The Word He Let Slip
"What did you just say?"
Lee Hae-ryang's face hardened as he asked again.
"What?"
"You clearly said Ryu… something."
I put on a look of pure ignorance.
"Did I? Ryu whoever? Honestly, I don't even remember what name I used. My memory's terrible."
"What?"
"Why the shocked face, though? It's one of the most common men's names in the jianghu. Is there some reason a name like that should startle you?"
"…You."
It took Lee Hae-ryang less than a fraction of a second to smooth his frozen expression back into place.
Of course.
He didn't break. Even when he did, he snapped right back.
This one was cut from the same cloth as Jegal Sea.
I would stake my life that my martial strength far outstripped his. I didn't need to trade blows to know it. But when it came to rhetoric and strategy, I could feel him standing a step above me. His schemes and his tongue were nowhere near ordinary.
Even so, I was confident.
Because he still isn't that man.
I had already met someone who outclassed the man in front of me by an entire realm — the single most deranged, unreadable lunatic among every Blood Cult figure I had ever encountered. Without question, that was the Seventh Palace Lord, Ryu Hwasa.
Before a heaven-and-earth net woven from the elite Blood Scarlet Eight Gates under the Seventh Palace Lord's direct command — the First through Fourth Gates all mobilized at once — Ryu Hwasa had floated in midair through boundless telekinetic mastery and spoken.
…This trite, dogshit jianghu needs a fresh kind of shock. Don't even start with martial arts and who hits harder. What writes history is human nature and madness, not that kind of simple arithmetic. So.
He had flicked out a crimson tongue as if he could see straight through every layer of me.
Let's have ourselves a hell of a time, Moyong Bi-gun. You're the only one who can excite me. Not the Murim Alliance Leader. Not the Heavenly Demon. Not the Blood Demon. Only you — you rabid mad dog.
I still hadn't known what he wanted.
You birthed me, you know. Me, who'd grown so tired of this predictable jianghu that I'd fallen asleep…. Moyong Bi-gun.
I hadn't known what he felt. I hadn't known what he intended. The one thing that cut through all of it was madness itself.
Not the cheap kind — the kind that pretends to be insane and licks blood off a blade for show. I had felt it. He had forgotten even what he was chasing and pursued only the blind collapse of everything. Through those red eyes I had seen a dog frothing with rabies, sprinting straight toward ruin.
Having already faced someone like that, I could afford composure even with a Blood Cult man like Lee Hae-ryang standing in front of me.
Lee Hae-ryang regarded me with a look of genuine interest.
"That remark you just made — depending on how one hears it, it sounds rather unusual. Almost as if you're implying I belong to something other than Unwol Jiju."
"Is that so? Fascinating."
I gave a short snort of laughter.
"Well now. This gentleman…."
Lee Hae-ryang scratched the bridge of his nose and glanced around. No one was paying us any attention. He looked back at me, and the smiling face vanished.
"Biryu-nim. I don't know what you're thinking, throwing words around like that, but you had better be prepared to answer for—"
His sentence cut off cold.
The waiting-room door burst open. A supervisor stepped inside.
"Apologies for the delay, everyone. The bracket results are in."
"Ohh! At last!"
The waiting room erupted into noise.
"What are the results?"
"What's the schedule?"
"Me? What about me? Who am I fighting?"
People crowded the supervisor, who flustered and waved them back.
"Through the preliminaries, we do not disclose your opponent in advance. When you hear your name, exit through that door, and you will face whoever you're matched against. Best of luck to you all."
The mood scattered. For the moment, still no one was watching us.
Lee Hae-ryang glanced at the crowd, then fixed on me again.
I spoke first.
"That expression of yours is worth watching. Far more human than the smile you always wear."
"…You."
Blood quietly webbed the whites of Lee Hae-ryang's eyes.
That was enough. Push any further and he would detonate, and that wasn't what I wanted either. I was nowhere near Jegal Sea's level with words, so I chose the safe path and turned the current.
"Fine. I get it. Even that bastard So Cheonpa got completely wrecked by me — slammed his forehead into the floor seven times, pissed himself, the whole humiliation. But Unwol Jiju is the same outfit in name only, right? You're practically strangers to each other."
