A Living Corpse
Outside, the night had grown restless.
"...Why isn't he coming out?"
"Just wait a little longer."
It was Lady Un and Wun Mu-jeong, trading words in low voices. More than six hours had already passed since the Golden Heaven Divine Sword had entered the clan head's chamber.
How could anyone believe it should take this long?
Two hours in, the magistrate had taken his leave, asking only to be notified when the Divine Sword emerged. Four hours in, the head of the Hyekri Clan had done the same.
Now only three members of the Yi Clan's main family remained at their posts.
Yi Won, anxiety gnawing at him, kept biting at his nails.
Surely... surely Yi Do didn't kill the Golden Heaven Divine Sword...?
Whether she sensed her son's thoughts or not, Lady Un gave his shoulder a pat.
"Mother..."
"Worry not. Do you know who the Golden Heaven Divine Sword is? One of the leading candidates to number among the Ten Great Masters of the murim in the years to come. His realm is the Realm of Harmony — a height that people like us, mere mortals, could not so much as imagine."
That much was undeniable truth.
And yet such a man had failed to kill a single martial artist who was, at best, at the Jucheon Realm — perhaps even just the very threshold of the Four Realms of Qi Condensation? Impossible. It simply could not be.
"By now the matter is surely settled. That wretch Yi Do will be lying on the floor vomiting blood. The Golden Heaven Divine Sword is a man of the orthodox sects, but his disciple's clan has been destroyed. As a master, this is not a situation he could stand by and watch... He must be deep in his mourning rites as we speak."
Of all the reasons he might not have emerged after so long, this was by far the most plausible.
"...It seems it will take some time yet. Let us leave a few servants to keep watch and return to our quarters."
It was already late. Lingering in attendance through the small hours of the morning felt unseemly in its own way.
And so, after ordering a handful of servants to stand guard, all three of the Yi Clan's main family withdrew to their quarters.
Just as the few remaining servants were keeping watch before the clan head's hall —
Without a soul noticing.
A man slipped into the hall as smoothly as flowing water.
The servants never sensed him. Had they, this man could never have earned, all those years ago, the epithet of the Thousand-Faced Assassin.
Hwang No-baek entered the empty hall and surveyed his surroundings — and found the bed, dislodged from its place. Checking beneath it, he discovered a space descending below the floor.
...Honestly. What a place to hide a hole.
Hwang No-baek descended into the underground in silence and came upon an iron door, shut fast.
He pushed it lightly with one hand. It did not so much as shudder.
...Did they rig it with a mechanism? No — wait.
A shiver ran down his entire body.
Why is it so quiet in here?
It shouldn't be this quiet.
There was no time to think. He wrenched the iron door open with both hands.
The door swung wide — and immediately, a soft thud rang out as something dropped. Hwang No-baek looked down, and for a moment his voice failed him entirely.
It was Yi Do.
What had just fallen was Yi Do's arm. He had clearly been pushing the door with it, unconscious, before collapsing.
Nothing made sense. Hwang No-baek raised his head.
...He saw two figures.
One was a man's upper body. The other, his lower half.
Both were drenched in blood, yet there was no mistaking who it was.
The Golden Heaven Divine Sword, Ma Heuk-rang.
He lay dead, his body cleaved in two.
His skull, moreover, had been split down the middle.
"......What in the world is this...."
Why had the Thousand-Faced Assassin, Hwang No-baek, come to this place in the first place?
Setting everything else aside, it was to save Yi Do's life.
He had prepared a great many words in advance.
Senior Ma Heuk-rang, an unworthy junior pays his respects... To one such as me, undeserving of the title Thousand-Faced Assassin, this man Yi Do is my benefactor... Would you permit me to take him, and consider it as though he had simply been slain... I beg of you... and so on.
In plain terms — he had come to beg.
Truthfully, Hwang No-baek had no desire to become entangled with the King's Sword Sect.
And yet.
There had been one person who moved him to come anyway — his sole disciple, Jo Hyeon.
"Master. They say a man called the Golden Heaven Divine Sword has come to kill Lord Yi Do."
"He may mean nothing to you, Master, but to me he is my benefactor. He's the reason you and I ever met, isn't he?"
That was nothing more than coincidence. Even if that man Yi Do had never appeared, wouldn't you and I have continued on as shop owner and cook just the same?
