The Evolving Power of the Heavenly Demon
“If my hypothesis is correct, then that ability of yours must have undergone a significant change by now.”
At her insistence that we had to confirm the Heavenly Demon’s authority at once, I stared at her in bewilderment.
“Hold on—a change? What do you mean by that, and why check the ability all of a sudden right now?”
Eun Seollyeong opened her mouth to elaborate.
“This commoner—”
Ahem. She cleared her throat again.
“You.”
Ahem. Cleared it once more.
“…Look, if it’s too hard, you don’t have to force yourself to change the way you talk.”
“It is not hard.”
She blinked.
“Something of this level is no problem.”
“….”
She gave a dry cough.
“A-Anyway. If my hypothesis is correct, the Heavenly Demon Jade within you has grown by devouring the Mount Hua Sect Guardian’s pearl as its prey. We must confirm what changes have occurred in your jade, if only to prepare for what is to come.”
She spoke hurriedly, as if making a solemn declaration. Yet at the end of her words, a faint fluster and haste could still be felt.
“Confirm it? How?”
“You ask the obvious.”
—Swish!
At her gesture, a white blade flashed through the air and settled into her hand.
“Copy my martial arts. Right here, right now.”
She had a stubborn streak about the strangest things. The stubbornness of a skilled martial artist was said to be enough to burst a belly and still drink the Yellow River dry—a common saying in the jianghu for a martial artist’s single-minded obstinacy. She seemed to have a habit of insisting on a contest whenever something subtle caught her interest. I said nothing, yet I almost felt a seething emotion burning behind those cool silver eyes.
“Fine, all right. There’s probably a reason for the order. A reason a commoner like me couldn’t begin to guess.”
“….”
Her silver earring swayed, and her ears turned red.
Following her instruction, I walked to the center of the courtyard. I sorted through the story she had told me of what happened right after I collapsed—the events immediately after everything had ended.
I had committed the madness of mixing the first verse of Sura-dae-myeol-geop-jin, Geuk, together with the fourth stage of Heaven and Earth Great Shift. There had been no other choice, yet even if they were brother arts recognized by Asura, it was pure insanity. According to Eun Seollyeong, I had even surpassed the stage of qi deviation. As a Guardian, she had thrown every scrap of knowledge she possessed into trying to save me, yet nearly all my meridians had been crushed and burned; death had been only a matter of time.
‘At that moment, some form flowed out from your body.’
Eun Seollyeong had not described it in detail. But those words were enough. I understood everything. I had already seen a similar form before. I recalled the first time I faced the Heavenly Demon Jade after being killed by So Yeomgyo. What Eun Seollyeong had witnessed must have been that unknown shape resembling black waves, tentacles writhing as they forced me to take them in my hand.
She said she had experienced something similar in the past. She would certainly have recognized what it was. That was why she had seen that what it sought and craved was a pearl, and had handed over the Mount Hua Sect Guardian’s pearl she possessed in order to save me. And the black tentacles had greedily devoured the pearl as if they had been waiting for it.
…I thought it was like a mantis. There had been an unusually large number of mantises in the mountain village where I lived. A mantis that had exhausted its energy to lay eggs would voraciously devour its mate from the head down after mating, replenishing its own strength. When autumn came and mating season arrived, one could often find mantises dead with their heads eaten off throughout the forest.
—Twitch.
A subtle unpleasantness crept over me, as if some living thing with a will other than my own had coiled itself in my dantian. Pushing past that discomfort, I quietly called the name.
“Mumyeong.”
The unchanging, monotone voice of Mumyeong rang in my head as if it had been waiting.
[Is it all right to show that Guardian your ability?]
“….”
It would be a lie to say I did not hesitate. Tens of thousands of thoughts flashed through my mind in a short time. I changed the subject.
“What do you think?”
[My opinion is…]
Eun Seollyeong already knew the entire story, including Mumyeong’s existence. She watched me conversing with Mumyeong while sitting on the porch, having pushed the floating white blades aside with a gesture.
