[775] Chain Reaction (1)
When the heat of the explosion subsided, Miro's party and Shura edged a little closer to Gaold.
Before the unprecedented sight of the Buddha broken, their senses sharpened, straining not to miss the smallest signal.
"I reached the state of the Buddha after experiencing the full sum of joys and sufferings in the world," Julu said.
"But… it wasn't more painful than Gaold."
He understood human pain, but not all pain—and that was where the outcome had been decided.
Sein spoke up. "As long as Gaold doesn't allow it, you can't close this world."
That was why the sermon had been shattered.
"Yes. For now."
At Julu's clarification, everyone turned back to listen to the exchange between Gaold and Nane.
"Does it hurt?" Gaold looked down at Nane and asked.
Nane's body was badly broken, blood streamed from his mouth without stop, yet his eyes looked peaceful.
"Most in the universe."
Gaold snorted a laugh, flopped down beside Nane, and drew a cigarette.
The moment he put it to his lips and lit it, a fit of coughing burst out.
"Kuk! Kuk!"
A backlash swept through him, as if every bone in his body were being crushed.
"Even with a body like that you still smoke?"
When the coughing subsided, Gaold narrowed his eyes as if the cigarette tasted exquisite and inhaled.
"Compared to the agony of living, a cigarette is nothing. You—you wouldn't last long."
He lowered his gaze. "Afraid? Of dying, I mean."
It wasn't a question to ask a Buddha, but all the more reason Gaold wanted to hear the answer himself.
"Not really. Life and death aren't different."
Gaold exhaled a long plume of smoke and stared at the broad horizon. "…Just—don't you want to try living? Throw away your merits and titles, get into the mud, rub shoulders with people, get messy."
Gangnan's eyes filled with sadness.
'Of course,' Nane thought. How could he blame Nane?
'You are the one who most wants to die. And Nane…' He understood Gaold's feelings more deeply than anyone.
"My mind won't change. Your pain may be endless, yet you chose life…."
Blood-tinged fluid trickled from Nane's eyes as he pictured sentient existence.
"Not everyone in the world is as strong as you." Even if the weight of pain is the same, not everyone endures with iron will.
"…That's true." Gaold, who had thought of death as often as he drew breath, knew that too.
"Damn it. Why make it so complicated?" Gaold tossed the cigarette away. "What's so important about others suffering? Then what's your suffering? Why live so painfully?"
Nane was unmoved. "Because I know it's right."
Knowing he couldn't change Nane's mind, Gaold fell silent for a long time.
"Could it be…" Gaold's thinking that he might leave Nane alive made Miro suddenly uneasy.
'The chain reaction of the Law.' If the Buddha exists, so does Yahweh; in the end, goodness cannot utterly erase evil.
"I'll do it myself."
"Miro." Julu spoke coldly. "You know it already, right? We don't have the qualification."
Only Gaold had suffered more painfully than the Buddha. Thus, whether to acknowledge or deny the Buddha would be his alone.
"Humanity's future is at stake. If the game isn't ended, countless people will suffer."
"That's your conviction, not Gaold's. He isn't humanity—he's a human."
"But—!"
"Miro, stop conceding." Julu turned, his eyes void of feeling. "Humanity won."
It was spoken in the Middle Tongue.
It had been humans who defeated the Buddha. Faced with an undeniable fact, Geukseon bit his lip. 'Gaold, please listen to me…' Nane said, "Stop. Since it's a world you established, I'll hand it to humans and leave."
Gaold looked up at the sky. "You're not a bad man."
Miro's face crumpled. 'Gaold, please…'
"Only—" At that moment, as if by telepathy, Gaold turned and looked at Miro. "If the woman I love lives here, it seems hard to do certain things."
"Huh?" Those listening all turned to Miro at once, but the more they looked, the less she could move her eyes.
Nane lifted the corner of his mouth. "That's enough."
Humanity had won, so the criteria by which the world was judged ought to be thoroughly human. "It's fortunate the one you love is Geukseon." Geukseon—the one who always gives.
"I don't care about that. I don't want to know." To Gaold, Miro was simply a stubborn woman who would tear out her own heart and give it for humanity's happiness.
When Gaold raised a hand, the air sliced, condensing to the edge of a blade. "Farewell." The moment Nane closed his eyes, an air-cut blade streaked toward his neck.
Kakakakakaka! Sparks flew, the blade faltered, and after a heartbeat a faint phantom of a shield coalesced into being.
"Hah! Hah!" Shura, hiding behind the shield, peered down at Nane in bewilderment.
'He'll die soon.' It wasn't a decision born of clear judgment. 'I don't know.' A sliver of doubt had bloomed in her when Nane's death became real. She felt she needed time to sort her thoughts, and that motive was enough.
'Get out first.' As she tried to shove Gaold away with Gestalt's shield, an unbelievable pressure crushed her. 'What is this?' Even after spending mental strength on Nane, the force of the rupture was more than Shura could handle.
