Rising Hope, the Cheese Sword...?
Jade plaques from Baedal-ui Hojok rang out with a bright little chime.
In Yeonhwa’s memories of his old life, ordering meant tapping at a smartphone screen until a cheerful “Your order has been placed” message appeared. But here in Murim, the process was strangely more arcane: one infused a wooden token with spiritual energy, and the words bound to that energy would appear here, delivered through the air.
Baedal-ui Hojok. The invisible alliance of those who filled the bellies of the hungry in the martial world.
Baek, the serving man, read the message aloud from the jade plaque.
“A takeout order before the raid on Manhon Yeon-ok. Three Margheritas, two pots of truffle cream pasta, six herb-seasoned lamb ribs, and... three buckets of ice from the Blood Ice Cave. Ordered by Black Dragon Blade Cheol-ya.”
Cheol-ya? Elder Cook’s hands, which had been tossing the wok with effortless precision, paused for a brief moment.
“That bastard’s going after Manhon Yeon-ok again after all.”
Wiping sweat from his brow with a towel, Elder Cook walked toward the hearth.
Manhon Yeon-ok. Literally a Purgatory where tens of thousands of souls were said to burn, trapped within its flames. Every time it opened, someone challenged it; if they failed, it devoured them, and their sacrifice became yet another soul imprisoned within. Open, challenge, close. With that cycle repeated over the ages, there really might be more than ten thousand spirits bound there.
Worse, Manhon Yeon-ok slowly incinerated every human sense. It was a place where taste, smell, and even the pain of being cut to pieces vanished one by one, until a person quietly turned to ash.
And yet it couldn’t be left alone while it remained open, because its miasma kept spreading wider, devouring the surrounding land. Every time it opened, martial artists died trying to contain it; perhaps even those sacrifices were merely swallowed and made fat, only to sink into a brief slumber.
It was also inconveniently located in Hanzhong, Shaanxi, close to the center of the Central Plains, which made the headquarters of the righteous and orthodox alliance in nearby Chang’an all the more frantic about preventing the spread of corruption whenever it appeared.
“Yeonhwa, if it’s for takeout, you’ll need to make it three times sturdier than usual. That Purgatory melts even time until it goes soft.”
At Elder Cook’s words, Yeonhwa nodded and stretched the Margherita dough thin. A curse that stole the senses? Then there was only one answer. She’d have to hit it with a taste the brain remembered and the body could never forget.
“Master, I’m putting in five times as much Geon-rak as usual for this Margherita. And I think the sauce needs basil aroma concentrated with fire qi.”
Five times the cheese. Right away.
Elder Cook narrowed his eyes. “Five times the Geon-rak? What sort of trick is that? It’ll be so rich they’ll be fighting with stomachaches.”
“No, Master. This is hope that stretches longer and longer. When all your senses vanish in the Purgatory, the visual pleasure of Geon-rak stretching out will keep Cheol-ya-dae-hyeop’s mind anchored. Back in my hometown, people say a pizza only really counts when the cheese stretches.”
A pizza pulling into long, decadent strings of cheese. With five times the saltiness, it would surely feel as though body and pizza had become one and the same—
Elder Cook stared at her for a moment with a baffled expression, then burst out laughing.
“Hope that stretches, huh! Well, the path of Murim is just like that too, isn’t it? It’s always hanging on by a thread and yet somehow continuing. Fine. Do it however you like. I’ll handle the truffle cream pasta myself. That deep aroma can’t be fixed in place without internal energy.”
Elder Cook poured truffle oil and cream into a pot and stirred with qi-infused strength.
“Look at this, Yeonhwa. The scent of truffle is the scent that suppresses darkness. It’s the kind of aroma that can cut through the foul sulfur reek of Purgatory and strike straight at the brain.”
It seemed the little wordplay about “hope that stretches” had amused him, because Elder Cook gave his own truffle cream pasta a name as well: the aroma that suppresses darkness.
“What do you think? With this, the monsters in Purgatory won’t come charging in, will they?”
“Wouldn’t that actually make it more dangerous...?”
While they worked, Yeonhwa prepped the lamb ribs at the side. She used ice from the Blood Ice Cave—the chill shards left behind by Dao-cheong-dae-hyeop.
Elder Cook instructed her to crush the ice and lay it beneath the meat.
“If you leave it as is, the heat of the Purgatory will dry out all the juices. But meat that has absorbed the Blood Ice’s frost will hold that coldness deep inside even if the outside chars. A bite of cold meat met in the midst of heat... wouldn’t that be the one moment in Purgatory when a person could keep their sanity? And at that moment, the aroma that suppresses darkness will clear the mind!”
“Um... no. Maybe when the pizza’s Geon-rak turns into geeeon-raaaak, he’ll realize, This is what living tastes like!”
Clack!
As the preparations were nearly complete, the inn door opened and Cheol-ya stepped inside.
Black clothes. Black eyes.
His gaze met Yeonhwa’s.
The faint smile he gave her, and the deeper hollows beneath his eyes than usual, somehow made him seem even more decadent and alluring... Huh! No, no, that’s not it... It’s not! Even if I’m wearing a skirt and acting like a girl, I have to remember that the person inside here is a man. At least, I’m a man inside.
“Is it ready?”
His voice seemed to rise from the floor itself, a magnificent... voice... Huh! Yeonhwa, calm down. I know that’s your type, but your brain is not cooperating right now. Your body shouldn’t be dragging your mind around by the nose.
Yeonhwa shook her head back and forth.
