The Heavenly Demon Soul
The Demonic Cultist who had been tearing down the Shaolin Temple plaque at the Cheonma Tomb and hanging up the sign for the Heavenly Demon Sacred Hall was a Guardian from the Divine Hall. The one who had sailed across the open sea with dozens of ships was too far away on the command vessel for anyone to see his face, and even Choe-ri-ong said he had no idea who it was. But to Cheong, he seemed like the most vicious man in the entire Demonic Cult. It had been a journey of crossing mountains and seas. Whether by luck or fate, he had ended up being the only one among the Demonic Cult masters to encounter the small boy.
“Hey, kid.”
“……?”
Ji Seungju’s eyes widened. Since his face was normally expressionless, it was easy to guess just how shocked he was.
“What? Why are you so surprised? Like you’ve seen someone you shouldn’t have.”
“You were alive, my lady?”
“What do you mean, alive? When did I die?”
“I clearly saw your corpse. It was in a place modeled after the front courtyard of the Divine Cult’s Divine Myth Hall.”
“Divine Myth Hall?”
“It is the manor where the Great Guardians reside. It seems someone wanted to kill you so badly that they created an illusion of your death. Be careful. Even if it is an illusion, if they see you, they might come running to kill you again.”
It was a conversation that left one person completely out. Choe-ri-ong cleared his throat.
“Ahem.”
“So the Jajeon-magun is safe as well. That is fortunate.”
“I heard the Young Demon Brain was trying to dismantle the formation, so I came to help. How is the progress?”
“I have cleared a few barriers, but I cannot even guess how many were laid in total. For now, I applied the Eight Trigrams into the Nine Palaces and used the Scattering Formation.”
“On my way here, I saw the Imagination Heaven of the Five O’Clock and the Earthly Vitality Path.”
“Ah, then we can remove the four similar directions from the Southern Heaven Board: Spirit Trigram, Spirit Heaven, Exit River, and Flying Formation.”
Technical jargon flew back and forth. From that point on, it became a conversation Cheong could not understand at all. Of course, she had no intention of helping anyway. She soon lost interest and looked around, but there was nothing particularly interesting to see. In the end, the bored Cheong let out a long yawn.
Choe-ri-ong clicked his tongue at the sight.
“Tsk tsk. Keep that up and your mouth will split open.”
“What am I supposed to do if I’m sleepy?”
“Then you should just go to sleep instead of a grown girl yawning so shamelessly. If you had married early, you would have been a mother by now.”
Cheong tilted her head. Was that some familiar nagging? Did all old people end up like this? But Choe-ri-ong was not one of those familiar people. Cheong’s face twisted.
“What does it matter to you whether I become a mother or a father?”
“Your mouth is filthy, girl. Why do you keep getting more and more wicked? Just because you have a pretty face, you think you can act up?”
“Whatever. So how long do you think it will take?”
Choe-ri-ong looked at Ji Seungju. Ji Seungju glanced back and forth between Cheong and Choe-ri-ong with a strange expression. Unable to withstand Choe-ri-ong’s silent urging, he finally spoke.
“Even at the fastest, I thought it would take another day, but with the Jajeon-magun’s help, it should be much better. After all, we are short on time because there is no water.”
A person could endure without food, but not without water. That was true even for the greatest masters. Cheong did the math in her head. Ji Seungju was an expert. If a job that would take him a full day alone could be cut in half with the old man’s help, that meant half a day. Then she could get a good, long sleep, right?
“Since the old man told me to, I’m going to sleep. Wake me up if the formation looks like it’s about to be dismantled. I want to watch how it turns out.”
Cheong made sure to give the instruction just in case, then wriggled around, trying different positions for her head until she found a comfortable one. She had already been wandering for so long that she had missed her usual sleep time. Once her body relaxed, sleep came rushing in.
