The Winter Beside Me
“Young master, please take this cup.”
In Shaanxi Province stood a pleasure house renowned as the finest of its kind, a place called the Guiyan Pavilion. Deep within its innermost reaches lay a private courtyard known as the One-Way Palace, reserved solely for distinguished guests.
Willow leaves trembled in the breeze while the sticky scent of wine hung thick in the air. A pond filled with liquor reflected the music that drifted through the space, where courtesans danced in sheer, translucent robes. Pink incense smoke curled through every corner of the courtyard, and there Gwak Ido and the men of the Jongnam Sect had gathered.
“Damn it all.”
The black-haired young master, Gwak Ido, drained his cup in one rough gulp.
“Our young master looks especially sour today. That handsome face of yours is all wrinkled up.”
A courtesan poked Gwak Ido’s pale cheek with a white finger. Gwak Ilsan twisted his goat beard and laughed.
“Hahaha, leave him be! That brat’s completely smitten with the Blood Death Sect’s branch leader, by the looks of it!”
“That bitch… No. You there—feed me some fruit.”
Thorns edged Gwak Ido’s tone. The courtesan carefully picked up a piece of fruit and placed it into his open mouth. He chewed slowly, then finally clenched his teeth and conceded to Gwak Ilsan’s words.
“…Honestly, I keep thinking about them. That haughty bitch looking down on me, and that bastard who dared stare at me without knowing his place.”
The face of the Blood Death Sect’s branch leader rose in his mind—the woman who had gazed at him as coldly as if he were some street thug, never once fawning or begging to be held. Beside her stood that man of unknown origins, Biryu, her subordinate who had dared try to throw a punch at him. Their faces flickered endlessly before Gwak Ido’s eyes.
He ground his teeth and muttered, “At the very least, I’m going to cripple that Biryu bastard.”
“Heh heh. Like last time with that Jejongrim place? The little brat from that backwater sect you turned into a cripple?”
“Yes. And as for that high-nosed bitch, the Blood Death Sect branch leader—we’ll use a commission as the pretext and make her come alone.”
“Alone? Aha.”
Gwak Ilsan wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth and kept pouring wine into his cup.
“Keh heh heh, good. Honestly, that body of hers has been tempting me for a while.”
Lust rising, Gwak Ilsan snatched the courtesan beside him. She let out a weak scream at his rough hands. The music filling the pleasure house swelled louder.
“Senior Brother, even so, it’s an official duel. How about we loosen up our bodies together and train for about an hour before it starts?”
Gwak Ido suggested. Gwak Ilsan wiped the powder from his lips and replied,
“An hour? Hey! No need for that! There’s a saying—heroes love beauty! We’re training in real time right now! Am I right, everyone?”
The Jongnam Sect men tangled with the courtesans all burst into laughter and clapped.
“That’s right! Let’s see if there’s any martial artist who trains as hard as we do!”
They clinked their cups.
“Let’s enjoy ourselves!”
“Life’s meant to be enjoyed!”
Everyone roared in cheer. And so the lights of the Guiyan Pavilion never went out.
—Thud.
The cave resounded.
—Thud.
It resounded again.
“Aaaagh!”
I screamed in agony, clutching my fist and rolling on the ground.
Mumyeong shouted.
Seventy-two times! Still a long way to go!
“Hah! Hah!”
Before me stood a massive granite boulder soaked in blood. I had struck it thousands of times, yet not a single scratch marred its unyielding surface. Pain made me falter.
Strike.
“Ugh… uhhh!”
Strike it.
I hesitated. Mumyeong’s voice cracked like thunder.
Strike it now!
—Thud!
The training was hell.
What I had been given was three hundred days under Amyeondong’s property that stretched time tenfold. Within that span, I had to settle the score.
For this training, the standard by which I will drive the Host will match the level of the Seven Battle Command units—the absolute elite of the elite even within the Heavenly Demon Cult.
