Chapter 124
Even to a Daoist's eye, I seem to stand out.
I can feel the gazes gathering on me, and set among them are figures that aren't people at all. One of them is shaped like a beast, and yet dressed in human clothes.
So that was why, when something other than human came calling, there hadn't been so much as a flicker of prejudice in their eyes. I had thought I would have to reach a place where immortals lived before I saw anything of the kind. I never expected to see it from here.
People don't trouble to remember, with any particular care, the things they never bothered to notice. Rummage through memory as I might, it's hard to tell whether anything like this was ever there. Had they been the sort of racists who hated some particular people, the distaste would have fixed those people in mind — but among the dead immortals and Daoists, there had been no one like that. By the measure of these faded memories, this place holds nothing but good people.
Well. From the far side of the monster, of course it looks that way.
I followed the Daoist into something like an elevator, and the elevator lifted straight into empty air and climbed. There were no cables, no mechanisms at all — only a box, rising by itself. The main hall of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult had shown me steel lines and machinery. This place was a great deal more peculiar. It didn't even travel in a straight line. It drew a graceful curve up toward an island afloat in the sky, stopped not at the summit but somewhere around the middle, and drew in toward the stone.
It looked as though we were about to strike the rock, but we passed straight through. It had all the look of real stone, and yet I could see a veil of illusion — a thing with no substance — ripple as we went through it. While I was quietly marveling to myself that it was a hologram, the box came to rest at a place like a ferry landing. The door opened, and I stepped out.
Looking around, I found an enormous octagonal passage, timber and stone hanging in the void and shifting this way and that. It stretched farther than the mountain had seemed from outside. Follow it inward, and Kunlun lay beyond — the world where the immortals lived.
"This is as far as I go. Past this point is where the immortals dwell, and I am not permitted to enter. I shall take my leave."
I returned the Daoist's courteous bow with one of my own. Having received it, he boarded the same box we had ridden and descended at once.
I was alone.
I knew the way, so I could simply have gone in. No — there wasn't even a way to speak of. This was a single road, and if I walked straight ahead I would step directly into the world where the immortals lived. But no one had told me to go, so I didn't. If I waited, someone would come out to meet me.
And I was alone, wasn't I? Wander in without a clue, and I might be attacked out of nowhere — you are for the fire — just like that. The wards on an entrance are always the strongest. Put another way, I was afraid. At a level like this, I had to wonder whether it was powerful beyond anything I could answer.
It wasn't time to die yet.
Not, at least, before I had met Yuanshi Tianzun.
So I stayed where I was, and after a long while a man came walking toward me. I'm taller than the average man of this age. He was tall enough that his eyes sat just a little above mine.
"You would not come inward no matter how long I waited, so I have come to find you. I am Puxian Zhenren. What business brings you?"
His tone made it sound as if coming out to meet me were only natural, but it isn't as easy as the words suggest — least of all for someone who doesn't know what waits up ahead. Rather than complain of it, I did as I always do, and set out only the facts.
"Hello. I'm Choseol. I thought our timing might have crossed, so I simply stood here."
Among those who sit higher up, the ones who like to dress their authority will show their dignity by arriving late to the very place they were meant to appear. A meeting, for instance — the confidence that nothing can begin until they arrive. But if immortals share anything like a human heart, then the face this man was wearing was embarrassment. Which meant he hadn't come late on purpose, to press a hierarchy down onto me.
"You might simply have come in. This is your first time on Mount Kunlun, is it not?"
"Yes. It's my first."
At that, Puxian Zhenren broke into a bright, open smile and began explaining this and that about Mount Kunlun. I had half expected some hulking, muscular man to step out looking for a fight, and instead a remarkably kind person had come. Somewhere in the faded memories a man gave off a dim, uneasy flicker, as if to say this wasn't right.
I already know the timeline is subtly off, don't I? By now I ought to understand well enough that a story and reality aren't the same. So why was he doing this?
I followed the guilelessly talking Puxian Zhenren into Mount Kunlun. We walked a long way down the passage, and deeper in I could see forest, and stone adrift in the air. From the outside it looked as if we had simply passed through the island that had hung in the sky when we arrived, but in truth that island had been serving as a gate. The color of the sky was subtly wrong, and strange flocks of living things passed between the islands.
Whether he was simply glad of a guest, Puxian Zhenren spent a long while on the charms of Mount Kunlun, and guided me along as he talked. I thought he might be leading me to a room. Instead he brought me to a pavilion with a clear view all around, seated me there, and stood on the opposite side, watching me as he spoke.
"This is Mount Kunlun. Forgive the presumption, but I was told you came seeking Lord Yuanshi Tianzun. May I ask what business brings you?"
Business. Business, was it. Right — now that he mentioned it, there had been something of the sort.
"First, I came to tell you that I fought Tongtian Jiaozhu."
A sympathetic look came over his face.
"You fought a fearsome person. Have you come to Mount Kunlun to ask for aid? We will, of course, weigh the rights and wrongs of the matter, but if you have come seeking Kunlun's help, you will not be sent away empty-handed. Do not worry."
There was a faint fear clinging to that face. Search Daegon's memories and this man doesn't appear. Had he fought one of Daegon's subordinates, perhaps? Buried in the faint fear was a deep, lived sense of it, so the odds were good he had fought back when the Jie Cult invaded the Chan Cult.
