The Buddha Beneath the Graves
I had walked this path countless times, only to see it again. The picture I kept seeing was the sixth secret cave, the one depicting the six hidden valleys. It showed a seated Buddha with a hundred or a thousand graves rising from its body.
I studied it over and over, even as I walked. It did not feel like the obvious tiger-shaped black rock of Obidong. No matter how I looked, I could not tell what the artist intended. In the worst case, it might not even be the place Yun Hyeon had pointed out.
**[Host, shall I flip the picture vertically?]** Mumyeong said.
I turned it.
**[Now I see it. The straight line behind the Buddha looks like a horizon.]**
“…!”
I had been trapped by my own preconceptions.
Since the Buddha was seated in lotus position, I had assumed it lay on the ground.
**“The buried Buddha…”**
The line depicting the horizon ran vertically from the right shoulder of the Buddha’s statue.
The farther I walked, the land grew drier and drier.
I scooped up a handful of soil from the ground.
—**Pahss.**
It was so dry it crumbled apart.
No moisture at all.
**[In a place like this, even barley would die, let alone potatoes or sweet potatoes.]** Mumyeong said.
“Potatoes and sweet potatoes?”
**[Normally, before planting anything on parched land, one lets the soil rest for a year or two and plants potatoes and sweet potatoes to loosen the earth. It’s also a way to secure food. This really is a land of death.]**
“….”
It was surprising.
What he had just said was not the sort of thing a warrior—or, more accurately, not the sort of thing Mumyeong would say.
An eerie sense of déjà vu settled over me.
**“Did the Heavenly Demon Cult farm here?”** I asked. **“How would a warrior know something like that?”**
[…]
Mumyeong stayed silent.
He had said that his fragmented memories were slowly coming back to him as time passed.
**[I wonder why I know something like this…]**
Mumyeong trailed off.
**[I was…]**
Mumyeong hesitated.
**[I…]**
He no longer mentioned it.
I was a bastard by nature.
I was not friendly, and honestly, I was not kind either.
But I understood that asking about it now would be out of line.
“When I was led to this rural ruin by my mother, the first thing I planted was sweet potatoes. A kind old couple who lived a little farther away gave me the seeds. Now that you mention it, I remember.”
It was a completely useless story, but I turned it into a lead-in.
**[Well, Host is a warrior who suits weapons more than hoes. You chose your aptitude well. If you kept farming, you would have grabbed a stem and pulled it, saying, “Grow already!”]**
Mumyeong tossed it off casually.
It was clearly sarcastic, and I could picture exactly how I would have acted.
But if I stayed quiet, he might think I was laughing at him. So I forced a reply and kept walking.
**[Once, after a long day, when I lay in my bed at night.]**
Mumyeong spoke suddenly.
**[Without worry about tomorrow’s death, I would sleep peacefully. I would swear an oath with my friends a month later without fear. I would promise to see my parents again in a year and part with a smile. I believed that kind of life would come someday.]**
Ruined houses lined the road one after another.
If anyone lived nearby, I had walked the enormous road where we would have met.
It was barren land with no single blade of grass.
Only the faint traces of the last person who had walked this path remained scattered along the road.
“So that day came, did it?”
Whenever the wind blew, the sandstorm filled my eyes.
**[I have no memory of it. But…]**
Mumyeong said.
**[From where I exist now, at this time, I can clearly see what kind of ending awaited me.]**
A vast pit lay ahead.
It was a deep hollow as though a mountain had been flipped upside down.
—**Huuuung.**
The sandstorm roared.
I pulled the mask I had wrapped over my nose up higher.
“So this is what you meant.”
Now I understood what the picture represented.
The giant pit looked like the side view of the seated Buddha statue.
The slope downward was stepped and orderly.
Graves filled the steps in perfect order.
The sharp, dry winter wind whipped up clouds of dust.
Red haze stained the sky, and even the sunlight turned red.
All of it had been done on parched earth saturated with red energy.
No living creatures. No common flies. Just graves in this land of death.
“Young man, you don’t belong here.”
I looked beside me.
A hunched old man leaned on a staff, wrapping a rag under his eyes to shield against the sand.
A red bead was embedded in the tip of the staff.
**“Don’t tell me you’re going to swing that knife of yours at an old man like me.”**
He gazed at the weapons hidden inside his fluttering robe and spoke.
“…I am no ruffian.”
“Even if you were, I would still talk to you.”
The old man stared distantly at the sea of red graves that filled the world.
“This place no one comes. I haven’t had a real conversation in a while. Just muttering to myself.”
“Are you the guardian of the graves? A gravekeeper, perhaps?”
The old man chuckled.
He tapped a half-collapsed sign with his trembling staff.
“Look at this. Under the sky neither the imperial court nor immortals will come. This is cursed ground.”
“….”
I broke dry soil as I walked.
The sign that had fallen in the winter wind I set upright.
—Ten Thousand Graves, Thousand Reclining Buddha Mountain
The characters looked as though they had been written while the man was dying.
I drove the sign back into the ground and asked.
“Then why are you still here?”
“That’s simple.”
The old man said.
**“I was buried alive by the White Lotus Demon Cult. I came to kill you.”**
**[Host?]**
No one was behind me.
Mumyeong said.
**“Why do you keep muttering to yourself? Did you discover something?”**
[…]
I blinked.
I licked my parched lips.
Thinking about it, it was far too obvious.
