Neither More Nor Less
Every story had ended.
I had stayed up through the night.
Not a single person from the Moyong Family remained at my side.
As I crossed the forest alone, the sun was rising far in the distance.
“I should hurry before the sun fully rises.”
Left alone, I pushed through the underbrush just as I had at the very beginning.
Are you all right?
Mumyeong asked.
“About what.”
The conversations from earlier.
After a brief silence, I answered.
“Of course.”
Good. Then that’s fine.
With that, Mumyeong asked nothing more about the earlier talks.
I changed the subject.
“This is the right path, isn’t it?”
Moyong Ryu clearly said it was this way. It’s certain.
For a while the unfamiliar road made me worry I might have taken a wrong turn. Then, at some point, familiar sights began to appear one by one.
“Ah.”
It was a familiar path.
Thump.
The further I advanced, the more familiar the road became, and my heart raced.
Flutter…
I couldn’t help but quicken my steps.
Hmm. To think I would see this scenery again.
Mumyeong muttered.
In a trembling voice I said, “Mumyeong. You remember what I told you earlier, right.”
I know.
“Don’t just say you know.”
I’ll do my best. This too is for survival, and Cheonsubaekryeonsa is, in a way, the enemy’s heart of hearts. Honestly I don’t like it, but…
“Don’t change the subject.”
I pushed through the grass once more and spoke again.
“Once I go inside a little later, I won’t be able to talk with you this comfortably for a while. We need to get our stories straight now. So the things I said earlier—you’re sure you remember them clearly?”
Mumyeong was silent for a moment, then spoke each point carefully and distinctly.
When conversing with others, if you begin speaking too quickly, warn you. If you grow overly excited, warn you. If you seize something too dangerous, warn you. Is there more?
“See? You forgot the most important one.”
I let out a short sigh.
“Here. Absolutely. Continuously drill into me that this place is not the extreme environment of unconditional life-or-death, either-or choices that we have been in until now.”
Ah, right. I forgot the most important one. But when you put it that way…
From the hem of my black martial robes a shadow rose like ink seeping upward. In that abyssal darkness, red eyes opened.
It looks like watching a demon who has sworn not to kill entering a Shaolin temple to take monastic vows.
I frowned.
“What are you doing materializing here? What if someone sees?”
You seem to forget sometimes, but I was a demon from the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult. Although.
Mumyeong smacked his lips.
I have almost no memories.
After the great blood battle with Ilmanhyeolje, Mumyeong had been materializing a wild dog form with shadows during conversation with increasing frequency. It was as if it proved that Mumyeong’s self was growing stronger.
As if reading my worry about possible witnesses, the black dog added,
Don’t worry. When I materialize I also expand my senses and carefully check whether people are nearby. And materializing whenever possible helps recover memories faster, so please understand…
As time passed his voice was growing clearer and stronger, and his once hazy personality was becoming more distinct.
I pressed a hand to my forehead.
“…Haa. I wish you’d just find those memories or that self already and get it over with. Who knew there would be so few records of the Heavenly Demon Emperor in this vast Jianghu.”
…
The black dog stared at me blankly.
Host.
“What.”
Mumyeong said,
…Was there truly no record at all in the current Jianghu? Really none whatsoever?
I made a puzzled sound.
“Huh? You should know. You were with me the whole time, talking with Jegal Sea and investigating together—”
I stopped. My thoughts had been short. I smacked my bitter lips.
He had informed me in advance that after the fight with Ilmanhyeolje he was regularly entering half a day of sleep each day for the restoration and attunement of my body. Of course he wouldn’t know.
I looked at the black dog.
“…Yeah.”
…
“Surprisingly none. Really, surprisingly so.”
The black dog merely let red light flow from its eyes and said nothing.
There was a brief stretch of time.
