Chapter 412: Only Forgetting Can Sever Karma
Patriarch Golden Vajra Warrior was visibly stunned. A host of eyes suddenly popped open on the shadow. “Or,” Xu Qing continued calmly, “is it possible those words were being spoken to some other entity that I just didn’t notice...? You see, Sir Inkwell has always addressed me as ‘exalted Jailer.’ However, in the portion just now, he used the simpler address ‘exalted one.’ It’s a somewhat obvious discrepancy, and yet strangely, I never noticed it.” Xu Qing’s eyes were as cold as ice. “And now I’m wondering how many inmates are actually housed in D-132.”
Eyes narrowing, he searched his memory.
“First, the cloud troll. Second, the human woman. Third, the Rockdevil. Thirteenth—” Xu Qing suddenly stopped talking. “Wait, what about the fourth? Who’s the fourth?”
His pupils slowly constricted.
To the side, Patriarch Golden Vajra Warrior opened his mouth to speak, only to find himself dumbstruck. He couldn’t think of the answer. Then he started trembling, and a look of terror appeared in his eyes.
The shadow was similarly in a daze.
“And who’s the fifth?” Xu Qing continued. “More precisely, who are the fourth through thirteenth? And how come I can’t remember who they are?” Taking out the jade slip with the information about the inmates, he checked the roster, and sure enough, there were fourteen inmates. And yet, he simply couldn’t remember the nine in the middle. It was extremely bizarre.
Even after carefully reading through the jade slip, he found that he couldn’t remember the details.
“Chen Boli talked about the inmates, and yet... he didn’t mention any of the nine in the middle. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it. How interesting.”
Eyes flashing, he opened his bag of holding with the intention of making a personal record of what he’d just come to realize. After a moment of consideration, he decided not to use a jade slip, and instead, took out an empty bamboo slip. He had a lot of bamboo slips in his bag of holding.
Being very careful and precise, he recorded everything he had just discovered onto the slip. On the final line, he wrote five words followed by a question mark.
The power of a god?
With that accomplished, Xu Qing stood and walked out of his sword pavilion and into the night. As the rain continued to fall, he walked through the puddles to the Corrections Division.
Then his footsteps echoed about as he walked down the stairs. It was the first time he’d come to the Corrections Division at night. Everything was dark, except for the occasional lamps on the wall that cast flickering, shadowy light. That light definitely wasn’t enough to fully penetrate the darkness.
That said, to Xu Qing, day and night were virtually the same, and he didn’t want to wait until the next day. What was more, the longer he waited, the more he was worried about his memories fading. He wanted to see for himself who the fourth through twelfth inmates were. Everything was dark and quiet when he reached Level 57, and the dark door of D-132. He pushed it open.
Do the fourth through twelfth prisoners even exist?
As the door creaked, Xu Qing walked inside, his face completely expressionless. Then he shut the door behind him.
D-132 was as dark as usual.
The moment he entered, he could sense gazes locking onto him from within the cells. At almost the same time, the boy appeared next to him, looking somewhat helpless and concerned.
Noticing that, Xu Qing frowned. The gazes that had locked onto him were why he was here! Back when he checked the jade slip, he hadn’t seen the boy. Yet he clearly remembered the boy’s helpless facial expression. That was why he had come here in the middle of the night. He wanted to find out why the boy’s gaze was like that.
That was his only goal at the moment.
“What is this?” Xu Qing asked, holding up his right wrist and looking at the boy.
The boy opened his mouth and began to speak. And yet, no matter how Xu Qing strained, he couldn’t hear a thing. It was almost as if the two of them existed in a different part of space and time. He tried other methods, for instance writing. But no matter what he did, he couldn’t establish a method of communication with the boy. Eventually, when he could sense that it was getting light outside, he sighed and gave up.
He looked around at D-132 and the fourteen prisoners there. Everything seemed normal.
He turned to leave. However, just when he was about to push the door open, a look of confusion suddenly appeared on his face.
I came in the middle of the night just to try to communicate with some destiny aura? That doesn’t sound like me! That’s something I could do in the middle of the day just as well as at night. So why did I come here at nighttime? I... think I forgot some things.
Turning, he once again looked at D-132. It looked exactly the same as he remembered it looking.
