Seventeen Deaths and a Smile
Yeongso clutched her sleeves, glaring at Ma Ryun with resentful eyes. Ma Ryun, the Heavenly Killing Star—a man said to never stop once he began killing until he was drenched in blood—quietly averted his gaze from the Alliance Leader's wife, who did not even reach his shoulder.
"She's glaring at you," Banya chimed in teasingly. "You're dead meat now."
"...Are you going to keep blabbing about this to just anyone?"
"Just anyone? My lady, the Heavenly Killing Star is hardly 'just anyone.' Besides, if I ever try to break the rules, I need someone who can stop me by force. Of course, you promised to help me too, my lady... but a man who was locked in the dungeon out of sheer loyalty is far more trustworthy than the person who actually killed me."
Ma Ryun, who had been listening quietly to the couple's conversation, asked, "Rules, my lord?"
"There is such a thing," Banya replied, adjusting his robes. "Do not harm others, and perform ten thousand good deeds. That is my task from now on. You could call it a death sentence for the greatest master of the Unorthodox Path."
He let out a long sigh. "Honestly, I'd prefer an actual death sentence."
With those final words, Banya walked away. Yeongso gave Ma Ryun a brief nod of farewell before following her husband. The second-in-command of the Thousand Death Alliance, still unable to comprehend his master's words despite receiving an answer, hurried after the couple a few beats late.
"Good deeds... did you say, Alliance Leader? Good deeds...? Wait. Do you mean the kind of 'good deeds' I'm thinking of?"
Wondering if he had heard correctly, Ma Ryun kept asking over and over until Banya handed him a slip of paper. He then vanished. He had gone to investigate something on the Alliance Leader's orders.
It must be about me, Yeongso thought. That's why he gave him written instructions so I wouldn't hear.
As soon as she was sure they were far enough from the Thousand Death Alliance headquarters, Yeongso could no longer contain herself and asked her husband.
"Even after regressing nineteen times, do you still have questions left for me?"
Banya glanced at her as if he had no idea what she was talking about. Look at him playing innocent.
"You said you regressed nineteen times. With your personality, there's no way you would have left me alone. The moment you regressed, the very first thing you would have done was storm into the inner chambers of the Thousand Death Alliance and strangle me."
No servants accompanied them on their outing today. The pedestrians passing by the couple all seemed busy with their own affairs. Nevertheless, Yeongso spoke in a voice so quiet it was practically a whisper. Even so, Banya could hear her perfectly.
"The very first time, you probably couldn't control your strength and killed me too quickly. Since you killed the culprit before you could ask anything, everything after that was likely just venting your anger. You must have killed me the second and third times as well, but by then, you would have realized something was wrong."
Yeongso looked up at her husband, who was walking casually with his hands clasped behind his back. "Be honest with me. How many times did you kill me?"
"Seventeen times."
Yeongso's mouth slowly fell open. Even with a sworn enemy, killing them that many times would make the act lose its thrill. Yet, Banya had looked at her with such immense resentment back at the shrine of the Queen Mother of the West. What on earth was this man's grudge? Hwa Banya was the kind of person who thought it was perfectly fine to kill someone seventeen times, but absolutely unacceptable to be killed even once himself.
"So you killed me almost every single time?" As expected, her husband didn't even bat an eye.
"Wait... You said that during your nineteenth regression, you showed me mercy, which allowed you to skip to this twentieth life... That leaves one life unaccounted for. Why didn't you kill me during the eighteenth?"
"That time," Banya paused for a moment before replying, "I committed suicide the moment I regressed."
"Suicide..."
"And yet, I still regressed for the nineteenth time in the exact same place, at the exact same hour. Can you imagine how absolutely losing my mind I was?"
Hearing that he had killed her seventeen times was shocking enough, but she had never expected Banya to have taken his own life. Had it really been that painful for him? She had thought he was a man who feared nothing in the world. Yet, even her husband had something he dreaded more than death itself.
"If you killed me seventeen times, it means you never got the answer you wanted. Are you curious about why I killed you?"
At Yeongso's words, he stopped in his tracks.
"No way, my lady... Are you actually going to tell me now? Are you serious? Just like that, so easily...?"
