The Chain of Hatred
“……We're too late.”
Dang Yeohye of the Myeolmade twisted her lips as she stared at the corpse displayed in the center of the village square.
Whatever they had done to him, the Beggar Sect man's chest had been blasted clean through.
He had been a Beggar Sect operative who had wormed his way deep into the Demonic Sect's headquarters. After Cheonma himself executed him, they had been parading the body through every village like this, putting it on open display.
“His name was Hwang Gu, wasn't it?”
Dressed in shabby clothes like any local, Namgung Jin examined the body and muttered to himself.
This was supposed to be a Myeolmade-only operation, but the young master of the Namgung Family had insisted on tagging along with Moyong Cheonghye.
Pushing through the crowd for a closer look, he soon nodded with certainty.
“There are signs of torture, too. He must have held out until the very end.”
Moyong Cheonghye murmured with quiet regret. Anyone who would infiltrate all the way to the Demonic headquarters in territory this dangerous had already prepared to throw his life away like a worn-out shoe.
He would have endured and endured again, no question.
“Those damned Demonic bastards…….”
Hearing his vice leader's mutter, Captain Jeok Unyeop ground his teeth, his fury at the Demonic Sect plain on his face.
But unlike those four of the Myeolmade, the murmuring villagers were burning with hostility toward the orthodox martial artists.
“Look well! This is the end of the sewer rat who snuck all the way into headquarters to spy on us and invade!”
The village crier stood tall on a platform, pointing at the corpse with open contempt. The crowd answered him with heated passion.
“Those Central Plains dogs — can't they just leave us alone?”
“We just want to live in peace…… Why do they keep stirring things up?!”
“Slander and persecution aren't enough for them anymore, is that it?! Damned hypocrites!”
Stones and refuse rained down on the corpse of the Beggar Sect man who had slipped in to spy on them.
Disguised as Demonic Sect followers, the Myeolmade members watched from among the villagers.
“Live in peace? Who was it that stirred up the Central Plains first…….”
Dang Yeohye, still green when it came to undercover fieldwork, nearly flared up at the surrounding reactions — but Moyong Cheonghye calmly caught her hand and shook her head.
A quiet transmission urged her to swallow her temper and keep her composure.
“…….”
They had found traces of the Demonic Sect at the scene of a bloodbath in the Central Plains, then followed that fragile, fraying trail of connections all the way here.
But the Beggar Sect operative who had fed them information and guided them this far had returned as a cold corpse.
Watching carefully planted spies of the Murim Alliance and the Beggar Sect get exposed one after another and executed……
“Either they identified us from the start and simply waited for the right moment……”
“Or there's a traitor on the inside.”
Captain Jeok Unyeop and Vice Leader Moyong Cheonghye offered their thoughts in turn.
Either way, something was seriously wrong. And if it was the former, the “right moment” had arrived — meaning a major move was coming within the Demonic Sect.
“Captain, we should pull out of here for now.”
At Moyong Cheonghye's suggestion, Jeok Unyeop nodded tightly, his face bitter.
The person who had summoned them had turned up as a corpse. From here on, they would have to form their next plan on their own.
Which meant wandering the heart of enemy territory without eyes or ears to report on the enemy's movements.
They might already be in far more danger than they realized.
“We need to figure out how to get out.”
Shaanxi Province, Murim Alliance Headquarters.
Having fully recovered from the aftermath of the Blood Sect raid, the place was now seething with yet another wave of intelligence that had flown in from beyond the borders.
Tense footsteps never ceased among the solemn buildings nestled in the mountains.
“We've lost contact with another spy?”
The fingertips resting on the letter trembled ever so slightly. Alliance Leader Namgung Soseon's voice was quiet, but suppressed grief bled through it.
“Yes. Given that regular contact with the internal liaison has gone dark, it seems……”
Military Strategist Jegalseon swallowed the rest, but everyone already guessed what that silence meant.
How could they not? Contact with their spies had been dropping off one by one of late — as if someone meant to gouge out the Central Plains' eyes and ears completely.
“Precious lives, snuffed out so hollowly.”
His voice settled heavily over the room.
Across the council chamber, the Beggar Sect's Elder Ilhogae nodded in deep agreement, a dark shadow cast over his eyes.
“He was one of the few talents who had infiltrated deep into their headquarters. Looking at it now, Alliance Leader…… the Demonic Sect may have deliberately let them into headquarters just to toy with us.”
