Blood and Dandelions
Drip… drip….
Blood fell from the serrated blades of Myeolseom clenched in my hand.
Far off, crows began to gather one and two at a time. Drawn by the reek of fresh blood, wild beasts started closing in. Ants crawled beneath my feet, scattering in every direction to escape the rising flood of crimson.
Before me lay the bandits, torn to ragged pieces.
I flicked the blood into the empty air. Letting go of the dagger’s hilt and giving my hand a downward shake, the wire linked to my wrist guard pulled taut with a sharp metallic rasp, and the blade was drawn back into the sheath mounted on my forearm guard as if swallowed whole.
Feeling the heavy weight of steel, I walked forward.
Ahead stood the man who looked to be the last remaining chieftain.
“S-stop.”
I halted.
A child was locked in the bandit chieftain’s grip. The boy’s face had turned a deep purple. The bandit hurriedly jammed his blade up under the child’s jaw and shouted.
“St-stop right there! Come any closer and I’ll kill the kid!”
…
I slowly tilted my head to one side. My red gaze remained fixed on the bandit’s face as if nailed there. My footsteps did not stop.
“How—how…!”
Half out of his mind, the bandit chieftain screamed.
“This can’t be happening! This is insane! What the hell are you? What are you?!”
“A martial artist. Orthodox faction, if you couldn’t tell.”
“Don’t give me that crap!!”
The bandit chieftain slashed the air left and right with his blade.
“What—what orthodox martial artist commits a massacre like this?! Are you even human?! Huh?! To people—to people—!”
Bodies lay scattered in every direction as if a thunder-bomb had gone off, every last one of them torn apart.
“You swung a saw!”
Not a single cut among them was clean. Wherever they had thrashed, wherever they had resisted, everything had been ripped free, broken, shredded to pieces.
I spoke calmly and kept walking closer.
“It’s not a saw. It’s a dagger. Like someone once said—the kind of blade a brat would use.”
“H-hiiik. Stay back! Stay back! Stay back!!”
I did not stop.
The bandit screamed as if his soul were leaving him.
“St… stay—!!”
Thud.
I walked straight past him.
“Uh… huh? You’re just… walking by?”
I pushed aside the tall grass that had been blocking my view.
A low buzz filled the air. Flies were already swarming.
More than ten men and women lay with a shattered carriage. The women’s clothes were torn. The men had died trying to the very end to protect their companions and families.
…
I closed my eyes for a moment. Then opened them.
Among those corpses was one of a woman whose clothes had been ripped open, a child still clutched in her arms, a blade driven through her body.
“Just…”
My voice was bone-dry. At the very end of it, the faintest hint of moisture remained.
“Just why is everyone so desperate to kill? So desperate to devour? Huh?”
I felt the dry, cracked skin of my upper lip and spoke as if each word might snap.
“I really do wish I could be like the heroes in those tall tales. Look at a corpse, watch my enemies die, and just laugh—cold, bitter, detached. I truly want that… But I can’t. Not even a little. Instead—”
I spun on my heel and strode straight toward the bandit without a moment’s hesitation.
“—all that fills my head is rage soaked in pure malice.”
“I told you not to come any—!”
My body flickered like a shadow and appeared right in front of him.
Crunch.
My forearm, still wearing the steel dagger sheath, whipped across and smashed into the bandit’s jaw. Flesh shoved sideways; the jaw tore free. His neck twisted and was about to snap when my other hand shot out, seized it, and locked it in place.
I drove my fist up into his Adam’s apple, hoisted him off the ground, and slammed him into the dirt.
Boom!
The bandit could not even scream.
In that same instant the unconscious child was flung into the air like a broken doll, arms flailing. An instant before he hit the ground my foot shot out like lightning.
Whap.
The instant the back of my foot touched the child’s back, my thigh and calf swelled as if about to burst. The falling body stopped as suddenly as water soaking into paper. Balancing the child on the tip of my big toe, I slowly lowered my leg and set him down.
Thud.
A clump of white dandelion fluff lying on the ground swayed as softly as cotton and settled back into place. The seeds drifted away on the early-autumn breeze.
The child remained unconscious, breathing in a steady rhythm as if he had simply fallen into a deep sleep, eyes still closed.