"I'm not going to tell you."
"Of course you aren't." Even as he said this, Banya looked somewhat relieved for some reason.
"Do you know how many people I killed right in front of you just to get you to speak? It must have been at least several hundred. If you were to open your mouth so easily now, after keeping it shut even through torture... Forget it. I expect nothing. Keep your mouth shut as you always have, my lady. I will investigate it myself."
He tortured me? Yeongso glared at her husband's back once more as he walked ahead of her.
"By the way, my lady. Who on earth is your master?"
"You just told me to keep my mouth shut."
"That's completely different. This is a different question."
He was as self-centered as ever. Banya leaned down slightly toward his sulking wife, coaxing her in a gentle, persuasive tone.
"Your real master is different from the one the world knows, isn't it? There's no way that old Taoist priestess taught you."
"...Did you do something to Perfected Master Choi as well?"
"You know unorthodox martial arts."
She hadn't realized her husband had dug that deep. One of Baekri Yeongso's many secrets, which she had intended to take to her grave, was on the verge of being exposed by Hwa Banya.
"Cough! Cough!"
A beggar child, coughing violently and failing to look where he was going, bumped right into Banya. The boy tumbled onto the dirt road along with the worn-out wooden bowl he was holding. As a few meager copper coins scattered across the ground, a pack of other children crouching in the corner rushed over, fighting each other for the money.
"No! That's mine... cough! Don't take it! Cough, cough!"
A cloud of dust rose from the many hands scrambling on the ground. One of the boys frantically gathering the coins finally noticed Banya's presence. A man in luxurious black silk was looking down at them. Recognizing the token of the Alliance Leader of the Thousand Death Alliance hanging from his belt, the boy's face froze in sheer terror.
"Uh... Uh-oh, hey. R-Run!"
The rest of the gang scrambled away in a panic. The boy who had lost his coins hesitated as he picked up his bowl, tears welling in his eyes. Why are they running all of a sudden? It's not like the guards are coming. What did they see? Such thoughts must have crossed his mind. He raised his head very slowly, only to freeze in absolute horror the moment he saw Banya's token.
This was Nagan, where the headquarters of the Thousand Death Alliance was located. Even an illiterate beggar had to recognize the symbol of the Alliance if they wanted to keep their head on their shoulders and run for their lives. Yet, the child had just run smack into the most terrifying man in the already terrifying Alliance.
The Bloody Butterfly Fan, Hwa Banya! Rumors that the dead Alliance Leader had returned to life after three years had already swept through all of Nagan. Today is the day I die. The color drained from the child's face in an instant.
"I-I'm s-sorry..." He was so paralyzed with fear that he couldn't even form a proper sentence. "Spare me, s-spare..."
The boy trembled violently, as if he had just met the King of the Underworld himself. Passersby stopped in their tracks, pitying the poor child's imminent fate. It was tragic, but there was nothing they could do when the opponent was Hwa Banya. Gathering the courage to intervene would only increase the body count.
Yeongso reached out to her husband, who was staring down at the beggar child's head. As she gently placed her hand on his arm, Banya turned his head toward his wife. Yeongso smiled at him. It was a clear, firm, and unmistakable smile.
"...Ha." Banya's lips twitched.
Yeongso did not back down, maintaining her smile. I believe in you. You can do this. This is a precious opportunity to do good. You can do it, Banya. You can suppress your killing intent.
"Haha."
"I'm sorry, my lord. M-My lord. Alliance Leader. Please, spare my life... cough!"
"You." The tear-stained boy flinched violently, almost jumping out of his skin. "How old are you?"
"...T-This lowly one is nine years old."
The moment he finished speaking, a loud growl echoed from the boy's stomach. Banya shot his wife a look, silently begging her to let him off the hook, but Yeongso only beamed back with an even brighter smile. Banya's lips twitched strangely once more.
"Since this morning, we have been distributing food to beggars in front of the gates of the Thousand Death Alliance. Have you not heard the news?"
"I heard. But... that's n-not our territory, so we can't go there."
"Fucking brilliant," Banya spat through gritted teeth. Only then did the smile finally fade from Yeongso's face.