Chapter 22: Poison Forest-4
Chapter 22: Poison Forest-4
A moment later, a dejected-looking Dakam emerged from the thatched hut.
"I'm truly sorry. I didn't know you would go that far. You came all the way here, and I don't know how to properly apologize."
Bi Sa-yeong chuckled and replied.
"Well, thanks to you, we got to see something interesting. Still, seeing how vigorous the old man is, he doesn't seem like he'll die anytime soon, so that's a relief."
Following his words, I spoke to him as well.
"If you need help again next time, come to the Flying Dragon Thirteen Squads and find us. We'll help however we can. As for that, well, putting that aside, would it be alright if we came to find you if we need something?"
At my words, his face lit up and he nodded vigorously.
"Yes! Of course! I'll help however I can!"
At his simple and honest demeanor, I smiled inwardly.
Simply by putting him in our debt, I had sufficiently achieved the purpose of coming here.
Finding the antidote herbs and creating a personal connection I could ask to guide us deeper into the jungle. That had been my original goal.
The matter concerning the old man's true identity weighed on my mind somewhat, but if he himself was that stubborn, what could be done about it?
With a much lighter heart, I spoke to the squad leader.
"Let's head back then, squad leader. If we leave now, we'll have plenty of time."
But Seol Pung did not answer me.
He was staring at the thatched hut with an expression of deep contemplation.
"Squad leader?"
Then, he suddenly began walking back toward the hut.
We exchanged bewildered glances with one another.
Seol Pung began speaking to the old man in front of the hut.
"Elder, it seems there is a misunderstanding."
Then, from inside, that characteristic enraged voice rang out.
"Misunderstanding, my ass! Get the hell out of here right now! You damn bastards!"
But Seol Pung paid no heed and continued speaking.
"First of all, while I am indeed with the Flying Dragon Squad, I am not a member of the orthodox faction. And I did not come here to leech off you, but deliberately came to help you."
"Shut your mouth, you wretch! Where do you get off spouting such lies?! Claiming to be in the Flying Dragon Squad but not orthodox! You might as well say you're a son of a bitch but not a beast!"
It was a tremendous torrent of abuse, but the squad leader did not get angry in the slightest. Rather, he smiled faintly and spoke again.
"Then shall we make a wager? If I can prove that I am not of the orthodox faction, then permit us to examine your condition."
"What?!"
"I shall take that as permission and enter."
As the squad leader entered, Miss Cheongyeon, who had been watching him, asked Bi Sa-yeong.
"Was the squad leader not of the orthodox faction?"
Bi Sa-yeong shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't really know either. I've never once heard about the squad leader's sect."
It was not just Bi Sa-yeong; probably no one in the Thirteen Squads knew the squad leader's true nature.
At least, not yet.
I suddenly recalled events from my past life.
His true identity, which I learned on the day the front line completely collapsed...
That identity was nothing short of astonishing.
I vividly remembered his eyes emitting a crimson glow and his overwhelming martial prowess.
Just then, the old man's startled voice came from inside the thatched hut.
"R-red?! You! What the hell are you doing in the Flying Dragon Squad?!"
I had seen the squad leader receive that question in my past life as well.
Back then, the squad leader had answered like this.
That he had come running away from himself, but at some point, precious things had come into being.
A short while later, we were able to enter the thatched hut again.
Inside the hut, the squad leader was already holding the old man's wrist, taking his pulse.
But his expression was extremely grave.
Beside him, Dakam and his younger siblings were holding their breath, watching the scene.
"Hmph! Did I not tell you? It is not a condition that the likes of you can do anything about! You are merely wasting your efforts in vain!"
The old man was still grumbling with a displeased face.
But I could feel that his voice was much softer than before, and within it was mixed a thread of apology and concern.
A moment later, having finished taking his pulse, the squad leader let out a deep sigh.
"I apologize, Elder. As you said, there is nothing I can do with my abilities."
At this, as Dakam and his younger siblings made regretful expressions, the old man snorted.
"Of course! Even I, who have spent my entire life studying medicine and martial arts, cannot do anything about it, so what could the likes of you possibly do?"
The squad leader then rose from his seat and apologized to Dakam as well.
"I am sorry, Dakam. My abilities fall short of your expectations."
"Ah, I, I see..."
As Dakam hung his head in disappointment, the squad leader bowed politely to the old man and turned his back.
"Alright, now let's truly head back."
That was when it happened.
The old man, grinning with a sardonic expression, asked the squad leader.
