7. Baek Byeog-yeon
"You still haven't found him?"
The Cult Leader's voice, shattering the deep silence of the Demon Sovereign's Hall, was steeped in a cold fury.
"We beg your forgiveness, Cult Leader. We have investigated from every angle, but... at this point, I half suspect he may already be dead."
At the rebuke, Jeon Gwi-ak, leader of the First Shadow Squad, hastily pressed his forehead to the floor.
The Demon Sovereign's Hall—the beating heart of the Heavenly Demon Cult—held the Cult Leader enthroned in the seat of supremacy, flanked by the Grand Guardian, the Left Guardian, and the Right Guardian, with the leaders of the cult's core military units gathered below them.
The emergency summons had gone out because Yul Sogang, vanished without a trace for more than a full year now, remained unfound—and the Cult Leader's patience had finally reached its limit, his fury boiling over.
"You mean to tell me a master of the Hwagyeong realm dropped dead on some roadside like a nameless traveler? Cut the nonsense! It has been a year! A year! And you still have no word of him—not even his shadow. If that doesn't prove your incompetence, what does? Am I wrong, First Shadow Squad Leader?"
Under that ice-cold rebuke, cold sweat poured down Jeon Gwi-ak's spine like a waterfall.
Fuck's sake... We've searched this hard and still found nothing, which means that old bastard Baek Byeog-yeon lied from the very beginning. He blurted out that his disciple had entered Hwagyeong without thinking it through, and once the Cult Leader announced he would verify it himself, there was no covering it up—so he obviously smuggled the boy off somewhere and sent him away in secret.
In a way, Jeon Gwi-ak's suspicion was only natural.
Of the two hundred elites of the First Shadow Squad—the unit that commanded every scrap of intelligence in the Demonic Cult—a staggering one hundred and twenty had been tied up for a solid year hunting a single man.
The fugitive might have changed his face, or he might be deliberately burying his martial arts and playing the meek nobody—so in every region where a report came in, they quietly investigated any "unidentified young men" who had appeared out of nowhere.
Sometimes they merely watched from afar; other times they picked the dead of night to test the man with a surprise ambush.
After all, surely a Hwagyeong master hiding his strength would never be felled by some clumsy ambush? At the very least, he would parry it or slip aside.
And if he failed to parry and died? Then that simply proved the man was not Yul Sogang, and they could move on to the next target.
And so every "man who had appeared out of nowhere" snared in the First Shadow Squad's tight-woven net had died to their merciless ambushes without even managing a proper scream.
In the end, the only ones to fall to their empty suspicions and indiscriminate slaughter were hundreds of innocent commoners who had never trained a day of martial arts in their lives.
The reason none of them ever dreamed that Kang Soyul—no, Yul Sogang, the very man they were hunting so desperately—had been transformed into a woman was simple.
Baek Byeog-yeon, the sole person who knew the secret, had kept his mouth firmly shut and buried it.
For Baek Byeog-yeon, it was the only sensible course.
My precious disciple, who had only just set foot in Hwagyeong, went and turned into a woman halfway through his marrow-and-bone rebirth—absurd as that is—and was so mortified by the sight that he fled the cult without a word of permission!
Who in all the world would swallow such a ridiculous tale, and with not a shred of evidence to boot?
Say it wrong, and the best he could hope for was to be written off as a madman; at worst, he would plainly lose his head on the spot for spouting possessed nonsense before the Cult Leader. And so Baek Byeog-yeon had had no choice but to offer up a plausible lie instead.
"I beg your forgiveness, Cult Leader, but when I rose one morning, the boy was gone—without so much as a word."
He spoke with feigned sorrow laid over a foundation of perfect calm.
"You are certain he said nothing before he left?"
"W-well... he did say, now and then, that he wished to reach a higher realm—to gaze upon the distant end of the martial path. Cult Leader."
"Hoh... I see. An endlessly audacious, greedy creature, is he? Not yet even thirty, already in Hwagyeong, and still he harbors such grandiose ambitions. No—perhaps it is precisely that terrifying obsession which carried him to Hwagyeong at so tender an age."
Of course, Soyul had never once uttered anything so profound, but in that desperate, do-or-die moment, Baek Byeog-yeon had brilliantly improvised the excuse most likely to sound believable.
