The Enigmatic Map Revealed

“What is this smell?”

The herb gatherer Kang Yuk lifted his head.

He had spent more than twenty years digging for medicinal roots in Baekhakmubong, yet he had never smelled anything like this. At first he thought his nose was playing tricks on him.

“There’s no way the stench of rotting meat could be coming from a place this empty of people.”

Baekhakmubong sat on the outermost fringe of the righteous path’s territory—a brutal stretch of land that also bordered the Blood Cult and the Demon Cult. The region was forever damp and shrouded in fog, gloomy enough on its own, and no one willingly approached for fear of being dragged into the endless power struggles among the martial factions.

“For a place even the mountain beasts avoid to reek this badly of decay… it defies all sense.”

The stench only grew stronger as he pressed forward, thick enough to blunt his concentration.

“…Just what the hell is out here?”

He shoved through the undergrowth. After a long struggle the brush suddenly fell away and a sheer cliff face dropped open before him. The foul odor was rising from below.

He peered ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠over the edge. Where nothing but empty air and rock should have been, a vast clearing sprawled at the foot of the cliff. Loose soil kicked free by his toes went skittering down into the void with a soft clatter.

—Cawww!

Hundreds of crows startled by the sound exploded upward in a black cloud.

“Impossible. How in the world…?”

Filling the clearing, rotting where it lay, was an enormous white snake.

“A snake that size? Is that one of those spirit beasts you only hear about in stories?”

The herbs no longer mattered. Kang Yuk tore off his pack in a hurry and began scrambling down the cliff face. The drop was steep, but for a man who treated Baekhakmubong like his own backyard, descending a cliff of this grade was nothing. He reached the floor of the clearing in moments.

“Good gods.”

From above the white snake had already looked massive; standing before it, its sheer bulk was overwhelming. The head alone was larger than two full-grown oxen set side by side.

But something else stunned him even more.

“Who did this?”

The giant serpent’s jaw had been ripped clean off. That meant it had not died of natural causes; something had killed it. Both of its front fangs were broken. Its tail lay snapped in half and driven into the earth. The entire clearing looked as though a desperate free-for-all had once raged across it—every rock and patch of ground collapsed or shattered.

—Thud. Thud.

Kang Yuk walked through the deathly silence that blanketed the open space. Off to one side, half-crushed among the boulders, stood the ruins of a small hermitage, and beside it ran a dry watercourse that looked as if a waterfall had once poured through it. The cliff face that must have been the spring’s source was collapsed and sealed. There, where the waterfall would once have hidden it, a single character had been carved into the rock.

Kang Yuk was completely illiterate, yet that one character was the same one that appeared in his own name; he could not fail to recognize it.

“Six? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

In that instant—

—Krrrk…

The corpse he had been certain was dead began to twitch. A crack split open down the center of its body, like a moth thrashing to free itself from its chrysalis.

—Crack. Snap.

The snake’s hide tore. From the rent poured a cold so sharp it felt like midwinter. The frigid air flooded the clearing and overflowed, raising every hair on the herb gatherer’s body. A sticky, fishy chill ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that seemed to rise from the serpent’s own flesh saturated the air.

—Crrrack… krrrk…

As though forcing its way out of a sack far too small for its body, a new serpent’s head began to grind free of the ruined carcass. Once that massive white body started to spill out, thick with viscous fluid, it kept coming without pause, like a dam bursting. White scales glittered. Between them a bloody red light coiled and pulsed with an ominous aura.

“This is… the Ten-Thousand-Year Blood Crimson Snake that only exists in legend…!”

The enormous serpent reared as if stretching after a long sleep, its head rising endlessly into the sky.

—Hissss

The membranes covering its eyes peeled back, revealing crimson pupils. The moment those eyes opened they locked straight onto the herb gatherer standing before it.

“Aaah!”

He could not even think of running. Strength left Kang Yuk’s legs and he crumpled to the ground.

“Let’s get one thing straight.”

Lee Jasuo was hunched over like a pill bug, squatting on the floor with his back curled tight.

“Lift your head, would you? What exactly happened between us?”

“N-nothing! Nothing happened at all!”

Lee Jasuo’s head snapped up as if struck by lightning.

“Good. Perfect. Nothing happened between us. That’s better for both of us. I have zero intention of running my mouth about it anywhere.”

“Khh…”

He let out a pained groan and doubled over again, clutching his midsection. I sat across from him and pulled out the scroll he had handed me, then looked him in the eye once more.

“Before we check what’s in this trial, there’s one thing I want to ask.”

“Y-yeah?”

“I’m a little worked up right now, so forgive me if I sound rough. The first trial they dumped on me was absolute dogshit, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠some bastard meddled with it halfway through.”

Lee Jasuo nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Th-that’s impossible! No one would dare interfere with something Cheonsubaekryeonsa is handling! The trial scroll itself has the official seal proving it was issued legitimately…!”

“Yeah, well, all I’ve got is suspicion and no hard proof, so I can’t exactly nail anyone. But someone definitely messed with it. The problem is they messed with it legally, so there’s no handle to grab.”

One of the reasons I could speak with such certainty was the quiet tip Eun Seollyeong had given me. She at least did not seem to be lying. Why would a Guardian bother inventing stories for no reason?

“So tell me. You didn’t break the seal, but you’re the executioner. You already know what’s inside.”

I waved the scroll right in front of Lee Jasuo’s face.

“In your professional opinion, is this second trial a normal one, or is it another pile of shit like the first?”

“….”

He said nothing. That silence was answer enough. Ice water seemed to run straight down my spine.