The bandit, belatedly registering the pain, thrashed and tried to scream. My hand shot out like lightning.
“Mmph! Mmph-mmph!”
I clamped my palm over his mouth, straddled him, and clenched my fist.
Under the bright sun of a clear early-autumn noon, my gaze—red eyes gleaming while my fist stayed tight—cast a black shadow across the bandit’s face.
Terrified out of his mind, he shrieked through the gaps between my fingers.
“I’m sorry, somebody help, somebody help! Isn’t there anyone?! There’s a demon here, a demon—!”
Crack!!
The heel of my fist drove down like a hammer, shattering teeth and burying itself in his face.
“Huuu.”
I picked up the ruined corpse like a rag and tossed it to the pack of wolves that had been watching me in silence. Taking that as their signal, the beasts that had been waiting only for my cue swarmed in at once.
There were many predators feeding, yet not a single creature approached me. A wolf that had to cross my path tucked its tail and edged past with a low whine. Crows banked wide around me before settling on the bodies.
I slung the child over my shoulder. Checking again and again that he had not woken, I gathered the corpses. I broke the carriage into firewood, stacked it, and piled the dead on top. Snapping my fingers against the wood, a bolt of pure black lightning leapt up as if striking down from the sky. The pyre roared to life and everything vanished into flame.
I looked at the ground. Long wheel tracks of the carriage still marked the dirt road.
…
I glanced once at the child, then followed the tracks.
A fork appeared. The village I had originally been heading for lay to the left. The carriage ruts, however, came out of the right-hand path.
I kicked off the ground and shot up into a tall ancient tree in a single bound, climbing all the way to the needle-thin tip. Balancing my entire weight on the tip of one big toe, I poured power into my eyes.
Far in the distance I saw white smoke that looked like cooking fires. The location, to be precise, lay past the village I was supposed to visit, past Shaanxi itself, a little farther on.
“Mumyeong.”
In the abyss a pair of red eyes opened. A chill that seemed to wrap around the nape of my neck prickled against my skin. Feeling Mumyeong’s presence—faint for a moment, now solid once more—I spoke.
“Even if we go by way of that village, we can still reach Shaanxi within the time I promised Jegal Sea, right?”
Black mist poured out behind me and rose upward. The shadow of a black dog rippled, scanning every direction. Mumyeong returned and whispered into my mind.
“However?”
“…Caught between them?”
The black dog’s head turned to look at me.
I leapt down from the tree. As my feet fell, vital energy concentrated along them.
Red afterimages bloomed. The body blurred into a straight-line breakthrough of extreme speed.
I skimmed the ground, then began trampling through the grass. My body blurred and grew faster still. Crackling black lightning coiled around the characteristic red afterimages of Hyeol-yeong-mu-hwan-sin-sul—less intense than when I used demonic qi, but unmistakable.
The walls of Shaanxi, which I should have entered by a detour, appeared faintly beyond the forest and then vanished again. I left them behind and pressed on.
I arrived at the entrance of the village I had marked as my destination. People moving between the houses one by one poked their heads out and stared. The villagers eyed the sudden stranger with open wariness. The child on my back began to stir and open his eyes.
I spoke to the villagers.
“Does anyone here know this child’s family?”
Several of them recognized the boy on my back. A middle-aged man stepped forward.
“Who are you? No—why is Jinryong with you? The boy was only supposed to guide a merchant family and their party along the road…”
“There was a bandit attack. Are you a relative of the child?”
The man flinched at the word “bandit.” His face grew heavy as he shook his head.
“No. No kin or family of mine.”
“Then do you know if he has any other relatives somewhere?”
The man answered flatly.
“The only one he had left was his mother. She froze to death last winter.”
Thoom…!
The earth trembled faintly. A roe deer that had been grazing jerked its head up in alarm.
Crunch!!
It was crushed in a single instant, bursting apart as if squeezed. The deer’s torso flattened into a paste stuck to the ground; only the head rolled free, as if it still had no idea what had happened. Birds took flight.
Thoom…! Thoom…!
With the sound of the earth’s axis shaking, a colossal human silhouette walked on. Matching its enormous height, the shock of each footfall left deep prints and made heaven and earth resound.
