The Calamity of Clan Annihilation
A hole had been blown clean through my chest. I had survived, if only by a thread — but the trouble was not finished with me.
The ascetics had turned tail and fled, every last one of them.
Their speed was beyond anything I had imagined. Even my Void Treading, raised to the realm of Three Flowers Gathering at the Crown, could barely run them down. Had I given chase from the very start it might have been different, but the distance between us had already grown far too wide.
So in the end, I have to do that again….
Put the mask back on and recite those lines that made my skin crawl? I was not eager.
Once, I would not have thought twice. Doing it where Seol-ah could see, though, was a little too embarrassing.
Was there no other way? I was turning the question over when—
"Huh?"
A single thread of thought flashed through my mind. Chin still resting on Seol-ah's head, I went blank.
"What's wrong, all of a sudden?"
"The Lee Clan was making contact with the ascetics, you said?"
She looked puzzled.
I grinned.
"It used to be your family. So tell me — mind if I turn the place upside down?"
"…What?"
For a moment she was flustered. Then a smile touched her lips.
"Can I come too?"
"Of course."
That was half the reason I meant to go to the Lee Clan in the first place. Why wouldn't she? I would have to wrap her in protective qi so she wouldn't be hurt, of course — but at the realm of Three Flowers Gathering at the Crown, that cost me nothing at all.
"First, though, we play ourselves out today. I need to stabilize the realm while I'm at it."
"Okay!"
Newton's laws of motion, learned in my first life. The first law — the law of inertia, as they called it. A body at rest tries to stay at rest, and a body in motion tries to keep moving… that sort of law.
I experienced that inertia with my whole body.
I had only meant to slack off for a day. It was already the third.
In my first life I had been so afraid of exactly this that I never rested at all. Laziness, as it turned out, was the most frightening thing there was.
I ought to get to work. Even now.
…So I told myself. The choice was not mine.
"We really have to get up…."
Say it as I might, Seol-ah only kept chanting five more minutes.
That was already the fourteenth time.
Getting up on my own was not an option either. She had wound her arms and legs around me. I could have shaken her off. I would not dream of it. Even if she came to no harm, prying her loose by force would leave her sulking, whether she meant to or not….
"Haa."
Stripped even of the most useful violence I possessed, I resolved at last to employ a forbidden art.
My fingers settled on the nape of her neck.
"Kyah— kyahahaha!"
Against tickling refined to the realm of Three Flowers Gathering at the Crown, she did not last a minute before she was launched clear of the blankets.
"Haaaaah…."
The minor flaw was that the ordeal left her even limper than before. I solved it by getting her ready myself and carrying her out. I pretended not to notice how quickly her strength came back. I hadn't used spatial manipulation either, after all.
"I'll leave the navigating to you."
Wary that someone might spot us drifting through the sky, I had brought us to the heart of the forest before I spoke.
"This way."
Seol-ah pointed into empty air — not the road we had traveled, but the straight line joining where we had started to where we meant to arrive. The shortest path. To have memorized it raw like that… I could probably have managed the same before I ever learned martial arts, but remembering it that precisely would have been hard. The more I thought about it, the more certain I became. Without her Nine Yin Severed Meridians, she would have been formidable.
I set the idle thought aside, gathered her into my arms, and rose.
Flying past the speed of sound would tear her body apart, so I did not forget to sheathe her in protective qi—
Ah. Wait.
I halted in midair and retuned the nature of the qi.
"? What did you do?"
"I bent the light with qi, so no one outside can see us. The eye can't register light once it's been refracted and thrown back, so anyone looking our way will just see the scenery behind us."
Simple enough. The same principle as a reflection in a mirror, which makes it seem as though the thing itself is sitting inside the glass. Bending light was easy, once you used qi — a force of an entirely different order.
"So we don't have to take the long way around. No matter what we do, they can't see us to begin with."
"Ooh…."
Her eyes shone as the little gasp left her. She did not look as if she had actually understood. Fair enough. Explain the same thing to me before I had learned martial arts, and I would have stared back with a look that said What is wrong with this idiot and ignored it outright. The very idea of one person bending light at will was absurd. Qi was the power that made the impossible possible.
We flew on past the speed of sound for a long while, and at last we reached our destination: the Lee Clan Manor.
Not even half a day. Compared with the journey to Songwon, the time on the road had been cut in half.
"Who goes there?"
"We received no word that visitors were coming!"
Two gatekeepers leveled their spears and shouted. Experts who had reached Transcendent First-Rate.
"Their standards really are something else."
Transcendent First-Rate martial artists, used as doormen. Not that it posed any problem.
"State your name!"
"Yu Hajin."
Thud. Thud—! I had no wish to hurt them more than necessary. A flick to each forehead, and the matter ended with both of them unconscious.
"Let's go in."
"…Okay."
Seol-ah followed with a complicated look on her face. Of course her feelings would be strange. When we had only been talking, the corner of her mouth had curled up, delighted — but this had been her clan, too. More than that, the memory of being cast out of it must have left a wound.
Wipe them out, or let them wither?
I worried at the question, then shook my head inwardly. If it was to be done, Seol-ah should be the one to decide. An outsider like me had no right to choose.
I sheared the gate cleanly with Sword Astral, stepped through, and looked around. For the residence of a single clan, it was far too vast, and far too grand.
"Who are you!"
The bold cry came in the same instant that swords and spearpoints closed on my throat from every side.
"Fetch the patriarch."
I flicked my fingers as I said it.
Three black roses rose above my head and caught fire.
Three blossoms, burning a dark crimson light — a miracle no human strength could ever achieve, obvious at a glance.
"Y-yes, sir!"
The moment they saw it, those loyal men bolted for the patriarch's hall.
"Seol-ah."
"…."
