Dark Clouds - 3
It was the next day. The magistrate returned to the government office. He had only made it back at dawn, so he hadn't slept a wink. From sunset until night, he had clung tightly to his son's hand by his bedside. The boy's rambling words, spilling out now and then, compelled him to do so. According to the monk, his soul was returning. It was all fragments of memories. Recollections of feeding him meat dumplings in the market, playing in the fields—such things jumbled together in the soul-retrieval rite. So trivial inconsistencies, like the fact that his son had never cared much for meat dumplings, could be overlooked. Nothing else mattered besides the miracle that his boy, dead from the plague last summer, was speaking again.
"......Summon the clerk. I will attend to my duties."
"Yes, sir."
Even amid all this blasphemy, work had to be done. Saving his son meant refusing to abandon the future. The clerk's gaze—a toxic mix of fear and loathing—didn't even register. He processed matters with the same unflinching efficiency as always. He even released the innocents. In a week, there would be no more need to kill.
"It's true they have no ties to the Demonic Cult."
"As I mentioned before, that bizarre monk seems more suspi...... Never mind."
The clerk bit his tongue. The magistrate's eyes gleamed fiercely at him. Lately, he bore no resemblance to the gentle, mild-mannered man who had first arrived at his post. He was unmistakably mad, his spirit frail.
"Get out."
As he retreated, the clerk suspected the grim rumors were true. Whispers that the magistrate devoured corpses somewhere in the office's rear garden. No one knew who had started them, but the tales circulated endlessly. If only the head of the incinerated Lee family manor were still alive to quell it. Water under the bridge now. The clerk sighed as he stepped outside.
*
The magistrate handled his official duties. He wielded the brush, dispatching routine affairs. Village quarrels, land disputes, lavishing the confiscated Lee family assets as gag money—then his hand froze. His chest constricted, trembling uncontrollably. He had committed vile acts, but he had never taken pleasure in them. That was why such eerie premonitions sometimes seized him.
There were outer gods in the world, or so they said. The magistrate knew the truth better than anyone. The monk had discoursed on offerings and celestial divinities, beings that transcended the mortal realm.
So.
What if heavenly retribution truly existed?
"......"
He didn't care about himself. He had resolved as much the first time he ripped out an innocent's gall bladder. He would never reach paradise after death. He would plummet to hell for a thousand ages, burning eternally in karmic flames. That was the way of murder in the Great Ming realm.
But his son? If that retribution fell upon the boy he had barely revived?
Heavenly punishment wasn't merely a bolt from the blue. An inexpressible terror suddenly gripped the magistrate.
His tenure wasn't eternal. What if his successor caught wind of the village rumors? What if he took an interest in the charred ruins of the Lee family manor? What if he stumbled upon a corpse of unknown origin in the backyard?
The magistrate shot to his feet. His anxiety crested just as the ritual neared completion. No matter how he turned it over, those bodies had been buried far too hastily. There was no guarantee no one would find them. Sleepless nights had frayed his nerves, fanning the flames of dread.
Breathing ragged with unease, he slipped out of the office in secret. Into barren wilderness, in broad daylight. A place utterly devoid of witnesses. Shovel in hand, he strode purposefully.
"I need to be more meticulous......"
Such cunning never would have occurred to a man who had recited scriptures his entire life. The mind that once turned smoothly like oiled gears had ground to a halt when the plague claimed his wife and son. He had never pondered how to hide a body, yet now he frantically dug anew.
Bury them deeper? Or scatter them across the mountains for the wild dogs? That might be better. No—pray at the altar. Who knew if that miraculous fish would devour such offal? He extracted the still-unrotted innards. Stuffed them into his familiar sack and hurried up the mountain. So intent was he that he never noticed the shadow trailing him.
Sweat streaming down his face, he reached the hidden cave. Only then did he hear a chilling voice.
"What's inside there?"
The magistrate neither panicked nor swung his shovel wildly in reflex. He often endured such nightmares. He had accrued too much resentment. Someone shadowing him was a real possibility. He was always prepared.
His reply flowed like a mountain stream.
