Unknown
Warmth suddenly flooded through his entire body, which had been freezing over. Strength returned to limbs gone stiff. His clouding mind sharpened into clarity.
Cheon Gyeol-woo flung his fluttering eyes wide open—and there she was, silver hair glittering like snowflakes in the sunlight, jade eyes glistening wet.
"Your Highness! Are you all right?"
"My lady?"
"Yes, it's me! Can you hear me properly now? Are your hands still shaking? Does anything hurt?"
Seruhwa poured out her questions in a choked, breathless rush. Bewildered, the young prince pushed himself up.
Only moments ago his whole body had been paralyzed, vomiting blood without end—yet now he felt better than he had in his life. Light enough to float, almost.
My side, too… I'm certain a rib was broken. And it's fine.
Having confirmed the state of his body, the boy gazed at the girl with a dazed expression.
Wound about her shoulders, fluttering weightlessly as she looked over him in worry, was a mysterious, semi-transparent cloth of jade green.
"…A Nalgae-ot?"
"Ah."
At his murmured words, Seruhwa's face turned helplessly sheepish.
"…It was urgent, so I tried channeling a spirit the way I learned in my shamanism lessons… and this happened."
"Channeling? Do you mean you received a possession?"
When the Crown Prince startled and repeated her words, the girl let out a sigh and gave a small nod.
"Yes. That's how I treated you just now. I've healed every visible injury—is it all right? Anything else hurting?"
The boy looked down at his mended body, then back up at the girl's tear-streaked face.
Eyes red and swollen. Lips bitten nearly raw. Fingers still crumpling the fabric of her dress.
How desperately she had worried, how hard she had labored, was plain at a glance.
To save me?
His heart grew heavy.
If the Crown Princess had become a possessed shaman, petitions demanding her deposition would rain down like hail—after all, the royal house could fall for it. And more than one or two of them would be lying flat on their bellies in "loyal sincerity," demanding she be sent off as a priestess to the State Temple.
…I will not allow it to come to that.
She was the boy's wife. There was no other in his imagination.
Absolutely not. No one, ever.
Even setting emotion entirely aside, it was only right. Seruhwa was the savior of the royal house, and she had just saved his life for the second time.
…And here I am, owing her yet another debt.
Truly—even judging with every personal feeling of the Crown Prince himself stripped away, deposing a Crown Princess like this would make them beasts with no sense of gratitude, would it not?
And if anyone still buried in superstition dared spout such nonsense, he would find some way—any way—to shut their mouths.
Yes. Whatever means it takes.
In that brief span, the Crown Prince finished his resolve and calculations for a head-on collision with the royal clans and the ministers, then smoothed his face into a gentle, radiant smile.
"I am quite well now. You've saved me yet again, my lady."
"You only got dragged into this because of me in the first place."
Seruhwa swept her strangely luminous gaze over him from head to toe, then let out a breath of relief.
"Thankfully, all the venom's gone, too. Are you truly all right? Can you move now?"
"Of course. My body feels wonderfully light. Such a miracle—you are truly remarkable."
"A miracle…."
Seruhwa repeated it with a blank look, then suddenly bent her gaze to her own hands as though they belonged to someone else. Confused, she clenched and unclenched her fists—then a proud little smile bloomed at the corners of her mouth.
"Yes, it was a miracle! A real one."
She murmured it in a slightly giddy tone.
"It really feels like a miracle. I thought, I have to do something, no matter what—and then it actually happened…."
Her face and flushed cheeks might as well have read, I did it, I did it! Her whole body bounced as if she were dying to hop about with excitement, barely holding herself back.
Adorable. The Crown Prince thought, once more, distantly. My wife really is adorable.
That someone this lovely had healed and saved him from the brink of death, and was even wearing a Nalgae-ot on top of it—could she, in fact, be a celestial maiden descended from heaven?
Entirely unaware of what foolish thoughts were running through the boy's composed face, the girl gave a small cough to steady herself and spoke.
"Your Highness, then—if you're feeling well enough, could you help me?"
"With what, may I ask?"
"Over there."
Seruhwa pointed far behind her.
The snake youkai, maddened with terror, had exhausted itself with glowing and now lay flat on its back, tongue lolling out. She pointed beyond it.
"We need to go that way, so please help me."
"I beg your pardon? Go that way?"
"Grand Minister Woosang's grandchildren should be over there. I could see it from the direction the shadows were flowing… uh, um, w-well, it seems my Seoljok ability awakened. That power to tell fortune from misfortune—not prophecy exactly, just sharpened intuition. So I think we need to head that way."
The girl fumbled through the explanation, flustered and rambling.
The Seoljok ability? Didn't she tell me last time, after all that growing pains, that almost nothing had changed?
Something felt slightly off, but the Crown Prince decided not to press it.
Had her words ever once been wrong?
Even those dreamlike tales had all come true—that the Dowager Empress would awaken, that the Emperor would forgive him, that he would be accepted not as a monster but as a Daoist who wielded the Dark Spirit arts.
If my lady says we go, then we go.
The boy nodded and rose to his feet.
"What would you have me do?"
"That youkai is called a Maninsa…."
I gave the Crown Prince a brief explanation of the creature first.
"…It's a tenacious youkai. If we just leave it and move on, it'll be chasing us again the moment it comes to. We have to finish it off now, while it's collapsed from exhaustion."
"Finish it off?"
"That youkai doesn't die unless the Maninblood Stone inside its body is pulled out. We have to cut open its belly and extract the stone."
It worried me terribly, asking a child who'd just escaped death itself to do this—but I had no other way to peel that hideously tough hide.
