Chapter 576 Heart Demon II
If I tell him that the reason, he's stuck here is basically himself. He'll probably lose it. But this is a heart demon, and if he doesn't acknowledge it and solve it, he'll stay here forever, me included…
"Why are you stalling?" asked the old man.
'Bro, I'm trying to think of an answer that won't get me killed!'
"It's not that I'm stalling… it's just strange, it doesn't really explain how this happened…"
"You're still stalling… and now I'm even more curious, tell me, stop hiding information from me… I dislike that…"
'Shit, shit, shit…'
I can't tell him the truth, but I can't lie to him either he'll instantly figure me out… But I can mix truths and lies.
"Do you remember how we ended up here?" I asked.
"Of course, it was the work of the Darkest Sun, he banished us due to his fear of us overtaking his seat. Although we never even thought of doing such, he's a paranoid person with incredible jealousy and fear for his seat…"
'Reminds me of someone… huh, a power-hungry warmonger exists everywhere, I guess.'
"Then what," I asked.
"The attack came too sudden; it was when our teacher was outside the clan. The whole territory was extracted and banished to this void. Not many survived the banishment, and the few who did, passed away within those hundred years. I'm surprised to see you among the living, especially since I'm sure I saw you dying due to the transfer…"
The old man's brows rose up, and he began frowning.
'Well, I guess he's remembering more than he should.'
"How come you lived? Hold on a minute…" the old man seemed to be on the brink of losing his sanity again since what he remembers and what he's seeing started colliding.
"You didn't see me dead; you saw me dying, I had issues recovering my cultivation base because of that you see… that's why I'm like this, I've lost a lot of my memories in that accident also…"
"Oh…" the old man sighed and said, "It must be true then, right, right. It indeed was a cataclysmic event."
'One thing's for sure, the old man subconsciously knows I'm not the same person from however million years ago. But he's actively stopping himself from seeing the truth, he is denying it, and accepting whatever lies I tell him. Why? Simple, because he's been alone for so long. And if he were to find out I'm not his 'junior brother,' he'll lose his mind again. His own subconscious is actively trying to fix itself. So no matter what I tell him, as long as it falls within reason, he should believe it, no, he must believe it. If not, his mind will fall.'
"So, the Darkest Sun seemed to have used a method to force a heart demon to manifest into the form of those shadows…"
"A heart demon? Who's?" he asked.
"The strongest person here," I replied as I pointed at him, "You,"
"So… you're saying that those are heart demons? And it's because of me that they came to exist? And I've been fighting myself this whole time? Absurd! I can't believe that!"
The old man's hand gripped his head, as pain was obviously creeping up his expressions.
"Yes and no…" I said before he began losing his sanity. Damn this is rough.
"How so," he said as he let go of his head and meekly looked at me.
"It must be because the Darkest Sun made it so that you cannot figure it out. He trapped you within an illusion… I was only able to wake up recently and saw it, otherwise you would still be trapped in this illusion that you're fighting an unknow foe forever, while it was nothing but a heart demon…"
"If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have realized this…" the old man said as he looked outside.
"So many, only for them to be a part of my own mind… but how do I clear this, Heart Demon?"
'Bro, why are you asking the junior… aren't you like a million and something year old, you should know how to do that…'
"Hmm, so far we identified the cause, figuring out how to solve it shouldn't be that hard. We need to know the reason it became your heart demon. My first guess is that it was formed due to 'our' inability to protect the clan…"
"I would also assume such… but even then, I'm not foolish enough to succumb to a heart demon due to the action of someone far more powerful than I am… if the Darkest Sun decided to attack out clan, then I'll have to fight tooth and nail to protect the clan. And if I were to lose, I would have no regrets or reasons to make a heart demon. A heart demon is only made when one goes against their own nature…so it cannot be an external factor, although an external factor can be a contributor to the creation of a heart demon…"
"Hmm, so we can assume that the Darkest Sun wasn't the reason for this thing coming to existence…" I said as I kept scrolling through the seemingly infinitely long logs of the formation.
"The only thing that could answer this riddle… is the heart demon itself," I said.
"Huh? How so?"
"Oh, you probably don't know, the main one, has an ego, it was created and established due to the passage of time. And if we catch it, we probably can figure out the reason why it came to exist in the first place… the problem is…"
"It's not going to tell us," he said.
"Yeah, that's not going to be easy, because the moment we know why it came to be, It's basically halfway through answering how to get rid of it…"
"It's okay, I know how to make it talk if we catch it," he said.
"How so?" I asked.
"With violence…" he replied as if it was the most obvious answer in the world.
"And what if violence doesn't work?" I asked.
"Then we just use more," he said grinning.
I'm not gonna lie… I like this old guy…