I Will Not Die Again
—Clang!
Moyong Taese watched in blank horror as his sword was knocked spinning from his grip.
Inescapable death. In that instant he felt it settle over him like a shroud.
The leader of the Blood Death Sect was simply too overwhelming. Even the finest form he could muster crumbled before her grotesque, bone-chilling techniques—moves so destructive he had never seen their like.
So Yeomgyo’s blade drove into his abdomen.
“Tch.”
So Yeomgyo bit her lip. At the last moment the tip of her sword had slipped a fraction off true. The wound was still mortal enough, but it would not kill him instantly.
As her sword withdrew, two more cuts slammed into Moyong Taese’s thighs. She kicked the kneeling man’s chin straight up, then sent a final stroke toward his unconscious neck like a streak of blue lightning.
And then—
—Shiiing!!!
A clear, ringing note pealed across the earth.
“What.”
So Yeomgyo’s eyes flew wide. Standing before her, trembling violently, was Moyong Bi—clutching the very sword that had been knocked away and using it to block her blade.
“You.”
Moyong Bi’s eyes were those of a wounded wildcat. Even when she had first met him, that gaze alone had burned itself into her memory. It had sparked her curiosity then. She had even tossed him a sword and told him to come at her.
If you so much as graze my clothes once, I’ll spare you. I promise. Not enough? Fine—one more. The next time you face death, no matter what kind, I’ll save you.
She had made the empty vow just to goad him into a fight. It had been nothing more than idle amusement, a light game with not a shred of seriousness behind it. She had never intended to keep the promise; she had spoken the way a cat toys with a mouse, certain a third-rate nobody like him could never touch even her hem.
That had been So Yeomgyo’s mistake.
She had never seen eyes so full of pure, venomous resolve. Even seasoned assassins hesitated for a heartbeat before choosing mutual destruction—yet he had charged with that very resolve. Legs severed, arms severed, he never flinched. Screaming, feeling every shred of pain, he had clung on to the end.
Pilsa-jeuksaeng—to court death in order to live. That desperate aura had been enough to startle even a jaded killer like her, making her forget for a moment that this was only play.
“What are you?”
And right now, the eyes of the trembling Moyong Bi blocking her sword were exactly the same as they had been then.
“What the hell are you?!”
—Clang!
With a vicious ring of steel she knocked his blade aside. Behind the red mask her pupils shook as if in an earthquake. A flash of wrongness sliced through her.
“You’re dead—there’s no way you’re alive! Back then you were definitely…!”
“Urghk—!”
“?!”
Moyong Bi vomited a great mouthful of dark-red blood. Watching him was like watching a sandcastle collapse in real time.
Internal injuries? Damage that severe should only come from a direct hit by a sonic attack capable of rupturing organs. Yet no one had struck him.
So Yeomgyo plunged into utter confusion.
“Shut your mouth, Mumyeong! I already know not to leave an opening!”
“What?”
Moyong Bi settled into a ready stance. His breathing was ragged. The tip of his sword quivered. That alone told her everything: his martial level was pitiful.
“Your courage is admirable, but you’re only hurrying your own dea—!”
Her breath caught. At first his posture had been so crude she could barely stand to look at it. Yet past a certain point a change had begun. Footwork, breathing, stance, grip—everything suddenly carried the polished maturity of decades of training, as if someone had simply cut the skill out of another body and pasted it onto his.
And that ready stance… she could not fail to recognize it.
So Yeomgyo’s eyes trembled. A murmur rose among the elite of the Blood Death Sect—men who never spoke during a mission. Ordinarily she would have scolded them harshly, but even she was frozen in shock.
“How… how can you…”
A beat later, scarlet fury flooded every inch of her.
“How does the likes of you know our sect’s secret technique?!”
Crimson serpents of haze and power erupted from Moyong Bi’s body and coiled around him.
“Gods above—that’s the Munju’s Blood-Honed Serpent Wheel Sword!” one of the subordinates screamed.
