Sent Back by the Heavenly Demon — Geon-gon (1)
To wrap it in fine paper: a guard, a herald, an assassin, a strategist, and a godfather to the heirs, bound to appear the instant he was called — in every season, at every moment — and the only soul among the Eight Great Megademons beneath the Heavenly Demon who had no child, no house, and no faction to his name.
"Geon-gon."
My body answered before I did. Ninety years old, now. A long life. Not that I had any business saying as much of her.
Under the moonlight she still wore that deep crimson hair — the Heavenly Demon, Cheon Yu-wol. A hundred by the count of years, yet her skin was smoother than a woman in her bloom, and her eyes clearer and fiercer than most moonlight. She rolled those dark-red pupils and looked down at me through the iron bars.
"Why did you do it?"
A question with a great many things folded inside it. I gave no answer, and the Heavenly Demon — seldom one for many words — opened her mouth at unusual length. My betrayal, after more than seventy years of loyalty. On the surface it had been an ambush with no plan behind it, and that had nearly made it all the more dangerous for her. In the end, it failed.
"You ought to have remained as you were. The jianghu knelt at my feet. The new emperor trembled lest he sour my mood. The Hundred Thousand Great Mountains had become the hidden heart of all under heaven. When boredom came, you had only to roam the realm each winter, and when spring returned, scour the world as if hunting lice and root out the seeds of any who might challenge me."
A low growl scraped out of me as I ground my teeth.
"How many times do I have to say it."
Death was already at my throat. Even before the Heavenly Demon — absolute of destruction, all creation beneath her feet — I could lay my true heart bare.
"I hated it."
"The situation being what it is, I shall permit that insolence this once."
"Yes."
The obedient answer leapt out before I knew it. Decades of habit... tch.
"Why did you do it? I permitted you everything. The most renowned beauties under heaven. Spiritual medicines and treasured blades beyond all price. Authority and power enough to crush all but this body. Even my heirs scurried in the dark, hungry for your trust. What was lacking?"
"......"
Lacking. As she said, nothing in particular had been lacking. This had never been a thing I did for lack.
"In days past, it was you who came seeking me. Amusing. Do you regret it now? Did you wish to sit where I sit?"
"Yes. Greed took hold of me. So badly that regret is too small a word — I am near enough to madness. I even find myself longing for that regression the world has spent a lifetime dismissing as empty rumor."
At my answer, the Heavenly Demon waved a hand. Everyone was to leave. The torchlight wavered, and then they withdrew — the company that guarded her from the dark, the strongest martial force in the Heavenly Demon Cult. The Dark Heaven Evil God Ghosts, whom I myself had commanded and drilled.
"Has it been bearable?"
For the briefest instant, something like regret touched her indifferent voice, and then it was gone.
"How could it have been. Still, as a place to speak without reserve, it will serve. No eyes watching, no ears listening — of that much I am certain. I cannot readily trust even the Dark Heaven Evil God Ghosts I led from the front, so this is indeed the best of it."
"So it would be. No one would think to suspect a man interrogating a prisoner."
"So then... did you find them?"
"Some. On the pretext of hunting those who joined your impulsive rebellion, I rooted out and seized every faction that had been gathering strength in secret. Half the Eight Great Megademons were bound up in it, and my own children had joined hands to cast me out. Because of you, I was able to cut them down before they could unite. But..."
The moment her words trailed off, I was certain.
"You did not catch the ringleader. Then the same thing will happen again. No — whoever stands behind all of this is already far ahead of us."
I clicked my tongue, bitter at the waste of it. It had been a scheme that required sacrificing even me, her right hand. Without that, the inside could never have been stilled so quickly, and a drawn-out civil war would only have multiplied the dangers pressing in from outside. And still the most important piece had been missed.
"You do not take the ringleader for one of those cut down this time."
"Not one among them possessed the majesty to dare reach for the Cult Lord, nor to draw all the rest beneath a single banner. Above all else, half of those who had long been my eyes and ears vanished or turned up as corpses in an instant. A result like that lies beyond anything an insider could manage."
"The imperial palace? The Demonic Alliance, split apart and shattered into pieces once more? The orthodox packs, blinded by greed? Or the lingering vengeance of the countless martial prodigies we have forced to their knees?"
"From all I have learned until now, if I may venture it."
"..........."
"The Former Cult Leader — the one whose head you took with your own hands — is moving. I never found a perfect thread of proof fit to persuade you. But I am certain of it by instinct."
Told that her own father had risen from the dead and was moving to kill her, anyone else would have found it hard to speak at all. Most would have toppled over in shock, or let some crack of weakness show. The Heavenly Demon laughed.
"Heh heh."
A fierce heat of fighting spirit closed around her, as if a volcano were a breath from erupting. Then she drew out a bloodstained handkerchief and covered her mouth. A short, wet cough — and a great deal of blood soaked into the cloth.
"I thought as much. For quite a long while, the hand at work has felt like someone who knows me well."
"You've been... poisoned? In what unguarded moment?"
