Four Days Before the Eve of Absolute Extinction
Festival of Absolute Extinction of the Hundred-Eight Seven Nights
Four Days Before the Eve
“—I thank you for bestowing upon Jeolhae, the Fifth Branch, the honor of hosting the sixty-second Dark Fighting Tournament. On behalf of Cheongma Oryun and the currently absent representative of Unwol Jiju, I, Paeng Ha-jin—”
People thronged the underground plaza paved in marble.
Several hundred of them, at least.
So Yeomgyo’s claim that the underworld’s most notorious names would gather here had not been empty talk. It wasn’t only the black paths—this was the backstage of the entire martial world, assembled in one place.
This can’t be.
What stunned me wasn’t the atmosphere of the crowd, or even the caliber of the people present.
It was the place itself where I stood.
Until now, my idea of “underground” had carried a certain prejudice. A space of stone walls, a ceiling one or two men high at most—that had been my definition of the subterranean.
Which was why I had never understood So Yeomgyo’s hesitation, right up to the end, about including the Fifth Branch’s underlevels in our search for the ritual site of the Festival of Absolute Extinction. We had scoured Branches One through Four faster than I’d expected; surely the two of us, working together, could have cleared the Fifth just as quickly.
Today I learned how thoroughly I had been a frog in a well—and why she had hesitated.
“Impossible. How…?”
My voice shook as I muttered the words.
“How can a place like this even exist in this world?”
I stood at the center of a vast semicircular underground cavern.
Calling it a cavern didn’t begin to cover it.
The ceiling soared so high its end vanished into darkness. Holes punched through the rock at intervals funneled light onto mirrors set everywhere, scattering it into thousands of beams that gathered at the center like a sun. What darkness those lights could not drive out was answered by thousands of crimson lanterns ringing the cavern’s rim, painting everything in red.
—Woooom.
Along the chill underground breeze, the lanterns swayed with a faint tremor, and every shadow present drifted slowly with them.
At the heart of the plaza stood a temple.
Its colors had faded—reds and blues weathered together—yet the three-story structure looked easily several centuries old. Soft wind-chimes lent the air a dreamlike hush. The wooden building held a lofty silence in the depths of the cavern and looked down upon the packed plaza, upon everyone who had come to enter the Dark Fighting Tournament.
—Shaaaah…
Wind stirred.
Thousands of willows ringed the temple like a living wall. Shoulder to shoulder, they trailed their curtains of leaves as some unseen draft sent them dancing.
An entire world buried underground…
I looked around. These people belonged to a realm entirely different from any I had walked until now.
“It is an honor to receive the distinguished guests of every black-path faction gathered in this place—”
Paeng Ha-jin’s voice, thick with inner force, rolled softly through the enormous cavern. His figure was nowhere to be seen.
“With that, I withdraw. From this point forward, the Chief Steward of Jeolhae’s Fifth Branch will explain the procedures and regulations of the Dark Fighting Tournament.”
The moment Paeng Ha-jin’s words faded, the massive paulownia doors barring the temple’s main gate began to open.
—Creeeak.
Doors that had stood shut for decades parted, tearing through veils of spider silk. Every black-path martial artist present fixed their eyes on the entrance.
A single figure walked out.
“Greetings. I am Lee Hae-ryang, Chief Steward of Jeolhae’s Fifth Branch, and the one entrusted with conducting this Dark Fighting Tournament. A pleasure to meet you all.”
A scholar-like man in gray robes edged with gold offered a polite smile and a courteous bow.
“From this moment, you will be participating in the Dark Fighting Tournament, a contest whose name is known even throughout the black paths. Thank you for giving your precious time to attend. Before your formal entry, we will proceed with identity verification, the drawing of brackets, and a review of the rules.”
Lee Hae-ryang explained in a mild, measured voice that made it hard to believe he had come from the underworld at all.
“Where’s the arena going to be?! Don’t tell me it’s right here! Jeolhae’s Fifth Branch is famous for its wealth even among the black paths!”
Someone in the crowd bellowed at the top of his lungs.
That was the spark.
“Is it true the first-place purse is ten bars of gold this time?!”
“Is the rumor that the Little Dark Empress is entering real?!”
“Unwol Jiju may be rich, but some of these rumors are too much!”
“Gold bars and Little Dark Empresses aren’t what matter!”
A vast voice swept the assembly.
Enormous inner force.
I turned toward the source.
“Good gods—that’s No-eul-jin, the apostate monk, the Nine-Part Night-Riding Yaksha?!”
“That mad monk came too?”
A large man in tattered monastic robes stroked a long beard.
“The question is whether that rumor is true—that I-ta-bang, that eccentric, nose-in-the-air lunatic of a blacksmith, is going to forge a weapon with his own hands for whichever contestant takes his fancy! Throw empty promises around and you’ll pay for it, you dogs of Jeolhae’s Fifth Branch!”
“Shut your mouth, bald fraud. You’re not the only one here, so lower your voice and show some manners, why don’t you?”
At the frost-edged rebuke, No-eul-jin spun like lightning.
A skinny man in a battered bamboo hat stood there, a soft sword cradled in his arms.
“…Lee Eeo-jin, the Soul-Snatching Immortal Demon? Still not dead? I heard the imperial army cornered you while you were stripping Hubei’s nobles and put an end to you.”
“If that was enough to kill me, I’d have died ages ago. Looking at you still stuffing yourself with meat three times a day and unable to live without women while clinging to those monk’s robes—you haven’t changed a bit either.”
Sparks flew between them.
