Chapter 289: Great Ming (2)

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“For now, put down your blades. You as well.”

The Mad Buddha mediated first in a low voice. Unlike me, who kept my blade raised and remained on guard, they sheathed their weapons at the Mad Buddha’s words.

The Mad Buddha’s calm eyes looked at me. Since everyone else had put away their blades, there was no reason for me to keep holding mine.

“Good.”

When I sheathed my blade, the Mad Buddha’s stiff expression relaxed slightly.

“Yes. If it can be resolved through conversation, it ought to be resolved through conversation.”

“The Mad Buddha I know is a man driven mad by deviation.”

“That I was.”

“That you were? Are you saying you are not like that now?”

“This seems as though it will be a long story to tell standing. Follow me.”

After speaking to me, the Mad Buddha gave orders to the people who had put away their halberds.

“You all have your own work to do as well.”

“Understood.”

It seemed the Mad Buddha held a position of command within this formation. I could not understand why, but for now we decided to follow him.

The place the Mad Buddha guided us to was a small thatched hut. There was a fence, but it was so low that even a three-year-old child could climb over it.

“Do you live here?”

“That I do.”

There was truly nothing inside the hut. It did not feel as though anyone lived there. I wondered how static a life one had to lead for it to be like this.

“My daily work is sitting quietly. A house is only a place to shelter from rain.”

The Mad Buddha spoke as though reading my thoughts.

“So, what brought you inside here?”

I thought for a moment. Naturally, I could not tell this perfectly sane Mad Buddha that I had come to cut off his head.

“I fell into a trap.”

I told only half the truth. In any case, it was true that I had entered because I fell into a trap.

“Someone shoved us into this formation.”

“Hmm. So this formation can be used that way as well.”

The Mad Buddha stroked his chin. I could not tell what he was thinking from his quiet eyes. I was not even sure whether he believed me.

“Very well. I will believe you.”

“That is appreciated. Then perhaps you could tell us a little about yourself as well.”

“What do you wish to know?”

“First of all, are you really the Mad Buddha himself?”

“That is what others called me. I did enough to be called that.”

The Mad Buddha closed his eyes.

“But I have cast aside that name now. I mean to live uprightly under the Dharma name granted by the Buddha, Kongya.”

“So you were a disciple of the character Gong from Shaolin.”

A disciple of the character Gong at Shaolin would be similar to a disciple of the character Cheong at Wudang. Kongya, formerly the Mad Buddha, seemed past forty as well, so he was likely around the same age as Master Cheong-hwa.

“Then may I address you as Great Master Kongya?”

“Since I have karma to atone for, I hardly think I can be called Great Master. It is enough to call me Monk.”

“You are aware of your own karma.”

“What my body has done. I could hardly fail to remember.”

After all, everyone knew about the phenomenon of deviation itself, but almost no one knew what mental state one was in while actually experiencing it.

Was the mind trapped while watching what one’s body did? Or was the mind itself corrupted and broken? Did one become like an idiot? As far as I knew, research on deviation was still insufficient.

“Then how did you escape deviation?”

“You must have felt the tremendously concentrated demonic qi when you entered this formation. It is as though you passed through a wall of demonic qi. In fact, demonic qi still fills this formation even now.”

“That is true.”

“I suppose that may be the reason. Perhaps the system of my internal energy, broken by demonic qi, was forcibly set right.”

“You mean you regained your sanity after entering here.”

“That is so.”

The Mad Buddha, Kongya, affirmed it. For now, he said the reason he had returned to his right mind was this formation. It was somehow unsatisfying as an explanation, but since he could not have escaped deviation of his own will, the explanation was at least somewhat convincing.

“How many years has it been since you entered?”

“Who knows. In this formation, the seasons and weather remain constant. Fortunately, it is a season good for farming. So I do not know exactly how much time has passed. You would know better, I suppose.”

“The Mad Buddha vanished from the Central Plains at least five years ago.”

“Has it already been that long? Time passes quickly indeed.”

Kongya swallowed. I too had felt it while confined in the training hall. When one stayed in one place for a long time, one tended to lose all sense of time’s passage.

“Seeing that you farm, it seems people live here outright.”

“That is so. There are about sixty people inside this formation now.”

“That is quite a lot.”

“Once you enter, you cannot leave. What else can be done?”

Only then did my heart sink. Meeting the Mad Buddha had made me forget for a moment, but Myeong-gyeong and I were not people meant to rot away here.

“There is absolutely no way out?”

“None. I too spent the first while pouring desperate effort into escaping this formation, but it was all in vain.”

Kongya looked at us as though pitying us.

“In truth, as a martial-world criminal, it may be better for me not to leave, but you are different. But that there is no way out is the truth.”

“That is rather troublesome.”

“I will not stop you from trying to escape the formation. Only, there are people here building new lives, so see that you do not disturb them.”

“Do you play the role of governing the people here, Monk?”

At my words, Kongya looked startled.

“Govern? How could a sinner like me govern anyone? I have simply been here the longest, so I only help them settle in.”

“Is that so.”

Even though he spoke that way, seeing how people followed Kongya, he seemed to serve something like the role of a village head as well.

“But this space itself is fascinating. It looks as though Beijing was lifted and moved here wholesale.”

“I know extremely little about this formation myself. Why Beijing was cut away and made, why it is filled with demonic qi. I was simply cast here, so I only live.”

“I see. Then may we look around the formation and investigate a little? We might find something those already here have not.”

“Well. Everyone swept here has said that, but there has been little result. Still, it is hard to accept living quietly here and building a new life, so do as you will.”