"Until now, you alone knew my weakness. The rest, I killed."
True. For all her overflowing talent and all her training, there was one weakness she could not overcome — a heaven-sent affliction. Something unexpectedly common, easy to obtain, and yet, once it passed through a particular refinement, a terrible poison to the Heavenly Demon. A spiritual herb called the Clear Moon Herb.
For most, it was a herb that helped them accumulate internal energy. For the Heavenly Demon, it was a poison of the worst possible affinity, stirring qi reversal and steadily petrifying flesh and meridians. I had poured every capacity I possessed outward, and never spared a thought for her safety. No — I had grown careless. I had grown easy. Because I knew how strong she was.
"I am ashamed. The fault is mine."
"You know it well. You ought to have striven harder, without rest — not raised a ruckus at me about retiring. I wasted years chasing after you."
"......"
She tapped the bars with long, pale fingers, then seized them as if she might shatter them where she stood.
"I will ask one thing."
"......"
"Had you stood at the same beginning as this body, do you suppose you could have dared to surpass me?"
"How could I dare."
"I know that is not your true heart."
I was a martial man myself, with a hunger to win. If I bared that true heart, the answer would of course have been different.
"Even the Heavenly Demon did not hold all things from the first, did she? Through talent to spare, you were given time to grow, and chances — every manner of circumstance and support. Long before you met me."
"That is a thing unknown until the cards are turned. I have a proposal."
Life stirred in the Heavenly Demon's dry eyes.
"Become a being this body would have cause to fear. Can you? Then my father, too, would be thrown into confusion by your existence."
"Like this? A man with nothing left to do but wait for the day he dies?"
She drew a single talisman from her hand. An unremarkable thing.
"A talisman to be exchanged for my soul. It took a long time to find. A precious secret manual I obtained alone. And as it happens, they say today is the moment of Heaven-Defying, which opens only once in several centuries."
As she drifted into words I could not follow, I let out an empty laugh.
"You believe those rumors out of legend? That regression is possible?"
"Once, word that the Heavenly Demon Cult had appeared again was nothing but hearsay. And yet this body existed. You were one of the few who believed that hearsay. Did you not come and find me? Then why will you not believe this — you, who even suspect that my dead father has returned?"
"......"
"Cease to dream, and limits and a frame set in. You are not what you were."
I had nothing left to say. She snorted a laugh and held the talisman out to me.
"Stain it with blood and tear it. Then you—"
She flicked her hand. The wind caught me and flung me close enough that her breath might have touched my skin.
Bang—
My face slammed into the iron bars, and I met the crimson light of her eyes.
The Heavenly Demon was no clumsy swindler. Thump — my heart shook.
"......"
"The difference in age between you and this body means it will not be the same beginning. In exchange, the chances of the future are more than enough for you. Return to the proper moment, and your potential will change enough to threaten this body."
"Why not go yourself?"
"I told you the medium of that talisman is me. I cannot go of my own will. More than that, it is your going that will throw my father into confusion. If he has truly returned."
"My judgment may be wrong."
"Do you think it wrong?"
"No."
"Then my choice will be wise this time as well."
"Fair enough. Setting aside your eye for men, you have always been wise."
"There was a time I considered taking you as my Dao Companion. Had I made you one then, you would not have been able to spit out nonsense like that a moment ago."
A Dao Companion. A husband, in other words. A snort escaped me.
"You say that knowing full well what became of the men who passed through the Cult Lord's hands?"
Every last one of them had met a cruel, merciless death, and every last one of them had brought it on himself, indulging a greed his vessel could not hold. At the end of each of them stood I, carrying out the Heavenly Demon's command. Small wonder they called me the Yama of the Dao Companions.
"Because ordinary men grew tiresome."
"Honestly — well. I am better than they were."
She really is a fiend. No. The king of fiends. Still, there was a certain logic to it.
"So you enjoyed it as well."
Did it show? Then again, the Heavenly Demon's eye for men was the worst there was. Or she simply never looked. Arrogant to a one, their ability unable to keep up, no sense of their station, no grasp of principle — anyway.
"I may never return to my lord's side. After I regress, I will have no need of anything like my lord's help."
"Then I shall have gained one new enemy. Better than living out decades in boredom and dying without power."
"I will live a life in which I keep what I want and choose as I please. My martial arts will have to stand at the peak, and the wealth I hold will have to overflow. More than my lord's."
"That is the path of an absolute. Age must be dulling you, for you to say something so foolish."
"Then what of this? You are not harboring some naive notion that if I regress, I will remain at the Heavenly Demon's side, are you? I have not the slightest intention of doing so."
I cut my eyes up at her.
"Even so, you mean to choose me?"
The Heavenly Demon gave a low, wicked chuckle.
"Go on, then. Do as you please."
Those red eyes provoked me. I snatched the talisman into my hand as if seizing it from her.
"Don't regret it."
A fierce exhilaration — greater than every feeling and every thrill I had known in a lifetime — stood every fine hair on my body on end.
I stained it with blood.
"......"
And tore it.