Chapter 360: Interrogation
“There’s no helping it, he really is an orthodox martial artist…… There’s no helping it, he really is an orthodox martial artist……”
The Murim Alliance Leader clearly did not look to be in very good condition, so it seemed best for me to take the lead with the questions until he came to his senses.
“Speak clearly. What do you mean you have no name? And what does it mean that you do not know your exact age, but this body is over fifty?”
“Exactly what I said. A name is a word that reveals one’s essence. One whose essence has become unclear loses his name. As for separating the age of the body when counting age, that is because the gap between soul and flesh is too great.”
“More simply.”
“Hmm.”
“I am not a proper human being. That is why, even if you ask my name or age, I cannot answer.”
At a glance, it was true enough that he was not a proper human being, but what kind of nonsense was this?
For a moment, I wondered if perhaps I had been a little too rough with him.
Then the bastard, who had been furtively gauging my reaction, hurriedly added,
“But I do have a designation, if not a name. The ascetics of Potala Palace call me Gandharva.”
“What nonsense!”
The moment he finished speaking, Jeong Hyeon, who had been watching him closely, shouted in anger.
“You who abandoned the Buddhist path and committed countless killings, how dare you call yourself by the name of one of the Eight Legions of Devas!”
“I never called myself that. The ascetics call me that on their own. Did I not say it? Since it does not represent my essence, it cannot become my name.”
“What sophistry!”
Jeong Hyeon glared at him in fury.
But there was no point in inflicting more pain on someone who was already being cooperative. That would only backfire.
I quickly stepped between them and calmed Jeong Hyeon down.
“Did you not feel something strange just now, Great Master Jeong Hyeon?”
“If not strangeness, then I certainly felt insulted.”
“No, not that… Is he not speaking as though he himself is not truly one of Potala Palace?”
“Mm?”
Only then did Jeong Hyeon notice it. His eyes widened as he looked toward the bound bastard.
The man nodded calmly, then glanced at me before speaking again.
“This body is certainly that of an ascetic of Potala Palace. However, I, trapped within it, am a different existence.”
“Do you mean to say that in earnest? That you truly thought you were Gandharva?”
“What exactly is this Gandharva thing that has you so worked up, Great Master Jeong Hyeon?”
At my question, Jeong Hyeon took a short breath before beginning his explanation.
“Gandharva is originally a subordinate of Dhṛtarāṣṭra and one who serves Indra, possessing the special ability to smell the fragrance of sound. They attend to Indra’s music, and they themselves also praise the Buddha’s merit through beautiful performances. They are also a numinous being that protects children.”
“Oh. So you mean a Buddhist spirit creature?”
“To be precise, they are closer to heavenly beings. We know of their existence only through the Buddha’s teachings. They dwell in a place entirely different from where ordinary sentient beings like us live, and they are not beings one could ever meet.”
Only those who had fully attained liberation could travel freely across the Three Realms. If one who had not done so claimed to be such a numinous being, then they were either a fraud or a madman.
That was his additional explanation.
“But didn’t he say he wasn’t?”
“…We should hear a little more first.”
When Jeong Hyeon and I turned our gazes toward him together, the bastard opened his mouth with a calm expression.
“As the old monk said, naturally I am not Gandharva. However, the ascetics of Potala Palace wished for me to become such a being, so they called me that of their own accord and tried to cram me into that mold. In the end, I became neither this nor that—merely an existence that obeyed the ascetics.”
“To put it simply, you were forced to become some kind of Gandharva until you went insane. But why Gandharva of all things?”
“Gandharva is a being deeply connected to music. And the ascetics of Potala Palace are deeply enamored with a certain being and a certain object…”
“The Blood Buddha. And the Demon Bell.”
“You know well, as expected of the one who defeated it directly.”
At his affirmation, Jeong Hyeon’s eyes sank heavily.
“Surely… no, but even so, they are still disciples of the Buddha, so how could they…”
“Do you have some idea of what this means?”
“I do. But it is something that should never have been, so I must tread carefully.”
His expression was a complicated one in many ways.
But the man in question continued as though it meant nothing.
“I am a collection of the residue the Blood Buddha produced over the course of long reincarnations, and a defective product created when the ascetics, having lost their Palace Lord, attempted to make a new one and failed.”
“Ah.”