"Both in origin and disposition, you cannot be anything but a strange fellow. Do you intend not to tell even those youngsters in the end?"
When the squad leader turned back to look at the old man with a heavy expression, the old man continued speaking.
Words that made all of us aghast...
"The fact that I am a Blood Cult demon head."
It was a shocking statement, to say the least.
Bi Sa-yeong's eyes flew open wide and he shouted.
"Wh-what?!"
Bi Sa-yeong's enraged voice came out trembling.
"You... are a Blood Cult demon head?!"
Seol Pung looked at him with heavy eyes.
Honestly, it was something I had already suspected.
His excessively vast knowledge of demonic beings, his temperament of hating the orthodox faction to death. I had thought the probability was high that he was a retired Blood Cult demon head.
And judging by her expression, Cheongyeon had also seemed to have guessed already.
But according to Dakam, the old man had been striving to save the Myo people for a very long time.
And currently, he was the guardian of Dakam and his younger siblings as well.
So, as long as he was not a vicious villain, I had thought to pretend not to know that fact. But for Bi Sa-yeong, whose sect had been nearly annihilated by the Blood Cult followers, that was naturally not possible.
"Squad leader, what is the meaning of this?! Is that man truly a demon head of the Blood Cult?!"
Letting out a sigh, Seol Pung answered.
"I am sorry, Sa-yeong. Thinking of Dakam and his siblings, I could not bring myself to tell you."
At that, Bi Sa-yeong stared at the squad leader with eyes full of betrayal, then soon drew his blade with enraged eyes.
Chang!
"Blood Cult demon head! I don't know about the squad leader, but I cannot forgive you!"
Then, the startled Dakam and his younger siblings hurriedly shielded the old man with their own bodies.
"P-please don't! We're sorry! Please forgive us!"
"No! Please spare him!"
The old man cackled and sneered at Bi Sa-yeong.
"Yes, yes. That's the orthodox faction I know. Are you not the kind who, whether young children are left to fend for themselves or not, cannot rest until you've subdued demons and exterminated evil in any and every situation?! Kuhahaha! Subdue demons and exterminate evil! Truly laughable words!"
"Shut your mouth, demon head!"
Bi Sa-yeong raised his blade as if he would strike down at any moment, but his hand was trembling as though caught in a storm.
Dakam and his younger siblings now clung to his body, pleading.
"Please forgive him! We beg you!"
"Don't kill Dokno, daehyeop!"
"No! He's our grandfather!"
Bi Sa-yeong stared at the old man with a contorted face at the children's desperate gestures.
But the old man was still cackling, mocking him.
Then, Bi Sa-yeong shouted with a furious face.
"Blood Cult demon head! You bastard! How can you possibly mock the orthodox faction?! What makes you think you have the right?!"
But the old man did not back down either.
His eyes, too, were blazing with fury.
"How can I mock you?! Why can I not mock you?! I can mock you all I want! You hypocrites! I, who lost everything to you bastards, can mock you however much I please! Did you think I would only mock you?! I will obliterate you from this world! Come on! Even in my abnormal state, the likes of you alone is no problem at all!"
"Yeah?! Bring it on! I'll give you what you want!"
"Aack! No!"
"Please spare him!"
Bi Sa-yeong, who had seemed ready to bring his blade down at any moment, ultimately could not shake off the children crying and clinging to him.
His expression changed several times in that moment.
In the end, staring at the children with a twisted face, he weakly lowered his trembling hand.
Then, he spoke as if chewing and spitting out the words.
"I am Bi Sa-yeong, the senior disciple of the Bi Sect. In my sect, there are junior disciples just as young as these children. To hide behind children like this... you are a coward beyond measure. Though, that is why you are a Blood Cult demon head, I suppose."
Having said that, Bi Sa-yeong sheathed his blade with a deflated expression and turned his back.
"I will erase today's events from my memory. I never saw you, Blood Cult demon head."
That was when it happened.
The old man, with an expression as if he had received some shock, suddenly asked Bi Sa-yeong in a trembling voice.
"Bi Sect, you said? Surely you don't mean the Bi Sect of Guangxi Province?"
With his back turned, Bi Sa-yeong snorted and answered.
"Hmph, is there another Bi Sect elsewhere?"
At that, the old man muttered quietly.
"The Emperor's Tomb Blood Incident."
Those words reignited the fury Bi Sa-yeong had been struggling to suppress.
"What did you say?!"
The enraged Bi Sa-yeong whirled around, his eyes blazing.
"You dare speak of that matter in my presence?!"
But it seemed the old man had not spoken those words to provoke him.
