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"......."
The middle-aged man in the gray bamboo hat lay still on a wooden chair. On a white-sand beach with waves lapping, he soaked up the sun, naked except for pants that reached his thighs.
Twitch.
Beside him, a bamboo rod stuck in the sand quivered. The middle-aged man immediately rose and grabbed the bamboo.
"Good."
He gently grasped the handle of the bamboo. At its tip dangled a transparent thread.
"Got a bite...."
Slowly, he pulled the bamboo, then released it. Over an hour, he repeated pulling and releasing, and soon the bamboo's movement became one with the waves and the water.
And the moment the thread pulled taut—
"Hnng!!"
The middle-aged man yanked the bamboo back with rough force.
Splashhh----!!
Amid a great surge of water, something burst from the surface. An eight-tentacled fish, its body smooth and its eight legs as large as a child's, flew out: an Eight-Tentacled Fish.
Pshooosh!!
The Eight-Tentacled Fish, sent rolling across the white sand, spat a black fluid at the middle-aged man. He deflected the ink with his hat, then cut his own finger with a small knife and flicked his hand at the fish.
Thuk.
The blood that shot from his hand pierced the fish's body. The fish, impaled by a droplet smaller than a needle's eye, convulsed briefly, then went limp.
"A trophy catch."
Chuckling, the middle-aged man hefted the fish and placed it on a wooden platform a short distance from the beach. After rinsing off the sand with several splashes of water, he gripped the small knife.
Stab--!
He stabbed the fish's head with practiced hands and dressed it. Then he lifted the lustrous object that popped out from inside, roughly the size of a child's head.
"Oh."
It was the inner core of the Eight-Tentacled Fish. Its sheer size alone rivaled a spirit creature, and the fish's inner core was comparable even to those of the Solar Fire Carp or the Human Face Spider.
And that inner core—
"Damn thing, not even edible."
He flung it.
The middle-aged man tossed it toward the sea. Even thrown lightly, it flew so far one might think it would reach the horizon, and soon the nearby water turned the color of blood.
"Hehehe."
With the inner core out, the middle-aged man carved large chunks from the fish's legs. In his hand, a sword aura dyed crimson was honed to a fine edge.
"Still, since it had an inner core, the flesh is firm."
Thwack, thwack, thwack!
After chopping the legs of the Eight-Tentacled Fish with the sword aura, he immediately coated the pieces in a mixed powder. Then he lit a fire under a pot of oil beside him and plunged the fish pieces inside.
Sizzle, sizzle.
The fish began to fry with a pleasing sound. The middle-aged man took out two wine cups and a bottle, placed them on the platform, and filled the cups to the brim.
"This is what living's all about. Heh heh."
Humming a tune, he scooped out the fried pieces. He produced a thick, blood-red sauce, dipped a leg of the eight-tentacled fish—well-drained of oil—deep into it, and put it in his mouth.
"Hahk."
The steam made him blow puffs of air to cool it. Even so, he never considered spitting it out; he crunched down and swallowed a big bite.
"......Whoa, good."
He picked up one cup. He clinked it against the unclaimed cup, then raised it toward the red-glowing sun beyond the horizon.
"To the happy days gone by, to a pleasant day today. And...."
He downed the drink in one gulp.
"......to a brilliant tomorrow. Cheers."
* * *
Yunnan.
Throughout the Central Plains' history, Yunnan has rarely drawn their gaze.
Even Sichuan, which lies above Yunnan, has been little more than a frontier in the annals of the Central Plains, save for a single exception.
With its rugged mountains and a climate far too humid for Central Plains folk to endure, some even call those who live in Yunnan 'barbarians.'
If Yunnan ever briefly caught the Central Plains' attention, it was only long ago, when Zhuge Liang conquered Nanman, wasn't it?
So much so that Yunnan is a land forgotten by people.
And because it is forgotten, many take advantage of that to hide themselves here.
Crack!
A ruffian lunged from behind a tree, and Lee Si-a drove a palm strike straight into his chin. The Heavenly Demon Divine Palm shattering his jawbone was somewhat excessive, but one look at the man's attire would make anyone want to kill him.
"Guh, guhak...!"
The ruffian wore a deer's skull pulled over his head and nothing below the waist except underwear over a fairly robust, heavily tattooed body. Lee Si-a then buried her fist into the attacker's solar plexus and sent him flying outright.
"Ugh, I really hate this."
