Chapter 38
"Bite him."
I pointed at Jo Pyeongho.
"......"
The child didn’t lunge right away. Instead, she tipped her head up and looked at Geom Mujin, as if asking for permission with a faint, hesitant look on her face.
The man who had always stopped her whenever she tried to drink blood was now telling her to bite. Under normal circumstances, she would’ve gone straight for it, but since her stomach was already full of congealed blood soup, she reacted like this instead.
"Ah, not suck his blood—bite him the way you’d make a thrall. You know, like when you turn someone into your subordinate."
I had no intention of getting the kid to taste human blood if I could help it.
She seemed fine for now, but if she got a taste for it, what if the instinct of the Goema woke up?
Once you’ve tasted blood, it’s not something you easily forget.
It did sound a little like I was talking about handling a beast, not a person, but well—facts are facts.
"So? Think you can do it?"
"....."
Can I do it?
It wasn’t the first time she’d heard that kind of thing.
Back when she was living in prison, the adults had often said the same thing to her.
Back then, though, it wasn’t a question like, Can you do it? It was an order: You have to do it.
Children who failed to carry out their orders were discarded.
Compared to that, this was different.
As I’d said before, children weren’t idiots.
They simply couldn’t put it into words. They looked at the world with a rational gaze no less than adults did.
The child, who had lived through a harsher life than most, watched Geom Mujin for several days.
He was different from the adults she had known.
He didn’t hit her, and he didn’t take anything from her.
-How’re you feeling today?
-Here, try some blood soup!
-I’ve got mint candy and nurungji candy—what do you want?
-I’ll keep watch, so don’t worry and get some sleep.
Rather than demanding anything, he gave her things without conditions.
He fed her warm food, and when she couldn’t sleep because she was afraid the adults might come and take her away, he stood watch beside her and reassured her.
Then, with relief washing over her, she would fall asleep as if by magic.
In the end, the child realized that he was taking care of her.
It was the first time she had ever experienced anything like that, so she couldn’t fully understand it—but her heart understood.
And now, for the first time, he was asking her for help.
She wanted to be useful, even a little.
So the child nodded—not because someone told her to, and not because she needed to survive, but of her own will.
"Mm-hm."
It was the moment a tiny seed of repayment sprouted in her empty heart.
"Yeah, good girl."
Geom Mujin patted the child on the head in thanks.
Something tickled in his chest, and it didn’t feel bad at all.
"You bastard! What are you trying to do to me...!"
Jo Pyeongho was the only one in that warm scene who sensed impending doom, and he started barking in panic.
"Ngh...! Ggh!"
"Hehe, you can’t go anywhere."
I restrained him easily when he tried to move his body.
"Don’t be so scared. If she bites gently, it’ll hurt less."
Probably.
I grabbed his neck and offered it up to the child so she could bite more easily.
As the child approached and opened her mouth, sharp fangs came into view.
"N-no...!"
"Just a sec—this will sting~"
Crunch—!
"Agh!!"
The child sprang in like an eager rabbit, and her fangs sank into Jo Pyeongho’s neck.
At that instant, his squinting eyes shot wide open as if they were about to tear.
Wow, this guy really does have the eyes of a killer.
Like a proper demonic cultist, he had the four whites and one black—those murderous eyes people talked about in physiognomy.
The tiny pupils that had once looked like pinpricks went dull and hazy.
"Hm."
Geom Mujin’s eyes sharpened.
Holding Jo Pyeongho by the scruff, he could feel what was happening inside the man’s body.
Something’s being injected.
The blood flowing from the child’s fangs was entering Jo Pyeongho’s body.
The blood that seeped in headed toward the spinal cord.
So that’s the mechanism behind thrall conversion—blood seeps into the marrow and spreads up to the brain.
I’d thought you just bit someone and—poof—made a thrall, but it turned out to be a lot more scientific than that.
"Ah-bababa...!"
