Shadows of the Blood Cult
Suddenly, the mood turned murderous toward the heretic. How do I kill him? I'd always thought I was a pretty good-natured guy. But with the killing intent boiling inside me right now, that didn't seem to be the case.
I'd have killed him if I weren't just five years old... It wasn't all that surprising. After all, I'd been born into the Tang Clan.
Before I knew it, my brother had stood up and pinned me down.
"Hey, Dang Yohwan. Snap out of it."
"Snap out of it? You think I can right now?! That damn monk needs to die right now—"
But before I could vent all my rage, a fist slammed straight into my face.
Getting decked by my brother for the first time. I didn't even need to lick it to feel the salty sting of all the sweat I'd shed from grueling training.
I lowered my head, and blood trickled down. It wasn't a nosebleed.
"M-my front tooth..."
"Hey, you back to your senses now?"
What the hell was that just now? The sheer absurdity of it snapped me out of my fury. I took a calm moment to think about what had gotten into him—usually, if I got too heated, he'd just knock out a baby tooth or something. Resorting to straight-up violence out of nowhere wasn't surprising, though. Brothers could swing between love and hate, sometimes even risking death for each other.
But that speed—it was incomparable to our sparring sessions. What the hell? We'd traded punches countless times as sparring partners, but I hadn't even seen a blur.
To protect my remaining teeth, I desperately assumed a defensive stance.
"No way... Bro, you with the Blood Cult too?"
Only then did I remember we hadn't learned any of that crap—we'd only mastered the Tang Family Fist.
My brother looked at me with a resolute expression.
"This isn't the time to worry about others."
"What?"
"Think about it. Everyone in Tang Family Village knows you two were always together. Right?"
"So? What about it!"
"The elders might question you soon too. When they do, don't try to cover for her—just tell the truth."
His tone was far too mature for a six-year-old. Was he playing the big brother card, worrying about me?
"No need to worry. Sohee's not that kind of girl."
"What if she was just hiding her true colors around you?"
I couldn't completely rule out that possibility. Come to think of it, she was too pretty! And that pure innocence unlike the other kids—was that all part of the cult act?
"No way! Sohee's not a cultist!"
I shouted, firmly denying even the slightest chance that Sohee had befriended me, the fifth son of the family head, on purpose.
But my brother had one point. Getting all worked up wouldn't solve anything. I took a deep breath and regained my composure.
Come to think of it, I don't even know the name of that Gold Merchant Group leader I should've ripped apart.
There wasn't enough info to draw any conclusions. No wonder groups like the Hao Clan made a living off this stuff. The difficulty spiked hard in a world without the internet.
"Yohwan, do you know what the Blood Cult is?"
His smug, know-it-all attitude was annoying as hell.
"Do you know, bro?"
"What else? They're demonic cult scum, but even worse."
For someone shrugging so confidently, Dang Jihwan's answer was on the level of "Communists are bad!" My own knowledge wasn't much better. Sure, in modern MZ wuxia, the "overpowered protagonist" trope had cornered the market so fast that even the Heavenly Demon became generic entertainment. But in the old-school martial arts novels I'd read, the Blood Cult or Demonic Cult were always the root of all evil—the big bads the hero had to smash.
That's when it hit me why Dang Jihwan had brought up Sohee.
"Wait, did they take Sohee too?"
"Probably. I didn't see it myself."
At those words, my heart sank. I jumped up and bolted toward the ridge where Bi Yeon Pavilion stood. This time, Dang Jihwan didn't stop me.
"Sohee!"
Even with my training-weary breaths coming in gasps, I didn't slow down. I flung open the unguarded door. The empty courtyard led into the building, where I entered a musty room thick with dust.
In this barbaric world where guilt by association still lingered—parents' sins passed to children—who wouldn't worry about Sohee?
But the voice that greeted me wasn't from the Bi Yeon Pavilion master.
Hmm, fretting over your girl, are you?
Something almost human sparkled mockingly from atop a table in the empty room.
The mirror!
...I'd totally forgotten it existed.
"Of course! She's my friend!"
Though, aside from Sohee, I didn't really have any other friends. And even if that friend might be a cultist, it didn't matter right now.
To think you'd trust a friendship between man and woman so naively.
What's your mental age anyway, teasing kids like this?
"Whatever. Where's the Bi Yeon Pavilion master? She's here, right?"
