WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 135: The Slanted Ceiling and the Mountain of Smiling Corpses - 7

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I sipped the remaining Baekhwahongju as I watched the mental image. Then, after seeing the Great Master's final grand spell, cast just before her death, I muttered.

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

"Ah."

"The Abyss wasn't hell. It was heaven. This land became the Abyss and vanished, so no one could ever find it. And thanks to that, you returned to your old work after a long time and buried three hundred thousand people."

"Ahhh...."

"But I guess you couldn't completely turn away from the resentment of three hundred thousand prisoners. So you made a keepsake out of the question you couldn't bring yourself to answer. Honestly."

Jizan had yet to be drawn. It was neither sword nor staff, just a pitch-black rod. With no fixed shape, Jizan was both the key to this mental image and the problem behind this question.

Still, I was a mind-reader and an honor student who had been top of my middle school class every year.

Reading the answer instead of solving the problem was a piece of cake.

"That's a pretty grand setting for a survey."

Not that there was any correct answer. If you thought about it, the Great Master had created a survey with the Earth Sword, Jizan, as the prize.

The question itself was deeply subjective, so unless someone could persuade the mental image well enough, Jizan would not grant them its power.

It had nothing to do with me, though.

I read the intent behind it and lifted Jizan. A black, unadorned rod that could have been a sword or a staff.

The Earth Sword possessed the authority of earth arts and, if wielded against people, would become a weapon more vicious than any other.

"Ah, ahhh."

"I can't tell whether it's a staff or a sword. That's an odd design."

"How... How could you...."

The Great Master sobbed as though I had exposed her shame. More precisely, it was the Great Master's mental image.

The mental image looked at me in despair as I tore up the survey sheet it had painstakingly made, fiddled with the prize however I pleased, and grasped the true intent behind this test.

"Even if cowardly prophets are the reason you ended up like this, isn't it crossing a line to test the living with a question you couldn't answer yourself? Ah, I'm not saying you're arrogant. You literally crossed the line between life and death."

I shrugged at the mental image, still bawling with its head lowered.

Even if it was a mental image left behind in a keepsake, it was no more than an echo of the dead. There was no way it would answer me.

I waved Jizan around and said,

"Since you've already passed on, there's no need for greetings. I won't go far to see you off, so farewell."

Just as I was about to turn my attention elsewhere.

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

"Ah! You scared the hell out of me! My heart nearly stopped!"

The Great Master's mental image suddenly spoke to me.

Corpses had really been startling people a lot lately. Why were they suddenly waking up and talking? Did some consciousness from thirteen hundred years ago still remain?

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

Rubbing my chest, I narrowed my eyes and stared at the cross piercing the Great Master's abdomen.

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

The authority of the Sanctum, whose very existence was shrouded in mystery. Perhaps it was delivering a question to me across thirteen hundred years, like a delayed prophecy.

I stared at the cross for a while, but nothing changed. I decided not to bother with something pointless and focused on the Great Master instead.

"Then I should treat you as one of the living for now."

As I pondered deeply, the Great Master's mental image, which had been wailing, raised her head.

Her eyes were clear as a lake, and a single stream ran down from them. Her expression held grief and anguish that had crossed the ages.

Weeping sadly, the Great Master's mental image pleaded with me.

"In the end, this humble one could not choose and kept postponing the matter until I was finally driven into a corner. I fled because I did not wish to kill people with my own hands, only to end up killing myself. I found relief by fleeing that place... but a part of my heart always remained attached to it."

"How many people leave this world with no regrets? If you left in peace, isn't that enough?"

"But... is that truly enough? Was this humble one allowed to flee from sin?"

At the Great Master's desperate cry, I met her gaze and spoke to the faint lingering thoughts I could sense.

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

"Is that so...?"

"Except for those who make death their refuge."

The mental image shut its mouth tight. I knelt before the Great Master's mental image and met her eyes.

"Death looks like a perfect refuge, doesn't it? A place where no one can come looking for you, where no one can hold you accountable for what you did. It feels like the perfect absolution, doesn't it?"

I could not read the mental image's thoughts. Even my mind-reading could not cross the wall of time. Damn it. That damned authority.

Still, like any ordinary person, I showed an appropriate amount of empathy and murmured,

"Yes, that's right. There is no afterlife in this world, so how could anyone come to hold you accountable for your sins? It must be comfortable for you."

Even the Abyss, which actually existed, had only been reached after all this hardship and chaos. What if someone died without leaving behind even a trace? That was the ultimate form of defaulting on a debt.

"But think about reality's side too. Someone comes to collect a debt, only to find out the debtor is in a place they can't reach without dying! How do you think the creditors feel? Who are they supposed to bill for what they failed to collect?"

From the mental image atop the highest mountain, I pointed down below.

At the regressor and Jiseon fighting each other on the farthest, lowest ground, unlike this place.

They existed, but could not be seen within this mental image.

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

"Ah...."

The Great Master, who foresaw what was about to happen, let out a deep lament. If she had vanished without lingering regrets, that would have been one thing. But if she had left behind a mental image because she wanted to resolve them.

She should have expected this would happen.

I held out the survey sheet to her. The Great Master, now the one being tested, accepted it heavily. I rose to my feet and looked down at her.

