Chapter 794: Primordial Chaos (4)
It is cold.
The moment he recalls that, the boy bursts out of the water.
Cough, cough!
Spitting out the water, he looks around with blank eyes.
Huuuuuuup—
Naturally, he warms his body through the breathing he has been doing his whole life and expels the cold water in his lungs.
At the same time, he activates his brain, sorts his memories, and grasps his surroundings.
Tuk— Tuk—
The boy taps his head a few times, then, through the subtlety of issuing force, even drains the water that has gotten into his ears. He then rises from where he is, and only then does he recognize what situation he is in now.
"...The past?"
The eye-crippled who had become an old man connected countless stars to stars to make an altar and performed a long ritual.
Praying that if there is a next life, to please let him not be unhappy, and then died.
And the one who was the eye-crippled, after death, regressed to that single moment of his childhood when he was drowning in the water.
Now, the eye-crippled who has become a boy makes a quick judgment.
There is no leisure to fall into sentiment.
Huup—
He draws a breath again and, through breathing, takes perfect control of his whole body.
Then he burns the life force in his body and, for an instant, dashes somewhere at a speed a seven-year-old child can never produce.
Part of his lifespan is shaved off by the excessive movement, but that is none of the boy's concern.
Right now is the time to act.
Paatt!
The place the boy reaches by moving at a transcendent speed is the shabby thatched house where he lives with his mother.
The boy flings the door open and runs to his mother.
He quickly takes his mother's pulse and does what he did not manage to do before the regression.
Tuk, tuk, tuk!
He pricks points all over his mother's body and activates her life force.
He knows as many ways to kill a person as one could want.
In the first life, just how many people died by his hand?
The structure of the human body and the principle of life and such are not difficult.
He cut, he split, he sliced, and it was just not once or twice that he rummaged through the skin.
And before long, the boy's mother looks at the boy and smiles.
"Child...my baby..."
"Yes, Mother. I am here."
The boy holds his mother's hand tight and speaks in a trembling voice.
His mother's eyes regain life, and affection and will stand in her gaze.
"It is cold outside. You must go about warmly."
"Yes, Mother. I will dress warmly."
"Good, my baby. You even listen...well..."
The boy's mother, having finished speaking, looks at the boy with loving eyes and closes her mouth.
Whoooooosh—
A cold wind blows from outside.
The boy lowers his head.
Though he tried to activate her life force by opening points, it was already too late.
In the end, all the boy accomplished through regression is nothing more than staying by his mother's deathbed and hearing her last words.
The result does not change.
The boy knows this too.
In the first life, even transcendents who dominate the entire Cosmic Great Desolation trembled with fear before the boy and poured out countless wisdoms.
Even the rulers of the galaxies where innumerable stars and stars gather, and the mighty divine spirits who devour those entire galaxies...
The divinities who spend and adjust the lifespans of humans and other living spirits...
All of them kneeled before him, stricken with fear, and answered everything he was curious about.
In the last life, the boy even had the chance to transcend life, death, and lifespan itself, becoming a divinity of the pantheon like other divinities and transcendents.
Since the herald of the Chief God, the one who rules the Cosmic Great Desolation he lives in, even proposed to him the Seat of the God of War, he could have become an undying, everlasting being as much as he pleased.
However, he threw all of that away with his own hands, and in just one corner of the infinite Astral Realm, he made an altar out of starlight and kept praying without end until he died.
Even if he becomes an undying being...
The pain he received in that life, the misfortune, the sorrow and grief...
He knew they could never be repaid.
He wanted to erase the very existence called himself, become nourishment for the beings after himself, and live as a completely new being.
"The first...principle of history..."
History that has passed does not return.
The past [absolutely] does not change.
Even if there is a being who turns back time...
Even in the time that has passed, history repeats.
That is the knowledge he obtained while he slaughtered and captured countless divinities and transcendents during the first life.
"If it is going to be like this...then why on earth did you send me back...?"