Emotion thickened the elder's final words — anger and self-reproach tangled together.
His wrinkled hands could not hide their trembling.
“Haa.”
Namgung Soseon let out a long breath. Talents they had poured their hearts into cultivating were being exposed one after another, meeting gruesome ends.
At first he had wondered if it was coincidence. But as the silences stacked up in sequence, the truth was clear.
The Ming Cult — no, the Demonic Sect — had been moving beneath the surface just as they had. And a step ahead, at that.
“They've been watching and spying on us as well. For it to happen all at once like this, our intelligence must have leaked to them.”
Just as they had planted spies among the enemy, the enemy had planted spies here first.
And planted them deep. They had opened channels for information to bleed out, and before any all-out war could even begin, the Murim Alliance was already losing the intelligence war.
And that failure was one the Beggar Sect — the greatest information network of the orthodox Murim, the vanguard of every intelligence war — had to share responsibility for.
“I have no face to show you. We thought we had weeded them out thoroughly……”
Elder Ilhogae quietly covered his exhausted face with one hand.
“No. Your people have paid the heaviest price of all. How could I blame you?”
Countless Beggar heroes had died in the heart of enemy territory. To tear each other apart over that would only delight the Demonic Sect.
Still, with the future weighing on him, Namgung Soseon had one question he had to ask as Alliance Leader.
“Tell me, though — has the Beggar King still not returned?”
Elder Ilhogae nodded with a gaunt face.
“Yes. He has yet to reappear in any official capacity. He remains behind the scenes.”
In truth, Hwang Geolgae had already returned in secret and meant to take command of the Beggar Sect again — but with no way of knowing how far the Demonic Sect's corruption had spread, Elder Ilhogae could not risk revealing him lightly.
Outwardly, however, the story was still that the old man was the same as ever. Namgung Soseon rubbed his brow as if tired of the whole business.
He seemed to cast his mind back to old memories.
“The Beggar King has always been…… an impossible man to read.”
He remembered how, even in their youth, the man's way of thinking had set him apart from ordinary people.
And in his later years, he had supposedly suffered a heart-demon.
Namgung Soseon understood. Still, this was a moment when the man's help might be desperately needed, and the thought left him aching.
“Is the Demonic Sect coming to claim blood tribute from the Central Plains once again?”
Their bottomless rage and thirst for vengeance toward the Central Plains, never quenched.
They cried out that they had been betrayed, and they had sown hatred — and the people of the Central Plains who had suffered under that hatred had lived on, burning with the same hunger for revenge.
The Alliance Leader rose slowly and walked to the window.
Evening light was already staining the mountain range red. That crimson brought back blood-soaked stories of the past.
The Great Orthodox-Demonic War.
A phrase that enraged any Demonic Sect follower who insisted on calling themselves the Ming Cult. A tragedy that stiffened every martial artist in the Central Plains at the mere sound of its name.
Long ago, when the feud grew too deep and war finally erupted, both sides were left with wounds said to be beyond washing clean.
But wounds that cut too deep take time to heal. For a while, peace had come, and many had worked hard to keep innocent blood from being spilled.
He did not claim to speak for all of the orthodox Murim — but Namgung Soseon, too, as Alliance Leader of this age, had hoped peace would endure over vengeance.
And though people would find it hard to believe, the Demonic Sect had seemed, for a long stretch, equally unwilling to fight unnecessary wars.
They had tasted the agony of war and understood that grinding, wasteful conflict served neither side.
So the fragile peace had held…… or so it seemed.
“What could have happened, for them to change so completely?”
He had thought that eliminating the Blood Sect — that headache which had lurked so long and then suddenly resurfaced — would be enough.
But the Demonic Sect's recent moves had been brutally aggressive and bold. Executions of spies. Disappearing agents. Schemes stretching into the Central Plains. They were trampling, for all to see, lines neither side had crossed before.
And as Alliance Leader, he could not simply stand by. If he answered in kind, they would answer harder still. And what that ultimately meant was……
“Is there truly no way to avoid this?”
A chain of hatred that neither side could break.
And as history had shown again and again, such a bond could not be easily settled. If it had to be resolved at all, there was almost only one method.
Annihilate the object of your hatred completely.
“Of all times — during my tenure as Alliance Leader…….”
A lonely look crossed Namgung Soseon's face.
Some leaders called for war. Namgung Soseon, at least, was not that kind of man.
“And Alliance Leader — the Myeolmade members who infiltrated to provide on-site support for the spies have also become unreachable.”