"Kiyahhh!" As a massive godly strangulation assembled from hundreds of inverted crosses formed, she was flattened.
Kuuuung! The hard air compressed the ground through friction and a massive explosion followed.
"Grab Shura!" Since it hadn't been Gaold's intention, Julu no longer stopped Miro as she headed toward the surface.
A smaller pit opened at the center of the giant chasm in Jungcheondong, and Miro's group slipped through the smoke into it.
"What happened?" Gaold stood, gazing out toward the distance.
"Caught." He pointed to the ground. "Half of her."
Miro lowered her eyes. "Tail cut off? How devious…." Shura's lower half, neatly severed below the waist, writhed and bled.
Through clenched teeth, rough breaths escaped her. "Hik! Hik!" Crawling with only her upper body, she moved with the speed of the wind.
After passing cliffs in the Jungcheondong range and winding through tangled forest trails, Nane—lying on Shura's back—asked, "Why did you save me?"
"Don't know! I don't know! I'll think about it from now on!" Nane smiled faintly. "Sometimes lies are clumsy."
That was why doubt surfaced. 'What in this world is eternal? If you die, you die! But… but…!' You should at least know what it is, right?
'Lies! Lies! Lies!' Shura pushed off the ground with both arms, blood pouring from her waist like a downpour. "There is no truth in this world!" Everything is only frequency, and what we take as substance is just the illusion those signals create. "Everything is false!"
Born a snake and mastering incarnation to become human, Shura had repeated countless lies. 'But then…' The final conclusion the god of lies had reached was: 'What the hell is real?' Something must exist, in any case.
"Huuung. Heung." Blocking the blood with a rag, Shura clenched her teeth and climbed the steep slope until she reached the summit.
"Hah! Hah!" She dropped her chin to the ground, drew out a one-meter tongue and panted, then turned back. "You okay?"
"…Not dead yet." Nane added, "You would've died if you hadn't looked after me."
Shura narrowed her eyes. "Hmph! Even the Buddha didn't want to die, huh? So everything you said up to now was a lie after all?"
"If you look with falsehood, everything is false; if you look with truth, everything is true." Nane turned his head. "In essence, what you and I see isn't different."
"…." As when facing Beron, under Nane's gaze she could not lie.
"Ugh, wait. We should hide first…." Shura bit Nane's collar and crawled into a cave, erecting a phantasmal defensive barrier with Gestalt.
Nane looked up at the sky and smiled. "Nice weather." Nane had survived.
Hiding in the cave, after about three days Shura's lower body had regenerated up to her thighs. Still unsteady on her feet, she crawled with her arms through the cave, mouth full of water.
"Ugh. Ugh." Nane's bones hadn't yet set; he opened his mouth and she poured the water into him.
"Good water." "Of course. I went out to fetch spring water from the rock. Now, can you stop getting up? You can heal with your teachings."
"I thought about it." Shura, licking the dirt from her skin with her tongue, brightened. "Did you uncover the secrets of the world?"
"If I had, I would've already closed the world. Rather, I thought about why perfection was impossible."
Shura looked disappointed. "Ah, that's already been broken."
"Looking back, it seems flawed from the start. Rightness isn't something you reach. It simply is right."
Shura blinked. "So whether you ascend via falsehood or truth, you can't reach the real thing."
The Eleventh Sense—gunggam. "Yes. Whether you call it the sky or not the sky, you don't know until you become the sky."
Shura mimicked the Buddha. "Do not look at the idea; become the idea. That is true rightness."
Nane stroked her head. "Having understood integration, you could be called a Buddha."
"Hehe, so what will you do now?"
"First, I'll tear down everything I built. If it's not something you can reach, all you can do is wait to be right."
"Hee, what a waste." There was one way to dismantle the state of the Buddha. "Now I feel the suffering of sentient beings in my heart. I can shed tears, so nothing is too precious."
When he activated the restoration of his teachings, Nane's bones knit and Shura's lower body regenerated in an instant.
Shura was a little embarrassed. "I don't like being like this…."
Nane smiled and patted her. "Let's go. It's what I must do."
Outside the cave, Nane let his eyes adjust to the sunlight, formed a hand seal, and declared, "I announce to the entire universe."
It was Nane's final sermon. "Under the current Law, the suffering of sentient beings cannot be fully saved; therefore I will take extraordinary measures."
In a tremendous voice he proclaimed, "I permit all beings to transgress the Law."
The fact that the world's master had abandoned maintenance of the system echoed throughout the universe. Conversely, it meant Nane could no longer serve as this world's administrator.
'Thus the Buddha will disappear, but….' Shura watched the Sword of Words surge skyward, sending ripples through the Law. 'He's gained the possibility of becoming a true Buddha.'
Perhaps that was why. Even having become an ordinary human who had lost the absolute truth, Nane still held the world with warm eyes.