----
The dismantling of the formation was taking much longer than expected. By the time Cheong woke up after a long sleep, the scene before her was the familiar grand hall of the royal palace. Choe-ri-ong, looking exhausted, was going back and forth between mountains, fields, and the palace. It made sense that an old man running around like that would be tired. Cheong, still being carried in his arms, felt embarrassed.
“Old man, if you’re tired, why don’t you rest a bit?”
“Do you think a master would get tired just from staying up one night? No need to worry about nonsense like that.”
“Then put me down. I can walk and run just fine now, you know?”
“If you wander around out of curiosity and step on something wrong, all the work we have done so far could be wasted. Just staying here like this is helping.”
Was that so? If that was what he said, then fine. With a legitimate excuse, Cheong proudly enjoyed the ride. The work of dismantling the formation was completely incomprehensible to an outsider. They muttered incomprehensible words, stopped and turned, sometimes walked backward or sideways, then stopped at a point and kicked the empty air. Then a metal ball would pop out of thin air and roll on the ground. It was an endless repetition of that process.
And on top of that, she was hungry! But complaining about hunger felt impossible when Choe-ri-ong’s already sunken eye sockets looked even more hollow and shadowed. Cheong could not bring herself to say she was hungry in front of him.
“I’m starving. What about food?”
“Nothing we can do. We have to go hungry.”
“Ugh, this is disgusting. The bastards who set up this formation should have their dicks cut off. If they want to fight, they should do it fair and square instead of laying traps like this.”
“Right. Just like you said. Those sons of bitches.”
Choe-ri-ong also ground his teeth. As they starved, stray thoughts came to mind. Wouldn’t it be much faster if they woke up a few more people to help? There were probably more formation experts among the Demonic Cult members. Wait……? Now that she thought about it, she had knocked out several people when she went to check the location of the Heavenly Demon Soul. Had they not woken up yet? The old man had come to his senses, though. Cheong was thinking about that when a sudden voice broke her thoughts.
“Mother.”
“Hehe, my son.”
“Mother.”
“Yes, Mother is here. My son.”
Cheong turned her gaze toward the voice and frowned at the strange sight. It was Mi-buin with her venomous face. While her expression was filled with nothing but hatred, she was gently stroking the head of her grown son resting on her thigh, speaking in a tender voice. But that son’s face looked familiar.
“Ah! That bastard! He’s living the good life, isn’t he?”
It was Jijon Hoseoin, wearing a bright smile.
“Old man, put me down for a second. I decided I wasn’t going to let that bastard off easy.”
“Say something that makes sense. If I were going to stand by and watch that happen with my own eyes, why would I have gone through all this trouble?”
“Tch.”
Cheong clicked her tongue. That bastard had been begging for the Nature Realm, and in the end, he had fallen into the formation and was playing with his own mother. But it was also unexpected. She had thought Jijon Hoseoin, being in the highest position, would be having some grand illusion like “I am the emperor” or something, but his greatest desire was just playing around with his mother? Cheong made a disgusted face and asked.
“This is Jijon Hoseoin’s illusion, right? This shows the thing he wants most, right? That’s what that weird, shameless bastard wants?”
“Even Jijon is pitiful if you think about it. He never once got to be held by his mother, so that is the kind of longing he has.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“It is the karma of the Divine Blood. Tsk tsk.”
The mother who bore the Divine Blood could not be ordinary. She needed a sturdy frame, powerful blood and qi, a clear upper dantian, and strong innate qi. So they usually kidnapped the most suitable women from the Central Plains to bear the child of the Divine Blood. Because of that, it was rare for a mother to develop maternal feelings after being forced to give birth to an unwanted child. When she looked at the child she had borne, her eyes and mouth poured out nothing but cruel blades. Her tongue alone could be called the greatest swordsman in the world.
“Mother.”
“Yes. My son. My lovely son.”
“Mother.”
“Yes. I love you too, my son.”
The anger on the woman’s face as she said this was crystal clear. Yet her voice was so affectionate that it was chilling.