It was impossible for an old man to survive here after being buried alive.
Moreover, when I approached this area, how could Mumyeong not have said anything?
“…No.”
I stood up in the cold winter wind.
“Nothing.”
**[Don’t go down.]**
The sky was filled with red sunlight.
The sandstorm was so fierce that even though it was broad daylight, it felt like dusk with the setting sun.
I descended the trail.
The ground had been shaped into steps. At each level there were countless mounds, each the size of a human coffin.
In front of and behind each mound were two tombstones.
Thick dust covered the stones.
—**Huuuung.**
A gale slammed into the pit as though it were greeting me.
The pit itself seemed like a living, breathing creature.
**[Leaving Sabidong, the remnants of the Baekryeon Demonic Sect are confirmed.]**
Mumyeong whispered softly.
The dust on the tombstones suddenly vanished as though a curtain had been pulled away.
The geometric characters revealed beneath were clearly the ones I had seen.
They were not writing at all, but gouges made by a madman swinging a knife, filled with the wild, obsessive curses that had once covered the walls of Yukbidong.
—**Dduok dduok.**
I descended the trail.
The path, shaped into steps, spiraled downward at an angle.
The number of graves defied the name of Manmyo Cheon-wabul-san; the scale was enormous, easily exceeding ten thousand.
“Even in daylight, with such yin energy, no one would dare come at night.”
The depth of the pit was beyond imagination.
As I went deeper, the space grew narrower.
After a long descent I looked up. The blue sky was no bigger than a fist.
—**Uuuu…!**
A tornado roared inside the pit, howling like a mournful cry.
The spiraling downward path ended at a dead end.
**[This can’t be.]**
I looked around.
The space that had grown narrower now opened into a small clearing barely large enough for ten people to lie down.
Only clean marble had been laid on the floor, covered in red sand.
**[Too much time has passed. There’s an entrance farther in, but it collapsed.]**
[…]
I walked on.
There was a well.
I looked down into it.
It was an endless black hole with no bottom.
**[Host, what is it?]**
I searched my pocket and said.
“Sabidong would never be found so easily.”
I pulled out a lighter.
I tore a strip from my robe.
I lit it and tossed it down the well.
The burning cloth fell into the darkness.
The flame, which had seemed tiny, shrank to the size of a fist.
**[Host?]**
I tensed every nerve.
I stared fixedly at the falling flame, determined not to miss a single instant.
—**Chik.**
It touched the stagnant water at the bottom and went out.
In that split second I had seen clearly.
A skeleton buried in the rotten water, and right beside it a nearly rotted staff with a red bead embedded in it.
“I found it.”
To see more clearly, I focused both eyes.
—**Kiiing.**
As tension rose, red light seeped into my eyes and my red eye activated.
The darkness inside the well was pierced.
I muttered in a dry voice.
“What is that?”
The skeleton, which should have been lying flat, was staring at me with its head raised.
The red bead beside it flared red in reaction to my red eye.
An uneasy feeling made me step away from the well.
—**Kwak.**
The marble beneath my right foot cracked.
In panic I balanced on my left leg and tried to step the martial form.
The ground beneath my left foot sank even faster.
“Eh?”
**[Oh no, the floor!]**
Mumyeong screamed.
Before I could react, I fell.
I could not even scream.
I was swallowed by darkness.
—**Kwaang!**
While falling I slammed into the well wall and rebounded.
—**Kwojik!**
I flew back and crashed hard onto my back.
“Gwaak!”
I drew my sword from my waist and slammed it into the well wall.
—**Ka-kagak!!!**
Sparks flew. The blade shattered, leaving a long gash.
—**Ching.**
I could not beat the opponent and the sword broke.
I crashed to the ground in an instant.
—**Kwaaang!**
The water was almost nonexistent.
I was slammed with a massive splash.
Wherever I tried to land the broken parts had no effect.
I scrambled to my feet.
The moment I stood I threw my body forward.
—**Kwoong! Kwojik! Chobeng!**
Stones that fell behind me rained down on where I had been.
The impact shattered the bones that had been piled on the water’s surface.
I clung close to the wall, dodging the falling debris.
“This is bad.”
I looked up.
No sane person would enter a place like this.
I had already come deep into the pit; now I had fallen into an even deeper well.
This darkness and bizarre yin energy, even standing still, would drive a person mad.
The rotten water rose up my legs second by second.
I scanned the surroundings with my red eye.
Something brushed my foot. I swept it away with my hand.
It was a human bone.
Below the surface the water was filled with countless skeletons.
**[Host, behind you.]**
I turned at Mumyeong’s voice.
From there the scenery became endlessly familiar.
A corridor of Yukbidong crammed with mad inscriptions from floor to ceiling.
Far away rose a hill where the stench of rot had climbed.
“That…?”
A single jade tombstone stood beneath a beam of light.
Beneath it were characters carved.
**[Impossible. No way.]**
Mumyeong shouted.
I read the five characters that had been swept across in a giant brushstroke, one by one.
—**White Lotus Eight Nights’ End**
The end of eight nights.
**“The White Lotus Demon Sect’s disappeared…!”**
This was the first real encounter with the martial arts of the Baekryeon Demonic Sect, the mother sect of the Heavenly Demon Cult and the Blood Cult, a sect that had been active in the jianghu for eight hundred years.
The Heavenly Demon copies martial arts.