The World Is Not Equal
The world was always chillingly realistic.
Whenever you desperately wanted something, the world always looked the other way. There was no luck in it, no fortune. The world and reality simply stared back in silence, like a field blanketed in winter’s white snow.
Clatter.
Gravel tumbled down from the collapsed cliff face. Two enormous azure dragon marks were carved into the rock, as if a pair of great dragons had ascended into the heavens.
Everyone held their silence. Even the martial artists who had scrambled desperately out of the way before the explosion kept quiet.
It had been an all-out attack.
With every latent power detonated through Heaven and Earth Great Shift, I had poured every last drop of my internal energy into unleashing Ssangryong-seonpung-geom. I had only barely mastered the fourth-grade Vajra Demon Subduing Fist and was still in the process of fusing it with Heaven and Earth Great Shift. Under those conditions, a third-grade Ssangryong-seonpung-geom amplified by Heaven and Earth Great Shift was a gamble—and the strongest card I could play.
“Haaah! Haaah!”
I collapsed, twisting under the delayed storm of agony that crashed over me, cold sweat pouring down like bean paste as my pupils returned to black.
“Guh… aaagh.”
Even sitting still, a crushing pain tore my limbs apart as if my body were being compressed. Enduring that pain without screaming was the only thing I could still do.
…Sleep is coming… Host, please don’t die…
Mumyeong, who had poured every scrap of strength into holding my body together as it threatened to burst under the incomplete fourth-star Heaven and Earth Great Shift, scattered without even finishing his words.
“M-monster…”
I muttered in a fading voice.
Beneath the settling dust, Jeokmaryeong still stood. The Moyong Family’s secret art, Ssangryong-seonpung-geom, into which I had poured every ounce of my internal energy, had not been enough to drive the Flame Wolf King to death.
Thud, thud-thud.
Jeokmaryeong’s upper robe was shredded to tatters. Smoke rose from both arms he had raised to block. His skin had burned past red; it was blistered and peeling.
I bit my lip and let out a bitter sigh.
This is the true face of the jianghu.
I had at least expected to take an arm.
How unfair.
I wanted to jab a finger at the sky and scream that this made no sense. Fully two gaps of internal energy. More than two gaps, even if the efficiency was abysmal and it leaked away in streams, I had slammed every last bit of it into a single strike. I had forced Heaven and Earth Great Shift up to the fourth star and fused it with a third-grade Ssangryong-seonpung-geom. It was the final move of a power I could never have imagined in my past life.
And yet.
Jeokmaryeong, Flame Wolf King of the Surayeomrang Squad, had endured it—though his body was now a wreck.
“Keuhuhuh.”
Jeokmaryeong staggered forward. With a rip he tore away the fluttering remnants of his robe and kept coming.
“Since the day I took command of the Heavenly Demon Cult’s Surayeomrang Squad and became Flame Wolf King… how long has it been since I felt even a moment of the fear of death?”
His fist smashed into my cheek. A simple straight punch. No feints, no variations. I couldn’t dodge the fist I saw coming clear as day.
Crack.
I tumbled through dust and blood. A molar tore free. I spat the blood-soaked tooth and tried somehow to rise. My legs gave out. I fell again amid the dust. Still I tried to stand.
“Haa! Haa!”
I gasped and struggled up. Jeokmaryeong was in no hurry. He walked toward me in silence.
“Was it at the ranking ceremony of the Demonic Cult four years ago?”
He kicked me in the side.
Crunch.
“Gyaaaaah!”
My ribs shattered. I rolled, clutching my side. Heaven and Earth Great Shift was completely spent. My body lay exposed to his monstrous strength with no protection left.
“Or eight years ago, when I challenged the Cult Leader’s authority?”
Jeokmaryeong flicked out a light punch.
“Uwaaagh!!”
A wet crack rang out as my left wrist snapped along with the earth before the fist-wind.
Damn it—how was this any different from last time?!
