A Smile Under the Golden Dawn
“Haa… haa…”
The night was over.
The darkness that had seemed as if it would never end was finally fading.
Far in the distance, the eastern sky was breaking open.
A bright dawn was rising.
The golden light of daybreak swallowed the last fading stars of the small hours, painting the night sky with its glow.
Beneath that dawn, the midsection of the mountain range lay exposed as if a veil had been torn away—sheared clean through as though a giant shovel had slammed down upon it.
The land revealed below was a scene of pure devastation.
Mountains.
Lakes.
Fields.
Stone.
Trees.
Every boundary between them had been pulverized and churned together, as if the earth itself had been overturned in preparation for reclaiming a tidal flat.
Not a single birdcall could be heard.
There was no sound of any kind.
A thick, choking silence, dense as ground ink, pressed down upon every breath of air.
An ultimate secret art of total annihilation, reducing every living thing within its range to nothingness without distinction of friend or foe—a technique forged solely for massacre.
This martial art of the Cherry Blossom Dragon was the culmination of her life and her cultivation. It was also her curse.
From the beginning, its root had been the bitter hatred and grudge she bore toward the world she had endured—a technique born of her desire to erase everything, an outpouring of pure rage.
After the disciples and retainers of the Mount Hua Sect she was meant to protect had been slaughtered by her own hands, the orthodox factions had officially recognized her actions as self-defense.
But that recognition had been nothing more than empty words.
How can a human martial art be so tyrannical…!
That technique holds no benevolence, no righteousness, no chivalry.
It is a disgrace to the honor of the orthodox path.
And so she had been cast out.
The leadership of the orthodox factions, flushed with victory after the Great Orthodox-Demonic War, had been certain a long age of peace would follow.
There had been no formal stripping of her title, yet another Guardian of Mount Hua had been quietly registered in her place. Rather than keep Eun Seollyeong as Guardian, they had willingly chosen to endure decades of vacancy, fashion a new gemstone through the Flowering Rite, and elevate a successor who better suited their dignity.
During that vacancy—because she had never been formally deposed—they still summoned her for various duties whenever it was convenient. Even that, however, faded as the new Guardian settled into the role, and they discarded her like a hunting dog once the hares were dead.
“Haa… haa…”
Across that ruined ground, Eun Seollyeong’s faint breathing echoed.
Her face was deathly pale, as though she had poured every last scrap of strength into a desperate sprint.
“…Moyong Bi.”
No one answered her whisper.
Nothing stirred in response to her breath.
No one looked at her.
Like the sole survivor left alone in a world where every other soul had perished, she stared blankly at the desolate landscape spread before her eyes.
“Just like then.”
Her eyes trembled violently.
In her hands, the shattered Demon-Slaying Crystals were flowing back to her like silver mist, reclaiming themselves.
“Exactly the same as then.”
Eun Seollyeong blinked without a sound.
“Eons have passed. I struggled so hard to move forward—”
With every blink, clear tears burst forth and streamed down her cheeks.
“In the end, nothing had changed at all.”
She stood like a stone stele abandoned in a weed-choked shrine, as if she had been standing there for countless ages.
—Stagger.
Eun Seollyeong’s body swayed.
A wind rose.
“You clearly promised this lady.”
She steadied her trembling frame.
“You said you were different from the others. That you were not weak. This lady knows that.”
—Clink.
The Demon-Slaying Crystals slipped from her grasp.
“How desperately you wanted to live. How badly you wanted to be happy. This lady knows.”
She took one step forward.
“You yourself said you were dull-witted. This lady knows. You said you were unsociable, that you did not fit in, that you had a temper and could not control yourself. This lady knows.”
Her eyes were brimming with tears.
“Among all the countless men this lady has watched, none has had flaws as clear-cut as yours. And yet… and yet…”
Tears filled her eyes completely.
“At the very least, you were never a man who tossed out empty words the way the others did, were you?”
Eun Seollyeong began to run.
“…Did you not promise me?!”
She sprinted like a madwoman toward the last place he had been.
Everything had been plowed under and heaved upward; the waters of the lake had mixed with the earth until every stretch of ground showed the black, wet underflesh of the land.
—Squelch!
She dropped willingly to her knees in that mire, white martial robes and all.
“Moyong Bi, please… please!”
With both hands she clawed frantically through the mud.
“You’re alive. You have to be alive… you must be…! You must!”
Eun Seollyeong wailed.
Sobs broke from her eyes. Her expression was that of someone whose entire world was collapsing.
“You said you would survive…! You said with such certainty that you weren’t the kind of man who would die like this!”
