This Seat Shall Accompany You
I felt a gaze.
Even while straddling the line between life and death, blood spraying all around me, that intense stare cut through everything.
Host, behind.
I had already turned before Mumyeong even spoke. It was inevitable.
“….”
Eun Seollyeong leaned against the wall, staring at me.
I had never seen that expression on her face before.
It was the look of someone who had witnessed the impossible.
Shock. Remorse. Terror. Regret.
Her silver eyes trembled violently.
She bit down hard on her crimson lips.
—Clang.
She strode toward me without the slightest hesitation.
“Uwaaah!!”
The last surviving member of the extermination squad let out a scream of pure terror and swung his blade at the woman approaching from behind him.
She raised a hand.
—Ssshhk.
I couldn’t even tell what had happened.
“Huh?”
The assassin let out a dazed sound.
—Puh-kaak!
It was as if a radish that had already been sliced clean through suddenly collapsed all at once.
His body shattered into pieces and crumpled to the ground.
—Charrk!
With the metallic sound of steel being sheathed, countless silver fragments were sucked back into her sleeves as if drawn by an invisible force.
Surging killing intent blanketed her entire body.
—Thud.
The Guardian of the Mount Hua Sect stood before me.
Any ordinary person would have launched a preemptive strike under the crushing weight of that killing intent.
“….”
Our eyes met.
Host, prepare—
I shook my head.
Others might not know, but I did.
The light in her eyes right now was that of someone forcibly holding back an explosion of rage with sheer reason.
It was razor-thin, but until something else pushed her further, it would keep her from any sudden action.
I had walked the edge of rage for so long that I recognized the feeling with absolute certainty.
She was holding herself back.
—Paat!
She seized my wrist.
It was exactly the same as our second encounter, when she had been acting as the Mount Hua Guardian.
Back then she had reclaimed the silver bell from my hand in just this way.
Keuk.
Even with my trained arm, it felt for a moment as if it would be ripped clean off.
But I endured it.
It wasn’t that I trusted her so much as a cold calculation: this was the better path for survival.
Better to risk a little and watch what she did than to offer clumsy resistance, shatter the last thread of her reason, and plunge us both into an unstoppable catastrophe.
“….”
Eun Seollyeong’s long, pale fingers pressed against the pulse of my wrist.
I felt her qi sweep roughly through my body, almost ravaging it as it searched.
Only then did I understand what she was looking for—and why her reaction had turned so violent so suddenly.
“I-It’s not there. No. That can’t be.”
She now clasped both of my hands in hers.
She was shorter than me.
Still gripping my wrist, Eun Seollyeong searched every inch of me for something.
“This can’t be! It has to be there. I clearly saw the black thunder with my own eyes—”
“It’s not there.”
“What?”
Her silver eyes snapped up to my face like a lightning strike.
I blinked my black eyes and met her gaze without flinching.
“There’s none of it. No internal energy that originated from the Demonic Cult.”
“…None?”
“I’ll say it again. I am Moyong Bi of the Moyong Family. I am not a member of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.”
For the first time, the Mount Hua Guardian’s eyes truly registered my existence and looked at me as a person.
I opened my mouth.
“If you’ll give me the chance—”
This was the same woman who had eyed even the meat I offered her with suspicion and refused to eat it.
“—I’ll try to explain as best I can. It might be better for both of us. Whether you believe me or not is up to you.”
Until now she had always seemed to be staring at something impossibly distant rather than the present moment, as if the here and now held no interest for her.
That same woman was, for the first time, focusing on me—questioning me.
—Murmur murmur.
Every person in the inn was whispering.
“Someone like that can actually exist?”
The waiter clutched his tray and muttered blankly.
—Rustle.
Eun Seollyeong sat right in front of me.
She tucked a strand of falling hair behind her ear and ate her noodles.
I had never seen anyone for whom the phrase “like a doll” fit so perfectly.
The silver eyes beneath her long, slender lashes looked almost otherworldly.
