I Knew This Would Happen (3)
Kiaaaaaaaah!
From the pattern, together with a loathsome light, there burst a hideous, soul-stopping shriek like the howling of ghosts from hell.
“Descend upon this world. And place all things beneath your feet. This lowly servant prays and prays for the Heavenly Demon’s arrival!”
And then the Bishop’s insane cry rose up in answer.
If hell truly existed, it had to be exactly like this.
Chung Myung kept stumbling forward through that hell in silence.
And then—
“Hraaaah!”
The sword he swung slammed into the Bishop’s shoulder.
Puuuuhk!
But the blade, robbed of proper force, failed to cleave through his body and merely deflected awkwardly off to the side.
Still, it was enough to knock down a man already drained of strength. The Bishop soon spat blood and went tumbling sideways.
“Guhhh….”
The Bishop, struck by the sword, and Chung Myung, unable to withstand the recoil, both collapsed to the ground and twitched and groaned there.
“Cough.”
Blood gushed from the Bishop’s mouth. Yet even with his body nearly dead, he still would not die.
“……Damned little cockroaches.”
Chung Myung gritted his teeth and forced himself upright. But halfway up, strength fled from his arm and he toppled forward again.
“……Son of a bitch.”
With bloodshot eyes, he glared at the Bishop.
“Cough! Cough!”
The Bishop, now on his back, wore only fierce venom in his eyes.
“It’s pointless.”
“……What?”
At once, he put on a triumphant smile and shouted,
“The ritual is already complete! No one can stop His resurrection now!”
His voice gradually grew clearer.
“What a pity. The descendant of the Plum Blossom Sword Saint….”
But as he spoke to Chung Myung, his expression warped strangely.
“You are….”
Then it happened.
Kyaaaaaaaaah!
The Ice Crystals laid between the grotesque pattern on the floor began to stain red with blood. And an even more terrible shriek started to echo through the chamber.
“Hahahahahahahahaha!”
The Bishop burst into uncontrollable laughter.
“No one can stop it. No one! The Heavenly Demon will descend and wash the world in blood! The faith of a hundred years will at last be fulfilled!”
And then he began chanting mantras like a madman.
Chung Myung’s gaze shifted toward the pattern, where the light was growing ever brighter.
And in that instant—
Fwoooosh!
The enormous cloth bearing the image of an asura twisted and wrangled, then began to burn from the bottom up.
The cloth blazed into ash in the blink of an eye, and at last the figure hidden behind it was revealed.
Chung Myung’s eyes flew wide open as if they might tear apart.
“……Th-”
Shocked beyond measure, the fingertips of his hand began to tremble.
“These insane bastards….”
A man in a pure white robe sat cross-legged at the very center of the massive pattern.
Skin so white it seemed untouched by even a speck of dirt, lips red as blood. And though his eyes were closed, the long, clearly defined shape of them remained strikingly vivid.
Every time the wind roared, his hair, grown long enough to trail to the floor, whipped wildly about. Anyone who did not know better would surely have taken him for a deeply mystical man.
But what struck Chung Myung with the greatest horror was the red line slicing across the man’s neck.
He knew this man very well.
No—he had never been able to forget him, not for a single moment, not even in dreams.
How could he have forgotten?
A being who, though alive, should have been called nothing less than destruction.
A god descended into the mortal world, the embodiment of martial might.
And the one he had personally beheaded and killed.
“……Heavenly Demon.”
A groan he could not hold back slipped from Chung Myung’s mouth.
It felt as though his insides were on fire.
Remember this, disciple of Mount Hua. This is not the end.
“That goddamned….”
Chung Myung ground his teeth until they seemed ready to shatter.
He knew. That was nothing but a corpse.
He had certainly cut off the Heavenly Demon’s head and killed him completely. Proof of that still remained in the clear scar he had carved into the corpse’s neck, didn’t it?
“What the hell are you doing, you insane bastards!”
He didn’t know what method they had used. But one thing was certain: they had recovered the Heavenly Demon’s body from the peak of the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains and preserved it all this time.
Only now did he notice the countless Ice Crystals piled thickly around the Heavenly Demon’s body. It wasn’t only the ones placed within the pattern.
No matter what their purpose was, keeping a dead body in such pristine condition for a hundred years was not something ordinary madness could accomplish.
Ice Crystal, Ice Jiangshi, the Heavenly Demon’s corpse.
Chung Myung’s gaze snapped back to the Bishop.
