Chapter 592: Journey to Kunlun (5)

Then a thought suddenly struck Qing as well.

Wait—doesn’t that make no sense? Yeonyeong talked like you could crank out walking corpses on an assembly line.

“But if revival is that hard, then what exactly is a walking corpse? A self-directing walking corpse? I’ve seen ones that think on their own and have memories.”

“Self-directing walking corpse? Oh. That’s an exceedingly rare entry, yet you know it well. Seems you’ve more than a passing interest in sorcery. Did Divine Lady’s Gate preserve a record?”

“You know about self-directing walking corpses?”

“Yes. Such a monster exists. But a walking corpse is a monster, not a human. How would you compare the two? Restoring a person wholly to life is not the same as making a monster.”

“A monster? But I heard they have memories and think for themselves. Wouldn’t that make them the same person?”

“Humans and monsters do not think the same. In the Celestial Realm there are immortals who ascended after accomplishing the Dao as humans, yet an immortal’s thinking is not that of ordinary folk. Do we regard an immortal as the same being simply because they retain worldly memories and can think? Absolutely not.”

“I don’t know; I’ve never met an immortal. Oh—have I? Did I?”

Qing said it while recalling that nasty old man she’d met during the Sword-Cut Wall circuit—whether that was the Heavenly Martial Emperor shaped by my ideation, the Heavenly Martial Emperor himself, or just a lingering thought, who could tell.

“Hmph, hm-hm, kh-hm.”

Master Danlun kept making sounds that felt very much like a snorty laugh.

But judging from his face, he wasn’t sneering—his natural laugh just sounded like that, and his usually stony features had plainly brightened.

“An amusing jest. I should remember it. Heh. Yes. Hm, hm. Kph, fuuuu.”

Apparently, he found it very, very funny.

I’ve no idea what about it was so funny, though.

“Then how about this? The owner’s soul returns to the body, but it’s already crossed the Gate of Rebirth and lost every memory. Is that the same person or not?”

“Uh, there are people who say they know their past life, right? Couldn’t they recover their memories?”

“Absolutely ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) impossible. That is true even for a sorcerer who has reached the Translucent Realm. I said sorcery knows no impossibility, but I’ll retract it. A soul that has crossed the Gate of Rebirth can never recover prior memories. Put another way, it’s like smelting down iron called ‘the soul’ and returning it to the shape of an iron ingot before forging a new weapon. The affairs of the underworld are not so sloppy. Otherwise how would it govern all the affairs of the three-thousand great-thousand worlds of Saha?”

The “three thousand” of the three-thousand worlds does not literally mean three thousand.

A thousand worlds are called a “small thousand world.”

A thousand of those small thousands make a “middle thousand world.”

A thousand of those middle thousands make a “great thousand world,” so the Buddhist Saha of the three-thousand great-thousand worlds is precisely this.

In other words, multiply a thousand three times: “three-thousand worlds” means one billion worlds.

Before the law that governs the three-thousand worlds, humans are less than motes of dust; no matter how strong the will of that dust, it cannot defy law.

“Still, shouldn’t you ask the weapon’s owner? Even if others say it’s not the same, if the owner says it is, then it is.”

“Mm? Even if you smelt a weapon and forge a new one, if the owner says it’s the same, then it is? Huh. That is... persuasive. No—no. Think of it—what are the laws of Saha? They hinge on the mind. What I see and think becomes phenomena—ah, yes, yes, was it thus...”

For a moment, Danlun’s focus went blank.

Sitting on the chair, uncomfortably cross-legged, hands folded demurely before his lower abdomen, a clear, fresh Daoist true-energy suddenly whirled about him.

Wait, what? Enlightenment—here?

Why are you having a realization when I’m the one asking questions?

This guy’s been making everything about himself since a minute ago, hasn’t he?

Who knows how long it went on.

Half-open, drowsy eyes—his mismatched pair that had been obviously different now began to align, little by little, into the same shape.

