The King of Hell Arrives
“What? You crazy son of a—!”
—Crack.
“Gyaaaaaah!!”
Ryu Cheong-jin’s wretched scream tore through the air. I stripped the remaining shoe from his foot.
“Calling yourself righteous in spirit might be a stretch, huh? Fine then.”
I counted off the remaining joints of his toes and fingers one by one as I spoke.
“Let’s say your future aspiration is to become a righteous martial artist.”
I looked down at him and said calmly, “I’m not joking. I mean it.”
Ryu Cheong-jin’s face drained of all color.
“Y-you madman. Even in our cult we don’t have anyone this insane.”
“….”
Seeing my expression harden, he scrambled to speak.
“Wait, wait a second…!”
“Looks like you’re not going to cut it. We’ve still got plenty of joints left to help our constructive conversation along, but time’s short, so from now on we’ll do two at a time. Oh, and one more thing.”
I picked up a shard of stone from the floor.
—Crunch.
The fragment turned to powder under the grip of my two fingers and sifted away.
“Nail-pulling comes free of charge as a bonus. Call it premium complimentary service.”
“…Aaaah!”
Moments later the dry snap of breaking twigs mixed with a massive scream that shook the underground chamber.
“Stop! Stop! I’ll tell you everything you ask—just stop the torture!!”
Ryu Cheong-jin finally opened his mouth when both hands were ruined and my fingers reached the first joint of his right toes.
“Ah, changed your mind a little?”
“…I may be helpless now, but I will have my revenge on you no matter what. The Blood Cult is the kind of group that will chase a man to the ends of the earth over a single dead hen in the yard. Don’t expect rational judgment from us….”
On the floor lay Ryu Cheong-jin, reduced to a bloody rag, twitching and foaming at the mouth. I tore a strip from his clothes and wiped the blood-soaked Seven Sects Black Pearl Gauntlet.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m already tangled up with madmen from the Blood Cult worse than you. Adding one more like you is nothing.”
My answer left him staring blankly. While the terror of pain still gripped him, I fired off the questions I had prepared and dragged the answers out of him.
“So, Mumyeong—what do you make of what we just heard?”
After a short silence Mumyeong answered.
I judge there is sufficient basis. Compared against the Blood Cult knowledge and sorcery I once knew, it is clearly no mere empty talk. However.
“Hm?”
Mumyeong fell silent for a moment.
Never mind. It seems to be true, so keep listening for now.
“…Tch. I was hoping it was a lie.”
I filed away the story I had just heard, rapidly organizing the situation and the information, then looked at the man in front of me. Ryu Cheong-jin flinched the instant our eyes met.
“Let’s summarize. Right now, with the help of the black-path men of Unwol Jiju, you lot have gathered one hundred and eight young children and are performing the Deathless Hundred-Eight Seven-Night Ritual. That ritual is meant to artificially create an eleventh Guardian gem—something that should not exist outside the ten Guardians of the Nine Sects and One Gang. That about right?”
“…Yes.”
I held up the ring I had taken from a black-path man’s finger, the one engraved with a red pattern.
“And this is the symbol of the Blood Cult organization that artificially creates those Guardian gems?”
“Yes.”
Ryu Cheong-jin writhed on the floor as he spoke.
“The Blood Cult has no equivalent to the Guardians—those ‘singular forces that overcome vengeance’ who serve as symbols of the righteous factions’ Nine Sects and One Gang. We are not a vast military force like the Demonic Cult either. All we can rely on is sorcery, so seeking to create a substitute for the Guardians through that sorcery is only natural, is it not?”
…He is being far too cooperative.
Mumyeong murmured low. Catching the nuance, I muttered under my breath.
“What’s wrong?”
…Nothing. There seems to be no falsehood in the information this man is providing, so continue for now. Something simply does not add up for me…. Still, as far as obtaining information goes, there is no harm, so proceed.
I nodded and pressed on with my questions.
“Three days from now you announce the start of the ritual, then over a total of five days you carry it out, and on the final day you offer up the one hundred and eight children all at once, taking their first blood to create it… Has this plan been in the works for a long time?”
Ryu Cheong-jin glared at me as he answered.
“Yes. But the technique itself was only completed recently. On top of that, the vessel for it needed martial arts at least at the Peak realm or higher, and no one was willing to volunteer for an unproven technique with an over-eighty-percent chance of death—until recently, when one man finally appeared. Ah, now I understand. The dark-red face mask…. Aaaah. Now it all makes sense. How could this be. Heh. Hehehehe!”
As if something had clicked, Ryu Cheong-jin suddenly beamed and let out a laugh thick with madness.