[I agree with her proposal. Certainly, even from my perspective right now, a great many things have changed, starting with the Host’s physical composition. The majority of those changes were ones that should already have been applied if the Heavenly Demon Jade had successfully settled in the Host from the beginning.]
My flesh was constantly changing. Originally, the moment I made contact with the Heavenly Demon Jade, the Heavenly Demon should have overwritten my personality and transformed everything. All of that had been thrown into chaos when I crushed the jade with my teeth. The transmission of martial arts and body had failed. My body had stopped midway while transforming into the Heavenly Demon’s physique, leaving only the incomplete trace known as the Heavenly Martial Body. The Heavenly Demon’s ego that should have overwritten mine had vanished somewhere, leaving only a voice close to that of a dead man—Mumyeong’s.
“With this incident, has any additional memory returned—about the Heavenly Demon’s authority, or about you?”
[Unfortunately, almost no memories have returned. However.]
I had spent a great deal of time with him. Others might hear it as a voice of unvarying pitch, but by now I could tell what he intended the moment he began to speak. I was certain a faint emotion of joy was mixed into his voice right now.
[For now, this is not bad. How is the Host’s physical change?]
I lightly rose onto the balls of my feet and lifted my body. My body felt light as if it could fly. I clenched a fist. I threw a punch into empty air.
—Paaang!
A fine shockwave tore through the air.
“….”
Eun Seollyeong’s eyes widened slightly.
“My body is definitely lighter.”
There was no outward change, yet the strength of my muscles and the force I could generate were clearly different.
—Kiiing….
Beyond my black pupils, I felt the faintly burning flames of a red lotus. Power boiled throughout my body.
‘…’
I did not know why the thought came to me. It was simply something I had thought from time to time over the long, hard journey. I had thought of myself as a doll stitched together from rags. After this ordeal, I truly felt as if I had been stitched more firmly, made sturdier. Yet the essence was still that of a doll with the patchwork seams remaining—an old, worn doll that might burst at any step. Even if both legs burst and the stuffing spilled out, a dirtied white stuffed doll that would crawl forward on all fours if it had to.
I had thought no one was more exhausted than I. I had thought no life was harder than mine.
But.
—Squeeze.
I clenched my fist. Even so, I had decided to keep moving forward. Because this was reality. I would walk on, believing that the day when things would surely get better would come. That day was nothing grandiose. It was not about becoming the greatest under heaven, nor about the power to look down on the world with a single swing of a sword. Nor about keeping the five great beauties of the Central Plains as concubines and living in a house as large as a whale’s back.
Just.
Yes, simply….
‘The day I can drink a cup of wine.’
[Good. Then let us try it, Host.]
Mumyeong said.
[In a way, it is not often that one gets to test the authority under conditions and an environment this well prepared. For the sake of survival, if nothing else, there is no loss.]
I wet my dry mouth with saliva from the tension. The Heavenly Demon’s authority. I needed to know how the ability to copy martial arts had changed.
I met Eun Seollyeong’s eyes. I nodded. Eun Seollyeong rose from her seat.
—Tak.
She stepped onto the bare earth with her pure white toes. She raised the long hand that had been propping her chin. Her finger flicked in the air.
—Swish!
One of the seven white blades floating beside her flew like a living arrow. She called those weapons in the form of white blades without hilts Baekryeongcham. The Baekryeongcham could separate into many or merge into one according to her will.
—Pivivit!
She made a gesture of splitting into two. With a clear ring, the Baekryeongcham split into two. She snatched the blades that had been divided to about the length of short swords. The remaining half of the blade buried itself diagonally into the porch floor.
“We shall begin with.”
Eun Seollyeong stretched her arm to the side.
“From the first formula to the fourth formula of the Twenty-Four Hands Plum Blossom Sword, the most basic martial art of the Mount Hua Sect. The form of execution will apply only the movements of the left arm in the upper body, excluding lower-body movement. I will deliver continuous strikes without rest, and take only a single sequence. There will be no separate transitional stances between them. Understood?”
I nodded and took my stance. I put as much distance from her as possible. I spread my palm toward her.