I had to master and melt into my body the seven martial arts I had copied so far, excluding the Heaven and Earth Great Shift. Only by thoroughly integrating them into my flesh could I suppress the manifestation of the red eyes and the distinctive traits of the arts, allowing me to face Gwak Ido cleanly in a duel under countless watching eyes.
As the Host said, this is nothing new. This time we are simply raising the intensity.
The goals Mumyeong set that I absolutely had to complete were only two.
First: drill every form into my bones through endless repetition until they became pure muscle memory.
Second: forge an overwhelming physique that could fully express everything I had melted into it and still have strength to spare.
And so the training began.
—Drip.
Dew formed on the ceiling and fell.
To melt the Heaven and Earth Great Shift into the Vajra Demon Subduing Fist, I had to surpass the training I had endured for two and a half years in Amyeondong. I had to surpass myself.
I trained like a madman, one session after another.
I smashed the granite boulder with my bare fists. Weighted with hundred-catty chains, I embraced a boulder twice as massive as before and rose and sat thousands of times. I steadied the swinging chains wrapped around my body and clung to the wall. Using the grooves carved into Amyeondong’s walls, I climbed all the way to the ceiling. I hung there and endured. I swung a sword wrapped in hundred-catty chains. I repeated every form I had learned hundreds of thousands of times. After eating and taking the barest rest, I tempered my body once more.
You must create a physique that can melt every martial art and still have room left over!
—Drip.
Sweat fell from my body hanging from the ceiling.
“Ghk…! Ghk!”
I clung to the grooves with nothing but my fingers and held on.
“—!!! ——!!!!”
Throughout the entire training period, my screams—like a beast having its limbs torn off, like a man under torture—echoed thunderously through Amyeondong. Blood and sweat dripped from my fingernails and fell.
Hold for at least the minimum goal of three hours!
Sweat on my body, suspended by fingers alone, gleamed as it reflected the light. The heat radiating from me alone heated the entire cave. The training drove me mercilessly, like hell itself.
“Uwaaaagh!!”
Without rest I pushed a boulder resting on a faintly inclined ledge.
Push!
Mumyeong urged. Blood seeped from my clenched teeth. My knees creaked and groaned. With no internal energy whatsoever, I drove myself using pure physical strength alone.
“Huff! Huff!”
Blood vessels burst in both eyes. I no longer knew how much time had passed.
Two steps! Three more steps and two more pushes! Push! Host! Push it!
Heavenly Demon body or not, I refused to rely on the coincidences I had been given. Even that was not enough. To survive—to keep from being swayed by others’ hands—I needed something higher still.
There is no such thing as coincidence in this world. Nothing is given to those who simply stand still.
I want to live. I truly want to live. I want to live a human life that no one else’s hands can control.
Strike down! Strike it down!
—Thwack! Thwaaack!
I smashed the granite boulder. Using only my body, without a single thread of internal energy. Blood sprayed. Flesh flew.
Perform the martial arts you copied one hundred thousand times each while wearing the hundred-catty chains! Begin!
Wrapped in the iron chains of the hundred-catty weights, I repeated the forms again and again.
Kongtong Sect’s Hwan-yeong-dae-sin-bo.
Mount Hua Sect’s Plum Blossom Spinning Dagger.
Moyong Family’s Ssangryong-seonpung-geom.
Blood Death Sect’s Blood-Grinding Serpent Wheel Brush Sword.
Shaolin Temple’s True Heaven Three Demon Fist.
—Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Pus flowed along the chains coiled around my entire body. Even a body remodeled upon the Heavenly Demon’s physique—said to be peerless across all ages—was being driven past the point of recovery. It was hell.
When training ended I forced mountain-like piles of meat into my mouth.
You must eat it all! Otherwise your body won’t hold!
“Uweeeek!”
Host!
—Splat splat!
I vomited up the bear meat I had struggled to swallow.
Eat! You cannot rest!
“Ugh! Uuuugh!”
I forced myself up in the darkness. My mouth was caked with vomit. Mumyeong roared.
Eat!
I tore into the meat as if stuffing a rag into my mouth. The moment I finished eating, I began training again without pause. Loads that surpassed even the Heavenly Demon’s physical abilities—enhanced dozens of times over with rapid recovery—were piled onto my body.