Jeong Hyeon finally let out a groan.
I lightly patted him on the back and then pressed the self-proclaimed failure to continue.
“Explain in more detail.”
“The Blood Buddha was the greatest ascetic in Potala Palace’s history. By storing memories in the Demon Bell and overlaying them onto others, he achieved the feat of reincarnating while retaining his memories. …That was the problem.”
He continued recounting Potala Palace’s history in the same emotionless voice.
Back when Shaolin and Potala Palace still maintained regular exchange, Potala Palace had, despite being a different branch, still been a proper part of the Buddhist path.
But among them, a madman appeared.
One who wished to steal other people’s lives and enjoy immortality thereby.
That man was the Blood Buddha.
As a child, he had been acknowledged for his brilliance and talent and was the pride of Potala Palace. When he grew older, he concealed his ugliness thoroughly and rose all the way to the position of Palace Lord.
Everyone praised the Blood Buddha before he revealed his true colors.
But once he had gained free access to all of Potala Palace’s knowledge and wealth, he saw a single drop enshrined in its vaults and came to a realization.
An ancient ritual object capable of containing Heartscape and transmitting it in all directions.
Originally, it had been a precious treasure that granted temporary peace to suffering sentient beings.
Yet the Blood Buddha ultimately corrupted it into a ghostly object.
That was the Demon Bell we knew.
Just as the Illusory Illusion Witch had said, the Blood Buddha had not been using it according to its proper purpose, but abusing it in another way.
There had been those who noticed the problem, but they were purged one by one by the Blood Buddha.
And so all that remained were not people horrified by the cruelty of devouring others to prolong one’s life, but those who worshiped a false Maitreya Buddha who continued immortality by repeating reincarnation after reincarnation.
Potala Palace’s corruption began with the Blood Buddha, and in the end they became so deeply immersed in esoteric Buddhism that even Shaolin, appalled, severed its ties.
The result was the deathless Blood Buddha I had known before my regression, and the bald monks who followed him fanatically.
But then one day, the Blood Buddha suddenly vanished.
When the spiritual pillar who had ruled for generations and returned even after death disappeared, Potala Palace was thrown into chaos.
And what those madmen, now deprived of their leash, chose to do was create a new master.
“They extracted the residual memories left behind in the many corpses the Blood Buddha had used so far. Because the souls had been distorted by the Demon Bell’s influence, they had not completely scattered, and those fragments were scraped together and implanted into another person’s body. That is what I am.”
“But you could not become the Blood Buddha.”
“That’s right. I possess some of his knowledge, and that alone was enough to place me among the very best in Potala Palace… but in the end, I am only residue. Above all, even the remnants left behind by the original owners of the bodies the Blood Buddha inhabited have been mixed in.”
And so he was given the name of Gandharva, one of the Eight Legions of Devas.
The ringing of the Demon Bell soothed the mind and body of those who heard it, and thus bewitched an appropriate vessel.
In the end, he was a failed product, but they confined him within the mold of Gandharva while believing that one day, just as the scraps responded to the Demon Bell, they would call back the true Blood Buddha.
“I see. So the reason the Demon Bell, which had never once run wild on its own until now, caused trouble this time was partly because of you.”
“I cannot say I bear no share of responsibility.”
“Good. But while your origins are certainly an interesting story, they are not what we want to know. Why did you attack Kunlun, and why did you join hands with the Demonic Cult?”
“The Demonic Cult Leader taught the ascetics of Potala Palace part of the truth they wished to believe. And he also informed them that although the Blood Buddha had vanished, the Demon Bell remained intact.”
“The Demon Bell, fine. But ‘truth,’ is it?”
The Heavenly Demon’s realm was so lofty it was impossible to measure exactly.
Of course it was. Had he not raised it by force through repeated regressions and the accumulation of endless slaughter karma?
Naturally, it would not have been impossible for him to enlighten others.
But I had a feeling that what the apostate monks of Potala Palace wanted was not that sort of martial enlightenment.
More than anything, had he not deliberately added the phrase wished to believe?
When I pressed him on it, an unexpected answer came back.
“The Heavenly Demon said that the one who governs the Six Paths of Reincarnation is not man, but the world.”
“Hah.”
It was not that people died and were born again, but that the world died and was born again.
