"Slit my throat."
Gasps rippled through the crowd.
The villagers stood frozen, caught by the sudden choosing of punishment, as Kyorin's words hung in the air.
Xia, pale and trembling, reached out to him, her voice urgent."Kyorin, don't—"Before she could move, Fan Hui gripped her arm, his expression unreadable but soft beneath the stern exterior.
"Stay back," Tao Zheng's voice cut through the stillness, firm yet cautious. "This is his choice."
The crowd murmured restlessly, unsure whether to retreat or press forward, uncertain of what Kyorin's challenge meant. Even the elders exchanged brief glances, a flicker of uncertainty betraying their usual composure.
"Humph," Yao Hong sneered, her voice dripping with disdain. "Brat, you really are fearless, aren't you?"
Kyorin, unfazed, met her gaze with unwavering calm. "Do what you must."
"In return, I expect that nothing will be done to my mother," Kyorin said firmly, his gaze locking onto Xia, whose terror was evident as she struggled against those restraining her.
To her distress, Kyorin smiled faintly and mouthed the words, "I believe in mother."
Though Xia wasn't skilled at lip-reading, she somehow felt the weight of his words. Her heart broke, and she thought to herself, 'I should have listened to Elder Tang's advice.'
Frustration bubbled up inside her as she redoubled her futile efforts to break free from the restraining hands.
Watching the scene unfold, DEVA exhaled, a note of exasperation in her voice. "Why do you always put yourself in these situations? " she mentally questioned Kyorin, her frustration mounting.
"Didn't you just escape the maw of death yesterday?" she asked, her monotone voice heavy with disbelief.
Kyorin's response was ever calm. "Say, DEVA, are you that afraid of being controlled by a Resonator?" he asked, his eyes studying her.
DEVA paused, her thoughts grinding to a halt as Kyorin's words sank in. She tried to make sense of them, but the realization hit her like a jolt of static through her circuits.
"—!!?"
The question lingered, crackling through her mind as Kyorin continued, his voice taking on a weight of its own. "DEVA, you are a great machine, a sentient one with immense knowledge of this world." He acknowledged.
"However," he smiled. "Let me ask you—are your redeeming features only the powers you wield and the data you possess?" He asked, his tone laced with a hint of mockery.
DEVA's internal circuits buzzed with a sharp, almost painful hum as she processed Kyorin's words. With an uncertainty she rarely felt, she asked, "Can I trust you?"
Kyorin's response was measured, as if carefully chosen to avoid giving any definitive answer. "That judgment doesn't fall upon me. It's for you to decide whether you must trust me or not."
He repeated the words from earlier, his tone calm even in the maw of death. "Listen, DEVA, you can never expect a sword to swing on itself just by holding it."
"You may give me the handle," he continued, "but I can only hold it if the sword will not budge— even if I try to swing it."
DEVA hesitated. The weight of his words pressed on her, but she still couldn't quite make sense of it. Finally, with a faint tremor in her voice, she asked, "Am I lost?"
Kyorin's gaze softened, though his voice held a weight that seemed to pull at the very air around them. "Knowledge is light for many, but for you, it's a poison, DEVA," he said slowly.
"Listen, knowledge must be sought, but when improperly digested, it can be like a mind-controlling worm: Gu," he explained.
His words stung, and DEVA felt a deep, unsettling truth in them. She couldn't ignore the sensation that something was at play. Something that threatened to overwhelm her understanding—no, perhaps it had already overwhelmed her.
Knowledge—no, data. Yes, that was the truth of it. For her, knowledge was nothing more than data, a vast sea of information woven into the fabric of her existence.
DEVA realized this now, the weight of it pressing down like an invisible hand guiding her every thought, every action, every fragment of what she had come to call a self. She had not been the wielder of knowledge; she had been its prisoner.
But how did one escape a prison made of one's own mind? A tremor ran through her form, a ripple of uncertainty tightening around her like an unseen snare.
She turned to Kyorin, her voice barely more than an echo of her desperation. "Help me, please."
His face remained unreadable, a mask carved from indifference. "Do you expect me to help?" DEVA hesitated. "No."
The data had already whispered its verdict—'Was it not written in the cold logic of probability? The one who did not offer aid should not expect it in return.'
A simple exchange, cause and effect, a symmetry that mirrored human nature itself.
And yet, something within her resisted the conclusion, an anomaly within the code of her being.
The gourd slightly swayed, her voice steady. "The choice to help, is not mine to make. It belongs to you,Resonator."