“Impossible!”
“Even among the heirs of the Blood Death Sect, only the chosen can perform that secret art!”
So Yeomgyo cried out, “It’s impossible! Forget copying the forms—just to imitate it you need at least sixty years of internal energy… wait—?!”
The turbid serpents thrashing around Moyong Bi looked nothing like a normal manifestation. Compared to the clear crimson snakes born of her own internal energy, his were a far more desperate, blackish-red, shrieking with the cries of the damned.
So Yeomgyo muttered in a daze, “He’s burning true origin energy instead of internal energy?”
True origin energy was the root of life itself—once spent, it could never be restored. Even after drawing on that irreplaceable essence, the technique Moyong Bi unleashed held less than a quarter of its proper power. Yet a sharpened blade is dangerous because it has an edge, not because of who holds it. The form itself was unmistakably the killing art of the Blood-Honed Serpent Wheel Sword.
—Crack-crackle.
Black sparks flew. Black blood reverse-flowed from all seven of Moyong Bi’s orifices and sprayed upward.
“You lunatic—half your remaining lifespan for a single technique?! Even the cultists of the demonic cults don’t pull stunts this insane!”
There was no more room for mercy or restraint. Facing the seven serpents streaking toward her, she detonated her own internal power.
Serpent met serpent, biting and tearing as they tangled together. Heaven and earth shuddered. Shockwaves toppled distant walls and flipped the garden soil.
—BOOM
Moyong Bi’s crimson serpents were overwhelmed. Black blood erupted from his seven orifices. He spat thick, dark-red foam—yet still he refused to release his energy. His gleaming eyes howled with pain but would not break.
So Yeomgyo snarled, “Have you truly lost your mind?! Who the hell uses martial arts by burning true origin energy like this?!”
“I… I can’t die this time either! Absolutely… absolutely not!”
The caster’s raw emotion bled into the techniques. Both sides’ serpents went berserk, sweeping the area with agonized ghost-wails.
This bastard has no intention of stopping!
So Yeomgyo’s teeth ground together. Then I’ll just—!
Her breathing halted. For a single beat she seemed to rest, then her pupils narrowed into slits like a serpent’s.
—Rumble…
Thunder and a red mist of energy exploded from her body. Internal power of an entirely different density poured into her crimson serpents.
—Thoom.
What followed was instantaneous. Like a tiny stream swallowed by a raging torrent, the black-red serpents of madness were swept into the storm. Through that gale of force she saw Moyong Bi flung like a ragdoll, vomiting blood.
So Yeomgyo drove her sword tip into the ground and exhaled a thin breath.
“Munju.”
Startled subordinates rushed toward her; she raised a hand and stopped them.
“Don’t make a fuss. I’m fine.”
Where the dust settled lay Moyong Bi, reduced to a heap of rags. Excessive depletion of true origin energy had turned his skin the gray of a corpse.
“….”
So Yeomgyo watched the faint twitching of his body.
“Rest, Munju. We’ll finish this.”
“No. I’ll do it myself.”
Her animal-sharp senses caught distant turmoil. Soon the warriors of the Moyong Family—briefly away from the estate—would come flooding in. She reversed her grip on the sword, approached Moyong Bi, and knelt beside him.
“You surprised me at the end. I still don’t know what cheap trick you used to copy my technique… but you’ve ruined my clothes.”
“Cough… cough…”
Black foam on his lips, Moyong Bi was dying. The desperate struggle had not been enough. From the beginning he could never have won—and the man before her eyes surely knew it.
His mouth worked soundlessly.
“Last words?”
“…I can’t die. Not again… like this… powerless… able to do nothing…”
His gray skin already declared there was no hope. Tears tracked down from eyes that fought for even one more ragged breath.
“Hah… hah…”
He was going. His breaths grew shallower, more frantic. Those wildcat eyes that had seemed unbreakable slowly went out.
“…Pro…mise…”
“What?”