“S-She’s a fairy…”
From a corner of the inn I caught a glimpse of a middle-aged man muttering without thinking—only to get a sharp cuff to the ear from his wife.
“Huu.”
I hadn’t expected it to be this bad.
I had brought her back to the village where I’d taken the Snowman Noodle Proprietor commission without a second thought, but her appearance was far too eye-catching.
I gestured to the waiter.
He jumped as if electrocuted and came running at full speed.
Even if I told him to keep all the change, he wouldn’t have sprinted this hard.
He even completely ignored a customer who had been about to order a split-second before me, charging straight toward us in a perfect line.
“B-Benefactor! What else do you need?”
—Sniff sniff!
The waiter kept shooting glances at Eun Seollyeong as she ate her noodles, snorting excitedly through his nose, completely distracted.
Of course this bastard too.
I sighed and spoke.
Fortunately, from my earlier conversation with Jin Gabok in this very inn, I already had a method that would help in the current situation.
“Same as last time. The folding screen, please.”
“Ah.”
The waiter let out a sigh of unknown meaning.
“Ah.”
Every man in the inn sighed with him.
—Charruk.
Only after the screen was set up did I feel peace return.
“Look at that bastard, putting up a screen so he can monopolize her.”
“What a filthy world.”
The voices of men who had clearly misunderstood the situation drifted over faintly.
“Stay back! Our honored guest is dining!”
The waiter had grown remarkably polite ever since the Jin Gabok incident.
And after word spread that I had eliminated the Snowman Noodle Proprietor, the way he treated me was night and day from when he had first tried to force-sell me liquor.
Maybe the few extra coins I slipped him helped too—beyond the screen I could catch glimpses of him swinging a green onion root while shouting.
“…Anyway, that’s everything I wanted to say.”
I finished speaking as I looked away from the screen.
I used the same conversational approach I had learned while talking with Cheongunryong, the first of the Oho-samhwa.
I told no lies.
I spoke nine-tenths of the full truth.
The remaining one-tenth—the parts that didn’t need to be said—I simply left unsaid.
From the way she spoke, it seemed she had already encountered inhuman beings more than once over her long life.
There was no real reason to hide my meeting with Asura of the Eight Divisions.
Receiving his teachings was the same.
In fact, if I wanted to explain and make her accept the black thunder—the black lightning that had wrapped my body and triggered her violent reaction—I had no choice but to tell her.
The only thing I absolutely had to conceal in the middle of all this was one single art.
Patcheon-hyeol-ma-mu-geuk-gong.
The internal cultivation method Asura had transmitted to me, originating from the White Lotus Demon Sect.
I had not yet begun training it in earnest, so I had achieved nothing with it.
I had no idea what changes it might bring later.
In the worst case, the characteristic demonic qi of a demonic art might accumulate and she would notice it belatedly.
But that was a problem for later.
From everything she had said so far, she clearly carried some deep grudge against the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult that rivaled my own rage.
Judging by the name alone, this cultivation method came not from the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult itself, but from its ancient predecessor—the White Lotus Demon Sect, the father of both the Blood Cult and the Demon Cult before they split.
Still, caution never hurt.
I had no trust relationship with her whatsoever yet.
On top of that, I was already facing the unavoidable fact that the Guardian of the Jeomchang Sect was hunting me.
For the sake of my own survival, I could not afford to turn her into an enemy as well.
—Clink.
Even though she had clearly heard every word of my story, she remained silent for a long while.
She adjusted her grip on the noodles with her chopsticks.
She did not slouch the way most people do when sitting at a table.
Behind her perfectly straight back, her long unbound hair hung down.
Her skin was as pure white as the porcelain bowl holding the noodles, without a single blemish.
“This is uncomfortable.”
Eun Seollyeong faintly furrowed her delicately drawn brows. She gathered the silver hair cascading down and flipped it over one shoulder.
The clean line of her neck ran straight from her jaw down to her collarbones.
