Under the erosion of time or some other force, do even the corpses of gods rot? Or are they being devoured?
With sharp eyes, Sū ěr noticed a corpse half-buried in the crimson earth. Beneath the tattered robes on the divine frame, stark white bone was visible. The part exposed to the air maintained a solid form, but the flesh in contact with the ground was melting—like heated cheese, it pulled away from the edges of the bone in long, thin red strands of liquified meat.
Suddenly, it clicked. That blood-red earth was not red soil or rock; the entire surface was a layer of melted flesh. Those jagged outcroppings might have been buildings once, but now they were buried under the gore of gods, resembling small, fleshy hillocks.
There was no longer any need to waste time searching for the dwellings of the gods in Takamagahara.
If every demon has a lair that acts as a hub for its influence, then Takamagahara—the most sacred and noble realm in the legends of Ashihara no Nakatsukuni, home to millions of deities—was the lair of the most evil demon of all.
Even now, before Sū ěr and Think very eyes, a corpse that was mostly submerged in this sea of flesh, with only half a forearm exposed, dropped heavily. It looked like a tomato blanched in boiling water, but it wasn't just the skin falling off—it was a whole chunk of meat. In his mind, Sū ěr even provided the splat sound for the moment it hit the ground.
Then, amidst the slow writhing of the red meat, it sank, leaving no trace behind.
Sū ěr couldn't imagine how many bones were buried beneath this vast, continent-sized expanse of flesh, but he finally understood why he saw no trace of ancient gods in the future society.
Those gods who had been exiled to Ashihara no Nakatsukuni had ironically become the last embers of their race.
The earth beneath them was a nursery of gore, yet high above stood an unchanging sun—warm, bright, enough to dispel even the darkness in a human heart. But was the Amaterasu appearing before them truly the one of old?
What kind of essence lay beneath that shell?
Sū ěr refused to believe that beneath the skin of this goddess, praised as the incarnation of the sun, lay the flesh of a god. He didn't even trust that the form appearing before them was her true body.
"...So, what was the thing he was 'supposed to do'?" Sū ěr asked, casting a glance at the Ninigi-no-Mikoto below, who was currently undergoing his punishment. He was testing her, probing for information.
Amaterasu mental state seemed unstable; she would frequently drift into a daze while speaking.
"The thing he was supposed to do?" Sū ěr question made Amaterasu laugh strangely. Her laughter was part sneer, part fury, and incredibly piercing. "To grasp the whole of Ashihara no Nakatsukuni in one fist, of course."
"The trash of Izumo, the savage gods of the natives, the Yōkai born only to destroy the world, the children of Izanagi and Izanami, the beasts, the plants, the fish... to squeeze them all into one!" As if to emphasize her words, Amaterasu extended her palm and clenched it into a fist.
Sū ěr wondered if this "grasping into one" was a symbolic description—meaning to gather all the power of every race into a single cord—or if it was literal. Truly into one mass.
Considering the flesh-covered ground of Takamagahara, the latter—which should have been a joke—seemed more like the truth.
"And then? What would you do then?" Not fearing this inexplicable goddess, Think followed up with a cold question. She had always held the gods of this world in contempt, claiming they couldn't even compare to trash like Kainas.
"Then the Yamato Nation would govern all life," the piercing voice suddenly dropped in pitch. Amaterasu turned her head to look at Think. "...All of them. The living, the dead, the beings that exist in this world..."
Reason seemed to be returning to the Sun Goddess. Her vacant eyes were regaining a sense of clarity and independence.
It wasn't good news.
"Is this world real?" Sū ěr pressed immediately. He wanted to know more, even just a little. "The fake starry sky outside, the plate-like moon... what lies beyond this world?"
No matter what, he couldn't believe this was an independent world. After witnessing the scene before him, he wasn't even sure if this distorted world would truly evolve into the one with a real universe and planets.
"Real?" Amaterasu chuckled. "It is... and it is not~"
"...Well, which is it?" Sū ěr rolled his eyes. This riddle-talking was exhausting.
"Have I not said? Guest from the outside... it is, but it is not."
For a grandmother who already had a grandson, Amaterasu looked like a sixteen-year-old girl right now. Think had asked Sū ěr more than once in his mind if she should just go over and punch her.
"This world is bound—and I am bound as well."
Her voice suddenly turned icy cold. Amaterasu hand unconsciously moved up until she could touch her own collarbones. The expression on her beautiful face grew agonizing, as if she were being tortured by invisible irons. In the next moment, her ten fingers stabbed into her own chest.
A tearing sound, the creak of splintering bone—it was as if Amaterasu were trying to tear herself in two by her collarbones. The pain on her face wasn't from physical agony, but for some other reason Sū ěr and Think couldn't know—yet she stopped abruptly.
"Where did you go?"
She said this suddenly. If Sū ěr remembered correctly, this was the first question the Goddess Amaterasu had asked of her own volition since seeing them.
Scalding blood flowed down her chest, staining her plain clothes a deep red. The flesh she had torn open herself didn't seem to hold her attention at all. Her bloodied hands remained locked on the bone, frozen, as if nothing else existed.
"After that day, I could no longer see you... but nothing can escape the sun's radiance," Amaterasu said, sounding perplexed. "Yomi [The Underworld] has long been silent, and the source of this Heavenly River has been severed. Where exactly did it send you?"