“Wait. No!” Xu Qing’s eyes glittered.
My memory isn’t that bad, yet somehow I can’t remember.... Don’t tell me there’s some power influencing me? On the way here, I wasn’t affected. But as soon as I stepped inside, I forgot why I came.... In that case, it means I must have uncovered some clues.
After looking around one more time, he opened his bag of holding, rummaged around, and eventually pulled out a bamboo slip.
Written on the bamboo slip were numerous lines of text.
He frowned. The bamboo slip seemed familiar, but he didn’t remember there being anything written on it before. After carefully reading the bamboo slip, his expression flickered.
What’s in the fourth through thirteenth cells?
The power of a god?
Shock filled Xu Qing’s mind. The writing was familiar. He knew it was his own. Yet the contents were unfamiliar. Finally, he looked up.
Something’s messing with my memories?? His eyes flickered with killing intent as his third heavenly palace vibrated. The aura of the taboo poison swept out, covering him. Then he took a deep breath and, for the first time, called on the power of his fourth heavenly palace.
That was his violet moon heavenly palace. In response to his thoughts, the fourth palace trembled, and then a stream of violet moonlight erupted from his sea of consciousness. As it surrounded him, every single part of him was augmented. His expression became infinitely cold, and his eyes turned empty. Though his physical appearance hadn’t changed, he suddenly gave off the sensation that he wasn’t a human anymore. Instead of being filled with ordinary emotions, he was a god that looked down on all living beings. While in that state, he once again examined D-132.
This time, the cellblock looked completely different.
It wasn’t black anymore, but instead, red. It was like blood. The floor was covered in gore, as were the walls and the cells.
There was only one spot where brilliant light shone out, and that was from right next to him, where the boy stood. Because the boy was standing so close to him, the light he cast enveloped Xu Qing. He stood in the light, while beyond the light, everything was the color of blood. There was even a blood mist that sought to invade him, only to be blocked by the light.
Shaken, Xu Qing looked in the direction of the cloud troll, and saw... that there was no cloud troll! Instead, it was a headless stone lion! It was greenish-black and exuded something unknowable.
Next, Xu Qing looked at the cell with the human woman. She looked different as well. It was as if a veil had been lifted; instead of her being tender and beautiful, she was actually just a skeleton. Inside the cell there was a huge, blood-colored scarecrow, rocking back and forth. Straw fell off of it, which then turned into smaller scarecrows which would bite off chunks of the woman’s skeleton. After chewing a bit, they would spit out the pieces and put them back in place. It was as if this woman was condemned to be eaten over and over again, through all her reincarnations. Noticing Xu Qing’s gaze, the huge scarecrow turned, looked at him, and then smiled.
The cell with the Rockdevil and the head was also different. The Rockdevil was gone, and in its place was a huge water bucket that emanated an ancient aura. Within the bucket was a turbid liquid, out of which grew a black lotus, as well as countless vine-like branches which filled the cell. Quite a few of them had stabbed into the head, which looked like it was enduring intense pain. When the head noticed Xu Qing looking in its direction, a curious and helpless expression appeared on its face.
“I didn’t change,” it said weakly. “I told you. I’m one of the good ones....”
Not responding, Xu Qing looked at the other cells, and what he saw filled him with waves of astonishment.
He did not see the fourth through twelfth inmates.
Instead, he saw a huge finger that filled over a hundred cells. It emanated a godly might that was difficult to put into words, and the blood which oozed out of it made the surrounding cells bright red. In fact, the blood mist and the gore on the floor were all brought forth by hīm. This was... the finger of a god!
In the final cell was Sir Inkwell. He looked emaciated as he stood there naked from the waist up, his torso covered with bite marks. And his expression was ferocious as he used his finger to paint something. His cell was filled with countless scroll paintings, too many to count. The ground was covered with discarded paintings, and if you looked at them closely, each one depicted Xu Qing!
When he noticed Xu Qing looking his way, he smiled. “Good morning, exalted Jailer.”
This was what D-132 really looked like. There weren’t fourteen inmates. There were six.