And they weren’t alone. As if that exchange had been a signal, martial artists of every stripe—each armed with their own weapons—began to shift and stir. These were men who had survived the underworld on nothing but raw skill, a world without rules where life-and-death duels were the foundation of every reputation. Bad blood ran thick among them; the place was a powder keg waiting for a spark.
“Everyone, stop.”
What cut through it all was the voice of Lee Hae-ryang, Chief Steward of Jeolhae’s Fifth Branch—and not a scrap of inner force rode on it.
“I am well aware of how formidable your martial arts are. But the reason you have lived this long is less your outstanding skill and more your ability to read a situation—to know when to strike, and when to step back.”
“….”
The murderous intent that had been coiling went still.
“I won’t waste words. Stop. I lack the power to break up your fights. What I do have is the authority to strip you of your right to enter the Dark Fighting Tournament. Anyone who insists on continuing a dispute will be escorted out.”
Lee Hae-ryang’s speech flowed like clear water over stones.
“You came a thousand li for this. Will you leave now with nothing, find some quiet corner free of interference, settle your life-and-death grudge like dogs, and crawl home missing an arm or a leg—half-crippled and empty-handed? Or will you keep your mouths shut and enter the tournament? That choice is yours. I will not ask twice. So please—be silent.”
That single speech stilled the entire crowd.
Lee Hae-ryang smiled as if satisfied.
“Then I shall now explain the procedures of the Dark Fighting Tournament.”
“…This is why I can’t stand scholars,” I muttered under my breath.
Jegal Sea came unbidden to mind. She was forever saying that every field had depths no outsider could imagine, and that anyone who had pushed a craft—any craft—to its extreme deserved respect. Being good at martial arts and talking and seducing women and plotting schemes all at once, she insisted, was a fantasy cooked up by half-baked dilettantes who had never truly lived. Every time I ran into a moment like this, I felt anew how much experience, how much thought, a woman roughly my age must have poured into those few short words.
“The Dark Fighting Tournament begins in the three-story temple you see behind me. As the brackets advance, you will climb one floor at a time. The honored guests have already entered the spectator stands within the temple and are waiting.”
Lee Hae-ryang pointed toward the temple as he spoke.
Now that he mentioned it, I saw only martial artists here to compete. No one who looked like a guest come to watch. I hadn’t crossed paths with So Yeomgyo again since we parted at the entrance.
Guests and fighting dogs kept strictly apart, then.
—Sniff.
I took in the scents. Narrowed my eyes. Strained my ears. Lifted a toe and scraped the floor.
Lee Hae-ryang’s voice rolled on with tournament instructions, but I let it slide past my ear and kept packing every scrap of information I could into my head. After countless battlefields that had been nothing short of slaughterhouses, I knew it by instinct: prepare as thoroughly as possible in a quiet peace like this, and you could answer whatever hell came next and still survive.
Mumyeong was no less earnest—so long as the goal was survival. Without being told, he swept every surrounding detail at blinding speed and poured the results into my mind like a waterfall.
One hundred forty-two paces to the exit. Twenty-eight to either side. The ceiling—seven leaps and five more should do it. Then the ceiling.
I looked up. Holes of light pierced the rock above. If it came to it, I thought, we might climb those and crawl out.
Mumyeong seemed to consider the same route for a moment, then discarded it.
Escaping through the light-holes in the ceiling… will not work. The ground is too unstable. Even if you push Baekryeon-pal-ya-jong to its limit and scatter your weight, it won’t hold.
I cast a glance around, then approached the cavern wall under cover of a stretch, careful not to draw the black-path fighters’ suspicion. I rapped the stone with the back of my hand. Felt it. Smooth. Hard. No mark of any tool that had ever shaped it.
This is no man-made chamber. A natural cave based on endless stone, by the look of it—ordinary weapons won’t even scratch it. Large-scale techniques shouldn’t be a problem either. Of course; that’s how they built a temple of that size down here. Good. Next, the temple. From what I can tell, the Dark Fighting Tournament takes place inside that building. Peculiar—raising another structure within the underground and holding a tournament inside it.
My gaze left the walls and ceiling and settled on the temple.
The timber has been coated with a fire-retardant oil—that much is certain. Beyond the wood, the fireproof walls look to have been built with four-block stone, fieldstone, white clay, and refined oil. Hard to destroy by ordinary means… but not a problem for us. Based on everything so far, we now have twenty-two methods for handling contingencies. Analysis ends here. All calculations complete. Did you follow all of that?
“Yeah.”
I let out a long-held breath and nodded firmly.
Good.
In the darkness, Mumyeong bared white teeth and growled.
Tearing apart lowborn black-path scum, savage Blood Cultists, and hypocritical orthodox dogs—that is the proper burden of one who walks the demonic path.
Red eyes flared in my shadow as he whispered.
Tear them. Kill them. Rip apart every last one of these filthy creatures swollen with pretension and arrogance, hypocrisy and self-obsession, luxury and pleasure. Pull their heads and raise an altar. To reign over all under heaven—that is true demonhood, true—
Mumyeong’s words cut off cold.
Hmph. For now, focus on the tournament.
“You.”
Is there a problem?
Willow leaves trembled. My eyes blinked.
“….”
….
The crimson lanterns swayed. The hem of my black martial robes swayed. My black hair swayed.
—Crack.
A faint black lightning-flame rose from the tip of my foot. My brows twitched. My pupils contracted, then dilated, then contracted again. My little finger shivered once—and went still.
That was when a voice cut in from behind.
“What’s wrong with this bastard? Keeps muttering to himself like he’s missing a few pieces.”
I turned.
Two black-path fighters were staring straight at me.