“That black-path man who volunteered of his own will to become the most vicious of evil spirits—he howled that he would take revenge no matter what on the Blood Death Sect assassin who had ruined everything he had. And that assassin is you! Heh. Hahaha! What is this? So you were already a man destined for hell!”
“…Me?”
If it were my original identity—Moyong Bi of the Moyong Family—plenty of people wanted me dead and then some. But my second identity, Biryu, fourth-rank field investigator of the Blood Death Sect, should not have carried any particular grudges. Unless….
Ah.
I recalled a certain black-path man who had smashed his forehead into the ground seven times until it was soaked in blood. In front of the commoners he had treated like insects, he had knelt—the last pride of a martial artist—bowed his head, and even wet himself before collapsing unconscious before the entire crowd. The Hwangbo Clan head had discarded him like a worn-out tool, and every scrap of farmland across Shaanxi he had spent years carefully seizing had been stripped away by Jegal Sea’s dazzling rhetoric.
So Cheonpa, representative of Unwol Jiju.
After that incident I had heard from Jegal Sea that So Cheonpa had suddenly vanished, but I had not paid it much mind. I had never imagined he would be cooking up something like this.
I sighed and pressed my fingers to my throbbing brow.
“Damn it. So that’s why he disappeared in such a hurry… The darkest place is under the lamp—maybe the real problem was right here all along.”
Eun Seollyeong had clearly recognized the ring. Now I understood why she had postponed everything and left in such haste. I still did not know Ryu Cheong-jin’s exact standing within the Blood Cult as the Ghost Shadow Divine Thief, but he was clearly highly skilled in sorcery. He was almost certainly playing a key role in artificially creating this Guardian gem. According to him, the sorcery to create a Guardian gem had been a long-cherished wish of the Blood Cult for decades; they had tried tirelessly, only to be obstructed and fail every time. Eun Seollyeong must have realized the moment she saw the ring that the plan was being set in motion somewhere again, and that was why she had departed so urgently.
Peace exists because of martial strength. Everyone knows that the moment they encroach on one another, victory or defeat becomes secondary—they themselves will suffer fatal wounds. That is why the current jianghu, tangled as it is among the righteous, heretical, demonic, and blood factions, has maintained a fragile peace without exploding. But the instant anyone—regardless of faction—decides “this might be worth a try,” all peace will end. If the Blood Cult, already driven more by instinct than reason, is handed a new Guardian as a blade, even a three-year-old could guess what catastrophe would follow.
“…Damn it. Of all things.”
Even if I went to Jegal Sea to tell her, she would not meet me. She was as thorough about public and private as she was brilliant. She would never create any threat that could harm her family. She had given me the freedom to act as I pleased without interference. But put another way, from the moment I left the Jegal Family she would thoroughly avoid meeting me for the time being, precisely because she could not know what I might do. If she met me in secret and it was later traced by other forces, it would deal a massive blow to her and her clan. On top of that, there was far too little time to inform and persuade the other great powers.
Ugh. In the end, the only one who can handle this in time is me.
I wet my dry lips with my tongue.
Not enough. Can I even do it?
I pulled out the map Jegal Sea had given me and flipped through it as I spoke.
“In the end, the place where the ritual is being held will be underground in one of the five branches, and only So Cheonpa and a few core officers know the location….”
My insides burned with urgency. If I did not stop it, there was no telling how far this fire would spread. I might not be a genius on Jegal Sea’s level, but even a fool like me could see this was a faint spark before it became a wildfire. The weight of it made it hard to breathe. I bit my lip and muttered rapidly.
“In the end I’ll have to turn everything upside down. Three days until it starts, plus five days until the ritual is complete—eight days total. Tight, but somehow….”
No, Host. Wait a moment. Something is wrong here.
Mumyeong cut me off. I stopped moving.
“What?”
The Blood Cult I know, judging from the Blood Sect founder of old, is faithless, instinctive, and close to barbaric—but this man is no low-level dreg. He is at least high-ranking.
“….”
And yet he spills information this readily just because of a little torture? Impossible.
I slowly lifted my head from the map. Somewhere, laughter was rising.
“Kil… kilkil… kilkilkil.”
Ryu Cheong-jin was laughing. I looked at him.
“Did you think only you had a working brain? Yes—you used the fact that the Blood Cult and Demonic Cult are mortal enemies to deliberately make a clumsy provocation that any empty-headed demonic practitioner would fall for, peeling away my suspicion and mixing one drop of truth into a sea of lies. That rhetoric was fairly excellent. Even I was briefly fooled. But you never considered that the same rhetoric would work on you, did you?”
“…You bastard.”
“I’ve dealt with clever brats like you before.”