I offered him a vat of truth with a single drop of lie stirred in.
"Of course, if you want to claim you hate me because I finished off Unwol Jiju's representative So Cheonpa and his underlings So Jeongmun, Lee Eultak, Ryu Hwasa and the rest of that lot, I've got nothing to say. But everyone on the black path already knows you people barely see each other once a year over your little turf fights. Why work so hard at this? Who told you to match the speech patterns of some worthless subordinate from another branch?"
"That is complete nonsense—!"
Lee Hae-ryang's mouth worked, fishing for a reply. I got there first.
"Even so, the past is the past! And that business was a fair duel besides! Right now I'm a tournament entrant, and you're part of the organizing committee. Public and private have to be kept separate — that's the way of the jianghu. Isn't that right?"
Lee Hae-ryang went blank. For a moment he said nothing at all. I didn't need him to speak to know what was thrashing around in his head. He was drowning in confusion, unable to decide how to treat me.
No one alive was more suspicious of my identity than he was right now. He had clearly built the hypothesis that I knew about his double life between Unwol Jiju and the Blood Cult, and had been stacking certainty on top of it. I also knew exactly what had thrown fuel on that fire.
It had come out by accident during an argument with the puppet master Ghost Shadow Divine Thief, Ryu Cheong-jin, at the Unwol Jiju branch raid.
In the jianghu it was famous that the Blood Cult and the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult were like dogs and monkeys. The depth of that blood feud was unmatched — people even said the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult despised the orthodox sects because doctrine demanded it, but hated the Blood Cult because they were people of the jianghu. Both had sprung from the same root, the White Lotus Demon Sect, and precisely because of that shared bloodline they saw each other as a shame that had to be crushed, absorbed, and conquered.
The Heavenly Demon Divine Cult's favorite insult was to sneer at the Blood Cult's specialty in corpses and unholy arts by comparing them to corpses themselves. Ghost Shadow Divine Thief Ryu Cheong-jin had reacted with particular violence to that jab. It had slipped out of me on impulse at the time; only later, through So Yeomgyo, had I learned there was history behind it.
And sure enough, the moment Lee Hae-ryang heard the same kind of remark, his face had changed on the spot. From his seat, my tossing out a slur that would be a reverse scale for any Blood Cult man could only mean I already believed he was one of them and was mocking him sideways.
As the conversation wore on, he would have been steeling himself to erase me at the earliest opportunity, risk be damned. And the instant his patience hit its limit and he was about to put that resolve into motion, I had scattered another lie to sow fresh chaos.
Not a pure fabrication — ninety-nine parts truth to one part lie. A deception you could see through and still fall for. By dredging up my old grudge with So Cheonpa, I had left him the stubborn little spark that the "Ryu Hwasa" I'd named wasn't the Seventh Palace Lord he knew, but a same-named underling of So Cheonpa's — that everything might simply be his own overheated imagination.
His head should be splitting about now. Not that your people were ever that airtight an organization to begin with.
Unwol Jiju had been practically a cell structure. So Cheonpa had been its representative in name, but everyone on the black path knew he was a figurehead. Knowing the name of one disposable hand under a puppet boss was already absurd. Bookish, overthinking types like this one were especially prone to talking themselves into corners. All I had to do was toss a single spark into a dry reed bed.
Lee Hae-ryang still hadn't recovered. He looked like a fish being driven into a net, battered from every side of the stream. Those eyes that had been so triumphant, so certain they saw through everything two moves ahead and held it all in their palm, went cloudy in an instant — as if he had forgotten what he was even thinking.
I nodded.
"I even understand why you bothered coming to me. Must have been confusing. A man shows up who shatters a ten-thousand-year black iron boulder bare-handed, you dig into him, and the paperwork never ends. You read it and still can't tell if the bastard's an assassin or a martial artist. You don't know how much he knows. Hell, you can't even tell whether his main art is fist or sword. Am I right?"
Lee Hae-ryang's face flushed so deep with dismay it looked ready to burst.
