Then I’ll Make You Remember Me (1)
Splish.
A soft sound rang out, like a footstep crushing through a shallow stream.
Splish.
With every step he took, the sound grew a little wetter, a little more viscous.
Though he had spent decades on the path of the Dao, refining himself in its discipline, Plum Blossom Sword Saint had still always been accused of being poor at keeping his composure.
But no one would dare speak to him of composure now.
Because what he was standing on was not water, but blood.
His face twisted horribly.
Corpses were piled up like mountains, and the blood that had spilled from them flowed like a river. The moment he stopped walking, he could vividly feel the blood soaking his feet, creeping up around his ankles.
He did not want to believe any of it.
“Th-...”
A mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.
What else could he possibly call the sight before him, if not that?
His fingertips had begun to tremble of their own accord.
“How can human beings...?”
Of course, he knew.
This was war.
War was, in the end, nothing more than the business of killing the other side.
Even so, there was nothing he could do about the nausea and fury surging up from deep in his gut. The savagery that had swept through this place had gone beyond anything he could have imagined.
How could people slaughter one another like this?
Even stomping on ants could not be more brutal or merciless than this.
Crack.
A sound like bones grinding came from the fist he had clenched so tightly it had gone white. Even the veins standing out blue on the back of his hand were trembling.
And then...
“...S...sh...”
A faint voice brushed past his ears.
Chung Myung’s gaze snapped around with violent force. Before his mind had even finished processing it, his body was already shooting toward the source like a beam of light.
He furiously clawed through the corpses stacked on top of one another and seized the hand of the young disciple, who was still not entirely unconscious.
“M-Myeongdo! Myeongdo!”
And through Myeongdo’s coldening hand, he forced in a stream of true qi.
Chung Myung’s voice was shaking so badly it was almost unrecognizable.
“M-Myeongdo. It’s all right, okay? I... I...”
But the moment his eyes dropped to Myeongdo’s lower body, despair swallowed him whole.
Crack.
His bitten lips split open, and blood trickled down.
Myeongdo’s body below the waist was gone.
Even if the Great Immortal himself returned from the dead, he would not be able to save him.
But how could he say that?
“It’s all right. It’s all right, Myeongdo. I’ll treat you. You damn brat, Myeongdo. Hm? Don’t worry.”
“...S-Sasuk.”
“Yes! Yes, Myeongdo!”
Vitality began to drain from Myeongdo’s face all at once. Faced with death, he drew ragged breaths and desperately tried to say something.
“...Ru...run. Sa...sasuk.”
“...Myeongdo?”
Chung Myung, straining to listen, furrowed in confusion as he heard him.
Who was he?
He was Plum Blossom Sword Saint Chung Myung, one of the Three Great Swordsmen of the world.
No—calling him one of the Three Great Swordsmen was still not enough. If he had only wanted it, the title hanging over his name would not have been one of the Three Great Swordsmen, but the Greatest Sword Under Heaven. No, beyond that—he would surely have become the Greatest Master Under Heaven.
And there was no one in Mount Hua who did not know it.
Yet he was being told to run?
To run from what?
Just what in the world...?
The question did not last long.
“Hea...venly Dem...on...”
The strength in Chung Myung’s hand, which had been clutching Myeongdo’s in desperation, tightened further.
“...Sa...sasuk. You have to run... run...”
Myeongdo’s words, held together by the last scraps of breath, broke off. The eyes that had been filled with pain loosened and went slack.
Feeling the strength leaving the hand he held, Chung Myung lowered his head.
The taste of iron spread through his mouth.
Blood from his split lip dripped from his chin, drop by drop.
“...Heavenly Demon.”
The mastermind behind this horrific sight.
The one who had killed his martial nephew.
The ruler of the Demonic Sect who dominated the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains, the evil spirit shaking the world itself.
“Heavenly Demon!”
Chung Myung clutched his sword and rose to his feet.
“You bastard. I’m going to kill yo...”
That was when it happened.
His mouth shut on its own. At the same time, his movement froze completely.
What?
It was strange. Chung Myung himself did not understand why his words and actions had stopped.
This was not his will.
More accurately, Chung Myung’s body had stopped everything on its own, refusing to obey his will.
And that was not all.
His head, against his own desire, slowly began to turn as though it had been wrenched toward one side. Like the dull grind of rusted gears, Chung Myung’s head jerked with a metallic clack and shifted to the side.
And then...
His pupils slowly dilated.
A person.
Yes, a person.
But...
Could that thing really be called a person?
The sky was dyed red by the setting sun. The ground was dyed red with blood.
Across this land of death, where the stench of blood was so thick that even breathing was difficult, a single figure was walking slowly through it all.
Chung Myung’s body began to tremble.
Nausea surged through him.
His stomach turned, and even breathing became a struggle.
That unbearable sense of wrongness crashed over him in a flood, wrapping his entire body and making his head swim, the world before his eyes tilting and wavering.
That...
That was not something that could be called a human being.
That was...
It was an overwhelming pressure Chung Myung had never felt once in his life.
That did not belong with anything else.
Heaven and earth. Human beings between them.
Something different. Something alien, existing among all the things that made up the world and flowed with its current. Something that rejected the flow of the world all by itself.
Alone and complete.
Unfathomably powerful.
He knew it. He had to know it.
Even if no one explained it to him, even if this was the first time he had ever seen it—how could he not understand?
If such a thing existed beneath the heavens, there was only one name it could be given.
“...Heavenly Demon.”
The progenitor of demons. And their sovereign.
The sole ruler of the Demonic Sect that had trampled the world beneath its feet, and the evil unmatched across all of history.
