The Screaming Walls
“Kh… kkhhh!”
Hanging precariously from the cave mouth, I stretched out my hand.
“J-just a little more!”
Rumble…
Gravel kicked free by my toes plummeted into the abyss below. On the fourth try I finally snapped a branch from the pine growing at the cave’s edge.
I need fire.
Crack. Snap.
I stripped the branch with my hands, peeled the pine bark, and scraped the resin that welled under my nails. Tearing a long strip from the lower leg of my right pant, I soaked it in the resin. The part of the branch I would grip I wet thoroughly so it would not burn; then I wound the resin-soaked cloth around the tip and struck flint until a torch flared to life.
Acrid smoke rose with a flame no brighter than a paper lantern. Torch in hand, I stared into the darkness that slapped and seethed like black seawater. Wind breathed out of the throat of the mountain. Goosebumps prickled my skin at the sensation of crawling into a giant’s gullet.
“Mumyeong. I have a favor to ask.”
My voice trembled, just a little.
“Talk to me now and then while we go, will you?”
Mumyeong said nothing. I hurried to add:
“It’s not because I’m scared.”
As if.
Feeling the wind on my face, I started forward. I walked a long while. The cave ran deep. Thankfully it did not end in sudden cliffs or narrow to the point of impassability the way I had feared. It simply stretched ahead like a burrow, just wide enough for a grown man to walk upright.
Drip. Drip. Condensation fell from the ceiling in a measured rhythm.
I wondered why you snapped off that pine so suddenly…
Mumyeong’s voice was calm.
Perhaps you might consider using the abilities you already possess.
“What do you mean?”
With the Crimson Eyes, darkness of this degree should be transparent to you.
—Kiiing.
My eyes flew wide; the pupils flooded crimson in an instant.
“I’ll be damned. It actually works.”
And I trust Host has already noticed as well.
I nodded.
“There are artificial traces, no question.”
The feeble pine torch had missed them, but with the Crimson Eyes my vision was nearly as clear as day. The path grew straighter. Straighter still. Then it began to swell.
I followed it. The farther I walked, the stronger the wind became. I had expected nothing more than an ordinary cave—or, at best, a narrow passage leading outside. This was nothing of the sort.
“…What is this?”
It was a vast cavern. A colossal chamber carved into a perfect circle of stone. The floor was paved with cut marble slabs, smooth as an empty training ground. I could not tell how high the ceiling rose, nor how far the chamber stretched; the space was simply that immense. And at its center yawned a well-like pit of unknown purpose, a black maw gaping wide.
—Step.
—Step, step.
How long had it been since anyone last set foot here? I looked back. Only the footprints I myself had left remained. As I walked, they marched alone down the center of the great road. Decades? Centuries? My footsteps were the only sound this place had known for an age.
“Hello?”
Of course no one could be here. Yet the space was so unmistakably the work of human hands that the sheer strangeness forced the words out of me again, louder.
“Is anyone there?”
My voice rolled away into emptiness. Even the Crimson Eyes could not fully pierce the gloom. In the end I raised the torch I had been conserving.
—Whoosh.
Under the wavering light the cavern’s majesty only grew.
“What the hell was this place used for?”
I swallowed dryly under the oppressive weight and approached one wall. From floor to ceiling it was packed with enormous paintings and writing. I brought the torch close.
“….”
I nearly dropped it in shock.
Screaming people. Every single face, every wrinkle of skin, carved with meticulous care. Murals of thrashing, howling humanity covered every direction.
—Drip. Drop.
Condensation struck the floor with a funereal sound. I swallowed again.
“What are these unnerving pictures? And these look like characters, but I can’t make any sense of them.”
Behind the carved throngs of the screaming, the background was solid text. The unreadable script filling the endless walls radiated a kind of madness.
Feels like coming home.
Mumyeong muttered something I could not parse.
“Home? A grotesque place like this?”
I agree with Host’s assessment, yet somehow it is also… cozy. I don’t know why.
“Spoken like a true son of the Demon Sect.”
Look closer.
Studying the carvings and the script, I reached out without thinking and touched one of the characters.
