The Grabbing Ceremony
A toddler still unsteady on his feet came to a stop before the meadow at the island’s heart.
“Gangcheon. Take whatever you want.”
“Son, look—something good over there, huh?”
“My dear, did we not agree to leave the choice entirely to Gangcheon?”
“And yet you’re quietly steering him toward the Moonlight Sword?”
“Ahem!”
The baby called Gangcheon tilted his head, then burst into a peal of laughter. Sunlight had slipped free of the clouds for a moment and was glittering across the ground.
Before the child, spaced with careful precision, lay one hundred and eight weapons of every kind. The couple were holding a Grabbing Ceremony to mark their son’s first birthday—the ancient rite in which an infant’s future is read in the first object he seizes.
“Gangcheon, that one’s no good. Honey! Why did you bring anything from those cult freaks?”
Divine weapons left behind by the hundred great masters who had died on this soil—and among them, the favored blades of Demonic Cult experts. To Gangcheon’s eyes, though, they were nothing more than sparkling toys.
“That’s right, Gangcheon. That one is the Samadhi Sword once wielded by True Man Jeong Myeong, the finest sword of Kunlun. Even holding it still will aid your energy circulation. A true sacred weapon.”
“Son, that’s a dud. Grab that and you’ll turn into a stuffy old fossil. The soft sword next to it is way better. It’s called the Soul-Stealing Sword—shake it and it bends like crazy. Hold it up to the sun and shake it, and characters even appear on the ground. That’s the Lotus Sword Art. Perfect for assassination.”
“My lady! Is that any way to speak in front of our son?”
“I’m just saying! You think I’d raise our boy as a killer? And a Taoist is absolutely out of the question! I will not raise my son into some moldy hypocrite!”
“A hypocrite? Then you mean to raise him as a beast who worships only strength and gain?”
“What did you just say?”
“Papa! Mama!”
At the child’s call, both their faces softened as if by magic.
“There, there, son. Mommy and Daddy aren’t fighting.”
“That’s right. We’re just talking over what our boy should pick.”
The couple even joined hands, presenting a picture of tender affection.
“Hehe.”
The child laughed again, then began touching the weapons one by one, grunting as he tried to drag them about.
“I knew it! My son! A real man has to handle a saber! The Meteor Splitting Extreme Blade—an excellent choice!”
“Son, does it have to be that one…?”
Just as disappointment crossed So Cheongbi’s face, the baby set the Meteor Splitting Extreme Blade down and seized the fan lying beside it.
It was the Honmaseon—the Soul Demon Fan—once wielded by Lost Soul Old Mother Yeo Dansim, the infamous old hag of the unorthodox path. Shake it while channeling inner energy and the screams of the damned would ring out; hence the name. In truth those cries became a sonic assault that tormented whoever faced it. It had been a divine weapon that once set the entire martial world into an uproar, and only after Yeo Dansim claimed it had the fighting finally ceased.
“Huh?”
“Hm?”
And so the child touched every weapon in turn, then set each one down again.
“Mine.”
One of the few words he knew how to say. The couple let out hollow laughs.
“All right. They’re all yours anyway.”
“Take them all, son.”
This time their smiles were genuine. Yet the brighter the laughter, the more bitterly the shadow of reality pressed in behind it.
“We can’t keep our son on this island forever.”
“I was thinking the same.”
Their gazes turned toward the sea thrashing in grotesque frenzy.
“It’s already been five years since we came here.”
They remembered five years past.
Five years earlier.
It was a night of faint moonlight shattering against towering waves. Before the Dragon King’s savage temper, any ship might have been expected to turn back. Yet one vessel forced its way over the heaving swells.
Crash!
Fragments of the screaming waves rained down like a cloudburst across the deck. On that precarious platform, which seemed ready to capsize at any moment, a full hundred people stood in ranks.
Their ages and attire varied wildly, but they shared a single common trait: every one of them held a weapon.
“Ghost Valley Island in sight!”
Amid the chaotic din, someone’s shout managed to cut through to their ears—not because it was loud, but because the listeners’ hearing was extraordinary.
“Let us prepare.”
An old man whose neatly groomed white beard fell to his solar plexus stepped forward. True Man Cheongheo, Master of the Infinite Path—an elder of the Huashan Sect and the current Alliance Leader of the Martial Righteous Alliance—gripped his treasured Infinite Sword.
“We finished preparing long ago.”
A giant with bristling black whiskers like a hedgehog and a mane of hair flaring like a lion’s mane came to stand beside him. Ghost Extreme Heavenly Lord Ma Byeokseong—an absolute master of the unorthodox path said to have opened a new realm through external martial arts alone.