It was, in any case, the one explanation the Cult Leader could nod along to most readily.
And since Jeon Gwi-ak of the First Shadow Squad had been present in that hall, he had heard Baek Byeog-yeon's words with his own ears.
At the time he had shrugged it off—so that was that—but now, three years on, looking back, the oddities were too many to count.
A master who reached Hwagyeong before the age of thirty.
And that very master had slipped away without a squeak on the precise night before the Cult Leader was to grace him with a visit and confirm his strength in person?
And in all the time since, not one trace, not one clue had surfaced? By any common standard, it made no sense whatsoever.
Not even after throwing half the roster of the Demonic Cult's finest unit—the First Shadow Squad, virtuosos of pursuit, assassination, and surveillance—at the problem.
And so Jeon Gwi-ak could think only: What if no man named Yul Sogang ever existed in the first place? Or, What if Baek Byeog-yeon exaggerated—or lied outright?
Flat against the floor, Jeon Gwi-ak stole a careful read of the Cult Leader's expression and eased his mouth open.
"C-Cult Leader... forgive my presumption, but I suspect that this subject of ours, Baek Byeog-yeon, may have dared to feed you falsehoods."
"Falsehoods, you say?"
The Cult Leader's brow twitched, ever so slightly.
"Yes. In truth, has a single soul—not even you, Cult Leader—ever laid eyes on proof that he reached Hwagyeong at such a young age? And yet this rare treasure of a talent departed the cult, by pure coincidence, on the very night you were to travel in person and confirm his strength. The timing is far too convenient."
"I share that view. The First Shadow Squad Leader has proven his exceptional abilities through results, time without number. For a man like him to come up empty for an entire year, there must be some other cause. And the suspects presumed to be Yul Sogang—seized, beaten, and killed—already number in the hundreds. No man can live while evaporating without a trace like this. Least of all a true master of Hwagyeong."
"Even the Right Guardian? Hmm..."
Sensing the Cult Leader's interest, Jeon Gwi-ak turned his eyes to the Right Guardian, who had so abruptly taken his side, thought, I really must see to it that I treat that old man better, and wept silent tears of gratitude.
Fortified by so dependable an ally, Jeon Gwi-ak pressed on, louder and surer of himself this time.
"Therefore, if only for the sake of your honor, Cult Leader, I believe it is right that Baek Byeog-yeon be interrogated in thorough detail. My First Shadow Squad will take full charge of the interrogation. Cult Leader!"
He had phrased it politely enough as an "interrogation," but the notorious interrogations of the First Shadow Squad were never the sort to wrap up over tea in a heartwarming little exchange—'This is what I heard. Is it true?' 'No, sir.' 'Good. Keep up the good work.'—and be done with it.
Theirs was a vicious, savage process that mobilized every species of cruel threat, horrific torture, mind-shattering restraint arts, and drugs, forcing from the subject not only everything he knew, but even memories he had himself forgotten—or things he had never known at all.
The Cult Leader, who knew the word's full weight as well as anyone, hesitated for a moment.
It was not, of course, that he shrank from torturing one old man.
It was the bare fact that Baek Byeog-yeon had been the master who trained a Hwagyeong martial artist—that single truth alone—that gave him pause.
But what if Baek Byeog-yeon was crippled or killed under the torture, and then—damn it all—Yul Sogang returned? Would his fury at those who had savagely tortured his one and only master not pierce the very heavens? And who would be left to answer for that?
Yet a hundred and twenty First Shadow Squad elites could accomplish so much, and letting that precious manpower sit idle for a whole year chafed at him as Cult Leader. The decision had to be made.
"Very well. Permission granted. First Shadow Squad Leader Jeon Gwi-ak—you will interrogate Baek Byeog-yeon and establish, once and for all, whether he has fed This Sovereign false information."
"By your command!"
Only then did a smile, half-visible at best, touch the lips of the Cult Leader—Heavenly Blood Demon Emperor Dokgo Jeon.
Jeon Gwi-ak never knew it, but the entire proceeding had unfolded precisely according to the Cult Leader's design.
The thought that Baek Byeog-yeon might be hiding something had occurred to him, but he had no wish to be the first to order the man's interrogation with his own mouth.
If Baek Byeog-yeon had indeed lied to him, the First Shadow Squad Leader's vicious interrogation would drag the truth out in the end regardless.
