The Corpse Merchant's Wager
At first, my memories would not connect.
I could not recall what I had been doing moments before, or even what station I had held in life. It was a strange sensation. I found myself wondering if this was what it felt like to die.
The world was choked with fog—and that fog was red.
Then a sound reached me.
Screee…
It was the scorching cry of late summer heat, the death rattle of a cicada burned past endurance.
I looked down.
Tremble…
A cicada lay on its back, legs twitching weakly. I raised my head and took in my surroundings.
Screeeee…
Only the dying song of cicadas filled this place, thin and breaking. What filled my vision was a crimson twilight, and a forest that seemed to stretch on forever. A forest steeped in blood-colored dusk.
“….”
I lifted a hand and swept it through the air. There was no sensation of parting the atmosphere at all. I looked up at a sky drowning in twilight. Not a single cloud. In a forest this vast, one ought to have felt at least a breath of wind—yet there was none.
A world endlessly familiar, and yet so alien it raised the hair on my skin. In all my memory, only one landscape matched this.
“Maseonrim.”
“Ah, so you’ve developed something of an eye for these things, I see.”
Someone stepped out from the darkness thick with undergrowth.
Crunch. Crunch.
His hands were clasped behind his back. Robes blacker than mine, yet of the same cut, swayed with each step.
“Suddenly I am reminded of the first time we met. You were such a hopeless child then… Shall I call it deeply moving?”
His feet never quite touched the earth. Blades of grass no thicker than strands of hair did not so much as bend beneath him. He approached me with unhurried grace. There was dignity in every motion. Calm. Courtesy. A demure restraint. And in all of it, a chilling dread more piercing than anything I had ever known.
I nodded as I watched him.
“Yeah. I figured a bastard like you would show up sooner or later.”
“Aha?”
The man chuckled softly.
“As expected of our young master Moyong Bi.”
He wiped his dry lips and folded both hands together—calm, polite, deferential.
“This is precisely why I am so fond of you.”
His bright yellow eyes blinked once, smiling quietly.
“And still you have no intention of asking my name?”
“Even after all this time, your bad taste hasn’t changed. Mara Jin.”
The yellow-eyed Mara Jin looked almost disappointed.
“The more people who become aware of my existence, the greater my joy, you see.”
“….”
“I sincerely hope that one day young master Moyong Bi will grow curious enough to ask after my true name.”
“That day will never come.”
Mara Jin smiled quietly and tilted his head.
“To cut me off so cleanly… how hurtful. Did your master perhaps give you some word of warning?”
“I barely ever meet my master, and he’s never once mentioned a corpse peddler like you.”
“Corpse peddler… Such a crude, vulgar expression.”
Mara Jin smacked his lips.
“You seem far too tense. Is it that the air of this forest is making you needlessly self-aware? Hmm. Now that I think of it, I haven’t even prepared refreshments. Whatever shall we do?”
“….”
Mara Jin smiled.
“To invite a guest and offer no hospitality is something I simply cannot abide. It is a principle of mine—every bit as important as keeping promised rules.”
He raised his hands.
Clap. Clap.
He struck his palms twice. I blinked.
The first thing I noticed was the scent of old timber—and incense.
Tok-tok-tok…
In the distance, the regular rhythm of a wooden fish drum.
“Do you find this more to your liking? After all, your master Asura would have favored a place like this as well.”
“…This is…”
An ancient temple. Mara Jin and I stood in the center of an empty main hall. Upon the raised platform loomed a great gilt statue of Shakyamuni Buddha. Arrayed beside it were one hundred and eight smaller Buddha images. From the ceiling hung lotus lanterns, each folded by hand, stitch by stitch.
Creak.
The hall doors opened. A monk entered carrying a tray with a teapot. His eyes met ours where we stood in the middle of the hall. They went wide.
“Wh-who—!”
Mara Jin clapped once.
Clap.
Everything stopped. He walked over, took the tray, and lifted it.
“Mmm. The monks of Shaolin these days certainly have more refinement than they used to.”
He lifted the teapot lid and sniffed.
“In the old days they would only brew tea from bodhi fruit and keep anyone from even approaching… so they have taken in a great deal of worldly culture, have they?”
Mara Jin fetched two sitting mats stacked to one side of the hall and tossed them onto the floor between us. He gestured at the frozen monk. The man moved stiffly, like a doll with broken joints, and knelt between the mats as if he himself were a table.
“Do sit. Better than Maseonrim, no? Heh heh.”