In the fight with Ilmanhyeolje I had learned of the existence that became the final card—the Heavenly Demon Emperor. I did not know exactly what it was, but I could only guess that it lay in my abyss, that Mumyeong was guarding it, and that it was an absolute powerhouse like a Guardian of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.
Ilmanhyeolje seemed to recognize who it was, yet that too had been buried in the chaos of battle and remained uncertain. After the fight I asked Mumyeong, but he could give no clear answer about who the Heavenly Demon Emperor was or about his past.
He compared it to an anchor rising from the abyss, drawn by magnetic force. The more he contacted things closely related to the White Lotus Demon Sect, the stronger the memories revived; but if the medium disappeared without specific measures, it sank back into the abyss.
When Ilmanhyeolje—the founding-level Guardian of the Blood Sect that had just split from the White Lotus Demon Sect—was annihilated and vanished, the medium that had been pulling up his memories was immediately lost, and the memories that had been growing clearer were cut off again.
Damn it. Damn it…
At first I wondered if he was lying to me. But since he was parasitizing my body, we could feel strong mental images between us. From the way he tried to dig through the foggy mist to remember somehow, I could feel he was more frustrated than anyone.
The method I thought of next was investigating the Heavenly Demon Emperor through Jegal Sea. I thought if it was her—the smartest and most capable person I knew—she might know something.
I still could not forget the first words she spoke to my question about whether she knew of the Heavenly Demon Emperor.
‘Heavenly Demon Emperor? Who’s that?’
His records were so thoroughly erased that one would wonder if there was anyone in this Jianghu whose records had been lost this completely. If he had not been realized in my body and manifested his power, even I would never have believed he existed; his existence had been perfectly wiped out.
Even the most shameful coward in the Jianghu, or the most vulgar thief of the Demon Sect and Blood Sect—if you looked, there would be a line of their name in some history book. Yet the name of the one called the Heavenly Demon among Heavenly Demons had been thoroughly eradicated.
That was all I knew of him.
Funny enough, even as the whole world denied it, there were exactly two things I could be certain of regarding the existence of the Heavenly Demon Emperor.
Creak… creak…
A hazy memory of the back of a man being forced to hang by everyone’s spears, in a corner of faint recollection.
And the other, funnily enough:
‘Mother, the first child said to have surpassed the White Lotus Demon Sect, the unparalleled strongest Guardian of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult who was ultimately discarded like a hunting dog and hanged—the pitiful bastard whose record wasn’t even left in Demon Sect history…. Uwahahaha!! Well, who cares. Anyway, that’s a story only those who dig through moldy old books like me know!!’
It was a single stream of mad cry from Ryu Hwasa, the 7th Palace Lord most proficient in sorcery in the Jianghu, directed at me.
The Heavenly Demon Emperor definitely exists. Definitely. Someday the day will come when I can know for sure.
I flicked my fingers.
Crack.
It was not as strong as back then, yet an eerie black thunderbolt sparked between my fingers and vanished. This was the indicator that the Heavenly Demon Emperor was alive and breathing in my body.
As the medium close to the White Lotus Demon Sect—Ilmanhyeolje—disappeared, the Great Heavenly Demon Emperor sank back into the abyss, yet my body that had been transformed accordingly remained in part for certain.
Don’t worry. Once it’s hard to surface above water, once the Heavenly Demon Emperor has been realized, with just a little stimulus it’ll float right up to the surface. But it’s important not to rely on that and further train and raise your usual state.
That was Mumyeong’s advice. According to Mumyeong, my body had surpassed the Extreme Demon realm and entered the beginning of the Demon Escape realm.
Certainly, even when using Asura Great Annihilation Calamity, the color of the black thunder has subtly changed. It’s absolutely not the black I knew before. Some change has occurred.
I swung my hand. My body’s strength had increased several times over. Speed as well. Internal energy remained the same, yet the body had definitely changed. That thought turned to certainty in the earlier fight with the Sichuan Tang Family’s Guardian. Endurance, speed, and power were all stronger than I had imagined.
