WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 135

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The Slanted Ceiling and the Mountain of Smiling Corpses - 7

I sipped the remaining Hundred-Flower Red Wine and watched the mindscape. At the very end, when I saw the final grand spell the Grand Master cast right before dying, I muttered,

"Wow, she really was special. No wonder she was so arrogant."

"Ah."

"So the Abyss wasn't hell? It was heaven. This land became the Abyss and vanished, so no one could find it. Thanks to that, I got to return to my old trade and bury three hundred thousand."

"Ahhh...."

"But I guess it wasn't easy to ignore all the resentment of those three hundred thousand prisoners. So you turned the question you couldn't answer into a relic. Wow."

Jizan still hadn't been drawn. It was just a pitch-black rod, neither sword nor staff.

Unformed Jizan was the key to this mindscape, and the problem behind this question.

But I was a mind reader, and once the top student all through middle school.

Reading the answer without solving the problem was easy.

"For a survey, this setup is pretty grand."

Not that there was even a real correct answer. If you think about it, this was basically a survey the Grand Master made with the earth sword Jizan offered as a giveaway prize.

The question itself was deeply subjective, so unless you convinced the mindscape, Jizan probably wouldn't grant its power.

Though that had nothing to do with me.

I read the intent and lifted Jizan. A black rod with no decoration, impossible to tell if it was a sword or a staff.

The earth sword, bearing the authority of earth arts, and if swung at a person, a weapon more vicious than almost anything else.

"Ah, ahhh."

"Staff or sword. Hard to tell what this design is supposed to be."

"Why, why...."

The Grand Master sobbed like someone whose shame had been exposed, or rather, the Grand Master's mindscape did.

That mindscape despaired as it watched me tear up the carefully made survey sheet, toy with the giveaway prize, and grasp the true meaning of this test.

"Even if this happened because of those cowardly prophets, isn't it crossing a line to test living people with a question you couldn't answer yourself? Ah, I don't mean that as disrespect. You literally crossed the line between life and death."

I shrugged at the mindscape, still weeping with her head down.

Even if it was a mindscape left in a relic, it was only an echo of the dead. There was no way it would answer me.

I lazily swished Jizan and said,

"You've already passed on, so no need for greetings. I won't see you out, so goodbye."

That was when I was about to pull my consciousness away.

"The one being tested... was it this humble one?"

"Ah, damn, you scared me! My heart nearly stopped!"

The Grand Master's mindscape suddenly spoke to me.

Corpses these days really did love startling people. Why wake up and start talking out of nowhere? Don't tell me consciousness from thirteen hundred years ago was still left behind.

"Is it because this is the Abyss? Corpses and lingering thoughts are strangely odd here. They're preserved too well, and the thoughts are clear enough to read."

I calmed my pounding chest and narrowed my eyes at the cross piercing through the Grand Master's stomach.

"Or is it because of that cross...?"

That power from the Sanctum, an existence no one could clearly define. Maybe, like a delayed prophecy, it had crossed thirteen hundred years to deliver this question to me.

I stared at the cross for a while, but nothing changed. I decided it was pointless and focused on the Grand Master.

"Then I should treat you as a living person for now."

While I was thinking that through, the screaming mindscape raised her head.

Her eyes were clear as a lake, and the single stream running from them felt fleeting. Her face held sorrow and anguish that had crossed time itself.

Crying, the Grand Master's mindscape pleaded with me.

"In the end, this lowly one could not choose, kept delaying, and was finally driven out. I ran because I did not wish to kill people with these hands, and in the end I killed only myself. I fled that place... and felt relief, yet one corner of my heart still held regret."

"How many people leave this world feeling truly unburdened? If you left in peace, that's enough."

"Even so... was that allowed? Was it right for this lowly one to flee from sin?"

At that last-gasp-like cry, I met her eyes and spoke to the faint lingering thought I could feel.

"What's wrong with running? Running from a problem you can't bear is one guaranteed path. I don't hate people who try to run. I actually tend to like them."

"Is that so...."

"Except those who use death as their refuge."

The mindscape shut her mouth tight. I knelt in front of her and met her gaze.

"Death looks like a good refuge, right? A place where nobody can come find you, where nobody can question your wrongdoing, like the perfect absolution, right?"

I couldn't read the mindscape's thoughts. Even my mind reading couldn't cross a wall beyond time. Damn it, cursed power.

Still, like any ordinary person, I used a reasonable amount of empathy and murmured,

"Yes, that's right. There's no afterlife in this world, so who would come chase your sins? It's comfortable for you."

Even the Abyss, which actually existed, took all this struggle and chaos to barely find. So if someone died without leaving even a trace? That was the absolute extreme of debt default.

"But think from the reality side too. Imagine going to collect a debt, and the debtor is in a place you can't reach unless you die. How would the creditors feel? Who are they supposed to bill for what they couldn't collect?"

From the mindscape at the highest peak, I pointed down below. To the regressor and Jiseon, fighting on the farthest low ground unlike this place.

They existed, but could not be seen in this mindscape.

"That's why they followed you all the way to hell. To collect the debt you postponed."

"Ah...."

The Grand Master, who foresaw what would happen next, sighed deeply. If she had faded without regret, maybe things would be different. But if she left this mindscape because she wanted to resolve that regret.

She should have expected this.

I turned the survey sheet around and held it out to her. The Grand Master, now tested in reverse, accepted it heavily. I stood while looking down at her.

