"No matter how he looks, he's still a man of the Orthodox Sects… no matter how he looks, he's still a man of the Orthodox Sects…"
Given that the Murim Alliance Leader's condition didn't seem to be in the best shape, it would be best for me to ask my questions first before he came to his senses.
"Speak plainly. What do you mean you have no name, and what do you mean you don't know your exact age but your body is over fifty?"
"Exactly as I said. A name is a word that represents one's essence. Those whose essence has become unclear are bound to lose their names. Also, when counting one's age, separating the body's age is because the gap between the soul and the flesh is great."
"A little simpler."
"…I am not a proper human being. Therefore, I cannot answer when asked my name or age."
"Hmm."
Even at a glance, it was clear he wasn't a proper human being, but what kind of nonsense was this? For a moment, I wondered if I had been too generous in my caresses.
The fellow, who had been slyly watching my reaction, hastily added.
"However, if it's a title rather than a name, I do have one. The monks of the Potala Palace call me Gandharva."
"Nonsense!"
The moment he finished speaking, Great Master Jeonghyeon, who had been watching him closely, bellowed.
"How dare a man who abandoned the Buddhist path and committed countless murders claim the name of one of the Eight Classes of Divine Beings!"
"I never claimed it. It is merely what the monks took it upon themselves to call me. Did I not say this cannot be my name, as it does not represent my true nature?"
"Sophistry!"
The furious Great Master Jeonghyeon began glaring at the man. Forcing pain upon someone who was already cooperating would only backfire.
I quickly stepped between them to calm the Great Master down.
"Great Master Jeonghyeon, did you not sense something amiss?"
"If you mean a sense of insult, I have felt more than enough of that."
"No, that is not what I mean… Does it not seem as though this man is speaking as if he is not a member of the Potala Palace?"
"Hm?"
Only then did the Great Master Jeonghyeon catch on, his eyes widening as he stared at the bound man.
The man nodded calmly, then paused, glanced at me to gauge my reaction, and spoke again.
"This body is indeed a monk of the Potala Palace. However, the one trapped within it is a different being."
"Surely you cannot mean that sincerely? That you were a Gandharva?"
"If I may ask, Great Master Jeonghyeon, what exactly is this Gandharva?"
At my question, the Great Master Jeonghyeon took a brief breath before beginning his explanation.
"A Gandharva is originally a subordinate of Dhṛtarāṣṭra, one who follows Śakra. They possess the special ability to perceive the fragrance of sound, and while attending to Śakra's music, they are also celestial beings who praise the Buddha's merits through their own beautiful performances. They are also benevolent beings who watch over young children."
"Ah… so you're saying they're a spirit beast of the Buddhist faith?"
"To be precise, they are closer to a celestial being. We only know of their existence through the Buddha's teachings—they dwell in a realm entirely different from where we mortals live, so they are beings one would never have the chance to meet."
Only those who have attained complete enlightenment may freely traverse the Three Realms. The master added, almost as an afterthought, that anyone who claimed to be such a divine being without having achieved that state was either a fraud or a madman.
"But you said that wasn't the case."
"…I suppose I'll have to hear a bit more."
As I and the Great Master Jeonghyeon sent our gazes toward him at the same time, the creature spoke with a calm expression.
"As the old monk said, of course I am not a Gandharva. However, the ascetics of the Potala Palace wished for me to become one, and so they arbitrarily named me as such, trying to force me into that mold. In the end, I became something that was neither one nor the other. Merely a being that could only obey the ascetics."
"In simple terms, you were forced to become a Gandharva and ended up mad. But why a Gandharva of all things?"
"A Gandharva is a being deeply connected to music. And the ascetics of the Potala Palace are deeply captivated by one being and one artifact…"
"…The Blood Buddha. And the bell."
"As one who defeated them yourself, you know well."
At the young man's affirmation, Great Master Jeonghyeon's gaze sank heavily.
"Surely not… No, no matter how I think of it, he should be a disciple of the Buddha. How could he…"
"Do you have some idea of what this might be?"
"I do. But it is something that must not be, so I speak of it with caution."
His expression was complicated in many ways. Yet the one actually involved continued speaking as if nothing were amiss.
