EP.135 Slanted Ceiling and Mountain of Smiling Corpses - 7
Sipping the remaining Baekhwa Hongju, I observed the mental image. Then, at the final moment, seeing the ultimate great magic the Grand Master used right before her death, I muttered.
"Wow, it really was special. No wonder she was arrogant."
"Ah..."
"So the Bottomless Pit wasn't hell? It was heaven. Because this land became the Bottomless Pit and disappeared, no one could find it. Thanks to that, she returned to her original calling after a long time and buried 300,000."
"Ahah..."
"But it must have been hard to ignore the resentment of 300,000 prisoners? So she encapsulated the question she couldn't answer and turned it into a relic. Well now."
Jizan had not yet been drawn. Neither sword nor cane, it was merely a pitch-black rod. Jizan, whose form was unfixed, was the key to this mental image and the crux of this question.
But I am a mind reader, and simultaneously a top student who was the perpetual number one in middle and high school.
Reading the answer without solving the problem is as easy as eating cold porridge.
"For a survey, the background is quite grand."
Not that there was much of a correct answer to speak of. Come to think of it, it was essentially a survey the Grand Master created by offering the Earth Sword Jizan as a free gift.
The question itself was extremely subjective, so without sufficiently convincing the mental image, Jizan would not permit its power.
Well, it had nothing to do with me anyway.
Reading the intent, I lifted Jizan. A pitch-black, unadorned rod—unclear whether it was a sword or a cane.
The Earth Sword that possessed the authority of earth magic, while simultaneously becoming the most vicious weapon imaginable if swung against a person.
"Ah, ahah."
"Whether it's a cane or a sword. It's a hard-to-understand design."
"Why, why..."
The Grand Master—or rather, precisely speaking, the Grand Master's mental image—sobbed as if her shame had been exposed.
The mental image despaired watching me tear up the carefully created survey paper and fiddle with the free gift as I pleased, grasping the true intent of this test.
"Even if it turned out this way because of those cowardly prophets, isn't testing a living person with a question you yourself couldn't answer crossing the line? Ah, I don't mean to be arrogant. Literally, you crossed the line between life and death."
I shrugged my shoulders at the mental image still burying her face and wailing.
Even if it was a mental image left in the relic, it was merely an echo of the dead. She had no reason to answer my words.
I swished Jizan around and said.
"Since you've already passed on, there's no need for formalities. I won't come far to see you off, so farewell."
Just as I was about to withdraw my consciousness.
"The one being tested... was this humble one?"
"Yikes, you scared me! Almost had a heart attack!"
The Grand Master's mental image suddenly spoke to me.
Corpses these days really startle people. Why does it suddenly wake up and talk? Could it be that the consciousness from 1,300 years ago still remains?
"Is it because of the Bottomless Pit? Both corpses and thoughts are strangely weird. Too well preserved, and the thoughts are clear enough to be read."
I patted my startled chest and glared with half-closed eyes at the cross piercing through the Grand Master's belly.
"Or maybe it's because of that cross..."
The authority of Seonghwangcheong, whose very existence is a complete mystery. Perhaps that was conveying a question to me across 1,300 years of time like a delayed prophecy.
I stared intently at the cross for a while, but still nothing changed. I decided to stop paying attention to fruitless matters and focused on the Grand Master.
"Then should I treat you as a living person for now."
While I was deep in thought. The Grand Master's mental image, who had been screaming, raised her head.
Eyes transparent like a lake and a single stream flowing from them were fleeting. Her expression revealed sorrow and anguish transcending time.
The Grand Master's mental image wept sorrowfully and begged me.
"This humble one, in the end, could not choose and kept putting it off, and was ultimately driven to it. After running away because I did not want to kill people with my own hands, I ended up killing myself. While fleeing from that place... this humble one felt relief, yet always kept lingering attachment in one corner of my heart."
"How many people in this world get to leave feeling relieved? If you left comfortably, that's enough."
"Is that... truly acceptable? Was it permissible for this humble one to flee from sin?"
At the Grand Master's deathbed-like cry, I met those eyes and spoke to the faintly felt residual thoughts.
"What's wrong with running away? Running away when facing an unmanageable problem is one guaranteed path. I don't dislike those who want to run. I rather like them."
"Is that so..."
"Except for those who make death their refuge."
The mental image clamped her mouth shut. I knelt before the Grand Master's mental image and met her eyes.
"Death seems like a good refuge, doesn't it? A place no one can come find you, a place that can't pursue your sins, as if it were the most perfect indulgence, right?"
I couldn't read the mental image's thoughts. The wall beyond time was something even my mind reading couldn't leap over. Damn, what a cursed power.
Still, like any other ordinary person, I exercised an appropriate level of empathy and murmured.
"Yes, that's right. There's no afterlife in this world, so how would anyone come to pursue your sins? It must be comfortable for you."
Even the actually existing Bottomless Pit, I barely reached after going through all this hardship and commotion. Given that, what if you die without leaving a trace? That is the very extreme of debt default.
"But please also consider the reality of the situation. What do you know, I went to collect the debt and they're in a place you can't reach unless you die! How are the creditors supposed to feel? Who do they bill for what they couldn't collect?"
From the mental image of the highest mountain, I pointed down below. The Returner and Earth Immortal fighting each other in the farthest lowest land, unlike this place.
Those who exist but cannot be seen from this mental image.
"So they followed you all the way to hell. To pick up the debts you put off."
"Ah..."
The Grand Master, who had foreseen what would happen, sighed deeply. She should have known this would happen if, rather than perishing without lingering attachment, she left a mental image because she wanted to resolve that attachment.
She should have expected this.
I handed the survey back to her. The Grand Master, who was tested in return, received it heavily. I looked down at the Grand Master and stood up.