"Seol-ah?"
"…Y-yes?"
"You all right? You don't look well…."
"I-I'm fine…."
Watching her force the words out through a darkened face was painful. I drew her into my arms without a word.
"If it's too hard, we can stop."
"No! That's… no."
Firm. I smiled faintly and kissed her.
"All right. Then you don't have to worry. As long as I'm here, nothing is ever going to put you in danger."
"Hehe. That's reassuring."
The smile found her again, and a soft laugh slipped out.
"A clan like this… I don't think we need it."
"Want me to erase it?"
"…I'll see what Fa— what the patriarch does."
"Good."
If so much as a tear fell from my Seol-ah's eyes, I would cut his throat.
"I-Im-Immortal…!"
A middle-aged man with white hair and blue eyes came running from far off. That would be the patriarch. He looked at me once, then shifted his gaze to Seol-ah, pressed close at my back. A father, was he? At least he knew his own daughter?
"…Now see here! I don't know who you are — step away from the Immortal!"
…What?
"Ah…."
Seol-ah let out a hollow sigh. Tears ran down her cheeks.
"Crying, even! To smear the name of the Lee Cla—"
"Patriarch of the Lee Clan. Lee Jin-hwa."
At the coldness of my voice, his words broke off.
"I-I'm sorry! I can't even keep my own household in— Now see here! Wiping your tears on the Immortal's robes—"
Shhk. The sword left its sheath, and Lee Jin-hwa's right arm fell. A beat later, blood poured from the cut.
"Gyaaah…!"
Screaming, he was not pitiful in the slightest. I did not look at him. I looked at Seol-ah, her face buried against me, weeping without a sound. She was in no state to speak. Fine. I would do it for her.
"You don't even recognize your own daughter."
"Kh… but I don't have a daught—"
No. Seol-ah was of the Lee Clan's direct line. The child of a slave who was not even a concubine, perhaps — but the patriarch's daughter all the same. Lee Jin-hwa's wife was an imperial princess. Fearing the political struggle that would follow, he had passed Seol-ah off as a collateral branch and had her mother executed. And when he learned that Seol-ah bore the Nine Yin Severed Meridians, he cast the girl out as well.
Slash! A clean cross-section appeared where his left arm had been.
"Ghk…. I-Immortal…!"
"How dare you. Know your place. You wound Seol-ah's heart?"
Shhk—! His body lurched as the left leg came away. Balance ought to be kept, so I took the right leg too.
"Ghk, khak…!"
In the space of a blink, Lee Jin-hwa had lost every limb. Only a torso remained, rolling across the ground. Or perhaps rolled was the better word.
"Lee Seol-ah. Do you understand now?"
"…Y-yes!"
Judging by that answer, he still didn't remember.
Crack! My foot came down and crushed his testicles to pulp. Deliberately light, so the shape of them remained. Blood spattered in a sickening spray, but it could not pierce the protective qi.
"Ghaaaah!! Agh, hk… khak…."
"You swing that cock around any way you please, and the head on your shoulders still can't do a head's job. That about right?"
"Ghk, kuh, gheerk…. Glrrk…."
A man of the Peak Realm, foaming at the mouth over one burst organ.
"Bow."
"Ghk…."
Lee Jin-hwa's eyes burned with hostility. Fear, awe, hatred, shame, confusion, bewilderment…. Among them, not a trace of apology.
"Drag that limbless body of yours through one hundred and eight prostrations."
At those words, Lee Jin-hwa — eyes half-unfocused — flipped himself over with internal energy. Toward me.
Thud—! I kicked him.
"No. I'm not the one you apologize to."
"…Ghk, uk…."
Trembling all over again, he turned toward Seol-ah. Not because he understood that the apology was owed to her — only because I was not the one he was meant to bow to, and so he went to her.
"Seol-ah."
"…Yes."
"Here. Take it. Whether he lives or dies is yours to decide."
I held out a sword wrapped in qi. One swing, and a neck like Lee Jin-hwa's would leave his shoulders in an instant. Handing her the power of life and death over a parent was cruel. Still, I hoped this would let her cut free of the shackles of the past.
She took it, closed her eyes, and let the tears fall in silence before she spoke.
"…I'll ask just one thing."
"A-ah…. My daughter… s-spare me…! Wh-whatever it was, I was wrong! Forgive me!"
Shameless past the point where laughter was the only answer. He had taken a lover, and killing her had not been enough — he had thrown his own child into the street and washed his hands of her. And now, having failed even to recognize his daughter, he begged her for help.
Seol-ah seemed to think the same. Her brow twitched, and her grip on the sword tightened.
"Why did you kill my mom?"
"…."
Silence. Not the silence of a man who knew and would not say — the silence of a man who could not remember Seol-ah's mother at all.
Pain crossed her face. She bit down on her lip, then brought the sword down.
Crack—! The blade sank in, splitting the bones of his neck, and stopped. Seol-ah stared at it, unmoving.
"You've been through a lot."
I held her.
"…I always wanted revenge, someday…. Now that I've had it, it doesn't feel very good."
"Yeah."
I knew. Revenge left its own unpleasant aftertaste. I had lived a whole life for the sake of it. The moment revenge was finished, a heart that had lost its hatred and its rage was left empty. And so I, too, had dragged my life along, desperately hunting for something new to hate and rage against.
"But it's all right. I've got you, Oppa."
At her words I smiled bitterly and held her tighter. That was the difference between us. Unlike the loner who could not live without hatred, Seol-ah was not like that. And there was someone to fill the heart that had been emptied.
"…Thank you. For being with me."
Her voice caught as she spoke, and she burrowed into my arms.
"No. I'm the one who should be grateful."
I stroked her back and smiled.
The loner who could not live without hatred could no longer live without love.