My body was collapsing. After swinging the chain-wrapped sword more than a hundred thousand times, my limbs went slack.
—Trickle trickle.
Urine ran down between my legs. A foul stench rose.
“Haa…! Haa!”
Even if my body had been remodeled to endure without issue, my mind remained exactly as it had always been—Moyong Bi’s.
One hour…!
“Kraaagh!”
Hanging from the ceiling, I lost my grip. With a thunderous crash I tumbled down. The hundred-catty chains wrapped around my body swung wildly.
Fifteen days have already passed and you still can’t even fill one hour! Hang on!
I clenched my teeth and clung again. The iron chains hanging from my entire body swayed. I forgot what I was even doing. My mind alone remained purely myself—nothing more, nothing less. The ordinary me who had once sat helplessly tearing at my hair beside my mother’s corpse.
Mumyeong drove me ruthlessly.
“Huff huff…”
Both body and willpower were at their limit. The previous two-and-a-half-year training had still been something I could endure. I could eat. This time, however, my body itself was necrotizing under the strain. It was training so brutal it bordered on self-harm. I could not even get a single scrap of food into my mouth.
My hands trembling, I put a piece of meat between my lips.
“Uweeeek.”
Something white rolled out. A white tooth.
“Haa. Haa.”
Suddenly I thought I was tired. This life of thrashing about with death as my companion felt weary and exhausting. No matter how far I went, there seemed to be no end. How much longer must I walk this path? My head felt blank. It was like groping forward through an endless cave. The act of walking itself was not so much painful as the certainty that I could not know how far it stretched—that I might walk like this forever until I died—that certainty gnawed at my mind.
I could see no growth.
Heaven beyond heaven.
The sky was far too high for the likes of me to fly. A wretch like me was not even a sparrow. I was merely a sparrow that had luckily crawled across the ground and somehow obtained wings for a single flight.
“…Mumyeong, if I thrash about in this cave and die one day…”
…Host?
My dry lips split as I spoke in a faint voice.
“Even if my story is suddenly cut off one day as if by a blade, the people outside will know nothing and go on living ordinarily. Yes, I know that’s only natural. I was the same once. Still…”
…
I covered both eyes with my palms. Everything I had been suppressing and accumulating finally burst. Something hot flowed along the corners of my eyes.
“I’m thrashing about like this just to stay alive in this vivid reality… and no one knows. Do you even understand that loneliness?”
…
Mumyeong said nothing. Dew formed on the ceiling and fell. When I stopped moving, not a single sign of life could be heard in Amyeondong. This was a formless space where even the air itself was dead—where everyone was perfectly dead. Here I had spent nearly a year fighting alone while staring at the walls. And I would have to keep doing so.
“If it just ends like this, what becomes of me? If my story simply ends like this… even if that happens, the outside world will just keep turning as if nothing ever happened.”
I’m alive. I’m breathing so vividly, so clearly alive. I’m still thrashing with everything I have, trying at least once to live properly in this distinct reality…
“What would a dead thing like you know? You nightmare of the Demon Cult who only drools over my flesh—what would you know of this feeling?”
Mumyeong spoke.
I told you my memories are returning in fragments. Shall I tell you a story from the past?
I do not know why. Suddenly the image of a black dog and a snow-covered white hill rose in my mind. The two of us were gazing out over an endless white snowfield.
There were many people in the Demon Cult. And among them were friends named Gwanyeon and Jaro. Even though they were friends, the two were very different.
Gwanyeon was born gifted. His face was handsome, his skin like white jade, and other young ladies trailed after him. With a single swing of his sword, enemies were sliced like radishes in a world-shaking display, and third-rate martial artists died wholesale from one stroke.
Jaro, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. His skill was meager, he was ugly, his hands and feet were ruined with calluses, and his skin was so blackened by the sun it had cracked and peeled.
Mumyeong’s words continued faintly, as if they might break off at any moment.
