Why the Buddha Shows Mercy
A skilled assassin is an assassin who has survived a long time. Survive long enough, and the humanity wears away until what remains is a killing machine. When the order falls, they kill. Not a shred of feeling clings to the act.
The assassins closing on Sun Wukong were, without question, skilled. Not a flicker of fear rose in their eyes. They moved as if each of them had become a blade unto himself. The instant their leader cried the order to kill, they answered as emotionlessly as the swords in their hands.
A single, seamless motion. A battle array so tightly woven it seemed to have no gap at all — a formation built to face a powerful opponent who could not be brought down by stealth or ambush. The reason they had revealed themselves so confidently was suddenly, perfectly clear.
Unfortunately for them, the world sometimes produces a rather unusual kind of person. Someone who, when there are no gaps, does not go around.
CRACK!
Someone who makes the gaps himself.
Sun Wukong's steel staff left a trail of ink-dark light as it drove into the assassins' formation. Blood sprayed along that black trajectory. The skull of the man directly in front of him burst apart. This was nothing like the restraint Sun Wukong had shown until now — a blow from which there was absolutely no surviving. There is no surviving a crushed skull.
He swept the staff he had driven straight through in a great arc to the left. Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh — the spinning steel staff moved with a lightness that belied its tremendous weight. The results, however, were anything but light. Anything that caught the ink-black trajectory was smashed and shattered without discrimination. Head, shoulder, chest, leg, arm — it made no difference. The instant it connected, it broke, tore, and became a lump of bloody flesh.
The ink-black trajectory was vast. That was the advantage of the staff's great length. The weakness was equally plain. The arc was so large that, paradoxically, if you closed in completely you could slip outside it. Dodge the staff and reach Sun Wukong's side, and you could escape that monstrous weapon.
The assassins all moved on that thought at once.
CRUNCH!
Regrettably, not a single one of them succeeded. They died horribly the moment they charged — and still they did not stop. They poured in without end. Kill one, and three more clung on. Kill three, and five more appeared. At this point any powerful warrior would have been unnerved enough to take a step back.
For Sun Wukong, there was only advance.
The ink-black trajectory. The fountains of blood. The fragments of human bodies raining down. He broke through one step at a time, taking every life in his path — swinging the staff, bringing it down, thrusting, smashing whatever it caught, one after another.
And at that point, a strange light rose in the assassins' eyes.
WHOOSH!
The staff split the air with a shriek. An assassin caught in its path flinched and went tumbling across the ground.
"......!"
An indescribable light crossed the face of the man who had rolled. The donkey roll — the name for the way a donkey tumbles across the dirt. A method of throwing one's body and frantically rolling to evade an attack. Martial artists consider it humiliating. Assassins do not. They have no honor, after all.
But the emotion on this assassin's face now was something difficult to name. Humiliation? Insult? Shame? It was none of those.
I did it instinctively, without even thinking...
He was nothing more than a single component of the formation. Even if the staff came flying straight at his face, a component was supposed to hold its position. That was the order. This assassin had broken it. He had not meant to. His senses had made him. He had dodged on instinct. The instant that blood-soaked, monstrous steel staff came rushing at his face, he had thrown his whole body and rolled across the ground before he knew what he was doing.
The comrade beside him, who had not dodged, was now spread across the floor like well-minced fish meat. Realizing the difference, the assassin's body gave a sudden, violent shudder.
I was afraid.
Instinctive movement is born of fear — the fear of dying. The instinct to live had manifested as a fierce will to survive, and it had forced his body to move. The moment he understood that, the assassin's heart dropped in his chest.
He had believed his emotions were erased. He had thought fear was already a residue that had been wiped away. He could step into any assassination without hesitation, because terror, and things like it, were gone. Both of his blood-soaked hands trembled. He realized that the emotion of fear, which had been erased from his heart, was now sprouting anew.
And he was not the only one.
"Urgh!"
"Gahk!"
The groans and screams were multiplying. Life was rising in eyes that had been as still as a dead man's — and with it, a terrible terror. At some point the formation had begun to creak. One or two men dodged, or pulled back, or hesitated and retreated. The crack that had started was slowly spreading.
The assassin swallowed without meaning to. The sword hilt in his grip shuddered. How had it come to this?
The Yusal Sect had succeeded in countless assassinations against high-level masters. There had certainly been masters they had to fight in formation like this. Those men, too, had broken the array with tremendous skill and rampaged to the end. The ending never changed. Assassination successful, at the cost of countless sacrifices. He had thought this time would be the same.
When the entire Yusal Sect had come here, he had been prepared for a master of that caliber to appear. He had known many would die. He had known he might be among them. And still he had taken up his blade without fear, hidden throwing weapons in his sleeves, and stepped forward.
But what was this?
The eyes...
Only then did the assassin understand where the fear was coming from. It was the eyes. Not some indescribable aura radiating from those blood-red irises and brilliantly shining golden pupils. It was the gaze itself, in its purest form.
No-Mind.
A terrible absence of feeling. Even though the assassins who had already died by Sun Wukong's hand numbered nearly half of those present, the pupils did not so much as waver. Not a shred of emotion. No pleasure in killing, no resolve to fell an enemy, no rising excitement.
An assassin beyond any assassin.
He was like a machine. Swing, kill — and not a shred of feeling attached to the sequence. They say that when a person sees someone similar to themselves, or the same as themselves, they feel an instinctive terror. That was what the assassins standing here felt now.
The assassin muttered in a voice that shook.
"To think I'd only feel fear once death was right in front of me..."
The ground beneath his feet was slick. Blood stood in pools. Sun Wukong stared for a long moment at the steel staff, now dyed entirely crimson, then turned his gaze.
A man appeared before him. Sun Wukong sensed the force radiating from him and nodded.