Both eyes dyed crimson — the telltale sign of the authority’s manifestation.
—Flutter.
Eun Seollyeong’s silver hair scattered. A single strand of wind brushed between us. The Guardian of the Mount Hua Sect, Eun Seollyeong, declared in a clear voice.
It tore through the empty air with ferocity. I had thought that calling a person’s performance of martial arts beautiful was merely the exaggerated metaphor of idle talkers. This was the first time I was properly seeing the martial arts of the Mount Hua Sect with my own eyes. There was a metaphor the idle talkers never omitted when discussing this sect’s arts.
‘My god.’
First through fourth formulas — continuous strikes, left arm only, no transitional stances.
Reflected light sparkling in the spring sunlight overlapped and overlapped again, forming a single plum blossom petal.
‘So plum blossoms were not a mere metaphor, but the real thing.’
Her white wrists and ankles moved with each flutter of her thin clothes, marking the directions. The time it took her to unfold from the first formula to the fourth was but an instant. To an ordinary martial artist, it would have looked like nothing more than a single storm of blade edges.
—Taat.
Her toes stepped on the sand of the ground as if marking a point.
—Shaaa.
Centered on her, the sand on the floor drew a wave pattern as it spun and then stopped.
Eun Seollyeong spoke.
“Well? Did the copying succeed?”
She was a Guardian who had lived for long years. She did not bother with detailed explanations for me. Yet she clearly seemed to have some inkling regarding the jade dwelling in my body. She added a single line.
‘If this hypothesis should prove correct, the jade within you will grow ever more blatant in its desire for the pearls of other Guardians, and by devouring them will seek to advance to an even higher existence.’
I extinguished the red light kindled in my eyes. I withdrew the hand I had stretched forward.
‘…’
There was no room for doubt. Until now, the Heavenly Demon’s authority for copying martial arts had carried various restrictions.
First, the copying speed was slow, so unless one was prepared for death, it was only applicable when complete time was guaranteed. Second, the distance could not be too great. One had to be close enough for every single movement to be completely engraved. Third and last, even when copying a mere third-rate martial art, my body suffered encephalitis and pain accompanied by considerable aftereffects. In addition, not the slightest applied technique could be mixed in, and only a single martial art had to be unfolded purely in one go.
In this way, my previous Heavenly Demon’s authority had many restrictions. The price of use was enormous, and the constraints numerous. It was closer to a poison that killed upon consumption than something meant to be used. Mumyeong had speculated that this was the effect of the Heavenly Demon Jade becoming incomplete after being destroyed.
‘…’
I looked down at both hands. Eun Seollyeong had thoroughly performed the martial art under conditions where, with the previous authority, I would not even have dared to attempt a proper copy. Rather than an independent set of techniques, she had mixed and linked various forms, leaving the conclusion ambiguous, unfolding the Twenty-Four Hands Plum Blossom Sword in a way similar to the martial arts I myself had internalized and melted together. She had even mixed in variations. It was closer to a single flow of action than a martial art.
If the copying succeeded this time, the simple expression of “copying martial arts” would no longer suit this authority. Beyond the martial arts themselves—the speed the person employed. The power. The reactions. Even the habits. It would be more accurate to say it tore the target themselves out whole and brought them back as a rubbing. Moreover, if I succeeded in copying this, it would be a clear conclusion that my jade grew by absorbing the pearls of other Guardians.
“Moyong Bi?”
Eun Seollyeong called as she approached me standing still.
“I did it….”
“What?”
Previously, it had felt like carving out and forcibly bringing back martial arts piece by piece. But now it felt like digging out and bringing back an entire flow and movement whole. I spoke in a trembling voice.
“I completely copied the techniques executed at high speed, without leaving a single one out, including the variations, from that far distance.”
“So my prediction was correct after all.”
Eun Seollyeong spoke in a parched voice. I stammered.
“But… what is this.”
Noticing that my complexion was strange, Eun Seollyeong hurried closer.
“Moyong Bi, what is the matter?”