"Your choice still isn't over."

The glittering light in the regressor's eyes flickered weakly. Right after that.

"Urgh...!"

The Wheel-Turning Heavenly Eye vanished, and what remained was fierce exhaustion. For a moment, the weakened regressor was buried under collapsing concrete and corpses. A small tomb had formed to seal her.

The fight itself had favored the regressor. She had pushed Jiseon into defense with repeated attacks.

But Jiseon was stronger while on defense. Especially with endless concrete overhead that she could draw on freely. If this had been the surface, where the sky was open, the fight might have stayed more even, or even favored the regressor.

But whenever Jiseon was cornered, she pulled Tantalus's concrete without hesitation and drove it downward. Each impact shook the mountain of corpses and made it spill.

A corpse landslide.

No matter how mountain-like it looked, it wasn't made of hard earth but dead soldiers' bodies. They could not endure impacts this huge. The regressor, positioned lower, was swept up and forced to evade, burning through her stamina.

In the end, she ran out of strength before she could reach Jiseon.

'...If only I'd blown away the whole corpse mountain with a storm. If only I'd broken Jiseon's foothold...!'

Why did that thought come now, when all her strength was already gone?

Regret always came too late. Now the regressor could only groan amid the sickening touch of corpses.

No, there was one more thing she could do.

Watch me rise in front of the Grand Master's remains.

Back in reality, the sharp scent of Hundred-Flower Red Wine brushed my nose. This highest-grade liquor, strong enough to drown out even the blood scent from the corpse mountain, numbed my senses for a moment and heightened my emotions.

Ah, this was good. This was liquor.

Filled with excitement, I drew Jizan and shouted loud enough to shake the Abyss.

"Nobody move! From now on, I'm directing this situation!"

Everyone here froze. Watching me, their mouths hung open and their movements stopped. It felt like I'd become a king, and I liked it.

This overwhelming sense of omnipotence. The thrill of everyone watching me, swinging between heaven and hell by my every move.

As I raised Jizan in triumph, Jiseon, who had just buried the regressor down below, widened her eyes.

"How? An ordinary person holding the Grand Master's relic...?"

"Why are you shocked by this? Crawling up a mountain and picking up the stick at the top is less shocking than changing your eye color all the time, isn't it?"

I had basically just recovered a stick planted by a hiker who climbed first. Except the mountain was a corpse mountain made of three hundred thousand bodies, and the thing at the top was the Grand Master's relic. Other than that, I was just an ordinary hiker you'd see anywhere.

But Jiseon couldn't accept that claim.

"...That cannot be so, can it, Hughes-nim. What in the world are you doing?"

"Hunting and gathering! A time-honored act of picking up ownerless things!"

I swung Jizan. It felt heavy, but it wasn't as hard to move as I'd expected.

Good. At this level, I could make the declaration.

"Jizan is mine now. Which means I can do whatever I want with it."

"Your joke goes too far."

"I joke sometimes, but not at moments this important! I do know time and place!"

Unbelievable. After grumbling in protest, I decided to prove this wasn't a joke.

I held up the sword, vested with authority equal to earth, and shouted.

"To all buriers who built this stage, you've worked hard."

At those words, the loose-clothed corpses all looked at me at once. Seeing the few of them left, I gave a warm smile.

"Buriers recorded in history. Those killed by the Tyrant King. Those who became vengeful spirits with duty in their hearts and spent thirteen hundred years simply piling corpses."

When the Grand Master disappeared along with three hundred thousand corpses and the Abyss appeared in their place, the Tyrant King thought she had hidden the bodies and fled, so he threw the remaining buriers into the Abyss.

This was the burier massacre by the Tyrant King, as history knew it.

But they did not die. Somehow, as they fell, they reached the bottom of this Abyss.

What greeted the buriers was the Grand Master, belly pierced through, life fading, honoring the dead.

There was a saying that position makes the person.

Some had admired the Grand Master in life. Some had only pretended to hold the title of burier. Yet all of them accepted the fate of being trapped in the Abyss and honored the souls of the three hundred thousand soldiers.

Before death, with their bodies. After death, as vengeful spirits.

"I witnessed and experienced every duty all of you fulfilled! But a monk cannot shave his own head, and a burier cannot bury their own corpse! Because your role denied you the farewell of the living, I, an ordinary human, will honor your souls in your place!"

After shouting that, I raised the Grand Master's relic high. The corpses, with only vengeful spirits left in them, followed Jizan with their eyes.

To all who had not forgotten their mission even after death, I shouted at full voice.

"I am still alive, and while passing by, I found an old grave. So by the duty of the living, I hold a modest memorial rite before going on. You all worked hard. Rest in peace."

I held Jizan with both hands, bowed deeply to them all, and right after that.

The corpses all collapsed at once, like kites with their strings cut.

Even if some other ordinary person had mourned them instead of me, they would have found rest.

What they needed was only a rite for them.

They were buriers who followed the will of Mother Earth, and since they had not been buried by someone else, they had not been able to close their eyes.

When I closed their eyes and straightened up again.

Jiseon stood before me. Wearing a slightly stiff smile, she looked at me.

"...In place of this lowly one, you honored the souls of the Grand Master and those who followed her."

"Don't thank me. That's the duty of the one who holds this Jizan."

At my reply, delivered with a refreshed smile, Jiseon's expression darkened.

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