Chapter 406
A Glimpse (VI)
I feel like shit.
Like a proper, fully marinated piece of shit.
Try as I may to justify it to my little ape brain, it all rang hollow. I'd take the man's money and then use a seven-year-old girl to kill him. Somewhere in the conscious act of thought there is a justifiable reason for simply drifting over the waters, but my boat ain't quick or agile enough to find it.
So, I float endlessly, looking for it while the guilt gnaws at me.
Was it the right decision? Probably.
But I'm beginning to get the sense of why anyone with even the remotest sense of a moral compass goes gray and wrinkly within a few years of holding a semblance of power. Making choices that decide the fates of others without their input... it's sort of like playing god, robbing people of their free will.
Unable to sleep, I stood up from the bed and walked over to the window, whipping out the bottle of wine as I gazed over the webbed streets of the city. Once again, we will be leaving the wake of ashes behind us--when the man dies, the order will die with him. Fighting will break out, leaving heaven-only-know how many dead.
The Age of Change... I'd jokingly thought of my beginning in this world to be a signal for it, but it's hardly a joke any longer. We're like pestilence, mowing through wherever we go.
It's sort of like seeing the world as a glass pane; on the surface, none of the places we visited seemed all that bad. Be that the tiny little village where we first discovered the parasitic vine or the towns and cities we came upon. Even that damned castle high up on a mountain didn't appear outwardly awful. People who came there came because they had no other place to go to, and they made a life for themselves.
But beneath the stately beauty, there was always rot, one so deeply rooted that pulling it out meant collapsing the entire thing from inside out. Who was to say that whatever wakes in their ashes would even be better? We never stayed to see or witness, let alone help.
Sort of like superheroes who kill the big, bad villain, destroying sixteen blocks of a city in the process, never needing to face the consequences of that.
Because they are heroes.
And yet, it was a choice I had to make. Long Tao merely gave me a push, not much else. From the moment I read his status window, I knew what the 'right' thing to do was. Even if it felt incredibly wrong.
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... I guess, more and more, both Long Tao's and Lao Shun's words are beginning to ring true. The naivety that I brought into this world from Earth, the broadly empathetic approach to things, the attempt to not let this world change me... it's failing.
It's not the first time it happened, either--who I was on the day Yas got diagnosed and who I was towards the end of it... those were two different men. Utterly, completely different. The world molds us, I learned, like a pot of clay; a pinch here, a push there, a wedge yonder, and before you know it, you've adjusted to whatever new reality is in front of you.
The first time I had to help Yas to the bathroom, it broke me. Watching somebody so full of life be so shorn of it was like somebody dropping a sledgehammer onto my heart.
The hundredth? I was numb. Annoyed, even, that I had to get up at 3:00AM. And then guilty for having felt annoyed.
Here I am, again. The first time I had a hand in someone's death, it was devastating. But now, though the guilt was there, I knew it wouldn't last for long. It'd fade, like a memory of some awkward encounter you had back in college. He'd be dead, and I'd be... somewhere, doing something wholly unrelated.
Haah.
Alright.
Enough moping for today.
One bad thing about being a cultivator is that I can't get drunk anymore; there's no such thing as 'holding Qi back' so that the booze can permeate my blood. My blood purifies itself immediately.
Still, the taste itself and the dreams of being buzzed got me through 'til dawn. The city awoke and, with it, so did the kids.
Yun came bearing two spatial rings full of Spirit Stones just past the dawn. Before I could even ask her much of anything, the kids thieved her away and dragged her with her through their morning stroll.
On the other side, Lao Shun dragged me to the inn's back garden--that I didn't even know existed--appearing excited over something.
"I finally did it."
"Did what?"
"I concocted it!"
"... clue me in so I can share in on your giddiness."
"The first Flawless Foundation Pill!!" he exclaimed rather merrily, seeming less so like a five-centuries-old sage and more so like a teenage boy telling his friends he'd just had sex. "I've successfully concocted it! It's of awful quality, and I would never feed it to anyone, but it's a success!"
"Wow! That's amazing!" What's actually amazing is that I completely forgot about it. "But... how? If you brought that cauldron out, I think somebody would have noticed."
"... I snuck out?" He looked at me as though I was stupid--which, in fairness, I really was.
"Oh."
"I think I should have the first batch ready before the kids enter the realm," he said. "It should help them tremendously."
Will I even let them enter? I don't know. That demon's words... they are ringing around my skull, louder and louder every day. But, at the same time... they have to go. I have to go. If I'm ever to break through into the next realm with the perfect method, I, too, need this journey.
The remainder of the day passed by rather quickly, with the new day coming just as fast--the day of our departure.
We were far from being alone at the central tower, rather having to line up early in the morning alongside a hundred or so others and be chaperoned into the tower in batches.
The kids were still interrogating Yun, while she tried to 'interrogate' them back about 'Senior Brother Tao'. All she got, however, was Dai Xiu's, 'He's just a broody boy', and Wan Lan's lie, 'I don't think about him much', and ultimately Light's, 'He's our Master's biggest supporter', which promptly caused Long Tao to heave her over his shoulder and sew her mouth shut temporarily.
The girl didn't seem to mind it, though; those very same sewn lips curled up into a smile.
Alright.
Let's see what traversing spacetime without breaking any laws of physics is actually like.
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