Heaving a deep sigh, he used his one movable arm and one movable leg to climb down from the cot, then laboriously knelt before Bi Sa-yeong.
"My family, my everything—I lost them all to the Jeomchang Sect and those orthodox bastards. I have never once regretted my revenge, but... yes. A descendant of those who died unjustly in the Emperor's Tomb would have the right to kill me."
"...What in the hell are you babbling about?"
Before Bi Sa-yeong, who asked with bewildered eyes, the old man confessed calmly.
It was a staggering confession, far beyond anything we could have imagined.
"I am the one who planned the Emperor's Tomb Blood Incident alongside Mu Gwang. I am the enemy who killed the elders of your sect."
Du-dung!
It felt as if a drum had sounded inside my skull.
What did he say?
The one who planned the Emperor's Tomb Blood Incident?
Could the name Mu Gwang he just mentioned possibly refer to Jeon Mu-gwang, the Slaughter Blood Demon and leader of the Blood Cult?
We could not close our gaping mouths.
Bi Sa-yeong asked, his eyes trembling uncontrollably.
"What, what in the hell are you talking about? You planned the Emperor's Tomb Blood Incident? What nonsense is this?! Why would such a person be here, in this state?!"
The old man answered calmly.
"You need not know my circumstances. I won't even ask for your understanding. I simply... am sorry. So kill me and satisfy your grudge."
Bi Sa-yeong screamed as if wailing.
"Shut up! Don't speak as you please! Whether I understand or not is for me to decide! You speak! Tell me everything that happened!"
At Bi Sa-yeong's cry, the old man regarded him with heavy eyes, then slowly began to speak.
The old man's name was Seok Gyeong-dal, he said, and he had once been the steward of the Jeon Family Estate, an orthodox clan of Yunnan.
And he had also been a bosom friend of Jeon Mu-gwang, the family head of the Jeon Family Estate at that time.
Back then, the Lightning Flash Sword Technique—the secret martial art of Jeon Pyo-seung, the Lightning Flash Swordsman, one of the Ten Swords of the World from over a hundred years prior—had been lost to the Jeon Family Estate. Restoring that lost Lightning Flash Sword Technique was thus the estate's long-cherished ambition.
Jeon Mu-gwang, who had long pursued that restoration alongside his friend Seok Gyeong-dal, one day managed to discover a secret training chamber used by their ancestors.
And there, they were finally able to recover the Lightning Flash Sword Technique they had lost.
It could only be described as a tremendous, joyous event.
Every member of the Jeon Family Estate was overcome with elation.
But they did not know then.
That it would become the seed of catastrophe...
The pretext was that the secret training chamber lay within the domain of the neighboring Ma Family Estate.
At the time, the head of the Ma Family Estate, Ma Yong-cheok, had been claiming that since the training chamber was in his domain, the Lightning Flash Sword Technique also belonged to his Ma Family Estate.
It was nothing short of absurd.
If ancestors' remains were found in their domain, did that make those ancestors Mas as well?
Jeon Mu-gwang dismissed it as nonsense.
At that, Ma Yong-cheok dragged in the Jeomchang Sect, one of the Nine Great Sects and effectively the master of Yunnan Province, asking them to render judgment.
Even then, Jeon Mu-gwang had been confident.
He believed that while it was the martial world's code of honor to return a martial art one had come by accidentally to its original sect, the Jeomchang Sect—as the pinnacle of the orthodox faction—would never side with Ma Yong-cheok.
But what Jeon Mu-gwang did not know at that time was the fact that Ma Yong-cheok's son, Ma Won-ung, was the direct disciple of the Jeomchang Sect Leader.
In the end, the Jeomchang Sect took the Ma Family Estate's side.
Then they began pressuring Jeon Mu-gwang to hand the Lightning Flash Sword Technique over to the Ma Family Estate.
It was a truly infuriating situation.
The steward, Seok Gyeong-dal, made a suggestion to Jeon Mu-gwang at that point.
He said he would secretly go to the Murim Alliance.
Go to the Murim Alliance and ask them to mediate.
Left with no other options, Jeon Mu-gwang saw Seok Gyeong-dal off with tears in his eyes, and Seok Gyeong-dal rushed to the Murim Alliance as fast as he possibly could.
But that was as far as things went.
Perhaps the Jeomchang Sect had already pulled strings, but no one would meet with Seok Gyeong-dal.
Not the Alliance Leader, who was called the greatest hyeopgaek under heaven, nor even any of the elders—he could not meet a single one of them.
His voice was completely shut out.
