The Ming Cult
The Ming Cult. A sect that had existed in the distant past. They had erased themselves entirely from the world's sight, only to reappear a decade from now, when the great war between the orthodox and demonic paths would ignite.
Their power had been immense.
With the Great Elder Ak Nan-hyang at its center, that organization had drenched the martial world in blood — and yet, as time passed, its members were hunted down and butchered one by one.
It went without saying, of course, that the final victor of the Zheng-Mo War would be the orthodox sects. In the end, the righteous paths exterminated every last demonic fiend.
I gazed at Ak Nan-hyang for a moment with something like pity in my eyes.
The reason I remembered her name at all was that her end had been more tragic than most would imagine.
And this was something I needed to be certain of: the Sword Emperor was a martial artist. His madness ran along two lines — martial arts, and women.
The world believed the Sword Emperor was obsessed only with the blade. Nothing else. And even those who knew the truth claimed ignorance. They had no choice. He was simply too powerful.
Ak Nan-hyang was beautiful. That much was an undeniable fact.
Stripped of every ounce of her martial power, she was reduced to the Sword Emperor's plaything. For three years she endured him, until his interest waned and he cast her into a brothel. Bound at all four limbs, she lived two more years in that place — until Myeong Hyeon, who found the spectacle too cruel to bear, finally granted her the mercy of death.
That was her end.
"What? Why are you staring at me like that?"
I was hardly a man overflowing with compassion, and injustice alone didn't set my blood boiling — but I could sympathize, at least. The end of such a self-assured woman was tragic, certainly. But it was someone else's tragedy. She wasn't one of mine, and she had nothing to do with me.
I slid my sword back into its sheath.
"I see the misunderstanding has finally cleared."
"I believe you. But that's where it ends."
"Hmm?"
"I have no interest in the Ming Cult. Leave."
"...Why wouldn't you be interested? Doesn't it strike you as remarkable that a sect that vanished centuries ago still exists, perfectly intact? Someone of your caliber can surely tell what realm I've reached. This is the sort of thing that ought to spark your curiosity. Doesn't it?"
"Curious, yes. Interested, no."
"See? So why not? Rather than serving Dokgo Dan-ya at the Asura Sword Sect, you could simply come to our Ming Cult and—"
"I would serve Dokgo Dan-ya?"
The corner of Ak Nan-hyang's mouth twitched.
"Am I wrong?"
"If that's how it looked, then all the more reason I'll never go."
"...Well, well. Don't tell me... you mean that?"
"I don't know what 'that' is, but you and I have nothing to do with one another. As for your interference with the Hong Clan's trading caravan — I'll let that pass. I'd prefer we never cross paths again."
I was about to brush past her when it happened.
"So you were a man with ambition?"
I stopped. Turned around.
"You didn't simply mean to use the Asura Sword Sect as your shield... you intend to swallow it from beneath?"
Strictly speaking, it wasn't quite accurate — but it was close enough.
As I'd said before, I was not the sort of man who served others. If I were ever to serve anyone at all, it would be one person, and one person only.
My master. No one else qualified.
Not Myo Man-li. Not Dokgo Dan-ya.
No one. I bowed to no one.
"All the more to my liking, then. If the man himself objects, I have nothing more to say."
At some point, the torrential rain falling from the sky had softened into a fine drizzle.
"So... I have a rough idea of the kind of man you are now. Shall we make one promise, you and I?"
"What promise?"
"That if the Ming Cult ever moves against you, it will never represent the will of the sect as a whole — and that if such a thing ever does happen, you won't hold it against me as a debt of grievance."
Ak Nan-hyang was being unexpectedly deferential. The reason was obvious. She was leaving a door open — that great demonic fiend had taken far too much of a liking to me.
"But saying all this with empty hands feels a little shabby, doesn't it? A person ought to give before they take."
"What are you getting at?"
Ak Nan-hyang wore an enigmatic smile.
"The Killing Curtain has entered the service of the Heaven-Breaking Fist Sect."
That much I already knew. She continued.
"Mun Hudo, the Black Slaughter Ghost King and master of the Killing Curtain, met with the Sect Master of the Heaven-Breaking Fist Sect in person to negotiate — and the terms were rather staggering. You could call it a trade. Care to guess what it involved?"
