Cube of Natho–Nuke Sealing Relationship

The Cube of Natho–Nuke Sealing Relationship is the binding between the Cube of Natho and The Nuke: the cube holds a powerful, apparently conscious prisoner whose confinement is essential to preventing its power from being used or its release from being attempted. The relationship is neither a dormant piece of containment nor a secure conclusion to the conflict. The cube watches, its mechanisms can be exploited, and even after the Yinyang Khan falls, Yuan Guang treats protecting the prison as an ongoing responsibility.

The Cube as Prison

The Cube of Natho is presented as a container with agency and menace. When a man reaches for it among the wreckage, its eyes dart toward him with the insistence of a being yearning for freedom. The scene makes the seal legible through the prisoner’s desire: the cube is not merely a valuable object, but the barrier between a captive power and the world beyond it.

The man reaching for the artifact interprets its release as a route to universal salvation for mortal souls. That claim belongs to his conviction, not to any demonstrated outcome. Its importance is the contrast it creates: the cube’s would-be liberator regards freedom as deliverance, while the surrounding evidence frames the prisoner’s power as something requiring an exceptionally secure binding. The cube’s watchful eyes give the promise of liberation an unsettling counterweight.

Power Used Through the Binding

The Yinyang Khan’s control of the cube shows that imprisonment does not mean complete inaccessibility. Orient later detects mechanisms woven into it that would partially allow the prisoner’s power to be used. She assumes the Khan relied on those mechanisms to fire his arrow of light, though she has not investigated further. The cube can therefore serve as both a prison and a constrained channel to the force it contains.

That distinction gives the seal a practical vulnerability. The Khan could draw on some of the cube’s potential without, as far as the evidence shows, fully releasing its prisoner. Yet partial access was enough to make the cube central to a violent contest for power. The mechanism’s existence also means that anyone who acquires the artifact may be tempted to experiment with it, whether to imitate the Khan or to pursue another use.

The Seal After the Khan

The Khan’s death removes his Barriers, revealing the Cube of Natho among the ruins and Manhattan freed from another barrier. The cube’s continued presence after the battle does not resolve its danger. When Yuan Guang later wakes severely injured, Bucket is holding it; the artifact’s baleful eyes still look back at Yuan with a glint of malice. The image underscores that the threat has survived the defeat of the person who most recently wielded its power.

Yuan Guang understands the stakes in terms of both relief and alarm. He is glad The Nuke has not escaped its binding, but the need for an apparently unbreakable prison testifies to the prisoner’s power. Manhattan’s warning that ambitious fools and madmen would keep hunting the cube turns the seal into a continuing political and personal burden. Yuan Guang’s resolve to stand between the artifact and anyone seeking it makes protection, rather than possession, the defining response to the binding.

Orient’s Custody and the Meaning of Containment

After Yuan Guang, Holster, and their allies return to the locomotive, they find Orient keeping watch over the cube in the driver’s car. She has sealed it inside the engine, among pistons and sutras that form another prison. This new confinement does not replace the Cube of Natho’s bond with The Nuke; it adds a layer of custody around the already dangerous artifact. Orient can sense the prisoner’s malice leaking from its enclosure, and her unease confirms that concealment and restraint have not made it harmless.

Yuan Guang decides the cube must be taken somewhere no one will find it. Although Kaguya is likely to contact them, he refuses to give it to her or to any sect: in his judgment, no sect should possess such power. Orient agrees that no one should wield the creature. Her assessment of the seal is cautious rather than absolute: she says it will not escape unless they intentionally release it themselves, while acknowledging that its mechanisms permit partial access. Her refusal to probe further, and Yuan Guang’s approval of that restraint, establish ignorance as a reason for caution rather than an invitation to test the prison.

The relationship therefore outlasts the conflict that exposed it. The Yinyang Khan’s death ends his immediate use of the cube, but it leaves its prisoner, its exploitable mechanisms, and the prospect of future hunters behind. Containment becomes a responsibility shared by Yuan Guang and Orient, not a problem solved by defeating one antagonist. The cube’s watchful face and hidden mechanisms keep that responsibility visibly unsettled: The Nuke remains bound, but the binding must still be guarded.