Black Heart
Cheol-ya knew it the moment he crossed the boundary of the artificially torn gate. Yeon-ok has changed. Or rather, someone had changed it.
The previous Yeon-ok had been chaos itself. Wails of vengeful spirits, columns of fire shooting into the air, twisted shadows lunging from every direction to devour the living. But this Yeon-ok, opened by the sorcery of Mu-hyeon-gok, was eerily silent.
Step inside, and your feet vanished beneath red mist. Black stones rose here and there like pillars above the fog, which had already climbed to waist height. On the stones were grotesque patterns that gleamed as though drawn in blood.
Cheol-ya narrowed his eyes. Yeon-ok was supposed to be a place of chaos, with no direction and no path. Yet this time, a passage seemed to have been deliberately carved through the mist, faint and narrow, as if someone had made it just for him.
"Waiting for me, are you."
Instead of an answer, the temperature beneath his feet began to fall. He opened the box from Mugung Hyeoptak within his robes. Steam rose from the food inside—food Jangro Suksu had boiled with his inner energy, and Yeonhwa had finished with fragrant red pepper oil.
As that sharp aroma spread, the red mist pressing down on Cheol-ya slowly retreated. The food’s overwhelming scent, which stained the surroundings with warmth, was like an anchor keeping his mind from drifting away.
Cheol-ya walked along the passage. Beyond the mist, masked figures appeared—sorcerers from Mu-hyeon-gok. They were waiting for him in a space arranged like an altar.
"So you came, Cheol-ya. The gate has tilted toward you. Behold—you are the center of Yeon-ok."
At that moment, the tiny black shard that had burst into his heart when he shattered the last Yeon-ok’s black core responded. Invisible, yet undeniably present, the fragment of darkness stirred his dantian into disorder.
"We were the ones who opened Yeon-ok, yes, but look where this energy is pointing. The truly opened gate has opened for you. Proof that the thing inside you is the real key."
When the sorcerers all raised their hands at once, blood spilled through the air and formed a strange pattern.
Then they split that pattern in two, and a red arm thrust out of it. Around that arm, Yeon-ok’s red mist gathered and took shape into a beast with many limbs and no eyes. It was a monster from Yeon-ok, artificially amplified.
As the beast rushed in with countless arms, Cheol-ya clenched his fist. He drew just a little, only a little of the energy flowing from the black shard in his heart and poured it into his fist.
Kuhk— So that was it. It was not something a human body could properly contain. And yet, if only for a moment, if only a little—
The instant his fist landed, the beast’s torso did not tear apart. Instead, it folded inward as though a door had slammed shut. Fear and certainty flashed simultaneously in the sorcerers’ eyes.
But the price of using that dark energy was steep. With every beat of his heart, it felt as though the black force was coursing through his meridians. Then it happened.
Ding—
A thin melody cut through the thick, stagnant air of Yeon-ok. It was the sound of Heuk-ak-sa’s seven-string zither. The music disrupted the blood pattern the sorcerers had drawn, making them stagger.
At the same time, a chill force rolled in from beyond the gate. Along with a faint scent of plum blossoms, Baek-yeon’s sword qi began slicing away at part of Yeon-ok itself. They could not enter, but from outside they were shaking the structure of Yeon-ok, opening a crack for Cheol-ya to escape through.
And in that instant, the greatest surge of energy shook all of Yeon-ok.
"The way of the martial world is not something to be torn apart so carelessly."
It was Hong San, the diviner-investigator of the Orthodox-Unorthodox Coalition Headquarters. Fusing the power of the Black Moon Jade Token he had received from Yeonhwa with his own vast inner strength, he held up a pillar so the gate of Yeon-ok would not close completely. If Heuk-ak-sa was using melody to disturb the balance and Baek-yeon was prying open a gap, Hong San was driving back Yeon-ok’s oppressive pressure with sheer force of presence.
