The Confession of a Traitor
Searching for people. When it came to extracting information, torture was terribly inefficient. Torture bred resentment in the subject. How could one trust any information spilled by someone whose hostility had been pushed to its peak? Moreover, the victim, the one being tortured, watched the torturer’s every move just to survive the moment. Instead of conveying accurate facts, they ended up saying whatever the torturer wanted to hear.
But Cheong didn’t know the facts anyway. Even if she had, she wouldn’t have cared. Deep in her heart lurked malice. A powerful urge that always whispered persistently. Blood and more blood. And even more blood. Screams. Howls of agony. The wet, rattling gasps of blood-filled lungs. Breaths clinging desperately to life. Forced-down sobs. Eyes that had lost focus, trembling violently, unable to settle, widening with the hollow despair and disbelief that came right before death. All those moments of suffering were so beautiful.
Her body shuddered. She couldn’t hold back her ragged breathing. Every nerve, every bone and joint, every muscle in her body burned with a terrible pleasure. Ah. So this was why artists lived like madmen. Why they painted while breathing mercury fumes, why they wrote while coughing up blood from consumption. Their short lives weren’t unfortunate at all. They must have been happy their whole lives. That was why Cheong’s approach was different from ordinary torture. It was closer to a quest for truth or a religious ritual.
She parted flesh and flipped muscles, instinctively gauging the damage through moans, screams, and breathing. It was an exploration of how to keep a living thing alive while dissecting it alive. All so she could keep it alive longer and inflict even more pain. That was why her touch was delicate and careful. This was a rare, one-of-a-kind teaching material she had finally gotten her hands on.
Suddenly, Cheong’s hands stopped. Ah. If she touched anything more here, it might be dangerous? It was a baseless hunch. Tsk, things were just getting good. Cheong clicked her tongue and stepped back.
“Please, please, just kill me instead……”
Only Wangsonman, now nothing more than a human-shaped mass of blood, begged. His vocal cords, ruined from screaming, scraped like sand, and his crushed lungs could no longer function properly.
“You’ve done some bad things, haven’t you?” Cheong giggled. “We’re secret friends, right? Won’t you tell just me? What kind of things do you have to do to go over three hundred points?”
Right. She should have found that out first. She’d carelessly chopped off heads without thinking. Had she been living too thoughtlessly? She admitted it and reflected once more. But this world was the one at fault anyway. It had suddenly kidnapped someone who was living just fine.
“I, I deceived people……”
“Ah. The missing people?” Cheong tilted her head. “Nah, that can’t be it. You think you’d only get minus three hundred points for something that small? Tricking a few people is that bad?”
“I knew…… they wouldn’t come back……”
“Ah. You sent them to their deaths even though you knew? That makes a bit more sense. How many did you send?”
“Two or three…… a week. It’s been over half a year……”
“What? So one point five per week. Ten every four weeks. Over half a year, that’s at least sixty people? Hmm. Hmm. That’s enough to pass.”
Cheong nodded. If he had sent at least sixty people to their deaths, that must be worth around three hundred points of evil karma. No, wait. Wasn’t that wrong? Killing bad people was good karma, wasn’t it?
“Is that all?”
“I also…… cultivated demonic arts……”
“Demonic arts? What kind?”
“Seopsimgong……”
Cheong didn’t know martial arts anyway. But from the name alone, she could guess what it was. Seopsimgong. Didn’t that mean a technique for eating hearts? In truth, it was far more vicious than she imagined. Seopsimgong was a corrupted secret art of an esoteric sect. By consuming hearts refined through alchemy, one achieved inner energy progress. Through a sinister great method, one had to transfer the innate essence of a nine-year-old child into the heart to complete the black heart of Seopsimgong, a process that involved horrific pain. Furthermore, regardless of the practitioner’s talent or constitution, progress came solely based on the number of hearts consumed. Even upon reaching great success, there wasn’t actually a tremendous increase in inner energy. The real problems were the horrific training method itself and the possibility of mass-producing high-level experts. That was why Seopsimgong was widely known throughout the world as a terrifying demonic art.
“So, you ate hearts?”
“Those people brought them to me……”
“Those people?”
“I don’t know their identities. I really, really don’t.”
It didn’t sound like a lie. Cheong slowly rubbed the back of her neck.
“No, but why? Why would you need to cultivate demonic arts by offering people to strangers? And while eating human hearts, too. Actually, that part sounds kinda tasty. Do they come fresh?”
“What……”
Cheong slapped her own cheeks. “No, fuck, cannibalism is a bit much. Sorry. My head’s all over the place. Anyway, why? Why go that far?”
