"Well, look at that. Hope stored at the bottom of the pithos." Not-Yuki said in her usually flippant and irreverent tone born out of schadenfreude.
It made my blood boil.
"Who the hell are you?!"
"Oh? Are you drunk Zagreus? Don't you recognize your one and only Yuki-chan? And here I went the extra mile to set up this date. Isn't it just as memorable as our last one?" Everything about her, down to the smallest mannerism was flawless. The way she sways her head, the light dancing in her eyes, the swing of her body.
This should be Yuki.
The Yuki in front of me is just as beautiful and free-spirited as I remember… and yet I can't help but reject her.
My gut is telling me this creature is fake. It is telling me to get angry. That I should tear it apart.
That I should hate it. Because my worst fears are reality.
It is like I lost the bottom of my stomach. A lead weight dragging me down.
My heart is constricting like it wants to escape from my chest.
Yet my mind is utterly lost. I don't know what is going on.
No. That is a lie. I don't want to face reality.
When a man is born, the Fates weave his future and swaddle him in it. Men cultivate virtue so that they can cast off that swaddling weave. When a cultivator ascends to the sophic realm, he casts off his silk bonds of mortality and tethers himself to his Principles. This grants him an astonishing lifespan, the power of the rules of nature, and a soul capable of hearing and emoting discourse free of the constraints of the body.
This comes at the cost of subjugating oneself to the soul's higher aspirations. These ten rules for life are boundaries that define the limit of my soul.
That is why I know.
Yuki already…
"I WILL KILL YOU!! I WILL INFLICT EVERY VIOLATION, EVERY PUNISHMENT, AND PAIN THAT EXIST IN THIS EARTH! YOU DON'T DESERVE A PLACE AMONG HEAVEN AND EARTH! THERE IS NO PUNISHMENT APPROPRIATE FOR YOU DOWN BELOW EITHER!"
"Oh, my. What a pair of lungs you have! How appropriate, I guess… wait. Are you crying?"
I tried to summon my pneuma to no avail as I tried to bite off the throat of the revenant wearing Yuki's skin like a suit. It was of no avail, the bondage of bitten iron is the Achille's heel of cultivators, capable of rendering the pneuma inert and irresponsible. Chaining both the soul as well as the body.
The dark fate reserved for a race made of iron.
"Well, there is no point in keeping the charade." Yuki pulls the suture around the crown of her head, uncapping the top of her skull like a cap to reveal the smiling brain.
I lost. I had lost long before I realized it as well.
"What? Did you run out of breath? I guess I can't fault you and it is convenient. I wanted to trade some words before I seal you."
"Who are you, and what are you after?"
"My name is Kenjaku and well, do you remember our little talk about the nature of gods a few years ago?"
Of course, that thing would have access to Yuki's memories, even if its mannerisms are being displayed unconsciously. It fits with Yuki's own research about the body, soul, and the resonance that binds them together.
"A god's nature is to live apart. Untouched and unspoken of. A pure existence – the true form of feelings and ideals that linger in men." I remember. We happily whispered secrets meant only for each other while singing sweet nothings to each other like it was a personal game of dare.
"Indeed. Yet, humans are too tainted to understand this kind of purity and perfection. It goes beyond ignorance. The answer would shatter the ego of all who witness it." Kenjaku proselytizes as she fastens the skull back into place.
No.
"Or so I thought until you came in. Virtue is how a mortal aligns himself with the divine. If the answer is too much then how about tempering one's soul in the question? To pursue virtue is to be beholden to it, to shape oneself to it. To plunge into the deep in pursuit of what lay beyond the darkness of uncertainty even while forsaking all wealth and pleasure the world has to offer because the pursuit is what justifies your existence.
That is what means to be alive!" The monster said while infusing his rhetoric into the world and invoking the first principle of its soul.
Kenjaku makes a painfully snobby face Yuki wouldn't be caught dead making.
