Voyage to the Bottom — 4
What would people do if a tall woman with purple hair came walking toward them, three blue-skinned men with ghastly expressions at her back?
The answer is this.
"A vengeful ghost eaten by beasts has come for us! A vengeful ghost!"
"Namo Amitabha Buddha—Bodhisattva Guanyin!"
"In the name of Yuanshi Tianzun, I command you: begone, fiend!"
As if they have seen a ghost, people duck behind the buildings and level every tool they can find in our direction. Here and there I can see the faithful chanting something. Judging by the fact that it does nothing at all, the words are nothing special.
I look the village over. There is nothing particular about it. No one virtuous, and no one who could quite manage to be wicked either—only middling people, and the place is full of them. In a society a little further along, these would be the ones who truly devour their fellow human beings. In this age, they are closer to common folk. At most, they might band together and ruin a single household.
That is far too little warmth.
If I am going to do something, better to do it in a larger town. Casting back through what I remember, the next city is not so far, so I pass through the murmuring crowd and go straight on. Unlike a hamlet or a backwater village like this one, it is a walled city, a place the authorities' reach actually extends to, at least in some measure. I do not stay. I make for the next settlement at once.
The three men stop in the village and begin discussing what they mean to do from here. I am watching them in real time anyway, so they and I part ways here.
Each of them intends to return to his own sect, explain that the Vice-Leader stole a treasure and fled, and make Jeong Chil-jin pay for the crime. Swearing that the lives of the dead sect members must be paid for, they make vows thick with hatred. To my eyes, they do not look very reliable. From the way they speak of going back to their sects, what they want first is simply to return somewhere safe.
Unfortunately, going to stab him will be easier than going home.
Why do they think they can return to their sects at all? Their skin has turned blue, and their hair purple. Until now, the only one with blue skin would have been the Heavenly Demon, so blue skin alone might suggest the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult—no. In these people's words, they will not be taken for Demon Cultists on that alone. They will be doubted as human, though.
Even so, after deciding to return, they do not split up at once. They discuss how to get back. Agreeing that it would be better to travel while avoiding people's eyes, they say as much while looking at one another's skin, leave a few words of parting, and each head into the forest.
I feel a pang that they are not going straight off to kill Jeong Chil-jin, Vice-Leader of the Five Sacred Mountains Alliance. It cannot be helped. True enough—think it through, and Jeong Chil-jin's standing is the higher one for now. A few people who have turned blue charging in and saying a handful of words are unlikely to bring about anything great. There is a strong chance they will be dismissed as Demon Cult ravings, die, and that will be the end of it.
Whatever the case, if they return to their sects instead of chasing the Vice-Leader, that is not a bad thing for me. The farther they travel, the better. As people pile together, a great current will form. I do not have the mind to grasp where that current is headed, but I do know that people will gather. The thinking can come after.
Sorting what I am going to do from what I want to do, I leave the village entirely behind and climb a long hill. Up and over it, a great city waits ahead—broad rice paddies, and walls stacked of stone. Even after that, Kunlun is far enough that I will have to walk a long while yet.
On I go.
I arrive at the great city. But a problem has come up. They refuse to let me in. An outsider like me, they say, cannot enter as she pleases. The way they put it is little short of a flat ban on foreigners.
Strangers are always watched with suspicion, but I had not expected to be turned away by soldiers who so plainly belong to the authorities. They have no interest in me at the moment, so I will have to go the long way around. Only, this is not a city of a few buildings. By that man's faded memories, it amounts to a city in its own right, which means a long walk to circle it.
I take the road around.
Outside the walls, a slum like a village of tents stretches on and on. Walk in without a thought, and there is no telling what might be done to you. If you were not me, that is. I walk alleyways that are old and filthy, and might as well have no straight road in them at all. I expected something to happen at once. Unexpectedly, the people around me only mutter and yield the way. No one lays a hand on me.
That suits me just fine.
I walk for a full day, and around the time the sun has gone completely down, I stop. I am hungry, and there is nothing to eat. Walking on with the thought that it would be nice if somewhere in a place like this sold food, I catch the faint smell of it. I head straight that way, and between the buildings a fairly wide clearing opens up.
Shabby tents are pitched all around. A few dim campfires have been set burning, and people sit in circles there, drinking. Off to one side, someone is selling fare that barely rises above junk.
"What are you selling?"
"Nothing here that a martial artist like you would eat..."
The woman trails off and eases a step back. Old enough to be called a crone, though her actual years are not so many. She has simply lived hard, and time has struck her face head-on.
"I eat without being picky. Oh—I don't think I had any money."
Now that I think of it, I do not carry anything like coin.