"But I never would have become your disciple, would I?"
On that point, Hwang No-baek had nothing to say. If not for Yi Do, he would never have so much as considered resuming his life as the Thousand-Faced Assassin.
"Lord Yi Do's methods may have been excessive, Master — but I want to save him. You told me yourself, didn't you? That the debts and grudges of the murim must never be taken lightly. I don't know much, but I know enough. If not for Lord Yi Do, those Hyekri bastards would have beaten me half to death. And if I'd never met him at all, I'd have lived out my days as the shop owner and died a nobody in some place where no one knew my name. Just this once. I'm begging you. Please."
There had been a great deal more said besides, but it all came down to one thing: save Yi Do.
That said, no matter how formidable the Thousand-Faced Assassin might be, he was not as formidable as an elder of the King's Sword Sect.
Fight him one-on-one? Madness. If he went for a sneak attack, he might somehow inflict serious wounds — but the odds of the assassination succeeding were less than thirty percent.
He came anyway.
His disciple had knelt to the ground and begged. What master alive would refuse that?
But before the scene spread out before him now, he could not string two words together.
It was as if his thoughts had simply ground to a halt.
How?
How, and why?
Why is the Golden Heaven Divine Sword dead?
He didn't know. Thinking it through didn't seem likely to produce an answer. And then Yi Do's condition caught Hwang No-baek's eye.
"...Hoo."
In all his life, he had never seen anything like this.
Blood vessels stood bulging out across the man's entire body. A casual glance might have mistaken him for simply soaked in gore — but no. All of that was veins.
Veins of blue. Veins of crimson.
The moment he saw that body writhing madly, on the verge of rupturing at any instant, Hwang No-baek stopped thinking and moved.
First he settled Yi Do into a seated position, then pressed both hands against his back.
He closed his eyes.
He channeled the Black Fiend Heart Method.
Decades of accumulated internal energy began pouring out of him, drawn into Yi Do's body like water down a drain.
Little by little, Yi Do's body began to stabilize.
The face that had been contorted in agony gradually eased into calm.
In contrast, sweat began pouring down Hwang No-baek's brow like a waterfall — but he did not stop.
Thus the hours passed.
Khh.
I came to my senses coughing up blood.
My final memory surfaced hazily.
After splitting Ma Heuk-rang's skull, I had dragged myself desperately toward the entrance. Not to escape — I hadn't the strength left for that. Somehow, I had to stop anyone from entering or leaving. And the moment I laid my hand on the iron door, I lost consciousness.
Now the iron door stood before my eyes. And next, I could feel someone's hands resting against my back.
I rose to my feet and turned around.
"Haa... haa...."
A mask covered his face, but this time too, I knew exactly who it was.
Hwang No-baek.
I took stock of my body. Limbs? Intact. Dantian? Empty, but unbroken. My lower dantian was unharmed, my middle dantian likewise.
My upper dantian... I couldn't say. The Heavenly Spirit Spiritual Root Pill.
That elixir had, if only for a fleeting moment, let me draw upon the power of my past life.
That sensation of having my upper dantian wrenched open by force was, frankly, not a pleasant one.
Everything in life has its proper season — and one who refuses to wait for that season and takes a shortcut instead invites great calamity upon himself.
In that instant, I had understood that I might lose every trace of the internal energy I possessed.
It would be fair to call it a miracle.
My current realm was Five Dragons Scaling the Wall. Some would call it the realm of a master, but by my own standards it was a level I would dismiss as weak. Even so, I hadn't wanted to rush. As I said — everything has its season.
I could simply take the next step slowly, in its own time.
And then my gaze drifted toward my dantian.
...What is this?
Something remained there.
The residual energy of the Heavenly Spirit Spiritual Root Pill, perhaps.
That strange power I had felt back then — the one akin to, yet utterly distinct from, the pure essence of refined qi — was unquestionably still lingering within me.
More than anything, my body's overall rate of recovery seemed to have climbed.
...
For a while, I couldn't find my voice.
Call it a true stroke of fortune, I suppose. It defied comprehension. I clenched my fist once more.
Crrrnch.
Some strength had drained away, but overall I was not so very different from how I had been before.
This was genuinely absurd.
It was as though a rate of regeneration that one should only attain upon approaching the Realm of Harmony had been forcibly grafted onto a body that was still only Five Dragons Scaling the Wall.