I couldn’t just sit there dazed. Don’t scream from the pain. Think of the next move. I can still get out of this somehow. I’ve managed so far, haven’t I? So this time too I can definitely pull through, I can live…!
“Or fifteen years ago, when my own family beat me and drove me out?”
Jeokmaryeong leapt. With a sickening crunch his knee drove straight into my thigh.
“…!”
No more screams came. I shrieked in silence. I thrashed, clutching the ruined leg. Jeokmaryeong seized my head and hauled me up. He shoved his face right in front of mine and snarled.
“I, Jeokmaryeong, Flame Wolf King of the Surayeomrang Squad, acknowledge you, Moyong Bi. From the last incident until now, no one has ever pissed me off this thoroughly. You’re the first.”
“Haa… haa!”
His palm cracked across my cheek.
Slap!
Every scrap of internal energy was gone. Every scrap of external force was gone. The gap in power between us now was that of a mouse and a grown man. A single gesture from him split skin and broke bone.
“H-hiiik. It was impossible after all. No one can defy the Flame Wolf King’s martial might!”
Deathly terror settled clearly on the face of a Jongnam Sect man. He edged backward, trying to flee.
“G-Gwak Ilsan-nim. Hurry and run—”
“The Flowering Ceremony! Hasn’t the Flowering Ceremony finished yet?!”
Only then did the fourth of the five horn blasts sound. One still remained. The color drained from every face.
“Surayeomrang Squad, hear me.”
Still gripping me by the collar, Jeokmaryeong spoke.
“Your command, Flame Wolf King.”
Every Demonic Cult martial artist bowed their heads in obedience.
“Kill every last witness. Cut off the limbs of the Emei Guardian successor and bring me only the torso—a human pig. I will present it to the Cult Leader myself.”
“As you command.”
Jeokmaryeong finished his order and looked back at me. He spread his fingers in front of my face.
“And you—your eye color has been changing this whole time. Some kind of sorcery?”
Sharp internal energy gathered at his fingertips like a bird’s talons and drifted toward my pupils.
“From the way you copied my martial arts onward, there are far too many things that don’t add up for you to be a mere lower-hall student of Cheonsubaekryeonsa. What is your true identity? What little tricks are you hiding?”
A low hum.
The black claws closed in as if to gouge out my eyes. Jeokmaryeong grinned as he watched me stare back, wide-eyed and silent.
“Fine. Seeing it with my own eyes should tell me. In that case, what color is your dantian?”
His fingers moved toward the area below my navel, toward my dantian. It looked like a crow’s beak coming to tear out living entrails.
“Let’s have a look. Will it take the form of a gem like the Guardians’, or will nothing come out but guts?!”
His fingers shot forward as if to rip my belly open.
“Sorry to interrupt.”
It was a color that called to mind a deep crimson twilight. A blade of orange and red light, coiling and burning as if it would drag any who gazed upon it into endless thought, barred the way in front of my stomach, edge raised.
“Don’t you think it’s a bit unsightly for men to go after each other’s midsections?”
“You—”
Beside me stood a black-haired woman, her eyes glowing with a soft, burning red light.
Whoosh.
Flame Eye So Yeomgyo swung her crimson sword. Within the arc of that blade lay the wrist of Jeokmaryeong, who still held me by the collar.
Jeokmaryeong snorted.
“Hmph. A mere sword like that couldn’t even scratch a body under Heaven and Earth Great Shift—”
The blade sliced smoothly through Jeokmaryeong’s wrist as if it were tofu.
“…!!!”
Jeokmaryeong was a veteran of countless battles. The instant he realized his wrist was being severed he yanked it free and flung himself backward. I lost my balance and tumbled. So Yeomgyo caught me on the top of her foot and casually tossed me to the ground.
“Keugh!”
I clenched my teeth against the searing pain and spat a curse.
“Damn it. Next time catch me with your hands. I’m not a ball.”
