor and the weight of knowledge I have no means of doing anything about.

  Whatever it is, though, for his sake... I hope he's mistaken, and that whatever's inside has absolutely nothing to do with him.

  Nothing at all.