"You really understand, don't you? Think of the perfect shape of fear and destruction. A cursory look at the world we live in reveals it can't be found anywhere. It could never exist among mortal men because every human will have a different answer. Metaphysics – The study of abstractions. The contemplation of things that can't be directly observed. I thank you from the bottom of my heart!"
"And yet…"
"Ha, ha ha! You got me there. It isn't enough. I can now picture the path in my mind's eye but what I really want is to truly see!"
"Tengen." I said the name like it was a curse.
"Precisely. I thank you, Zagreus. You left quite an impression on that shut-in with your performance of overwhelming aggression that disregard all else. Again, I can't fault her for that. I am the same. You blew Sukuna out of the water! I dreamed it was possible but feared it would remain just a dream until I met you! Unfortunately, you are too strong and unpredictable to remain on the board. I promise to release you a century or millennium in the future. Let's meet again in a new world!"
"This is it then? You two are conspiring together to turn that thumb into a god by fusing her with the entirety of Japan? And you think I will let you? Didn't you hear me? I will make you regret being born!... just sit tight and wait for me, Yuki. I am going to free you."
Whatever retort Kenjaku was about to say was arrested by Yuki's surprise attack. A star rage-infused punch to the brain. It probably would have worked as well if it was anyone but Kenjaku, the brain invoked the rules of nature in a desperate counter sacrificing both of her arms in a calamitous clash.
She then started to laugh in an uncanny out of character way while healing with RCT. "That is the first time such a thing happens, yet it fits with your hypothesis of the soul. Not a dull moment with you, is there? I will keep what you said in mind while I await you in the new world that is about to be born." The Prison Realm closes during her final proclamation, sealing my fate.
"Good night, Zagreus. Have sweet dreams thinking of me, will you?" Not-Yuki saluted while blowing up a kiss. "Gate, close."
-//-
Well, crap baskets. I don't think I have seen so many skeletons since my days as a grave keeper. The former inmates of my cell. Time also doesn't seem to pass here – it is a contradictory feeling of constraint a person has while working oneself to the bone to meet a tight deadline while at the same time, the clock seems to be standing still and is never-ending.
This is sort of appropriate since I can only guess the sort of havoc Kenjaku is up to in Yuki's body. I am on a deadline, the longer it takes me to get out the more dire things will get. Easier said than done though, the Prison Realm is in a whole new dimension as far as barrier techniques are concerned.
I know enough about Genshi to deduce this is based on his Magnus opus,
Ōjōyōshū ("Essentials of Birth in the Pure Land"). A contemporary of Tengen, and probably Kenjaku as well, he must have understood the secrets of cursed energy. The rift between Dream and Reality is a Curse. In that sense, the Pure Land is the proposition that aims to break free from cursed energy, the Cursed Realm, and the reincarnation circle.
The Wheel has stopped turning.
Ironic enough, this makes the Prison Realm a hard counter against my founding mystery of the [Wheel Turning] as the principle of the Pure Land is a conceptual denouncement to
metempsychosis (μετεμψύχωσις), colloquially known as the reincarnation circle. The death of the prisoner may allow the Prison Realm to be used once more but the souls of the previous victims are still chained still to this day. While a normal person would only see skeletons my affinity with chthonic spirits give me the means to see the ghost for what they truly are.
They are one and all praying for salvation that will never come. A macabre chorus of despair.
Despite the degree of refinement my pneumatic and sophic senses have reached, I still find no seams to this prison. There is no seam for leverage my influence and pull this place apart… or maybe I am simply too weak to find it and then force my way.
Well, if it is the first then I already lost but if it is the second option then I still have Hope.
While cultivators of virtue don't practice closed doors cultivation for more than months this has to do with the nature of the cultivation of virtue, heroes ascend through Labors and tyrants through acts of tyranny. And yet this doesn't mean it is an
ineffective method, in fact, due to the fact cultivators of virtue bit their souls to multiply by fostering the excellence inside their souls we are far less reliant on the traditional 'cultivation resorts' xianxia characters can't seem to live without.