"You wretch. Harming me is tantamount to harming the realm itself. If you're a commoner, show respect for imperial authority. If a martial artist, uphold the sacred divide between officials and warriors."
Harming an official was rebellion, plain and simple. Even those who soared on sword-light were no exception. The laws of the land excluded them from their purview, and they in turn submitted. They had never encroached upon each other since time immemorial.
Yet the intruder's question remained unchanged.
"I asked what was inside."
"None of your concern."
"The young lady I-sojin might need to take an interest."
A new voice—clear and lovely, unmistakably feminine. Only then did the magistrate turn.
A man and a woman, straight out of a painting, regarded him. Neither carried a sword. Their fine clothes and flawless skin marked them as no ordinary folk.
There was only one conclusion.
"Are the martial world encroaching upon the majesty of national law? Do you think the Hanjung Martial Alliance is blind to your audacity?"
The martial world's freedoms existed only because of the Alliance. It bound clans and sects together, forcing their nominal cooperation with the state. They had to at least pretend loyalty to the throne.
"If the Alliance learns of this, they will hunt you down. Repent now, turn back with a clean heart, and perhaps mercy will......"
The magistrate's words devolved into mutters the longer he spoke. Strangely, both man and woman seemed to smile wryly, as if they had been hounded by the Alliance before.
"You've already committed murder and consorted with heresy."
"On what grounds do you so falsely accuse me?"
The magistrate gripped his shovel and blocked the cave mouth. Desperate resolve. He would not let them near the place where his son lay. Eyes bulging, he raised the tool high with all his might—ready to kill.
But a mere magistrate's meager arts could not surpass the Manifestation Realm.
"Step aside."
One punch hurled him backward. Jang Cheon had no need to show mercy. As Cheon Sohyang had noted, any man who conspired with heretics to offer humans in sacrifice was no longer a magistrate. Word of the rumors had surely reached the Hanjung offices by now. Vanish without a trace, and the authorities would cease pursuit. Investigators would simply report the crimes upward. Countless Demonic Cult collaborators had met their end that way.
"Aaaak!"
The magistrate clutched his nape unthinkingly. Something had struck it, drawing blood, and now a hard surface pressed against his back. His groping hand recognized the texture. A stone altar. That man had flung him all the way here with a single fist.
Terror half-filled his eyes, only to harden into resolve.
"Eeeeek! Die!"
Where did such courage come from? Bare-fisted, the magistrate lunged swiftly at Cheon Sohyang. Hoping to seize a hostage, no doubt. Especially now, with the girl frozen at the sight upon the altar.
A gap in her guard? Hardly.
"Not the kiddo! Get away from kiddo!"
Her pitiful swing missed. Cheon Sohyang refrained from killing him only because the shock had rooted her. Martial artists encountered all manner of strangeness. Corpses like the one before her eyes, for instance.
"Didn't this bro say the young face here was okay?"
"Hungry hungry hungry hungry."
"Please spare me! I did nothing wrong! Please!"
Words erupted from the decaying young man's corpse in dozens of voices at once.
Stunned by the grotesque scene she had never witnessed before, Cheon Sohyang merely kept the magistrate at bay. Meanwhile, Jang Cheon pressed deeper.
He was of the Manifestation Realm. His spirit sense pierced the unseen.
Perhaps it wasn't solely due to his realm.
"Do you even know what you've done?"
"You bastard!"
Jang Cheon's sense captured it. The youth on the altar convulsing, voicing cries. But these were not acts of the flesh. To cultivate the Immortal Heavenly Spirit Art, one mastered human anatomy. The spine housed countless nerve bundles. Through them, the body's limbs were commanded. In other words, manipulate those alone, and one could mimic......
"Your eyes can't perceive it...... So you have no idea."
Insubstantial. Formed of endlessly dark, frigid qi. A sinister thing on the verge of revealing itself, much like the prior Zhuque.
Yet different. No intent to raze an entire city in flames, no heat to incinerate bone. If ranked, it fell several tiers below Seongdo's Zhuque.
But in sheer grotesquery?
This translucent fish, threading invisible filaments into the corpse's nostrils and eye sockets, could surpass even the Flame Wing Divine Bird.