The Heavenly Demon Copies Martial Arts
"Good heavens."
"A-are you sure you're okay, Hero Moyong?"
With the Escort Commander no longer around, Gang Mu-jeong had stopped worrying about anyone else's opinion and taken to calling me Hero without the slightest hesitation.
"No problem. If a tiger shows up, tell me at once. And if the limited visibility makes it hard to get a sense of the terrain, just follow the footprints I leave and step exactly where I stepped."
I pushed into the forest without a moment's pause.
Han Jung-mae shook his massive head and stuck out his tongue.
"We're supposed to be about the same age, but how is he that fearless?"
Gang Mu-jeong spoke up.
"Honestly, when he said we'd cross the forest at night with nothing but moonlight and no torches, I thought he'd lost his mind…"
"Shut up. Yelling in a forest at night—are you out of your mind? Keep it down."
At Sa Ha-yun's scolding, the party closed their mouths.
Behind me, Gang Mu-jeong, Han Jung-mae, and Sa Ha-yun followed in silence.
A low hum filled my ears. Both of my eyes were steeped in the crimson glow that appeared whenever I invoked the Heavenly Demon Jade's signature power, Namsang Samadhi.
The world dyed red, I advanced without the slightest hesitation.
I had fought Ilmanhyeolje in a lightless cave. A forest like this was nothing.
Still, I never expected the Escort Commander to agree. Lucky break.
In a way it had been a gamble. No matter how clear the righteous cause, if the man with the authority to grant permission failed to recognize it, the whole thing meant nothing.
There's one demonic spirit tiger left. We'll deal with it ourselves. How about designating that as the second official trial right away?
That was the proposal I had put before the Escort Commander.
Naturally he had nearly jumped out of his skin. But I had already thought it through.
We are of the Orthodox Path. The reason we changed the form of this official trial in the first place was to cultivate and test the disciples' strength while, at the same time, helping powerless commoners however we could.
Even so…
But just as you yourself worried earlier, Escort Commander—if we delay the hunt over a mere matter of timing, there's no telling how that demonic spirit beast, now bereft of its mate, might descend on the villages and do harm. That would lodge in your heart for the rest of your life like a stone in your shoe.
At those words the Escort Commander's face had shown fierce internal struggle. But he was already wavering. He had already seen my strength in our one-on-one bout. If a man like me was willing to risk himself to wipe out a single remaining demonic spirit tiger, he stood to lose nothing. And being able to clear his schedule in one stroke under a perfectly reasonable pretext had to appeal to him as well.
Seeing the uncertainty in his eyes, I gestured toward the others behind me.
They flinched as if struck by lightning.
Please let us go!
We'll show that justice still lives in the martial world!
It was a little weak. I fixed Gang Mu-jeong with a long, deliberate look. His face went deathly pale. He bolted forward and dropped to his knees.
Escort Commander! Disciple Moyong Bi already took one down alone—if the three of us join him, that's four of us piling on. What is there we couldn't catch?! I'll beat it to death myself, I swear it! And if we can pass two official trials back-to-back this way and win ourselves pure preparation time ahead of the promotion exam, wouldn't that be a fine opportunity for us as well?
…I honestly hadn't known he could talk that well.
When even the quiet Sa Ha-yun finally declared her intent to join, the Escort Commander offered no further objection.
And so, for the half-day until the carriage returned, we accepted the commission to subjugate the last remaining demonic spirit tiger.
The Escort Commander had to remain behind in case the Cheonsubaekryeonsa carriage arrived early. Instead he entrusted me with a signal flare, swore he was counting on me alone, and until the very moment of our departure kept urging me, over and over, to run if things went wrong.
That was how we began the final official trial, one right after the other.
"If we pull this off, it's straight to the Chu-mu-gwan promotion exam. The promotion exam."
We had been swept into it half by accident, but once it began, Han Jung-mae and Gang Mu-jeong both raised their focus to the absolute limit. Knowing that Chu-mu-gwan was the realistic final goal for most martial artists, I could understand how they felt.
Sa Ha-yun, too, had drawn her milky-white longsword and was following at the rear of the line, face taut with tension.
[Unbelievable.]
