'Ah... I am afraid of myself...'
Even though his footsteps on the ground didn't falter and his forward gaze didn't waver, Sū ěr murmured this in his heart.
Was it because of arrogance?
No... he was indeed humble.
No matter how many beautiful words his lips spoke or his mind thought, the emotions in the depths of his heart would never deceive him. Sū ěr could not deny his current sense of being lost.
[Then why not leave it to a coin? You told me about this once.]
'A coin?'
[Yes. When faced with a difficult choice, you only need to toss a coin. Regardless of whether it lands heads or tails, the moment you toss it, you will know what your truest desire is.]
'...I suppose.'
The "coin" was merely a metaphor. Sū ěr simply picked up his pace, and Hoderi, noticing the change, accelerated as well.
the "coin" he sought was down below.
Sū ěr had petted cats before; those lovely felines would purr continuously when they closed their eyes to breathe. The "Thunderous Breath of Tigers and Leopards" mentioned in various literary works was exactly that sound, but it was nothing like what he was hearing now.
It was as if some colossal beast were snoring below. Not only was there not a hint of cuteness, but it was also incredibly evil. With the currents of air being exhaled or inhaled through the passage, Sū ěr even caught a faint scent of rot, which grew more pungent the further they descended.
Led by Hoderi—the "mole" familiar with this underground city—Sū ěr group perfectly bypassed all the Oni patrolling or living there. He even used his status to temporarily dismiss guards stationed at fixed points. Their path was unimpeded.
Then, they saw exactly what they had expected. They also understood why Hoderi was so despondent, claiming that everything was meaningless—all because of his father, Ame-no-Nishi-Kuni-no-Nishi-Amatsu-Hikohiko-no-Ninigi-no-Mikoto.
"Actually, in the beginning... it was okay..." Staring blankly at the giant entity at the end of their vision, Hoderi voice became choked with emotion. "But the more he ate, the more violent Father became... more and more chaotic..."
Beside that twisted mountain of flesh at the end of the passage was something that caught Sū ěr attention even more: meat spheres piled together like hand-rolled dumplings. However, one only needed to look closely to see that they were not single pieces of meat.
Fixed to the surface were irregularly twisted limbs, and heads with half or whole faces peeking through the gaps in those limbs and torsos. Their expressions were frozen in the moment before death—pain, sorrow, despair, terror. Like the most vivid oil paintings, everything was engraved and set into a sphere by a translucent, solidified liquid, permanently entangling them with people they may or may not have known.
Medicine.
Though it was their first time seeing it, the word simultaneously sprang into the minds of Sū ěr, Think, and the two youkai. It was the information inadvertently leaked by those humans who were only arrogant in front of their own kind; only such a word could be linked to this nauseating sight.
The monster, as massive as a mountain range, groaned through its countless large and small lips. It was definitely not a groan of comfort, but of unending agony, even though it occupied the position of the aggressor. The flesh flowing from its body spread like growing vines, yet they were vivid red briars that creaked with pale bone-spurs.
With an agility that belied its clumsy appearance, the massive monster's flowing pillars of flesh sprouted branches that reached out to pluck a blood-dripping sphere from the pile of "medicine," much like a smiling young girl looking at you and gently picking a flower.
This was undeniably the god who had established the entire Land of Yamato—the god who had allowed his bloodline and that of the subordinate gods who followed him to spread throughout the kingdom. He was also the most powerful god in all of Ashihara no Nakatsukuni, ruling the land protected by Amaterasu.
Ame-no-Nishi-Kuni-no-Nishi-Amatsu-Hikohiko-no-Ninigi-no-Mikoto—was this massive meat-monster, with every part of its being emitting an endless wail.
Even though he was twisted to this extent, even someone seeing him for the first time like Sū ěr would not mistake him, simply because of the light illuminating this subterranean world that should have been pitch black.
It looked like white-hot fire—the light of the sun. It was within the body of this ugly and disgusting monster, or rather, shattered into stardust existing both inside and on the surface of its body. That was the power the Tenson had inherited from Amaterasu-Omikami: the power of the Sun.
And his current agony was also because of this power. Those lights were constantly scorching his body, intertwining and intersecting like ribbons of flowing light over the burn marks that bound every part of his flesh like a black fishing net.
Even Think had never imagined that scenes of evil and holiness could exist so harmoniously in a single life, even if that life itself was lamenting to the point of wailing because of this intersection. Yet, it existed.
Tears constantly flowed from the many faces protruding from the body. However, the tears shed even by such a monster were crystalline. The flesh, growing various faces, elongated like snakes—soft and flexible, yet intertwining as if trying to strangle itself.
They were celebrating, hungrily stuffing that "medicine ball" into a massive rift that split open on the body. It closed, squirmed, chewed, and swallowed... then, from a nearby face, a pale-purple mist with a blurry humanoid shape erupted. Even the mist was wailing, only to be sucked back in with a breath—hic.
A satisfied belch.
On this final stretch of the journey, Sū ěr had wondered countless times what his mood would be when that coin landed, and what the answer he got when tossing it would look like. However, he hadn't expected that when the time actually came, he would still be lost.
A coin was just a method, and a method... was only a method.
Countless corpses were spread casually from the front of the monster all the way to Sū ěr feet. He only had to look down to see the nearest one, which had not yet rotted.
A short, hunched body, arms that nearly reached the knees, fur as thick as a wild beast's, and protruding cheekbones and buckteeth.