The Disappointment in Her Eyes
I had no idea what had just happened.
My body had felt it, but my mind could not keep pace with the situation. It was not a martial art. It was not a technique. No internal energy had been poured into it. The impact had been enough to make my upper body sway, yet there was no serious injury. Only a red, heated mark remained on my cheek. Even so, I could feel that the emotion carried at the end of that blow was utterly real.
The cool wind of late summer’s final days brushed across my flushed cheek. I muttered under my breath.
“…Why on earth?”
I looked at the woman standing before me. Eun Seollyeong was a span shorter than I was.
—Trickle, trickle….
Water gathered with a soft sound atop the waterwheel over the well at one corner of the flower bed. She said nothing at all. Under the blue moonlight, her white martial robes—once soaked in blood as she slaughtered demonic beings—were spotless, without a single stain. Eun Seollyeong’s silver eyes blinked. They were expressionless eyes that looked as if they might freeze solid. And for the briefest instant, what flickered across them was disappointment and anger directed at me.
Ah.
When she blinked once more, every emotion that had filled her eyes vanished like a mirage. All that remained was a gaze utterly devoid of feeling. Meeting those eyes, I understood. It was not a great deal. Yet I felt, with bone-deep certainty, that every slender thread of trust we had painstakingly built had been reset to the very beginning—to the time we first met.
“There will be no aftereffects from the injury, so rest easy.”
With those words she turned on her heel as sharply as a blade and walked away without looking back.
—Thud….
—Whoosh—.
The bamboo waterwheel at the edge of the flower bed turned, pouring out a cool stream of water. The only thing left in the garden was me, standing blankly while I touched my swollen cheek.
“Ahem…. When the two of you are giving off this kind of atmosphere, even if I want to speak I can’t get a word out.”
I glanced to the side. A woman leaned against a pillar, dressed in white robes that called a crane to mind.
“Jegal Sea?”
“That’s right. The eldest daughter and mainstay of the Jegal Family—currently reading the room so hard it hurts even though there’s no need at this completely wrong timing. Is your cheek all right?”
“….”
Jegal Sea grumbled at me and jerked her chin toward the interior.
“Let’s go inside. It looks like the two of you have plenty to talk about.”
“Damn it, this makes me feel like the owner of the place. Here, take this, Moyong Bi. Where did I put the tea? I’m sure I saw it tidied away around here eight years ago….”
Jegal Sea rummaged expertly through every corner of the house as if it were her own, pulling things out one after another. I could hardly believe my ears.
“You remember the layout from a single visit eight years ago?”
Her hands paused. She looked at me.
“Something about the way you just said that feels off. I’m not a thief, you know?”
“…Of course not. The eldest daughter of one of the Five Great Families could never be a petty thief.”
“Doesn’t sitting still get boring? I just watched carefully and it stuck in my head. Honestly, this girl still keeps the tea set arrangement exactly the same as eight years ago—not a single thing out of place. Even her taste hasn’t changed. Does she not know what a change of mood is?”
She kept grumbling, yet she still set out a full tea table with snacks from various places. I simply watched her work. Jegal Sea poured the hot tea she had steeped in front of me and spoke.
“Still, Eun Seollyeong used up her own internal energy to treat you. Do you realize you slept for a whole month? I heard you were here and came as fast as I could, but it still took a week, so yes—exactly a month.”
“….”
I had not known I had been lying down for an entire month.
A whole month? Actually, even my own existence had been blurred for a while…. Had that much time really passed? No wonder I kept sensing the cool edge of autumn slipping between the lingering heat of summer.
Mumyeong muttered by my ear. Jegal Sea continued.
“Well, I don’t know her all that well myself, but….”
She poured tea into the cup in front of her.
“For someone who isn’t even officially acknowledged by her own sect and is treated like a specter, her reaction is only natural in a way. Strictly speaking she is a person with emotions, not some divine artifact.”
That was unexpected.
“…Not acknowledged? Cast out?”
“Mm.”
Jegal Sea set down her cup and picked up a red apple. With a crisp sound she began peeling it.
“You really don’t know a thing, do you? I thought she had opened up to you at least a little, so I figured you might have heard something.”
“I’m not exactly gifted with smooth talk or a sociable, friendly personality….”
I felt a brief flush of embarrassment but pressed on.
“You already know that.”
“Idiot. Lunatic. Mad dog. Rage-control disorder who goes for the throat the moment he’s provoked. A man who can be rational one second and then sees nothing once his eyes flip.”
“…Jegal Sea.”
Still peeling the apple with a languid expression, she went on.
“—But also the martial artist I acknowledge more than anyone: someone who feels shame over his own shortcomings and strives to improve in every direction. That’s you, Moyong Bi, isn’t it?”
