Alhazard, Are You Insane? (8)
Batur Qan gazed down at the corpse of Extreme Yang, which had finally ceased moving after spewing black blood. He pondered the man's final words. Extreme Yin. When the seven Blood Jiangshi of the Five Elements had first appeared at the outdoor banquet, there had been one female among them whose beauty was almost otherworldly. The Khan Emperor was certain she was Extreme Yin. After all, just as he had once delivered the corpse of Extreme Yang to the Great Sage—Alhazard—he had also been the one to bring her the body of Extreme Yin.
The Khan Emperor recalled the day he had obtained the corpse of Extreme Yin. After unifying the Central Plains martial world, he had begun subjugating the external forces that lay beyond it. Some had surrendered at the mere sight of his terrifying might, but others, like the volunteer army led by Jang Seok-gong, had fought to the bitter end. Among those final holdouts, the most tenacious had been the North Sea Ice Palace.
Living for generations at the northern edge of Lake Baikal amid endless snow and bitter cold, they wielded the Ice White Divine Art, a technique that freely manipulated the energy of extreme yin. Yet even they could not withstand the mounted archers of the steppe. Countless arrows, loosed with supernatural accuracy from horseback, had torn through their ranks just as they had torn through so many others before them.
Having crushed the North Sea Ice Palace with humiliating ease, Batur Qan permitted his weary troops to plunder the palace as reward. He had already issued his ultimatum to their lord before the war began—an ultimatum that was, as Alhazard had once mocked in a letter, nothing more than a naked threat.
"Surrender at once. If you do, I shall treat you with generosity, preserving your culture, faith, and governance as a vassal state. Should you refuse, war shall continue until one side is utterly destroyed."
The lord of the North Sea Ice Palace, naturally, flew into a rage and declared he would fight to the death. His palace was subsequently annihilated. The men and elders were slaughtered; the women and children were bound in ropes and dragged away as slaves. To the Khan Emperor's retainers, this was a familiar sight. When word spread that the emperor had allowed plunder, the soldiers had swarmed through the palace with glee. Amid the treasures they looted, they discovered the grand tomb where successive lords of the palace had been laid to rest.
They forced open the sealed stone door and stepped inside.
"Ugh… it's freezing."
"Why is there such a cold wind coming from a tomb?"
Braving the biting wind, the soldiers found, among the ancient skeletal remains, the perfectly preserved corpse of a beautiful young girl radiating an intense chill. Though she had been dead for decades, her body showed no signs of decay. Startled, the soldiers immediately reported their discovery to the Khan Emperor.
When Batur Qan entered the tomb and beheld the girl, even he could not suppress his admiration. Her features held a pure, distinctly Eastern beauty, as though time had frozen the moment before a flower bud could bloom. He sighed with genuine regret. Had she lived a few more years and grown into womanhood, she would surely have become a legendary beauty whose name echoed across the world.
According to the captured maidservants of the palace, she had been the youngest sister of the current lord. Born with the Extreme Yin constitution, she had been unable to overcome the yin energy that devoured her lifespan and had died decades earlier, before even reaching adulthood. Because the yin energy within her had been so overwhelmingly powerful, her corpse had remained pristine for all those years.
The Khan Emperor had taken her body back to his palace as a trophy. He stored it in the underground wine cellar, using the ceaseless cold that emanated from her as a natural freezer. The surviving members of the North Sea Ice Palace would have wept tears of blood had they known, but her Extreme Yin energy was simply too valuable a treasure—even the Khan Emperor could not resist it.
More than a decade later, when Alhazard requested the corpse of Extreme Yin, Batur Qan had hesitated briefly before ultimately handing it over. Everything was for the sake of unifying the world under one rule. He had forced himself to let go of any lingering attachment.
Yet when the seven Blood Jiangshi of the Five Elements appeared at the outdoor banquet, she had stood before him once more—transformed. The Extreme Yin corpse the Khan Emperor remembered had been a girl who had not yet passed her twentieth year, still carrying the untouched beauty of the East. But the Blood Jiangshi reborn from that corpse now radiated a seductive fragrance with the force of a flower in full, overwhelming bloom. Her beauty was a perfect fusion of Eastern and Western ideals, an unparalleled masterpiece.
Batur Qan loved his principal wife, Katun, with genuine affection. Yet he was a warrior of the steppe, and his desires were strong—especially after his martial prowess had grown and he had consumed countless elixirs. The moment he laid eyes on her peerless beauty, he had been seized by the urge to take her into his arms. But that same desire had been matched by wariness. Her appearance had changed far too drastically to be natural.
Some time later, the Khan Emperor had gone to Alhazard and asked, indirectly, why her appearance had altered so completely.
Alhazard had answered without hesitation.
"I performed cosmetic surgery on her. I wished to conduct a certain experiment."
"Hmm… And what exactly did you hope to test by making her so extraordinarily beautiful?"
"Your Majesty, are you aware of a certain superstition that exists in the West?"
What followed was an explanation the Khan Emperor had never heard before. In the West, it was believed that if one crafted an image in the likeness of a god, that god's power would dwell within it. Similar notions existed in the East as well—people built ever larger and more magnificent statues, gilded their surfaces with gold, and adorned them with precious gems. Across both East and West, mortals yearned to recreate the divine while simultaneously aspiring to become gods themselves.
"So I decided to test whether that superstition holds true. I took the appearance of the Goddess of the Moon, whom I had once glimpsed, and projected it onto her."
"Heh… Then you mean to say her current appearance is modeled after Lunaria, the Moon Goddess worshipped by countless Western nations?"
"It is not merely modeled. She has reproduced Lunaria's appearance almost perfectly."
At the time, Batur Qan had dismissed the matter as unimportant. If she resembled the goddess called Lunaria, then it was only natural he had felt desire for her. Yet the thought had also filled him with unease. He had ultimately abandoned any intention of claiming her. What if, by taking her, he invited the curse of the original goddess upon himself?
Now, hearing Extreme Yang's dying words, he realized how foolish those thoughts had been.
"Extreme Yin is stronger than Extreme Yang."
The meaning was painfully clear. Even with hundreds of royal guards and the Khan Emperor himself—who stood at the very peak of the supreme realm—they had nearly suffered catastrophic losses to a single Extreme Yang. Had the man succeeded in his final suicidal strike, the emperor's survival would have been far from certain. And now he was told that Extreme Yin surpassed even that.
Added to this were the ten thousand elite Blood Jiangshi archers he had been tricked into creating, the remaining Five Elements Blood Jiangshi, the countless nations of the West, and—most terrifying of all—his old rival, Alhazard.
No matter how he calculated it, the odds of his long-prepared western campaign succeeding now seemed vanishingly small.
He lifted his gaze to the night sky. The full moon drifted serenely through drifting clouds, casting its eerie light upon the earth. For a moment, the Khan Emperor felt as though the goddess Lunaria herself was looking down at him, laughing.
A bitter sigh escaped his lips.
"This one has fought Alhazard three times… and suffered three great defeats. Three battles, three losses. Therefore, this one shall never again dream of conquering the West. O heavens, how can you allow a mere ray of moonlight to obstruct this one's heavenly mandate…"
The emperor stared resentfully at the full moon for a while longer before issuing a command to his royal guards: burn everything related to the Great Sage. Naturally, among the things consigned to the flames was the corpse of the Blood Jiangshi known as Extreme Yang.