Unknowingly Kenjaku just handed me over the perfect circumstances for me to perform closed-door cultivation. Either I break through to the Heroic Realm or everyone I love is left for dead. I tattled far too much about the Old Gods to Yuki to satisfy her curiosity and these hints were everything that Kenjaku needed to attempt the creation of an ascended god like the god of Fear and Hunger.
Forget Japan, the fate of the world is on the line!
We need a hero.
Good thing then that Hope springs forth eternally.
The highest of all blessings for it is the only thing that endures when everything else fails.
The worst and most twisted of all curses for it augments all other evils in empty promises.
I have to keep hope that I can escape it and I already know where to start. I look at the crowd of burned skeletons and the ghosts hidden behind them. Death is a sacred tragedy, even a corpse is owed its dignity. My time as a grave keeper has taught me the worth and value of granting a proper repose to the restless dead.
They too hope to be free one day. We are joined by common misfortune and no friend of mine will be left as a pauper with an open grave. Time to put my old spiritualist skills to use, the lack of quarry is no restriction. Bakkahos constructed the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, one of the ancient wonders of the world. It was said that he gathered its gemstones, its golden plates, and its ebonies, all from the Parthenon of his own cultivator's heart. Over the last decade, I gorged myself on the cursed energy of Japan, I have a lot of spare fat to burn.
-//-
What was once a macabre cage made of restless bones is now a tranquil grave. I gave every ghost the best burial I could manage. This place is still a cage but I banished the despair of this place, they are ready to cross to the other side once I break free from here. All cursed energy resonates in a virtuous circuit.
It was hauntedly beautiful if I say so myself. My best work so far.
A distraction more like.
I really miss the time you were shyer. Words might be worth their weight in silver but silence is gold.
You are just turning your face away from despair.
The important thing is that this little project helped me re-center myself. To meditate on my captain virtue. Based on my early decision I arrived at a concrete plan to solve my current predicament.
Coward!
The Titan of the Moulden Clay, Prometheus created mankind from the ashes of the Titans that devoured Dionysus. This is the attributed source of humanity's dual nature, the body, inherited from the Titans, and the soul, inherited from Dionysus. A man (Logos) in a chariot pulled by two horses, one ornery and blacker than night, the other snow white and passionate.
Prometheus golden ichor was capable of remaking a person like he was clay, it was liquid refinement itself. But the refinement of what? The body or the soul?
Yuki gave me the answer. The soul is the body and the body is the soul. Unity in all things is best, unity of the body and the soul most of all. In living the proper way, the virtue of the body and the virtue of his soul will be in perfect synchronicity with one another. It all begins with virtue. And it all ends with virtue just the same.
Now, what is virtue? Sure, even I parrot it as performative excellence all the time but the truth is that those are just the effects of virtue, not the cause. Virtue is a hard concept for men to tackle as it exists in the ineffable realm of metaphysics together with the soul. Fortunately, I already established that the soul can be physical as well as abstract. Hunger, spirit, and reason can be attributed to the body as much as they can to the soul. So why should virtue be any different?
Humans may have souls but it was the Thief of Flame that stole for us a spark. We are all his children. This also means that he can be called a prototype of the human form in Plato's theory of form. The manifested ideification of the human form. The finishing line to the race for divinity is called cultivation. And it is fundamental for cultivators to know where they are racing toward.
Together now.
The Diminishment of the World might indeed be a ruthless cosmic constant. I may indeed be just another worthless man from a race of iron, condemned by the Fates to never rest from labors and sorrow by day, and from perishing by night as the gods rain down sore trouble upon us for our impiety and irreverence. That is okay, human wisdom has unveiled the secret of elemental transmutation, or rather how it can be used as a guiding principle through unity to uplift a hardy but worthless iron soul.
It is our quintessential nature, to transgress in the territory of the Heavens.
I focus on the starlight marrow flowing in my veins. I incense my spirit and covetous nature with the heat of my virtue and force it to
burn. I endow my starlight marrow with the weight of a thousand truths that comprise the loading-bearing principles that govern my soul. Then I turned said heat upon my flesh, unmaking me and tearing everything superfluous until only what I couldn't live without remained.
