Coexistence of Moon and Stars
After fighting to the death, I finally understood.
That wild-eyed sect leader was not someone the three of us could beat.
I still had no idea exactly what that Moon Cloud Mind Method she had muttered about truly was, but it seemed to carry a nature completely opposed to the Seongun Simbeop I had cultivated. Every time our swords clashed, a gut-twisting shock slammed into me—the one of lower realm.
A wise man avoids a losing fight, so I started running my mouth against a Transcendent Realm master. Given how she had been going on about needing the power of the stars, there might even be room to negotiate.
Gihyo trembled violently with a blade at her throat while the Emei Sect Leader glared at us as if she wanted us dead. Sinister violet light poured from her eyes, yet for the moment she had stopped her fierce assault for the sake of her disciples.
I edged closer. She kept trying to close the distance while pretending to answer me, so I yanked the sword even tighter against Gihyo’s neck.
“Hey now, stay right there.”
Another thread of crimson blood trickled down the white curve of her throat. Ilhong was holding Jeongyo the same way I was, but her face clearly asked whether this was really the right move.
“Boss, this makes us look like the real bad guys.”
Hyein Satae shook with rage at the threat of her disciples’ throats being cut, yet she could do nothing.
“So what? They threatened us first.”
I was just answering attempted murder with a little intimidation of my own. Mutual, right? I shrugged.
“But we trespassed into a no-men zone, so we can’t really complain about swords flying at us… and holding disciples hostage after we start losing the fight is actually the worse crime when you think about it, isn’t it?”
Ilhong muttered that the life-or-death threat was only natural once black-hearted men (or whatever we were) had sneaked in. Beside her, the female thief nodded as if that was a fair point.
“……Do we really need to go into all that?”
Ilhong hadn’t heard the whispered exchange earlier. This was all a staged performance with their cooperation from the start.
“Dan Mujin, I’d only heard the rumors, but you really do go all out, don’t you?”
“What are you on about? Shut it, thief.”
The pot calling the kettle black. I snorted and brushed off Yang Yang’s criticism.
“I’m not just any thief—I’m the Divine Thief, Yang Yang!”
Divine Thief, my ass. The packaging was worse than calling herself a gentleman thief. In the end she was just a criminal who snuck around stealing under cover of night.
“You vicious, heinous scoundrels…! Do you think you can threaten Emei’s disciples and still walk away with your lives?!”
Having listened to the troubleshooter and the thief bickering, Hyein Satae furrowed her elegant brow and snarled threats at us.
“And the one who tried to suck out someone else’s primal true qi just to save her own skin is saying that? Hmm?”
Vicious and heinous, my foot. I jabbed hard at her contradiction, but she was already armored in her own twisted logic and didn’t so much as flinch.
“A man who was going to die anyway for invading Emei’s sacred ground. If he was going to be discarded, I merely intended to make use of him!”
After that she would have left on the Path of Wicked Penance, cutting down the wicked while secretly harvesting their primal true qi. She would have ended up prolonging her life by killing people, she admitted, yet claimed it would have posed no problem at all for ruling and nurturing the Emei Sect.
“No. That would only drive you madder and madder. The evil karma would pile up.”
“……What do you know that you dare spout such nonsense?”
Hyein Satae clung to reason by a thread, like a candle flame about to be snuffed out by the wind, and snapped back at me. The benevolence and wisdom I had first sensed in her had long since vanished somewhere.
“You mentioned the Moon Cloud Mind Method, right? Did the one who taught it to you happen to be a being from Beyond Heaven?”
“……!”
She had demanded what I knew, yet the moment it seemed I truly knew something, her body jerked. When I named those secretive beings she was certain no one could know, Hyein Satae stared at me with eyes that refused to believe.
“H-how do you know that? Do you also know Daoist Ilseong……?”
She was so shocked she even stammered. Wait a second—not Ilwol Daoist, but Ilseong Daoist?
I tilted my head at the name that sounded similar to the mind method yet carried a completely different meaning.
“So the mysterious Daoist who taught you the Moon Cloud Mind Method is someone called Ilseong?”
“……Yes. When I was wasting away alone, thrashing in heart demons, he suddenly appeared before me and showed me the path I must take.”
This repertoire felt awfully similar to Hwang Geolgae’s. Extending a helping hand in a moment of crisis to arrange something for the distant future.
“That’s some ironic naming, though.”
Ilwol Daoist—whose name held the moon—had taught me the stars. And Ilseong Daoist—whose name held a star—had taught her the power of the moon. For reasons I couldn’t fathom, these two beings from Beyond Heaven seemed to wander the world bestowing paradoxical teachings upon people.
