Questioning Heaven, Desiring the Way - Chapter 256
256: Final TL Note
Some final thoughts from the TL & answers to some queries:
The author ended the story quite abruptly and the last part might be confusing, so let’s try to break this down. In essence, this story is all about Gu Suihan’s journey to find the answers behind his existence and whether anything lies beyond it. The answer is that there is this will of heaven, which has been called “the Way” by mankind. So, Gu Suihan tries to find it and see if he can go beyond it.
There was a reader’s question about what Gu Suihan means at the end when he says “the fifth time”, and whether this is referring to the number of times someone has gone against heaven. So…yes, these are all attempts to thwart the will of heaven.
a) Pangu is a Chinese mythical character credited with creating the world but does not have control over what happens in it. The will of heaven is the one that controls the fates of the creatures living in it. The deities tried to rebel, so heaven quashed the rebellion with Pangu. The two sides took a rest, but they weren’t wiped out. this is the first time.
b) After Pangu died, the immortals and demons made a comeback. They created a system to judge the world and take charge of what happens in the world. And the will of heaven seemed to have let it be.
c) But Pangu left descendants, and these descendants wanted to become the will of heaven. To become more powerful, they combined the most powerful things they could get their hands on and made humans. There was a second rebellion. But it didn’t end well – all non-humans had to go into hiding, and humans were allowed to remain in the open and flourish, presumably because humans did not seem as powerful as the deities and were therefore less of a threat.
d) Despite not being as powerful, the humans decided they still wanted to be heaven. They tried becoming high level buddhists and daoists in order to move beyond their human limitations, including attaining immortality (as in, never dying from natural causes). The will of heaven allowed the humans to try, so the concept of attaining immortalhood, godhood, the way, all came into being, but nothing worked out. And nothing worked because instead of fighting on their own, they tried to merge their lives with the will of heaven. This is the third rebellious attempt.
e) To stop the humans from realising that the buddhism and daoism was never going to work, the will of heaven tried to seal off history and cover up what happened, but it didn’t cover up everything properly and Ying Zheng actually succeeded in becoming so powerful, the will of heaven became scared. This is the fourth attempt.
There was another reader’s question about how Ying Zheng became so powerful. This is not stated in the book. The only clue we have is that Ying Zheng was a character with no heart (or a heart so hardened, he forgot it existed). Which is why the will of heaven needed someone even more heartless to fight Ying Zheng.
And this is also why Gu Suihan was so interested and excited to meet with Ying Zheng. He wanted to know how Ying Zheng basically managed to rise to where he was.
f) But the will of heaven wasn’t backing down without a fight, so it created Gu Suihan. Possibly, heaven was hoping to make a character that could take down or defeat Ying Zheng, yet remain within its control. Maybe it hoped that Gu Suihan would be like Pangu right at the beginning. But Gu Suihan refused. He continued to search for answers about where he had come from, why he existed, and how he could become greater than it. But his existence was a plan by the will of heaven right from the start, so everything he thought would lead him to an answer did lead him closer to the truth, but also closer to destruction. The will of heaven was not going to let him exist if he was going to destroy it. So as Gu Suihan insisted on fighting the will of heaven and soared into the sky right at the end, that’s the fifth time someone’s trying to rebel.
Another reader asked if Gu Suihan killed Ying Zheng at the end – the answer is no. Gu Suihan flew into the sky to fight the will of heaven and Ying Zheng called on all living creatures to join in the fight. So it’s actually Ying Zheng becoming part of the fifth time alongside Gu Suihan.
Since the author states in his last notes that Gu Suihan dies in the end, I presume Gu Suihan was too weak at the end (he was dribbling blood and all that) to survive any fight. He attained Immortal stage, but that’s not the same as immortalhood, and even immortalhood will only prevent you from dying from old age. You can still get murdered.
Some final thoughts from the ED:
This was the first title that either I or the TL worked on from the start to completion. To the people out there who gave us the support to accomplish this, thank you! Your favorite ED-TL duo is back at it again soon with a translation of Ms. Song’s Autopsy Reports.