The Demon Cult Does Not Fantasize
A sandstorm boiled high into the sky, then soon sank away.
Where the storm had passed, the desert floor lay pocked with craters — pits deep enough to swallow a grown person whole. Before long, a girl's head poked out of one of them.
She looked this way and that, drinking the whole desert into her eyes, and within them something glimmered — somewhere between boredom and contentment.
Then something unfamiliar drifted into her view. Legs. Countless legs — standing upon the earth like the trees of a dense forest, the kind of forest she had seen only a handful of times in all her life.
A moment later, the legs began advancing toward the girl in perfect, disciplined unison.
A room inside the building — crammed with ornaments rarely seen in the Central Plains, plush carpets and the like.
I'm losing my mind.
An hour ago, I very nearly had. The raving cultists who'd been shoved through the crowd into a solo audience with the White-West Gold King kicked up such an uproar that my head began to reel — and in that very moment, she had seized my wrist and pulled me in here.
Fortunately, just before the door closed I'd spotted Eun Ae-hyang, and our eyes had met.
And so, my gaze still wandering, it settled on the White-West Gold King, seated there and seemingly lost in thought.
"Um... Holy Leader?"
I called out to her, but she gave no response, as if she hadn't heard me. So I studied her more closely instead. Dressed in the white robes that proclaimed the orthodox lineage of the White Lotus Cult, her hair arranged in some distinctive style, the White-West Gold King bore exotic features one would rarely encounter in the Central Plains. Her eyes, ringed with red pigment, were strikingly large — like those of the Westerner I'd seen in Guangdong only days ago — and her nose rose so fine and high that looking at it was like admiring the curve of masterwork porcelain.
Watching her sit wrapped in those features, sunk in thought as though the world were a mile away, I found myself thinking that the old phrase a face like a flower, a bearing like the moon must have been coined for exactly this sight.
...Whoops. This is no time for that.
I pulled myself together and called to her once more.
"Holy Leader?"
Only then did she seem to hear me. Her shoulders gave one great shrug, and she looked me over at her leisure.
"Hm? Ah — ah. What is it, Gongseo Gong?"
"I... wished to ask why I am here."
"Mm. All that uproar seemed to be leaving you quite bewildered, so I brought you here for a brief refuge."
Did my reaction amuse her? The White-West Gold King laughed softly, the sound spilling out slow and silken. When that laughter mingled with the strange air woven by the bizarre patterns adorning the room, my heart, for no good reason at all, began to race.
If only I weren't a Taoist, that is.
Some nameless restlessness kept creeping in, so I steadied my breathing and carefully ran a cycle of qi circulation. At once my mind settled and calm returned. Watching me do this, the White-West Gold King spoke.
"At times the mood of our gatherings turns violent. If one or two grow carried away, I can move to restrain them myself. But when too many are roused at once..."
She rose from her chair and drew near.
"...then the one who stands in their way is the one who has failed to reflect the will of the people."
"...I hardly know that one such as I has any right to speak of the people's will. But is the White Lotus not meant to exist precisely to hold that will in check, lest it stray from the proper path?"
"That is not the path I believe the White Lotus pursues."
...That settled it. This woman is not the Heavenly Demon Emperor's successor.
If she were the Heavenly Demon, she would have bent every soul beneath her with her awe-inspiring martial arts and crushed them into her grip. Even frenzy and exaltation had lain under his dominion — he had held such mastery that men breathed only when he allowed it and died the moment he willed it.
The demonic cult does not fantasize. Measured against the Heavenly Demon who once led such a creed, this woman's manner of command was a pitiful thing.
Most likely she was either a leftover follower of the demon cult or a charlatan trading on its name. If so, seizing her and her lot would pose little difficulty, even without recourse to martial arts.
So why couldn't I shake the feeling that something was off?
I was still lost in the thought when a cold touch brushed my cheek.
"Ugh!"
I jerked my head back on reflex, hand flying to my face — and saw that it was the White-West Gold King who had touched me.
"What a fascinating man you are," she said.
"In what way?"
"Your face holds the purity and sparkle of a child. Yet your hands are ridged with calluses, as if you have battled the world's storms head-on."
Ah. She'd seen my hands.
Whether she noticed my fluster or not, she went on.
"A purity perched so gently above the world's sea of suffering... If Maitreya himself were to walk the world again, I wonder that he would not look exactly like this."
"...Your praise is too generous. I hardly know where to put myself."
So she really is nothing more than a devotee of the demon cult.
I was thinking this mission might actually wrap up quickly when the door burst open and in strode a man with the build and countenance of Budai, the Laughing Buddha. He was the one who had introduced himself as Bokmyeong, and days of observation had established that he functioned as the bishop of these demon cult remnants.
Bokmyeong shot me a sidelong glance, then beckoned to the White-West Gold King. "Holy Leader, a moment, if you would..."
Hm?
She rose calmly, walked over to him, listened to his whisper with small nods, and then turned to me. "The commotion seems to have settled, so you may go out now."
"Ah — thank you for your consideration."
"Heh heh. We all advance together at the head of the White Lotus's tide — what is there to thank? I do hope to see you again tomorrow."
Leaving those words behind, the White-West Gold King departed the room with Bokmyeong.
Moments later, Eun Ae-hyang's voice transmission reached me.