"No."
"Gong Wi-ryang demanded that, in exchange for admitting them into the sect, Mun Hudo bring over several elders from within the Asura Sword Sect. And Mun Hudo asked in return that he be allowed to kill you by any means necessary — with the aftermath cleaned up on his behalf. Starting to see the shape of it?"
I saw it well enough.
"Spare me your thanks. Just live long. That way, when we meet again, we'll still be something other than enemies — and we can share a drink."
With that, Ak Nan-hyang turned to go. The plum blossom pattern embroidered on the long robe she wore was striking. And now that I looked properly — she was no mere Ogijowon practitioner. She had reached the Realm of Harmony.
To that woman, I spoke.
"Ak Nan-hyang."
She turned back.
"You've given me more information than the situation warranted."
"I suppose I have."
"I know it well. So I'll return the favor — two pieces of information, in fact. Avoid friction with the Imperial Sword Sect. And if you are ever captured by them, end your own life without hesitation. Even with your dantian shattered, even with your limbs pinned, develop a technique that lets you burst your own heart and skull with the merest thread of internal energy."
With each word that left my mouth, the furrow between Ak Nan-hyang's brows carved itself deeper.
And her next words caught me slightly off guard.
"...You talk strangely. How much do you actually know?"
That statement meant Ak Nan-hyang herself knew a great deal about the Sword Emperor. Interesting. I answered flatly.
"I know at least as much as the Sword Emperor's hobbies."
"..."
"I've given you my warning, plainly. Whatever you've done until now — if you want to die like a martial artist, or at the very least like a human being, remember what I said."
With that, I turned away. My business here was finished.
I felt her gaze boring into my back, but I gave no sign of it.
"Are you... worried about me?"
I didn't dignify her question with an answer. Worried? Hardly.
"One last question, then. Truly the last, and I'd like an answer to this one. Do you know anything about the Ming Cult's current situation?"
I stopped walking and turned my head.
"You think I'd know that?"
"...Outsiders aren't supposed to know, but judging by you, you do. Do you know about the factions, too?"
I said nothing.
But she seemed to read the answer in my expression, because Ak Nan-hyang burst out laughing in sheer disbelief.
"Unbelievable. You're going to drive me mad. Honestly."
"Was there more to your point?"
"...There is now."
"Then say it."
"If joining the Ming Cult doesn't appeal to you — how about joining hands with me, personally?"
"What do I stand to gain from an alliance with you?"
"...Well, I haven't thought that far, but wouldn't it benefit us both in plenty of ways? Say what you like, but as long as you and I both walk the martial world, we'll stir up trouble or get swept up in it. If we were each other's allies, wouldn't that leave our backs covered?"
"Aren't you part of an organization that's tearing itself apart?"
Ak Nan-hyang pressed her lips shut.
"Your enemies would become mine. Fine. Then offer me a gain worth bearing that weight — not some vague 'we'd be allies, your back would be covered.' Is that a concrete answer? Am I supposed to accept a proposal built on that?"
More than anything, the Asura Sword Sect itself was shaking at that very moment. Joining hands with a woman from a sect shaking in exactly the same way?
Dig deeper into that pit? Belong to that place?
Even foolish choices had their limits.
"...You're a difficult man."
"There is no reason to join hands with someone who cannot be trusted."
"Then you should grant me the chance to build that trust."
"Aren't I granting it right now?"
Ak Nan-hyang tilted her head.
"Bring me an offer capable of swaying me. Then I'll consider it — consider, mind you."
I turned and walked on in silence. I could feel her gaze following me, and I ignored it.
And so I crossed Bibong Mountain and arrived at the gates of Sambong-hyeon.
A man stood there, taking the full force of the rain upon himself. Water streamed off him in rivulets — plenty of it. I could roughly guess how long he'd been standing like that.
The man — Un Do-hyeon — settled into a fist salute.
"You've worked hard, my lord."
I nodded.
"Let's go in."
"Yes, my lord."
Yi Do knew an extraordinary number of martial arts.
Every technique that had been lost to the world in the past — and every art practiced by the martial artists of the present. There were reasons he had come to know all of it. Two of them, in fact.
