The Voice Beyond the Door
“...It’s a staircase. Someone clearly built this space artificially.”
“Are we really supposed to go in there?”
Hyeryeong blinked up at me, her eyes wide. Now that the door was open, fear seemed to have caught up with her. I placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t worry too much. I’m not planning to charge in right away.”
Opening the door with gusto was one thing, but rushing into an unknown space without any thought was no different from suicide. I scratched my chin and reinforced my eyes with aura, peering into the darkness.
“Looks like it goes down at least two floors.”
“That deep? The darkness is a little scary...”
“You can cut off a person’s head without blinking, yet you’re afraid of the dark?”
“That’s completely different!”
Different, huh?
Martial artists’ sensibilities were hard to understand. Mokgyeong was nodding along beside her, too.
Maybe I was the one out of touch with the times.
“Darkness has always been an enemy to martial artists. No matter how sharp their senses, they cannot perfectly perceive threats in the dark.”
She had a point.
The dark was the most dangerous place. My eyesight had improved and my night vision adapted faster, but that didn’t mean I could see perfectly through pitch blackness.
Of course, among the countless martial arts in Murim, some techniques could pierce even this absolute darkness, but we didn’t have those. So we needed torches.
Torches to protect us from the dark.
“...It’s already late. Let’s head back to camp instead of going in now.”
I closed the cellar door and turned around. There probably weren’t any people nearby, so leaving it like this should be fine.
If anyone came, it would only be the person who built this place or someone connected to them.
The thick moss on the rock suggested the cellar itself was quite old, so no one was likely to find it anytime soon.
I scattered some leaves over the door and returned to our campsite.
“Mokgyeong. The torches?”
“Here they are.”
“Uncle, do we really need to make this many?”
“Nothing in this world goes the way you want it to. We have to prepare for the unexpected.”
Preparation was necessary as much as possible.
Nothing ever unfolded according to my wishes. If life had gone the way I wanted, I wouldn’t have ended up in Murim in the first place.
Recalling my friends from the slave ship—whose bones might still be lying somewhere—I took the torches from Mokgyeong.
“Mokgyeong, do you have a flint?”
“Please tilt the torch this way for a moment...”
I followed his instruction and angled the torch toward him. Mokgyeong placed his hand on the head of the torch and snapped his fingers.
“Using Samadhi True Fire just to light a torch? Isn’t that wasteful?”
“It consumes less internal energy than I expected.”
That was a relief. I tied two spare torches to the luggage and handed the rest to Hyeryeong and Mokgyeong.
“If you ever get separated, never let go of your torch and hang it somewhere visible. That way we’ll know you passed through.”
“I won’t drop it, no matter what.”
Once we confirmed there was nothing special, we could just continue on our way.
I kicked aside the leaves I had piled over the hidden door and pulled it open. With a creak, the old hinges scraped against my eardrums. The same sight as yesterday unfolded before us.
What could possibly be down here that warranted such a hidden entrance?
Holding the brightly burning torch forward, I checked the stairs.
“The stairs look intact.”
“Just as you said, they don’t appear broken.”
“Uncle, can’t we hold hands while we go?”
“We need to stay ready for emergencies, so no.”
Hyeryeong made no effort to hide her disappointment, but her safety came first. If we wanted to check things quickly and safely, keeping a little distance was better.
“Then let’s go.”
We began descending the stairs, unsure what might be lurking below.
How could a staircase be this long?
We must have walked for nearly an hour, yet there was still no sign of the bottom.
“Eun-gong, could we have been caught in a formation...?”
“I’m not sure...”
“It doesn’t feel like a formation!”
Hm?
We both turned to look at Hyeryeong. She wore a smug smile, clearly pleased to finally have something she could contribute. She glanced sideways at Mokgyeong.
...She seemed to treat him as some kind of rival.
“My master taught me how to check if you’re trapped in a formation! First, try going back the way you came. Second, keep leaving marks as you move!”
“Simple enough.”
I drew my sword and carved an X into the wall.
“Let’s keep going down for now.”
After descending a little farther, the floor finally appeared.
So it had just been ridiculously long.
“The difference in technology is ridiculous...”
Was this really medieval China?
It felt like it was several centuries ahead. Was this even right?
Murim’s China having over-the-top technology wasn’t new, but seeing it in person was still absurd. Even the 21st century would struggle to build something like this. Just who were the people that made this cellar?
“At least there aren’t any night pearls embedded in the walls...”
There were rings for holding torches, though.
I placed my torch in one of the rings and lit a fresh one.
“The smell of dust suggests no one has been here for a very long time.”
“It seems this place has been abandoned for quite a while, just as you said.”
Mokgyeong swept his torch around as he spoke.
“Uncle, doesn’t this look like a passageway too?”
“It does.”
It had widened a little, but it was still a straight corridor. What was this place built for?
Could it be a secret passage?
If it was, where did it lead?
We walked endlessly, occasionally hanging torches in the rings. After some time, we stopped.
A shape lay sprawled across the floor.
“Eun-gong, this is...”
“Uncle...”
“Looks like it’s been dead for a long time.”
Only bones and tattered clothes remained. The skeleton gave off the unmistakable feeling of having lain here for decades. I examined it slowly.
How had it died?
Depending on the cause, we might find the answer to this endless corridor.
I carefully removed the clothes from the skeleton and inspected the bones. Fortunately, most of them were still intact, so we quickly discovered the cause of death.
“The spine is broken, and it died face-down...”
“It must have been attacked from behind!”
“It seems Hyeryeong is correct.”
“...I have a feeling we might get dragged into something troublesome.”
Ever since arriving in the Central Plains, misfortune seemed to follow me wherever I went. This time, though, it was self-inflicted, so I had no right to complain.
I stood up, finished with the examination.
“Let’s keep going forward.”
“Wouldn’t it be safer to turn back? If we get involved in an incident like you said...”
Hyeryeong grabbed my sleeve, her voice full of worry. I took her hand and looked at her.
“Don’t worry so much. Don’t you trust me?”
“Uncle...”
“...Eun-gong. Perhaps we should proceed for now...”
Mokgyeong’s awkward voice snapped me back to reality. This wasn’t the time for that. I took the lead again and continued down the passage.
“Uncle, there’s another skeleton here.”
“They’re spaced out. Looks like someone killed one, then chased and killed another.”
What exactly had happened here?
I examined the remains while trying to piece together what kind of event had unfolded in this endless corridor.
“This one also took a dagger in the back.”
“If the direction we came from is the exit... then something went wrong at the place connected to this secret passage, and they were killed while trying to escape.”
“We’ll know once we reach the entrance.”
The breeze suggested the entrance was open. We would find out soon enough.
We pressed onward.
Before long, we reached what appeared to be the entrance—a door slightly ajar, cracked as though someone had forced it open. For us, that was fortunate.
“From here on, it’s probably the real deal, so stay alert...”
“Who’s there?”
Hm?
A voice came from beyond the door.
I looked at Hyeryeong and Mokgyeong, surprised by the unexpected sound.
“...Uncle, I really think too many unexpected things happen when I’m with you.”
“...I think so too.”
I grabbed the handle and pushed the door wide open, searching for the owner of that aged voice who had already noticed our presence.