Beside her sat a stack of five empty noodle bowls.
For the record, I still hadn’t finished even one.
Terrifying.
I eat a lot myself.
But I tend to be rather noisy about it.
My third brother, Moyong Ryu, had once pointed that out in passing.
Compared to me, she quietly, calmly demolished every scrap of food.
Even though she was eating just as much, the way she silently absorbed and annihilated the meal made her somehow even more intimidating.
So this is what they mean when they say silent, coiled rage is more frightening than rage that barks and snarls.
She would never dream that her eating was making me recall Asura’s teachings.
—Clack.
She finished her sixth bowl of noodles.
—Gurgle gurgle gurgle.
She brought over a large bowl and poured a full measure of strong liquor into it.
The bowl was as big as her head.
…Why do all the female martial artists around me drink like this…
For a moment I thought of someone else who used to sparkle with red flame-eyes while enjoying drinks with especially spicy side dishes.
Whether she noticed my lament or not, Eun Seollyeong packed the liquor in tightly.
As if her insides were burning, she put the bowl straight to her lips and gulped it down.
A single drop of liquor escaped her lips, trailed down her neck, and faintly soaked the front of her robes, revealing a glimpse of white skin.
“Your story holds together from beginning to end.”
Eun Seollyeong set the bowl on the table.
She immediately grabbed another bottle and poured another full measure into the bowl with a heavy glug.
“Yes. Even though it is not a demonic art, the symbolic color that represents the power of Asura—the Fighting God and God of War—is black. I have definitely read that phrase in an old text before…”
She looked at me with lofty eyes as she spoke.
“I will not kill you.”
At those words, the tension that had been wound tight through every muscle in my body finally loosened.
“Of course, that does not mean I trust you.”
“No, Elder!”
—Crack!
A fine crack appeared in the bowl gripped in Eun Seollyeong’s hand.
I stammered.
“Th-That was just, I spoke without thinking—”
“The inn’s bowls are fragile.”
She pushed the cracked bowl aside as if it were nothing.
In its place she took a double-portion noodle bowl and began pouring liquor into it as she continued.
“Is my way of speaking that old-fashioned?”
“…No, it’s not that.”
“I have been trying my best to imitate your speech patterns since then, so let us drop that discussion. Returning to the matter at hand—”
She sipped her liquor and went on.
“I do not trust you. But the one chasing you is, in another sense, trustworthy.”
The tension that had been easing suddenly clamped down again.
Even in the middle of trying to relax and live an ordinary moment, that presence continued to torment me like a fishbone stuck in my throat.
“That traitor—that evil ghost who chased strength alone until he even converted to the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult—is hunting you so desperately. At the very least, the target of such a pursuit cannot be a fellow demonic being.”
“…So he really is coming after me.”
There was only one being Eun Seollyeong could be referring to.
The Battle Ghost.
The existence Mara Jin had repeatedly prophesied as the final destination of my life and the true culprit who would bring me death.
The expelled Guardian of the Jeomchang Sect.
By speaking the reality I had not wanted to accept out loud, I fully accepted it.
The worst and most vicious existence of all was pouring every ounce of his power into hunting me alone.
If not for the guidance of Asura of the Eight Divisions, I would already have met him and been torn limb from limb.
The image still circled in my mind.
That unidentified presence that had hovered endlessly before the temple gates like a flailing wraith, searching for the traces of me that had vanished into the mist for a single instant.
Beside it, freezing maggots and flies had swarmed in droves.
“I have decided.”
“Hm?”
Eun Seollyeong set down the noodle bowl and looked at me.
“Where is your next destination? You seem to be moving with some purpose in mind.”
“…Why are you asking that?”
I muttered while drinking my tea.
A faint unease stirred.
Eun Seollyeong tucked her silver hair behind her ear and spoke.
“I hereby inform you that this seat shall accompany you to your next destination.”
I spat out the tea I had been drinking.