Seok Gyeong-dal, at a complete loss and pacing anxiously, suddenly received even more devastating news.
The news that the entirety of the Jeon Family Estate had been attacked by unknown assailants.
When he rushed back in shock, the Jeon Family Estate had already been reduced to ruins.
Jeon Mu-gwang was alive, but not a single other member of his household had survived.
Seok Gyeong-dal's own family was no exception.
As Seok Gyeong-dal shed tears of blood and cried out for vengeance, Jeon Mu-gwang shook his head weakly and told him.
That they had taken Jeon Mu-gwang's young daughter.
That they had warned him if he did not stay quiet, he would never see his one remaining daughter again.
After that, the people Jeon Mu-gwang and Seok Gyeong-dal, now wandering in search of a means of revenge, ultimately met were the remnants of the Blood Cult.
Though they were the public enemy of the martial world, to the two of them, they were now the only remaining means of revenge.
Having heard up to that point, none of us could find anything to say.
For a martial artist, avenging a close friend was akin to unbreakable law.
How, then, could we condemn the revenge sought by those who had lost both family and clan?
Hearing this tragic secret history for the first time, I sighed and spoke.
"So that is why you planned the Emperor's Tomb Blood Incident. It was aimed at the Jeomchang Sect from the beginning. You knew there was absolutely no way they would resist their own greed when something occurred within Yunnan Province."
The old man laughed hollowly and nodded.
"Yes. It was a foregone conclusion. Those bastards acted exactly as we thought they would. So I have never, not even once, regretted that action. However..."
He looked at Bi Sa-yeong with heavy eyes.
"I had not anticipated that they would drive everyone into the Emperor's Tomb to kill every single martial artist gathered there. I hadn't imagined they would try to slaughter even the weaker martial artists, those who posed no real threat. But all of this is merely an excuse. The certain fact remains that my revenge ultimately created more people just like myself. And so, you have every right to curse me. You also have the right to kill me. Come, kill me. Just as I sacrificed the elders of your sect to satisfy my own grudge, you too should kill me and satisfy your sect's grudge."
At his calmly intoned words, Dakam and the children clung to him.
"Tokno!"
"Grandfather, no!"
But the old man did not budge an inch, as immovable as a boulder.
He merely continued to regard Bi Sa-yeong with a composed gaze.
Bi Sa-yeong, who had been staring vacantly into the air with an expression of hollow desolation, abruptly asked,
"But why is such a formidable person living here like this? Were you betrayed, or something?"
"...I fled. My only goal was revenge, but it seems that in the meantime, Mu Gwang developed different dreams. I could neither bear to watch it nor stop it."
At that, Bi Sa-yeong asked with a sneer.
"So you've been living here, caring for these Myo tribe children? Trying to atone?"
Hearing that, the old man smiled weakly and shook his head.
"How many lives have I taken? Could looking after a few children possibly atone for that? It was simply... that their faces haunted my steps."
Upon hearing those words, Bi Sa-yeong began to chuckle.
"Simply that their faces haunted you? Heh heh heh, heh heh heh heh."
Then he roared.
"You son of a bitch! Do you even know how I've lived because of you?! How my sajes are living?! I couldn't even leave that crumbling place, thinking of the masters who took me in, an orphan! I've worked as a waiter, a gofer—there was nothing I didn't do! And that's not all?! I even begged! When we ran out of food in the sect! I went around begging so my sajes wouldn't starve! My sajes are still living like that now! And they haunt you?! Their faces haunt you?! Why?! Fuck, if you're a demon head of the Blood Cult, you should have lived like one to the bitter end! Why are you doing this kind of bullshit?! Why the hell are you living like this?!"
As Bi Sa-yeong howled, tears streamed down his face.
The old man merely kept his eyes tightly closed, his head bowed.
Bi Sa-yeong, who had been staring into the void and shedding tears for a long while, suddenly began chuckling again.
"You know what's really fucking funny? When I met Ju Tae-gyeong, that bastard who's a disciple of the prestigious Jeomchang Sect, I told him I was from the Bi Sect. And that bastard had the nerve to ask me where that was. So, I told him about the Emperor's Tomb. I wasn't hoping for much. I just wanted to see an apologetic look on his face, even once. Then that fucker not only mocked my masters but actually tried to kill me. But now... now I meet a demon head of the Blood Cult, and this demon, just hearing the name 'Bi Sect,' kneels down and says he will atone with his death. What the fuck. This is... this is just too cruel, isn't it? Isn't this just too fucking much?"
No one, nothing could utter a word.