Dirt packed beneath her fingernails. Scratches opened across the pale skin of her forearms above the rolled-up sleeves of her robes.
With every drop of internal energy spent, her hands received no protection at all. She did not care. Bare-handed she tore at rock and rough earth.
Both hands turned red. Blood ran.
“Please… please…!”
She screamed. It was a cry laden with every regret she had ever carried.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I’m sorry I slapped you then…! I knew better than anyone that you weren’t that sort of person…! Why do I… why do I keep doing the same foolish things over and over…!”
She dug one spot, then another, then the next, clawing and clawing until she moved sideways and began again.
“I couldn’t even apologize properly… I clung to my pride right to the end…!”
No one understood better than she did.
No living creature could have survived the storm of blades.
“I… I…”
Eun Seollyeong wept without sound.
“In the end I—”
That was when it happened.
Behind her, the mud stirred.
It was a bright light.
“…Cough. Cough.”
I was buried in mud.
With the last of my strength I forced my arm to move and scraped away the sludge covering my face.
I blinked stiff, crusted eyes.
The sky came into view—filled with golden dawn. Clouds drifted past. Beneath their shadows, shafts of golden light fell like fine curtains, swaying gently as they touched the earth.
I moved mud-caked lips and whispered in a hoarse voice.
“My ears hurt… stop shouting so close to me…”
Eun Seollyeong slowly turned.
She stared at me, half-buried in the mud pit.
“…Heavens above.”
She murmured as if she could not believe it.
“Cough…”
With difficulty I shoved aside whatever mud and debris had been covering my upper body.
—Clink.
Beside me, two half-broken shards of Demon-Slaying Crystal—now flattened and dulling of light—tumbled free.
“How…”
Eun Seollyeong looked at me, then at the shattered crystals lying at my side.
—Huum…
As their true master gazed upon them, the Demon-Slaying Crystals resonated faintly, as if reporting that their duty was done.
—Crackle.
They crumbled into fine fragments and seeped between the folds of her robes.
Eun Seollyeong murmured,
“The Demon-Slaying Crystals… protected you of their own will? Amid a storm of blades, with crystals of the same essence?”
Before answering I cleared my throat three times, thick with blood, and tried to sound as normal as I could—two or three pitches higher than my true voice. Brighter. More alive. More at ease.
“…Probably.”
When the storm of blades had swallowed me, I had seen the two half-broken Demon-Slaying Crystals streak toward me like arrows.
Host, curl up!
At Mumyeong’s urgent cry I had reflexively rolled my body into a ball. After that, nothing.
Eun Seollyeong said,
“Impossible. For the Demon-Slaying Crystals to act of their own will, separate from their master’s qualifications, they must first acknowledge the very existence and pride of the person themselves.”
I managed a weak laugh.
“…Haha. Lucky they thought well of me, I gue— Eun Seollyeong?”
She rose from where she had been kneeling. Her knees were stained red. The white martial robes, filthy with mud, swayed as she staggered toward me.
“Eun Seollyeong?”
—Thud.
She collapsed in front of me as if her strength had given out.
I thought I felt a white breath against my skin.
—Whoosh.
Eun Seollyeong threw her arms around me.
“… …….”
Her murmuring mouth was buried against my shoulder. I could not make out the words. Because she was holding me, I could not see her face.
“My clothes are filthy…”
I started to speak, then looked at her shoulder.
“….”
I stopped.
Her shoulders were shaking.
I simply stayed still, arms hanging limp, staring blankly at the sky like a broken wooden doll.
In my entire life, had there ever been a single person who truly feared for my death? Not once—not in front of me, at least.
Had anyone ever worn an expression of genuine, heart-dropping dread at the thought that something might have happened to me? Never that either.
I had lived without a single family member. Without a lover. Without a friend. I had lived by flipping a coin again and again under a rule that said heads meant death and tails meant survival—always until heads finally came up.
This feeling—worry and relief—must be something utterly ordinary for people who have family, lovers, friends. For someone who had walked the world alone, it was a collision of emotions so unfamiliar it left me reeling.
Far away, the golden dawn continued to rise.
Suddenly I remembered the first time I had met her—before the gates of Cheonsubaekryeonsa.
I had been dying then, my abdomen slashed open by the peddler-assassins sent by Moyong Jinryong, first son of the Moyong Family. I had been lying on the ground, and Eun Seollyeong had been looking down at me. Her eyes had been ice-cold, filled only with duty—as if it would not matter in the least if I died right there in front of her.
So much had happened since then.
