Living Jiangshi
The moment the man the entire realm had once hailed as the next Son of Heaven rose from a pool of blood, every fight in the underground chamber froze solid.
Sword tips locked mid-thrust. Mouths hanging open. Ally and enemy alike, every stunned gaze snapped to him at once.
"Y-Your Highness the Crown Prince...?"
One of the Imperial Guards called out carefully, voice trembling.
But even a glance made it clear something was hideously wrong. A bloody radiance poured from both his pupils, and a smile that made the skin crawl was fixed on his lips.
"Damn it. What the hell is that now."
If only he had just stayed dead. I took an instinctive step back.
Every run-in I'd ever had with the Blood Sect was screaming the same warning: that thing was no longer the invalid I used to know.
"My son... Ju U-gi!"
A mother's eyes, though, saw something else entirely. Empress Ga Hwiryung's shaking voice rang through the basement.
Joy and relief flooded her face as she ran toward her son.
Even the Imperial Guard warriors who had thrown everything behind the Empress's faction—risking the brand of traitor—brightened at the thought that the "treatment" had worked.
"...At last, the treatment is complete!"
"His Highness the Crown Prince will lead us once more!"
As the battle briefly stalled, cheers of victory erupted from the Empress's camp, as if every problem had just been solved.
Meanwhile the black-clad figures traded knowing looks and laughed darkly among themselves.
The Crown Prince-like figure scanned the surroundings with empty, emotionless eyes.
Clang-clang-clang!
Even now the roar of a savage exchange between the Empress's forces and Consort Yang's troops poured in without pause from outside.
They were clearly fighting tooth and nail to keep anyone from reaching the basement.
"His Highness the Crown Prince has risen..."
"You who persecuted the Empress's faction all this time—you're finished!"
Several Imperial Guards' triumphant shouts rolled through the chamber.
Had the sheer size of the gamble they had taken clouded their eyes so badly they could no longer see clearly?
Or were they desperately looking away even while the Crown Prince's strangeness stared them in the face?
They seemed to regard the man who had not only opened his eyes but risen to his feet as the hope that would overturn their losing position.
Reality, however, was merciless.
CRACK!
Several experts from the Eastern Depot forced their way into the basement, having punched through the Empress faction's defenses.
Just as the once-disadvantaged front was about to even out again—
The black-clad figures, deciding the situation was turning against them, roared roughly.
"Rise!"
"And kill them all...!"
At that, the thing called "Crown Prince" sprang up exactly as ordered and charged straight at us.
"M-my son...?"
The head that had been tracking us with stiff, mechanical turns. When it flicked a paper-white hand, the blood pooled thickly across the floor gathered into sharp shapes and shot forth like a rainstorm.
Thwip-thwip-thwip!
"Hup!"
"Kh!"
Caught flat-footed by an attack that shredded common sense, both imperial martial artists and Eastern Depot experts screamed and went flying.
The only ones who completely slipped that blood technique were me—the sole person with prior experience—and Cheon Su-gong, whose mastery was considerable.
As the thing they had believed to be their son skillfully shaped blood and began taking orders from the black-clad men, the faces of the Imperial Guards and Empress Ga Hwiryung—who had been cheering that everything was fine—went rigid.
Only then did they seem to understand what they had done.
"M-my son! Why are you taking their orders? Your mother is right here!"
A scream thick with pure anguish tore from the Empress.
"You still don't get it? Your son's a jiangshi now!"
I explained as much while batting away the Blood Sect followers who came crashing in from every direction, clearly intent on silencing us after that surprise blood-technique assault.
At my kind clarification that he had become a jiangshi, the Empress froze like a stone statue, barely able to draw breath.
"Die!"
"Sworn enemy of the Blood Sect! I will tear your limbs apart!"
The Right Dharma Protector and his underlings pressed with vicious persistence.
We had witnessed with our own eyes, right here in this basement, the Crown Prince tangled in blood scabs and resurrected by the Blood Sect's sorcery. Of course they meant to cut our throats and bury the secret as fast as possible.
Then, whether by threatening the Empress or laying some blood technique on her, they planned to swallow the Imperial Palace whole.
With only one step left to the great cause they had been plotting, of course they were frantic to kill us.
"Kh!"
"These damn bastards!"
Eastern Depot martial artists already wounded by blood techniques were dropping one after another around us.
Scattered resistance still flared, but the scales of battle had tipped far too heavily the other way.
"The Blood Sect Leader does not specially remember the names of mere mortals, much less unbelievers..."
Right Dharma Protector Nachal-gang glared at me with the same blood-red sword qi the Left Dharma Protector had used.
Convinced he held the upper hand, he twisted his lips into a smile and went on.
"But you alone he remembers specially. And he ordered me: be sure to bring your head to the Blood Sect altar...!"
To honor the Left Dharma Protector's sacrifice and use it as material for jiangshi techniques, no less.
"What the hell are you talking about—go fuck yourself!"
Not even allowed to rest in peace after death. These guys really made my skin crawl.
I tightened my grip on the Jiokchammabong and charged the Right Dharma Protector. Trajectories slashed dizzyingly across my vision.
I slipped past those familiar arcs by a hair's breadth and drove a counterattack home.
CLANG! CRAAACK!
Blood-red sword qi and pure white staff qi slammed together again in midair. The shock widened the cracks racing through the basement even further.
The space that had quieted for a moment began turning into a slaughterhouse once more.
"You vile Blood Sect dogs! Do you even know where you are, daring to show your faces here!"
