Chapter 38: The Ancient King of Kakin
As they ventured deeper into the stone passage, the rough-hewn walls gave way to something more deliberate. Polished metal stanchions, looking completely out of place in the ancient tomb, began to appear at regular intervals on both sides. Velvet ropes were strung between them, creating a clear, designated pathway. It was the unmistakable, almost clinical setup of a museum exhibit, a sterile barrier erected to protect priceless historical artifacts.
And woven into the very fabric of those ropes, repeated over and over in a crisp, corporate font, was a single name: "BLANCHETT COMPANY" "BLANCHETT COMPANY" "BLANCHETT COMPANY"...
It was a jarring reminder that they were not the first to discover this place. The company had, clearly, already been here. They had cataloged this tomb, roped it off, and claimed it as just another part of their sprawling business empire, though they had clearly opted not to share this particular "attraction" with the public.
"There's writing on the walls," Shizuku stated, her voice flat, as she pointed her flashlight past the velvet rope.
Kai, Menchi, and the others stepped closer, careful to stay behind the barrier. They aimed their own flashlights. The beams cut through the subterranean gloom, landing on the ancient stone. The wall was a mottled canvas, covered in a chaotic, crisscrossing mess of deep gouges and carvings.
Menchi leaned in, squinting. "That doesn't look like writing," she said, her voice echoing slightly. "It just looks like a bunch of random hack marks. Like someone went crazy in here with a sword."
"If they went to the trouble of roping it off, it can't be that simple," Kai countered. He focused, activating his Gyo, and a shroud of Aura instantly enveloped his eyes. He stared intently at the seemingly random, chaotic gouges. His breath hitched. "Just as I thought..."
"Is that Aura? On the marks?" Menchi asked, quickly activating her own Gyo.
"I've seen something like this before," Dako muttered, his eyes wide. "On extremely valuable, master-crafted antiques..."
He and his team of freelance Hunters were completely astonished. These were just scratches on a wall, yet they were still emanating a faint, lingering presence of Nen, perhaps centuries after they had been made.
It was a known phenomenon. Sometimes, a master artisan—a painter, a sculptor, a smith—pours so much of their soul and focus into a piece that their latent Aura, their life energy, becomes infused with it. To a non-Nen user, that piece is a "priceless masterpiece" with an "indescribable aura." To a Nen user, it's just a tangible echo of its creator's spirit.
Menchi, ever the tourist, held up her phone and started dutifully documenting the glowing, Aura-laced scratches.
"Menchi, switch to photos. Don't take any video," Kai said suddenly.
"Huh? Why not?" she asked, lowering her phone.
"Think about it," Kai said. "If a video records a scene containing active Nen, a normal person won't see a thing. But anyone who knows how to use Gyo can—and will—see that Aura, clear as day, right on the recording."
He was thinking, of course, of the Heaven's Arena arc. It was how Gon and Killua had finally unmasked Hisoka's Bungee Gum—by using Gyo to watch his old fight tapes.
"So you can't see it in a still photograph?" Shizuku asked, processing this new piece of information.
"Honestly... I have no idea," Kai admitted. "But we have to bring something back as proof for our work, right? Since video is a security risk, photos are our only option. Otherwise, that balding official will definitely try to stiff us on the bonus."
"Haha! 'Balding official'?" Menchi snickered, snapping a few photos. "You're brutal."
The group continued their exploration, walking and documenting. The further they went, the more the chaotic scratches began to change. They started to merge, forming strange, abstract patterns that looked like primitive paintings. They were so bizarre, so utterly non-representational, that it was impossible to tell what, if anything, they were supposed to be depicting.
But they all shared one common, unsettling trait: every single line, every pattern, every shape, pulsed with that same faint, ancient, and undeniable residue of Aura.
The tomb, as it turned out, wasn't a large complex. It was just a few short, interconnected corridors. At the end of the main passage, they entered a final, much larger central chamber. As their flashlight beams swept across the walls, everyone simultaneously activated their Gyo, and their breath caught.
The four walls were covered, from floor to ceiling, in text. It was a dense, claustrophobic sea of wild, "dragon-flying, phoenix-dancing" cursive script, carved deep into the stone with what looked like the raw, furious power of knives and axes.
Kai's knowledge of the Hunter alphabet was... functional. He'd "absorbed" it from Muser, which was enough for basic reading, but this was something else entirely. This was the ancient, calligraphic equivalent of a madman's diary. He stared, straining his eyes, for several long minutes. He could only barely make out a few, disjointed words from the chaos: "...WORLD..." "...WHY..." "...HAHAHAHA..."
He couldn't help but feel a little concerned for the mental stability of whoever had carved this.
And just like everything else in this tomb, every single character, every furious stroke, was saturated with that same lingering, powerful Aura.
"This is... incredible. Who could have done this?"
"For Aura to remain this strong for... what, hundreds of years?"
"What does it all say? Could it really be him... the Ancient King of Kakin?"
Dako and his men were snapping photos frantically, their voices hushed with awe.
As their flashlight beams continued to sweep the chamber, one of Dako's men suddenly yelped, "Ah! What's that!"
Kai snapped his light to the center of the room. He hadn't noticed it before. Standing in the middle of the massive, empty chamber was a small, modern-looking glass cube, like a display case from a department store. All four walls were made of thick, transparent glass. When they shined their lights inside, they saw the floor was littered with... clutter. Toys, a small pillow, a rubber ball. And sitting perfectly still in the middle of it all was a stuffed... white fox. Dako's men had been startled by its unblinking, glassy eyes.
"What are you screaming for?" Kai said, annoyed. "It's just a pile of toys."