—Grrrrrr…
I jerked my hand back. A low, unfamiliar rumble rolled through the stone, like a millstone turning. As if some vast beast that had been sleeping had just noticed the presence called me.
—Tung.
—Tung. Tung. Tung…!
A bluish light began to kindle across the ceiling.
Night-Illuminating Pearls.
Mumyeong steadied my startlement. The great hollow brightened. Everything flooded with cool blue radiance. And ringing the enormous pit at the chamber’s heart—where nothing had stood a moment before—dozens of wooden figures now waited in silence.
“….”
I stared for a long time. They stood utterly motionless, as though they had always been there.
“Were those wooden men here earlier and I just didn’t see them?”
Mumyeong answered without the slightest hesitation.
There was nothing there.
“…Feels like I’ve been hexed by a ghost.”
I watched the throng of wooden figures a while longer before speaking again.
“Can we even call those things wooden men?”
From a distance the material looked like carved wood, so I had named them that. But their form was nothing like the ordinary training dummies that came to mind. They were statues of extreme, almost pathological precision—muscles and veins laid bare as if the skin had been flayed away. The sight was deeply unsettling.
“They look like people being tortured.”
Every wooden figure was locked in some grotesque posture, frozen mid-thrash as if they had been flailing in hell and simply stopped. The sockets where eyes should have been were smooth blanks; their mouths were carved wide in endless screams.
“I’m starting to think we should turn around right now. I know it’s ridiculous, but those things look like they might start moving, and it creeps me out.”
And behind you a living snake is already waiting with its jaws open.
“….”
There was no choice.
There may be a map or some clue on the walls. The Crimson Eyes and the Night-Illuminating Pearls alone are not enough light. Hold the torch closer to the wall. And do not approach those wooden men unless you must.
I gave the screaming figures a wide berth and swept the torch along the walls.
Whoosh.
The flame guttered and roared as I walked. Bringing it nearer, I studied the paintings again. The images running along the wall were not random; they formed a continuous narrative.
“This has a story to it. It’s not just decoration.”
I returned to the first mural of the screaming multitudes, then moved sideways panel by panel, slowly circling the vast chamber. Midway through a quick survey I stopped short.
“Wait. What?”
I went back and looked carefully once more.
Those characters look familiar. Bring the torch closer.
Mumyeong had been examining the densely packed background script.
White Lotus Demon Sect… To think a place linked to the White Lotus Demon Sect still existed here.
“White Lotus Demon Sect?”
The ancient predecessor of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult. Also called the White Lotus Cult. There was a time when every demonic martial artist rallied under that single name. It has long since been annihilated without a trace—which is why you could not read the writing. The White Lotus Demon Sect used its own occult script.
“…No. Forget that.”
Mumyeong’s excited voice cut off. My expression, fixed on the murals, had gone rigid. At first I thought I was imagining it. I was not.
“Right now the White Lotus or whatever doesn’t matter.”
—Whoosh.
I lit each painting in turn. Beside the throng of the screaming, the murals continued in sequence. They told one story. It began with a single child.
“…What is this?”
I moved the torch to the next panel. A vast field; a child clutching his mother’s hand. The next: the mother frozen to death, the child howling.
“Fuck. Anyone can see—”
…
At the end, a colossal shadow extended a black pearl; the child took it into his own mouth and bit down. Then murals of black silhouettes intertwining. Beside them, a figure fleeing from a snake. And finally—
“No matter how you look at it, this is my story.”
It ended with the discovery of this corpse-filled secret cavern, and the entrance into it.
Coincidence.
“Bullshit.”
I snapped.
“What kind of coincidence matches every single detail like this?”
Coincidence.
Mumyeong’s tone was empty of feeling.
“You know something. Or at least you have a guess.”
Host. Do not become agitated.
My pupils trembled. Behind me the wooden men watched in silence.
“Just say it! Even among all that writing there has to be something you can read! You said it felt familiar! Like coming home!”
My voice rang hollow through the empty air.
Do not assume Host’s case is unique across the long span of history. I will say it again. Coincidence.