Watching Jo Pyeongho drool as the child bit into his neck, I thought, Good thing I brought her.
At first, I hadn’t intended to bring the child along.
What kind of lunatic would go into battle with a kid strapped to their back?
I’m not freaking Zhao Zilong.
Though, to be fair, the thing Zhao Zilong carried into battle wasn’t a child, but a living disaster that claimed to be his son, Ah Dou.
Anyway, the reason I brought the child was Heo Injun.
If I left her behind for a while, there was no way he wouldn’t be worried.
I hadn’t said it outright, but atmosphere is a thing.
He was probably most concerned about being left alone with her.
And there was that near miss where she almost drank my blood, too.
On top of that, her existence had recently been exposed to Heo Yul.
The twelve-year-old Heo Yul, who knew nothing of surrender, had lain in wait and eventually broken through the guards—Heo Injun and Songbaek—to find Geom Mujin and the child inside.
-Mujin ajusshi..! Biae-ru isn’t okay... right?
-Try some of this too... okay?
Seeing Geom Mujin feed a child who was clumsily using chopsticks, while she opened her mouth like a sparrow being fed, had shocked Heo Yul deeply.
-...Ajusshi Mujin. Who is she? And what’s your name?
-...... (slips behind Geom Mujin.)
-Ahh! Don’t ignore me when I haven’t even—no, wait, that’s not what I meant!
Infuriated by the child’s refusal to answer any of her questions, Heo Yul bounced in place like a rabbit on a spring.
Maybe the reason I’d wanted Heo Injun to take the child away had less to do with concern over biting and more to do with the fact that I wasn’t confident I could handle two children alone.
Thanks to that, I’d even had to borrow a bundled carrying cloth I had no business owning and fight with the kid in it.
Still, once a battle broke out, the safest place for her was right next to me.
It looked a little absurd for a Great Swordmaster like me to be using a baby sling, though.
Then again, in the modern world, the Heavenly Demon had done Pilates, cooked, and even been a VTuber, so this was nothing.
"Ah."
At that moment, the child pulled her mouth away from Jo Pyeongho’s neck.
"Is it done?"
"Mm-hm. This one’s my subordinate now too."
Jo Pyeongho, with two bite marks left on his neck, wore a dazed expression.
"Good job, Lycos."
"Li-gosu...? Is that my name?"
The child tilted her head slightly as she asked.
It wasn’t a name I liked all that much, and not just because it sounded like something I’d pulled out of nowhere.
"Ah, no. Forget I said anything. Your name is... still under consideration."
I waved my hand in flustered denial, and the child nodded.
"Mm-hm. More importantly, make sure you answer my questions honestly, okay?"
"...Speak honestly."
At the child’s command, Jo Pyeongho’s eyes turned bloodshot, and he nodded.
"I will obey whatever you command."
His earlier habit of cursing even while getting beaten to a pulp vanished as if it had never been there.
Thrall conversion, huh. That thing’s got real performance.
"Then first—"
I began the interrogation.
* * *
Now that Jo Pyeongho had become the child’s thrall, he spilled everything he knew at every question, like an automatic answering machine.
"Haa..."
Even with such smooth progress, Geom Mujin let out a sigh.
"So... you don’t even know where the main headquarters is, and you’ve never seen any of the higher-ups?"
"No, sir. I’ve never been there, and I’ve never seen them in my life."
"Right. How very proud you are."
"A man’s worth is his steel."
"Hey, this punk."
The moment Geom Mujin raised his fist, Jo Pyeongho hurriedly tried to lift his guard—but it was impossible.
"....."
"...Master? Agh!!"
Thud—!
A heavy knuckle blow dropped straight onto Jo Pyeongho’s head, forcibly lowering the guard his master had ordered him to raise.
The interrogation revealed that Jo Pyeongho wasn’t from the Neo-Heavenly Demon Cult, but from the old cult before it.
