Chapter 103: Solar Eclipse (2)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 103: Solar Eclipse (2)
Heukbi’s Heaven-Defying Realm.
If a concept has no opposite, nothing happens. But if a clear point of symmetry exists, it is reversed.
Attacks, personalities, everything.
All by way of the densely packed mirrors.
The same applied to the properties of mystical mediums like mana. If one used divine power, it would be converted into demonic energy.
The proof was the Fox Orb. The red orb, specially crafted by Yuhwa, appeared green on the other side of the mirror.
It was a subtle hint for the gumiho.
After all, she could handle properties that were polar opposites. If she succeeded, escaping this place would be a trivial matter.
It was well worth a try.
“Hey, you said you wanted to save our master, right? Then you need to sync up with me.”
To do that, Rin’s help was indispensable.
Unlike the other mirror worlds, the one Rin existed in seemed to be recognized as a world of its own. Heukbi likely never anticipated the existence of two separate personalities.
However, the gumiho couldn’t interfere with the world beyond the mirror, so she needed someone else to control the other power.
Rin didn’t like the idea of cooperating with the gumiho, but she had no choice. She nodded.
“What’s the plan?”
“First, we need to raise the sun.”
Fwoosh!
As the gumiho formed a hand seal, a sun rose into the air.
“Alright, your turn. You can do it, right?”
With a serious gaze, Rin brought her hands together and formed her own seal. She began to concentrate.
Rin had never created a sun before. She had hidden herself away just as she was beginning to learn how to use the Solar Eye.
As the gumiho’s power grew, Rin’s presence had gradually shrunk, to the point where she lost her sense of self and forgot who she was.
She’d even felt the illusion of becoming the gumiho herself; her personality had nearly melted away and merged into one. She only held on because of her lingering attachments.
Thanks to that, perhaps, she had been in a state of synchronization with the gumiho while she was inside her, allowing her to watch and learn.
The flow of spiritual power.
How to use the eyes.
She learned even the most minute details, things one could never know without becoming one.
That was why, despite it being her first time, Rin knew how to wield the power perfectly.
Fwoosh.
A radiant sun rose above Rin’s head.
The gumiho smiled in satisfaction.
“Yes, that’s what a gumiho should be.”
Two suns now hung in the air, centered on the two gumiho like a decalcomania painting.
“Now, match my timing and send it over to this side.”
Rin nodded and manipulated her sun.
The suns, which had been floating high in the sky, slowly began to descend. Soon, the two suns touched the mirror. They began to be swallowed by the world beyond.
Krrrrr-ack!
The mirror couldn't easily absorb the suns, which contained an immense amount of power. It trembled as if it would shatter at the slightest touch.
But it eventually managed to swallow the suns completely. Then, it reversed the absorbed suns and sent them out into the opposite worlds.
And what began to emerge was…
Shaaa…
Not a sun radiating scorching heat, but a moon, casting a cool, gentle glow.
The suns, which had been transforming into moons, halted their change.
They were fixed in place, unable to move.
The amount was exactly half.
An orb, half-sun and half-moon, was interlocked across the mirror.
It was the same on both sides.
In Rin’s world, there was half a moon sent by the gumiho.
In the gumiho’s world, there was half a moon sent by Rin.
And each had the half-sun they had created.
With the sun and moon exquisitely overlapping, the thoughts of the two gumiho connected as one without a word.
The Solar Eye and the Lunar Eye flashed in unison.
“Solar Eclipse.”
Click.
The light went out.
A solar eclipse, where the moon perfectly obscures the sun, shrouding the world in darkness.
A shadow space untouched by sunlight or moonlight.
The gumiho’s absolute domain, where not even the heavens could peer in, where even the Heavenly Eye was blinded.
The Heaven-Defying Realm ceased to function. In a dark space devoid of light, the only thing a mirror could reflect was darkness.
And even if it reversed the darkness to emit light, it would be nothing more than a candle flame against an infinite abyss.
“Let’s go. To save our master.”
It was impossible to tell who had spoken.
The two gumiho were simply smiling.
Crack.
Craaaack.
The sound of shattering echoed endlessly in the darkness.
The moment the infinite noise ceased…
SHATTER!
The space broke apart and collapsed.
The outside world appeared.
“Hut?!”
As her domain vanished, a startled Heukbi whipped her head around, her hair flying. Her eyes met the gumiho’s, who was cloaked in the shadows deep within the void.
The interior of the domain was a virtual, man-made dimension.
The moment it collided with reality, it rapidly lost its power and disappeared.
The same went for the moon created by the properties of the Heaven-Defying Realm.
But they would not miss this chance.
A brief moment, less than a millionth of a second, where the virtual and the real coexisted.
A sliver of time too short for the tick of a clock.
The Solar Eclipse covered the Heaven-Defying Realm.
‘Now.’
The gumiho expanded her domain.
The virtual darkness stretched out, seizing control of reality.
The entire Lunar Shrine was plunged into shadow.
It happened in an instant, with no chance to escape.
“How in the world?!”
Heukbi looked around the darkness in a panic.
But she couldn’t see a thing, as if her eyes were closed.
Heukbi knew this was the solar eclipse the gumiho had deployed. But she couldn’t understand it, since she was still the one who possessed the power of the Lunar Eye.
“Surprised? To be honest, I’m surprised too. I guess you could say we got lucky.”
It was a good thing Rin was here.
And that Karami had come.