"What is?"
At the head of the column I listened to Mumyeong.
[That last woman. Even though I'm consciously watching her right now, I can barely sense her presence. How is that possible?]
Mumyeong kept marveling. And at the end of that marvel there was a subtle wariness.
[We should count it as Heaven's favor that a woman like her stepped onto the path of a martial artist.]
"What do you mean?"
The three behind me were in the same boat with me now. Judging by their reaction in front of the Escort Commander earlier, I was certain they would never breathe a word of anything they saw connected to me.
One faint question lingered—Sa Ha-yun hadn't been badly hurt, yet she had deliberately claimed injury so she could receive the spirit beast's blood from me for treatment and end up signing the contract. But all I had needed was the contract, so I no longer cared.
Thanks to that, at least in front of them, I no longer bothered to hide the glow in my eyes or watch my words when speaking with Mumyeong.
Of course I had already prepared explanations for each situation. The red eyes were one of the Moyong Family's secret arts for illuminating the dark. And the muttering? When I thought hard, I had a habit of talking to myself.
"Just as you said beforehand, Hero Moyong—you really do talk to yourself as if conversing with someone."
"He's different from us. Extraordinary, I suppose you have to call it."
I let the whispering behind me wash past. Mumyeong answered my question.
[In a way, what that woman is doing by pure instinct might be a secret technique in some sects. People are born with strictly different gifts. Overall ability can be overcome through effort, but an individual's localized traits—those can never be overcome by effort alone. Take that Jin, for example, the Baekjao captain of ten from the Namgung Family. Do you remember him?]
"…Ah. I remember him well enough."
He had been the one assigned to guard Namgung Sogyo when I first set foot in the Namgung Family. The moment he laid eyes on me he had said I smelled dangerous, and he had been the only one to keep extreme vigilance. After the battle with Ilmanhyeolje, when we met again, he treated me with warmth—yet something still made him even more reluctant to face me.
[Across the old martial world and this era both, I have never seen anyone whose sensory perception was that acute. He looked tight-lipped so I said nothing, but I guarantee that man alone had already guessed every last scrap of the internal energy you were hiding.]
"…"
At first I wanted to call it absurd. The sash Eun Seollyeong had given me was, when it came to concealing internal energy, far more than an ordinary artifact. I had faced any number of masters, and not one of them had seen through the full measure of my power and skill—over a full gapja of internal energy—that the sash concealed. Speculation, perhaps, but never certainty. That included even the unidentified branch leader from the Beggars' Guild. He had only watched the way I snatched the paper; to the end he never sensed the internal energy I was hiding, nor the Heavenly Demon Jade, nor anything of the sort.
[At first I wondered myself, so I deliberately released qi a few times using the internal energy you transferred to me—and every single time he sensed it like a ghost and stepped back. There is a world we cannot perceive that is visible to him. The same thing is true of that woman now.]
It was not something I could simply let slide.
[Right now that woman is demonstrating top-tier concealment arts, better than most assassins, without ever having been taught. Training at Jeomchang alone could never produce that. If we reason from the principle that, between the Orthodox, Demonic, and Evil paths, the world people live in is ultimately the same—]
Mumyeong fell silent in thought for a moment, then spoke again.
[I suspect a high-ranking figure in the Jeomchang Sect, fearing she might take the assassin's path, adopted her in order to keep her firmly leashed. Better to tighten the collar and tame her than leave her to become an uncontrollable beast.]
Somehow it did not feel like someone else's story.
[I can't be certain, but if you get the chance to watch her movements in the next fight, remember that it is innate rather than a martial art form, so copying will be impossible—observe as carefully as you can and analyze it well. She does not seem to realize what she is truly worth.]
So that was why Mumyeong was focusing for once. In the end it came down to this. Mumyeong always put his own survival first. When he concentrated, it was only when something was certain to bring great benefit to his own life. He had judged that Sa Ha-yun's concealment arts would be useful to him.
Well. Nothing wrong with that.
Mumyeong's advice lacked human warmth, but if you thought about it coldly, it never put you at a loss. And for those three, simply traveling with me was already as good as passing the final official trial. I considered it mutual benefit.