A statement treading extremely close to the line, though not enough to touch mental restrictions.
“And he said that if they obtained the Demon Bell, then like the Blood Buddha, he would make it possible for them to reincarnate while retaining their memories. In fact, he demonstrated the possibility using the Soul-Transference Grand Art. The price was to attack Kunlun and exterminate it.”
“And now the Soul-Transference Grand Art appears again.”
The Illusory Illusion Witch had found it strange in many ways—why he had even tried such a problematic grand art, and how he had managed to succeed…
But it seemed the reason had not been merely to continue using the King of Assassins. He had also intended to draw Potala Palace in.
No—perhaps making the Demon Bell run wild by gathering me and the Blood Buddha’s residue in one place had been the objective from the start.
Did I not already know now?
The Heavenly Demon’s true purpose was neither ordinary revenge like the other Demonic Cult members, nor the destruction of the martial world.
Even if I somehow managed to stop him, he would probably just laugh it off as bad luck for this cycle and begin the next one.
At first, if the Heavenly Demon’s purpose had been to destroy the martial world and add one more speck to slaughter karma enough to reach heaven—
Now that I knew there were regressors like myself, his true objective was clearly me.
Whether he wanted to make me his companion or had some other reason, I did not know.
If so, then the extermination of Kunlun had only been bait.
His real goal must have been to make me fight the Sword Demon—my own Heart Demon, given physical form.
From the start, the reason the Demon Bell had gone berserk and poured out my Heart Demon was because it had continuously been exposed to its power while showing me memories from before my regression.
And it had also been the Heavenly Demon who let me know that mental restrictions could be bypassed through the Demon Bell.
“This is insane.”
I had known the Heavenly Demon wanted me to grow stronger.
I had also known very well that he had gone mad from endlessly repeated regressions and harbored deep hatred toward the heavens that had trapped him in that cycle.
But knowing was not the same as understanding.
To use so many people as bait, to leave the King of Assassins in a state neither alive nor dead, and to buy time by putting Potala Palace forward in place of the still relatively weaker members of the Demonic Cult—
Each one of those was something I could conceive of as a method, but not something easily put into practice.
The Heavenly Demon had no line he would not cross.
Most likely, whatever line he once had had long since faded beneath the weight of time.
Apparently I was not the only one thinking that, because the expressions of the others had hardened frighteningly.
Up until now, our goal had been to establish the Orthodox and Unorthodox Alliance and properly respond to the Heavenly Demon’s invasion of the Central Plains…
But now, someone might well suggest that we strike the Demonic Cult first.
“Hoo. Then now, tell us everything you know about the movements of Potala Palace and the Demonic Cult.”
“Very well.”
The bastard calmly began spilling all the internal information he knew in meticulous detail.
He was giving far more detail than I had expected, to the point that I was the one becoming flustered.
“Wait a moment. It’s good that you’re being cooperative, but you’re going so far that it makes me distrust you instead. We know what you are now. I do not think you are the type to crumble from mere torture—ahem—harsh questioning. If you have a purpose, you should state it now.”
He fell silent for a moment, and only after a long while did he finally open his mouth.
“Kill me.”
“Not spare you?”
“I have never once been alive.”
After saying that, he looked at me closely.
“White Moon Sword Lord. What you did to me certainly brought intense physical pain… but I also felt my soul, twisted into complex knots and forcibly warped, filling out once more.”
“What?”
I had definitely used Demonic Cult-style torture.
The very things I had seen before my regression.
But he was saying that, rather than destroying him further, it was correcting his distortions.
Come to think of it, that method too had been devised by the Heavenly Demon, so why would it have such a divine effect…?
As I stood there in confusion, he continued.
“Even if this body dies, my broken memories and soul will return to Potala Palace according to the binding placed upon me. And then, just as it has until now, I will be forced again and again to wear the flesh of someone else and be used.”
His tone remained emotionless.
“The dissonance between mind and body. A soul that was flawed from the beginning. The order of heaven rejects me, and so merely existing is painful enough.”
And yet somehow, his voice sounded desperate.
“So let me reach true death.”
“Ah.”
Endless death and resurrection.
And at last, the rest that came at the end.
Suddenly, it occurred to me that perhaps the Heavenly Demon had some reason besides my growth for arranging for that thing and me to meet through Potala Palace.