Sometimes, Resolve Is Necessary
Atop the highest peak of Sipmandaesan stood a vast stone edifice, rising like a fortress against the sky.
This was the heart of the Ming Cult, the seat of all its power — the Hall of the Cult Master.
Built of black stone in a spectacle of grim magnificence, a white flame burned unceasingly at its summit, gazing down over the whole of Sipmandaesan.
And within the hall, a man sat upon the throne.
Hair streaked with white, an air about him like a killing winter wind, he watched the flame in silence.
Deep, dark eyes that seemed to pierce the abyss of the world itself.
Here he was the revered Cult Master of the Ming Cult; in the Central Plains he was known as the Demonic Cult Master — or Cheonma.
"Cult Master."
Below the throne stood a woman clad head to toe in white.
Skin like fresh-fallen snow, hair as white as frost — a beauty of such mysterious grace that the old phrase snow-skin and flower-face might have been coined for her alone.
"Baek Soha."
She was the reigning Holy Maiden of the Ming Cult.
"The resistance from the Central Plains seems far fiercer than expected. It appears the Dark Spirit Corps alone was not enough…"
The Holy Maiden spoke carefully of the enemy's unexpected skill, hinting that the Dark Spirit Corps had been unequal to the task.
The Cult Master's brow twitched. His voice, when it came, was cold as ice.
"Then send out the Resentful Blood Corps as well. And if that still falls short — the Retribution Corps too."
Eyes caught in a sinister light flared with rage.
He meant to commit everything: Resentful Blood, named for blood steeped in hatred, and Retribution, which answered every blow in kind.
"But Cult Master — if we do that, far too many of our people will die for nothing."
However vast the throngs of believers who upheld the Ming Cult, such losses would be catastrophic, a shadow cast over the Cult's very future.
The Cult Master turned to her with a look of genuine puzzlement.
"Holy Maiden. Did you yourself not say that among them walks a being both alien and kindred — and that we must capture them at all costs?"
Alien, yet kindred. In other words: someone to whom the White Flower, the sacred relic of the Ming Cult, was reacting.
Not of the Ming Cult. An outsider. Someone who had come from the Central Plains.
It was a truth she had witnessed with her own eyes, and still could scarcely believe.
"…I did say as much."
"Then, Holy Maiden."
He looked at her as if to ask what the problem could possibly be — when he had ordered a net woven so tight nothing could slip through, just as she had requested.
"Even so, losses beyond this are more than the Cult can bear."
The Dark Spirit Corps had swollen its ranks to scout, search, and hunt across the vast borderlands of Sipmandaesan — and barely one in ten had returned alive.
That was a far cry from the oracle the sacred flame had delivered.
"Every believer of the Ming Cult who draws breath upon this earth is prepared to cast their life away like a worn straw sandal, if it means vengeance. Holy Maiden."
"…"
Unlike the great clans and sects of the Central Plains, the Ming Cult was a force so vast it could almost be called a small nation.
And in the Cult Master's eyes as he declared that every last one of them stood ready to die, something strange and unreadable — something like madness — seemed to drift, faint as smoke.
The Holy Maiden saw it, and felt a chill of foreboding.
But she was not so foolish as to give that foreboding a voice.
"Then, for the sake of the greater plan to come, should we not preserve our strength? I beg you to reconsider, and select only the Cult's finest masters."
"Hm."
He stroked his chin, pondering a moment, then nodded as if deciding.
"Have the Resentful Blood and Retribution Corps give chase at a measured pace. The Hall Masters and Protectors will close in themselves."
Only then did Baek Soha allow herself a quiet breath of relief.
This way they could limit the losses and still seize that unsettling presence that so troubled her thoughts.
Just what is that person…
That the White Flower should tremble so, that the oracle should cloud and falter.
As if two Holy Maidens existed in the same age.
Even if that were true, a Holy Maiden of the Ming Cult could never be born from an outside invader.
O auspicious and sacred flame. Show me the path.
Since the intruders had entered their lands, even the motion of the heavens had turned strange.
She could only pray the matter would be resolved as swiftly as possible.
"Cough. To think my neck's still attached…"
Unit Leader Jang Jin, who had only just managed to open his eyes after collapsing, muttered as if he couldn't believe it.