Lee Si-a shook off the fist that had struck his solar plexus. Some strange oil clung to her hand, and I lightly activated the Zhongli Divine Fire Well, burning it away.
Kyaaah!!
The attackers who had been prowling around us, watching for a chance, shrieked at the flame that sprang onto Lee Si-a's hand and fled.
The dense forest provided cover, but they protected their bodies by oiling their bare skin. Fire would catch easily; if they were unlucky and caught fire, there wouldn't even be corpses to collect.
"Did we come all this way for nothing?"
"It's a place worth visiting at least once in your life. And thanks to me, you aren't dying of heat, are you?"
"Yeah. If not for these clothes and the Ice White Divine Art, I'd have been steamed to death by now."
Lee Si-a had already shed the outer robe of her Moon Woman attire entirely. Bare arms and legs exposed, old folks from the Central Plains might call it "indecent," but they'd be the first to shed their long robes if they came here.
"It's so hot here!!"
Yunnan is a hot region. Not merely hot, but humid. Before she could become overheated, I stroked her head with a hand wrapped in the Ice White Divine Art.
"That's exactly why Central Plains people can't easily settle here. It's not easy to adapt to the environment."
"If you hid here, no one would ever find you. How can people even live like this?"
"People are creatures of adaptation. If you were born here and had to live your whole life here, you'd have no choice but to accept nature and live with it."
Hot when it's hot, cold when it's cold.
"Still, as murim warriors, we can use internal energy to regulate our body temperature, can't we?"
"Even so, it's fundamentally too hot and humid. Are you sure that man is really in a place like this?"
"Of course."
We came all the way down to Yunnan to find him.
"Wasn't it you, Lee Si-a, who first said the Mad Demon was in the south?"
"I never imagined it would be in a place like this!"
"Haha, did you think Hainan was the furthest it could be?"
"But they at least have the Hainan Sect there. I heard it's a place where people actually live!"
"People live here too... heh heh, that was a joke."
I reined myself in before Lee Si-a could get angrier.
Did Lee Si-a know that beyond this jungle lay an ocean even vaster than the Central Plains, with just as many people?
I'd never been there myself, but since the Blood Cult Leader had said so, it couldn't be wrong.
"Once we get out of this jungle, we'll find a real city. It'll still be a bit hot, but it should be comparable to any mid-sized city in the Central Plains."
"......Annam?"
"That's right. A place where the Annam Protectorate was established back in the Tang dynasty. That is where... the Mad Demon should be."
Most likely.
"It's not that I don't believe you, but I heard the Mad Demon lives on Hainan. I was told he controls the Hainan Sect from behind the scenes. Is that not true?"
"It is true. The Hainan Sect was brought to ruin, allowing Kongtong Sect a place among the Nine Sects and One Gang, and the Hainan Sect is now essentially a Demonic Cult force with only a token foothold in the White Path."
In reality, not the Demonic Cult, but the Blood Cult.
"Have you ever seen the Mad Demon yourself?"
"...No. My father said he personally named someone he once fought in his active years. So the people of the Demonic Cult don't really know what kind of person the Mad Demon is."
"That's right. There are countless people calling themselves the Mad Demon, but none of them were personally appointed by the Heavenly Demon."
The Heavenly Demon let the many Mad Demon impostors be. In hopes that the Mad Demon might hear the talk, grow furious, and charge all the way to Heavenly Mountain, he ignored the madness of the cult's many lunatics.
"Do you know why the Mad Demon is called the Mad Demon?"
"Isn't it because he went mad from complete demonization?"
"No. It's because the Mad Demon's words and deeds make everyone around him call him 'mad.'"
A man the Central Plains Murim cannot handle. A man whose thoughts and common sense the Central Plains cannot accept. And so, a man who eventually left the Central Plains of his own accord.
"The emperor and the slave are the same person; all people are equal (All People Equal)."
At my words, Lee Si-a's expression grew pensive. If someone overheard me and reported it to the government office, they would arrest me for treasonous conspiracy, and it wouldn't be strange to have my head cut off.
"Doesn't it sound crazy?"
"...No way?"
"Exactly. I hear it was the Mad Demon's favorite saying."
Though I only heard it secondhand.
"Let's go. Let's meet this Mad Demon."
"...I'm starting to think bringing up the Mad Demon's daughter was a bad idea."
"Fufu, don't worry. We aren't going to fight."
I have no intention of fighting the Mad Demon.
"I'll decide after I see the Mad Demon's daughter, but for now I have no intention of violating her."