“You pile on the insults and then say something like that?”
“People who reach the peak in any field never have unscarred hearts or completely normal personalities. Just accept it. It’s my habit.”
I had definitely heard those words before.
“Eun Seollyeong said almost the exact same thing in the past.”
“She also reached the absolute peak of a field with nothing but her bare body, so of course she would have the same experience. Anyone who carries a wound that can jolt them awake from sleep is left with only two choices, no matter the field.”
She placed the fully peeled apple on the plate in front of me.
“Either they are slowly eaten alive by that endlessly reopened wound until they die in agony, or they sublimate the pain of that wound into explosive rage and infinite drive that pushes them forward. Do you think those grinning fools floating on pure happiness have that kind of drive? No. That’s just the idle fantasy of dilettantes who have never tasted the extreme. In a person’s life—”
Jegal Sea clasped her hands together.
“Extreme pain either kills you or creates something new. One or the other.”
“Stop talking in circles I can’t follow and tell me what you mean by her being cast out. And why she’s acting like this all of a sudden.”
She rummaged in her robes and produced a blue ornament with silver carving around the rim.
“This is…?”
The silver-tinged ornament was turning black from one corner.
“This is called a Seonhyeop Stone. It reacts to demonic energy within one jang. And right now it’s turning black in real time. I wonder whose fault that is. And it isn’t only the stone.”
Jegal Sea frowned as she looked at me.
“Looking at you now, I can feel something like a damp darkness. If even an untrained scholar like me can sense it, what the hell happened to you?”
“…!”
I had been too disoriented right after recovering from my injuries. I checked my dantian.
This is bad.
Centered on the Heavenly Demon Jade, demonic energy was still the dominant force flowing through my body. I hurriedly closed my eyes and concentrated. I pushed the Heavenly Demon Jade off to one side as it had originally been and recentered everything on my original dantian. I felt the four jiazi of righteous energy stored there reassert themselves and begin circulating through my body in a full cycle. A clean, refreshing sensation drove out the thick, damp demonic energy. In the process a faint metallic taste of blood rose from within, and numbness spread down to the soles of my feet.
Still, it’s far smoother than the first time.
Mumyeong quietly made the minute adjustments I could not manage myself, letting the spreading demonic energy and the energy being reined in miss each other by the thickness of a single sheet of paper. When I opened my eyes again, a faint red glow had briefly shone in them before fading.
Jegal Sea glanced at the now-clear Seonhyeop Stone and said,
“Wow, this is genuinely monstrous. Is this even possible? Demonic energy and righteous energy coexisting? Even a mere scholar like me finds it absurd. If the high-ranking masters of Kunlun or Shaolin saw this process they would foam at the mouth.”
“You’re saying Eun Seollyeong reacted that way because of the demonic energy?”
She nodded.
“The Demonic Cult is currently treated as a dead entity even within the Mount Hua Sect, and it is the most direct culprit that made her wander for an eternity. Looking like a demonic being and actively radiating the demonic energy that symbolizes them are completely different things.”
She put weight on the word “completely.” I felt a question rise.
“But Eun Seollyeong is the Guardian of the Mount Hua Sect. How can the Guardian of one of the Nine Sects and One Gang be treated as a dead existence?”
“Even the name Eun Seollyeong is something like a dharma name she received when she became a Guardian; it isn’t her real name. Didn’t you ever find it strange that a Guardian lives at Cheonsubaekryeonsa instead of her own main sect? Have you ever once seen her announce her identity and receive proper treatment wherever she goes? You haven’t, have you?”
“…!”
It felt as if I had been struck on the back of the head. She had always, wherever she went, taken one step back. She had never boldly declared herself the Guardian of Mount Hua and demanded or received special treatment. Ironically, the only ones who had ever sensed her identity even a little were not orthodox martial artists but people like Jeokmaryeong or black-path fighters who had faced her strength directly on the battlefield.
Jegal Sea drove the final nail into my wavering pupils.
“Mount Hua already has an official Guardian—they simply lack the jade. She is not the official Guardian. She is nothing more than a specter wandering in order to atone.”
“What on earth happened?”
Fingering her teacup, Jegal Sea spoke.
“I only overheard fragments from her long ago, but you know of the Orthodox-Demonic Great War among the old events of the jianghu, right? Back then, because of Eun Seollyeong’s mistake, five branches of the Mount Hua Sect and countless innocent civilians were massacred by the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult. In that single accident, two thousand civilians and sixty percent of Mount Hua’s strength were wiped out.”
I could say nothing. She looked at me and continued.
“Since that day she has not been able to take a single step forward. Together with the curse of never aging.”
With that she fell silent. The teacup in front of me had gone completely cold. After a long silence Jegal Sea spoke to me with a bitter smile.
