Chapter 189

  The Unspoken Hurt (VII)

  Okay, I need my brain to work at about four thousand miles an hour because I do not have that much time before shit hits the fan here.

  The system, for all its frustrations, has been... consistent. I don't know why it's giving me a 'hint' in the form of a riddle all of a sudden instead of just explaining what it is, but I can kind of venture a guess; as it outright said, the woman in front of me is desecrating Heavenly Ordinances--and even if the system isn't of them, it's somehow, in some way, certainly connected to them.

  I imagine, however, that even if I kept all the points I ever earned somehow, I would not have had enough to catch even a fading glimpse of her status window--but the system still wants me to 'resolve' this, and, since it's providing a hint, I do have a way to resolve it without detonating my nuke: Long Tao.

  So, what precisely is the hint about? Shorn of the fancy riddling red herrings, there's really just one clear clue: illusion.

  Whatever it has to do with, it's in some way connected to an 'illusion' of sorts. What kind? Hell if I know.

  Honestly, I don't even need to figure out the full truth of the hint, just exactly what the system wants me to do--or, rather, what it's saying I can do. When it comes to illusions, there's the Art of Survival--ability to discern through them. But seeing as Long Tao isn't reacting and none of my alarms are being triggered, I don't think we are subject to any illusion directly.

  ... which means that the illusion is about her and likely the desecrated ordinance.

  Long Tao implied that there are no arts that 'alter the appearance', at least not in the capacity that we are altering it right now.

  And yet, there she was. Not only did he change his appearance, but he also changed his sex, somehow. Was that the illusion? I don't actually... know. Maybe? If I take Long Tao's words as truth, then yes, it has to be an illusion since there are no means to alter the body beyond the basics.

  Which would make that one of the Ordinances being desecrated.

  What's the other one, then?

  Maybe splaying a young man and using him as a vessel to resurrect a dead person? Yeah.

  Okay, stray thoughts, come back. Luckily, Long Tao was still distracting her with inane chatter.

  "You do realize you will never succeed, right?" he said, breaking the silence. "Even if you kill us all, and your ritual proceeds as you want it to... whatever ends up possessing that boy up there... well, you'll be the first to die to it."

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "Hm," the woman nodded, oddly enough. "Indeed. The dead cannot be brought back to life--that's what all you cultivators believe. The laws of life and death are sacred to you and are to be unchallenged. I am... different. I don't believe in a higher order, or in the gods, or in some unspoken rules and laws about what we can and cannot pursue.

  "Life and death are parts of our lives as fire and wind are--the notion that we are disallowed from tampering with them... it's merely dogmatic beating of those who'd want us spiritually enslaved."

  "No, you're not quite listening," Long Tao said. "I'm not saying that you cannot challenge the laws of life or death--or even that you can't resurrect the dead. I am saying that you will be failed, regardless of if you succeed or not."

  "Oh? You think some higher power will intervene to prevent it?"

  "I think," Long Tao said. "That you are intoxicatingly moronic, but in the most frustrating way possible. The dead can be brought back--only to bear witness to your folly."

  The key point of everything is the concept of illusion--but there has to be another layer to it. Another aspect that I'm missing.

  Blood Fiend seems beyond convinced that this ritual will be a success; the question is... why? If he's as experienced in shamanic culture as Lilia and Zhu implied, he should know well enough that it's impossible. Even now, he doesn't seem all that bothered by Long Tao's provocations--merely... bemused.

  Why?

  --there can be only one reason.

  He isn't actually resurrecting anyone. If the ritual itself merely mimics resurrection but doesn't actually bring back the dead... what could it do? Well, there's really just one way to figure it all out...

  Ask.

  "You're not trying to resurrect anyone, are you?" My voice broke through as all eyes wandered onto me, hers most quickly. They widened into a surprise as the lips curled up into a smile.

  "Finally! Someone with a speck of intellect to converse with! I was beginning to think that there wasn't a clever thought combined among all of you."

  "... you're just using the ritual's machinations."

  "Yes," the smile widened. "You are all very much right--it is impossible to resurrect a soul. But the ritual itself... originally, it was not made for that. Its nature was altered in the texts as the Heads and Shamanic Elders desired its true nature kept a secret, all for themselves. Little Zhu--how old do you think Elder Layra is?" she suddenly asked.

  "W-what? It's well recorded that Elder Layra is 149 years old."

  "Hm. Her body, perhaps, is," she shrugged. "But the old crone within is just shy of her 1,000th birthday. Though I do want to take the credit for figuring it out, it wasn't me, I'm afraid. A Sage approached me one day and offered me a sheet of paper--a list of names and dates of children and young kids that went missing from the compound in the last six hundred years. Though there were random one-offs, the pattern... well, it was fairly self-evident. I confirmed it with my own eyes, too--this exact scene as here, these exact containers, and a body, one far younger than that, however, suspended above. They shed the old and don the new."

  "...!!" while Zhu and Lilia seemed to be entering the first stages of denial, a little lightbulb lit up in my head.

  If this entire ritual indeed isn't about resurrecting the dead, but it's still about resurrecting... then...

  I reached into one of the spatial rings and pulled something out that I'd gotten a long while back--a starkly simple-seeming umbrella.

  Umbrella of Disillusionment, as the system called it, was one of the rewards I got way back when I created Art of Survival--I'd honestly kind of... forgotten about it, since it had to do with breaking people out of a 'psychosis' (or, more specifically, 'any abnormal state'), effectively, but none of the kids ever seemed even close to that, save for perhaps Light that time she got trapped.

  This is purely, purely theoretical--and it might backfire like nothing else--but if my thinking is correct...

  "Master, what is that?" Dai Xiu asked curiously, once again drawing attention to me.

  "Uhm," I lifted it up and pointed it toward the woman, injecting Qi into it through my fingers. "Hopefully... an answer to everything."