The boy, letting out a grievous groan toward some vague someone who would have sent him back to the past, sobs with choking sounds before his mother's corpse.
Even the God-Killer who killed countless gods in the past life cannot change the flow of history that was once carried out.
Even if it is merely the matter of lengthening a little the lifespan of a mother who is only a mortal...
The first day of returning to the past.
The boy who was an eye-crippled feels to the bone the realization that he cannot turn back the time that has gone by.
After holding his mother's funeral, the boy slowly begins to recover the cultivation he accumulated in the past.
A power that overturns the world by willpower.
A secret art that, through such powers, completely separates himself from the world so that he does not receive the influence of the world's laws, and allows him to wield miracles.
Star Extinguishing True Chapter, Revised.
Darkness World.
The boy's hearing, taste, touch, and smell are sealed, and the sixth sense that all living beings have.
Even the sixth sense is sealed.
He focuses his mind on the consciousness of intent, called the seventh sense, and grasps the structure of the world at once.
The Law of Causality shaped like a net enters his sight, and the boy cuts some of the causal laws around him and inhales them.
Having devoured a portion of causal laws, the boy reorganizes the world's principles applied to himself, leaves the house, and walks slowly along the road.
In the boy's hand is held his mother's keepsake, a mother-of-pearl hairpin.
He walks and walks slowly, heading somewhere.
It is to the neighboring village beyond the mountain.
He goes to the market of the neighboring village beyond the mountain and meets a person he met in the first life.
"Hah, spare a coin...for this wretch's sake, at least...spare just a coin..."
Since he sealed his hearing, his ears do not hear, but while detecting the vibrations of the Law of Causality that are heard by the seventh sense, the boy looks at the face of the leg-crippled begging before his eyes.
'Was it such a face?'
He perches in front of the leg-crippled and speaks to him.
"Hey, you."
"Aigo, young master. Please, spare just a coin for this wretch."
The boy thinks.
'The flow of history does not change. But...'
The boy lost all senses, but unlike the last life, he did not lose sight.
He also heard his mother's last words, and he stayed by her deathbed.
Though he could not protect his mother herself...
'A little. If it is just a very little...might it change?'
Holding a small hope, he recalls before the regression.
He recalls the first life.
That time when the leg-cripple amicably calls the blind boy who cannot see and said to be friends.
It was not an attitude like serving a master as now.
"Let's be friends. I will become your legs."
Looking at the old connection, the boy, holding a faint hope that perhaps a person can change, makes him an offer.
The leg-crippled boy stares at him blankly and then asks a question.
"Wh-Why do you...? Why someone like me, a beggar...?"
"I am a beggar too. I will carry you on my back and go around together, so let's go around begging together. How about it?"
"B-But...uh...you look like you have no discomfort anywhere in your body... Why do you want to go around...with a cripple...like me...?"
The boy recalls the leg-crippled before the regression.
He tried to sell off the keepsake of the boy's mother to a merchant, got caught, and was torn to death by the boy.
'Was that...because this guy is innately evil? Or was it something that could have changed depending on circumstances?'
"...I too, was blind before."
"Wh-What...?"
"But..."
The boy smiles faintly and says,
"I prayed to Lord Heavens...and prayed again, and guess what. Lord Heavens gave me back my eyes."
"Wh-What...?"
""So...I want to become friends with you. Travel together with me and let's pray together to Lord Heavens. So that your legs can heal again."
He smiles faintly and hoists the crippled friend onto his back.
At the first kindness he ever feels in his life, the leg-crippled seems flustered for a moment, then soon starts to heave on the boy's back.
"Kkeuk...kkeuk..."
The leg-crippled is crying.
It must be because emotions surged up before he even knew it.
As the boy listens to the leg-cripped's heartbeat and the ripple of his soul...
He realizes the leg-crippled is truly moved.
"Stay with me. Even if Lord Heavens does not hear our prayers, I will fix your legs."