"Your choice isn't over yet."

The light shimmering in the regressor's eyes flickered weakly. Then.

"Urgh...!"

The Wheel-Turning Heavenly Eye vanished, leaving behind a fierce wave of exhaustion. Concrete and corpses collapsed over the regressor, whose strength had briefly left her. A small grave formed to seal her away.

The regressor had held the advantage in the fight itself. Her consecutive attacks had forced Jiseon onto the defensive.

Yet Jiseon was stronger when she was on the defensive. In particular, it mattered greatly that there was a vast supply of concrete above her, ready to be drawn on at will. If this had been open ground beneath an empty sky, the regressor would have been able to keep fighting on equal footing, or even with the advantage.

Whenever Jiseon was about to be pushed into danger, though, she freely drew in Tantalus's concrete and drove it downward. The impact made the mountain of corpses quake and spill over.

It was a landslide of corpses.

No matter how high they were piled, the mountain was not made of solid earth, but the bodies of dead soldiers. It could not withstand such a massive impact. The regressor, positioned relatively lower down, had to spend her strength avoiding it and being swept up by it.

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

'...If only I had blown away the entire mountain of corpses with a storm. If only I had destroyed Jiseon's footing...!'

Why did that thought only occur to her now, when she had run out of strength?

Regret was always too late. All the regressor could do now was groan amid the unpleasant sensation of corpses.

No, there was one more thing.

She could watch me rise before the Great Master's remains.

When I returned to reality, the sharp fragrance of Baekhwahongju filled my nose. The premium, potent liquor, which easily overwhelmed even the bloody stench rising from the mountain of corpses, numbed my senses for a moment and heightened my emotions.

Ah, this was good. This was alcohol.

Feeling spirited, I pulled out Jizan and shouted loudly enough for the Abyss to ring.

"Nobody move! From now on, I'm the surgeon in charge of this situation!"

Everyone here froze with their mouths hanging open as they watched me. It felt as though I had become a king, and I was pleased.

This overwhelming sense of omnipotence. The thrill of everyone watching me, of their heaven and hell depending on my every move.

When I raised Jizan triumphantly, Jiseon, who had buried the regressor below, widened her eyes.

"How? How can an ordinary person possess the Great Master's keepsake...?"

"Why are you so surprised by something like this? Isn't climbing a mountain and picking up a stick there less surprising than changing the color of your eyes?"

I was no different from a hiker retrieving a stick planted by another climber who had gone up first. Aside from the fact that this was a mountain of three hundred thousand corpses, and that the item atop it was the Great Master's keepsake, I was just an ordinary hiker anyone might encounter.

Jiseon did not accept my claim.

"...That cannot be so. Lord Hughes, what in the world are you doing?"

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

I swung Jizan. It felt heavy, but it was not as difficult to move as I had expected.

Good. This was enough to declare it.

"Jizan belongs to me now. That means I can do whatever I want with it."

"Your jest has gone too far."

"I do joke around sometimes, but I don't joke around at an important moment like this! I know when and where to do it!"

What nonsense. After voicing my complaint sulkily, I decided to prove this was no joke.

Holding up the sword that stood equal to the earth, I shouted,

"Now then, all you buriers who created this stage, you have worked hard."

At those words, the corpses in their loose clothes all looked at me. Seeing how few remained, I gave them a warm smile.

"The buriers recorded in history. Those killed by the Conquering King. Those who became restless spirits with a sense of duty, piling up corpses for thirteen hundred years."

When the Great Master disappeared along with three hundred thousand corpses and the Abyss appeared in her place, the Conquering King believed she had hidden the corpses and fled. He threw the remaining buriers into the Abyss.

This was the Conquering King's massacre of the buriers recorded in history.

Yet they did not die. For some reason, as they fell, they eventually reached the bottom of this Abyss.

Waiting for the buriers was the Great Master, mourning the dead with her life fading away and her abdomen already pierced through.

A role makes the person, or so they say.

Some had always admired the Great Master, while others had only pretended to be buriers. Yet they accepted their fate of being trapped in the Abyss and mourned the spirits of three hundred thousand soldiers.

With their bodies before death, and as restless spirits afterward.

"I witnessed and experienced every duty you carried out! But a monk cannot shave his own head, and buriers cannot bury their own corpses! Because your calling prevented the living from seeing you off, I, an ordinary human, will mourn your spirits in your place!"

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

I raised my voice to every person who had not forgotten their duty even after death.

"I am still alive. I found an old grave while traveling, and in accordance with the duty of the living, I will hold a humble memorial service before I leave. You have all worked hard. Rest well."

Holding Jizan with both hands, I bowed deeply to them all.

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

They would have found rest even if other ordinary people had mourned them instead of me.

All they needed was a rite held for them alone.

As buriers who followed Earth Mother's will and had buried three hundred thousand corpses one by one, they could not close their eyes unless someone buried them.

When I closed their eyes and straightened up again.

Jiseon stood before me. She looked at me with a somewhat stiff smile.

"...In this humble one's stead, you mourned the Great Master and those who followed her."

"Don't thank me. It is the duty of the one who possesses this Jizan."

At my answer, delivered with a refreshing smile, Jiseon's expression darkened.

Footnotes:

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