So Yeomgyo leaned in without thinking. Moyong Bi, pupils already blown, spat blood and forced the words out of unconsciousness.
“…Promise…”
Her breathing stopped. She remembered the words she herself had thrown at the man who refused to accept death even after both legs and both arms were cut away.
Not enough? Fine—one more. If you touch me, the next time you face death, no matter what kind, I’ll save you.
So Yeomgyo stared blankly at the ruined figure of Moyong Bi.
“You… you bastard.”
She muttered in a hoarse voice. Even as she spoke, the man continued dying in real time. He could no longer focus on her answer; the whites of his eyes were showing. If she did nothing, he would be gone in less than a quarter of an hour.
“….”
Ironically, she had already broken that promise once. Caught off guard by his fighting spirit, she had lost her composure and killed him. And now, less than a day later, that same man was dying by her hand again.
“Ha.”
So Yeomgyo murmured as if in a daze.
“Damn it. I thought I’d seen every filthy thing this jianghu has to offer… never expected I’d get to kill the same guy twice in a single day.”
Anyone watching would call her insane. What assassin in the world would do something this contradictory? She brushed her forehead and let out a short, disbelieving laugh.
“Ha… ahaha. Even if I’m the worst bitch under heaven… ah, I mean… I mean…”
Her laughter cut off cold.
“Shit.”
It was true that only the mad survived in this trade, yet she judged this the single most unhinged, self-indulgent act she had ever committed. She gestured behind her.
“The payment we took the day before yesterday for the branch-leader hit—bring it.”
“Munju?”
“I’m already irritated. Don’t ask questions. Just bring it.”
The subordinates hesitated, then understood. Their faces went white as one.
“Munju! You can’t mean—”
“Shut up. I know better than anyone that I’m a lunatic right now, so spare me the explanations and hand it over this second.”
“Ah…”
One of them drew a small box from his robes. So Yeomgyo opened it without hesitation. A sharp scent rose; inside lay a single green pill.
She pulled down her red mask. The lower half of her face and the red lips always hidden came into view. She crushed the pill between her teeth, spat the fragments into her palm, and shoved them into the dying man’s mouth.
“Forgive the method. These lips of mine are still precious, you know. I can’t exactly feed an outside man mouth-to-mouth.”
She struck the vital points so the shattered medicine raced down his throat. The moment the elixir began to take hold, Moyong Bi’s body convulsed. Color started returning to the gray face that had seemed lost forever.
“Munju. I try not to question your judgments whenever I can help it,” a subordinate said flatly from her side, “but using even the hard-won Soul-Saving Golden Pill to keep a target alive feels… excessive.”
“Baekho. Got any other way to save a maniac who just burned his true origin energy?”
At her words the subordinate—Baekho—flinched.
“How do you intend to explain this absurd situation to the client? If word of today’s events spreads, the Blood Death Sect’s reputation will take a serious hit. You of all people know that better than—”
“Enough. There were no witnesses. As long as we keep our mouths shut, nothing spreads. Any damage to trust or the cost of the pill—I’ll cover it myself.”
So Yeomgyo wiped her mouth with a handkerchief and reset her mask.
“So drop it for today.”
Baekho regarded her steadily, then said, “The Blood Death Sect belongs to its Munju. Whatever decision you make, we will follow.”
“Thanks for putting up with my tantrum, Baekho.”
“I’ll take it that this wasn’t pure pity. You want to know how our sect’s martial arts leaked, and what stands behind it. If I remember correctly, this is clearly related to the Heavenly Dem—”
“That’s far enough.”
So Yeomgyo cut him off with a voice like frost.
“We’ll discuss that matter again once we’re back.”
She adjusted her mask. In the distance she could already hear the Moyong Family’s guards rushing closer. She started to leave, then paused.
“Huu…”
She looked down at the man sprawled on the ground, then up at the sky.
“…Annoying. Dragging up old memories for no reason and putting me in a foul mood.”