Behind the two supreme masters who represented orthodoxy and unorthodoxy, two companies lined up as if a line had been drawn between them. Fifty each. Personnel selected by agreement between the Martial Righteous Alliance and the Sadoryeon. Faces that would not have shamed the title of the hundred great masters of the martial world.
“We shall punish an ancient evil that has clung stubbornly to life. On behalf of every righteous soul who has suffered, we shall gladly become the blades that strike them down.”
“The fiends of Tianshan hid themselves on a deserted island—so we’ve been spared the trouble of cremating the dead! Whoever kills the most will receive the Moonlight Pearl that the Demonic Cult has always hoarded so jealously!”
Waaaaah!
True Man Cheongheo and Ma Byeokseong raised morale each in their own fashion. The cheers split along faction lines, but their goal was one and the same.
The eradication of the Demonic Cult.
Three years earlier, in the great war against the Demonic Cult that erupted across the Central Plains, the martial world—orthodox and unorthodox alike, even hermits who had long withdrawn from the world—had at last held the cult at bay. The routed cultists had lost most of their strength under relentless pursuit, yet their core figures had vanished without a trace. After scouring the Central Plains, the final place discovered was this island—named Guigokdo, Ghost Valley Island, for its treacherous currents and wave-sounds said to resemble the wails of ghosts.
Boom!
The moment the ship entered the mist encircling the island, it shuddered as if it would break apart.
Boom! Boom!
Enduring several brutal shocks, the vessel at last reached a shore of black pebbles.
Screeech!
Scraping the bottom as it grounded, the ship disgorged a hundred martial artists who leapt as one onto the beach.
Crunch.
The ominous black pebbles ground out a sharp, grating noise underfoot.
Then a crimson fog came surging toward those who had landed.
“Blood Fiend Dominating Aura!”
“The Heavenly Demon!”
Shock flared in the eyes of the assembled masters.
The Heavenly Demon? How—?
The Heavenly Demon had died three years ago. That was why they had thought of today’s action not as a battle but as a cleanup operation. The disparity of power had been overwhelming. So why bring a hundred men?
We cannot let the orthodox factions monopolize the Demonic Cult’s inheritance.
The cult’s power must never fall into unorthodox hands.
Greed and mutual containment. Those two forces had meshed to form the expedition now standing on the shore. With far more strength gathered than the task required, no one had doubted victory.
Then the variable appeared.
The Heavenly Demon, believed dead, stood before them—his face far younger, his eyes steeped in madness.
“So there was a successor.”
True Man Cheongheo’s brow furrowed at the appearance of an heir who shared the bloodline. And that was not all. Beyond the rising red aura of the Blood Fiend Dominating Aura, monstrous figures emerged, breathing hard, their faces emptied of all emotion. Every one of them had blue-tinged skin and exhaled purple breath.
“Th-the Hundred Soul Corpses!”
The Demonic Cult’s Hundred Soul Corpses, long believed annihilated. They were the Heavenly Demon’s personal guard of one hundred, each said to carry a Hundred Soul Pill. For a single hour the pill burned even innate vital energy to unleash supreme martial power—but death was certain afterward. And now their numbers had swollen to three hundred.
“They restored the Hundred Soul Pill.”
The true Hundred Soul Corpses had already been wiped out in the Central Plains. The ones before them now were Demonic Cult martial artists who had swallowed the restored pills.
“Damn cult bastards! I’ll tear every last one of you apart with my own hands!”
Ma Byeokseong crushed the skull of a nearby monster with a single punch and charged forward.
That was the beginning.
At the heart of a storm that inverted the sea itself, a savage wind of blood began to howl.
“Aaaargh!”
“Kill them!”
Shouts and screams and the shrill clash of weapons rang out without end. It was a battle that could stop only when one side was dead.
A full twelve hours later, at night, the tangled cacophony had vanished—and what remained was a vision of hell.
Corpses still wearing expressions of shock, rage, and bitter grievance. Pools of blood drawn from dozens of bodies. Overturned earth. Severed limbs that had lost their owners. Excited by the carnage, the sea thrashed more violently than ever.
And yet—
Clang!
Incredibly, the fighting was not finished.
“Kh-hh. Kh-hh.”
Harsh breath leaked between clenched teeth.
“You have truly become a monster.”
True Man Cheongheo was propping his collapsing body on a single sword. Even caked in blood, he had to stay on his feet because of the one man before him.
A new Heavenly Demon whose very name was unknown. Still baring his teeth like a beast, his face soaked in madness. At most thirty years of age. This creature of the Demonic Cult—who had discarded his humanity for demonic arts and layered madness upon himself with drugs—had withstood every ultimate technique of the man once hailed as the greatest sword under heaven.
And now—
I have lost.
True Man Cheongheo had no choice but to admit it. With his own strength, he could not defeat this monster.