The boy thinks about the reason he returned to the past.
Even thinking again, he does not know the exact principle.
However, one guess he can make is that, as he committed killing and slaughter up to now, the footwork and techniques he studied to kill others even better seemed to cross some limit and feel like crossing time.
Another guess is the altar he connected stars to make is an altar he saw at a place in a secret cave where the brazier was, where he discovered the Star Extinguishing True Chapter. The function of that altar is an 'altar for making wishes'. It is an altar with a tale written that if one prays to God at that altar, God will grant the wish. The wish he prayed at that altar may have been fulfilled in this form.
Lastly, the moment he died,
He felt the will of some transcendent being come to him, caresses his soul, and something inside himself awaken.
He does not know which of the three made him return to the past.
But one thing is clear.
'Time that has passed does not return. The flow of the past also cannot be changed. But...if it is a small thing...'
For example, keeping sight by giving up another sense in place of his eyes.
Staying by at his mother's passing.
Or things like the first meeting with the leg-crippled friend being subtly different.
Fate itself cannot be changed, but the form of the connection can be different.
'If it they are small things...maybe I can change them?'
He still cannot know the principle, but the boy's regression likely originates from his own wish that he not be unhappy.
'In this life...can I be saved?'
Can he receive recompense for the unhappy first life?
The boy holds hope.
And this leg-crippled friend is the first test subject for him.
He begs together with the leg-crippled friend, and unlike the previous life, he teaches tricks and teaches breathing.
He kills a tiger living on South Mountain, sells its hide and gives him wealth, and he catches and kills a flood dragon under a bridge that eats people, and even feeds its Inner Core to his friend.
As a result, the leg-crippled friend gains wealth and becomes able to walk again.
"Th-Thank you, Blackie...thank you...!"
About one year.
In around a year's worth of time, the leg-crippled friend gives the boy the name 'Blackie'.
This is the same name he gave in the first life.
Because the boy roamed while wearing black clothes to honor his mother's death in his own way, the leg-crippled friend gave him the name 'Blackie'.
"It's nothing, we are friends."
Blackie hugs the leg-crippled tight and smiles.
One year of time.
It is the same time he spent with the leg-crippled in the first life.
During that time, he saw his own kind of hope.
And today,
Today, exactly the first anniversary of meeting him, is the day when, in the first life, the leg-crippled betrayed him and sold off his mother's keepsake.
'The peddler who coaxes this kid...I already killed him.'
Within the leg-crippled boy's heart, killing intent or greed cannot be found.
He fixed his legs.
He killed the person who would tempt him.
He even removed the curse called poverty that would make him possess greed itself.
He also did not show any bodily defect that would make him be looked down on as blind like in his previous life.
The situation differs from before, so he will not betray him.
Moreover, the waves of intent he feels also reflect the leg-crippled boy's heart, showing that he does not particularly harbor an evil heart.
'If it is only a little...I can change it.'
Of course, because this boy's lifespan is exactly until today, he might not be able to avoid dying today.
But just as he stayed by his mother's deathbed.
The very process by which the leg-crippled dies may be different.
He may be able to regard the leg-crippled boy not as a filthy betrayer, but as a friend.
If the boy who came to have the name 'Blackie' can only become like so...
The heart of himself that suffered in the first life...
The resentment and pain knotted in a corner of that heart might be able to be saved.
Thinking so, the boy vows that, if he does not betray him, he will kill even the god who spends out lifespans to save his 'friend'.
And so, that night arrives.
Puuuk—
Blink—
'Blackie' looks at the knife embedded in his body.
"Y-You bastard...what kind of eight-year-old brat doesn't even let out a single scream...!?"
Blackie looks around.
They are the village butchers.
He knows well that they are people who habitually do dirty deeds, and sometimes even take on murder-for-hire requests.
Crack—
Blackie crushes the knife with his bare hands and pulls it out, then lifts with one hand the butcher who stabbed him and flings him away.