Wonder and relief warred on his face as he gave quiet thanks for still being alive.
Watching him, Unit Leader Jeok Unyeop of the Myeolmade let out a dry snort of a laugh.
"You can thank our Vice Leader. For reasons I still don't understand, she carved through the enemy like a woman ready to throw her own life away."
Everyone turned to look at Moyong Cheonghye, who lay collapsed in utter exhaustion. In the battle just past, her blood-soaked rampage had been nothing short of an asura's.
"A little terrifying, that. How do you even manage a woman like her as Vice Leader?"
In the Murim, strength was nearly everything. And that woman carried a family prestige so great that even Jeok Unyeop could not casually rein her in.
"…Manage her? I just try not to die while following along, that's all."
The entire purpose of the Myeolmade was to exterminate the demonic — which happened to align perfectly with the aims of the Evil-Slaying Divine Maiden. It was a strange sort of symbiotic arrangement.
"Heavens, Brother! Are you all right? Oh no, there's so much blood…"
Namgung Sohye came rushing over to Namgung Jin, who was still binding his wounds after his own fierce showing in the fight.
She smeared gold-wound salve over the injuries, pulled out an internal recovery pill, and blinked back tears.
"Sohye, calm down a little… You're making my head spin."
Even as she fussed over every inch of him mid-treatment, he wore the expression of a man thoroughly at a loss while wrapping a cloth around the wound to stop the bleeding.
"Nngh… Somehow we all made it out alive…?"
Meanwhile Jo Harang, whose condition was far from good, muttered as she stemmed the blood still seeping from her body.
She had only survived thanks to the hardy constitution granted by the Purple Micro Star. Fighting on the front line like a battering ram alongside Moyong Cheonghye had left her riddled with deep, numerous wounds.
"Hey, Big Sword. Hold still. You move and those wounds open right back up."
Dang Yeohye was racing about like a field medic, treating the party's serious injuries one after another.
Whether it was her foul temper or the fact that she'd soaked the ground in poison, the enemy had come at her less than the others, leaving her relatively intact among the group.
Relatively intact in terms of wounds, that is — the Demonic Cultists who had been swept aside by her footwork were piled high enough to spare.
"Young Hero Dan."
Moyong Cheonghye's faint voice reached me from beside her.
"Honestly, I thought this place would be my grave… And yet both of us survived. Perhaps the gods of heaven and earth saw fit to help us…"
Moyong Cheonghye, once so bitter toward those same gods atop a cliff, was now offering them her thanks.
As far as I could see, though, it wasn't the gods — it was a chain of coincidences that had kept us breathing.
The first: the Evil-Slaying Divine Maiden, who for reasons unknown had gone berserk and cut a swath through the enemy like a woman possessed.
The second: the fact that no fewer than two stars of calamity sent down by heaven itself had been secretly mixed among us.
Truly… only two?
At that moment Salsung cut into my thoughts with an odd remark.
Truly only two, she said. Was she implying that yet another star of calamity was mixed in among us? That the stellar energy I was sensing wasn't Jo Harang's alone?
I quickly scanned the people to either side of me. Then I noticed something strange and fixed a hard stare on the red hand floating before my eyes.
Hold on. Why do you… have a wrist now?
She had originally been nothing but a solitary red hand. Now a slender wrist had grown attached to it.
Why… do you think?
She tossed the question back at me with brazen cheek, as if I ought to figure it out myself.
Apparently, somewhere in the chaos of battle, I had contributed in a meaningful way to snuffing out a life or two.
I hadn't intended to kill, and I hadn't even been aware of taking lives, so her influence hadn't swollen by much — but still. An extra span of wrist was not a development I welcomed.
…But you. You're fine with me killing Demonic Cultists? It doesn't bother you at all?
Salsung looked faintly pleased that her form was recovering even a little.
I'd heard she had been a Holy Maiden of the Demonic Cult. Maybe as a vengeful spirit or ghost, she no longer cared.
The strong… live. The weak… die. That is all.
A single rule that had taken root ever since the Ming Cult was betrayed by the Central Plains and began honing the blade of its vengeance.
The former Holy Maiden of a Demonic Cult that preached the Law of the Strong.