"So you didn't run, even though you're the boss."
"...I am the lord of the Yusal Sect."
The Yusal Sect Lord held a pair of short sabers in both hands, each about as long as a forearm. Sun Wukong cocked his head and asked,
"How's it feel? Watching the sect you spent a lifetime building collapse right now?"
"Assassins can always be raised again."
"Oh. Optimistic type."
Sun Wukong cackled. Within the laughter, his eyes flashed with a chilling light.
"So as long as you fill the ranks with assassins again, no problem. Meaning you've got a backer, I take it."
"..."
"Well, no point hiding things from each other at this stage, right? You just do whatever they tell you?"
The Yusal Sect Lord raised his twin sabers instead of answering. That was enough for Sun Wukong.
"Meaning they think so little of the assassination sect under their command that they'll throw the whole thing away just to trip me up."
Sun Wukong let out a sigh. He spoke in a tone that sounded almost regretful.
"Too bad. Looks like even the tripping-me-up part was a bust."
The Yusal Sect Lord's body rippled like a shadow and vanished. The twin sabers in his hands spun and spun. Round rings were fitted to the hilts, so he could slip his fingers through and whirl them. Faint threads of saber silk rippled and swayed around the spinning blades.
Sun Wukong whistled.
"Now that's a neat trick."
The Yusal Sect Lord's brow twitched. It was not admiration for having reached the level of projecting saber silk. It was the look of someone watching something genuinely curious — as if he were gasping at a clown's performance. The humiliation of it stung.
"That's what you call saber silk, right? Sword silk, saber silk... those things that come out like threads."
Sun Wukong's staff whooshed through the air, splitting space.
Crimson demonic energy flooded the ink-dark steel staff, heating the metal until it glowed red-hot.
"So if I do it with a staff, would that be staff silk? Doesn't have a great ring to it."
The Yusal Sect Lord's eyes flew wide. He even stopped the whirling of his twin sabers, and his mouth fell open. The yoryeok drawn out long from the ink-dark steel staff — that was...
"You think that looks like some kind of thread?"
The Yusal Sect Lord shouted, as if he could not believe what he was seeing.
"Projecting weapon aura through a staff... This is insane...!"
"Well, yeah, it doesn't look much like thread."
Sun Wukong grinned. The weapon aura stretching out along the surface of the steel staff — an aura forged of pure yoryeok — crushed the surrounding air in an instant and sent shockwaves of force rolling outward.
"Threads, huh. If you think of it as spinning thread, I suppose you'd do it like this."
The weapon aura pouring from the steel staff split apart like bamboo cracking open. It split, it tore, it shredded — dozens of strands, then hundreds, bursting outward from the staff like a storm of silk.
The Yusal Sect Lord stared, mouth hanging open. From his twin sabers, eight faint streams of saber silk drifted out. His entire body was soaked in cold sweat. An overwhelming difference that could not even be compared. His feet would not leave the ground, as if they had been glued there.
"Man, you people sure invent a lot of fancy tricks."
He had thought he could buy time this way. He had been prepared to die. He had even contemplated the destruction of his sect. But the moment he witnessed something so absolute that resistance was impossible — paradoxically, the desire to live began to stir.
The Yusal Sect Lord opened his mouth in a desperate rush.
"W-wait...!"
The steel staff swept through in a savage arc. The hundreds of silk strands pouring from it tore the Yusal Sect Lord's body to pieces.
Sun Wukong clicked his tongue.
"Ah, were you trying to leave last words?"
He smiled bitterly.
"I'm short on time. You'll understand, right?"
The Yusal Sect Lord gave no answer. His breath had been gone for some time.
"Silence is consent. Thanks for understanding."
A wet slap of footsteps crossing a rippling pool of blood. Sun Wukong shook his head. Namgung Seowol and the Butterfly Immortal stood there, looking exhausted and worn. The Butterfly Immortal checked the corpse's face with a startled expression, then nodded gravely.
"It is the Yusal Sect Lord."
"Then today is the day the Yusal Sect was destroyed."
For a statement about wiping out one of the Ten Great Assassination Sects of the Central Plains, it was remarkably offhand. The Butterfly Immortal stared at Sun Wukong with a look of sheer exhaustion, then quietly recited a protective mantra.
Sun Wukong grinned.
"I told you."
His finger pointed toward the western sky. As the sun sank, the heavens were staining themselves vermilion.
"I'd finish before sundown."
"..."
Not even two hours had passed. In that brief span, Sun Wukong had succeeded in erasing the Yusal Sect.
They must have believed they could at least hold me up for half a day.
Half a day was enough to put considerable distance between them. Even that much, and the Yusal Sect would have done its job. Sun Wukong hadn't taken half a day. He had finished in a single stretch of less than two hours. Now nothing stood in his way.
Namgung Seowol approached quietly and looked at Sun Wukong with a gaze that was difficult to describe. As she had cut down assassins without hesitation, she had stolen glances at his fighting. He had been like a machine — a ruthless killing machine into which no emotion entered. Until now he had strangely championed a doctrine of not killing, and had never carried out an assassination, so that sight settled heavily on Seowol.
Sensing her gaze, Sun Wukong wore a bitter smile.
"..."
"The Buddha has eyes that can see straight through a person's sins and faults."
Stand before the Buddha, and every crime is laid bare. Every karmic debt rises to the surface, down to the last detail. And so the Buddha had no choice but to show mercy.
"The problem is, there are too many evildoers in this world who deserve to die. If the Buddha has no compassion—"
"..."
Sun Wukong gazed quietly at the massacre he had made. In his dantian, his yoryeok ran wild as if delighted by a blood banquet it had not enjoyed in a long time. He wore a bitter smile.
For some reason, he found himself wanting to see Sanzang.