“You lunatics… you’ve gone and done something ridiculous.”
“Heh heh heh. It’s already too late.”
The Bishop staggered to his feet and then bowed deeply toward the Heavenly Demon. Hot tears streamed down his face.
“Great and glorious one! Your servant comes before you! Please do not cast aside this earnest wish and descend upon us to punish this ignorant wretch!”
Chung Myung’s blazing eyes bored into the Heavenly Demon’s corpse.
He still couldn’t quite grasp what was happening, but one thing was certain: he had to stop this somehow.
He clenched his sword and struggled to his feet. Then, toward the Heavenly Demon standing at the center of the pattern that vomited up gusts of wild power, he took a step forward.
But only for an instant.
Kwaaaaaaah!
A gigantic storm of qi began raging inside the cavern.
“Kuh!”
Chung Myung lost his footing and was thrown backward. Even if he’d been whole, he wasn’t sure he could have forced his way through that terrible power.
As that immense force began coiling around the Heavenly Demon’s corpse, the cavern itself could no longer endure it and started to collapse.
Massive boulders broke loose from the ceiling and crashed down. Stones were ripped from the walls and hurled into the ground. Yet none of it could even come close to the area around the Heavenly Demon’s body.
“Oooooooh!”
Watching the Heavenly Demon through the falling rocks, the Bishop’s eyes shone with overwhelming ecstasy.
“Heavenly Demon!”
Swoooosh.
Then the forces pouring out of the Ice Crystals mingled with the blood energy rising from the pattern and were sucked into the Heavenly Demon’s corpse.
Something impossible was happening.
“Aaaaaaah!”
Clenching his teeth, Chung Myung grabbed the floor and hurled the Dark Fragrance Plum Blossom Sword at the Heavenly Demon.
But the sword, flying powerless, could not pierce the whirling force and was simply knocked back.
Claaang.
The Dark Fragrance Plum Blossom Sword rolled across the floor.
“Huuuf… huuuf.”
Chung Myung no longer had the strength to stand. He could only stare blankly as the ritual reached its end.
Swoooosh.
The stacked Ice Crystals all at once began to lose their light.
The red glow pouring from the pattern on the floor gradually faded as well. The ferocious power whirling around the Heavenly Demon was absorbed into that body without leaving a trace.
“…….”
A silence like death settled over the cavern.
And then… Chung Myung saw it.
The Heavenly Demon’s tightly closed eyelids twitching ever so slightly.
Thump.
Somewhere, the sound of a heartbeat rang out.
Thump. Thump.
There was no need to think about where that heartbeat was coming from. Blood was returning to the corpse that, until just a moment ago, had been so white it verged on blue.
It was resurrection in the truest sense.
The dead were living again.
At last, the Heavenly Demon slowly opened his eyes.
“Heavenly Demon-nimmmmmm!”
The Bishop’s cry, bursting at the peak of rapture, thundered through the half-collapsed cavern.
“I am beyond moved by Your return, Heavenly Demon-nim! Ah, Heavenly Demon-nim!”
The arrival of the demon.
The corpse of the heavenly fiend who had once shrouded the world in darkness had begun to breathe again.
Yet even after seeing it clearly with his own eyes, Chung Myung did nothing. He simply stared at the Heavenly Demon, whose eyes were open and whose chest rose with breath.
A cold silence fell over the cavern.
Time passed in stillness.
“…….”
The Bishop, who had lain face-down on the floor without moving, slowly raised his head.
His eyes held undisguised confusion and doubt.
Having dared to lift his head and confirm the Heavenly Demon, his expression quickly twisted into ruin.
The Heavenly Demon had indeed opened his eyes. And he was certainly breathing.
But….
“……W-why?”
There was no focus at all in those open eyes.
He looked like a person with no soul inside him.
“N-no, that can’t be….”
The Bishop knew it instinctively.
That body was empty. It breathed and opened its eyes, but there was nothing inside. It was only the Heavenly Demon’s corpse, still breathing.
“That can’t be… that can’t be! N-no, no, no, no, no, no, no! Whyyyyyyyyyyyyy!?”
The Bishop, seeming to lose his mind entirely, began shouting and rambling incoherently.
“We already confirmed it several times! There’s no way the Soul Summoning Ritual could fail! Even those worthless wretches are breathing again, so why can’t the Heavenly Demon descend!? Why!?”
Hearing that soul-rending scream, Chung Myung let out a choking laugh and hauled himself upright.
