How did he know?
That was the question that rang through Long Tao's mind as he felt the soft, fleshy heart between his fingers. It still beat a few times after he ripped it out, squirting blood, before coming to a still. Perhaps a breath later than the man on the floor had the light in his eyes leave him.
How did he know?
The main reason why he decided to pursue this scum was because of one thing: Illusionary Heart-Seed.
... but, how did he know?
Illusionary Heart-Seed was perhaps the most difficult thing in the world to detect, and that was not an exaggeration. Long Tao himself had no means of detecting it. Even if he knew for a fact that the person had it, and even if he had all the resources in the world and all the time in the world, he would not have been able to detect it.
Not just in this life, either. Even at the pinnacle of his powers, when he was among the strongest people alive, he would not have been able to detect Illusionary Heart-Seed. After all, if he could have, perhaps Huan'er's fate would not have been so somber.
The so-called 'Three Great Silences', they were named.
Illusionary Heart-Seed.
Heart-Poison Curse.
And the worst one, Long Silence.
Long Tao had never met anyone with the latter of the three, though that wasn't odd; after all, there was only one person in the world who could use it, and she had been missing from the world for good twenty million years, best he could recall.
She was alive, as her Soul Tablet remained humming, but where exactly she was... nobody knew.
He might also be one of the few people alive who had experienced or seen at least two of the Three Great Silences.
Which further bugged him...
How did he know?
To Long Tao's knowledge, there were perhaps two people alive throughout the history of cultivators who could 'see' Illusionary Heart-Seed--the God-Emperor, and Buddha himself. And though Long Tao's senses had dulled slightly, he was very much certain his Master was neither of those men.
And it was hardly that those two could spot it with ease, either; such was the nature of any heart poison or curse, really. They were extremely difficult to detect.
No...
He recalled that his Master recognized his curse, too, practically on the day they met. At the time, the man disguised it vaguely, saying that he noticed there was something 'off' with Long Tao's heart and that the Heart-Stitching Art would help, and Long Tao accepted it as the truth since he would not have though a man from some backwater sect in the middle of nowhere could recognize his actual curse.
... but he knew, even then. He knew exactly what was wrong with him, just as he knew exactly what was wrong with that thing lying dead over there.
More and more... more and more... every so often, Long Tao realized, he learns something new about that strange Master of his.
His lips stretched out into a wide smile, one he'd never show anyone but the silence and solitude; were one to see him at this point, still holding the human heart, covered in blood and sneering like a madman, there were only so many conclusions they could draw.
He has the ability to manifest arts from thin air, conjure strange items just the same, and the ability to see through the people as though they were an unbound book. Where did it end? At what point do his unending abilities stop?
Long Tao, from the moment he died, firmly believed it would be his lonesome journey that would determine whether the worlds lived or ended. There was nobody else, he believed; those who had the will were not capable, or had already been killed. Those who had the means and were capable were the very architects of the apocalypse.
The rest were the middling souls adrift in the never-ending song of life, ebbing and flowing the best they could through the turbulent waters, never knowing when the end may come. He would not expect them to fight, as he would not expect a deer to fight against a tiger.
Most humans, he reckoned, spanned the spectrum of average. They were neither strong nor weak, neither clever nor stupid, neither brave nor cowardly; they were a concoction of all of them in a variety of weights and measures. Even while he was being hunted like an animal, and even as people kept revealing his location, he never blamed them.
Rather, he loathed the friends and loved ones who kept their lips sewn to the end. What for? They died a dog's death, and so did he, inevitably. Perhaps that was why he gravitated towards that man so strongly; Long Tao saw the shadow of himself in him, the man he swore he would kill.
Bonds, he believed by the last day of his life, were the chains. That was why he did not want to forge any in this life.
... but it was far, far too late, now. And that man, it seemed, would become the key to it all.
Someone neither of this time nor of this world, someone so unaccustomed to the most common of common senses, someone who can see what nobody else can. Someone who knows things nobody else does, and yet does not know a single custom for a Master-Disciple relationship.
Long Tao sighed, looking up past the trees and at the sky; it was about to rain, and the air smelled like it.
In the end, it did not matter.
It did not matter how he knew the things he did. Perhaps he had a special art, perhaps it was an innate gift, perhaps it was Dao itself exercising its will through the man... regardless of which it was, all that mattered was the truth.
And the truth was that it was possible.
It was possible to tear down those gilded walls, to undo their grand palaces, to unmake the holy image they've made of themselves--to show the entire cosmos the darkness which lurked in their depths. It was possible to sever the monsters and fix all the things he could not in his past life.
There were parts of him that still held onto the anger; he hadn't forgotten, the blood. The countless dead. Their voices, their eyes looking at him in his nightmares. He hadn't forgotten their blades, their sneers.
He hadn't forgotten how they hunted down everybody he ever knew and gave them a choice: betray or die. Young, old, it didn't matter. Everybody. Even the mortals who fed him goat milk when he was dying of thirst, despite not having enough for themselves.
He wanted the rivers of the heavens to run red with their blood. He wanted to build a mountain out of their corpses and laugh and jeer at them just as they did at him.
... but a small truth had carved itself into his heart. If that man asked him not to... would he have the strength to do it, regardless?
He no longer knew.