Jamma Cave
"Candidate 295, step forward!"
Shin Gi-woon stepped forward at the sound of his number being called. The person ahead of him had been announced as 294, so he had the sense to move up at once and face the instructor of Jamma Cave.
"Candidate 295. Have you built up any internal energy?"
"Not yet."
"Weapon of choice?"
"The spear."
"Then show me!"
He answered as if it were nothing. He still knew little about this place called Jamma Cave, so he chose to blend into his surroundings as best he could.
His lower dantian was completely sealed — a body with no internal energy at all. But his mind was packed full of memories of wielding a spear with absolute mastery.
Under the focused attention of everyone present, Shin Gi-woon demonstrated the martial art of the Battle Demon Spear Sect — the Battle Demon Heavenly Spear.
A dull whoosh of air-splitting force. The spear moved in a dizzying blur — fine work, considering the young body that held it.
Though it was martial arts, he showed no formalized forms. A kid with no internal energy using real techniques would have been a problem. All he needed was to plant the impression that he handled a spear well enough.
"Enough! You pass."
"Thank you."
The instructor standing at the center declared him passed. The other instructors looked much the same. A few watched him with interest, so for now he was satisfied that he hadn't been looked down on.
As he stood among the other successful candidates, a young woman tapped him on the shoulder.
"You're good with that spear. What's your name?"
Her eyes sparkled. At the very least, she hadn't approached him with ill intent. Still, there was no reason not to stay wary of a stranger.
"Shouldn't you tell me your name first? That's just manners."
"Wow, picky. I'm Se-hwa."
"Shin Gi-woon."
"So you're the shy type, huh? Let's get along."
"Shy? Hardly..."
No one had ever known the Ghost Spear's true name. He had always moved like a phantom, and he had never cared to make a name for himself in the first place. Even the Hao Clan had never managed to dig it up. That meant he could reveal his real name freely here in the Demonic Cult without consequence.
"You handle a spear well. Who was your master?"
"I had one. He's far away now."
"Ah..."
The girl who had given her name as Se-hwa let out a soft sound of understanding. She must have taken "far away" to mean dead. In truth, Shin Gi-woon's master had vanished one day without warning, leaving behind nothing but a single note entrusting him with the Battle Demon Spear Sect. He still remembered how stunned he had been.
Different from the others...
Killing intent hung in the air, subtle but unmistakable — not from Se-hwa, but from the other brats who had passed into Jamma Cave. She alone had approached him with anything like goodwill. He still didn't know what she was after, so he had no intention of dropping his guard. Even so, she held his interest more than the rest of them. That much was certain.
Time passed, and at last the entrance examination of Jamma Cave came to an end.
"Welcome to the real Jamma Cave, prospective demons. Some of you are still lacking. Some of you are nearly complete. This particular session of Jamma Cave has been ordered by the Heavenly Demon himself to receive his full attention."
The chief instructor began his address, and every candidate who had passed into Jamma Cave fixed their attention on his words. Shin Gi-woon listened just as carefully as the rest.
To every candidate who has passed the first examination, a Dark Red Pill shall be bestowed!
"They're giving out Dark Red Pills already?"
"The Heavenly Demon's grace!!"
The candidates erupted at the chief instructor's declaration. The Dark Red Pill was an elixir that granted roughly five years' worth of internal energy upon consumption — a spiritual pill that only the Demonic Cult could produce.
Shin Gi-woon knew about the Dark Red Pill well enough. More precisely, he had taken one before — looted off a demonic martial artist he had killed after a fight years ago.
At least I don't have to go ape-shit trying to build internal energy from scratch. That's a relief.
A Dark Red Pill would punch open his blocked meridians in a single stroke and give him internal energy to work with. The martial world of his time held that forcing a spiritual pill into a body with no internal energy brought catastrophic damage — but that was the conventional wisdom.
That damn bastard of a master force-fed me a Cleansing Pill first thing.
When he had first entered the Battle Demon Spear Sect, his master had made him swallow a Cleansing Pill. His body had been thick with turbid energy, and he had barely clawed his way to internal energy through searing agony. More than half the pill's power had been wasted in the process. Just thinking about it still made his legs go weak. But he had done it once already — he could endure it to some degree.
He had reached a certain realm and opened the Conception and Governing vessels. There was no risk of sudden qi deviation from mishandling his energy. That was when Se-hwa came over and asked:
"Want me to help?"
"Hm? With what?"
"You have to build internal energy, right? If it's your first time, it's going to be brutal."
"I'd rather not take someone else's help with something this basic."