Mara Jin set the teapot on the monk’s back.
“There is no need to hate or guard against me so fiercely. In a sense, I am the being closest to you mortals.”
“….”
I looked at the monk. Mara Jin waved a hand gently.
“Hypocritical, pretentious immortals… and other such entities. They are absorbed in their own worlds and have no interest in the likes of you. Only I—Mara Jin—take an interest.”
I looked at him.
“Because you trade in human corpses.”
“I am also the only one capable of acting like a person.”
“At least when I show something ugly, I don’t take pride in it.”
I held his gaze.
“Not like you.”
Mara Jin laughed low in his throat. “Amusing. Truly amusing.”
He lifted the teapot.
“I wonder what our young master Moyong Bi has been eating today… You are remarkably aggressive.”
“Get to the point. Stop circling.”
Mara Jin tilted the pot. Tea streamed out, filling the cups set before us.
“I assumed you already knew why I came, yet you insist on asking. That is…”
He flicked those yellow eyes upward.
“The guilty conscience of a thief, perhaps?”
I met his gaze in silence. Mara Jin continued.
“Patcheon Hyeolma Gunrimbo.”
“….”
“I mentioned it briefly once before, did I not? The five great martial arts of the White Lotus Demon Sect were indeed created by its founding master, the Heavenly Blood Demon. Yet of those five, half the enlightenment that produced Patcheon Hyeolma Gunrimbo came from me. In other words—”
His voice was soft.
“It is a technique that derives from me as well. Bound by the laws of causality, I can instantly sense the first stirrings whenever it is used. And several hundred years ago, when the White Lotus Demon Sect was destroyed, that technique vanished completely from the martial world.”
Trickle…
A thin stream of tea rose in the cup.
“Then yesterday, I felt the stirring of a technique long lost. And its wielder was none other than you. So I grew curious. Who on earth would dare—”
The cup filled. Tea began to overflow.
“—to pass a vanished art on to you?”
“….”
“Ah, and let me say this in advance.”
Mara Jin raised a finger.
“I find lies utterly abhorrent. There are two things that ruin the thrill of a wager: breaking the rules, and lying. So… answer the next question with care.”
Scalding tea began soaking into the back of the kneeling monk.
Hissss.
White steam rose into the air.
“Who is the successor who, without paying me any price at all, so brazenly stole the technique and taught it to you?”
Mara Jin did not right the tilted pot.
Tok-tok-tok…
The wooden fish that should have been silent in stopped time was growing faster.
Tok-tok-tok-tok…!
The sound swelled. I opened my mouth.
“I haven’t understood a single thing you’ve said since you started talking.”
“…Aha. You don’t know?”
Tok-tok-tok-tok-tok…!
Madness began to seep into the drumming. I spoke on.
“If you’d been watching from above, you’d already know exactly how I obtained that technique. Asking me again only means that even a pretender to omniscience like you can’t actually look down on everything.”
“….”
Mara Jin said nothing. His yellow eyes did not blink once.
“As you requested, I’ll answer carefully.”
I spoke each word with deliberate clarity.
“I received no succession from anyone. Therefore the answer to your question about a successor is: I don’t know.”
Time itself seemed frozen. Those yellow eyes bored into me alone. The tea pouring from the pot turned red.
“You don’t know? I ask about the criminal who overturned my entire board, and you dare say you don’t know?”
Crack!
The teapot exploded. Mara Jin rose to his feet.
“You, a mortal fly who reaped the greatest benefit from it, who dare—”
Crunch, creak…
Blood vessels began to web across his yellow eyes.
“Someone who seized Patcheon Hyeolma Gunrimbo without paying me any price—received the transmission, yet claims not to know who gave it?”
Crunch! Crack-crack!
The head of the great Shakyamuni statue was crushed as if by an invisible fist. The smaller images burst one after another, scattering shards in every direction.
I kept my voice even.
“If you’d been watching from above, you’d already know. I never received Patcheon Hyeolma Gunrimbo from any—”
“Lie!!”
Mara Jin’s once-calm, almost human voice twisted. It became the voice of a beast. His frame swelled. He transformed into a seething, bestial shadow that grew and grew until its darkness fell across my face. It was like a nightmare given flesh. With a voice that scraped like claws on damp cave walls, Mara Jin snarled.
