The Beijing Massacre
‘Why? Why him, of all people, now?’
Namgoong Hwi felt cold sweat trickling down his back as he watched Kang Samsik brushing the cement off his trousers.
The man's sudden appearance had brought the workers to a standstill. Namgoong Hwi could sense the plan unraveling — but it wasn't a complete disaster yet. Not when China's Awakened stood in force all around him, and not when other returnees from the Moorim Branch Association were at his side as well.
It would have been a lie to claim he felt no fear, but it was also true that this was a fight worth attempting. After all, Namgoong Hwi had always believed that his earlier, humiliating loss to Kang Samsik had been nothing more than a lapse in vigilance.
"S-Sword Emperor, what do we do now?"
"He's just one man regardless. We strike now!"
Namgoong Hwi gave the answer almost automatically to his comrade from the Moorim Branch Association, then barked his orders to the Awakened standing on standby.
"Everyone, attack."
At his command, the Chinese Awakened surrounding the gate charged the man all at once. The workers on-site screamed and scattered, while flames, frost, and a barrage of razor-sharp mana blasts rained down toward the gate.
"Ha. Quite a rude welcome, isn't it?"
Even under a storm of dozens of attacks, the man's expression remained utterly relaxed. As if he needed no weapon at all, Kang Samsik batted aside the incoming strikes with his bare fists, then threw himself straight into the onrushing Awakened.
A single punch burst one Awakened's head like a ripe fruit. A moment later, he seized another attacker by the nape of the neck and drove him into the ground.
CRACK.
The asphalt shrieked and split apart, but the Chinese Awakened did not stop. Overwhelming superiority in numbers — that alone was enough to convince them of victory.
That was the exact moment Namgoong Hwi made his move.
‘Now!’
He slashed his beloved blade toward Kang Samsik's back as the man grappled with the swarming Awakened. A perfect ambush, exploiting a blind spot. Namgoong Hwi had no doubt his strike would punch through those thick muscles and carve the man's innards apart.
But —
"Not bad, sneaking up behind me like that."
He could only grit his teeth as he watched Kang Samsik catch the very blade he had loosed in his bare hand.
The ambush, launched with flawless timing, had failed — but Namgoong Hwi did not despair. After all, several returnees from Moorim stood at his side.
"What are you all waiting for?!"
Poisoned hidden projectiles from the Tang Clan filled the air, each needle coated in lethal toxin, while a sword heavy with sword qi hurtled toward Kang Samsik's throat.
And that was not the end of it. The Azure Cloud Sword Art of a Qingcheng returnee rolled in like a storm cloud, and a man of the northern Peng Clan, hoisting an enormous saber, was unleashing his Mountain-Sundering Slash from above Kang Samsik's head.
"Die, demon!"
"Oh ho. A declaration of defeat?"
A relentless, wave after wave assault of sword qi and saber wind from every direction. The combined techniques of these martial artists, oscillating between climax and superclimax, were on an entirely different plane from the skills of ordinary Awakened.
Yet even as he absorbed every one of those killing strikes with his body, Kang Samsik's expression remained supremely at ease.
"Now this is fun! Who knew I'd run into orthodox-sect rabble even here!"
So saying, he thrust a fist toward the Qingcheng swordsman. There was a metallic snap of breaking steel, and the returnee was sent flying, vomiting blood.
Of course, Samsik came through it unscathed either. Several of the Tang Clan's needles had buried themselves in his thick muscles, and the attacks from Namgoong Hwi and the saber-wielding Peng clansman had opened shallow gashes across his body.
"Look! The man bleeds like anyone else! Rush him together, and there is nothing we cannot take down!"
Seeing the red blood flowing from Samsik's body, Namgoong Hwi shouted to the returnees around him. And in truth, he was considerably heartened that his own strike had landed. If nothing else, the poison coating the Tang Clan's projectiles was bound to take effect.
"Getting this excited over a few scratches? Hm?"
It was at that very moment that Samsik, grinning at Namgoong Hwi, tilted his head to the side.
"Come to think of it, your face looks awfully familiar."
"Wh-what nonsense is this?"
Namgoong Hwi shouted back, his face stiffening. The fact that his head had left his shoulders at Kang Samsik's blade during the Murim War remained a secret to this day.
"Ahh, you're the Namgoong Clan's lapdog, aren't you? Right. Now I remember. You were the one whose head I took off with my sword, weren't you? How in the world are you still breathing?"
"Lies!"
Namgoong Hwi spat the word and unleashed a storm of sword qi. The relentless, chained barrage unique to the Namgoong Clan flowed from his hands without pause.
"Hahaha. This is fun. This is really fun."
Samsik deflected every one of those attacks with his fists alone, all the while toying with Namgoong Hwi.
"Everyone, press the attack! He's been struck by the Tang Clan's poison — he's bound to collapse before long!"
Sensing himself being slowly pushed back in the war of attrition against Samsik, Namgoong Hwi cried out to the returnees around him.
And that was the moment.
The moment Kang Samsik caught Namgoong Hwi's blade in a hand sheathed in hardened qi.
"Poison? Don't make me laugh. Heh heh. I can't even feel a tickle. Anyway — who said anything about me coming alone?"
"Wh... what?"
At that sinister smile, Namgoong Hwi stared at the man with trembling eyes.
And in the next instant, beyond the gate, the bodies of countless people began to appear, one after another.
"Oh ho. So this is the Immortal Realm? I see. Filled to the brim with towers that scrape the heavens."
"Mad Blood Venerable, secure our surroundings first."
"Of course. Hm? That fight over there — isn't that Samsik?"
The two men exchanging words with such leisurely expressions were Hyeolnoe and Gwanghyeoljon. Behind them, figures clad in crimson martial robes surveyed the Chinese Awakened encircling them like wary sentinels.