Strategist Jegalseon reported with a dark face.
It was as good as a death trap, yet they were the Alliance's bravest warriors, who had volunteered willingly to lend steel to the field agents.
But as the people planted on site vanished one by one, the means of receiving their reports had vanished with them.
“Which is why…… we have also heard nothing of the Blue Cloud Sword for two months.”
The strategist's voice was soft and careful, but its weight shook Namgung Soseon.
His son. Namgung Jin. Son of the Alliance Leader, a young swordsman fighting on the very front lines of the orthodox Murim.
He never swaggered on the strength and power he commanded; he always threw himself into the fiercest action against the Demonic Sect and the Blood Sect.
Some already praised him as the next Alliance Leader. To his father, he was still a source of constant unease.
“I still don't understand why he volunteered for a mission like that.”
His son had insisted on joining even the Myeolmade's most perilous operations.
Not long ago he had mentioned wanting to watch over Moyong Cheonghye — had the young lady of the Moyong Family's beauty simply stolen his heart?
“Haa.”
Standing at the peak of the orthodox Murim, yet unable to manage even his own son — Namgung Soseon had no choice but to breathe another deep, heavy sigh.
“Eat up! Honored heroes!”
A large village with a clear view of the road climbing toward Sipmandaesan.
Perched at the foot of the mountain, it looked thoroughly ordinary from the outside. Broad paddies stretched in every direction; slow-moving oxen plodded along, pulling plows.
Children's laughter rang through the village, and old folk gathered under the eaves to trade stories of the past.
There were even several self-sufficient workshops, and a perfectly respectable inn like this one.
The Myeolmade party looked down at the steaming dishes the waiter had just whisked over to their table.
“I hate to say it, but looking at them like this, they almost seem……”
Dang Yeohye picked up a stuffed dumpling and muttered. A subtle confusion clouded her eyes.
“Like ordinary people.”
Moyong Cheonghye quietly took up the remark.
Captain Jeok Unyeop, who had been probing the dumplings with a silver needle for poison, shook his head.
“Vice Leader, that's impossible. They're only hiding malice under kindly faces.”
The silver needle showed no reaction, but the captain of the Myeolmade still refused to let the suspicion leave his eyes.
Against Demonic Sect people, he always said, you must never drop your guard. If you wanted to live, you should treat them as demons wearing human skins.
“Captain, sometimes prejudice keeps us from seeing what something truly is.”
As if remembering herself in years past, a pain no one could name flickered across Moyong Cheonghye's face.
“Prejudice, is it.”
Jeok Unyeop's eyes narrowed.
He studied Moyong Cheonghye for a moment, then went on as if finally ready to settle an old question.
“Vice Leader — do you know why the last Great Orthodox-Demonic War broke out?”
At the captain's question, Dang Yeohye — who had been stuffing dumplings into her mouth as if poison would only be a bonus — cut in at once.
“That war happened because of the Heavenly Killing Star, didn't it?”
The captain nodded, looking very much as if he had a great deal to say on the subject.
Beijing's night still clenched the breath with its sticky heat.
In the reception area of the detective agency, the front door in clear view, I leaned back in my chair and rolled the cold Ten-thousand-year Ice Essence silently between my fingers.
After Park Chil left — after that rather deep conversation — a certain thought refused to leave my head.
“The chaos in this world exists because I, as I am, failed to play my part…….”
A being like a punishment handed down from heaven. In the process of purification, the wicked should have been swept away as well — but they weren't, so that evil condensed and eventually produced side effects.
So if the absence of the Heavenly Killing Star caused all this…… wouldn't it be only right that I, the Heavenly Killing Star, be the one to fix it? Clean up what you yourself left unfinished.
“In the end, it's just 'cut down the wicked and pile up good deeds,' isn't it? Same as I've always done.”
Only I had a feeling I would need to work at it harder than before.
Because right now, just a little, I was feeling a strange sense of responsibility as the Heavenly Killing Star.
And once a thought like that took root, a faint prick of conscience was inevitable.
“Why can't I just be shameless about these things?”
Whether they had heard the mutter or not, Ilhong and Jo Harang both turned and looked at me without a word.
“…….”
“What? Why?”
One subordinate averted her eyes as if it were nothing. The saber-wielding woman spoke up without hesitation.
“That just now was pretty shameless, Mujin.”
“……What are you even talking about. Shut up.”
Grumbling, I pushed myself up from the chair.