I drew a deep breath and let it out.
Rustle.
I pushed through the grass. I stroked a tree. Everything was familiar.
Could I forget?
No.
I could never forget.
Everything had started here. I could not even guarantee a single day. I myself did not know whether I would see tomorrow’s sun.
In the distance a signboard reading Cheonsubaekryeonsa came into view. Right there I had been stabbed by a peddler and collapsed. I still did not know who the client had been, but here I had been slashed across the belly with a sword, and somehow, to survive, I had pushed the peddler. Even now, if I touched my belly, the scar from that day remained.
I had floundered to survive in a sea of blood, and because of the fingers I desperately shoved into the door crack, I was considered to have entered the territory of Cheonsubaekryeonsa and was rescued by Eun Seollyeong, surviving. From then on I had been crossing the realms of life and death.
If I had known that was only the beginning, I would never have come this far.
I had once asked Yun Hyeon of the Namgung Family’s Luoyang branch how he had risen from the lowly status of a porter and waiter, from the very bottom, to that position.
‘Young Master always has a mindset of wanting to learn. It’s good to see.’
Yun Hyeon, while preparing various weapons and armor for me to infiltrate the Ju Family, had carefully answered for my sake.
‘It’s nothing special. Most people, when wanting to go a long way, always look only at the destination and think only of when they will walk that far path, and give up. But I rather don’t look at the destination at all.’
‘Then what?’
Yun Hyeon said with a smile,
‘At those times I rather lower my head and only look at my feet. Take one step, sleep, take one step, sleep—just repeat that, and when I bump my forehead and raise my head to look ahead, before I know it I have arrived at the destination. And when I look back? Behind, the people still lamenting when they will get there are standing in the same place.’
‘…’
I had been dull. When I first heard it, honestly I did not know what it meant. Seeing my expression, Yun Hyeon smiled kindly.
‘Someday you will understand. And since I also gave you words that will become a jewel, won’t Young Master also give me one valuable word that only Young Master knows? Since someone like Young Master who has lived a rather unsmooth life would have at least one.’
‘What would a guy like me have such a…’
I stopped speaking.
‘If I were to say one.’
I had said to Yun Hyeon. It was also the words Mumyeong had spoken to me when I stood confused before the mural announcing the destruction of everything while drawing the Guardian’s gem in Yuk-bi-dong.
‘A person lives only the life they have drawn. Neither more—’
Chirp, chirp-chirp.
In the early dawn, standing before the main gate with the golden light of dawn, I muttered,
“…nor less.”
Everything was as it had been. As if only here time had stopped, nothing had changed. Only I seemed to have changed.
The black shadow stretching from my body lengthened long and cast over the closed main gate of Cheonsubaekryeonsa. The cool dawn air tickled the tip of my nose.
Creak.
“Whew, sleepy. Another day begins… eh—oh my goodness!”
A maid opening the main gate of Cheonsubaekryeonsa to carry a jar saw me and screamed. In that startle the jar in her hands flew into the air. The maid screamed again.
“Ah! Th-the jar!”
“…!”
The jar floating in the air nearly fell to the ground and shattered to pieces.
Pa-bat!
I kicked a pebble at my feet.
Kagagagak!!
The pebble dug fiercely between the bottom of the jar and the dirt ground. The sound of pottery scraping fiercely rang out.
Tegurreurreurreu…
With a large gouge mark the jar rotated and rolled across the ground.
“…Huh?”
The maid who had squeezed her eyes shut blankly watched the jar rolling to one side. Then she looked at me with a bewildered gaze.
I said to the maid,
“Is there perhaps a person in charge or a gatekeeper inside—anyone?”
“Yes? Just now with a pebble, in that short instant, the jar…?”
The maid looked at me with a dazed expression, babbling.
I adjusted my black martial robes and said,
“Moyong Bi of Ha-mu-gwan. Having completed all the disciplinary trials, I have just returned.”