Right there—reborn in flesh and bone!

Why, of all things, did they unify to the smaller eye instead of keeping the bigger one?

Well, because Danlun spends all day in a dim archive for fun, copying texts.

Smaller eyes are better for ocular health, apparently.

Aside from that, the change was fairly plain.

For scions of great schools who’ve trained martial arts since childhood and whose muscles and bones are aligned to martial skill, even “reborn in flesh and bone” doesn’t bring some violent reaction.

Their bodies are already somewhat optimized; further optimization doesn’t produce an enormous change.

Of course, if the muscles and bones had been twisted by an accident or a defeat along the way, then it all goes crack-snap and becomes a huge disaster, leaving them terribly vulnerable.

If an enemy ever shows that, don’t hesitate—kill them on the spot. That’s what Master taught me.

Maybe a quarter of an hour passed like that.

Master Danlun opened his eyes. Or did he?

His one thin eye and one slightly less thin eye had unified to the thinner side, leaving Master Danlun with slitted thread-eyes that looked extremely suspicious.

Then he glanced at Qing and—grinned with a suspicious look that was anything but ordinary.

But he bowed at the waist and offered a courteous salute.

“Thank you.”

“Oh come on, what is there to thank me for? Congratulations on your realization.”

“I was just at the point where the joints begin to ache. Rebirth in flesh and bone yields greater returns the later it is achieved—I have struck it very rich indeed.”

Sure, the body optimizes and regains a measure of youth, and the older you are the more you get back.

But do people usually call that a profit?

If you reach super-transcendent while young, your body doesn’t age easily and grows sturdier; by that logic, achieving it as early as possible to slow aging while staying healthy is far better—so they say.

“Eh? So you weren’t a sorcerer? You trained martial arts?”

“Mm? Why would I abandon wondrous Kunlun’s precious ascending martial arts to study such useless sorcery? It’s just a pure hobby.”

“Oh—‘useless.’”

“Sorcery twists worldly common sense with sophistry and manifests it as law. In the end, it borrows others’ power. Worse, great sorcery only exerts force when heaven, earth, and human timing align, and even if you achieve results, you’re treated like a sham Spirit Wheel quack. Why would I study that? Besides, I’m a disciple of Kunlun; if I wish, I can partake of the world’s finest divine arts.”

“Mm. I do see why you said the Spirit Wheel lineage is effectively a lost practice.”

“Mm. Good. Now—where were we?”

“Eh? That’s all you’ve got to say about reaching super-transcendent?”

“I never cared much for martial arts. I learned them because training promised long health. As a child I was forced to cultivate by the seniors’ pressure; now I simply enjoy decocting medicines and organizing old books. So. Anyway—ah. We were talking about walking corpses.”

“Self-directing walking corpses.”

“The ‘self’ is one’s own; the ‘directing’ is command. Not following an owner but thinking and deciding on one’s own. Works of the Eon-family corpse-puppet adepts, made during the First Orthodox-Unorthodox Great War, though they say the results were not especially fruitful.”

“Why not?”

“I already said it. A walking corpse is not a human.”

The corpse-puppet adepts of the Eon line merely wished to revive comrades who retained memories from life and fight alongside them.

But the self-directing walking corpses did not regard their former selves as the same person.

“What do human quarrels have to do with me?”—with that, most of them walked away.

Aside from a few who joined in just for fun and lent a hand, the whole thing only carved up the hearts of the bereaved.

To become a walking corpse is to become someone else—no, something else entirely. That conclusion is exactly what those results meant.

Qing suddenly thought of Eon Yeonyeong’s nasty, cocksure confidence.

“You’ll understand me someday.”

If that means she’ll make me into a walking corpse so I’ll adopt a walking corpse’s mode of thought—mm. That... does track.

In the end, looks like Yeonyeong really is a walking corpse.

I’m certain, at least in my gut.

But those countless swords of blade-aura—

Is that the power a walking corpse would display? Can something like that even be made?