Cheol-ya realized he was not alone. Knowing Hong San, Baek-yeon, and Heuk-ak-sa were waiting outside, he stopped suppressing the black energy in his chest and drove it forward.
"Krrgh...!"
He could tell he would not be able to use his inner energy properly for a while.
"M-move!"
The sorcerers from Mu-hyeon-gok hastily threw themselves aside, but some were swept up and vanished as though the space itself had folded over them.
Cheol-ya approached the altar and stood before the pattern. The grotesque design made of blood pulsed like a living thing with the space itself.
He reached out, took the black energy in his palm, and rubbed the leftover cooking oil across the pattern. Blood and fragrance mingled, and the artificial design warped. Yeon-ok began folding in on itself. It still could not be erased completely, but the layer Mu-hyeon-gok had forced open crumbled away.
"That power was never meant to be used to close Yeon-ok!!"
Only the sorcerer left behind inside could be heard screaming as the gate of Yeon-ok closed.
***
As Cheol-ya was flung back outside beyond the gate’s boundary, Hong San caught him by the hand and steadied him. His whole body was a wreck of soot and blood.
"Reckless. Still, thanks to you, we know exactly what Mu-hyeon-gok is after."
Hong San said this as he tucked the Black Moon Jade Token back into his sleeve. Beside him was Baek-yeon, readjusting his scabbard, and Heuk-ak-sa, whose presence was already sinking back into the darkness of the forest.
Cheol-ya clutched his chest, where a dull pain still lingered. The black shard inside his heart had gone quiet again, but it had not disappeared. Whether it was poison, a key, or part of Yeon-ok itself, he still could not tell.
"Mu-hyeon-gok won’t stop," he said.
Hong San nodded at that.
"Then neither can we. Come by Mugung Hyeoptak. Yeonhwa’s been waiting for your reorder."
Cheol-ya let out a faint laugh and started walking. This time, he was not alone. There was the melody, the great force holding the gate from outside, and the sharp edge of a sword. And above all, there was the memory of warm food, food that had awakened his sense of being alive even in that hellish Yeon-ok and held him fast to the world of the living.
Then Cheol-ya stopped for a moment.
The energy of the space around Yeon-ok was strange. As though one layer of air had slightly slipped out of alignment with another, thin cracks seemed to lurk everywhere in the void, ready to split open again with the slightest touch.
The gate of Yeon-ok had folded shut. But it had not vanished. It should have been nothing, and yet the black shard buried deep in Cheol-ya’s heart continued to resonate unpleasantly toward those cracks.
"So Yeon-ok is trying to break and spill out beyond itself after all."
A low voice rang out from one side. Cheol-ya looked up. Beneath the moonlight, between the long shadows of the trees, Heuk-ak-sa emerged. Or rather, to call it fully emerging would have been inaccurate. He still stood on the boundary between shadow and moonlight, his form blurry, like a ghost made only half real.
"Was that you, filling Yeon-ok with sound from the outside?"
"I merely awakened a single sense."
The realm of carrying out will through sound, infusing energy into music. Transcendence, was it?
Heuk-ak-sa took one step closer to Cheol-ya. The Black Moon jade token hanging from his breast gave a faint tremor in the moonlight.
"Those bastards knew," he said softly. "They knew what this was, and where someone like me would be led once I carried it."
Cheol-ya’s hand drifted unconsciously to his chest. The black energy that had taken root there the moment he tore open the gate of Yeon-ok. Was it because of that?
Heuk-ak-sa looked up at the sky and said, "Yeon-ok has no balance to begin with. But once you enter it, the gate tilts toward a single point. That is proof that the thing inside you is part of Yeon-ok, or something in contact with it."
At the word part, bitterness filled Cheol-ya’s mouth. How am I any different from the monsters in Yeon-ok?
Just then, a cool breath swept over him, carrying the scent of plum blossoms. It was Baek-yeon from Mount Hua. His white robe was torn in several places, and black blood had stained his shoulder. It was the trace of the struggle he had endured outside, dispersing Yeon-ok’s pressure.