I'm wondering that myself. But I don't have legs at the moment.
That old hag wouldn't have left behind a priceless relic like Siri. Bi Yeon Pavilion wasn't that big, but with all the junk, it felt like a maze. But who am I? Dang Yohwan. The guy who found a talking mirror in Myeong Gyeong Hall that no one else dared touch. Who got to the moon first? Who cares.
I didn't expect you'd think finding me was such a big deal.
Shut up, mirror!
Anyway, I'd scoured the place enough times that I could navigate Bi Yeon Pavilion blindfolded. Luckily, I found the Pavilion master rummaging in the very next room.
"Pavilion Master!"
But it was too soon for relief. She was alone.
Suppressing my rising anxiety, I asked.
"Where's Sohee?"
"She's being questioned by the other elders."
"What? You should've stopped them! You're her adoptive aunt—can't you even do that?"
The Pavilion master shook her head right in front of me.
"I understand your concern, but these matters need to be cleared up now. Especially with her background—it could become an issue later."
Thinking about it, that made sense. If Sohee ever made a name in the martial world, rumors like "Her dad's a Blood Cultist!" could spread like wildfire. Sure, the Pavilion master's authority could protect her, but for Sohee's future...
If she's really innocent, that is.
"That child had strangulation marks on her neck."
The small bruise—it was from choking.
After steadying her breath for a couple of cycles, the Pavilion master continued.
"The Blood Cult has a ritual where they offer children as living sacrifices."
Crazy, insane?
"Did the Myeong Gyeong Hall master plan to offer her own daughter as a sacrifice?"
"I can't say for sure, but that's what I think. In fact, it's fortunate."
If she was a victim, not a brainwashed agent, she could clear her name. If we hadn't found the mirror, Sohee really might've been killed like a dog.
As I was thinking that, the mirror chimed in.
The Blood Cult, huh? Looks like their remnants are still kicking around.
"You know about the Blood Cult too, mirror?"
The Pavilion master, who never taught me anything, surprisingly began explaining.
"The era when Mirror Lady was active was right around when the Martial Alliance crushed the Blood Cult. Just before Emperor Taizu of Song took the throne."
A moment that revealed the mirror's age, which I wasn't curious about at all.
"Damn cult's been around forever."
Mixing my past-life knowledge with the martial history lessons from this life. With my balanced view—no Han Chinese supremacy bs—I knew the Song Dynasty wasn't some eternal golden age crushed by Khitan, Jurchen, and Mongol triple combo. It was after the Tang splintered like cell division into that chaotic "China has a lot of states" period. Even though I'd taken world history for the college exam, I couldn't remember how Tang fell. Did Emperor Wanli and Xi Jinping team up for mind control or something? Still, guessing from mentions of the "Tang army," it probably had something to do with that.
The clan's explanation was a spectacle. Buddhism and Taoism waged religious wars; the Shaolin abbot, the top dog of the era, went berserk killing everyone regardless of no-kill precepts; even officials weren't safe. In that chaotic martial world, they united against the common enemy of the Demonic Cult, forming the Avengers-like Martial Alliance we know. Only in the early Northern Song did the "officials don't touch martial artists" policy start, finally shaping the clichéd wuxia world I knew.
"So they got wrecked back then and begged the Demonic Cult for help?"
But the martial history I'd learned was pretty bizarre. The Blood Cult spawned the Demonic Cult, which then birthed the Blood Cult again—super vague.
"Yes. The remnants of the Blood Cult that were supposedly wiped out were absorbed by the Sun and Moon Divine Cult, which became the Demonic Cult."
Cults banding together when it suited them, fighting when it didn't. Even in Hell Joseon, cult leaders' kids splitting into factions was rampant.
But the mirror started nitpicking again.
Modern kids only know half the story. The Martial Alliance never truly destroyed the Blood Cult.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Mirror Lady, could you explain in detail?"
The Pavilion master's polite honorifics toward the mirror ghost felt awkward. Was the mirror ghost not just irritating but also mind-controlling?
If the Blood Cult had really been annihilated by the Alliance's righteous heroes as history claims, your family wouldn't have suffered either.
"Our family got hit?"
Hearing the mirror, the Pavilion master's face paled.
"...No way. Was the perpetrator of the Blood Moon Night... one of those remnants?"
I yelled at the women spouting stuff I couldn't understand.
"We can talk old stories later! We need to worry about Sohee right now!"