“Then what of the realm of a self-directing walking corpse? Is it bound by the realm the person had in life?”

“In terms of craft—skill—there are aspects like that, so I’ve heard. A master of sword arts, for instance, would handle a sword well. But I was told the inner-work is determined by the maker’s capability and the materials invested.”

“Then if the finest corpse-puppet adepts pooled all their strength and forged with the best materials—could they make a self-directing walking corpse with inner-energy on the level of the Life-and-Death Boundary?”

“I don’t know. Self-directing walking corpses are an Eon-family secret. And the Eon family was orthodox; if they would not furnish information, what—should we have stolen or seized it?”

If anything, because the Eon family was orthodox, what remains is only old records.

“But unless the Eon family had lost its mind—knowing exactly what sort of monster a self-directing walking corpse is, would they have handed such an inhuman outsider inner-energy at the Life-and-Death Boundary le— Ah. Right. Those Eon bastards—that damned lot of corpse-mongers—had lost their minds! So it was!”

Master Danlun burst into a sudden lament.

Still discovering it on his own, and only then explaining.

“Yeonyeong, that child. Erudite in sorcery, a truly good child. Back when I was a Patrolman, she often visited Kunlun to chat—my little sorcery friend; I can still see it. Then I heard her clan was annihilated and she entered the Blood Cult. I thought, ‘She drowned herself in sorcery and crossed the line.’ But unless the annihilation was accomplished with the Blood Cult’s help? A self-directing walking corpse with inner-energy at the Life-and-Death Boundary? Are you certain? Did you see it yourself?”

I have no idea what Yeonyeong was like in the past, but everyone I meet keeps attaching “good” and “lovely” and “proper” to her like labels.

“Yes. She said so herself.”

“Did you warn the Martial Alliance?”

“I conveyed it to the Alliance Chief, but since she’s young, he didn’t really look inclined to believe it.”

“Anyone would find it unbelievable if they regarded that child as a human. Hah. There likely aren’t records on self-directing walking corpses left, either.”

Back in the Second Orthodox-Unorthodox Great War, the Martial Alliance was based in Chang’an, not Kaifeng; the library was burned in the demonic invasion.

What Kunlun retains comes from an ancestor’s old handwritten notes.

Master Danlun, whose hobby is copying and binding by year, naturally lodged it in his head while copying.

“If other sects also retain ancestral notes, we could collate them for proof. I must inform the Alliance at once. But—rushing won’t change much; we should finish our talk first.”

“Eh.”

He’d acted like something was urgent, and now Master Danlun just looked back at Qing as calm as ever.

“In conclusion, the difficulty of offerings to the Corpse-Blood Poisoner you mentioned, and of rites for the walking corpse, is exactly this. A walking corpse may be a monster against heaven’s order—yet still, it’s a person.”

Still a person.

For some reason my heart went warm and fuzzy—like that.

“However, there is but one record claiming success—and even that is Dongfang Shuo, so it’s hardly credible. Such a monster likely does not exist.”

Dongfang Shuo is an undying figure of Middle Kingdom lore; in Daoist transmission he is a freak who stole all of the Queen Mother of the West’s heavenly peaches and gained a lifespan of “three thousand sixty-year cycles,” one hundred eighty thousand years.

Naturally, I’d never heard any tale tying him to the revival of the dead, so “not credible” meant precisely that.

“Does that answer it?”

“Yes. Enough.”

“Then good. Mm. Looks like binding books is out for a while. Still, it’s not bad to have a young sorcery friend again.”

What? Since when was I your sorcery friend?

Do you really have that few people to talk sorcery with?

Just then.

As if waiting for the cue, footsteps fell outside and a voice called Qing.

—Lady Ximen!? Did you get the answers you wanted!? The party for the Sword-Cut Wall is all selected! We leave as soon as Lady Ximen comes!

It was Bungsain’s summons: we roll the moment you arrive.