Official Declaration of War
The Nine Killing Stars.
They were the Heavenly Demon Cult's finest pack of hunting hounds.
Each wore a black windcloak that fell to the ankles, and a blue face veil that left only the eyes exposed. Through that blue gauze, red light poured in steady streams.
Among the nine, the one at the front—golden dragons embroidered across the shoulders of his cloak—opened his mouth.
"…At first, we simply came to take the Yeomrangwang."
He started down. The rest of the Nine Killing Stars followed at a measured pace. As they descended they fanned out like cranes unfurling their wings, nine bodies flowing into a cordon around Jeokmaryeong.
Every individual motion looked slow. The overall current never broke—smooth as running water.
These bastards.
Mumyeong's voice was tight with tension.
They're moving completely differently.
Any ordinary martial artist, once the presence of enemies was confirmed, would have raced to seal every direction at once. That was the natural order of things—strategy even a three-year-old understood.
They did not bother with the crude formality of a full encirclement.
They simply drew a shallow arc and stood side by side, all nine facing me.
I checked my rear.
It was wide open. Dense forest waited beyond.
My eyes swung forward again.
Host. Do not even think of bolting that way.
Mumyeong's warning cut in.
Forget skill. These people have the feel of professionals who have done this hundreds—thousands—of times. They would never leave an escape route open by accident. When you hunt a rabbit, you deliberately open a path toward the place you want it to run, lure it there, and take it the easiest way possible.
I agreed. I had thought the same.
Jeokmaryeong stood in the rain, staring up at the sky, and muttered,
"Heh… heh heh heh…. How the hell did the Nine Killing Stars push all the way out here to Gwando? Did they get another revelation from that dog of a shaman the Cult Leader keeps on a leash? That damned spirit-ridden bastard never misses!"
"…."
In the downpour the Nine Killing Stars only watched, red light bleeding from their eyes. I felt that cold gaze rake over my body again and again. Goosebumps rose.
Jeokmaryeong, left with nothing but venom, kept screaming into the rain.
"Two beasts thrash each other bloody until they drop, and every wolf in the forest piles on—ugly as h—ghk!"
I snagged him by the nape of the neck, hauled him roughly back, and planted him behind me.
Jeokmaryeong foamed and thrashed.
"You dog-born bastard, how dare you lay hands on—!"
—Crack!
I spun his jaw with my heel and said,
"Shut your mouth and relax. I don't do temporary alliances or 'let's join forces' crap with an enemy standing in front of me. I will kill you."
I was not protecting Jeokmaryeong out of kindness. It was the Guardian jade in his robes.
The half-fragment of the Sichuan Tang Family's Guardian jade was still tucked against his chest. Fortunately he could not so much as twitch a finger right now, so I did not have to worry about him hurling the thing out to provoke everyone around us.
But if the Nine Killing Stars rushed him and killed him in a single surge, and in that instant the Guardian jade tumbled free and its whereabouts became certain, the Guardians would start butchering one another over it.
The surest move would have been to quietly lift the wooden case holding the Guardian jade from his robes myself—but with them watching, that was impossible. Until I knew how much of the present situation they already understood, I could not afford any careless act that might hand them information.
—Shhhhhh.
The rain only grew heavier with every passing breath.
The lead killer—the one whose windcloak bore golden dragons at the shoulders—spoke again.
"My name is Il-ho. I have been watching the fight with deep admiration. The one collapsed behind you must be our target, the Yeomrangwang. Might this unlucky soul inquire after your honorable name?"
"…."
There was no reason to answer.
Il-ho took the silence as only natural.
"Fair enough. No one about to die feels like offering his name. And hearing it would not make us spare you anyw—"
His words stretched, slowing.
"…ay."
"Then why ask?"
"That would be…."
Il-ho fell quiet for a moment.
The largest of them—a circular iron buckler strapped to one arm—glared at him.
"Talk should be finished by now. Still hesitating, Il-ho?"
Rain beaded and fell from the edge of Il-ho's blue veil. After another beat of silence he murmured,
"Gu-ho. There is no rush to kill him."
"You…. You really mean to—!"
Il-ho flicked a dismissive hand.
"Keep your voice down. This is not defiance of the Cult Leader's command. But I will have confirmation."
"…."
From the shadows beyond my own, a black dog whispered with calm precision.
Do not listen to them. Buy even a little time. Steady your breath. Gather what internal energy you have left scattered. They are coming—without fail.
For Mumyeong, survival always came first. His words had never been wrong.
I swallowed.
Hah… hah….