Meanwhile Cheon Su-gong was locked in a savage exchange against two Blood Sect followers. His roar, thick with killing intent, shook the entire chamber like a lion's bellow.
Blue sword qi blazed as it carved through the enemy ranks left and right.
"Hah, the old man's got spirit!"
"But how much longer can he last!"
From a blind spot, another volley of blood-formed daggers came flying.
Clang-clang-clang!
But as if to prove he was no ordinary fighter, Cheon Su-gong knocked every last one aside with his sword qi and held the Blood Sect followers fiercely at bay.
Whoosh!
I dodged the Right Dharma Protector's slash that grazed past my eye, sacrificing a few strands of hair, and drove the staff tip into the opening.
Thwack, smack!
Staff and blade clashed and sprang apart in a relentless rhythm.
They tried to force me back with their own twisted sword techniques, but I had already learned the Blood Sect's arts with my body through several brushes with death.
I calmly handled the Right Dharma Protector, batting away every blade that came at me with a feel much like the Left Dharma Protector's.
"You little shit...! Don't tell me you've stolen our Blood Sect's martial arts...!"
At that unbelievable phenomenon the Right Dharma Protector's eyes bulged as rage poured out of him.
I had never consciously tried to steal them, yet without meaning to I had taken their martial arts—the very foundation of a sect in the murim—and turned them against their owners.
"Jealous? Then you shouldn't have kept messing with me...!"
Failing to kill me only made me stronger. And that applied to the Heavenly Killing Star as well.
A being that grew stronger the more it fought—the Right Dharma Protector seemed to realize that even now I was absorbing the Blood Sect's arts and growing more fluent with them. He ground his teeth.
"Jiangshi, join in! Kill this bastard! Lend a hand, I said!"
He shouted for the Living Jiangshi—forged from vast quantities of elixirs, lives, and secret arts—to enter the fray.
As the emotionless Crown Prince sprang up like a machine and prepared to leap into the fight, Empress Ga Hwiryung panicked and hastily seized him around the waist.
"N-no! Don't go! Please, come back to your senses, Ju U-gi!"
But the plea was empty air. As if brushing aside a bothersome obstacle, the Crown Prince flung his mother far away and charged with blood-like hand qi coating both hands.
No longer a dignified member of the imperial family—only a jiangshi, revealing itself for what it was.
"Kyaaaah!"
Consciousness and reason gone, mouth gaping wide as he charged like a ghost—the Crown Prince.
CLANG—!
Whatever blood technique had been used, the Living Jiangshi before me possessed power that could contend even with qi blades.
I hurriedly fell back from that life-disregarding charge and barrage of attacks and shouted urgently toward Cheon Su-gong.
"Cheon Su-gong! Can I take this jiangshi's head off!?"
Cheon Su-gong, who had just smashed a Blood Sect follower's crown with a palm strike, yelled back as if I had lost my mind.
"Have you gone mad! You must absolutely not take it off!"
"Damn it, then how the hell am I supposed to deal with him!"
They were fully intent on killing us, but we weren't allowed to kill him. And that Living Jiangshi who was already half-dead, no less.
But Cheon Su-gong's words did have a point.
The people of the world—especially those of the Imperial Palace—still did not know he was a jiangshi. If I, the troubleshooter hired by the Imperial Consort, took the Crown Prince's head in that state...
That wretched Empress would pin everything on me, claiming I had beheaded a perfectly healthy Crown Prince.
She would gladly testify as much to take my head and the Imperial Consort's, weeping buckets about how her son had been murdered.
"Shit! We're fucked!"
A cry that only came out in situations more urgent than mere "we're screwed."
"Uuuh... uuhh..."
The Living Jiangshi, its attacks blocked by my staff qi, let out an eerie moan right in front of my face.
"Uh, Your Highness the Crown Prince. This is our first conversation, right? Sorry to ask this on first meeting, but could you please just get lost?"
"Kyaaaah!"
Negotiations had broken down. The Living Jiangshi that had seemed to flicker in and out of lucidity for a moment exploded with killing intent again, swinging its blood-red hand qi and gaping its mouth wide to try to bite me.
"Kh—how is it this strong...!"
Whatever it had been fed to become a Living Jiangshi, it matched the Heavenly Killing Star for raw power.
I could only scream, unable to advance or retreat against his brutal strength.
"Uuuh, uuuuh!"
I barely knocked him away and used the opening to burst one Blood Sect follower's head, but the Living Jiangshi charged again as if completely unfazed.
And poured that same incomprehensible moaning into my ear.
It's crying out to be killed...
Salsung muttered to me, as if she could hear the cry of a soul that was neither living nor dead.
But even if I wanted to kill him, Cheon Su-gong was blocking the way—and even if I had the will, no path to victory presented itself in the current situation.
"Damn it, what the hell am I supposed to do!"
This Living Jiangshi was too tough and too strong. Its attack style was crude, but it shot blood like daggers between swings or raised blood techniques behind me for interference.
It was no easy opponent. Meaning there was no opening to grant it the rest it wanted.
"Cheon Su-gong, do something!"
"You do something yourself!"
Cheon Su-gong and the few remaining Eastern Depot members had no more room to spare either.
Just when it seemed this blood-soaked basement would become our tomb—
BOOM!
The door was smashed clean through, and an expert of no ordinary caliber walked into the chamber.
And upon seeing me in the thick of the bloodbath—
"You again. The troubleshooter who showed disrespect to His Majesty."
He spoke as if he knew me.