“Still, that Ilseong fellow seems pretty dangerous. Trying to turn the leader of the Emei Sect, a cultivator of the Dao, into something no different from a demonic tyrant.”
I muttered while gazing up at the full moon that blazed far brighter than any of the tiny twinkling stars. At the word “demonic tyrant,” her eyes flew wide.
“……Silence! What do you know that you dare judge him so freely? He is the one who gave a new life to me when I was howling that I wanted to live!”
She flared up and looked ready to charge again, so I put more force into the sword and shoved Gihyo forward as a shield.
“Ah, yes—that new life where you steal other people’s lives to prolong your own. How wonderful.”
“…….”
Having heard the whole exchange and finally grasped the situation, Gihyo and Jeongyo wore extremely complicated expressions.
“As if you wouldn’t have done the exact same thing if you were me! Just because it’s not your problem……!”
Struggling to extend her lifespan had nothing to do with me? Listening to that nonsense, I slowly recited the formula of the Seongun Simbeop.
All spirits unite as one…… Gather the myriad qi and shatter the world…… Wherever I go, I become the master……
Embrace the stars of the firmament and illuminate the whole world.
Like gentle ripples spreading across water, the energy of the Seongun Simbeop began to rise slowly through my entire body. This was not the act of forcing power through the meridians to unleash martial arts; I simply drew forth pure star energy I had nurtured and let it diffuse in every direction. Ordinarily it would have been a foolish waste of internal energy that achieved nothing, yet to someone who cultivated the Moon Cloud Mind Method under the moon, it seemed to carry profound meaning.
“How…… How can you hold the energy of the stars within your body……?”
Yes—the star energy she had searched for, only to abandon because the chances were too slim.
“Beats me. Just sort of happened?”
I did not regard this meeting as mere coincidence. The arrangement of Ilwol Daoist passed to the Heavenly Killing Star through Hwang Geolgae, and then running into the exact person who desperately needed it in this remote mountain. When coincidence piled up this high, you could already call it inevitability.
“He told me…… that no matter how hard I struggled, I was fated to lose my reason and die in the end…….”
Everything she had done until now had been thrashing to escape that fate. The words felt strangely familiar. Someone had once told me I would eventually go mad and die as well.
“That Ilseong fellow said that? That it was an inescapable destiny no matter how hard you tried?”
At my question Hyein Satae swallowed hard in silence and nodded. The terrifying, ferocious woman of the moon had already wilted; her shoulders had slumped completely.
“I don’t believe a single scrap of that destiny-fairy-tale nonsense.”
Some transcendent order the heavens had laid down that humans could never defy. I had never believed in that crap—not in my previous life, and not in this one either.
“So how about we take that bullshit about predetermined fate and try overcoming it for once? I’ll help.”
Justice didn’t always require someone’s head to roll. Even in rotting flesh, you still had to save whatever could be saved.
“But…… the moon’s energy is vast and ferocious. If you are swept away by it, you too could go mad.”
Now that a chance to live without devouring another’s primal true qi had appeared, reason seemed to be returning; she offered that warning. She clearly still saw me as nothing more than a martial artist who had luckily accumulated some star power.
But I was the Heavenly Killing Star, walking around with a gigantic mad star jammed inside my skull.
“Uh, Boss is already halfway crazy…… so he’ll probably be fine.”
Ilhong offered something that could have been support fire or pure sarcasm—hard to tell. Hyein Satae studied my women’s clothing and the sword I had held to an Emei disciple’s throat, then nodded as if that settled it.
“……Very well. If you are already not in your right mind.”
She accepted it a little too easily, which left me feeling oddly unsettled. Already not in my right mind, huh. My mood soured for a second, but I swallowed it and extended a helping hand.
“Young Hero Dan Mujin, please take care of our sect leader.”
Once it looked like the crisis could be resolved without anyone dying, Gihyo and Jeongyo spoke with desperate eyes. Worry and loyalty for their master colored their voices.
“And could you maybe take this sword away from my neck?”
Those sinister, flashing violet eyes had made it impossible to relax my guard. Looking sheepish, I slowly lowered the blade that had been aimed at her throat. The moment we released the two Emei disciples, Hyein Satae stared into my eyes as if wrestling with one last doubt. After a brief silence she slowly nodded.
“……I entrust myself to you.”
Then a cold, trembling hand took hold of mine.
The terrifying thing about depression is how it narrows a person’s thoughts until normal thinking becomes impossible. Ideas that would normally be unimaginable start to feel perfectly reasonable—just as with so many other mental illnesses.
Which is why, once some measure restores one’s sanity—
“Good heavens…… what in the world was I about to do all this time……?”