"Yeah. Definitely the Demonic Cult."
A world where only the strong were respected. Pure wilderness. Not a doctrine any sane nation or faith would put forward.
At the words Demonic Cult, she flinched and bristled.
Not just the palm — the wrist trembled and jerked with outrage as well.
Because of you… Central Plains mongrels… the doctrine changed…
It had come about, she claimed, from the need to survive against us and to grow stronger.
But in the end, that was just an excuse.
Anyway — between that twisted doctrine and the fact that my death would put her in a very bad spot — she didn't seem inclined to stop me even when I happened to take Demonic Cultists' lives.
If you die… I get… dragged away too.
Dragged away? Where would something already bound to a star of calamity be dragged?
Perhaps, like that terrible something Hwang Geolgae had glimpsed inside me, she would be seized by some monstrous force and made to suffer.
"If you've patched yourselves up enough, everyone on your feet."
Despite wounds that still gaped and internal injuries that were clearly severe, Unit Leader Jeok Unyeop was the first to stand, urging the rest of us into motion.
"He's right. The enemy's follow-up forces are still hunting us."
Namgung Jin's assessment: of the countless waves crashing toward us, we had beaten back only one.
"Exactly. The Demonic Cult never gives up. That's just the kind of people they are."
Unit Leader Jang Jin nodded in agreement. Most of us were children of great clans or storied sects; we had grown up on the stories of family members and grandfathers who had fought in the Great Orthodox-Demonic War.
Stories of the senior brothers and sisters who had fallen. Stories of just how vicious those people were, and of the lengths they would go to in order to kill a martial artist of the Central Plains.
"But in the condition everyone's in right now, we won't get far."
Dang Yeohye, who had examined every one of us, delivered the cold assessment.
We still had a long way to go, and everyone was running on empty — stamina and inner energy both drained, bodies in tatters.
"At this rate we'll thrash a few dozen more Demonic Cultists and then get caught…"
We couldn't give them a pretext for war, so until we left Demonic Cult territory the Murim Alliance couldn't move either.
Which meant the enemy would scatter troops with relentless, vicious persistence, determined to kill us or secure our identities before we slipped back into the Central Plains.
Was that why Dark Spirit Corps Leader Jeok Gwang, even as he died, had howled that prophecy — that all of us would be swallowed by the White Flower's flame?
That curse of a cry rose in my mind, and I was about to hum under my breath when—
"I'll stay behind… and buy time."
Sister Moyong Cheonghye, sensing that capture was inevitable, looked at me with a resolute face and told us all to escape while she held them off.
"…Don't talk nonsense."
I rejected my elder sister's declaration of a last stand without a second thought and started turning the problem over in my head.
The situation was as bad as it could get. So how was I supposed to keep everyone alive?
For a moment I even considered taking on the role Moyong Cheonghye had just offered to play myself.
There's… a secret passage… leading to… the Central Plains…
Then the red creature who would be in serious trouble if I died offered me a way out.
These borderlands of the Demonic Cult had seen long years of war. Secret passages honeycombed the region, dug for the purpose of ambushing the other side.
Now that was welcome news.
"I'll take the lead, since I'm in the best shape. Everyone follow me."
I said I'd go first and looked in the direction Salsung was pointing.
We were deep in enemy territory, where the terrain itself should have been stacked against us — but now it seemed we had a reliable guide.
"This way, everyone."
The rocky mountain stood firm even in the rough wind.
Following the red finger's direction, I swept aside brush and rotting cloth.
A moss-covered boulder came into view. Jo Harang and I put our combined strength into it and shoved — krrrk — until it gave way.
"Oh. What's this? A secret passage?"
Unit Leader Jeok Unyeop recognized the remnant of the Great Orthodox-Demonic War at a glance.
"And this direction… it's heading toward the Central Plains, isn't it?"
"…I see. The old seniors of the jianghu used to talk about how the enemy would suddenly pop up in the rear through tunnels like these and cause all kinds of trouble."
The brother and sister of the Namgung Clan both let out breaths of relief.
"Heavens! They say even if the sky falls, there's a hole to crawl through!"
The rest of the party cheered, faces bright with the simple joy of still being alive.
It seemed we had found our breathing room.
Or so I thought at the time.