Kwaang!
One butcher smashes through the room's ceiling, flies away, and becomes a lump of blood.
Blackie looks around with clear eyes.
"D-Don't move, you monster bastard! If you move, I will kill your one and only friend!"
"Heuheuk... B-Blackie..."
He looks at the friend held hostage by the butchers.
This life,
The friend did not betray him.
In this life, those who attack him are only marketplace butchers unrelated to him...
From that alone, he feels relieved.
Crunch—
An instant.
In only an instant, all the butchers die at once.
In a flash, the entire room where Blackie was sleeping blows apart, and wind pressure and shockwaves cover the area.
The courtyard of the manor where Blackie and the leg-crippled friend lived together enters his eyes under the moonlight.
"Don't worry. You won't die today."
Under the moonlight, whether at someone's instigation...
Numerous contract killers, assassins, and bandits hold weapons and look at Blackie with tense eyes.
With a calm face, Blackie faces his friend, who is a little older than him but still a child.
"Because you are my friend. Even if your lifespan ends today...I will kill even the power of the god who decides lifespans to save you. So don't worry..."
Puuuk—
"...Fri...end..."
Blackie looks at the leg-crippled who, trembling, drives a knife into his chest.
"...What are you doing?"
He truly cannot understand.
There is no one as well-versed in murder and killing as himself.
He definitely did not feel killing intent from the leg-crippled boy.
He also did not feel any will to commit murder.
Lately he seems a bit depressed and confused, but Blackie thought that, since the leg-crippled friend's physical age is a little older than his, it is only confusion arising as he goes through puberty.
Then, why...?
"D-Don't make me laugh... You beat to death the tiger of South Mountain... You beat to death the flood dragon under the bridge... You picked up a completely useless me and raised me... Everyone fears you..."
Blackie looks into the leg-crippled friend's eyes.
In those eyes lies an emotion Blackie can never understand.
For ordinary people, they are called 'despair' and 'inferiority'.
And an emotion they call 'fear'.
They are emotions that, across his past life and this life, Blackie has never once felt and cannot understand.
"The magistrate of Ju County...s-said if I help kill you...he will marry me to his daughter..."
Greed similar to the previous life.
However, that greed only seems like an excuse.
Because the leg-crippled friend regards Blackie as an 'incomprehensible monster' and 'something that must be dealt with'.
"You're a monster...die... Please die...!"
Chiiiiii—
From the sword the boy stabbed into Blackie, a faint sorcery shines and makes the boy's body heavy.
Poison energy whirls through his body, and black shackle-like patterns appear all over him and bind him.
"The sorcery worked!"
"Attack all at once!"
"Hunt the monster wearing a human mask, the one who killed the tiger of South Mountain and beat to death the flood dragon under the bridge!"
To ordinary beings, an incomprehensible fear.
That is the greatest superficial reason the being called 'Blackie' was betrayed and shunned.
But...
Blackie knows.
"...So I cannot change it."
Because he can see how the causality, history, and fate of this world flow...
He thought he could change small things.
But the flow of the world does not change no matter what he does.
For history that has already repeated once only goes along the original flow.
'Betrayed by the one he trusts.'
'Made to have his heart shattered'
The world moves to recreate history and fabricates reasons here and there.
First principle of history.
History does not change.
Even if one twists small currents, the result never changes.
Blackie laughs.
"Heh."
With a face all distorted, with tears dripping down, he laughs.
The experiment failed.
A person's effort cannot change the fixed result.
Rather...
He should not have become friends with the leg-crippled at all in this life.
He should have eliminated the very opportunity to build friendship and trust.
For if he had not expected from the start, there would not have been disappointment.
Kururung—
Above Blackie's hand, something black rises.
Above his mother's keepsake, the law of the world that he twisted up with Darkness World sucks in the surrounding causality, recombines it, and spits out a new power.