"I'll mark the spot for you with my Nalgae-ot. You cut where I point, with your Dark Spirit Blade."
"With the Dark Spirit Blade."
The Crown Prince echoed my words, then added weakly, "I'm sorry."
"What?"
"My blade couldn't pierce its scales. I tried earlier, and I failed, so…."
The Crown Prince ground his teeth in frustration. I asked, puzzled.
"It wouldn't cut with the Dark Spirit Blade?"
"…No."
"That's strange. Master always said the Dark Spirit Blade has power similar to sword-qi. The Maninsa's scales might deflect ordinary sword energy, but they shouldn't be able to withstand a sword-gang…."
At my words, the little prince's face suddenly lit with realization.
"Sword energy won't work, but a sword-gang will…."
"What?"
"Sword energy, sword-gang—the difference between them… something merely manifested, and something honed… honed. Fixed, refined, tempered…."
Muttering low to himself, the Crown Prince smoothly drew from his own shadow a curved blade made of darkness.
The Dark Spirit Blade he had used all along was so concrete in form that it looked like an ordinary sword painted black.
Slowly, he slashed it through empty air. The shadow coiled like smoke, and the blade's edge grew longer. Watching the wavering steel, the Crown Prince let out a hollow laugh.
"So that's it. Bigger and longer doesn't mean stronger. This much—only this much—was what the me of right now could temper, could wield. Never mind knowing the enemy or knowing myself; I hadn't even reached knowing myself. Of course it couldn't cut…."
"Your Highness?"
"I believe I can do it, my lady."
The Crown Prince turned to me, blade hanging loose at his side, and smiled—a clean, unburdened smile.
And there he goes again… somehow, the little one's grown a bit more.
I was gazing absently at that refreshed smile when I remembered this was no time for leisurely admiration and dipped my head.
I have to hurry. The shadows are flowing in that direction—which means the Geuseundae is over there. If that thing is heading toward the children right now, we're in serious trouble.
Thanks to eyes that could now see the flow of qi, similar to the Cheonmyeongan—ah, whatever, let's just call this one the Cheonmyeongan too. They're both powers dwelling in my eyes, after all.
The character for heaven (天) and the character for the netherworld (冥), each inherited separately. Those two characters joined became my name as a god: Cheonmyeong. Whether inherited or made by me, it's all Cheonmyeong—so this is a Cheonmyeongan too.
Anyway, with that, I could see the direction in which the shadows filling the corridor were pouring out—and seeing that meant I could guess where the Geuseundae, master of those shadows, had gone.
"Be careful, Your Highness."
I approached the sprawled Maninsa alongside the Crown Prince, then stopped a few paces away and sent him on alone.
If that thing thrashed, he might dodge—I couldn't. Distance was necessary.
"You truly must be careful. It could wake at any moment."
"I will, my lady."
The Crown Prince answered my worried addendum with quiet obedience. Then, Dark Spirit Blade in hand, he moved toward the Maninsa's neck.
I stretched the Nalgae-ot out long. Through the Cheonmyeongan, I could see with perfect clarity where the qi within the Maninsa's body had gathered. That was where the Maninblood Stone lay.
"There."
Pointing to the spot with the Nalgae-ot, I found myself thinking.
My own divine power… it feels like the concept of healing, just like the Maninblood Stone, has split off and pooled separately inside me.
If it's divided like this, couldn't I ladle it out and pour it into the Straw Gods now?
Then—then maybe, without any kind of sealing, I could keep creating Straw Gods like this and go on living…!
My heart trembled at the hypothesis that surfaced in an instant. I hastily steadied my breathing and pushed the thought out of my head.
…I'll think about that after we get out of here alive.
While I fluttered up in an instant and calmed myself back down, the Crown Prince was leveling the Dark Spirit Blade at the place I'd pointed, steadying his breath.
…
The boy's eyes lowered halfway, his expression utterly still. Long, delicate lashes cast shadows on his cheeks. Soon the wavering edge of the Dark Spirit Blade had been tempered until it looked as solid as true steel.
With immaculate form, the Crown Prince drew the blade down. Seuak—without even a sound, the Maninsa's belly hide split open.
The black serpent's blood gushed forth, and between the torn skin something glinted like a blue-green stone.
The Maninblood Stone.
An inner core formed from ten thousand lives traded for death, bearing an efficacy close to a universal panacea.
To the eye, it was a jewel as large as a grown man's fist, tangled in blood vessels, pulsing in the Maninsa's belly like a second heart.
The Crown Prince glanced back at me, as if to ask if this was it. When I nodded, the boy—fearless—reached his hand into the Maninsa's belly, where dark-red blood welled and churned.
Gripping the Maninblood Stone, he tore it free with all his strength. The tangled vessels ripped apart, scattering blood in every direction.
"Kiyaaaaaak!"
At the same moment, the Maninsa twisted its whole body in one last convulsion. The serpent's gaping maw came crashing down like lightning on the spot where the Crown Prince had stood. The old floorboards splintered through, wood shards and dust bursting up to the ceiling.
Perhaps that had been its final strength; the Maninsa stopped moving with its skull still driven into the floor.
The Crown Prince was nowhere to be seen.
"Your Highness!"
I shrieked in alarm—but a calm voice answered from close by.
"Yes, my lady."
Somewhere along the way, the Crown Prince had arrived at my side. The hem of his robe, billowed by his violent movement, settled slowly to earth like the wings of a crane.
The boy started to extend his hand to me—soaked through with youkai blood—then caught himself, wiped it briskly on the cleanest edge of his garment, and held it out to me once more, gently.
Handing me the softly glowing blue-green jewel, the Crown Prince smiled brightly.
"I brought it back."