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墨書 Inktalez
Time seemed to stand still in that moment. I stood before the hourglass, all thoughts of Qi Tian, Great Sage, the Demon Fighting Buddha, anger, and revenge faded away. Everything that belonged to "me" became insignificant and absurd in the face of this cosmic funeral.
Each star that fell represented the withering of a world and the extinction of countless lives. And it continued to flow.
He was not facing me. He was alone, confronting the countdown to the death of the entire universe.
"When did it start?" My voice was dry and hoarse, like a puppet speaking for the first time.
"Before me," Tathagata replied calmly, stepping beside me as we gazed at the ever-flowing river of stars. "Since I became aware, it has been flowing. I do not know its cause or its consequence; I only know that it is heading towards Great Nirvana."
"Will the Way of Heaven... die?"
"All things have their formation, existence, decay, and emptiness. The Way of Heaven is no exception." He looked at the hourglass as if observing his own predetermined fate. "I have tried countless methods. Using great power to stabilize it only makes it flow faster. Attempting to supplement new stars only results in their assimilation into lifeless dust. All I can do is delay."
"Delay?" I seized upon that word.
"Yes, delay." He nodded and finally shifted his gaze from the hourglass to me. "I discovered that a powerful, unyielding will filled with variables can disturb the flow of the hourglass. Every act of resistance, every defiance you show causes a barely perceptible... slowing of its passage."
I shuddered and looked at him.
"So... the commotion in Heaven..."
"It was a play I allowed." He calmly stated a truth that could overturn the understanding of the three realms. "I needed the most powerful variable, a will daring enough to oppose the Way of Heaven. Your emergence was a surprise. Every upheaval you caused, every challenge to the order of Heaven bought time for this dying world."
"And Five Elements Mountain... The Journey to the West..."
"Was inevitable." His voice held no trace of emotion, only the coldness of stating facts. "Your variable is too strong, strong enough to shake the Way of Heaven and also strong enough... to exhaust itself prematurely. Like a meteor, brilliant yet fleeting. What I need is not a momentary light but a star capable of burning steadily. Thus, I must rewrite you."
He looked at me, and for the first time, a hint of complex emotion flickered in his eyes—not compassion but rather like an engineer gazing at his most remarkable creation.
"I stripped away your most primitive and unstable free will and sealed it deep within your Sea of Consciousness, becoming Blood Sea. I reshaped your Golden Body with Buddhist teachings and made Universal Salvation your new core—a more grand and enduring willpower. I transformed you from a meteor that could burn itself out at any moment into an eternal Demon Fighting Buddha capable of stably outputting disruptive force."
I took a step back as if trying to distance myself from this cold truth. The reality was more brutal than any scenario I had imagined.
Tathagata observed my dazed expression in silence for a long while.
Then he posed that question to me.
The simplest yet most ruthless question lingered in the air.
"I admit, I have rewritten you. I have deceived the Three Realms with a colossal lie, sustaining this crumbling world."
"Now, you see the truth."
He pointed to the ever-flowing Heavenly Dao Hourglass.
"Your truth is the funeral of all living beings. It is fair, it is honest, but its conclusion is that everything, including you, will turn to silent dust."
Then he gestured to his own heart.
"My lie is their only hope for continued existence. It is vile, it is cruel, but it allows the monkeys of Hua Guo Shan to keep frolicking, and the mortals of the Eastern Tang Dynasty to continue procreating, granting this Three Realms a few more years of survival."
He locked his gaze onto mine, his eyes seeming to pierce through my very soul.
"Sun Wukong, now, which will you choose?"
I searched for "who am I," only to realize in the end that "who I am" was not important at all. What truly mattered was who I was willing to be for this world.
As I gazed at the dying river of stars, I felt a genuine sense of... despair for the first time.
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