Chung Myung’s gaze remained fixed on the Heavenly Demon as if it had been pinned there.
His black hair, unnaturally dark, had grown wild and long nearly to his knees, and his face was pale, devoid of any color.
His clothes—white beyond reason for a Demonic Sect member—were immaculate, without a single stain. The red embroidery sewn into the snow-white robes only deepened the sense of wrongness.
Wasn’t it absurd?
That this man had slaughtered so many yet still not a single drop of blood stained his body, and yet he was wearing white robes embroidered with red thread.
Wasn’t it absurd?
Wasn’t it utterly ridiculous?
“Th...”—
A grinding sound slipped from Chung Myung’s twisted mouth.
He understood.
That was chaos.
He immediately understood why Myeongdo had told him to run.
An existence so overwhelmingly imposing that even Plum Blossom Sword Saint could not tear his eyes away.
A terror tight enough to make his heart seize on its own.
His body, which had never once betrayed his will, screamed at him.
Run.
Run from here right now.
And yet Chung Myung did not run. No—he could not run.
Because he wanted revenge for the dead Myeongdo?
Because he had finally gained the chance to face the Heavenly Demon?
Not at all.
The thing gripping Chung Myung was not something so simple.
In the face of fear so great that it would have been better to go mad, the reason he could not step back was only one.
“...Look at me.”
Chung Myung’s face contorted like a demon’s.
He was standing here.
Still alive and breathing upon a land that had been left with nothing but death.
But the Heavenly Demon’s gaze did not turn to him.
That fact was unbearable to Chung Myung.
Would a man who had just trampled an ant hill turn his eyes toward a single ant trying to flee?
Of course he might.
But he might not, either.
Because it was so insignificant, he could crush it underfoot—or simply leave it be.
To the Heavenly Demon now, Chung Myung was nothing more than one ant wriggling among a pile of ants that had already been trampled to death.
So he had not bothered to look. Because even its life and death were beneath notice.
And that was exactly what Chung Myung could not endure.
“...Look at me.”
Bloodshot fury filled Chung Myung’s eyes.
“Look at me, you son of a bitch!”
Could it have been his voice that reached him?
The Heavenly Demon, wandering alone across the blood-soaked world, slowly turned his gaze toward Chung Myung.
Even from a distance, those eyes looked straight at him.
“...”
Black pupils so dark they could only be described as endless darkness.
Under that gaze, Chung Myung’s skin broke out in gooseflesh and his whole body trembled.
There’s nothing there.
There was nothing in those eyes.
No emotion, no will—nothing at all.
How could a human’s eyes be like that?
All that could be found in those indifferent eyes was a deep, bottomless emptiness.
After a moment, the Heavenly Demon seemed to lose interest in him, turned his head away again, and resumed walking. That single glance had been the entirety of it.
“Ha...”
Chung Myung let out a hollow laugh.
He didn’t even see me?
Was that what this was? I wasn’t even worth engaging?
Crack.
Chung Myung bit down so hard his teeth nearly shattered, then drew his sword.
“Then I’ll make you remember me.”
Though terror clamped down on his entire body and his limbs shook uncontrollably, Chung Myung only curled the corner of his mouth upward.
“I’ll make you never forget me until the moment you die!”
He gathered his storm-like inner power, kicked off the ground, and charged at the Heavenly Demon.
Toward the despair that had swallowed the world whole.
And one month later,
the death squad that had gathered all the strength of the Central Plains climbed the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains to kill the Heavenly Demon.
Not a single one of them.
came back alive.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“Chung Myung!”
He jerked.
Chung Myung stared forward with wide eyes.
“Are you all right?”
“Sasuk?”
“Why are you sweating so much? Is something wrong?”
Only after a moment did he realize it had been a dream.
Almost reflexively, Chung Myung reached up and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. His entire body was soaked through.
“...Damn it.”
“...”
Chung Myung spat out a rough curse. Baek Cheon did not rebuke him or ask for a reason, only watched Chung Myung’s face in silence.
Anyone who saw Chung Myung’s expression right now would have made the same choice.
After remaining silent for a while, Chung Myung suddenly stood.
“...Wait a second.”
“All right.”
And then he headed straight outside.
The frigid ground of the North Sea. The temporary shelter dug into that earth.
When he emerged through the entrance above, the cold wind of the North Sea immediately began to cool his sweat-drenched body.
“...”
But Chung Myung felt none of the chill. He simply stood there with a hardened face and stared at the dark sky.
Heavenly Demon.
That was despair.
Despair that took everything away.
Crack.
Chung Myung ground his teeth.
Every time he thought of the Heavenly Demon, it felt as if magma were coursing through his gut. Fury he could not control, despair he could not control. Hatred so fierce it seemed to bleach his mind white, and terror that froze his heart, all mixed together and roared through him without restraint.
The final day, when his breath had been cut off.
Even now, the sight of the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains on that day tormented him relentlessly. Sometimes it came as a nightmare so vile he could not escape it; sometimes as memory so vile it would not let go.
It clung to him like glue.
His sect leader senior brother, his martial brothers, and even his martial nephews.
The faces of those who had died without even closing their eyes would never be forgotten, not until the day Chung Myung himself died again.
Never again.
Such a thing should not exist in this world.
No one knew.
No one.
What the Heavenly Demon was. What kind of existence the Heavenly Demon truly was.
It stole everything. Life, breath, and even human bonds.
“...Revival?”
Bloodshot veins burst across Chung Myung’s eyes.
Don’t make me laugh, you bastard.
There would be no place in this world for the Heavenly Demon ever again. Chung Myung would make sure of it.
Never again would anyone.
No one in this world would ever take Mount Hua away from his hands again.
Never again...