“……I knew this would happen.”
The Heavenly Demon had not been resurrected.
But Chung Myung felt not the slightest bit of joy.
Not even a little.
“That can’t be. That can’t be… it can’t be. It can’t be. It can’t be. It can’t be. It can’t be. It can’t be….”
The Bishop mumbled endlessly with a vacant expression.
Snikt.
What snapped him back to reality was the sound of Chung Myung’s hand seizing the fallen sword once more.
The Bishop’s blank eyes followed him. Chung Myung gripped the blade tightly and said,
“Let’s end this now, you bastard.”
At that, as if all will had left him, the Bishop’s body suddenly shook as though struck by lightning.
It was as if he had realized something profound.
“You….”
In his mind, the tangled thread of doubt that had remained unsolved all this time finally began to loosen.
“The Soul Summoning Ritual….”
His voice grew startlingly clear.
“Yes. The Soul Summoning Ritual could never fail.”
Certainty kept swelling within him.
“Then the only possible answer is… only one!”
His eyes, fixed on Chung Myung, were stained with joy and despair and terror all at once.
“You… you bastard! You really are the Plum Blossom Sword Saint!”
“…….”
The Bishop, having grasped everything, burst into laughter until his throat nearly split.
“Hahahahahahahahahaha! Yes! That was it! You really were the Plum Blossom Sword Saint! Yes, that’s right! That was it! Hahahahahahahaha! I know now! You really are the Plum Blossom Sword Saint! Really!”
Chung Myung simply approached him with a blank expression.
“The Soul Summoning Ritual is a ritual that calls the soul! If it doesn’t answer, it can only mean one thing—the soul has already found another body!”
Tears spilled from the Bishop’s eyes.
“If you could do it, then there’s no reason He couldn’t have either. Yes! Then He must be….”
Thwack!
The tip of the Dark Fragrance Plum Blossom Sword pierced the Bishop’s heart.
“…….”
The Bishop, staring quietly at the sword that had run him through, opened his mouth with effort.
“The Heavenly Demon….”
It was a voice already fading helplessly.
“Already….”
At last, his body went limp.
Thud.
Not even fresh blood spilled from his heart. He had long since lost the light of life, yet had continued breathing by sheer force of will. And the moment that will vanished, he returned to nothingness with pitiless ease.
The face of the Bishop, now truly dead, was frozen in a smile full of rapture. Chung Myung bit down hard on his lip.
“……I knew this would happen.”
His gaze slowly turned to the Heavenly Demon. Those unfocused eyes were, strangely enough, looking in his direction.
No, in truth, Chung Myung was simply standing where the Heavenly Demon’s gaze happened to fall.
But….
Chung Myung staggered toward him.
Step. Step.
Then he looked him straight in the face, just as he had long ago, when the two of them had been left alone atop a sea of blood and corpses.
Of course, the Heavenly Demon’s eyes had no focus, but the arrogant smile he had worn in that last moment while looking at Chung Myung still remained on his lips.
Gnrrk.
From between Chung Myung’s clenched teeth came the sound of grinding strain as his face twisted violently.
The Heavenly Demon already….
Flash!
Chung Myung’s sword, swift as lightning, whipped out and severed the Heavenly Demon’s neck.
The head flew up into the air and then rolled away uselessly.
Even after being decapitated again, that smile still did not disappear.
Seeing that mocking grin, Chung Myung could not contain the boiling fury in his chest and trembled uncontrollably before curling in on himself.
“Ugh….”
He clamped a hand over his mouth with a mangled hand that convulsed like he was about to retch.
Already?
Don’t make me laugh.
That thing, that demon, to come back into this world again….
“Ughhh….”
The scene of the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains, left with nothing but blood and death, surfaced in his mind with sickening clarity.
Those who had died until not a single one remained. The vast field of corpses.
And the Heavenly Demon standing alone and exalted in that world.
“Ugh….”
Everything of Chung Myung’s had been brutally crushed and swept away by his hand.
Consumed by rage and hatred so fierce it seemed to burn his brain white, Chung Myung groaned with his mouth open wide. And at last, as though vomiting up everything inside him, he let out a horrifying scream.
“Aaaaarghhhhhhh!”
With that howl, the entire cavern began to collapse.
The demon will return again.
It felt as though the Heavenly Demon’s clear laughter—never meant to be heard by human ears—was ringing in his ears.
“Aaaaaaaaaaah!”
The falling rocks buried his blood-boiling howl without mercy.