For now, I decided to rise from my seat. Whether to kill the Mad Buddha by the Emperor’s command was now effectively a dead issue. The Mad Buddha had simply been bait. From now on, I had to pour all my strength into escaping this formation.

I knew how terrifying formations could be. The formation beneath the sea had made one spend far more time than in reality. But the reverse was also possible. One might think three days had passed here while ten years had gone by outside. Thinking of that, I had to get out as quickly as possible.

“Then we may look around everywhere?”

“This space is larger than you think. Simply looking around will take quite a lot of time.”

That was true. This formation was not all of Beijing. Had I not walked more than half a shichen through the great forest before reaching this small Beijing?

“However.”

Kongya cut off his words. Suddenly the room felt as though it had turned cold.

“Do not enter the Forbidden City.”

“Why?”

“That is where demonic qi is concentrated. Here, demonic qi is at least dispersed enough for people to adapt and endure, but if you enter the Forbidden City, you will go mad. In a society this small, one mad person causes tremendous upheaval, so please be careful.”

Kongya’s manner of speech, slow and calm in every other remark, turned stern only when he mentioned the Forbidden City. That gap stirred a strange feeling.

“Understood.”

“I sincerely hope you find a way out.”

Kongya closed his eyes. It was a dismissal.

We quietly left the hut. I looked up at the sky. The sky was murky. It was probably the formation’s influence.

“Shall we look around for now?”

“All right.”

Myeong-gyeong nodded. It was time to explore this small Beijing.

* * *

We continued exploring inside the formation. In truth, it was hard to speak of day or night. Here it was simply perpetual white day, with a dim sun hanging in the sky all day long.

Inside the formation was truly vast. They might not have moved all of Beijing, but it seemed to be at least a third of it. From afar it had looked as though Beijing had been shrunk fiftyfold, but once we walked it, the space felt decidedly wide.

I kept trying to move while sensing the flow of nature. Inside a formation, natural flow was distorted from the start. My thinking was that if there were a crack, it would be where natural flow proceeded normally.

But this formation was like a spiderweb woven with meticulous care. There was not a single place left undistorted. Yet it maintained balance, so it could be called a formation bordering on the miraculous.

“I am tired.”

“Do you want to sleep?”

“My body is not as tired as my mind.”

Myeong-gyeong looked exhausted. I thought I knew what he meant. Seeing the same weather and the same scenery continuously was bound to be hard. On top of that, there would be the anxiety of what would happen if we could not escape.

“I do not think we will discover anything this haphazardly.”

“That is true.”

Part of our exhaustion was surely that what we were searching for was unclear. We had no clear answer for what we needed to find inside this formation.

“Would you like to go inside and rest a little? Great Master Kongya said we could use any empty house.”

“Something feels off.”

“What?”

“This is a fake space anyway. The very idea of sleeping in a place like that.”

“Is that so?”

I was the sort who did not care as long as I could lie down, but Myeong-gyeong seemed to feel differently.

“Then what should we do?”

“Well.”

Myeong-gyeong hesitated. He seemed to have something he wanted to say.

“If there is something you want to say, say it.”

“I want to go to the Forbidden City once.”

“Hmm.”

It was more or less what I had expected. If there was anything here, it would likely be inside the Forbidden City.

“We were told not to go.”

“That is not what matters to us right now.”

“That is true.”

I remembered that during the Taiji Sword Guardian selection, there had also been a trial using a formation that emitted demonic qi.

Normally it only caused nausea, but if exposed to demonic qi too strong, Myeong-gyeong, who had built his foundation mainly on spiritual energy, could fall into deviation.

So in truth, I had been thinking of going even alone. In that sense, I was not at risk of deviation. Rather, if I went to the Forbidden City, my power would overflow. I possessed demonic qi, after all.

“Could we not go together, Junior Brother? Like when we speak quietly, by spreading a qi curtain.”

“I am not sure. If it does not work, Senior Brother would be in danger. I cannot gamble with your life.”

“Then let us at least go and see. To find out how severe the demonic qi is.”

It felt a little wrong to ignore the warning and go immediately, but we had no reason to heed it.

“Then let us go when people are asleep.”

“Sure, why not. We should rest a little too.”

I did not know when people slept. With no real day or night, it was frustrating.

If I could use immortal qi to merge with nature, I would simply go, but in energy this distorted, I could not merge. So I had no choice but to move during gaps when there were as few people as possible.

I rested for a while, then looked around the village briefly. There was no one in the village. They had probably all gone inside. With only about sixty people in a space as wide as a third of this Beijing, it was simply hard to run into anyone.

For now, Myeong-gyeong and I moved quietly toward the Forbidden City. We traveled by small alleys rather than main roads, and each time we moved from one alley to another, we were careful to the utmost.

And so we arrived before the Forbidden City. Even knowing it was a fake Forbidden City, its grandeur overwhelmed us.

“…Hmm.”

And we could sense, just as Kongya had said, demonic qi so thick it was absurd.

If Myeong-gyeong so much as set foot inside, he would probably foam at the mouth and collapse. I could tell.

“It will be hard to enter.”

I shook my head. Myeong-gyeong stared at me.

“I think it will be difficult for me too.”

“Yes. So for now let us go back and…”

“You can enter, Junior Brother.”

I stopped speaking. No matter how strong an image I had shown, the demonic qi lurking inside the Forbidden City was not a concentration I could easily recommend entering. Yet why was Myeong-gyeong speaking with such certainty?

The silence was growing long and would become strange, so I opened my mouth with as natural an expression as I could manage.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Because you have demonic qi, Junior Brother.”

Myeong-gyeong’s dark eyes pierced through me.