My legs were shaking. My breathing was a wreck—no better than a man who had sprinted without rest. Even an ordinary civilian would have seen at a glance that body and spirit were completely spent.
I gave a faint nod.
One of the greatest traits of my primary internal art—the Patcheon-hyeol-ma-mu-geuk-gong—was that it did not demand any particular posture. Even in the fight against Gang Chisang, Guardian of the Jeomchang Sect, I had managed to keep it running under impossible conditions.
My ragged breath began, faintly, to slow.
—Thrum.
Around the Heavenly Demon Jade, the last mote of remaining demonic qi began to race through a full circulation at startling speed.
Il-ho stroked his chin with one finger.
"Apologies for the brief disturbance. My curiosity was simply this: how does an orthodox martial artist come to wield demonic qi? And from the pressure alone, qi no ordinary demonic cultivator could ever approach. In particular…."
Red light scattered through the rain as he whispered,
"That distinctive Black Thunder thick with demonic qi…. How exactly did you come by it?"
"If I tell you, will you let me go?"
Beside him, Gu-ho rapped his iron buckler and cut in.
"Not a chance. Dream on. Reason or no reason, we watched you fight the Yeomrangwang as an equal. With an orthodox genius standing in front of us, strength completely spent—a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—if the Heavenly Demon Cult failed to kill you here, that would be open rebellion against the Cult Leader himself! Am I wrong?!"
The last of it was aimed less at me than at Il-ho, eyes locked on him.
There must have been some dispute among them before they met the Host.
Mumyeong observed.
Gu-ho snarled at Il-ho.
"Answer me. I am not asking as a comrade. I am asking as the only other vice-captain the Nine Killing Stars possess—your equal. The way you are acting is shaking your own squad members! Stop playing games!"
The formation of the Nine Killing Stars had split, ever so subtly.
Including Il-ho, four killers stood at his side.
Including Gu-ho, the remaining five faced them from the opposite flank.
The killers beside Il-ho watched him in silence.
"…."
Il-ho inclined his head a fraction.
"True enough. We swore loyalty to the Heavenly Demon Cult. Gu-ho—nothing you said is wrong."
Gu-ho's mouth curved in satisfaction.
"However."
Il-ho lifted a finger.
"Before we are killers belonging to one organization, we are martial artists. Watching those two fight, I—and every comrade with me—felt the blood rise. You said as much yourself a moment ago, Gu-ho. No objection, I trust."
"…?"
"The orthodox forces will need time enough to search this far out to the perimeter. To surround a man that strong and wring his neck like a chick's would disgrace even bottom-rung killers like us. So what do you say we forgo a mass rush and instead take him one by one—a continuous chain of fair life-and-death duels? And the instant he turns his back, of course, we all fall on him together and finish it. A martial artist who can barely lift a pair of chopsticks is not going to kill any of us, is he?"
"Have you lost your mind?!"
Explosive pressure erupted from Gu-ho's body.
—BOOM!
Raindrops shattered outward in every direction.
Il-ho did not so much as blink.
"I am sorry to say I am entirely sane."
"Then what the hell are you proposing? Even the lowest third-rate assassins wouldn't pull this garbage! Can't you tell public duty from private whim?! What is wrong with you? In six years you have never once acted like this!"
"…."
Il-ho held his silence.
Jeokmaryeong spat a clot of bloody phlegm into the rain and chuckled wetly.
"Those fuckers. They already figure we're as good as dead and they're arguing among themselves…. Chew-them-up bastards…. Heh heh heh."
It was exactly the feeling of a cat toying with a mouse.
For professionals like these killers to behave this way before finishing the job meant, paradoxically, that they were absolutely certain they would never let me slip away.
Il-ho spoke toward Gu-ho.
"Setting the formation aside—treat him as a martial artist treats the strong. Orthodox origin or not, he carries demonic qi of the same nature as ours, does he not? By the law that the strong are to be respected, that is the courtesy I believe he is owed."
Even through the blue veil, Gu-ho's face swelled red enough to burst. He ground his teeth.
"Fine. I go first. I'll fillet that orthodox dog in a single breath."
"Agreed. Do not worry. If the damage grows too great, we revert to the original plan and everyone piles on to kill him."
Il-ho turned to me, utterly composed.
"I hope you will not take offense at being treated like a mouse before a cat. Truthfully, if not for the twenty-breath off-beat and that Black Thunder niggling at me, I would never have bothered with any of this. I would have simply overrun and killed you."
"…."
I blinked.
"Twenty breaths?"
Il-ho answered in a low voice.
"Actual operations for us happen maybe once a year, if that. When one is ordered, we receive a revelation from the Cult Leader's personal shaman—abstract hints that help us: where we might meet the target, the place, a particular window of time, and so on."