"Toys?" Menchi asked, walking closer to the glass.
Shizuku had also moved in, her Gyo still active. "The white fox is just a stuffed animal."
Suddenly, with a loud CLICK, the entire chamber was flooded with bright, white, fluorescent light, as harsh and brilliant as an operating room.
"Why were you all sitting in the dark?"
Kai and the others spun around. On the far side of the glass cube, the blond, suited man—Alan'tr'iel=Blanchett—was closing a small, previously unnoticed glass door. He had just flicked the light switch, which Kai could now see was installed just inside the doorframe. With him was Babimaina, who had followed him in. The Kakin soldier was completely ignoring them, his face a mask of grim concentration, his eyes glowing with a powerful Gyo as he stared, transfixed, at the furiously carved words on the walls.
Menchi and Dako's team, flustered and on edge, immediately started asking who he was. Alan'tr'iel calmly repeated the same introduction he had given Babimaina on the surface. He then gestured to the chaotic sea of script covering every wall. "All of this," he said, "is the handiwork of the Ancient Kakin King, from 400 years ago. King Zhenwu."
Babimaina's stony expression didn't flicker. Alan'tr'iel continued, "When my teacher and I first discovered this place, we also assumed it was his tomb. We were wrong. It's built like a tomb, but it was never used as one. We believe he used it as a... private retreat. A place to 'meditate.' When he hit a wall, or when he was so furious he couldn't think straight, he'd lock himself in here, alone, and just... vent all over the walls. Centuries passed, the 'Warrior King' became a legend, and this room was left behind, perfectly preserved, just as you see it."
So my guess about his mental state was spot on, Kai thought. What normal person builds a tomb to use as a personal rage-room?
What kind of problem could be so huge, what kind of rage so intense, that it would drive a man to do... this?
"King Zhenwu?" Kai asked aloud.
Dako, the freelance Hunter, was the one to answer. "He's a legendary king, straight from the history books. Hundreds of years ago, Kakin's 'Warrior King,' Veyrgo=Hui Guo Rou. The records say he came closer than anyone to unifying the entire Azian continent."
Babimaina remained completely silent, his entire focus absorbed by the walls, as if trying to read the ancient king's very soul from the furious script.
Shizuku was also listening intently, looking back and forth between the walls and Dako, seemingly fascinated. Kai, however, seriously doubted she would remember a single word of this an hour from now.
"The past is the past," Alan'tr'iel said, loosening his tie. "As you've no doubt noticed, while most of this is unreadable, these walls do contain explicit descriptions of Nen and Nen abilities. That's why this place can never be opened to the public."
He then turned to the silent Kakin soldier. "The guarantee I can offer you is this: 'Bai'—the... issue... you're worried about, Nasti=Hui Guo Rou—his grudge will no longer trouble the Hui Guo Rou royal line. The condition, of course, is that the Hui Guo Rou agree never to come here and trouble him."
As if on cue, the spectral, pale-white image of the child-ghost flashed inside the glass cube for just a second. Then, the stuffed white fox in the center of the toys... moved. It stood up on its plush legs, walked over to the glass wall, and began to listlessly bat at a small, rubber ball. It was now watching them all with its black, glassy, button eyes. Kai was fairly certain its gaze was fixed entirely on Babimaina.
"What did you do to him?" Babimaina demanded, his body tensing as he stared at the animated doll.
"We just did what we could," Alan'tr'iel said calmly. "The cycle of reincarnation... it's not so easily broken. The consciousness of Nasti=Hui Guo Rou is long gone. All that remained was his malformed, parasitic Nen, a grudge that had fused with his own guardian beast. We simply... built this vessel for it. A container. It won't be going anywhere."
The stuffed fox picked up the ball in its mouth, then dropped it, watching it bounce.
Babimaina stood in silence for a very long time. The silence stretched, becoming so heavy that Dako and his men started to sweat. They were just freelance contractors. They had just stumbled into, and listened to, the deepest, darkest, and most private secrets of a royal family. This was... not good.
"Excuse me, sir, how do we get out of here?" Dako asked Alan'tr'iel, his voice strained. The Ruin Hunter simply pointed to another corridor, where a different array of God Script glowed on the far wall.
Menchi put her phone away. "Well, that's that. We should probably get going, too."
"I'm good with that," Kai said. "Shizuku?"
"Oh?" Shizuku was still staring, mesmerized, at the wall of angry script. "I'll follow you, Boss."
"Then let's move," Kai said with a wave.
...
Babimaina stepped up to the exit script, placed his hand on it, and dissolved into a cloud of white particles.
Kai was about to do the same when he felt a small, insistent tug on his pants. He looked down. The stuffed white fox was at his feet, its plush paw hooked into the cuff of his shorts.
As he watched, a cloud of white Aura floated up from the doll, and for a split second, the spectral image of the pale-white child-ghost hovered within it.
Alan'tr'iel looked genuinely surprised. "That's... rare. It seems 'Bai' has taken a liking to you."
"But of course. I'm a likable guy. Right, Menchi? Right, Shizuku?" Kai, no longer in any hurry, crouched down and patted the doll fox's stitched head. He looked up at the Ruin Hunter. "Mr. Alan'tr'iel, you kept saying 'we' found this place. Your 'teacher'. The other person... it was Ging Freecss, wasn't it?"
As he spoke, Kai slowly pulled his own Hunter License from his pocket. Beside him, Menchi, catching his drift, did the same, holding her card between two fingers and wiggling it with a grin.
Alan'tr'iel's polite, corporate smile faded, replaced by a genuine, warm laugh. "That's right," he said. "Ging... is my teacher."
(End of Chapter)