"Who uses coins in a place like this? It's field rats and scorpions and the like. You'd do better going somewhere else."
"Scorpion, then. Spiders too. They're edible enough, in their way."
If I have no money, I can make gold. For this person it will be a calamity, of course. What am I supposed to do? Along with something to eat, I can make myself a chance to raise a commotion.
I snatch up a stone from the ground, crush reality, and turn it into gold.
Crack.
A faint fracture runs through the empty air. I could keep mending the cracks with gold from here on, and that would be fine. I hand it to the woman as it is.
"It's gold."
"An immortal? A god?"
She startles, seizes the gold, and touches it as if entranced, her face asking whether this can be real. Around us, the noisy clamor of the drinkers vanishes. Not a sound. The eyes of a great many people turn this way.
"No. I'm not an immortal."
I take what looks edible enough and eat. A human body needs calories. The nutrition is somewhat lacking, but if I eat my fill, I can more than cover the energy I need right now.
"Care for a bottle of liquor, at least?"
"No. I don't need alcohol. This is water, isn't it?"
She nods that it is, and while I eat what has been set before me, people begin to sidle closer.
"Hey. You there. If you've got gold enough to slap it down like that, how about a little charity for us too? Hm?"
Most of them are short and gaunt. Even the ones with some size to them have only their bellies jutting out, from poor nutrition, it seems.
"Do you want gold?"
"Yeah!"
So I pick a stone up off the ground and set it on his palm.
A hiss of air. A smack.
"You messing with me?!"
The man snatches up the stone and hurls it, eyes bulging, shoving his face in close. The motions people use when they mean to threaten are much the same everywhere. Well. In this world, I do not have to worry very much about the cracking. So I turn his limbs to gold.
A deep crack.
Dark fissures run out in every direction. Go any further and there is a risk of it breaking, so I cannot change any more. This is enough.
"G-gaaaaaah!"
"This is the gold humanity wanted."
The man screams and collapses to the ground. The arms and legs that ought to move and hold his balance have become gold. It cannot be helped. I decide to stoke the chaos from here.
Pure gold is softer than one would think. So I take the fallen man's finger, twist, and tear it free. A piece of pure gold. I throw it into the middle of the place where the people are packed most tightly. Those around us rush it as if possessed, howling that it is theirs.
Watching them, I say this.
"There's so much gold right here. Why fight over that?"
Yes.
The face of the man whose limbs are now gold goes white as paper, because the eyes around him have turned terribly sharp. In an age like this, a place like this, a human life is not much of anything. And just now, there is gold here that would be perfectly convenient to mine.
Soon, one person comes apart in pieces, like prey worried by a pack of wolves.
From that frenzy, plastered together with blood and gold, I offer the shopkeeper a farewell and step away. Then I approach the man whose limbs have been torn off, who is dying. His eyes have rolled white, and he has lost so much blood that he is on the verge of death.
"The gold is yours. Why would others take it? I'll help, so the one who ought to have it can."
I drive an enemy into him, plain enough to understand. In truth, this is the sort of thing done by someone who deals out the sickness and the cure both, and who takes people for fools. But in a situation churned together with madness like this, how many people can still think straight?
"I'll give myself to you. In return, later—once you've finished everything—I'll take all that you have. How does that sound?"
And at once I recite the words of the contract.
Even if his mind is not clear, the contract drives itself into a person. The man accepts at once. His skin splits like porcelain, and a man with vivid blue skin comes forth. His arms and legs, of course, have sprouted anew. He looks up at me with a face smeared in terror and awe. He seems afraid of what I might do. But his awareness has already ripened well enough.
So I say this.
"Go on. Do whatever you want."
With that, I leave him be and walk away from the place.
A short while later, many sounds tangle together behind me. A man shouting to hand over his gold. Voices refusing to let it be taken. The rush of people charging those who refuse, trying to seize the gold from them. And more besides.
I hope he survives as long as he can, and that amid a suitable chaos, the blue person is revealed to every quarter of the world. Until I catch up with the ones who went back to their own sects.
Fwoosh.
In the end, a fire breaks out behind me. In a place like this, a great fire ought to be put out at once—but when an easy-to-understand fortune called gold is sitting right in front of you, who is going to care? What if you put the fire out, and someone takes the gold? Or what if you use this opening to take the gold yourself? Someone other than me will do it. Someone will put the fire out. That is what will feed the flames, until putting them out becomes impossible. When that happens, the people inside the walls will have to come out as well.
Even if the fire itself cannot climb the wall and spill over, poison gas is another matter, isn't it?
Step. Step.
I walk toward Mount Kunlun.