"I am the collection of dregs that the Blood Buddha created over its long cycle of reincarnations—a defective product born of ascetics who, having lost their Palace Lord, failed in their attempt to create a new one."
"Ah."
In the end, Great Master Jeonghyeon let out a sigh. Giving his back a light pat, the self-proclaimed failure urged him on.
"Explain it in a little more detail."
"The Blood Buddha was the greatest ascetic in the history of the Potala Palace. He achieved the feat of storing his memories within a secret technique and overlaying them onto another person, allowing him to be reborn while retaining those memories. …That was the problem."
The history of the Potala Palace continued in that still emotionless voice.
It was a time when the Shaolin Temple and the Potala Palace still exchanged visits on a regular basis. At that time, the Potala Palace was merely a different sect—a legitimate branch of Buddhism.
But within it, a madman appeared. One who sought to enjoy eternal life even at the cost of stealing another's life. That was the Blood Buddha.
In his youth, he was recognized for his brilliance and talent, the pride of the Potala Palace. As he grew, he climbed to the position of Palace Lord while thoroughly concealing his ugliness.
Everyone praised the Blood Buddha before he revealed his true nature.
But once he gained free access to all the knowledge and wealth of the Potala Palace, he laid eyes on a single drop enshrined in the secret vault—and attained enlightenment.
An ancient ritual implement that held one's mental image and transmitted it in all directions.
It was a precious object that granted a moment of peace to suffering beings, but the Blood Buddha had twisted it into something vile.
That was the trick we knew of.
As the Illusion Witch had said, the Blood Buddha was abusing it in a way it was never meant to be used.
There were those who noticed the problem, but each of them was purged by the Blood Buddha, one by one.
And so, all that remained were those who followed the false Maitreya—one who sustained his eternal life through endless reincarnation instead of the cruelty of devouring others to survive.
The corruption of the Potala Palace began with the Blood Buddha, and in the end, it became so deeply devoted to Vajrayana that even the Shaolin Temple recoiled in shock and washed its hands of the matter.
The result was the undying Blood Buddha I knew before the regression, and the fanatical monks who followed him blindly.
But one day, the Blood Buddha suddenly vanished. A spiritual pillar who had reigned for generations, who always returned even after death, had gone missing—and the Potala Palace was filled with chaos.
What the madmen who had lost their leash chose was to create a new master.
"I extracted the residual memories from the various corpses the Blood Buddha had used over the years. Because the bell's influence had warped their souls, they hadn't fully scattered, and by scraping them together and planting them into another's body, I was created."
"But you couldn't become the Blood Buddha."
"Right. I possess some knowledge, and with that alone I could reach a level that ranks among the top in the Potala Palace… but in the end, I'm just dregs. Above all, remnants left by the original owners of the bodies the Blood Buddha had passed through are also mixed in."
And so, the name attached to me was Gandharva, one of the Eight Legions.
The sound of the bell calms the mind and body of those who hear it, and it seduces a suitable vessel.
In the end, I was a failure, but they believed that someday the dregs—just like the bell—would summon the real Blood Buddha, and so they trapped me in the frame of Gandharva.
"Indeed. It's plausible that the bell, which has never once run wild on its own until now, caused the problem because of you."
"I can't deny my share of responsibility."
"Fine. But while your origins are a rather interesting story, they're not the story we want to hear. Why did you attack Kunlun, and what reason did you have to join hands with the Demonic Cult?"
"The Demonic Cult Leader taught us a part of the truth that the monks of Potala Palace wanted to believe. He also told us that although the Blood Buddha had vanished, the bell remained intact."
"Let's set aside the bell for now—but the truth, you say."
The realm of the Heavenly Demon is so high that it's impossible to gauge precisely. Of course. Isn't it something forcibly elevated by repeating regression and accumulating countless karmic sins of killing?
Naturally, it wouldn't be impossible for such a being to grant enlightenment to someone.
But I felt that what the defrocked monks of Potala Palace wanted wasn't that kind of martial enlightenment. Above all, hadn't he deliberately added the words they wanted to believe?
When I pressed him on it, an unexpected answer came back.
"The Heavenly Demon said that the subject of the cycle of reincarnation is not a person, but the world itself."
"Hah."
It wasn't that a person died and was reborn—it was that the world died and was reborn.