And if Baek Byeog-yeon had spoken true, then they need only launch another sweeping search, and when Kang Soyul was found one day, coax him into their ranks.
And if, in the course of it, the boy flew into a rage over the torture of his master?
Simple.
Hand over the First Shadow Squad Leader's head and offer a few words of comfort.
One way or another, the Cult Leader himself stood to lose nothing.
That was exactly why he had cunningly steered things until the words we will interrogate Baek Byeog-yeon fell from Jeon Gwi-ak's own mouth.
Between a First Shadow Squad Leader who was, at best, mid-stage Chojeoljeong, and Yul Sogang, a young master of Hwagyeong with a boundless future, which one mattered more to the Demonic Cult was painfully obvious.
Oblivious to any of it, Jeon Gwi-ak withdrew in high spirits, and the Cult Leader smiled quietly as he watched him go.
Soyul, who had no way of knowing that her master now stood in danger of being tortured—perhaps even killed—was bubbling over with excitement at the lively market, the first she had ever seen in her life.
This was Cheongseok County, a smallish village on the outskirts of Gansu Province.
Gansu was home to the Kongtong Sect, one of the Nine Great Orthodox Sects, but the province was so vast that Kongtong's influence scarcely reached this far corner of Cheongseok. In short, this was the tail end of Gansu, and the county itself was correspondingly tiny.
And yet even the ordinary market of so small a village was, to Soyul—who had spent her whole life cooped up in some forgotten corner of the Demonic Cult, living for nothing but training—nothing short of a whole new world that made her eyes go round.
On the few missions she had run back in her Blood Shadow Squad days, there had been no room to spare her surroundings a glance, and strangely enough, her memories of that time were hazy on everything beyond the objective. Besides, even after fleeing the cult she had hidden deep in the mountains ever since, so perhaps that was only to be expected.
Amid the jostling, chattering crowd, Soyul stared in wonder at the stalls the merchants had lined up in an endless row, and when a sweet smell came drifting from somewhere, she caught herself sniffing at the air.
"Wow... that looks delicious. What's it called?"
Where her gaze had landed sat a plump, mouthwatering red rice cake.
Cho Ja-un answered, affecting the air of a man in the know.
"Hmm. They call that hongzao gao—red jujube cake. If memory serves, it is a sweet confection of jujubes and glutinous rice, steamed together."
"Ooh~ and how do you know that?"
"I tried one once, passing through Gansu years ago. I have little fondness for sweets, though, so I threw mine away half-eaten."
Soyul's eyes went wide.
"Threw it away? Something that looks that good? Every single food I've seen here is new to me... so it must be common enough to be tossed aside, huh."
At that pitiful reaction—Soyul's mood sinking in an instant—Cho Ja-un's expression darkened sharply.
It felt rather like boasting about food in front of a beggar.
So this is how far short I still fall, for all the training I have piled up. No thought for another's position—just an open mouth, letting whatever comes out spill free. If this is how I behave, how in the world am I any different from the ruffians on those streets? And is that woman a stranger to me, that I should speak so? We swore a bond of friendship, plainly. A man who cannot even look after those at his side—how could he ever look after a great cause?
Having flayed himself for his own flippancy, discourtesy, and want, Cho Ja-un performed a cupped-fist salute and spoke with genuine remorse.
"I was wrong. It was my mistake."
"Huh? What's gotten into you all of a sudden?"
"What is commonplace to me may be precious to another, or a marvel they are meeting for the very first time. To treat it as trifling, then, is an insult to that person."
After letting the silence stretch a moment, Cho Ja-un added one thing more.
"...And all the more so when that person is my friend."
Cho Ja-un's apology was so earnest it might as well have been titled I Am the Very Exemplar of the Orthodox Sects, and Soyul, goosebumps prickling up for some reason, quietly looked up into his eyes.
Wouldn't it be exhausting, she couldn't help thinking, to live like that—apologizing for each and every little thing?
Well, as far as Soyul herself was concerned, it wasn't a bad thing that the orthodox sect fellow tagging along at her side was such a soft touch—but she couldn't hold back the thoughts welling up inside her.
Why's he groveling that hard over one little remark? What a spineless bastard. Orthodox sect bastards, always turning so prim and pompous over nothing at all. Ugh, gives me the creeps.