"Hiiik."
"Th-this is madness..."
The ones thrown into immediate turmoil by their arrival were the returnees of Moorim. They did not know the faces of Hyeolnoe or Gwanghyeoljon, but they understood better than anyone what those crimson robes signified.
"Th-the Blood Demon Guard?"
During the Murim War, it had been the Blood Demon Guard — the martial arm of the Blood Cult — that had haunted the nightmares of the orthodox-unorthodox alliance.
"You never said anything about this! S-Sword Emperor! What in the world are we supposed to do about this?!"
The Moorim returnees rounded on Namgoong Hwi, demanding answers — but the problem was that he no longer had the presence of mind to reply. Kang Samsik, still gripping the blade he had loosed, was watching him with a smile that promised death at any moment.
"Don't know how you're still alive, but let's start with a beating."
‘Damn it all.’
Namgoong Hwi ground his teeth and cursed silently at those words.
The Inescapable Net Operation he had planned and executed had ended in perfect failure. No — perhaps the name itself had been wrong from the start. A net cast over heaven and earth could never hope to catch heaven itself.
"Blood Demon Guard. Clear away what stands before us. Pave the road."
"At your command!"
And so it was that the Blood Demon Guard, the foremost martial force of the Blood Heavenly Cult, carved their nightmare into the memory of China's Awakened.
The top-floor penthouse of a Manhattan high-rise.
Brian Shin leaned back into an antique sofa, his gaze fixed on the dozens of holographic windows floating before him.
"What of Sato Kenji?"
—Proceeding smoothly. Anti-government sentiment among Japan's leadership runs deep. The moment we dangled the bait, he bit.
The entity beyond the window — Ghost — answered in a flat, mechanical voice, and Brian Shin nodded as though it were only to be expected.
He had lived through countless regressions, and in not a single one of them had Sato Kenji ever refused his offer.
In truth, even a regressor could not control everything in the world. Just as a butterfly's wingbeat could swell into a typhoon, small variables twisted the future anew each and every time. Short of being a god, no one could predict every outcome — and Brian acknowledged that fact without reservation.
That did not mean the regressor's advantage was diminished, however. Circumstances shifted with every life, but choices rooted in a person's inherent nature or greed rarely changed. Sato Kenji's case was proof enough. The S-Rank gate that had appeared over North Korea this time was an event that had never occurred in his previous lives, and yet Kenji had still been sidelined from the mainstream of power, and had still, in the end, grasped the hand Brian extended to him.
That was why the regressor devoted himself not to the events themselves, but to controlling the people who wielded power. It was the very reason Brian had founded Babel — and the reason he manipulated others from the shadows.
"Boss. An anomaly has occurred in Beijing."
"...I'm watching it too."
The live footage streaming in from Beijing was shaking the certainty he had built his life upon.
After all, Brian could peer into anything Ghost saw. And yet, in not one of the worlds he had lived through had anything like this ever happened. No — he couldn't even imagine what variable could have summoned beings so far beyond the scope of his projections to Earth.
‘What in God's name is that?’
On the screen, China's Awakened were being swept aside one-sidedly, like so many autumn leaves. And watching that scene, Brian's fingertips trembled almost imperceptibly.
To be sure, China's returnees and Awakened had been arrogant, stumbling into one clumsy blunder after another — but the power they wielded was not weak. Yet now they could offer no meaningful resistance whatsoever to the attacks of the men in blood-red robes.
Overwhelming strength, and the resolve to wield it without a flicker of hesitation.
Brian Shin could only clench his jaw as he watched monsters quite literally overturning the board he had spent lifetimes setting.
‘Where on earth did beings like that come from...?’
If he had encountered such a group even once in a previous life, he would have abandoned the Western powers without a second thought and crossed over to China to claim them for his own.
Of course, he had no intention whatsoever of giving up. They were a variable appearing for the very first time — but merely learning that such a variable existed gave this life its meaning.
"Ghost, are you listening?"
Brian addressed the figure beyond the screen. No answer was necessary.
"Investigate that unidentified group. Leave nothing uncovered — their identity, their purpose, their origins, and their weaknesses. Whatever it takes. Use everything you have."
Brian Shin spoke the words with eyes gone cold and dead, fixed on the holographic windows.
What was interesting was that an urgency he had never shown before was seeping into Brian's voice.
Perhaps because of that, Ghost's reply came a little slower than usual — though Brian did not register it.
"...Yes. Boss."
"By the way, brother-in-law — where exactly did Samsik go?"
We were on our way home after meeting Han Chaeyun. My brother-in-law, hands on the wheel, glanced at me with the expression of a man who had just remembered something important. Seo Yeon and Seojun perked up at the question too.
Come to think of it, it was odd that Samsik, who usually stuck to me like a shadow, had vanished — but the news about my sister had apparently pushed that thought down the list.
"Ah. I sent him on an errand."
"An errand?"
"Yes. Things are getting a little... interesting, so I asked him to bring a few more people over from the Blood Cult."
I answered my brother-in-law casually, and he turned to stare at me, visibly flustered.
"Oh, r-right. So more Blood Cult people will be coming, then?"
"Uncle, are all the Blood Cult people as nice as Uncle Samsik?"
I turned around at Seojun's question from the back seat and couldn't help but chuckle. Samsik had played with him so often that, to Seojun, the man must have seemed the kindest soul in the whole world.
"Hmm, hard to say. Let's call them... a bunch of very stubborn old men."
I said it while picturing the faces of a few of the Blood Cult's leadership. Stubborn, eccentric men to a fault, every last one of them — yet not once did it occur to me that they might ever bring harm to my family.
‘Just how many of them will make it across, I wonder?’
So I thought, gazing out at the sunset bleeding red across the western sky.