“That kind of person finally opened her heart a little, only to discover you carried demonic energy. How do you think she felt?”
I raised my head.
“There are circumstances—!”
“I know. There must be unavoidable circumstances. That’s why I’m sitting here right now—to hear them. Since you can’t talk properly anyway, I’ll listen and pass it on to Eun Seollyeong. Don’t you know Jegal Sea, master of rhetoric? Anyway, if I mediate somehow between you two, for the time being…. Well, she isn’t going to kill you out of the blue.”
“….”
My head was a tangled mess. Jegal Sea stood up.
“And prepare to leave.”
“What?”
“I didn’t come all this way just to mediate between the two of you either. I’m not that free.”
Come to think of it, I still had no idea why Jegal Sea had suddenly appeared here.
“Prepare to leave? What’s going on?”
“I’m taking you and Eun Seollyeong straight to Shaanxi. That’s also the reason I rushed here. Because I hurried, we still have enough time. But to keep the people chasing you from tracking your route, we have to take a detour, so we need to leave right now and move diligently.”
“To Shaanxi…? Wait. I have to return to Cheonsubaekryeonsa—”
I stopped mid-sentence.
“Ah….”
A month had already passed. When I parted from the Ha-mu-gwan trainees of Cheonsubaekryeonsa, I had promised to return within the three-day limit required to pass the Ha-mu-gwan exam. Seeing my complicated expression, Jegal Sea pressed a hand to her forehead.
“Haa, you really are something. Don’t worry about the Ha-mu-gwan exam. Once everything is safely over I might be able to help somehow. Just set that aside for now.”
I looked at her.
“Can you see my thoughts?”
“Your train of thought is always a single straight track, so it’s obvious.”
“Why Shaanxi all of a sudden? Is something happening?”
I tried to change the subject out of embarrassment. At the question her eyes narrowed.
“It’s been a month since an ownerless jade was openly activated in Gwando. Do you really think nothing happened in the meantime?”
I remembered the moment just before I was about to consume the Sichuan Tang Family Guardian’s jade from the wooden case—the enormous wave of power that had erupted from the jade-colored gem and swept in every direction.
“Then don’t tell me—”
Jegal Sea spoke.
“Not all of them, but a few Guardians who happened to be nearby and possessed exceptionally sharp sensory perception definitely felt the presence of a jade that appeared and then vanished near Gwando. And here’s the real problem.”
She let out a long sigh.
“One of the Guardians who sensed it at that moment happens to be a Guardian-level madman known as a bloodthirsty demon—one of the Eight Demon Dragons. That’s the issue.”
“The Eight Demon Dragons?”
I had definitely heard the name a few times. Eun Seollyeong had mentioned it in passing as well. Gang Chisang, the expelled former Guardian of the Jeomchang Sect I had clashed with at Inhyeon Gorge, was also entangled with that group. And suddenly I understood. This was the opening curtain of the Guardian War.
“That demon whose brain is pickled in demonic energy and who has no reason left is slowly heading this way. His target is almost certainly you, the one who was sensed near Gwando. And he’s cleverly traveling along the mountain range that forms the border zone between the Demonic Cult, the Blood Cult, and the orthodox factions. From my position as the eldest daughter of the Jegal Family—the master of Shaanxi—the problem is this.”
I felt how serious the situation truly was. I had steeled myself, yet the reality of facing a spark that had fallen into a powder keg was far beyond anything I had imagined.
“I don’t care who eats a jade or what you martial artists do among yourselves, but the end of that damned straight path that leads all the way to Gwando just happens to be our Shaanxi. We have to stop that nightmare before it enters our territory—no matter what.”
“…And if we fail to stop it before it enters?”
Jegal Sea bit her lip.
“Do you really have to ask? Failure is not an option. That’s why I’m taking the two of you—the strongest cards I know. Those useless high-ups in the Murim Alliance keep spouting garbage about how they can’t freely deploy regular forces because it’s a border region, how it might provoke the Demonic Cult and Blood Cult and sow the seeds of conflict, how we should just watch and wait until the situation becomes clearer. Why do the people at the top always act the same whether it’s the imperial court or the murim?”
After ranting in fury for a long while, she suddenly shut her mouth as if cut by a knife. Then she spoke in a voice so low I had never heard anything like it from her before.
“If we fail, even if nowhere else is touched, at the very least the entire population of Shaanxi will be massacred on a scale that makes the complete awakening of the Ten Thousand Blood Emperor look like a joke.”
“….”
She was trying to act nonchalant, but her face was rigid with tension.
“Those things don’t even possess the intelligence to hold a conversation. They’re demons that even the Blood Cult and Demonic Cult cast out, saying they are no longer human.”