"That isn't why I came. I came because of that matter — because I wish to meet the one called Yuanshi Tianzun."
He frowned at that. It wasn't the sort of look that asked how I dared seek such a person.
"Lord Yuanshi Tianzun is not one who meets people often. It is difficult to see him merely because one calls. I do serve, in part, as his proxy, so if it is a matter you can speak of, you may tell it to me. Should that prove difficult, I will see to it that you meet Lord Yuanshi Tianzun somehow."
The hierarchy here wasn't as severe as I'd expected, then. If an ordinary society of rank is the floors of a building, this place felt more like a staircase. I had thought a Daoist order would have hardened into excessive rank the way some marine corps does, but that had been a misconception.
In the immortals' memories, most people obeyed the orders from above without a single complaint, and when there was work to be done they stepped forward and did it. So I had assumed there was punishment for failing to. This wasn't the obedience born of a coercive culture. If anything, it was closer to a culture of responsible people who simply did the work that needed doing. Here, of course, with so many gentle people about, a strange order would never have come down in the first place. If a thing was the right thing to do, they would have done it without hesitation.
Human Society: Heaven Edition. That was the impression the faded memories left.
Gentle, of course, doesn't mean they'll listen no matter the order. People like these, should someone above them grow corrupt or do wrong, would pull that person down and put them on trial without a second thought. In other words, you could say the society bears its responsibilities evenly.
"First. I am going to condemn you."
"What?"
"The Heavenly Demon Divine Cult. Or the Demonic Cult. Or Tongtian Jiaozhu's breeding pens. Someone I lived with like family died there."
Puxian Zhenren's face hardened at once. He seemed to have realized where I had come from.
"So you came all this way to condemn us. We do not apologize for that subjugation. To the people living there it was surely an evil, but had we left them be, something dangerous would have come of it. And you, too, carry that ill-omened purple."
"Destroying the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult was the right choice."
So I told him he had chosen rightly, and Puxian Zhenren stared at me, thoroughly startled.
"The Heavenly Demon Divine Cult was a group that taught killing from childhood, broke people's character, put worms into their bodies, and forced unconditional obedience on anyone of lower rank. And that group was also the place where Tongtian Jiaozhu raised hosts, so that he might make more of his own kind."
Astonishingly, this was the truth. Guseongyong had suspected as much and left it alone, and the Heavenly Demon hadn't known. Trace the history, and what let the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult swell its power was certainly Daegon's strength — but aside from Wolje Hall, the Jie Cult's hand had never touched it at all.
If I wanted an example from the faded memories: they were trafficking hallucinogens, and they opened a café to hide it. They weren't out to turn a profit, so they sold cheap, and the shop did a roaring trade. The people working there never knew they were laboring behind a screen thrown up to cover an illegal organization.
That was the relationship between the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult and the Jie Cult. Wolje Hall had played the shopkeeper. Only, so the cult could be cut away at a moment's notice should anything go wrong, it had remained a small organ in charge of the rites and the worms — an organ that bound what people did, and controlled the human body. The Heavenly Demon Divine Cult had been a place where things of that sort were all stirred together.
"A group like that, seen from the affairs of humankind, is a harm that ought to be removed at once. You did the right thing."
Puxian Zhenren looked at me with a sour, reluctant face.
"And yet you came to condemn us?"
"That, and wanting to condemn you because someone I was close to was killed, are separate matters."
He thought on my words for a long while, then nodded.
"Yes. That is correct. However wicked a person may be, they have family and friends, and when those people die it is no strange thing to pour out one's feelings, guilt or innocence aside."
So he didn't tell me he was sorry. That was the more correct thing, really. He didn't apologize, because what he had done wasn't wrong.
Say a large dog suddenly bites a child. To save the child, someone kills the dog. But the dog was one some person had raised with devoted care. The one who raised it may condemn the man who killed it. The man who killed it has no need to apologize, because he did the right thing. Condemning is free, and so is the answer.
Anyway. The small thing I had wanted to do was finished.
"And second. About Tongtian Jiaozhu."
Before the real matter — the preparation for what I truly meant to do.
"I killed Tongtian Jiaozhu."
At that, Puxian Zhenren shot to his feet. Of course he did. Once, the Chan Cult and the Jie Cult had fought to the brink of mutual annihilation. The Chan Cult had won, but it had been a narrow victory, and the Jie Cult, though beaten, had not lost by any great margin. And now I was telling him the other side of that war was dead. Truth or lie, it would be hard to know. But with this, at least, I thought Puxian Zhenren understood the position I stood in.
"I think this is enough to qualify me to meet Yuanshi Tianzun. What do you think?"
Knowing perfectly well how the words would land, I asked. A threat. That was what this was. Someone this powerful, calling for Yuanshi Tianzun to his face. Go and fetch someone higher.
At my words Puxian Zhenren stood where he was, working his eyes hard, and then he nodded.
"I will bring Lord Yuanshi Tianzun."
"Thank you."
I had been talking all this while. I had condemned them without raising a hand, and no matter what came I had waited quietly, endured, and waited. To good people, how did I look? Like someone they could talk to, surely.
Flee in the open and I would be hard to catch, but if there is to be a conversation, stepping forward is the way. I'm sorry for making you, without your ever knowing it, the one who throws the most important person to a monster for food. Puxian Zhenren.
But I came to devour, the way a monster does.
Heehee.