As Amamiya Rin awoke, the other Tomies stirred one after another, and the [Tomie Network] began to come alive.
(Fifty years? The span of time grows longer and longer.)
(Yawn… that sleep was so uncomfortable! Who is it? My body hasn't had enough rest, and yet someone has gone and woken me?)
(No idea—seems to be some kidnapper. But I haven't offended anyone… except that Takaichi at yesterday's party.)
(It's definitely her.)
(Hahahaha! First time I've seen someone go this far out of their way to court death.)
...
The Tomies, gradually regaining their senses, jeered at the act of kidnapping Amamiya Rin and at the mastermind behind it, all while savoring the fifty years of life lived within the Illusory Dream Realm.
The silent [Tomie Network] was like a lake surface struck by a stone, rippling outward in dense, spreading waves.
Fifty years' worth of accumulated, tangled memories, fragments of knowledge, and insights into technique surged like a river bursting its dam, rushing along those invisible nerve-lines, converging and intermingling.
Each and every Tomie began to adjust the flood of information pouring into her brain.
Amamiya Rin's insight into the faculty of hearing, Evil Cultivator Tomie's research into sound waves, Swordmaster Tomie's swordplay techniques… countless fragments of knowledge, lessons from failure, realizations born of success—all of it was accepted without the slightest hesitation.
"The faculty of hearing… self-nature… seeing one's nature and awakening…"
In the apartment bedroom, Kawakami Tomie pressed her right hand to her forehead, analyzing everyone's comprehension of Hypnosis.
The cases of those who had truly completed the cultivation of Hypnosis were few—only Swordmaster Tomie, who devoted herself to the cultivation of swordsmanship, and Amamiya Rin, who devoted himself to the cultivation of Dhyana.
The other Tomies either took shortcuts, or prepared to take shortcuts once the dream ended.
But while experience and memory could be copied, willpower and state of mind could not.
Even if one mimicked Swordmaster Tomie's Consciousness Slash, the suggestion one cast would be no more than an ugly imitation—wielding a tenth of its power was the very limit.
To mimic Amamiya Rin's faculty of hearing, one must first purify the consciousness of the mind, break through the afflictions and ignorance, and bring to utter cessation the discriminating mind and the clinging mind that arise and vanish along with external conditions—only then could one reach the Nirvana realm that transcends arising and ceasing and departs from all afflictions.
Placed within a mythological world, this would already belong to the tenth of the Ten Grounds Bodhisattvas: the Bodhisattva of the Dharma Cloud Ground.
The Tomies weren't even willing to undertake deep Dhyana—so how could they be willing to follow Amamiya Rin down this path?
"Then again, it wouldn't be entirely impossible…"
Kawakami Tomie turned onto her side, lying down in the spot Amamiya Rin had just occupied, curling herself into that depression where his body warmth still lingered, burying her face in Amamiya Rin's pillow.
She drew in a deep breath, as if she could still catch the scent of Amamiya Rin.
The corners of her mouth curved upward bit by bit, twisting into an almost deranged, infatuated smile.
"Rin…"
She rubbed her cheek against the pillow, a satisfied murmur sounding in her throat, the voice muffled within the pillow taking on a faintly neurotic quality.
"Ugh…"
Beside her, another Tomie caught sight of this lovesick spectacle and couldn't help breaking out in gooseflesh all up one arm, unconsciously rubbing at her exposed skin.
"So sickeningly sappy!"
She griped like this, yet this Tomie could feel Kawakami Tomie's state, and could understand why she could grow this sappy.
Within the [Tomie Network], everyone's minds were connected; no one's thoughts could be hidden from the rest. At most, one could borrow a little of the technique of hypnosis to conceal an unconsidered thought, or some notion that flickered past in an instant.
And so, back at the party, in order to break through Amamiya Rin's state of mind, Kawakami Tomie too had paid with genuine sincerity—it was only by putting herself in his place that she had been able to soften Amamiya Rin's heart.