"Seong Hyun, did you find anything out?"
"You reached me at exactly the right moment."
"You sent me a look as you were being led into that room earlier, remember?"
Childhood friends, truly — one glance and she reads me like a book.
"By the way — how long were you planning to stay in there, Lewd Cloud Taoist?"
"Ah, I'm coming out now. But what exactly makes me a Lewd Cloud Taoist?"
"Do you have any idea how that looked, following that woman into a private room without a single word of protest?"
"It's a misunderstanding. It was intelligence work."
"For intelligence work, you looked awfully soft in the face. Like some blushing innocent."
"...Take Yeong Yeong and go on ahead to the White Horse Inn. I'll join you shortly."
With that, her presence faded from my senses.
But when exactly did you pick up this habit of roasting me?
Granted, we had spent our whole lives finding each other's nerves and plucking them... but, whew — who could say anymore.
As I left the room, I turned over whether my eyes had deceived me. For just an instant, when Bokmyeong had called her away, the White-West Gold King's expression seemed to darken.
Stepping out through the door, I caught sight of the White-West Gold King just returning and gave a small bow.
"Oh. Are you on your way out?"
"I am. Thank you once more for your kind attentions."
I had just finished the farewell and was moving away from the door when—
"...Gongseo Gong."
"Yes?"
Light spilled from the White Horse Inn, glowing as though it were waging a desperate campaign to revive the vanished glory of the Song dynasty.
Inside, the common room churned with a crowd that put the lunchtime rush to shame. Slipping furtively between bodies, I climbed to the second floor — and there, sure enough, were Eun Ae-hyang and Yeong Yeong. And...
"So you finally deigned to arrive. I was beginning to wonder whether the teachings of that wicked cult had ensnared you," Bunhyang said, his voice thick with sarcasm.
What the—? Why is he here?
...Wait. And why was he standing off in the corner with his back against a pillar instead of sitting at the table with everyone else?
Instead of answering, I took the chair between Eun Ae-hyang and Yeong Yeong.
Yeong Yeong spoke up. "Sahyung, did you find anything out?"
"Hmm..."
"Surely you didn't spend all that time in that room just laughing the hours away with a woman? Pervert Cloud Taoist."
Why do my epithets keep multiplying? And only in increasingly deranged directions.
I sighed. "It's not that. Quite the opposite, actually — I came away knowing a great deal."
"A great deal? Such as what?"
Bunhyang pulled himself off the pillar, dragged out the one remaining chair, and made to sit so he could listen. And then—
"Stop."
At Yeong Yeong's word, Bunhyang froze mid-motion, the chair only half-drawn.
"And where does this baldy imagine he's sneaking off to sit, hm?"
"Nnngh."
Bunhyang slid the chair back and trudged forlornly to lean against the pillar once more.
I leaned toward Eun Ae-hyang and asked under my breath, "In the time I was gone, Yeong Yeong has gained total dominance over Bunhyang. What happened?"
Eun Ae-hyang knit her brow, as if dredging up a memory she would rather not have. "While you were off with the White-West Gold King, Bunhyang failed to carry out the rally dismantling he was supposed to handle. Not even a little."
"That much we've watched for days already."
In fairness, Bunhyang had proven even more incompetent than expected. From the day after the plan was laid out, he had appointed himself to step forward after every speech and expound the Buddha's law to the cultists in hopes of winning them over. Not one soul granted his words so much as the courtesy of listening.
"And today he turned up drunk from gods-know-where and even made free with a young woman."
"Wow — breaking his vows! Shaolin would raise holy hell if they heard."
"Precisely. Even Yeong Yeong knows at least that much."
"...Yeong Yeong is not stupid. Anyone would know that much."
Somehow this woman is treating Yeong Yeong like some poor soul swollen from the bite of a colossal mosquito. I don't know who that poor soul is supposed to be, but she delivered the comparison with remarkable ease.
"So? What is it you found out?"
"Ah, right. First — the White-West Gold King is not the Heavenly Demon Emperor's successor."
"I knew it."
Eun Ae-hyang, who had attended the rallies at my side these past days, seemed to have reached the same conclusion. Well, she had contended against the Heavenly Demon alongside me, so she knew something of what he was like.
Bunhyang, however, wore his astonishment plainly. "Impossible. The White-West Gold King's robes are plainly the demonic cult customs I saw described in the records."
"Just as the martial world holds more than martial folk alone, a land that harbors a demon cult is not a demon realm of cultists and nothing else."
But it seemed that was not the whole of Bunhyang's evidence. "The bishop, Bokmyeong, is capable of wielding demonic arts. This I heard from the arhats who faced him directly."
"If that's true, why are you only telling us now?"
I was dumbfounded. If even a fraction of the energy he burned on deciding whether this was the demon cult or not had gone toward seeking a way to complete our mission without martial arts, we would have been back on Mount Wudang long ago.
At my reaction, Bunhyang flinched and broke into a string of dry coughs. "Ahem, ahem. Amitabha... I was so beside myself that it slipped my mind."
Truly hopeless beyond all imagining.
Yeong Yeong favored Bunhyang with a look of withering contempt, then turned back to me. "Sahyung — if you said 'first,' does that mean you learned other things as well?"
I nodded and opened my mouth.