Looking very grim, Xu Qing took in everything, then turned his attention to the cell with the stone lion. He waved his hand, activating the spell formation in the cell. The lion exploded. Next was the scarecrow. The spell formation ripped it to shreds. After that was the water bucket with the black lotus, and then the head.
Xu Qing personally stomped the head to death with his foot. In the moment before it was gone, it sighed.
“Why do you still refuse to trust me?”
Last was Sir Inkwell. As the old man smiled gruishly, Xu Qing flicked his sleeve, sending a fireball into the cell which burned everything. Having done that, he looked at the finger of the god for a long moment, then turned to leave.
That finger was the true secret of D-132. What was really being locked up in this cellblock was the finger of a god. And yet, Xu Qing didn’t understand why something like that would be in Unit D.
He looked at the boy, and the light shining off of him that counteracted the blood from the god’s finger. Suddenly, everything made sense.
“Patriarch Golden Vajra Warrior was wrong,” Xu Qing whispered. “The misfortune wasn’t caused by my inability to withstand the destiny aura. Rather, it’s from a curse. The curse of a god. And the destiny aura is here to keep that curse under control. That’s why any jailer assigned to this cell block will be affected by the curse, and will suffer misfortune. It’s a cognitive curse, which means that breaking it is simple. You just need to see through it. And what that all means, is that you are the real guard here.”
The boy nodded.
Reaching the door, Xu Qing took one last look at the bamboo slip and then crushed it. He didn’t need it any more. He had already decided to step down from his position as the guard of D-132. The place was too gruish. Even though he had already seen through to what was really going on, he didn’t see any reason to stick around.
Retracting the power of the violet moon and the taboo poison, he pushed the door open. Once he was outside, with the door closed behind him, he took a deep breath and frowned.
Even though I couldn’t communicate with that boy, it didn’t seem like he had any evil intentions. He just seemed curious. Ah, whatever. D-132 only has fourteen prisoners. That’s a really low number.
It seemed to him that he should figure out a way to get some more prisoners for D-132. With such thoughts on his mind, he went off to find Kong Xianglong.
***
After Xu Qing left, everything went back to normal in D-132.
The cloud troll sat there chewing like before. The human woman kept trying to get the scarecrows to go to sleep. The Rockdevil rotated endlessly. The Paintedfolk painting was still there, as was Sir Inkwell.
Sighing, he said, “Why’d we have to get such a terrifying fellow? He wakes up every day. When will it end? Warning him doesn’t do any good. Once he wakes up, he just kills us. Not warning him results in the same thing. Every time he analyzes things, he wakes up.”
“I got it way worse than you!” shrieked the head atop the Rockdevil. “The first time he came around, everything was fine. But the second time he came, he woke up. And every day after that he always wakes up, and every single time he stomps me to death. It never changes! Am I that stompable? I’ve told him over and over again not to stomp me to death. Dammit! I’m gonna kill him! No, wait. Straw-hat will kill him. He’s doomed to die!”
Amidst all the clamor, the image of the boy appeared by the door of the cellblock. Kneeling, he picked up the broken pieces of the bamboo slip, then took them over to a dark corner of the cell block and tossed them... onto a large pile of broken bamboo slips. Every single piece was covered with Xu Qing’s handwriting. If you counted how many bamboo slips there were, you would find that they equaled the number of days Xu Qing had been on duty, less one. And every day he was here, a new slip would get added.
The boy sighed, then blurred and vanished. When he reappeared... he was outside of D-132, right behind Xu Qing.
No one could see him, not even Xu Qing.
He followed Xu Qing quietly, an accord with the agreement to protect him that the boy had made with that nice girl who agreed to be his friend. It was a formal agreement.
What was frustrating to him was that, starting with the second day, this person who he had been tasked with protecting actually didn’t need any protection. That was the day he realized what was going on in D-132, and how the boy was involved. He had resolved the misfortune on his own, without any help from the boy.
Because of that, he would wake up every day, and once he realized what was happening, would kill everyone in the cellblock. And then, because of the god and the inherent power of the Corrections Division, he would forget everything.
It was an endless cycle.
This was D-132, and it was the core of the Corrections Division. The misfortune didn’t come from the destiny aura, but rather from a curse. The curse of a god.
No one could deal with it, except by forgetting, which would sever the karma.