I had walked endless fields with her. Shared meals with her. Borrowed a kitchen and cooked together so we could feed the orphans. Fought back-to-back with her. Watched fireworks with her in a ruined shrine.
And through every one of those moments she had never truly been looking at me. She had been staring at something beyond me.
Blue moonlight.
What was different now was—
“…! …!!! ……!”
Eun Seollyeong was weeping openly. Beneath the golden dawn she was crying, arms locked around my shoulders, and I felt my shoulder grow warm and wet with her tears.
The grudge of eons, the ice of ages—everything was melting all at once. She cried without sound, hitching and sniffling, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. There was not a trace of the solemn expression she usually wore.
Who would look at her now and think of the Guardian, the adult of a great sect?
She was more than two handspans shorter than I was. Her shoulders were small. Setting aside the years she had lived, she looked far younger than me, and the true self that remained after she set down the countless burdens that age should never have been forced to carry was endlessly ordinary.
The woman crying in front of me was not a martial artist, not a Guardian—only a girl with a fragile face.
“….”
I wanted at least to hold her in return. But my body was broken; I could not so much as twitch a finger.
So I simply stayed in her arms and watched the distant dawn break open.
“…I didn’t die, you know.”
I spoke in a pale, broken voice, spacing the words out.
“I’m not dead… so why are you crying like I am…? Stop crying. Or are you sad that I lived?”
“……This lady… would never…”
Even at my joke she tried to answer in earnest.
“Then stop.”
“But… but… even when I try to make another expression…”
She hiccupped as she spoke.
“This lady… has never experienced this before. I do not know what face I am supposed to make right now.”
“…Expression?”
My body was clearly ruined beyond measure, yet I felt almost no pain. Perhaps that was a small kindness Mumyeong had left for me before he collapsed into unconsciousness after exhausting himself.
I said to Eun Seollyeong,
“I’ve thought about it before. I had a similar experience once. In cases like this…”
I told her,
“Just smile.”
“….”
“Smiling seems like the best option.”
She looked at me.
A wind rose.
The entire sky was growing bright.
In the distance I could see martial artists rushing toward us amid shouts of joy.
Golden dawn.
“….”
She whispered,
“…Like this?”
The stern brows that had always given her such a rigid air softened and smoothed away. And beneath them—beneath the radiant golden dawn—she looked only at me and smiled widely for the first time, tears still shining at the corners of her eyes.
“….”
The sight was so breathtakingly beautiful that I forgot to breathe. She looked like a woman who lived in an entirely different world from a creature like me.
I would stake my life that no one had ever seen anything but Eun Seollyeong’s stern expression. No one had ever seen her smile like this.
The thought made me laugh softly without meaning to.
Eun Seollyeong bristled.
“Why—why… why are you laughing?!”
“No reason. Just…”
“I-it can be awkward to smile, you know!”
I hastily changed the subject.
“Anyway…”
Long ago, in a situation just like this, I had spoken while half-unconscious.
“I’m hungry.”
Eun Seollyeong blinked.
“Hungry?”
“Yeah.”
The answer was already decided.
I smiled weakly and said,
“…Meat. Yeah. I’d like to eat my fill of meat for once.”
Those were the same words I had spoken when I first met her at Cheonsubaekryeonsa, as I slipped into unconsciousness. Back then I had been lying on the ground and she had been looking down at me. At my somewhat absurd request, a flicker of puzzlement had crossed those lofty silver eyes.
But she had lived through countless years. She had experience.
A wind rose. Her silver hair streamed out behind her. She looked at the sky. She looked at me lying on the ground. She looked at herself.
“Ah.”
At last she understood what I was trying to say.
I smiled faintly at her and spoke once more.
“Will you make me the same promise this time?”
Everything was identical to the beginning—the people, the postures, even the sky.
Only the reaction of the person listening had changed with the passage of time.
Eun Seollyeong said,
“Once your body has recovered.”
In the distance I could see Jegal Sea running toward us, shouting with joy. Martial artists. People of Shaanxi rushing closer.
“You will be able to eat meat to your heart’s content. This lady promises.”
Under the golden sky, Eun Seollyeong spoke softly.
“For Eun Seollyeong, Guardian of Mount Hua, has decided so for you, Moyong Bi.”
I smiled faintly—good.
And with that, my consciousness began to fade.
Which is why, at the very end, I missed the words Jegal Sea muttered when she finally arrived, mouth hanging wide open.
“…Don’t tell me I just witnessed the Covenant of the Sacred Mountain being traded for a single meal of meat. That can’t possibly be what I just saw… right?”