—you suddenly realize how wrong your previous way of thinking had been and truly grasp the state you were in.
“To live by absorbing another’s primal true qi…… how is that any different from a demonic tyrant?”
Hyein Satae’s voice trembled. The sinister aura in her pupils faded, and their original clear light returned. Driving out the madness that had seeped into her very marrow without her noticing and reclaiming sharp, vivid reason, she recoiled in horror at the things she had been about to do—trying to kill Hye-yul Sinni, the only one who had first noticed something wrong, and even planning something terrible for Gihyo and Jeongyo. As the leader of a Daoist sect she lifted her face to the heavens and deeply repented.
“O Primordial Celestial Worthy. This foolish one has been wandering lost in hardship all this while…….”
She confessed her sins to the sky. Beneath the starlight her face held regret and shame, and the relief of finally seeing light after a long dark tunnel.
Gihyo and Jeongyo then came to my side and asked what on earth had happened.
“Young Hero Dan Mujin, what just happened?”
“Sect Leader Hyein carries the moon’s energy, and you carry the stars’ something-or-other?”
From their perspective I—the one they had sent after Hye-yul Sinni—had instead infiltrated all the way here in disguise and resolved the crisis at its root, so the looks they gave me were understandably complicated.
“The moon is brilliant yet solitary, and drives humans into madness; yet a moon that dances among the stars becomes the night sky that balances the yin and yang of heaven and earth. The clouds of madness will withdraw of their own accord.”
Pure white energy of the Seongun Simbeop rose from my entire body, softly lighting the darkness. As I continued my plausible nonsense meant to paper things over, Gihyo and Jeongyo stared at me with slightly dazed eyes. Once it seemed Hyein Satae had fully recovered her senses, the two rushed over and hurriedly supported her.
“Boss, what the hell was that?”
Ilhong asked in a small voice.
“Hell if I know. I just made it up.”
I had only parroted the starlight nonsense Hwang Geolgae sometimes spouted.
“Young Hero Dan Mujin…… even if I had ten mouths I would not know what to say to you…….”
Having lunged at me to steal my primal true qi only to have her life saved instead, Hyein Satae spoke with a face full of shame. Not as the leader of a great sect but simply as one human being, she offered me honest gratitude. Even as the master of a major school she cleanly admitted her sins and felt deep remorse; in that moment I glimpsed the character she must have possessed before the moonlight tainted her.
“How am I ever to repay this grace……?”
Name anything I desired. Within the realm of the possible she would grant it, she said. Her eyes were as calm as a lake; the madness was gone completely.
“Anything, you say.”
I had saved a moon that was going mad. The more of these inevitabilities stacked up, the clearer one feeling became. It felt like an arrangement urging me to escape a destiny whose ending was already written—as if an invisible hand were guiding me. No matter how overflowing their internal energy or how peerless their martial arts, every previous Heavenly Killing Star had ultimately failed to break free of that cycle and met the same end.
“Later on…… if the whole world brands me an enemy and tries to kill me—”
Just as she had done moments ago, I met those clear eyes and continued the question. The reflection of myself in her pupils wore a thoroughly serious face.
“—will you stand on my side?”
Hyein Satae fell into brief thought at my ominous request. Her gaze deepened, then she spoke with a voice full of resolve.
“It seems you carry some heavy story. I cannot place the disciples of Emei in danger over my personal debts of gratitude, yet I, Hyein Satae, as an individual, will stand by your side whenever you need me.”
A declaration of support from a Transcendent Realm master who wielded enormous influence over the orthodox Murim. Its weight was anything but light. The leader of the Emei Sect—one of the Nine Great Sects—had promised to take my side. Because I had pulled her from an evil path, she would pull me free if I ever set foot on one myself. Climbing a sheer cliff, I felt as if another lifeline had just been secured.
“I’m grateful for your words. I’ll remember them well.”
The heir of the Sichuan Tang Family, the heir of Haomu Gate, the Dragon Head Sect Leader of the Beggar Sect and the Purple Micro Star, Cheon Su-gong of the Eastern Depot, and even Princess Dohwa of the imperial house. Every single one of them held no ordinary status and considerable influence. With this many allies, even if my identity as the Heavenly Killing Star were someday exposed, wouldn’t a way to survive open up?
Hilarious…… Your dreams are getting awfully big……
As I earnestly sought to escape the shackles of the Heavenly Killing Star, Salsung once again sneered in disbelief. But just wait and see.
“You and I are not the same.”
Just because she failed does not mean I will fail as well. And this single step I take now to carve out my own destiny—
I felt with my whole body the pure white star energy, and the new companion that had already seeped into me: the violet energy of the moon. With that, I renewed my resolve.