"......Are you insane?"
Ultimately, I got called crazy myself.
* * *
Kyaaah!!
Under the sea.
The fish that lived near the shore rejoiced. The predator that had ruled these waters—a spirit creature that devoured dozens of victims a day to swell its size—had been yanked out of the water the instant it swallowed an inner core.
The thing with eight legs that had been snatching and killing them suddenly leaped out of the water, and the sea fish danced with joy.
But the celebration was short-lived.
With a plop, a war broke out among the fish.
—The prey dropped an inner core!
The sharp tang of blood stinging their noses and the surging yang energy were irresistible. Even if it meant ramming each other, shredding scales, or having swim bladders torn out, they could not pass up the inner core.
Crunch!
A fish smaller than a human hand swallowed the inner core. Then the surrounding sea fish began fleeing in panic.
Skreeek!!
The fish that had swallowed the inner core darted about at high speed, skewering the bodies of the other fish. Its mouth, darting like an arrow, began to sharpen like a barbed spear, and every time it devoured a creature around it, its body swelled rapidly.
The sight of the rapidly mutating fish could only be called a bizarre phenomenon. After devouring everything nearby, the fish fixed its gaze above the water.
It sensed a human silhouette. Someone who looked entirely powerless was outside. The fish circled the shallows, then powerfully launched itself toward the shore.
"Huh?"
The human was defenseless. He had no shirt on, and merely stared blankly at the fish without reacting in the slightest. The fish instinctively aimed for the human's vitals—his heart.
And then—
"How dare you."
Slice.
Along with a red trajectory, the sea fish's field of vision split in two.
* * *
The monster fish's carcass rolled across the white sand. A red-haired woman plunged a pale hand into the fish's innards as they spilled out and fished something free.
Rinse, rinse.
The woman calmly washed the inner core in seawater. The gleaming, iridescent inner core had shrunk considerably from the size it had been before entering the water.
"Don't carelessly discard inner cores, Cult Leader."
The woman thrust the inner core toward the middle-aged man. It was a gesture of protest, but he only smiled and drank more wine.
"I'm not the Cult Leader. Where do you get off trying to brand me as some cultish figure?"
"Don't play games."
"It's not a game. Tch."
The middle-aged man clicked his tongue and chewed his fried food heartily. The woman scowled fiercely at the corpse of the Eight-Tentacled Fish being dismantled by his blood-red sword aura.
"You're eating weird things again?"
"What do you mean, weird? This is delicious."
"Eat something suitable for a human being."
"Oh? Come here. Come and take a bite."
"Ugh...!"
The middle-aged man picked up a piece of fried fish with the chopsticks he had been eating from. The woman's expression crinkled deeply—
"It's an order from the Cult Leader."
"But you just said you aren't the Cult Leader."
"Oh."
Under the stern command of the middle-aged man who issued orders however he pleased, the woman reluctantly opened her mouth.
"......."
"Good, right?"
Chew, chew. With a complicated face, the woman chewed and swallowed.
"Spirit creatures are living things, too. Especially the big ones—they have lots of edible flesh, so they're great."
"But you threw away the most important part, the inner core."
"If I throw it into the sea, another creature will fatten up and come back. Do you know why we release baby fish? It's not mercy. It's to let them put on more flesh in the ocean so they'll return even more delicious."
"Sigh. If you keep saying things like that, isn't that why people keep whispering that you're mad?"
"Hahaha, I'm living in a white house on the hill, you know!"
The woman shut her eyes. Everything else was fine, but she simply could not bear the incomprehensible things that kept coming out of his mouth.
"So, what brings our Hainan Sect Leader all the way from distant Hainan to visit this humble villager?"
"The Demonic Cult's Little Princess is heading this way."
"......?"
The middle-aged man cocked his head.
"Alone?"
"No. ...That man, the one who severed our reach when we tried to take root in the Paeng Clan. The one you ordered us to keep a close eye on."
"......Hoh."
The middle-aged man raised his cup with an intrigued eye.
"I'm not sure why the man who raped every single Moon Woman candidate would think of coming directly to the Blood Cult, but... I can roughly guess. Gyu-ryeong."
"Yes, Cult Leader."
"Inform the underlings. Don't try anything funny; if by chance they get captured, bring them straight here. ...Hmm, first, you should change how you address me."
The middle-aged man fiddled with the empty wine cup.
"Call me the Mad Demon."
"Yes, Cult Leader. ......Lord Mad Demon."
"......."