Chapter 131 – Echoes (VII)

Chapter 131

Echoes (VII)

“What is your biggest fear, Master?” His question stunned me into silence for a little bit, as it was entirely unexpected.

“My… biggest fear?”

“Hm,” he nodded. “Mine is darkness.”

“Darkness?”

“Chained in a room with no light or sound,” he said. “Sustained invisibly. Lips sewn shut. Yet the mind is free to wander in its own sludge of insanity and do so for all eternity.”

That doesn’t sound so much like fear as it does like something he’d already lived through once. Seeing as he was strangely honest with me, though, I decided to repay the favor.

“Honestly?” I closed my eyes for a moment. “I’m afraid of dying.”

“… dying?”

“Hm. I’m not afraid of death.” I opened them and met his gaze. “All that which lived inevitably dies. Death is just an opposite state of life, and one I will be entirely unaware of. Like falling asleep… and simply never waking up. Dying, though, is different. I’d cling to life, but I’d also feel the breath of life escaping me. Dying painfully, over a long period of time, I’d… seen it. And I’d sooner take a dagger through my throat than ever live it. Why are you suddenly asking about my fears?”

“… I’m curious,” he said. “The more I pick up on your philosophy of life, the less I know what to make of you. You are indeed odd, Master. An anomaly in a world that is painfully predictable.”

“… why are we here, Long Tao?” I braved it and asked. “Precisely why.”

“To train the kids.”

“… eh?”

“You were right; there are no treasures buried in that ruin, no more than there are hiding in the trunks of the nearby trees. But there is something buried within, though I was wrong in my first estimate.” Yeah, just stop talking like a teenage kid. I mean, I know we’re both deeply aware that the other is hiding something, but at least put in some goddamn effort…

“What about?”

“The purpose of the barrier isn’t to take in blood to reawaken something,” he said. “But rather to save it. My, uh, my mother mentioned it to me once and showed me the runes of the array–it’s called the Life-Bonding Array.” Yeah, sure, your mother. Haah, at least he’s still keeping up with that. “It has three parts–the outer layer that takes in any kind of life energy, however miniscule; the middle part, which purifies it so that it has no blemishes; and the central part, which arranges the energy in a particular manner, giving breath, literally, to whatever is in there.

“This is why it’s taking so long and why it’ll probably be much longer than I expected,” he said. “In fact, I’m fairly certain even if they culled this entire region of both mortals and cultivators, they still wouldn’t be able to gather up enough life energy to break down the outermost layer.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

… Hey, isn’t that bad? Doesn’t that mean they’re now, literally, just committing murder for fun? I mean, they were already monstrous about it, but at least they had an ‘excuse’, a ‘reason’. Without it, they’re just sociopaths indulging their wants.

“I can get us in,” he said. “Just you and me, however.”

“Why?”

“Because in case you go berserk, I can cont–help you with a method my father taught me. But it only works on one person at a time.”