Legends say the Father split humanity for our transgression, that every human being is only half of a greater whole.
In this Prison Realm where the Wheel has halted to a standstill, I will reach into the past, to borrow memories of a Silver bright world.
Humans are born whole but unconscious.
A truth doesn't need to be complex to be profound, there is strength to be had in clarity of purpose. Every new generation thinks itself more enlightened than the last as it gathers more knowledge and yet they are only lesser for chaining themselves tighter to that understanding.
As they come to know the world, they cut themselves to size in order to fit in.
A hero's nature is defiance against the world's decline. To be a hero is to subjugate to the soul's higher aspiration, to virtue, through performative excellence, through action, to right the wrongs of the world. That is why the age of heroes is remarkable in the improvement of the world whereas before it only fell further in decline.
A man would more readily see himself as a worthless wretch than accept gold hidden inside his soul.
Prometheus condemned himself for eternity but this doesn't change the fact he won. The Flame cannot be taken back by the Heavens, once Greek fire ignites it will burn until everything is consumed. The ladder to Raging Heaven cultivators so desperately climb is only a byproduct of his actions, not his final goal. For all his forethought, Prometheus was moved because his children were freezing, were blind. What else was I to do? Some things exist apart from explanation.
That is Passion
That is Passion.
How long have I been here? I don't know. I can't know either. By now the only thing I knew for real was the searing heat of my starlight marrow as it coursed through my body like ruby veins. It is like holding a hand on boiling water and forcing yourself not to flinch away from it. I wasn't a Titan, even if I was created from the clay in the image of one. I had no means to direct its refinement toward a particular feature or aspect, and even if I could I wouldn't know
how to improve upon them. If it was so easy, I would have done so years ago.
Stop whining, there is nobody who cares here.
Everything I have to guide me are remembrances of a silver-bright world.
And they are enough. Keep trying.
You are mad.
The definition of insanity on legs, yes.
Such is Hope.
Such is Hope.
This was everything I could do. Keep hope onto death itself in defiance of all reason and sound judgment. I can't allow myself to be ordinary if I want to ever escape this place. So I kept to my task and hoped it would eventually be enough to pay my freedom's price.
That is when it happened.
A defiant miracle imprinted itself upon the world, assembled from the shards of fallen stars to form a cosmic mosaic - a living constellation. The light spelled out his deed. Through the enlightened awareness of my divine daemon, the heavenly Muse keeper of my virtuous heart, I could see it. Glory written in the stars.
********************************
** MEGUMI CURSE EATER **
********************************
It echoed through all cities of men and far, far beyond it. Further than even their perceptions stretched to the right ears. It carried over the lands. It carried across the seas. And even beyond it.
No man was deaf enough to miss it as it reached up to Raging Heaven itself. Even though its answer will always be the very same.
It was somewhat tragic yet I couldn't help but smile. As a father, I couldn't be prouder. My boy a hero! he truly lived to his name.
More than that. I stand validated. It is the uncertainty that kills a man.
Sometimes everything a person needed was an example to inspire them.
You have lazed around for long enough, don't you think?
I certainly can't afford to let my brat show me up like that. I will never hear the end of it from Gojo otherwise!
Violet heat surged to life behind my eyes and spilled forth in a torrent.
********************************
** ZAGREUS FREES HOPE ONTO THE WORLD**
********************************
I burned.
-//-
[AUTHOR'S ROOM]
Yeah, plot twist. The Heroic Realm is actually the oldest, older than the Sophic and Tyrant Realm by a fair margin. How the sophic came to be placed below it is up in the air but nothing stops someone that doesn't know any better from skipping it either.
Sukuna bit more than he could shew this time around, or rather Zagreus up bring caused Megumi to inherit Bakkahos' iron stomach. So, in fact, Sukuna turned out to be less of an indigestion than he thought himself as. Rather ironic, but enough of spoilers for now.