Ryu Cheong-jin panted through a mouth stained black with blood and shouted.
“The moment you try to buy time with clumsy lies, they instantly grasp the intent and counter it. But put another way—if you resist just enough and then hand over the truths and information they want, they lose their heads and focus only on gobbling it up! Without even realizing that the time-buying is the real poison!”
“…!”
—Rumble….
The floor was shaking.
—Boom…. Boom…!
Something massive was approaching. The rhythmic sound of collapsing walls drew nearer.
“Shit.”
I hastily tucked the map away. In the past I would never have noticed, but after Asura’s training in sensing presence, I could feel most things even without Mumyeong’s help. A vast qi was approaching. Not one—easily dozens.
“Hahaha! Noticing now is too late!”
“What the hell are you doing?”
I seized Ryu Cheong-jin by the collar and hauled him up. He smiled with black blood dripping from his lips, utterly satisfied.
“Even if it was only a proxy battle through Blood Jiangshi, I was impressed that your martial arts shattered even my ultimate secret technique as the Ghost Shadow Divine Thief. But that only made me more certain.”
My face turned ashen at the approaching vast auras. Ryu Cheong-jin clapped and roared with laughter.
“Ruthlessness without mercy in your hands, drive that ignores factional logic and spares no means for the goal! And on top of that, a nature that is never arrogant and always cautious! There is no one in this jianghu more dangerous to our Blood Cult than you. That is why I was willing to hand over first-rate information if it meant buying time—and why I must kill you here no matter what!”
—KRAAASH!
The sound of the wall collapsing was almost upon us. The ceiling shuddered and dirt rained down.
“The instant I fell to your hands I summoned the twenty-nine Blood Jiangshi I had prepared nearby just in case. Feel the vibrations? The moment they arrive I will link with all twenty-nine and fight you at once! Well? Think you can shatter my ultimate technique again this time? Hahahaha!”
“Kuh!”
I yanked him higher by the collar, fist clenched. Behind him the wall shuddered and rubble poured down. Ryu Cheong-jin laughed.
“Hahaha! Useless! Too late, too late! Kneel and beg! If you beg I might show mercy and turn you into a jiangshi as well. Of course, with your ego intact so you can shed tears of repentance for the rest of your life!”
Then he lifted his head and roared with all his strength.
“Hahahaha! Consider it an honor! To hear about the Deathless Hundred-Eight Seven-Night Ritual—the first button of the Great Blood Cult’s conquest of the Central Plains—and then die!”
—KRAAASH!!
With a tremendous explosion one wall burst outward. Through the billowing dust the far side of the collapsed wall came into view. There stood human figures—dozens of them—radiating red eyes.
“Ah.”
I released Ryu Cheong-jin’s collar and stepped back, settling into a stance. From the floor, watching me, Ryu Cheong-jin curled his lips even higher and shouted.
“Here they are! My children!”
At his call the dozens of red-eyed figures beyond the dust twitched. Then they surged forward as if pouring out. Ryu Cheong-jin bellowed at the top of his lungs.
“My beloved children! Come to your father at once! Come and avenge your father’s humiliation—!”
—Thud.
The Blood Jiangshi spilled out of the hole like a flood. And then they simply toppled over without rising.
“…Huh?”
Ryu Cheong-jin’s laughter cut off.
—Crash-crash-crash.
It was not one. Dozens of Blood Jiangshi poured from the breached wall like a tall stack of plates toppling, collapsing forward in a heap. Every single one had a massive hole punched through its chest. Ryu Cheong-jin’s pupils shook.
“What. No, wait….”
“Whew, you were yelling so loud I could hear you from way back there. Cough, cough.”
From within the dust the last remaining figure walked out, coughing lightly. The eyes glowing through the dust were also red. But they were fundamentally different from the light that had spilled from the Blood Jiangshi.
“No way.”
I muttered in a hoarse voice. Ryu Cheong-jin stared at the fallen jiangshi and murmured in desolation.
“Ah, no—my children… my small, precious children….”
He jerked his head up and thundered.
“Who are you?!”
“Who am I?”
—Whirr.
A paper-thin soft sword flickered like a silver snake and coiled around a pure-white wrist.
—Crack.
A long, slender leg emerged from the dust and crushed a Blood Jiangshi’s head underfoot. The red eyes flickering through the haze burned like living flame. They were Flame Eye itself. Between the dust, black martial robes edged with red stripes fluttered. Standing atop the corpses of dozens of Blood Jiangshi, the figure rested a hand on her hip and spoke in a clear, ringing voice.
“Who else? The King of Hell, come looking for her subordinate.”
It was the leader of the Blood Death Sect—Flame Eye, So Yeomgyo.