Moyong Jinryong. That bastard son of the Moyong Family had stuck his hand in again. My head started to throb.

Seeing the look on my face, Lee Jasuo hurried to add something.

“Th-the department that handles punitive trials and the one that assigns regular trials are completely different! So—!”

“What?”

Ever since the humiliation of vomiting after our spar, he had been cooperating with me without resistance. Probably terrified I would go around spreading the story.

“Right now every trial you’re running looks the same from the outside, but the offices in charge are different. The three punitive trials you have to clear to get out of Ha-mu-gwan are handled by the White Horse Valley Disciplinary Committee. The three regular trials you were originally supposed to take are selected and issued directly by Cheonsubaekryeon Headquarters.”

He spilled the words in a rush.

“If that meddling you mentioned is real, it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠has to be connected to the Disciplinary Committee.”

“…I see.”

Which meant that whoever Moyong Jinryong had bought off was at least a core officer inside the White Horse Valley Disciplinary Committee. I looked down at the scroll in my hand. Once again it carried the yellow seal of legitimate issuance. Fair or not, I had no choice either way.

—Snap.

I unrolled it with a rough flick of the wrist.

“Hah.”

My eyes dropped lower. Beneath the text was a rough map leading to the lake of Hyeonhobong.

“This is just filthy.”

I let out a short breath. The second trial was even more blatant than the first. It practically screamed, Still not dead yet?

I recalled Moyong Jinryong’s face from the Moyong Family Residence—the same man who had traded blood-edged words with Moyong Ryu without yielding an inch, smiling the whole time.

[That does not mean it is entirely bad, Host.]

Mumyeong must have seen the map; his voice came dry and measured inside my head.

[If this map is accurate, then this is actually convenient. We can go there without drawing any suspicion at all.]

“True enough.”

I nodded. Whoever set this up had not intended it, but the trial was going to help me. The name Hyeonhobong written on that map was one I already knew.

Back then…

I groped through the memories of the days I had been trapped inside the secret cave. I had survived by licking moss-fouled water and tearing at rat meat just to stay alive. After I finally achieved every goal I had set and cut down the wooden puppets that had blackened the exit, I walked out into the corridor and discovered something I had missed in the chaos.

Even along the hallway I had fled through in blind panic, murals covered the walls. Just like the frescoes in the main chamber that had mirrored my own path with such uncanny precision, the corridor was filled with paintings that told every kind of story. They seemed to be trying to tell me something.

I had hesitated in front of those pictures for a long time. Every instinct had screamed to get out as fast as possible. But after the disaster of the first trial, I had learned the value of power in my bones. Without power, you get crushed. There is nowhere to complain. A world ruled by strength is simple and clear when you are the strong one—and infinitely cruel when you are the weak.

Inside that purposeless secret cave had lain the divine treasure of the White Lotus Demon Sect, the root of both the Demon Cult and the Blood Cult: the Pacheon Hyeolmu. When even a single scrap of power mattered, that was not something I could ignore. There might have been secrets hidden there. Or perhaps other secret caves of the same kind existed, and these murals were the clues that led to them.

…I’ll try.

I forced down the urge to burst out into the sunlight and stayed one more day, analyzing and re-analyzing. I picked the murals apart stroke by stroke, trying to extract the meaning they carried. Unlike the main chamber, the paintings that lined the corridor were almost identical in form; only the finer details differed. At a glance you could almost mistake them for the same sequence of images repeated over and over.

Six secret caves.

That was the conclusion I reached once the analysis was finished. Each mural showed the distinctive terrain of a location and was marked with a number from one to six. After that, the figure in the paintings always entered a secret cave in the same way. When I returned to the main chamber and looked again, the character for “six” was carved clearly into a corner.

[So this place was the sixth secret cave. We stumbled on them in reverse order, starting from the last. Host, this may well be a gift from the heavens if we play it right.]

I agreed. The corridor murals laid out the geographical features of each hidden cave together with the history of the place, almost as if they were inviting anyone who had reached the sixth cave to look back over the entire journey. For me—the first person to discover the sixth—it was an unintended answer key.

I still could not be certain, but I decided to treat it as a gift from the sky. I had never considered myself especially clever, so I willingly spent three more days. Three days might sound short, but after two and a half years without sunlight, licking moss water to survive, the superhuman patience required to stay underground when the exit was right there and the world outside was visible was almost unbearable.

For those three days I wet my finger and traced every line of the murals thousands of times, committing them to memory. I refused to miss even a speck of a clue. I wanted a perfect rubbing of them inside my skull. The instant I was certain I had every broken scratch and every hairline crack locked away, I smashed every mural and the entrance of the sixth secret cave to rubble.

“….”

I snapped out of the memory. Raising a finger, I closed my eyes and began drawing freely on the floor. Each of the five hidden caves from the first to the fifth had possessed a signature landmark. I sketched the exact feature that had marked the location of the fifth cave.

“What are you doing all of a sudden?”

Lee Jasuo stared at me in blank confusion as I suddenly shut my eyes and started sketching in the dirt.

—Scratch. Scritch-scritch.

Only when I was sure every stroke matched perfectly did I open my eyes. Then I unrolled the second-trial scroll beside the drawing.

“No doubt?”

[There is none whatsoever.]

On the map inked onto the scroll, a rock formation that looked exactly like a black tiger with its jaws open was drawn next to the characters for Hyeonhobong. On the ground beside it, the same black tiger with its mouth gaping wide stared up at me, identical as if stamped from the same mold.

My eyes flicked back and forth between the two pictures, a crimson light flashing in their depths.

The fifth secret cave of the White Lotus Demon Sect. Found it.