"Your choice has not yet ended."
The cluster of light shimmering in the Returner's eyes flickered weakly. Right after.
"Kuh...!"
The Wheel-Turning Heavenly Eye vanished, and what remained was fierce exhaustion. The Returner's body went limp for a moment, and crumbled concrete and corpses piled on top of her. A small grave was created to bury the Returner.
The fight itself had been in the Returner's favor. The Returner had driven Earth Immortal into a defensive position with consecutive attacks.
However, Earth Immortal, pushed into defense, was even stronger. Especially significant was the fact that there was plenty of concrete overhead that she could draw upon freely. If it had been above ground with an empty sky, the Returner could have maintained a more equal or advantageous fight.
But whenever Earth Immortal was pushed to the brink, she would unreservedly pull down Tantalus's concrete and thrust it out, and with that impact, the mountain of corpses heaved and cascaded.
It was an avalanche of corpses.
No matter how they were piled like a mountain, the elements comprising it were not solid earth but the corpses of fallen soldiers. They couldn't withstand such enormous impact. The Returner, relatively positioned below, was swept up and exhausted her energy avoiding them.
And ultimately, she couldn't reach Earth Immortal and ran out of strength.
'...If only I had blown it all away with a storm of the corpse mountain itself. If only I had destroyed Earth Immortal's foothold...!'
Why did that thought only come now, when all her strength was gone?
But regret is always late no matter what. Now, all the Returner could do was groan amidst the unpleasant sensation of corpses.
No, there was one more thing.
The sight of me rising to my feet before the Grand Master's remains. Watching that.
Returning to reality, I felt the sharp scent of Baekhwa Hongju at the tip of my nose. The supreme poisoned liquor that even overshadowed the bloody scent emanating from the mountain of corpses momentarily numbed my senses and heightened my emotions.
Ah, excellent. This is what alcohol should be.
In high spirits, I drew Jizan and shouted at the top of my lungs.
"Nobody move! From now on, I'm presiding over this situation!"
Everyone present gaped at my actions and froze in motion. It feels satisfying, as if I've become king.
This overwhelming sense of omnipotence. Everyone focuses on me, the thrill of knowing that my every move determines heaven and hell for them all.
As I triumphantly raised Jizan, Earth Immortal, who had buried the Returner down below, glared with wide eyes.
"How? How could an ordinary person wield the Grand Master's relic...?"
"Why are you so surprised by this? Isn't climbing a mountain and picking up a stick lying there less surprising than changing your eye color?"
I was no different from a hiker retrieving a stick left by someone who climbed up first. Except for the fact that this was a mountain of corpses piled with 300,000 bodies, and that what lay at its summit was the Grand Master's relic, I was just an ordinary hiker you could find anywhere.
However, Earth Immortal couldn't accept my assertion.
"...That cannot possibly be. Lord Hughs. What exactly are you doing?"
"Hunting and gathering! The time-honored act of picking up ownerless objects!"
I swung Jizan. It felt heavy, but it wasn't as difficult to move as I expected.
Good. This much should be enough to declare.
"Jizan is now mine. Meaning I can do with it as I please."
"You go too far with your jesting."
"I do joke around sometimes, but I don't make jokes at such an important moment! I know when and where!"
Unbelievable. After expressing my complaint in a sullen voice, I decided to show proof that this wasn't a joke.
I held up the sword endowed with equal authority to the earth and shouted.
"Now, all you burial priests who created this stage, thank you for your hard work."
At those words, the corpses in loose clothing all looked at me at once. Looking at them, now so few remaining, I gave a warm smile.
"Burial priests recorded in history. Those who died at the Hegemon's hand. Those who became vengeful spirits with a sense of duty, and for 1,300 years merely piled corpses."
When the Grand Master disappeared with 300,000 corpses and the Bottomless Pit appeared in her place, the Hegemon, thinking she had hidden the corpses and fled, threw the remaining burial priests into the Bottomless Pit.
This is the Hegemon's massacre of burial priests known to history.
But they did not die. For some reason, while falling, they reached the bottom of this Bottomless Pit at some point.
What greeted the burial priests was the Grand Master, pierced through the stomach, honoring the spirits with her fading life.
They say a position makes the person.
Whether they had admired the Grand Master ordinarily, or had merely held the status of burial priests, they accepted their fate of being trapped in the Bottomless Pit and honored the spirits of the 300,000 soldiers.
In life with their bodies, and after death as vengeful spirits.
"Your fulfilled duty, I have witnessed and experienced it all! But a monk cannot shave his own head, and a burial priest cannot bury their own corpse! On behalf of all of you who, because of your qualifications, could not receive a living person's farewell, I, an ordinary human, will honor your spirits!"
Having shouted that, I raised the Grand Master's relic high. The corpses with only vengeful spirits remaining followed Jizan with their eyes.
To all those who never forgot their duty even after death, I cried out loudly.
"I, who am still alive, found an old grave while walking my path, and according to the duty of the living, I offer a modest rites and move on. You have worked hard. Rest in peace, all of you."
Right after I held Jizan with both hands, bowed deeply, and offered my respects to them all.
The corpses collapsed all at once, like kites with severed strings.
Even if someone other than me, any ordinary person, had paid tribute, they would have found rest.
What they needed was only a ritual for them.
Because they were burial priests following the will of the Earth Mother who had buried 300,000 corpses one by one, they could not bring themselves to close their eyes unless they were buried by someone.
When I closed their eyes and straightened my back again.
Earth Immortal stood before me. She looked at me with a somewhat stiff smile.
"...You have honored the spirits of the Grand Master and those who followed her, in this humble one's stead."
"Don't thank me. That is the duty of the one who wields this Jizan."
At my answer delivered with a refreshing smile, Earth Immortal's expression darkened.