Sent Back by the Heavenly Demon: A Modest Investment (1)

The crash came the instant Geon-pyeong stepped into the room. Whatever his hands closed on, he destroyed—every painting, every piece of furniture, every last vessel of priceless porcelain, nothing spared.

Even the men who served as his own limbs were too afraid of him to open their mouths. They simply waited beyond the door for his fury to cool.

"Aaaaargh!!!"

He roared until it seemed the room itself would tear loose, and only after a long while did the violence finally stop. In the ruined chamber, Geon-pyeong dropped into the one chair that had somehow survived.

"Bring me wine!!!"

At the shout, a young maid crept in, trembling from head to foot. Geon-pyeong snatched the cup from the silver tray, drained it in a single swallow, and hurled it to the floor.

"Get out. Before I kill you, wench."

Only after the girl had fled did he look up at the ceiling and drag his breathing back under control.

He simply could not make himself believe the way things had turned. No—one thing, at least, was clear. His second brother had gotten him.

A foolish younger brother who had spent a lifetime cringing in front of him, forever watching his mood. Blinded by women, in and out of the pleasure houses with hardly a day between, his talent a paltry thing beside his ambition, every choice he made a stupid one. The third might be called a prodigy; the second had always danced in the palm of his hand.

And yet he had made a losing bargain with that very fool—and taken a scolding from his own mother on top of it.

"How do I grind that bastard under my heel?"

Letting it pass like this would sit very badly indeed.

"It ought to sit badly. Yes. It ought to sit very badly indeed."

I met a pair of blazing eyes emerging from the dark.

Damn it. Not a single thing is willing to go quietly.

The spirit beast glaring holes through the Blue Blood Vine bunched in my fist was, astonishingly, an Ice Abyss Lizard. A rare spirit beast I had faced once, long ago, while hunting down the old demon known as Hyeonheumbyeongma. Its bulk was just short of full maturity.

I had no idea how a creature said to live only in the abyss beneath the glaciers had come to exist in a place like this, but one thing was clear. This ice lizard, freezing everything with every breath it drew, was staring at the ten roots of Thunder Silver Azure Dragon Herb bound inside the Blue Blood Vine.

Now I understood. Why there had been ten stalks of the herb, and not four. By rights, this beast should have been master of six of them.

In other words—

"You're after this too, aren't you?"

I could feel the breath of that low murmur beginning, little by little, to freeze. I tossed aside the wooden case that held the human-skin mask and took one step forward.

This space already belonged to the Ice Abyss Lizard. Four legs, each as thick as my torso. A body that looked sculpted from ice and gravel, and an icy wind that began to howl every time it snorted. Belly pressed flat to the ground without so much as a twitch, it let a thick, cold blue yin qi seep from the sharp crystals of ice running from its head to its tail.

With every moment that passed, my whole body was freezing under the cold it breathed out. Give it any longer, and I would be locked solid, unable even to stamp a foot. The Ice Abyss Lizard, by contrast, waited at its ease. Its thick tail was cocked tight, ready to swallow me in a single motion.

The instant I moved, it would begin.

I could not afford to trust the strength I had right now. But the knowledge and experience piled up across long years—and a liver swollen hard with nerve—those, I could trust. I am a man of obsession, acknowledged even by the Heavenly Demon who was called the absolute.

I grinned.

The moment I stepped into my footwork, the Ice Abyss Lizard crossed the distance to the tip of my nose in a single leap. Its cold hung thick in every direction, and the enormous mouth, split wide above and below, loomed over my upper body. There was no path of escape.

"I never meant to dodge."

The Blue Blood Vine, in the shape of a creeper, lashed out from my fingertips like a whip and wound around every one of the ten roots of Thunder Silver Azure Dragon Herb gathered in one place. In the same instant, I kicked off the ground.

Not outside the Ice Abyss Lizard's mouth. Into it.

I, a breath away from being sheared in half, was swallowed whole, torso and all.

In that instant I wrapped the vine of the Blue Blood Vine around my entire body and shoved every root of the Thunder Silver Azure Dragon Herb into my mouth. A dizzying surge of lightning qi crashed over me all at once.

I dreamed.

A deep dream, and a long one. A pleasant memory of days spent with my mother—the day I learned to dive.

The water had been cold as ice then, too. But the hand that held my wrist and led me on was warm beyond measure, and strong.

I hadn't known, back then. That this was no mere way of swimming through water, but a trace of the Hansu Clan left behind in my mother, its sole inheritor.

The Hansu Clan's inherited art, rooted in water qi, let one breathe with the whole body beneath the surface. And I, from childhood—from what my mother had taught me—was already a being in whom that art had been engraved throughout the body. It was the power that let me endure even inside the belly of an Ice Abyss Lizard steeped in cold of the highest degree.

And there was more.

Ordinarily, even swallowing two roots would have been more than my vessel could bear. But now it was different. The cold wrapped around my body cooled the ferocious heat of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the lightning qi and made more than that possible. The pure lightning qi required to complete the second stage of the great method was not merely sufficient. It overflowed.

Now. This was the perfect chance to advance into the second stage of the Heavenly Mortal Transformation Art.

I burst upward through the thick-frozen floor of ice.

I had been carried all the way to the small pond linked to the cliff I had descended. While I completed the great method, I must have flowed this far through the Ice Abyss Lizard I had entered. A thin hiss of cold still clung to the air. I stripped off the upper garment that had been reduced to rags and swept my wet hair back.

In the end, the appearance of the Ice Abyss Lizard had served as a fortuitous encounter. The effect was as if the beast had conceived me and carried me to term. Thanks to it, I had fed ten roots of Thunder Silver Azure Dragon Herb into the great method and achieved more than the result I had wanted.