No matter how many hundreds or thousands of days Jaro swung his sword and strove, he remained nothing more than a shadow in Gwanyeon’s life. He was never the protagonist.
Others said the same—especially in the Demon Cult, where life was survival of the fittest. In the end Jaro would crawl at Gwanyeon’s feet and die out on the frontier. They mocked the silent efforts of the man who simply kept swinging his sword.
“….”
And reality was cruel. There was no twist here. Until the very end of life… there was not even a single scrap of that cheap happiness storytellers would call clichéd and mock. Reality held none of it…
Mumyeong’s voice was neither high nor low—dry, yet calm.
The Host resembles winter. And you resemble me as well. So, shameless as it may be, allow me to speak my wish.
“What?”
It was the scenery of gazing out over the white plain. A world with no one else. The black dog sat beside me on the hill and continued the story as calmly as in a dream.
In this upcoming duel at least, I want the Host to win for all to see. I want you to kick the asses of those who looked down on you. I want a conclusion like that old tale of rewarding good and punishing evil to feel as if it were only natural. As if such an utterly clichéd ending had been decided from the start… Do you think it’s still too hard? Like Gwanyeon and Jaro?
“You…”
Mumyeong said,
In this reality where nothing of the sort is decided—where that is only natural—I want you to show that utterly obvious ending with utter shamelessness. Just once is enough. I want the Host to show it.
Mumyeong had always spoken without emotion. And now, for the first time, his voice was trembling. That trembling was resentment itself.
My life was like winter. Cold dew fell with the Cold Dew solar term, winter began with the Start of Winter, frost descended with the Frost Descent, and the longest night of the year arrived with the Winter Solstice. I stayed up through the white nights of Lesser Cold… and in the end I met death without ever seeing new sprouts, staring only at eternal snow.
If there are winters like mine in life, then there must also be winters like the Host’s that wait for spring. Of course that path will be long and rough. But—instead—
Mumyeong said,
I will stay by your side.
He placed the final period on his long speech.
Even if no one watches your story, even if they turn away, even if your story is buried in darkness and forgotten… even if you live a life thrashing alone in everyone’s oblivion, I will stay with you in that darkness.
I rose. Before me lay meat mixed with vomit. Meat with dirt on it.
“You…”
I steadied my body that felt ready to shatter and my violently trembling hands. I picked up the meat and gasped for breath. For a long time I stared at it. My lips moved.
“Mumyeong.”
In a hoarse voice—for the first time in my life that I could remember—I spoke words like these.
“Can I trust you?”
Mumyeong answered.
Trust me. Moyong Bi.
—Crunch!
I tore into the meat. I ate every last scrap. In the darkness, red light blazed in the eyes of the man who rose.
Fifty days passed.
“—! ——!!”
I hung from the ceiling and howled in agony. Amyeondong shook. Even through the howling I refused to fall. Far away, the wooden puppets filling Yuk-bi-dong—creatures that should feel no fear—flinched.
One hundred days passed.
“Kraaaaaah!!”
I brought my knife-hand down on the granite boulder. I smashed it with my fists. Flesh flew, calluses formed, and blood sprayed again. Without forms or internal energy, cracks began to appear faintly in the rock under my bare hands.
One hundred fifty days passed.
Three hours broken through!
“No—I can still… I can still hold longer!!!”
Covered in tears, I howled while hanging from the ceiling.
Two hundred days passed.
“Nine hundred ninety-nine thousand…! Nine hundred ninety-nine…!”
Beyond consciousness, in pure unconsciousness, I executed the forms. The hundred-catty chains swung until they shattered, exploding into fragments in midair. When I performed the forms, the Heavenly Fire White Ginseng and Heavenly Thunder White Ginseng reacted, and the energies of fire and thunder seeped out.
Two hundred fifty days passed.
My entire body was torn to shreds, soaked in blood, sweat, and pus. I trained with a gag in my mouth. The gag was soaked in blood and dried repeatedly until it turned a deep brown.
And on the day that marked three hundred days—
—Craaaack.
The massive granite boulder split apart with a thunderous roar.