But I cannot leave him alive.
Being unable to win did not mean being unable to kill.
“I leave what follows to the two of you.”
Behind the Heavenly Demon stood a man and a woman, their faces drained white.
Blue Cloud Sword Ja Unhak. Demonic Art Mistress So Cheongbi. Both in their late thirties, each a figure who represented orthodoxy and unorthodoxy respectively. True Man Cheongheo had lasted this long only because they had joined him in combined assault. Yet they, too, had reached their limits.
Only once.
True Man Cheongheo moved for that single chance. One final strike with everything he had left.
The ultimate technique that represented Mount Huashan—the form the greatest sword under heaven had pursued—unfolded.
Azure Wind Returning Current
A gentle, soft breeze seemed to rise—then it circled once around True Man Cheongheo’s body and transformed into a typhoon’s crushing pressure, surging straight ahead. At the heart of the whirling gale, a single sword rode the wind and thrust for the Heavenly Demon’s heart.
Skreeek!
A grotesque sound rang out. The blade that had pierced the Heavenly Demon’s palm failed to break through the breastbone and stopped cold.
The price of a failed masterstroke was steep. With his sword fully extended, True Man Cheongheo was left utterly exposed. The Heavenly Demon was not one to miss such an opening.
Crack!
A hand wreathed in crimson energy punched into True Man Cheongheo’s solar plexus.
In the instant death seemed sealed—
Snap!
The sash that bound True Man Cheongheo’s robes whipped around the Heavenly Demon’s body. The Heavenly Demon flinched and swayed as he reflexively tried to sever it—he had not known the sash was woven of heavenly silkworm thread.
That brief opening was enough. With the last of his strength, True Man Cheongheo hauled on the sash and pulled the Heavenly Demon into an embrace.
I beg of you. In this moment, become one with me.
Fortunately, the two who met his eyes moved as one toward the Heavenly Demon’s back.
Thrust!
Ja Unhak’s Blue Cloud Sword pierced the Heavenly Demon’s heart, and So Cheongbi’s blood-red nails sank into the base of his neck.
For a moment, time itself seemed to stop.
Thud!
The two absolute masters who had fought so fiercely collapsed while still holding each other.
Thump!
And the two survivors sank to the ground where they stood.
Was everything over at last?
Catching his breath, Ja Unhak forced his staggering body to separate the corpses of the Heavenly Demon and True Man Cheongheo. He could not leave the master’s body in such a state.
That was when it happened.
Rumble!
The earth suddenly began to shake.
Whooosh!
A fierce storm of wind and rain lashed down.
“What in the world…?”
Faced with a caprice of nature so violent they could barely keep their feet, both wore expressions of pure shock. Yet something was wrong.
The flow of energy is strange.
It was not mere wild thrashing. It was power radiating outward from some definite center. For two people so sensitive to qi, the alien sensation was unmistakable. And both reached the same conclusion at once.
“A formation!”
Someone was manipulating a formation array.
“This way!”
So Cheongbi drove through the howling wind toward the island’s center, and Ja Unhak followed hard on her heels.
They arrived at a vast stretch of green open ground in the middle of the island. At its heart stood a boulder the size of two grown men. And a man with a blood-soaked beard was raising a massive hammer, about to smash it down.
“I offer a living sacrifice to our Cult Lord who wanders the Nine Heavens! Kekeke!”
The Demonic Cult’s strategist, unseen throughout the battle. The once-in-a-generation genius who had faced the Zhuge Clan alone in the war between the cult and the Central Plains had appeared at the final moment. Demonic Earth Dragon Moyong Cheon—also the head of the Moyong Clan, long colluding with the Demonic Cult.
“Stop!”
“Don’t!”
Ignoring Ja Unhak and So Cheongbi’s desperate cries, the hammer struck the boulder.
CRAAACK!
Moyong Cheon was known for possessing only mediocre martial skill, but he had enough internal force to shatter a single rock.
Crrrk-crack!
The boulder, already fracturing under the internal shock, suddenly exploded outward, scattering shards in every direction. At the same instant, the sea raging around the island began to roar.
“What is this…?”
Waves already savage now surged as if to swallow the island whole, and the mist that had cloaked its shores turned a dull gray.
“Kekeke! You two will become ghosts of this island as well!”
Moyong Cheon forced a laugh, though he no longer had the strength to stand; he lay on the ground pouring out curses.
“Keh… kuh-hack!”
Before anyone could punish that venomous heart, the man who had been laughing so hard coughed up a violent mouthful of blood and moved no more.
Whoooosh!
Hundreds of winds, each like the wail of a ghost valley, screamed around them. Two people had survived—yet they could do nothing, as if they themselves were already dead.