A statement that was razor-thin close to the seal, but not quite touching it.
"And he said that if I obtained the secret, he would make me reincarnate while keeping my memories, just like the Blood Buddha. In fact, he demonstrated the possibility using the Reincarnation Grand Ritual. The price was attacking Kunlun and exterminating their clan."
"So the Reincarnation Grand Ritual comes up again here."
The Illusion Witch had wondered why he had even attempted such a problematic Grand Ritual in the first place, and how he had managed to succeed…
It seems he wasn't simply trying to keep using the Slaughter King, but also had the intention of drawing in the Potala Palace.
…No, perhaps the very purpose was to gather me and the remnants of the Blood Buddha in one place and cause the secret vault to go berserk.
Don't you know by now? The Heavenly Demon's true goal is neither the ordinary revenge of other Demonic Cult members, nor the destruction of the martial world.
Even if I somehow managed to stop the Heavenly Demon, he would just laugh it off as bad luck this cycle and begin the next one.
At first, I thought the Heavenly Demon's goal was to destroy the martial world and add a speck to a karmic sin of killing that would reach the heavens.
But now that he knows there exists a regressor like himself, the Heavenly Demon's goal is surely me.
Whether he wants to make me his companion, or has some other reason, I cannot say.
If that's the case, then the extermination of Kunlun was nothing more than a kind of bait.
His true purpose was to make me fight the Sword Demon—that is, to make me fight my own Simma, which had gained a physical form.
The reason the gourd had gone berserk and unleashed my Simma in the first place was because I had been exposed to its power repeatedly while it showed me memories from before my regression.
And the fact that I learned I could bypass the seal through the gourd—that too was the Heavenly Demon's doing.
"I'm going insane."
I had known that the Heavenly Demon was trying to make me grow stronger.
I knew he had gone mad from the meaningless cycle of regression, and that he harbored a deep anger toward the heavens that had trapped him in that cycle.
But knowing something is not the same as understanding it.
He killed all those people as bait, reduced the Slaughter King to a state where he could neither live nor die, and even used the Potala Palace to buy time instead of the relatively weaker Demonic Cult members.
Even if one could think of a method for each and every one, putting them into action was no easy feat.
The Heavenly Demon had no sense of right and wrong.
Perhaps his sense of it had been buried under the years until it had grown far too faint to see.
I wasn't the only one who thought so—the others' expressions had hardened with fear as well.
Until now, we had aimed to create an Orthodox-Unorthodox Alliance to properly counter the Heavenly Demon's invasion of the Central Plains… but perhaps the call to strike the Demonic Cult first might come out instead.
"Hoo. Then tell me everything you know about the movements of the Potala Palace and the Demonic Cult."
"Very well."
The bastard calmly spilled every last bit of internal information he knew.
Because he was revealing even the most minute details, I was the one who became flustered.
"Hold on a moment. I appreciate the cooperation, but you're being so forthcoming that I'm starting to doubt you. We know who you are now. I doubt you'd cave to mere torture… ahem, to a grueling interrogation. If you have an ulterior motive, now's the time to speak."
"…"
After a long silence, the bastard finally opened his mouth.
"…Kill me."
"Rather than spare you?"
"I have never been alive."
Having said that, he stared at me intently.
White Moon Sword Lord. What you did to me brought intense physical pain, but… I also felt my tangled, forcibly twisted soul and spirit filling up once more.
"What?"
I had clearly inflicted Demonic Cult-style torture. The things I had seen before my regression.
But he said it actually corrected his distortion.
Come to think of it, this too must be a method devised by the Heavenly Demon—so why on earth would it have such an effect…?
He continued, facing my bewilderment.
"Even if this body dies, my shattered memories and soul will return to the Potala Palace according to the binding. And, as has always been the case, I will be forced to wear another's flesh over and over, used against my will."
His tone remained utterly emotionless.
"The rift between mind and body. A soul that was flawed from the start. The laws of heaven reject me, so merely existing is pain enough."
Yet his voice somehow sounded desperate.
"So let me truly reach death."
"Ah."
Endless death and resurrection. And at last, the peace that follows.
Perhaps the Heavenly Demon's decision to bring him and me face to face through the Potala Palace had a purpose beyond my growth.
That thought struck me suddenly.