“But it’s identical! We only just arrived! How is even the moment we entered already carved into the wall?!”
Calm yourself. Stop thinking and focus on what your eyes can verify, Host. Examine the paintings. They were made at least a hundred years ago. Set emotion and imagination aside and face the phenomenon as it is.
“….”
I bit my lip and looked. Mumyeong was right. However well preserved, the murals were clearly more than a century old.
“…Fine. Call it coincidence. Then is it prophecy? Did those White Lotus people foresee today and paint it?”
Whoever might have answered that question no longer seems to be among the living. There are more paintings beside these. Shall we examine those at least?
Ten martial artists stood with their backs to a blazing sun. Each of them stood atop a mountain of thousands of corpses. In the place where a dantian should be, every one of them cradled a glowing pearl—identical to the black pearl the child had bitten in the first painting.
“Ten absolute masters… like the Guardians of today’s Nine Sects and One Gang?”
Possibly.
In the next mural I could not look away for a long time. The ten martial artists were stabbing one another to death. Stabbing, ripping the pearls from one another’s dantians, and offering them upon an altar—pure, unfiltered madness.
“I can’t begin to understand what it’s trying to say, but it feels like staring into lunacy.”
This atmosphere is closer to the Blood Cult than the Demon Sect. The White Lotus Demon Sect was the father of both Blood and Demon, so it would naturally have carried certain Blood Cult leanings. In that sense, Host, there is something I wish to ask.
Mumyeong initiating a question was rare enough to startle me.
“A question?”
Yes.
What he asked was completely unexpected.
They say a child grows by watching its parents. What do you believe Host learned by watching yours?
“Why are you asking that all of a sudden? What does that have to do with anything?”
No particular reason.
“You never do anything without a reason.”
…
He fell silent. After a beat I spoke again.
“You read something in that script. I know you did.”
My memories are incomplete; I could not read it all. Only a few fragmentary lines.
He always spoke with purpose. Always acted with reason.
“What did you read? Tell me.”
Nothing of great significance. Still curious?
I nodded.
The madman who comes to perceive the true face of death shall, whether he wills it or not, become master of this place and bring about a blood calamity.
“What kind of nonsense is that?”
My turn. So—your answer to my question?
He seemed oddly hurried. What I learned by watching my parents. Staring blankly at the murals, I murmured.
“If I had to name something…”
A flood of memories flashed through my mind. Holding the torch high, I whispered as I gazed at the final painting of the chamber.
“The terror of death. And…”
In the crimson-flooded field of my vision the torchlight fell across the image.
“…hatred.”
In the mural the child was ripping the pearls from the dantians of all ten martial artists, weeping with raw despair.
…Pay no mind to meaningless murals of the past, Host. Let us examine the rest of this place.
I nodded and turned. I blinked. Beyond the wooden figures, in the space lit by the Night-Illuminating Pearls, a narrow entrance just large enough for one adult stood open on the far side. I circled the heap of wooden men and passed through.
Another, smaller chamber appeared. As I walked I found myself muttering without meaning to.
“Does destiny exist?”
I had not even been speaking for Mumyeong to hear. So when he answered, I was honestly a little surprised.
In the era when I was active, a famous master of the martial world named Song Huichang once said this:
Mumyeong’s voice was different from usual.
A person lives only the life he himself has drawn. Nothing more, nothing less.
“…That’s a heavy, cold thing to say.”
Is it. Well. I think the same.
Something like regret filled the words. I wanted to ask whether his memories had returned—but before I could, the scene before me seized my eyes.
A single shaft of light fell through a crack in the ceiling.
“This is…”
Beneath the light lay a mountain of corpses. I flinched. Only after a long moment did I realize they were not real bodies, but wooden figures of the same kind as those behind me, heaped into a mound. Atop that mountain of wooden men stood a stele of luminous jade. And driven through the center of the stele was a single longsword the color of dark blood.
Impossible. That cannot be—
Mumyeong’s voice was thick with shock.
…Why is the Heaven-Breaking Blood Martial—something that should exist only in the Blood Cult’s forbidden vault—here?