If he hadn’t, Rin would never have come to her senses and awakened the gumiho. Then the Celestial Fox’s orb would have run out of power, and they would have never found it.
She didn’t want to admit it, but she supposed she had to give him some credit.
Leaving Heukbi to flounder in the darkness, the gumiho looked for Karami. As the master of this space, it wasn’t hard for her to find him.
He was near Heukbi.
But his posture was strange.
He was lying face down on the floor.
He wasn’t moving in the slightest.
“Master…?”
Rin, too, sensed that something was wrong.
She took hesitant, anxious steps and stood beside Karami.
Her perked ears couldn’t hear the sounds they should have.
When she carefully turned Karami’s body over, it rolled limply.
Thud.
But his head lolled to the side before he was fully turned.
His half-open eyes were clouded over.
“Master…?”
Rin called out in a trembling voice, but there was no answer.
When she caressed his face, all she felt was a chilling coldness.
Even his scent was faint.
“Master? Master! Master!!”
Rin shook Karami violently, but his body just flopped back and forth without any resistance, like a doll.
The gumiho also realized something was terribly wrong.
“Heukbi, what did you do to him?”
Heukbi had no time to answer.
When trapped in complete darkness, a person’s senses become blurred.
Are they really here?
Or have they become the darkness itself?
The mind grows faint, and the longer one is trapped in the dark, the closer one comes to madness.
“Tsk.”
The gumiho clicked her tongue.
A normal conversation was impossible.
She had no choice but to shine a small amount of light on Heukbi.
Since they were already inside her domain, that much mercy wasn't a problem.
Spotting the single ray of light in the darkness, Heukbi scrambled toward it. She hugged her arms around herself as if embracing the light.
“Spit it out. What did you do to him?”
Having finally regained her senses, Heukbi stared at Karami with a dazed look.
“Him? Ah… you mean the Heaven Defier.”
Even for a fox skilled at controlling her emotions and hiding her inner thoughts, it was difficult to maintain control in a dazed state. Unable to contain her base emotions, a smirk escaped her lips.
“The Heaven Defier?”
“Did you not know? That he is the one who defies Heaven’s Mandate, who refuses to yield to a fox's tricks and forges his own destiny.”
“He was that amazing?”
She knew he wasn’t ordinary, but she’d never dreamed he was that incredible.
“He has also changed the fates of countless others, and his future path would have been the same. I simply took measures to prevent that.”
“Don’t tell me…”
“Yes, what you are thinking is correct, Lady Gumiho. I have reversed his life force. And so, he has met his fate.”
The opposite of Life is Death.
She had killed Karami, letting his fate run its course.
That was all there was to it.
“You…!”
Before the gumiho could say another word, Rin lunged forward, tackling Heukbi and knocking her to the ground.
Rin’s eyes shone with a menacing light.
“I see. I thought something was strange, but there was another personality hiding inside. You claim to trust no one, yet you gumiho cooperate with each other.”
“Cut the crap. Bring my master back to life, now!”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible. Reversing life results in death, but reversing death does not result in life. For ‘life’ is not merely the state of being alive.”
There are billions of lives.
Each of these lives possesses a thread called life.
No matter what path one walks, no matter what destiny one faces, the destination given to all is death.
Billions of threads may stretch out along different paths, each leaving its own unique trajectory, but in the end, all these paths converge at a single point.
But what of the reverse?
If one were to extend a path from death, where would it lead?
No one can know.
Because billions of branches exist, it’s impossible to trace a path back.
This is why reincarnation resets all memories and bonds. It is a necessary process to make death a fair starting point once more.
Only then is the reversal of death into life possible.
There must be a clear point of symmetry defined by the world, one that makes no exceptions for anyone.
In other words, it was impossible to revive Karami through reversal.
Before he died, the gumiho might have been able to twist things with her power, but now that he was dead, it was impossible. The fate of the dead cannot be changed.
But to Rin, such truths sounded like nothing more than wordplay.
“I don’t get all that complicated crap! Just bring my master back to life!”
“Hmm, if you truly wish it, I can assist with his reincarnation. Shall I? Of course, he will become a completely different person from the man you knew.”
“That kind of thing… that’s meaningless.”
As a gumiho who lives for eons, she could wait.
But she didn’t want her master to stop being her master.
If Karami didn’t recognize her, she wouldn’t be able to bear it.
Though she was on the verge of tears, Rin glared at Heukbi, her eyes radiating a killing intent that could slay a god.
Tears dripped down, splashing onto Heukbi’s face. The hot droplets made Heukbi’s eyes widen in shock.
‘She’s… crying?’
The gumiho… was crying?
Over the death of a single human?
The gumiho, more selfish and self-righteous than anyone, was shedding tears for another. It was a sight she couldn’t believe even as she saw it with her own eyes.
“Haaah…”
Watching from a distance, the gumiho sighed.
“In short, all we need is that ‘clear point of symmetry,’ right?”
“…Theoretically, yes, but it is nigh impossible. For the dead—”
“Ah, forget that part. We have what’s needed right here.”
“Pardon?”
Ignoring Heukbi, who was about to ask a stunned question, the gumiho tapped Rin on the shoulder.
Rin turned to look at the gumiho with bloodshot eyes.
“What…”
“What do you mean, ‘what’? You’re not going to save our master?”
“C-Can we save him?”
“It just so happens we can. I didn’t expect it to turn out this way, though.”
This wasn’t why she’d coaxed Rin out.
Well, she supposed she could think of it as repaying a debt.
“Now, it’s time to spit out what you ate.”