"You’ve gone to the end of hell again, all by yourself," Baek-yeon murmured, sheathing his sword.
"How was it inside?"
"Quiet, except for those Mu-hyeon-gok bastards. And there was a path, neatly cleared in advance."
Baek-yeon’s expression turned grave. Someone having cleared a path meant they might as well be inviting them deeper into Yeon-ok next time.
***
A few days later, in a hidden room at Orthodox Headquarters, Hong San’s private chamber.
On the table lay the Black Moon Jade Token and a short dispatch. Hong San stared at the dark energy clinging to the token and let out a deep sigh.
"The Blood Cult, then."
He held the token up to the moonlight.
"If they keep opening Yeon-ok over and over, and drag Cheol-ya into it... someday they’ll open a gate we won’t be able to contain. They’re not just causing disasters. They’re looking for something inside Yeon-ok."
Mu-hyeon-gok, the Blood Cult, intended to use Yeon-ok as a medium to nourish the black shard within Cheol-ya. The moment it bloomed, the paper called the martial world would be torn into fragments and scattered.
***
At the same time, Mugung Hyeoptak.
Only the quiet simmer of pots echoed from the kitchen. Cheol-ya sat in a corner seat, staring down at an empty teacup.
"Will you go again next time?"
Yeonhwa’s voice came from behind him.
The eyes looking at him, worried for his sake, seemed terribly sorrowful.
"If it opens, I have to go."
"My master said that next time, it won’t do to just make it spicy."
Yeonhwa held out a small glass bottle. Inside the transparent oil, strange herbs and spices were mixed together.
"This might help you find your way if scent starts flowing inside Yeon-ok. Master refined it with his inner energy, so you absolutely have to take it with you."
She didn’t know. Not about Mu-hyeon-gok’s conspiracy, nor about the fact that darkness was staining Cheol-ya’s heart. But she had done the best she could, crafting food and offering it to him with all the care she could give.
"Thank you."
"Ah! N-no, I just... figured it’d be a shame if we lost a customer, that’s all."
"We’ll call it that, then."
***
Deep in the night, in a cave in the northern gorge where no one went. On the altar of Mu-hyeon-gok, blood that had not yet dried still pulsed with black light.
"The gate has closed. He sealed it himself."
At the sorcerer’s report, the leader hidden in the darkness gave a soft laugh, as though surprised.
"You’re certain?"
"Yeon-ok folded around him as its center."
Silence fell for a moment.
"Good. That only makes it certain that a seed has been planted inside that bastard."
Seed.
The seed of Yeon-ok.
Or a seed that would swallow Yeon-ok.
"Next time, we’ll open a deeper layer."
"Will he come?"
"He will."
The answer was full of certainty.
"That man cannot stop."
Cheol-ya would not be able to stop—not because he was righteous, but because the seed within him would hunger for Yeon-ok’s energy and drive him toward the edge of death.
***
That night, Cheol-ya dreamed.
In the red mist, his own shadow was walking ahead of him. From the shadow’s chest, black roots spread outward and wrapped around Yeon-ok’s space.
Before long, those roots stretched long enough to tear open Yeon-ok and began constricting the mountains and rivers of the Central Plains, the halls of Orthodox Headquarters, and even the furnaces of Mugung Hyeoptak.
Cheol-ya woke in a cold sweat. It was the darkest hour, just before dawn.
"A seed, huh..."
He didn’t know whose voice had whispered it, but he instinctively knew it was the answer. The thing in his chest was not merely usable energy, nor just a key. It was something that grew on its own. Something that, if left alone, no one could say how far it would spread. It might not end with Yeon-ok at all.
He rose from his seat and tightened his grip on his sword. He could not keep waiting. To wait for the gate to open and the altar to be built was no different from waiting for defeat—or death.
"I’ll have to find it first."