The Path of Radiant Ascension
Clang-clang-clang! Clang-clang-clang! Clang-clang-clang!
The bell announcing reveille rang out across the grounds.
Ordinarily, Yeon Ye-ha would have been on her feet the instant she heard it, bedding already folded and put away. This morning her body felt leaden. A dull throb pulsed behind her eyes, and her skin was cold. Worst of all was the searing ache between her legs, and the sticky wetness clinging there.
"……!!"
The moment she realized she was naked, she bolted upright and stood on the floor in shock. Her clothes lay scattered beside the bed. The mattress itself was a wreck. The lower half, where her hips had been, was soaked through.
"This is…"
A red stain.
Blood.
She pressed her lips into a hard line. Her sharp mind was already piecing together what had happened the night before.
She had been violated. The virginity she had guarded all her life had been defiled.
Drip.
Something fell. Yeon Ye-ha lowered her gaze, one hand pressing down her large breasts so they would not block her view. A milky-white fluid was dripping from her sex. The instant she saw it, she felt the foreign presence still inside her.
She reached down and touched herself. The hair that should have been there was gone, and the sticky fluid fouled her fingers. There was no need to ask what it was. The seed of the man who had taken her.
Yeon Ye-ha bit down on her lower lip. Shame and fury surged up together.
And at the same time, the martial art she cultivated — the Heart-Severing Demonic Sword — answered. The boiling rage was sliced clean through by an invisible blade and vanished. The fury rose again. Each time it did, the Heart-Severing Demonic Sword cut her emotions away.
Those severed emotions became the sword's fuel. She felt inner energy welling up from her dantian. Never before had the Heart-Severing Demonic Sword responded this strongly.
Once her composure returned, Yeon Ye-ha found the situation almost funny. Or rather, she decided it was funny. She had been forced by some unknown man, and yet she could not even hold on to her anger. And because she had been violated, she was growing stronger.
She parted her lips and let out a long breath. She needed to rein in the surging Heart-Severing Demonic Sword, but she could not manage it just yet.
The rage might have been cut away, but the resolve to find the man who had done this and take her revenge remained. She needed a clue.
…The strange part is that I never woke while it was happening. …A sleeping draught? Or some kind of technique?
Yeon Ye-ha stared at the ruined bed. It reeked of urine. The rapist had not only shaved her pubic hair — he had pissed on the mattress before he left. An absurd pervert.
"Number 567! It's time to rise!"
A female instructor's voice carried through the door. Yeon Ye-ha flinched, then hurriedly pulled on the clothes scattered across the floor.
"Number 567!"
The instructor called again. Half-dressed, Yeon Ye-ha walked to the door, cracked it open just a sliver, and looked out at her.
"Number 567! Get out here! Assembly is about to start!"
"…I don't think I can manage today."
"What?"
"I said today will be difficult."
"I… see."
The instructor answered carefully, minding her tone. Any other recruit who spoke like that would have been screamed at on the spot — but this was the daughter of the Sword Demon, Third Elder of the Council of Elders.
"It seems you need rest."
Yeon Ye-ha nodded. The instructor nodded back with a stiff face.
"Understood. I'll report it to the Director myself. Please rest easy."
The instructor left.
Yeon Ye-ha closed the door. Only then did she notice the severed latch that was supposed to lock it.
…He slipped a blade through the gap and cut the latch. A cut this clean means… at minimum, he can draw sword qi.
A handful of men rose in her mind. Plenty of them looked at her with lustful eyes. A few among them were capable of something like this. The most suspicious was the Eighth Elder, Kwon Man-ok — the man known by the moniker Blue Hand Lust Demon.
…No. Kwon Man-ok would have to be out of his mind to do this to me. Ipmaso is sealed off even within the Heavenly Demon Cult. Even he couldn't walk in easily.
Still, she did not erase the possibility entirely.
She moved through the room searching for any scrap of evidence she might have missed — and found the objects left on the desk.
Two bottles, and more than ten pictures.
The two clear bottles held hair. One was stiff and plentiful; the other was thinner, but curled. Yeon Ye-ha stared at the bottles, then reached for the pictures. Each was no larger than her palm.
This can't be… This is… me…
She was in the pictures.
Could they even be called pictures? They were as sharp and real as if someone had pressed what the eye saw straight onto paper. In them, she lay naked on the bed.
Her hands began to tremble. Violent emotion seized her body. The Heart-Severing Demonic Sword activated, carving the storm of feeling clean through. Composure restored, she turned to the next image.
Her eyes went wide. The picture showed her sex in raw, unflinching detail — legs spread open, the mound buried under a thick mat of black hair.
Th-this is my…?
It was the first time in her life she had ever seen herself there. She had known she was hairier than most — the maids who attended her baths had thinner growth by comparison — but she had never paid it much mind. The maids had plenty of their own.
…I never imagined there would be this much around the anus as well. …The other maids must be the same, right?
Embarrassment flickered through her. Of course, that too was soon cut away.