“Well now. After I went to the trouble of saving you.”
So Yeomgyo sounded incredulous.
“Th-this is impossible! Who the hell are you?!”
He had pulled free, but nearly half his wrist was already gone; blood fountained out.
“Me?”
So Yeomgyo’s Flame Eyes glowed softly as she pointed her sword at me lying on the ground.
“This man’s employer. Who are you to lay hands on my underling?”
“U-underling… That really pisses me off.”
I coughed up bloody phlegm and forced the words out with difficulty.
Behind her lay a carpet of Blood Sect corpses covering the ground.
“I didn’t want to go as far as the Crimson Demon Command Sword and the Nine-Tailed Death Flame Gate… Using this thing costs lifespan, sure, but more than that I have to spend a hundred days eating nothing but wall-grain pills in closed-door seclusion holding memorial rites. That’s not empty talk—do you know how miserable that is?”
Blood flowed like a river. Beyond it the remaining Blood Sect stragglers were vanishing like mist. She flicked the thick blood from her blade and muttered as if resigning herself.
“In the end I had to draw the second sword. Never underestimate the Blood Sect’s ability to overwhelm with numbers.”
Jeokmaryeong’s eyes bulged as if they would burst.
“Th-the Crimson Demon Command Sword?! Wait—then you must be Flame Eye So Yeomgyo of the Blood Death Sect?!”
“Wow, all that hard work paid off. My title has even reached the Heavenly Demon Cult.”
“No. That can’t be.”
Jeokmaryeong’s pupils shook.
“Why would Flame Eye So Yeomgyo, said to be equal to a Guardian, be here… From the battlefield specter last time, why do beings who should never be in this backwater keep showing up…!”
Like a thunderbolt Jeokmaryeong’s gaze locked on me.
“You.”
I closed my eyes. I could sense a serious misunderstanding forming. Jeokmaryeong’s voice trembled.
“Last time the Mount Hua Guardian protected you, and now it’s the Flame Eye of the Blood Death Sect. Just what the hell are you?”
“Huh? Mount Hua Guardian?”
So Yeomgyo looked down at me where I lay.
“The Mount Hua Guardian protected you?”
My head started to ache. So Yeomgyo spoke with curious eyes.
“You know a Guardian? Those haughty Guardians would never protect someone without a blood oath. Not in a million years.”
“No. It was a coincidence.”
I groaned.
“So the young master of the Moyong Family has some real skills, huh? I don’t know how you sweet-talked them, but it looks like you’re scattering blood oaths all over the place.”
“…I’m telling you again, it was a coincidence.”
It was all I could say.
“I’ll have to report this to my superiors. To think the Heavenly Demon Cult’s intelligence network missed something like this.”
Jeokmaryeong clutched his wrist and edged backward.
“Count yourselves lucky. If not for the restriction the Cult Leader placed on me… if not for that restriction, you two—!”
So Yeomgyo waved a hand.
“Just go. My underling’s face is pale—he needs treatment right away.”
Jeokmaryeong ground his teeth, then spun around like lightning. So Yeomgyo frowned.
“It’s already been a while since the fourth horn. Pretty soon the fifth will sound and the Emei Guardian plus the entire leadership will join the fight. Think you can handle that?”
“Damn it all!”
Jeokmaryeong no longer hesitated. With a curse thick with resentment he began to withdraw along with the remaining Demonic Cult martial artists. His eyes blazing, he chewed out each word as if swallowing them, whispering in three broken pieces. The voice was low, yet it reached us clearly at close range.
“Moyong Bi…! Moyong Bi…! Moyong Bi!”
“Hmm. This is bad.”
So Yeomgyo furrowed her brows. With that final utterance the black mists scattered in perfect order and vanished.
“….”
Watching me gasp for breath, So Yeomgyo quickly pressed points in the air.
Thud-thud-thud-thud!