“But why does the mother’s face look like that?”
“She has never made any other expression in her life, so she cannot even imagine a different one.”
Cheong’s mouth opened and closed without a word. The mother was glaring with a face full of venom, while Jijon Hoseoin looked bright and happy. Cheong let out a deep sigh and swallowed her curses. Seriously, fuck. From the top to the bottom of the Demonic Cult, there was not a single normal bastard.
----
The work of dismantling the formation took a long time after that. It was long enough that they were hungry, thirsty, and so drowsy that their heads hurt and they could not sleep anymore. Cheong was sitting there with a throbbing head and hollow eyes when Choe-ri-ong suddenly stopped walking and spoke.
“The formation is disappearing.”
“Ah. Finally……”
She had thought she was going to die from exhaustion. The unspoken words hung in the air. That was what Cheong, who had only been dozing in his arms, thought. At this point, she figured she could congratulate herself on wearing down the triangle of conscience until it became a perfect circle. The world began to burn away little by little, like paper catching fire from embers. Ash scattered from all directions, and beyond it, the dim tomb chamber gradually revealed itself. Even though all the torches had burned out, the chamber was not completely dark. That was probably because the technique of drilling small holes to let in light from outside the tomb had already reached the level of immortals.
The Demonic Cult members began to wake from their illusions. Sighs of regret, occasional sobs of loss, or frustrated shouts echoed through the stone chamber. Some even collapsed on the spot, sobbing and calling out names only they knew. This was why Ji Seungju had called it a vicious formation. Those caught in the illusion did not want to leave, and even after the formation was dismantled, they were left writhing in terrible feelings of loss. It was the very essence of malice. And because of that, an opportunity had come to Cheong.
“Hup.”
Cheong jumped down from Choe-ri-ong’s arms.
“Dear?”
“Hehe, it’s been a long time of humiliation……”
At the same time, Cheong stomped hard on the ground. It was the anti-gravity step of the Moon Maiden Mountain Step. In the darkness, a single brilliant triangular prism shone, and the shadow of a human body fell over the glow of the Heavenly Demon Soul. Finally, Cheong grasped the glowing triangular prism in her hand. She took a deep breath, and soon a loud voice filled the tomb chamber.
“Everyone, pay attention! Can you all see this?”
In an instant, everyone’s eyes turned to Cheong. The dazed gazes, still suffering from the aftereffects of the broken illusion, soon found the sacred object in her hand and changed into various reactions. Some widened their eyes in shock, others simply blinked in confusion. Still others immediately dropped to their knees and bowed their heads. When her eyes met Ji Seungju’s, who was standing there with his mouth agape, Cheong winked at him. From the shape of his lips, even though she could not hear him, she knew exactly what he was saying.
Yem-byoung.
And where was that bastard Jijon Hoseoin? No, he still had not come to his senses. Jijon Hoseoin was still standing there with a blank look on his face. To be like this at the most important moment. Well, once she broke the Heavenly Demon Soul, he would probably make some interesting expressions after all. Cheong took another deep breath. Now it was really the end. Once she left the tomb chamber, destroyed it, and ran, she would finally be saying goodbye to these disgusting Demonic Cult bastards. Just as Cheong was about to deliver her final line, Choe-ri-ong’s shout stopped her.
“No! Dear! Put it down right now! Hurry! If someone without the qualifications touches the sacred object, it is forbidden!”
It was a desperate cry, as if he were spitting blood. His wide-open eyes trembled, and the emotion in them was clearly fear. Fear? Terror? Cheong read fear on Choe-ri-ong’s face. Why?
“Put it down! Please! Are you trying to die in front of your father twice?!”
Suddenly, her hand itched. Cheong looked down at her hand blankly.
“Huh……?”
Anyone who saw the self-luminous triangular prism slowly seeping into their hand would have no choice but to make a dumbfounded sound.