I clicked my tongue and leaned back in the chair.
"Thought so."
"You. What the hell are you? You're no ordinary martial artist."
He was thoroughly unmoored. He had never met a fighter who talked like this — least of all in the gutters of the black path.
Lee Hae-ryang bit down on his lip.
"I… took you lightly. But you truly are someone impossible to read. In more ways than one. A wolf of a man."
"Ah. A wolf."
I tasted something bitter.
"Yeah, I hear that a lot. That I disappoint expectations. That I'm a eunuch, too."
I shrugged.
He had thrown those documents at me hoping to shake something loose and walk away with whatever fell out. He had gotten nothing. He had come to rattle me, and he was the one who left rattled.
Lee Hae-ryang was just opening his mouth again when—
"Lee Hae-ryang-nim. You're wanted upstairs."
A supervisor called for him from across the room.
"Tch."
Lee Hae-ryang ground his teeth. He glared at me.
"Very well. I'll withdraw for today. I already know your strength well enough — I'll be seeing you upstairs soon enough either way. I look forward to it. Broadly speaking, it may even work in our favor. If a genuine talent like you…."
He looked down at me with an arrogant curl of the lip.
"…climbs up and offers himself as a sacrifice, it will be of great help to our future. Heh heh."
He slammed out of the waiting room and was gone.
"Hyung-nim, what did that snake-eyed bastard want with you?"
Eung-chil, who had been hovering and fretting without daring to approach, hurried over. He had brought a fistful of walnuts and peanuts from the refreshment room.
"Couldn't get even half of what he came for, so he's sulking."
I answered in a flat voice, but my head was anything but quiet.
…Sacrifice?
Don't stop thinking. I guarantee you that was an unintended clue.
Mumyeong's voice cut in like frost.
"I know."
I cracked one of the peanuts Eung-chil held out and sank into thought.
I felt it instinctively. That last line about a sacrifice had been loaded with emotion. It hadn't been calculated. It was the unfiltered sentence of a man who had underestimated me, come hunting for information, gotten unilaterally worked over, and been all but dragged out of the room — spit out in pure spite.
In other words, precisely because that sentence had never passed through strategic calculation, it was the one most likely to hold something useful.
I chewed the peanut slowly and narrowed my eyes.
"Sacrifice… sacrifice…."
It felt as if a piece were about to lock into place and then kept slipping sideways.
As far as I had pieced it together, the Netless Hundred-Eight Seven-Night Rite required a hundred and eight children, fed only thin gruel and dew until their insides were scoured clean, offered up as sacrifices to artificially create a Guardian's jewel. And the vessel for that jewel was So Cheonpa, currently swollen with hatred for me.
Why would they need more sacrifices beyond So Cheonpa and the children…? That doesn't make sense.
It hovered just out of reach. I crossed my legs and rolled two walnuts in my palm, lost in thought.
If only So Yeomgyo or Eun Seollyeong were here — someone who actually knows sorcery….
Eung-chil shoved his face in close, gray ponytail swinging, and shattered the train of thought.
"Biryu hyung-nim."
I flinched, just a little.
"What is it."
"They say you're first, hyung-nim."
Apparently he had eavesdropped on the supervisors talking outside.
I had roughly expected it. A tournament like this always needed a flashy opening spark. And someone who looked capable but had no famous name — someone like me — made the perfect kindling.
I couldn't make out every word, but Lee Hae-ryang's voice as he ran the proceedings rang clear through the hall, and the crowd's cheers swelled to match.
An usher gestured toward me.
"Please prepare for the next match. You are Biryu-nim of the Blood Death Sect, fourth-rank field investigator, correct? Wait over here."
I stood and started toward the waiting-room exit.
That was when it came.
"Biryu? Did he say Biryu…? Is it truly that Biryu of the Blood Death Sect?"
I looked sideways.
"Heaven has favored me. To think I would find you here."
A man was walking out of the dark.
"I have waited for this day alone."
The man before me was a former rising talent of the Jongnam Sect — someone I had half-killed during the Emei duel.
"…Gwak Ido?"