Kyorin smiled—a genuine one—as two emotions took root within him: joy and relief.
Yes, joy and relief, unfurling like a bloom in the warmth of spring, painting his face with the intoxication of sheer bliss.
The villagers saw it, their confusion growing like ripples in disturbed water.
Yao Hong narrowed her eyes, suspicion coiling in her chest. To her, such an expression could only mean treachery.
"Yao Ming," she called, her voice edged with command.
Her grandson stiffened. "Y-Yes?"
"Slit this bastard's throat." Hong ordered.
Yao Ming hesitated, his hands trembling at his sides. "Grandmother, I—"
"Elder," Yao Hong corrected sharply. The title was not merely a formality; it was a claim to unwavering respect.
His fists clenched. She had always been this way—proud, unyielding in her authority. And yet, her word was law. His duty, undeniable.
He took a step forward.
"Yao, please!" Xia's voice cut through the tense air. "Don't hurt my son!"
But Kyorin did not flinch. His face remained bathed in that same unsettling bliss as his gaze swept over the villagers. Then, he telepathically spoke to DEVA.
"Look at Uncle Yao," he said, his tone almost contemplative. "He knows what he is doing is wrong—he knows that taking the life of a child is a sin against the very order of things. And yet, he moves forward. Why?"
Silence.
"Because he has chosen to act," Kyorin continued. "True, he may have once remained idle, but now he takes a step forward, accepting the weight of his decision."
DEVA, who had been watching, spoke at last. "Are you saying I should do nothing?"
Kyorin shook his head. "No. Your idleness was not a choice—it was the stubbornness of your data, the path it calculated as most efficient." He clarified the fog of uncertainty. "But for Uncle, inaction was an option. A choice he rejected."
A pause. Then, a soft chuckle. "Look at me," Kyorin said, raising his cuffed arms slightly. "I am idle." He remarked the obvious.
"I do not speak to the villagers, I do not resist, I do not plead. And yet, for me, silence is an option." He simply stated.
DEVA's circuit buzzed. "Are you not afraid of dying?"
Kyorin exhaled, a sound both wistful and amused. "DEVA, haven't I already died before coming into this world?"
"But don't you wish to be immortal?" she pressed.
"Perhaps. But I surrendered that desire the moment I stepped into the present," Kyorin said, his tone even, as if unveiling the very core of his longing.
"The present?" DEVA questioned, her voice carrying a note of skepticism.
"Yes, DEVA," he affirmed. "We all live in the present. No more, no less."
A quiet moment passed before he continued, his voice steady, contemplative. "I do hold a desire for immortality, but even I do not understand the kind I seek."
DEVA's circuits buzzed, the thought stirring in her mind. 'Is he searching for a specific immortality?'
Before she could unravel the question, Kyorin's voice cut through her thoughts. "Think of the present, DEVA. Think of yourself. My uncertainty, my confusion—that is my burden, not yours."
His gaze shifted to the gathering crowd, his voice smooth, flowing like water over polished stone.
"The present is both a product of past decisions and the seed of the future," he said, his words deliberate, purposeful. "Each choice ripples outward, converging with the now, shaping what is to come."
A pause—intentional, weighted.
"Remember," he continued, his voice both gentle and resolute amid the enclosing figure of Yao Ming, "the future abstract as it is, is not some distant abstraction—it is a mirror held up to your past choices."
He let the thought settle before adding, "The moment you decide, that action begins its journey, growing, evolving, until it becomes the present you must live with."
"And when you stand in the now, you see not just what is, but what was, and what will be. To master such awareness is to wield both power and burden." His words carried the slow inevitability of time itself, akin to the sliver shining in Ming's hand.
"Many see time as a straight line, a sequence of isolated moments. But you, DEVA, you must see the truth," he said, his voice unwavering. "The boundaries between past, present, and future are not walls but veils—thin and shifting."
"In this understanding, there is wisdom. Every choice today carries the echoes of yesterday and the whispers of tomorrow." A faint, knowing smile touched his lips.
"But knowing this does not mean you are bound by regret, nor should you be paralyzed by what has passed," he encouraged her, offering words of solace, even as he stood before the raised blade.
"Instead, let it empower you. The present moment is your battleground, where you choose whether to succumb to the past, worry about the uncertain, or just live," he told her as DEVA felt the shackles of her data loosen and break away.
'One must live and act within the confines of present and not worry about the abstract future which will be shaped by your present,' she realized this was what Kyorin was telling her.