“I wanted…… to become the sect leader……”
Listening to him, he was even more of a bastard than she’d thought. The group those people belonged to was conducting some kind of operation using the commoners they’d abducted. Once it was finished, they planned to attack the Daejeong Sect. At that time, the eldest son Wangsonseok would be gravely injured, and the second son Wangsonman would brilliantly repel the enemies. Only then did joy bloom in Cheong’s heart.
Ah. So this evil karma was actually worth its weight? They really were complete bastards. Good thing she killed them. She confirmed that her hobby had actually contributed to world peace. A fresh sense of fulfillment washed over her.
“Then now that I’ve told you everything, please spare me……”
“What? Earlier you were begging me to kill you.”
“Please……”
Someone who couldn’t communicate was frightening. That was the state Cheong had been in while absorbed in self-studying the secrets of the human body with remarkable focus. But once conversation became possible, a faint desire to live began to sprout.
“Well. I’ll be generous. Thanks to you, my worries are solved too.”
“You’ll spare me……”
Even with his face flayed, vivid hope bloomed across it. A person’s will to live was truly remarkable. Of course, the people he had sold off must have felt the same way. That was why she still couldn’t kill him. She had carefully kept him alive so he wouldn’t die. If she killed him now, it would all go to waste.
“Well. Sure. I’ll let it slide this time. So always be grateful. Got it?”
And so the pleasant time came to an end! Pleasant times always passed so quickly. Feeling reluctant, Cheong roughly tossed Wangsonman onto the blanket and dragged him outside. It wasn’t the way Wangsonman had hoped for, but in the end, he did end up lying on the blanket. So in a very, very small way, his goal was achieved.
Cheong opened the iron door and stepped outside. The sun was already shining brightly. Come to think of it, when she’d asked if he knew a place where sound wouldn’t leak out, the fact that he’d guided her to this suspicious basement already showed he was shady. It was probably a spot where he secretly ate hearts and met with unknown people. Surprisingly, Cheong looked relatively clean. Of course, her sleeves were soaked, and there were plenty of dried blood flakes on her face where she’d rubbed it with her hands and on her neck. Still, compared to how she usually looked when completely drenched, this was relatively neat.
Since the basement wasn’t far from the Daejeong Sect, Cheong soon encountered the sect’s guests.
---- The Daejeong Sect had been very busy since morning. A valuable guest had gone missing, and the second son had also failed to show his face. They had released disciples to search while watching the guests’ reactions. But in truth, Sect Leader Wanggaeyuk wasn’t particularly worried. He figured the boy had simply gone out on some business in the morning. The young experts of the Sleeping Dragon Assembly seemed concerned, but Hwangcheon wasn’t originally a dangerous city. Wanggaeyuk firmly believed that.
That was why he nearly collapsed in shock when the missing guest dragged in something and claimed it was Wangsonman. People were weak to unexpected shocks. But that was only the beginning. It was what the guest said after they hurriedly sent the second son to the medical hall.
“He said he tricked the missing people and lured them away. I heard it myself. He’s working with bad people to kill his brother and take the heir’s position.”
“That’s nonsense! Do you have any proof? Evidence? That child may be unpleasant, but he’s not the type to plot something so evil……”
“I heard he cultivated Seopsimgong? Wouldn’t a master be able to tell?”
“Seopsimgong!”
Wanggaeyuk staggered with a groan. Wangsonseok, standing beside him, quickly supported him.
“Such, such……”
If Wangsonman had truly cultivated demonic arts, confirming it wouldn’t be difficult. Would he really tell a lie that was so easy to verify? It was the perfect evidence to support the situation.
At that moment, Cheong clapped her hands to draw attention.
“Alright, next. I also found out where the group of strangers took the people they abducted.”
Cheong looked straight at Wanggaeyuk and continued.
“The Daejeong Sect bears responsibility too, you know? So you should come with me, shouldn’t you?”
The abducted people were gutter rats whose disappearance no one cared about. So it wasn’t like she had to rescue them. Well, if they happened to be alive, she might as well save them. Honestly, she had no desire to go to great lengths to save someone who’d sold his own wife to pay gambling debts. But what about the people left behind?
Cheong recalled the face of the grandmother who had begged her to find her son. That desperate expression. Even if the grandmother didn’t have much life left, she still had to live out the rest of it. She shouldn’t spend her remaining days clinging to the Half-Sword guests and begging. Maybe Lee Hasam could finally wash his hands of everything and live well with his wife. Or maybe he was just another bastard like the gamblers trapped in the hell of Gangwon Province in the afterlife, ready to sell off his wife and children again. But even so, the people left behind shouldn’t be held back by lingering attachment because of someone like that.