And now, for some reason, Kawakami Tomie had once again let her heart be filled with love and desire for Amamiya Rin.
Whatever possessiveness, competitiveness, lust for domination—all of it was pressed down into a corner deep within her heart.
After a long while, Kawakami Tomie finally lifted her head; her cheeks were flushed with an abnormal crimson, her eyes alluring, as if they might drip with water.
"Break through attachment? As if I'd ever want to!"
Purify the consciousness of the mind? Break through the afflictions? Reach some Nirvana realm where arising and ceasing are both extinguished?
She was Kawakami Tomie, after all. What the slightest connection did she have to these Buddhist states?
Mm… perhaps there was one.
Amamiya Rin's insights came through the [Tomie Network] with perfect clarity—the realizations at every stage, the breakthroughs at every barrier-pass, and those demonic obstacles that demanded vigilance.
The ten demons of the form-aggregate, the ten demons of the sensation-aggregate, the ten demons of the perception-aggregate, the ten demons of the volition-aggregate… all manner of demonic states, hardships that one would encounter in the course of cultivation, where a single misstep would deliver one into demonhood.
A misstep? Why must it be a misstep?
Was she not allowed to step into it on purpose?
Kawakami Tomie giggled with a foolish, infatuated laugh.
A single thought, like a vine sprouting in the shadows, coiled silently up around her.
The path Rin walked was one of ceaselessly setting down, ceaselessly seeing through, until at last the radiance of self-nature shone forth.
Then what if… one went in reverse?
Not pursuing the breaking of demonic obstacles, but actively entering demonhood.
Not pursuing the seeing of one's nature to become a Buddha, but choosing to embrace the realm of delusion.
Taking all attachments—the attachment to him, the attachment to the self, the attachment to love and hatred and greed and wrath—and treating them not as obstacles to be broken through, but as treasures she was unwilling to cast away, grasping them all in her hands, drawing them into her own control.
Not pursuing emptiness, but pursuing existence in its utmost extreme.
Not pursuing extinction, but pursuing life burning fierce and bright.
A century of cultivating Buddhahood is no match for a single morning of entering demonhood.
Kawakami Tomie closed her eyes, no longer resisting that knowledge and those insights concerning the stages of cultivation in her mind; instead she actively guided her own consciousness, racing in reverse along the very path Amamiya Rin had walked.
Entering the stream, the object is lost.
Turning the hearing back upon self-nature, breaking free of attachment to external sound.
"But—I refuse."
Kawakami Tomie's mind moved with the sound, indulgent and deep, feeling that vivid, selfish, never-ceasing pulse of desire.
Where the form-aggregate should have first been broken, instead the demonic obstacle first manifested; her excessively powerful willpower and obsession induced the demonic realm.
All manner of auditory hallucinations and flickering lights flashed within her mind—yet gradually, those auditory hallucinations all turned, little by little, into the voice of Amamiya Rin.
Calm, or helpless, or furious, or gentle…
As Kawakami Tomie went farther and farther down this path of reversal, the experience belonging to the demonic realm of the form-aggregate began to grow intense and concrete.
Were she a normal cultivator, this was the moment to come to her senses, to rouse right mindfulness, to see through all of it as nothing but illusory thoughts conjured by her own mind, never to be clung to.
But not only did she not fear these states—she actively went to meet them, using her own obsession, with that twisted and intense obsession toward Amamiya Rin, to make them burn ever more fiercely, to cover and engulf them, to consciously tame them, just like taming a pack of dangerous beasts.
Entering demonhood was, from beginning to end, a joyful thing, and also a thing that would lose one's very self, and even more a thing that would inevitably destroy oneself.
But to a Tomie, it was not worth mentioning.
No calamity of any kind was worth mentioning.
Nothing could shake her self. Her self was the mightiest inner demon of all; her existence was eternal and undying, the very antithesis of cessation and Nirvana.
A demonic obstacle? Seize it in one grasp, and refine it away in an instant!
____
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