“So that’s one of those Eight Demon Dragons I’ve only heard about.”
The Lower Gate investigator dispatched on Jegal Sea’s commission could barely breathe. He prided himself on stealth above all else, yet crouched in the grass with only his eyes showing, he felt every surface of his jaw and the cloth covering his head grow soaked with cold sweat.
“All it’s done so far is kill every beast that enters its sight while walking in a dead-straight line. What the hell is this thing even doing?”
He swallowed hard.
“Calling it a cursed vengeful spirit or a wraith rather than a person would be far more accurate.”
It stood half again taller than a long-limbed adult man. Tattered, filthy bandages were wound from crown to sole. Pus dripped from them. The skin visible between the wrappings had rotted past recognition into pure black. Below the navel, a hideous cavity showed where something had been gouged out as if by a sharp dagger.
Hiss…
In its wake, dense demonic qi left everything dead. Crackling yellow lightning flickered and vanished in the trail of that thick demonic energy.
The investigator noticed something odd.
“What—this thing doesn’t even have a sword.”
In its right hand it gripped an iron bow taller than itself, the weapon wrapped in rusted metal thorns. The lower end of the bow had been sharpened like an iron stake, radiating a sinister menace.
“A bow? An archer…? Martial artists who take the bow as their main weapon are rare in the jianghu.”
Hooo… hoooo…
Like something sunk in the deep sea, the giant demonic being walked on, exhaling long, regular, abyssal breaths. Beasts that foolishly drew near were crushed into paste by formless pressure that fell from the air like an iron mace—crunch, thump, boom—and left as smears on the ground. When a large tree blocked the way, the tree burst under the invisible force and cleared the path. When a boulder stood in the way, the boulder split and crumbled aside. From start to finish its route was a flawless straight line without a single deviation.
Hooo… hooo… hoook!
The demonic being suddenly lifted its head. It fixed its gaze on something far away in empty air. Without even the sound of breathing, red light spilled from beneath its hood as it stared for a long time.
The investigator held his breath.
“What? It hasn’t stopped once until now.”
He quickly unrolled a map, checked the direction, and looked up.
“In that direction there’s only a cluster of slash-and-burn farmers, not even a proper vill—”
The demonic being stamped its foot.
KRAAAANG!
With a massive roar both feet sank deep into the earth. The iron bow spun and coiled into the bandaged hand. The lower end of the bow slammed into the ground like a stake, carving a deep scar into the land. As the being spread its fingers, enormous demonic qi began to concentrate. It took the form of a single arrow of pure gang qi.
A soul-rending wail of the damned rose as the bowstring, already strung with that lightning-wreathed arrow of gang qi, was drawn back with brutal strength—then released.
A flash of pure white light filled the world.
ZZEOOOONG!!
A colossal roar and lightning shook the earth’s axis. Everything that had filled the dense forest ahead was erased in an instant. Everything in sight vanished. Far away, the remnants of the houses where the slash-and-burn farmers had once lived collapsed slowly, plowed under. Burning corpses of people tumbled across the ground.
Thoom…!
The demonic being tilted its head slightly, then yanked the iron bow free of the soil and took another step.
“…No way.”
An ominous possibility flashed through the investigator’s mind.
“It wasn’t just beasts. It’s been killing every living thing near it as it advanced…?”
He saw the path of the Eight Demon Dragon begin to shift by the slightest degree. The Lower Gate investigator’s eyes bulged as if they would pop from his skull.
“It changed course.”
Thud, thud, thud…!
Thudthudthudthudthud!!
The footsteps quickened. It began to run.
“Damn it!”
The investigator frantically searched his robes and pulled out an emergency bamboo signal rocket.
“This was never part of the plan—I have to get this information out—!”
Whish!
The sound of air being cut. A chill ran down his spine; he looked up.
“Shit.”
He muttered under his breath.
“It already knew I was here—”
Crunch!
Formless pressure crushed his entire body except the wrist into paste. The hand holding the bamboo tube was severed and spun through the air. The tube in that wrist smashed hard against the ground.
Fwoooosh…
BOOM!!!
A crimson firework burst open in the sky.
Thudthudthudthud…!
The entire world began to shake under the giant’s accelerating stride.