We had not pushed through the forest long before a thick, wild stench hit us.
A roar that seemed to shake heaven and earth froze the party solid.
In the vast clearing ahead, a mad tiger with bloodshot eyes was thrashing about, smashing everything in every direction. Around it lay the shredded carcasses of all kinds of animals.
Demonic qi and the grief of a lost mate had driven its frenzy even further into savagery.
There was no hesitation. As we had agreed beforehand, we scattered swiftly in all directions and struck at the tiger. "Struck" was generous—I was the main attack; the others simply cut off its escape routes.
Aside from my internal energy, I no longer had anything to hide.
It was larger and more ferocious than the first tiger, yet the fight went even more smoothly. In the gaps between exchanges, I tracked Sa Ha-yun with my crimson eyes without pause as she slipped past the tiger's claws like lightning, took its rear, and drove her blade in.
It's certain. That woman alone draws zero reaction.
Even with my internal energy held back, whenever I closed in I could feel the tiger's senses chasing my back. Only the sheer mutability and speed of my movement under the Baekryeon-pal-ya-jong kept it from coping and left it taking hits. But with Sa Ha-yun, the tiger simply did not react at all until the moment the blade went in.
I had to be sure.
A low hum rose. I invoked Namsang Samadhi, but this time there was only silence.
It really isn't a martial art! All of that is innate. The world is wide.
From the breathing method she unconsciously leaked to the placement of her toes, I stored every detail in my mind and marveled inwardly.
When the analysis was finished, I put full force into my fist. Before twenty breaths had passed, the tiger's neck bones snapped and it died on the spot.
It crashed down. I tangled with the falling carcass.
"Hero Moyong!"
I saw the rest of the party racing toward me from a distance.
Before they arrived I quickly tore out the core saturated with demonic qi. Then I collected the blood and stowed it. Taking a core filled with demonic qi was the one thing that absolutely could not be seen by them.
Sa Ha-yun had already caught me harvesting the first core, but whether she had simply missed it in the chaos or something else, she showed not the slightest intention of revealing it. Still, caution never hurt.
The instant the core was extracted, the massive tiger began to burn away in black flames.
"Ha—haha! Hero Moyong! You're unharmed!"
Han Jung-mae cheered as he watched me walk out. By now, when no one else was around, he too had no hesitation calling me Hero.
"To think we'd finish every last official trial this easily—it's almost ridiculous!"
"It's all thanks to you, Hero!"
For them it was like waking up and finding a windfall. They looked ready to throw their arms around me and plant a kiss.
"Don't do anything stupid. You'll die."
At my frost-edged warning they turned pale and spun away just as they were about to close in.
Sa Ha-yun's face flushed red.
"S-still a male… a beast…"
"…"
I turned away quickly.
"Anyway, it's finally over!"
Leaving them to their joy, I sank deep into thought.
Crackling flames. Ahead of me the tiger's carcass burned. That had been the question circling at the edge of my mind for some time.
"Something's off. Even if they were a pair, not one but two of them, both this saturated with demonic qi—and here, of all places, nowhere near the Demonic Sect's Ten Thousand Mountains?"
Mumyeong seemed to share the thought.
[I was thinking the same—]
Mumyeong stopped mid-sentence. From within my shadow, the red eyes of a wild dog opened.
[Ah. That would explain it. Yes. That would be enough for demonic spirit beasts.]
"What are you talking about all of a sudden, Mumyeong?"
In the dark, the black dog's gaze checked behind me once more. After confirming that the rest of the party were each talking among themselves and paying us no attention, it nodded toward me.
[Straight ahead past the tiger's body—dense forest, and a waterfall.]
Above the acrid smoke of the burning tiger stretched dense forest and a cliff face. From that cliff a waterfall poured down. And there, a blood-reeking red mist was rising.
A low hum. Crimson light flooded both of my eyes. The pitch-black darkness fell away, and everything before me stood out in sharp relief.
Behind the falling water, moss-covered characters carved in relief flickered into clarity. The moment I saw them, I felt my breath stop.
"…Why is the White Lotus Demon Sect's Sam-bi-dong—the Third Secret Cave—here?"