Beneath the scorching noon sun. I could not tell how much time had passed, but the powerful energy writhing inside my body was unmistakable.

Measured against my own case, the Heavenly Mortal Transformation Art is completed across four stages, and these are called the Four Acts.

From that point on, I would have to decide which martial arts to learn, and how to train, according to whatever heavenly constitution the Heavenly Mortal Transformation Art had given me. Afterward, still other conditions would have to be met for Act Three.

Through Cheon Yu-wol, the Heavenly Demon who had been my lord, I had been permitted to read the records concerning the Heavenly Mortal Transformation Art, and I had gone through the accounts of every person who had undergone the great method. Among them, what I had quietly hoped the method might grant me were three physiques.

These three. Even from the records alone, they were heavenly constitutions bestowed by heaven.

Cheon Yu-wol's Beyond-the-Heavens Demonic God Body had been proof enough. That physique had been forged for destruction at its extreme. True qi and a body, meticulously stacked so that a single point of hardened qi might call forth ruin—truly worthy of being called a Demonic God. I knew it well. I had watched from her side.

I found myself wondering. And what of me?

If my potential was truly as exceptional as Cheon Yu-wol had claimed—enough to stand as her equal—then the heavenly constitution I had reached would be one of those physiques, or something fit to match them.

"She isn't the sort to speak in vain."

I sat upon the ice and set the inner energy gathered in my dantian into motion, examining my whole body in fine detail. How dense was the condensation of my true qi? When qi was released, was its edge keen or dull? How quickly did true qi accumulate in the dantian? What interaction existed between true qi and flesh? Was the structure of my blood vessels anything special?

Experience and knowledge stored across long years came alight. And the conclusion I reached was this.

"What in the world is this?"

Astonishingly, the heavenly constitution newly forged from the potential that had been sleeping was something I had never seen before.

Special heavenly constitutions ordinarily ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠carry special, powerful traits. A monstrous speed of qi accumulation. Muscle fibers dozens of times denser, so the flesh itself becomes a suit of armor. Or a destructive force set apart by the cohesion of true qi. I was no exception to that rule. Only, this was a special case I had never once encountered in the records.

Put in a single phrase: a powerful magnetic energy was flowing through every place the qi touched.

I could not yet say what influence that would bring to bear on me. One thing, however, was clear. The advantage of this body—the innate potential the Heavenly Demon had expected of me, added to the flesh—was this unidentified magnetic energy. And the water qi and lightning qi used in the great method had, in some fashion, shaped the forming of my heavenly constitution.

What remained was the question of which method I would choose to temper that magnetic energy.

"There isn't one among ordinary martial arts."

Yes. Finding an art suited to a peculiar heavenly constitution like the Magnetic Constitution was a distant hope. It did not so much as surface in a mind that had lived ninety years. So I had to change the way I thought.

Not a search for a tempering method fitted to the Magnetic Constitution, but a search for the case in which the Magnetic Constitution made up for a martial art's flaws. Entering the path of cultivation by each supplying what the other lacked.

"Then the matter becomes simple."

They possessed the supreme way of hegemony where raw destruction was concerned. And yet they were unstable in the handling of true qi, went so far as to damage muscle and blood vessels, and for that reason were far too easily laid open to qi deviation—forbidden arts of the worst kind, the sort that swept a man into madness. From among the names rising in my mind, I called up the demonic art counted the worst of the very worst.

Even heard in passing, it was a peerless art of overwhelming power. And no wonder. The founder of this demonic art was a madman who had vied with the First Heavenly Demon for the seat itself. He had devoted his life ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to one purpose alone: breaking the Heavenly Demon.

The problem was that the word destruction in that art embraced both the opponent and oneself. In the end, he too had annihilated himself.

But if it was the me of now—the me who had become a Magnetic Constitution—I might yet be able to turn this cursed demonic art into a divine one.

My thoughts were in order. It was time to recover the human-skin mask and go back.

If you have ever seen a drowned rat, it was probably something like this.

Seol-ha met me with her face twisted—me, returned half-naked, my hair a wild tangle made even worse as the water dried.

"How did you know to come here?"

Where I stood now was the guest room given to me by Gammok, superintendent of Mogwon.

"Young master, what... is this state you're in? And the human-skin mask is neat, of all things. I still can't get used to it, either."

"There's a great deal to say, but let's talk again after I've washed. I asked Gammok for clothes and bathwater. Meet me as a new man."

As I passed her, Seol-ha wrinkled her nose. Even she, it seemed, could not bring herself to forgive a stench of this degree.

Once I had scrubbed with all my strength, I looked reasonably human again. After throwing on the outer robe Gammok had procured, I sat down facing Seol-ha once more. The human-skin mask I had kept so carefully was, of course, already stuck firmly back in place. For now, it was still a shell I needed.

"The wood liquor here is excellent. Have you tried it? You ought to drink some before we leave. The yield is small, but the quality is outstanding. Once word gets out, people will be fighting over it."

"......"

Seol-ha was still staring holes through me without a word. I gave her a small smile.

"What is it you want to say?"

Only after a long while did she answer.

"You never said you were going to vanish like this, all of a sudden."

"Because ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you're hurt?"

"......"

"I'm sorry. I was in a hurry, so I moved without telling you first."

It was fair enough. Seven days and nights, she told me, had passed since I parted from my eldest brother, Geon-pyeong. Seol-ha had endured and waited, and in the end, unable to hold her worry down, she had come looking for me. Before that, of course, she had received an order from the Grand Madam to follow me.

"Still, there were results. And you came at just the right time."

"What do you mean?"

The trace of hurt had not yet left her face. At her question, I only grinned.

"Let's rest here a few more days before we go."

There's something I need to do with you.