The first was that he had simply killed so very many people, and most of those martial artists carried their secret manuals against their chests — a last desperate wish, perhaps, that their arts might pass on to someone, anyone. A fair number of the techniques he knew had come to him that way. The Red Dragon Divine Art of the Red Dragon Divine Lord, commander of the Murim Alliance's Azure Dragon Platoon, had been one such case.
The other reason was that in his previous life, Yi Do's enemies had been not individuals but organizations.
Among them were the Imperial Sword Sect and the Murim Alliance.
Other enemies had been large as well, but these two dwarfed them all. They had also been the hardest to fight.
The amusing part was that, in the course of attacking these two organizations, Yi Do had uncovered their secrets.
Both of them had been collecting martial arts.
Not merely orthodox techniques — demonic ones as well.
Beneath Cheonseogak, the Heavenly Book Pavilion of the Imperial Sword Sect, lay a hidden vault containing demonic arts beyond counting, along with the techniques of martial artists long dead.
And then there was Museogak, the Martial Book Pavilion of the Murim Alliance — accessible to no one but the Alliance Leader and the Vice Leader.
Yi Do had slipped in and out of both places many times. The arts he had learned there were legion: the lost techniques of Mount Hua, of the Jeomchang Sect — even those of the Beggar's Sect and Shaolin themselves.
These two organizations were, absolutely, not clean.
Yi Do did not defend himself. He felt no regret for the things he had done, and no interest in how people chose to judge them.
There had been debts and grievances, and he had repaid them. That was all.
The proof was that he had never once denied the title of Public Enemy of Murim.
And yet.
Different from Yi Do's case, there had been those branded demonic fiends without a single crime to their name.
Men overflowing with chivalric spirit, who practiced the ways of righteousness and honored them above all — many such masters had been hunted down and slaughtered by the Murim Alliance and the Imperial Sword Sect.
The Five Elements Sword Emperor, one of the ten great masters of the martial world, had been one of them.
The Five Elements Sword Emperor, Sim Seon-ryong. The last descendant of the destroyed Changling Sword Sect, he had been a martial artist who died roughly twenty years before the present day — branded a demonic fiend on charges of annihilating three county-level administrative districts of the Kingdom of Jeok, without cause.
In truth, the destruction of those three districts had been the work of the Heavenly Emperor of the Murim Alliance, committed in his hunt for elixirs. The crimes had simply been pinned on another man. Sim Seon-ryong was hunted down and killed, and to his final breath he cried his own innocence — and not a soul listened.
When the men who ruled the martial world willed a thing, what power was there to overturn it?
He had wielded a sword art called the Five Elements True Sword Formula, distinguished by the way the energies of the five elements took vivid, physical form with every swing of his blade, tearing apart everything along the sword's path all at once.
What Un Do-hyeon was practicing at this very moment was that very Five Elements True Sword Formula. His level was still abysmal — but time would mend that.
"Un Do-hyeon."
The young man halted his sword.
"Yes, my lord."
"That's enough for now. Any blocks in the mental cultivation method?"
Un Do-hyeon shook his head.
"No blocks, my lord. But my level is still too shallow — I cannot yet feel the five elements in full."
That much was only to be expected.
"You're still at the Five Dragons Ascension. Once you reach the Three Flowers Gathering at Crown, it will come more naturally. Take a few of those elixirs there and absorb them."
"...Thank you, my lord."
Yi Do knew himself.
He wasn't without a gift for teaching, though neither was it exceptional. But experience was not to be sneered at, and he had at least climbed as far as the Realm of Harmony once before — he reckoned himself capable of pointing out a mistake or two in matters concerning martial arts.
Just then—
"Ah, so this is where you gentlemen were."
At the unfamiliar voice, Yi Do and Un Do-hyeon turned their heads at the same time. At the entrance leading down into the cellar stood a man.
Yi Do and Un Do-hyeon wore the long robes of the Asura Sword Sect's martial artists, marked by an embroidered cart and flames. This man's robe carried its own marking as well.
A white cart, and golden flames.
Within the Asura Sword Sect, gold denoted the rank of Elder or Sect Master. A red cart with golden flames meant Elder; a golden cart with golden flames meant Sect Master.
A white cart with golden flames — as on this man's robe — meant Dharma Protector.
"A pleasure. I am Yi Maeng-rip, personal Dharma Protector to Elder Neung Don."