Elder Cook set the heavy parcel on the table with a thud and said, “Cheol-ya, you’ve lost your mind. How many times is this for Manhon Yeon-ok already? Even the masters of the righteous and orthodox alliance hesitate to set foot there. Even if you’ve succeeded two or three times before, it’s not a place to take lightly. That place isn’t a gate, it’s a crack. Once it swallows you, you forget who you are. Why is it called Manhon Yeon-ok? Because that many people die there. And you’re going back? Doesn’t the headquarters have anyone else?”
Without a word, Cheol-ya looked over the wrapped food. Then he lifted his eyes to Yeonhwa.
The moment their gazes met, Yeonhwa stiffened.
Gasp! W-when you look at me like that... N-no, ahem!
“When my senses disappear in the Purgatory, I can’t even tell whether I’m walking on a road or toward a cliff. That’s why I need food that can last a long time.”
“Then remember the taste, senior martial brother.”
Yeonhwa handed over the bundled parcel and added, “No matter what the Purgatory steals, your hunger in the stomach will remain. Even if your senses vanish, surely you’ll still feel the misery of being so hungry you want to die, won’t you? And... imagine the way the Geon-rak on this pizza stretches.”
As she passed the parcel, their hands brushed lightly. Yeonhwa snatched her hand back in a hurry.
At the sight, Cheol-ya let a small smile flicker and then vanish as he asked, “The way the Geon-rak stretches? What does that have to do with the raid?”
Elder Cook cut in from the side. “According to this child, that’s hope that stretches. Even if the path looks like it’s about to break, it’ll keep going like Geon-rak—so it’s Yeonhwa’s way of telling you not to give up. Well? Not a bad metaphor, is it? And the truffle cream pasta has that aroma that suppresses darkness, so even in Purgatory your eyes and nose will find hunger.”
Cheol-ya was silent for a moment, then gave a faint laugh.
“What a strange cook, and an even stranger server.”
He slung the parcel over his shoulder and set out on his way.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Cheol-ya stood before the crack in Manhon Yeon-ok. There was no air here. It was a place where even the wind had burned away in the flames. The instant he stepped inside, every sound in the world was cut off. He could not hear his own heartbeat, nor the footsteps grinding into the earth.
One step. Two steps.
His skin should have been burning away, but he didn’t feel hot. Flames danced before his eyes, and the very concept of heat kept being erased from his mind.
The loss of sensation. That was the true terror of Purgatory. It made it impossible to tell whether he was standing, lying down, or already in the middle of falling.
How long he walked, and how long he cut down the things charging at him—things that looked as if someone had stitched the wrong parts of a human body together, walls bristling with eyes packed so densely there was no room between them, monsters shaped like a rough bundle of severed limbs—he couldn’t say.
It was only once he could no longer feel the soles of his feet that Cheol-ya took out the food from Mugung Hyeoptak. He unwrapped layer after layer of cloth, and the rich scent of truffle... did not register. So this was the loss of sensation.
But he remembered. The weight of that thick cream Elder Cook had stirred with internal energy. Cheol-ya took a huge bite of pasta. He couldn’t taste it, but the dense fullness sliding down his throat was unmistakable.
Fullness was proof of life.
Illusions drifted through the Purgatory. Screams of those he had cut down in the past. The faces of comrades who had betrayed him. Yes. That was why he traveled alone. So he wouldn’t cut down someone else—an ally, an acquaintance. So he wouldn’t be cut down himself.
When his mind began to cloud, Cheol-ya grabbed a slice of pizza. The stretching hope Yeonhwa had spoken of.
“Heh. Yeonhwa. You really do know how to make a joke.”
As he bit into it, even in the invisible darkness, the sensation of Geon-rak stretching long and elastic came through his fingertips like a tremor.
The road was like something that stretched. It stayed connected even when it looked like it was about to break. That nonsense joke from the server became the only landmark in this hellish Purgatory.
At last, Cheol-ya drank the Blood Ice water. The extreme cold met the heart of the raging fire. In that instant, his senses returned in a flash. Pain. Heat. And cold.
He drew his sword. The feeling of life his stomach had remembered flowed into the blade’s tip.
Ah. So this is what it means. To remain in the sword. For every sense that had come alive again to touch the blade.
Like the way Geon-rak stretches. Like the direction cream spreads. Cheol-ya swung his sword without hesitation. Stardust qi began to circle around the blade. He himself began to infuse the sword.
He broke through the wall of Peak and awakened here as a martial artist of Transcendence.
Kwaaaang!
As the sword swept through the air, light exploded, and the senses that had vanished came rushing back like a storm.
Pain and heat slammed into him all at once, but a snort of laughter still escaped his lips.
Then this is a cheese sword.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Clunk!
Cheol-ya stood at the door, his whole body coated in soot, the hems of his clothes in tatters. And yet his eyes shone brighter than the flames of Purgatory itself.
“The takeout... can I place another order?”
Yeonhwa shot out of the kitchen and shouted, “Of course! Would you like to change the menu this time? How about a Geon-rak Volcano Risotto for your Purgatory raid, overflowing with cheese?”
Cheol-ya snorted softly and sat down.
“What a strange inn. There are people here hotter than hell.”
The fire in the hearth is lit again.
“All right, in goes the cheese! Let’s gooooo, stretching hope!”
With Yeonhwa’s shout, the kitchen once again filled with the savory scent of butter and the warm smell of people living their lives.
“Good. It’s time for the aroma that suppresses darkness to make its entrance!”
“Nobody ordered that.”
“Why not?”