Before the Orthodox-Demonic War, the cult had already been planting spies throughout the martial world, and Jo Pyeongho had been one of them.
During the war, he was in the middle of infiltrating Taeho Sect, so rather than joining the fighting, he had simply stayed loyal to his original mission.
And then what happened?
He’d been cheering from the shadows through his spy work, and the cult had gone and collapsed.
He had believed the Heavenly Demon was a god, invincible, so it was an outcome he’d never even imagined.
Suddenly left like a duck egg rolling uselessly down the Nakdong River, he’d spent his years with nowhere to go and nothing to do until the Neo-Heavenly Demon Cult approached him.
"That man showed me the path to the revival of our sacred cult after I lost my way. His first order was to swallow Taeho Sect and use it as a foothold."
In all likelihood, they had planned to replace the personnel with their own people and then emerge into the open wearing the mask of Taeho Sect.
"Okay, I get that. But you said you’ve never seen any of the higher-ups. Then who was the guy you just mentioned?"
"...That man contacted me many times, but never showed his face. Whenever he had instructions for me, he’d send birds."
"Birds? You mean carrier pigeons or something?"
"No. I don’t know what trick he used, but he spoke to me through birds. It was truly amazing."
"....."
This guy was practically useless.
"So you’ve got no way to contact headquarters."
I asked, but I didn’t expect much.
My interest in tracing the Neo-Heavenly Demon Cult had already cooled off.
"There’s no direct way to contact headquarters, but I do know someone who might be able to."
"Oh?"
Wait—he actually turned out useful here?
"Jamsungdan."
Jo Pyeongho pointed at the wooden box containing the Jamsungdan.
"When they gave me the Jamsungdan, unlike before, they set both the date and the place. I went to the meeting point as instructed, and there was someone waiting there."
"No way..."
"Yes. If Jamsungdan is important to headquarters, they wouldn’t have sent it through some random errand runner."
That made sense.
"Yeah, I knew I could count on you. So where do I meet that guy?"
"We used to meet every three months to receive supplies. I already got my supply last month, so I’d have to wait two more months."
"Tch. What awful timing."
So the timing’s gone completely sideways.
"It’s fine. We can just go meet him in person."
"What? You know where he is?"
"Not exactly. But I do know a place he’d likely be."
"Where is it?"
"Last time I received the Jamsungdan, I heard him mutter to himself that they were working on something over in the east, and that it was already causing trouble from the start."
"You’re saying he’s really there?"
"Yes."
Geom Mujin’s eyes widened.
What Jo Pyeongho had said was broad enough to cover a lot of ground, but I could narrow it down immediately.
"Got it. Then next—"
"Ggh...!"
The moment I was about to ask the next question, blood suddenly sprayed from Jo Pyeongho’s mouth.
"Kuhuk...!"
Swish, swish, swish—!
As he coughed up blood, grotesque letters surfaced across his skin.
"A binding curse!"
Geom Mujin hurriedly shoved the child behind him and shouted.
The characters rapidly multiplied, spreading until they covered his entire body.
I rushed to pump qi into him, but his blood was already flowing violently backward through his body.
Damn it. I broke his dantian, and now his circulation’s gone to hell.
"S-save me..."
Muttering as if he couldn’t understand what was happening, Jo Pyeongho spat blood from every opening in his body and collapsed.
Thud—!
He’s dead.
I checked his pulse, but he was already beyond saving.
Slither—
The binding curse faded away as if it had finished its job.
To think a curse could kill someone this easily.
They could place a curse like this on a person without even the target knowing it, then use a beast they’d tamed to communicate with others.
A miracle that ran on a completely different track from martial arts.
There was only one person capable of something like that.
"Hwanma...!"
One of the Eight Demon Generals, the greatest masters of the cult, and the main villain of the original story.
And the one man I’d wanted to kill even more than the Heavenly Demon during the Orthodox-Demonic War.
You rotten bastard.
So you really were alive after all!