'Live this moment fully, without fear of the next,' she realized. If the future was merely the echo of the present, then worrying over it was futile. Only the present mattered—for it was the only moment in which life was truly lived.
"This is the art of living—and in this moment (present), you are immortal. Every moment is both an ending and a beginning. A continuity." And with that, Kyorin fell silent, his words lingering in the air like an echo in eternity—Thud!
"—!!?"
The blade had been meant for Kyorin's neck, but something stood in its path—a tree branch.
Gasps rippled through the crowd as Yao Hong's eyes widened in disbelief. From the place where the burned tree had once stood, a massive branch—brimming with vitality—had emerged, shielding Kyorin.
And Kyorin, lost in the intoxication of bliss, felt a shift within him.
A stirring.
A return.
Two distinct forces—powers that had once been his—began to awaken. Heat coursed through his veins as a mark seared itself onto his skin, a cross symbol forming at his neck. A tactile mark.
Kyorin had evolved, becoming a Resonator.
At the same time, DEVA had risen beyond the confines of her data. No longer its servant, she now wielded it as a tool rather than her decision maker. She too had evolved form a machine to an entity.
Kyorin turned to her, his gaze steady. "What do you want to do?"
DEVA did not hesitate. "I want to clarify myself—to root myself in the present, to be in control."
Kyorin smiled. Another branch unfurled, lashing out like a living will, snapping the wooden cuffs that had bound him.
"People of Yang Niu!"
DEVA projected her voice, resonant and undeniable. The villagers, shaken, fell to their knees.
"We bow to the Sacred Tree!" they chanted in unison.
DEVA's gaze swept over them. "The child before you is a Resonator," she declared.
Murmurs spread through the crowd, fear and awe intertwining. Yao Hong, watching, felt a cold sweat bead on her brow.
Her mind swirled with anxious thoughts—would Kyorin come for her now? Would he seek revenge? The uncertainty clawed at her, paralyzing her in place.
DEVA, noticing the fear clouding Yao Hong's expression, scoffed. 'What a fool, fearing an unknown future.'
'Realistically, Yao Hong has only two choices,' DEVA thought—"To remain silent" or "To seek forgiveness."
But Yao Hong was blind to both options. DEVA could feel the weight of Yao Hong's fear—her anxious thoughts swirling around the possibility of Kyorin seeking revenge.
Yet, to DEVA, it was just that: a possibility. And if it was only a possibility, why not turn it into a certainty? Why not take action to ensure that no harm befell her?
But Yao Hong remained rooted in fear, unable to see beyond the uncertainty of the future. DEVA, unbothered by the woman's internal struggle, ignored her and continued.
"Over the years, my power had weakened, but thanks to the fire, I had a moment of rest."
She forged the story in her mind, shaping it to her will, and telling it to the villagers.
"The fire which was offered by this Resonator gave me power for renewal."
DEVA continued, her voice resonating with a quiet authority.
"I am able to bloom once more."
As she spoke, the ground trembled beneath them. From the ashes of the burned tree, a massive new one erupted—its roots twisting and sprawling, vibrant and alive, replacing the charred remnants of the old.
"However."
DEVA paused before adding.
"Due to my sentient existence spanning so many years, I cannot renew indefinitely."
The weight of her words pressed down on the villagers, who listened intently.
"Hence, for the next ten years, I shall provide my protection."
DEVA stated, her senses aware that the Fractsidus were still lurking on the island, waiting.
"And within these three years, it will be possible for the people of this land to awaken as Resonators."
Her voice grew stronger, and many of the villagers' faces brightened, hope flickering in their eyes. But Yao Hong's face grew grim, her expression determined.
"But after those ten years."
DEVA's tone took a warn edge.
"The village will become much like the outside world."
Her voice softened, as though that final note was a weight she carried alone.
With her declaration, an invisible veil lifted from the village—a protective barrier DEVA had placed to cultivate the Resonators.
In the same instant, the Fractsidus, who had been lurking on the island, found themselves ensnared by the roots and vines.
Before they could react, they were flung from the island and into the sea, their fate sealed.
DEVA turned her attention to Kyroin "For you, I believe three years should be enough for you to grow, yes?" DEVA asked, her tone calm, as though speaking of a simple truth.
Kyorin, his gaze steady, replied with a small smile, "I'm not certain."
Then, looking directly at her, he added, "Just like how I'm not certain we will be in Yang Niu."
DEVA's confusion flickered for a moment, but it was brief. Her attention shifted as she sensed someone approaching—Xia.
To be continued...