“Patcheon Hyeolma Gunrimbo was severed completely several hundred years ago. In my dealings with foolish martial artists who chase strength, nothing was a better lure. And you stole it. Or did you create the technique yourself? Invented it and—oh, what a coincidence—it just happened to match Patcheon Hyeolma Gunrimbo? Ha! Laughable.”
I did not flinch beneath his pressure.
“It’s the truth. I didn’t lie. If you still can’t believe me—”
I did not look away.
Rumble…!!
A crushing weight pressed in from every direction between us.
Snap, crackle!
Black lightning leapt across my body. A dark aura began to coil in my eyes—black flame sheathed in black thunder, with a pure white wick at its heart.
“—then make one of those wagers you love so much.”
“…!”
Something in Mara Jin had been struck.
“…Fine. So that’s how you want to play it? You dare speak of wagers in front of me…?”
His voice was rough.
“First, I’ll grant you this much. You’re right. Even I do not watch you constantly…”
The undulating black beast rolled its yellow eyes.
“To look down upon the world below, I must offer up a portion of causality every single time. Physical interference demands even more. I don’t know how you knew that, but your transparent lie is based on it. However—there is something you failed to consider…!”
“What?”
Mara Jin shoved his yellow-eyed face close to mine.
“Discerning truth from falsehood in the words of a mere mortal? That much I can manage with only a few human souls. Good. The moment you spoke first, the causality of a wager was already established. Just as you wished…!”
He laid a hand on the head of the kneeling monk.
Crack.
And twisted it clean around. Those bright yellow eyes burned with bestial rage.
“From this moment I will test whether falsehood is mixed into your words. If that absurd claim—that you acquired Patcheon Hyeolma Gunrimbo ‘without any specific successor’—is judged true, you win. If there is a successor, I win…!”
I kept silent for a beat, then asked quietly,
“And the stakes?”
Mara Jin answered,
“If I win, you become my proxy. That is all.”
Even without prior knowledge I could feel how much that simple sentence contained. Jegal Sea, who had once taught me the art of speech, had said something similar long ago: the plainest, simplest terms are the most terrifying of all.
I carefully recalled every lesson in rhetoric she had given me, and spoke to Mara Jin with calm precision.
“Fine. Then if I win—”
“If you win? Khhh. If you win, he says.”
Mara Jin’s mouth split in a grin that said the very idea was ridiculous.
“If you win—”
“Wait. Or rather.”
I raised a hand and cut him off.
“…?”
I added one more beat of stage business.
“On second thought, there’s no need to go as far as a wager. I got carried away just now. There’s nothing worth hiding, really. I’m prepared to speak honestly—”
“No!”
Mara Jin severed my words.
“The wager has already begun. Causality, once set in motion, cannot be stopped.”
His eyes rolled wildly.
“Yes—for a thrilling wager, the prices on both sides must be equitable.”
He nodded.
“Very well. If you win, I will gladly sacrifice my own causality to take your side—once. Those are the mutual stakes.”
I studied him for a long moment.
“…You’re truly going through with this wager?”
“Of course! As I already said, the causality is established. A wager cannot be halted midway…!”
He answered without the slightest hesitation. I inclined my head.
“Then I suppose there’s no choice.”
“…!”
The black, bestial bulk that had been swelling around Mara Jin collapsed back into the form of a middle-aged man.
“Ahh. Yes, yes. Young master Moyong Bi.”
He approached with a look of deep satisfaction.
“At first I was thoroughly displeased… but this way, the transaction is actually in my favor. Not just anyone—the disciple of the God of War, and the very one the Heavenly Blood Demon has his eye on—becoming my proxy… Among a thousand years of moments, this is the most exhilarating yet.”
He rummaged in his robes and produced a small silver bead, setting it before me.
“Place this bead in your hand. If any falsehood is mixed into the words you have spoken thus far, the silver will turn black. Then victory is mine. If it does not change, victory is yours.”
“Good.”
I snatched up the silver bead and closed my fist around it. Feeling its cool weight, I said,
“You’ll keep the promise?”
“But of course.”
Mara Jin smiled as he seated himself opposite me. Our eyes locked.
“I value rules and regulations enough to believe even that nonsense about learning Patcheon Hyeolma Gunrimbo without succession. Young master Moyong Bi. You understand that, don’t you?”
He blinked those yellow eyes.
“In the trade of human souls, trust is life itself.”
“Ah. On that point at least, I agree with you, Mara Jin.”
I opened my palm for him to see.
“In any relationship between people, nothing matters more than trust.”
Clink.
The silver bead resting on my palm still shone pure, untarnished silver.