Before I knew it, I had laughed out loud.
I had no interest in human sacrifices or elixirs distilled from living people. however far I stray, that is one line I hold. But the Heavenly Spirit Spiritual Root Pill had been such a tame, gentle elixir. I had hesitated to swallow it precisely because there was no reliable information about what it might actually do — and in the end, it came back to me as a tremendous gain.
This much was enough.
I extended a hand toward the man behind me.
Hwang No-baek, still gulping for breath, grasped it. I hauled him up and asked,
"Didn't I tell you not to intervene no matter what happened?"
"...Does your Excellency think anyone intervenes because they want to? Honestly — take in one disciple and look at the trouble... tsk."
From what I could piece together, Jo Hyeon must have begged him.
Twice now, I had received help without meaning to.
"Is there something you want?"
"Why? Would you actually give it if I asked?"
"I would."
"You say that without knowing what I might ask for."
I said it flatly, without room for doubt.
"Whatever it is you desire — if I wish to give it, it will be yours. If you want money, I will give you money. If you want land, I will give you land. If you want a country, I will make you its king."
"...If I were still a stranger who knew nothing about you, I'd be thinking, what lunatic is this spouting nonsense... Haa... But it really sounds like you mean to do it, and that's somehow more frightening."
Hwang No-baek's condition looked dire at a glance. If anything, I was the healthy one and he was the wounded patient.
"I want nothing. Just... whatever you feel like giving me someday, take care of it then, as you see fit."
"Fine. That suits me."
But it seemed Hwang No-baek still had more curiosity left in him.
"Then be honest with me."
"About what?"
"You're an old master beyond your years, aren't you? Half a century in reverse, restored body and mind."
"..."
"The man called Yi Do died long ago, and you're... what, using some face-altering art to change your features and move about the world? That's it, isn't it?"
"It is not."
"It isn't? Then how in the world is any of that possible?"
Hwang No-baek's hand was pointed at the dead Golden Heaven Divine Sword.
"I mean, that man is no passing nobody — he's an elder of the King's Sword Sect itself. How did you... What are you, honestly."
It was a first.
I had never known Hwang No-baek all that well to begin with, but I had truly never seen him flustered like this.
"I was lucky."
"...If luck could do that, then the finest swordsman under heaven would be lucky too."
I looked around.
It was a wreck, but the hidden grotto had held. And I knew where those dark waters of the grotto flowed.
Behind the Yi Clan's estate stood a great mountain. The people of Jangryeong Commandery called it Mount Mihok, and the grotto's waters ran toward it — of that I was certain.
"So. What will you do now?"
I looked at Hwang No-baek.
"You've killed an elder of the King's Sword Sect, which means their pursuit begins the moment this comes to light. Honestly speaking — aren't you nothing more than a living corpse at this point?"
I burst out laughing.
"So you can joke after all."
"That wasn't a joke."
"Fine, let's say it wasn't. But — the Golden Heaven Divine Sword? I don't know what you're talking about."
"...I beg your pardon?"
"The Golden Heaven Divine Sword never came to Jangryeong Commandery. Some calamity befell him on the road, and his life or death remains unknown — that is how the world will come to know it."
Hwang No-baek's mouth hung wide open.
"Go back now. The work isn't finished yet."
"...Don't tell me you mean what I think you mean."
"I don't know what you're thinking, but you're probably right."
"...Understood."
Hwang No-baek rose from where he sat.
As he opened the iron door to leave, I spoke to him in a small voice.
"Dongpa braised pork is a genuinely difficult dish to come by."
"Good heavens — I haven't even gone to eat it yet, have I?"
"I may not go this time either."
"..."
"Thank you. I will repay this debt."
Hwang No-baek waved a hand in dismissal.
"Spare me. What debt? I gained a fine-hearted disciple out of this — that alone is more than enough."
Leaving only those words behind, Hwang No-baek walked out.
Left alone, I folded my legs into a cross and settled where I sat.
The Golden Heaven Divine Sword never came to Jangryeong Commandery.
To make that statement true, I would have to kill everyone who knew the Divine Sword had come to this place.
Slowly, I entered my breathing cycle and let the qi circulate.
I have never once spared the men who stabbed me in the back.
Not a single time.