Almost imperceptibly the nine killers began to shift, each claiming a bearing. The intent was clear: the moment I showed my back, they would all descend at once.
Il-ho continued.
"And until now, whenever the shaman pointed the way, the revelation has never been wrong. This time it was correct as well, of course—and yet strangely…."
He tilted his head, murmuring,
"Everything ran twenty breaths late from the moment the revelation was given. Every single beat, shifted one slot behind. You understand?"
—Shff.
The man called Gu-ho stepped out in front of me.
"And either way it ends with you getting beaten to death. Orthodox boy."
Gu-ho—largest frame among the Nine Killing Stars.
—Shiiing.
From his robes, with a sickening rasp, a short hand-axe slid free.
In the end, nothing had changed.
Until I killed them, it would be one-on-one against the Nine Killing Stars.
Show my back, and I died.
That was despair itself.
This is it…! The death I could not escape was never Jeokmaryeong…!
Only now did I understand Muyeong-sintu's prophecy.
In all his foretelling he had never once said I would die to Jeokmaryeong himself. He had only said that the meeting with Jeokmaryeong would end in death.
From the beginning the prophecy had not shifted by so much as a hair. All of this had been foreseen.
The reaper of death was beckoning right before my eyes.
No one would come to help this far out on the fringe. The orthodox forces would still be combing the wrong parts of Gwando city like men hunting lice, and even if they somehow arrived here, the only thing they would find would be my corpse.
So this is what it was, after all.
I had thrashed and clawed for my life, and the whole of it had been inside the Buddha's palm.
"Second Vice-Captain of the Nine Killing Stars. Gu-ho."
Through the blue veil, Gu-ho's red eyes glittered with open mockery.
"Looks to me like you haven't a handful of internal energy left. Think you can hold out? Heh. Truly a one-punch job."
—Grit.
I clenched my teeth.
"…Right. So that's how it is. This is real death, is it? In the end I can't run—is that it?"
I spun the Patcheon-hyeol-ma-mu-geuk-gong, but what came was still pitifully faint. There was simply too little time.
I needed internal energy.
If only I had something like an inner core to replenish—
A single thought flashed through my mind.
"Ah."
No, Host. Not that.
Mumyeong, catching on, spoke fast.
But I no longer had a choice of any kind.
There was not the smallest hole left to slip through. Not the slightest stroke of luck. I could see the perfect dead end for what it was.
Head bowed, I muttered,
"…In that case."
I ground my teeth and lifted my eyes.
"One-on-one, my ass. Let's finish this."
Host…!
I stepped backward.
Jeokmaryeong's eyes flew wide toward me.
"Wh—what? You…! What are you—!"
I closed on him and roughly ransacked his robes.
"What the hell, you bastard—are you out of your—?!"
What I pulled free was a dull-hued wooden case.
—Click.
I opened it without a second's pause.
—WUUUNG!!!
The half-shattered jade fragment inside—green light—unleashed a massive shockwave that swept the entire gathering.
"What—that is—?!"
"A Guardian jade! Then the report that the Yeomrangwang seized the Sichuan Tang Family's Guardian jade was true?!"
—Shiiing!!
In the same breath I drew Myeolseom from my forearm—a span of steel—and reversed my grip on it.
There was no road to life either way. On this path, hesitation was gone.
I picked up the Guardian jade.
Every eye went wide.
Gu-ho, who had been about to charge, froze solid.
"Don't tell me—"
Without a flicker of doubt I tipped the Guardian jade into my mouth.
With every member of the Nine Killing Stars watching, I swallowed it.
Shock ripped through them all.
"No—that madman—!"
—Thooom…!
I felt the half-fragment of the Sichuan Tang Family's Guardian jade being drawn into the Heavenly Demon Jade. It was as if the dantian itself were swelling—the gem expanding inside me.
Il-ho's eyes went huge.
"Absorbing an unaltered jade should be possible only for one who already possesses a jade…!"
The total volume of my internal energy climbed at once, and for a fleeting moment I felt nearly a full sixty-year cycle's worth flood in to fill me.
—Fwoosh!
Light returned to both eyes.
—Kiiiiing!!
The double serrated blades of Myeolseom—legacy of the White Lotus Demon Sect—began to spin like things gone mad, devouring internal energy as they turned.
In the pouring rain I reversed my grip on Myeolseom.
"I, Moyong Bi…! If fate wants it that badly—!"
I roared it out in a voice steeped in blood and spite.
"I officially declare my entry into the Guardian War!!"