Se-hwa's mouth fell open as if she had been struck. Fair enough. Building internal energy for the first time was one of the hardest things a person could do, and he was turning help away. From anyone else it would have been pure arrogance. From Shin Gi-woon, it was nothing at all.
"You really don't need help?"
"I already said so."
Having confirmed it a second time, Se-hwa turned away. He had been so firm there was no point pressing further. Besides, the instructors had already begun assigning quarters.
Shin Gi-woon followed an instructor's lead to his lodging.
"Jamma Cave uses private rooms. Killing is forbidden inside your room, so you can rest easy."
"Understood."
A grim piece of information. If killing was forbidden inside the rooms, that meant it was permitted everywhere else. Put another way: if you were about to die, you could run to your quarters and live. Of course, the better plan was never to end up in that situation at all.
They said this session of Jamma Cave has a thousand people.
That meant a thousand Dark Red Pills had been distributed to the candidates. An overinvestment. Burning a thousand Dark Red Pills on a bunch of green initiates who had barely walked through the door? It made no sense without some other purpose behind it.
"It's war. All that righteous ranting about purging the demonic path, and they finally started a war?"
He still had no idea what era this was. Reborn into a new life, Shin Gi-woon had been thrown straight into Jamma Cave. Beyond the fact that this was the Demonic Cult, he had no way of knowing what was happening in the wider world. But if the Demonic Cult was burning a thousand Dark Red Pills on a program to raise the next generation of talent, they were doing it to extract that much value in return. And if they needed high-quality demonic martial artists that badly, the only answer was war.
"No, wait — thinking about it just pisses me off. Why the hell did those Martial Alliance bastards go berserk like that?"
The humiliation of being ambushed while peacefully eating dumplings at an inn still sat raw in him. He had just been trying to enjoy a decent lunch when they came swarming in. The sheer absurdity of it — no one who hadn't lived it could possibly understand. What kind of crime was eating dumplings? They could have at least pinned some ridiculous false charge on him.
Being reborn as someone of the Demonic Cult was a silver lining, at least. His sworn enemy was the Martial Alliance.
"All right. Let's begin."
He settled into a cross-legged seat and took the Dark Red Pill in hand. Since this would be the first opening of his meridians, he would lose at least a year's worth of the energy. A waste, but internal energy was something he could rebuild quickly enough. Without hesitation, Shin Gi-woon swallowed the Dark Red Pill.
The energy bound within the pill tore through his body like a horse with its reins cut free — a dark, thrashing force that answered to no one.
His heart slammed once.
"Kh—!"
Shin Gi-woon closed his eyes and fixed his full attention on the movement of the energy.
I am your master!
With sheer force of will he seized the energy that tried to scatter through his entire body. Stripped of its freedom, the power rejected him and thrashed harder, and bit by bit the Dark Red Pill's energy began to leak out of him.
Shut up and do as I say!
He felt no attachment to what escaped. He let the departing energy go and clung only to what he could handle. Power that resisted him, yet was dragged in all the same.
Before long, sweat poured down Shin Gi-woon's body like a waterfall. He had done this once before, but without anyone to help him it was unmistakably harder.
Now!
After a stretch of time, Shin Gi-woon finally drove the Dark Red Pill's energy into his lower dantian. A hole punched through the sealed core, and a vast surge of power swept clean the dusty warehouse that was his dantian.
"Cough—!"
Dark crimson blood welled up. He didn't fight it — he spat it out. It meant the dantian had been successfully formed.
"Hah... success."
He released the cross-legged posture and drew a deep breath. Vitality thrummed through his whole body in a way it never had before. There was no question — the internal energy had settled properly into his dantian.
"Loss... about a year, just as I thought."
Even as a spiritual pill, something about it wasn't fully pure. Impurities clung to it — perhaps because it had been made by the Demonic Cult. They called that quality demonic qi.
"This... might suit me well."
It was a sensation he was feeling for the first time, but it wasn't bad. Demonic qi seemed like it would pair cleanly with the Battle Demon Heavenly Spear. Both of them championed a tyrannical kind of power.
"Next on the list."
Awakening the Battle Demon Divine Art — the internal cultivation method unique to the Battle Demon Spear Sect.
Take digging as an example. Handling the energy in your dantian without a cultivation method was like scooping dirt with your bare hands. But with a proper method?
You get to dig with a shovel. The efficiency is on a completely different level.
He had no fear of being murdered tonight. But he also had no idea what tomorrow would bring. Right here, right now, Shin Gi-woon intended to raise the Battle Demon Divine Art to at least the second stage.