Shamans and yaoguai, sorcerers, monks, and daoists call the power they use when wielding mysterious sorcery Qi.
He refines that mysterious power and tempers it into the form of pure death.
The pure death of the North Pole.
Gang (罡).
The mother-of-pearl hairpin of his mother in Blackie's hand.
From the keepsake that the leg-crippled stole from him in his first life, black Gang Qi sprouts like countless teeth and claws and begins a slaughter.
Kwagwagwagwa!
Gang Qi swirls.
It is a single storm.
The Ju County magistrate, in order to suppress the little ghost that threatens his power, had eminent high monks make binding spells and, using the friend, set them upon Blackie. However, those binding sorceries shatter helplessly.
Just as a tornado turns a city into a wasteland, a black vortex blankets the entirety of Ju County.
A great massacre begins.
Countless human lives and living souls are torn to shreds and become lumps of meat, and the entire county is destroyed and becomes a ruin.
The magistrate and his family are dismembered and scattered like trash.
In that desolate ruin where everything is gone...
...the morning sun rises.
Blackie looks at the 'old friend' he alone kept alive until sunrise.
The 'old friend' looks up at Blackie with blank eyes.
"...Friend."
Looking down at the human who betrayed him twice across two lives, Blackie opens his mouth heavily.
"I killed the magistrate too. Now speak honestly. Why did you betray me?"
"...Y..."
He opens his mouth.
"You...monster... You're...a monster..."
The old friend, looking at the magistrate and the magistrate's daughter who roll on the ground as lumps of meat, still spits curses toward Blackie while wetting himself.
"You...are not even human...!"
"..."
"You're a monster...! You...you're...that's right. A snake. A snake...! How...how can you wear human skin...and do something like this...you snake bastard...? You're a monster...you're not human...inside you're pitch black...a black snake...!"
Black Snake.
The name his first friend gave him for the second time in the first life.
In this life too, he gains the same name.
History repeats.
Crunch—
The child who gains the name 'Black Snake' crushes one of the old friend's legs.
"Is that all you have to say?"
"Aaaaaaaagh! Aaagh, aaaagh...! G-Go...go to hell! Killing so many people...killing the sacred tiger of South Mountain, and killing the flood dragon under the bridge...n-now even killing the magistrate...and his innocent daughter...! You, you monster who dragged me in, raised me like a pet, and only mimics a human life...! You..."
Crunch—
The remaining leg is crushed.
He becomes a leg-crippled again.
"Kuaaaaagh...!!! Y, you...are not human. Don't...try to mimic a human...!"
"..."
Slice—
Black Snake cuts off the leg-crippled's neck.
In the morning sun, having at last cut off the neck of his first friend, he collapses on the spot.
Even though he regressed, nothing changed.
No...
Rather, even more blood stains his hands.
"...Wrong..."
The Black Snake, before the hope that has died, collapses and grits his teeth.
"Instead of saying black snake...or monster...you should have said...'I'm sorry,' 'the bad magistrate made me do it, I had no choice'...something like that..."
He knows.
All these lines are exactly the same as the words the leg-crippled spit out in the last life.
Back then he did not show such overwhelming force, and they were the words the leg-crippled spit out while being carried off on someone's back and fleeing.
However, even though he showed this overwhelming force and showed slaughter...
The past did not change.
More precisely, the lines that wedge into Black Snake's chest and give him the most painful wound did not change.
The great currents of history cannot be changed,
But the small ones can be twisted.
Only, the existence called the Black Snake...
By its very being, is a great current.
Second life.
In the first regression, the Black Snake gains the lesson that innate fate and its outcome cannot be changed.
However, he does not abandon hope.
People do not change.
They do not reform to goodness.
If so...
The person who gave him hope.
The meeting with the one who alone breathed hope into a life with nothing but pain and misfortune...
And the happiness he enjoyed within it...
They will never change.
Thus, for salvation, the Black Snake begins to walk to meet the wife of his previous life.