She turned to the next picture.
Someone's hand was holding a razor, shearing away her pubic hair. Yeon Ye-ha stared hard at the hand gripping the blade. Size and shape made it unmistakably a man's. She studied it more closely. Unfortunately, only the back of the hand was visible; the palm side was hidden.
From the back alone, it's an ordinary man's hand. No scars on the back of the hand — that's a solid lead.
Next picture.
The shaving was finished. A smooth, bare sex filled the frame. Her gaze flicked to the glass bottles. She understood now — one held the hair from around her sex, the other from around her anus. With cold eyes she turned to the next image.
A man's massive cock was buried inside her. Her sex, stretched past its limit, was bleeding as if torn.
A throb of pain lanced through her lower belly. She frowned and kept turning the pictures. Every one of them showed her being taken by a man. In the last, the man was gone. She was sprawled obscenely, legs open, pissing onto the bed. From her spread sex, a mixture of blood and semen was leaking out.
Black letters were scrawled beneath the image.
[The fucking delicious pussy of the Demonic Cult's Number One Beauty!]
"……."
Yeon Ye-ha crushed the picture in her fist. These images were dangerous. Her face was drawn in perfect clarity. If anyone else saw them, not only her own reputation but her father's would be dragged through the mud. She crumpled every picture into a tight ball. Later she would burn them until nothing remained.
She looked at the hair in the glass bottles. Those would burn with the pictures.
Then she turned and stared at the ruined bed. That, too, had to be dealt with. She could not ask the instructor for help.
"……."
Squelch.
White fluid chose that moment to trickle down her thigh, oblivious.
First she had to get the foreign matter out of her body. After a moment's hesitation she reached between her legs. The instant her fingers touched her sex, her body jerked. Ignoring the strange sensation, she spread her inner lips wide with her fingers. Semen poured out in a thick stream.
It was not enough. She could still feel the sticky residue deeper inside. After a brief deliberation she climbed onto the bed and squatted — that position, she thought, would let it drain more easily. She pushed her fingers into herself.
Hot fluid clung to them.
"……."
Squish. Squish. Squish.
With a blank face she scraped out what remained inside her. White semen spattered onto the already-fouled mattress. There was far more of it than she had expected.
I waited for morning assembly in high spirits.
I was looking forward to whatever face Number 567, Yeon Ye-ha, would wear when she showed up. But Yeon Ye-ha never appeared. The instructor knew she was absent and said nothing about it.
I clicked my tongue quietly in disappointment.
"…Number 567 didn't show."
Beside me, Cheon Yu-un muttered under his breath.
"Why? You interested in Number 567 or something?"
"Number 567 has always been diligent. She's never missed assembly — or anything else, for that matter. From where I'm standing, something must have happened to her."
"…You two close?"
"We've known each other for a few years, but we aren't particularly intimate."
"Not engaged, then?"
"I see you've heard the rumors floating around the Cult. Whoever started them, they're nonsense."
Cheon Yu-un shut it down flat.
Was he really uninterested in Yeon Ye-ha? Maybe for now. But whenever he dealt with her, his manner softened in a subtle way. He himself didn't seem to have noticed yet — but Cheon Yu-un was paying attention to Yeon Ye-ha.
"I see."
I kept my answer short. There was no need to needle him.
Yeon Ye-ha appeared in the dining hall around noon. Every eye in the room turned as she walked in with her head high. The First Beauty of the Demonic Cult. The title did her justice — she was beautiful. The men looked at her with longing; the women felt something beyond jealousy, something closer to awe.
"…Her aura's sharp. Something definitely happened."
Cheon Yu-un said it while watching her. His powers of observation really were excellent. Even so, figuring out that she had been taken by me was beyond him.
She's on guard against the men. Does she think the culprit might be here?
I snickered inwardly as I watched Yeon Ye-ha in her training uniform.
Even that coarse uniform looked refined on her, as elegant as a fairy's robes. Knowing that beneath it her watermelon-sized breasts were bound in bandages, and that her pussy was bare and smooth, made my cock twitch hard. The scent of her skin and the feel of her sex came flooding back.
She ate her lunch in silence, scanning the room warily — focusing hard on the men's hands.
My hand was in those pictures I left her. But identifying me from a hand alone is impossible.
I was confident of that — and still, my body tensed without my meaning it to. Yeon Ye-ha was staring straight at me. I moved my chopsticks as if nothing were wrong.
She's already narrowed it down to me…? Just how sharp are those eyes?
Fortunately, her gaze shifted a moment later. She fixed on Cheon Yu-un's hands. From the back alone, his hands and mine looked similar. Beyond him, there were maybe ten other men whose hands, seen only from the back, could pass for mine.
If Yeon Ye-ha catches me, I'm dead.
Yeon Ye-ha was a fine woman.
First she'd squeezed my cock with that tight little pussy of hers — and now she was squeezing my heart, serving up a delicious little thrill of dread.
…Should I go fuck her again tonight?