I didn’t know what art she used, but with her softly glowing Flame Eyes her martial skill was, I dare say, on par with the silver-haired Mount Hua Guardian. Though she only pressed the empty air, it felt as if her fingers struck my skin directly; my pressure points were stimulated and the pain rapidly went numb.
“You’re in big trouble. What now?”
“Why?”
I had no sensation below the neck, as if I’d been castrated. So Yeomgyo couldn’t fully block the pain of my severe injuries, so she had simply sealed every sensation from the neck down.
“Didn’t you hear the Flame Wolf King call your name three times at the end?”
“So what?”
So Yeomgyo began dismantling the Crimson Demon Command Sword.
“When Demonic Cult martial artists call a name three times, it’s something they only do for the sworn enemy of their master. The Flame Wolf King just swore to the heavens that you are his lifelong nemesis and rival.”
“…Nothing I can do about it.”
In the distance the fifth horn blast sounded. The moment it did, the entire Emei contingent that had been bunched together burst forth like a torn sack of rice and came charging this way. Only then did relief wash over me. I looked at the mountain of Blood Sect corpses piled behind her. The surviving Jongnam Sect members were finally glancing around and cautiously getting to their feet one by one.
“So Yeomgyo, did you really kill all the Blood Sect alone?”
“Of course not.”
So Yeomgyo separated the long, thick crimson blade of the Crimson Demon Command Sword into three thinner swords.
“I only killed about thirty percent.”
“Only thirty percent?”
She sheathed two of the red-bladed swords along her thighs. Last of all she wrapped the familiar flexible silver soft sword—the core that had been in the center—around her wrist.
“While they were pressing me, the fox-masked leader heard something from a subordinate, then cursed up a storm and vanished in a hurry. Muttering about Ryu Hwasa again or whatever.”
I had lived a life of desperately crying out to the heavens for help, only to be ignored countless times. Perhaps that was why So Yeomgyo’s words left me utterly dumbfounded. Looking at me, she murmured quietly.
“I don’t know if this is good or bad.”
“What do you mean? Of course it’s good.”
So Yeomgyo frowned as if frustrated.
“You idiot. Why does someone who moves like frost in a fight turn into a dazed lump of dead charcoal the moment the battle ends?”
“D-dead charcoal?”
“The Blood Sect turned on their heel and left even though the one who killed their people was standing right in front of them, perfectly fine. That fanatical cult, of all people. It’s as absurd as a starving tiger calmly turning its back on delicious prey. In other words, something has happened somewhere in the jianghu. A change even the Blood Sect can’t ignore.”
“….”
I had forgotten. She was the sect leader of the Blood Death Sect, one of the most renowned assassin groups in the jianghu. Because we bantered and bickered, I sometimes forgot that the scope of what she saw was on an entirely different level from mine.
“Well, still.”
I looked up at the sky. With my limbs feeling paralyzed, I could feel dried blood flakes falling from my cheek.
“We survived, didn’t we? You and me both.”
At those words So Yeomgyo let out a disbelieving snort of laughter and sank down onto the ground. For a brief moment a thoroughly exhausted look crossed her face.
“Yeah. It’s over, at least.”
Behind her the horn announcing the end of the Flowering Ceremony sounded. It was the sound that marked a shift in the axis of power among the Nine Sects and One Gang—the birth of a new Emei Guardian.
The sun was setting. Twilight was falling.
It reminded me of another task I had forgotten. The condition Mara Jin had set when he promised me Patcheon Hyeolma Gunrimbo. In exchange for the superior martial art, he had demanded that I obtain a strand of the Emei Guardian’s hair and offer it to him before twilight ended on the appointed day.
And if my memory is correct…
This twilight was the final twilight of the day I had promised Mara Jin.
So Yeomgyo spoke in a puzzled voice.
“Huh? Why is the Guardian coming this way?”
In the distance, the newly born Emei Guardian approached me, riding in a palanquin screened by bamboo blinds.