Read Novel Full Chapter 475: Incompleteness
Chapter 475: Chapter 475: Incompleteness
Chapter 475 – Incompleteness
"Aren’t unfinished things beautiful?"
The Historian — a short man standing at best four feet tall, with yellow skin, moose-yellow hair, and matching eyes — spoke directly to Kaden sitting across the table, scratching his full yellow-bearded jaw as he did.
They were inside the cave. Pandora was nowhere to be seen, dismissed by the man she called father.
But looking at him, Kaden couldn’t find a shred of resemblance between the two. And beyond the two of them, the Historian was truly apart from the whole Malan tribe.
As if he himself was a stranger, just like Kaden.
None of the tribesmen had yellow skin. Nor were any of them standing at four feet, looking like a child who could be easily lost in a crowd.
Yet despite all the oddities surrounding the jaw-scratching Historian, Kaden couldn’t help but feel small in front of him.
There was something in those yellow eyes — a kind of vicissitude, or even lassitude, that hooded his gaze — as if nothing between heaven and earth could move him.
He spoke unhurriedly. Softly, even. His gaze was steady, and he carried himself as if everything around him was small, and he alone was not.
The sensation was strange. And without meaning to, Kaden began to instinctively respect the man. As if something in the Historian simply demanded it.
He twisted his tongue inside his mouth, holding the cup of herbal tea the Historian had given him, trying to think of a smart way to answer the question. Some way to impress this giant of a man.
Yet the moment that want whispered inside his mind, Kaden snapped out of it, his Will acting on its own.
He looked at the Historian. The man was wearing a small, knowing smile.
Kaden cursed under his breath, heart quickening.
’Another problematic one.’
"I’m afraid I don’t understand." He said, glancing briefly around, noticing the same incompleteness that hung over the whole tribe present inside this cave too, like the omnipresent eyes of a god. "What could make unfinished things beautiful?"
"Allow me to answer with a question, Boy of Wisdom."
Kaden cringed at the title.
But the Historian pressed on, his voice gentle and persuasive. "What makes something finished beautiful? Is it the very concept of being finished — the ending of something — or is it simply that you are used to seeing things that way?"
"The ending." Kaden answered. "Everything that has a beginning must have an ending. Otherwise there is no meaning, Historian."
"Oh?"
"Yes." Kaden nodded with confidence. "An incomplete painting will be just that...incomplete. It might be beautiful, it might be a work of art, it might even inspire you. But there will always be something missing within it. Something that can only be found by giving it a proper ending."
"Just like a story, you mean." The Historian let out a low, bearded smile. "What is a story without an ending? Aye, I see your point."
"Then—!"
"However," the short yellow man cut in without much apology, "here is the thing, wise boy, who decides what an ending is?"
Kaden’s eyes widened slightly, caught off guard.
"Something incomplete to you could be very much complete to me. Like the herbal tea in your hand. Who decides when it’s complete? It’s your tea, so you decide. And my tea, I decide. Don’t I?"
The Historian fell silent for a few breaths before continuing.
"And even if something is incomplete, there is a beauty to it. A mystery, even. Something unfinished gives you dozens of ways to finish it, every single day. It nourishes your mind. Because each time you come up with something different. Something abnormal. Something utterly beyond the ordinary!"
His voice grew suddenly excited.
"Can you not see it, wise boy?" His voice rose, gesturing wildly around him. "That is exactly how life is! Incomplete! Unfinished! And every single second, minute, hour, day, and year — you move through billions of events that shape how the ending of your life will be."
"But," Kaden interjected, frowning, "isn’t the ultimate fate of life its ending?"
"Do gods die?"
"They can die."
"Only if they are killed." The Historian corrected. "Which would mean they walked a path that led to that ending. But what about those who choose the path of preservation?"
Kaden scoffed. "I might not know all the gods, but those I’ve known are nothing like what you’re describing. They are greedy, starved beings who would stop at nothing to get what they want."
"For what reason, in your opinion, wise boy?"
"For power."
"And what is power used for?"
Kaden fell immediately silent, understanding what the Historian was leading to before he could say it himself.
"Power, for mortals and gods alike, has one principal use: to preserve ourselves. To not die under assault. To not fall at the hands of enemies. To not wither like rotten meat under the merciless wheel of time."
The Historian paused, sipped his tea through a smiling mouth, and followed swiftly.
"That is what we are. Beings who do everything to stop the completion of their own life. Yet paradoxically, we have this obsession to bring everything around us to a state of perfection. A state of completeness."
He shook his head. "Be it a building, a painting, a relationship...everything. We always want things to be complete in the way we wish ourselves to be complete."
"And those are the sources of strife and wars." He barked a loud laugh. "We all experience the world differently. And so we all have a different vision of what a complete world should look like. You can only wonder, wise boy, what happens when everyone tries to impose their own version?"
"Wars." Kaden answered, voice tight, realising he was losing the thread of this conversation without quite knowing where it was going.
"Aye, wise boy." He nodded. "Wars erupt. Then more wars erupt to stop those wars."
He laughed without humour. "Ironic, don’t you think?"
"I accept your point. However..." Kaden retorted, unwilling to concede the floor, "maybe you are simply afraid. And that’s why you are finding all these excuses."
The Historian instantly stilled. He cocked his short head to the side, his yellow eyes glinting.
"The frightened man always devours himself." Kaden continued. "And the easiest way to do so is to stay incomplete in a world that pushes you toward completeness...toward evolution."
He locked his crimson, star-lit eyes onto the Historian’s yellow ones. "Maybe that’s why this village is the way it is. Maybe that’s why..."
The tension in the room thickened.
"...the Tower is unfinished. Not because you chose to seek enlightenment, or preservation. But simply because deep inside, you are profoundly — and embarrassingly — afraid of what would happen if the Tower were completed."
Kaden grinned coldly, watching the Historian’s face tighten.
"There is neither honour nor glory in stagnating because of fear. So don’t dress it up as something glorious."
He narrowed his crimson eyes.
"It’s absolutely not. And that makes me wonder, Historian..."
He looked around him.
"What are you afraid of? What is the thing you are hiding from? And what are the reasons you are fooling yourself, fooling this tribe, and trying to fool me into believing that incompleteness is the better way?"
Kaden leaned his face toward the now-silent Historian, who clearly had not anticipated Kaden’s will or his stubbornness.
"What is the Tower? And why is it unfinished?"
"Do you truly wish to know the answer?" The Historian finally spoke again, his voice now harder.
"Enlighten me."
The Historian bared his teeth, ornate and yellow. "As you wish then, wise boy! You are wise, aren’t you? Then you should know the difference between what you ought to know and what you shouldn’t. So open your ears and listen well!"
He didn’t wait for Kaden to gather himself.
"The Tower is simply the young, ageless girl you have come to fancy so much!"
Kaden’s eyes went wide. The Historian pressed on.
"And the reason it is unfinished is even more laughable. You might think it’s by choice. But we have no choice. We live with this incompleteness and learn to mirror it, only to slow the rate at which she kills us!"
"What do you mean?" Kaden’s voice came out rough.
"What else, wise boy?" The Historian sneered. "It means that Pandora kills anyone who approaches the Tower. And even without that, she kills us slowly. Didn’t you ever wonder why we have a Church?"
Kaden suddenly couldn’t breathe. And it worsened as the Historian’s last words landed.
"Because we are a farming tribe of sorrow for the Goddess. And I — the Historian — carry the duty of keeping the records of every person killed by the Goddess’s hunger, and by her personal, heaven-made weapon..."
Kaden’s heart skipped a beat.
"...Pandora."
—End of Chapter 475—