The Poisonous Creature Called the Heavenly Demon
I had my own reasons for believing that woman was a Heavenly Demon from a parallel world.
This world was simply a different dimension from Murim.
If this place was Earth-1, then Murim was more like Earth-3, maybe?
It wasn't just the total absence of internal energy — even the historical facts themselves were different.
The nation that had ruled the Central Plains back then was the Kingdom of Jun, and a place called Haedong occupied the Korean peninsula.
Even a country with no interest in history would know at least that much.
Because in my past life, I'd never heard of either of them.
No — now is not the time to be thinking about that.
The truth was, whether that woman was a parallel-world Heavenly Demon or a reincarnated one didn't matter all that much.
The real problem was that the woman radiating Heavenly Demon aura was currently approaching me.
Denim hot pants, a white t-shirt, and some unidentifiable, aggressively orange jumper.
On her feet, deep ivory-colored work boots.
Even this rather free-spirited outfit, worn by Cheon Yua, absolutely blazed to life.
God, she was filthy pretty.
The Heavenly Demon's beauty had been famous even back in Murim.
Even the old fossil elders of the Orthodox Sects never denied the fact that the Heavenly Demon was a beauty.
You could tell just from the epithets attached to her name — seductress, bewitching temptress.
Confined strictly to looks, those were practically rave reviews, in their way.
It said something, too, that in a Murim that unconsciously looked down on foreigners of the Western Regions, a blonde, blue-eyed Heavenly Demon still ranked among the Five Great Beauties.
Before the Heavenly Demon's beauty, even the differences between races became meaningless.
"Damn it. Thinking about the past is pissing me off all over again."
Because the Heavenly Demon was such a beauty, the young masters of the prestigious Orthodox sects lost quite a few nights of sleep over her.
Within the Demonic Cult, the position of Heavenly Demon's Consort — the husband of a female Heavenly Demon — held no real power whatsoever, so it wasn't exactly an appealing post, but for the sole reason that he'd be the Heavenly Demon's partner, its value shot up like a dog on a winning streak.
To some extent, I understood the sentiment.
What else is life for, really?
Someone at the Heavenly Demon's level was a once-in-an-age beauty worth dedicating your life to.
But the Heavenly Demon chose no one.
The only man she kept at her side was me, her companion wandering the Central Plains.
Perhaps because of that, throughout my entire time living in the Demonic Cult, I was worn ragged under mountains of jealousy.
And honestly, on this particular point, I'd been wronged.
It wasn't as if she dragged me around because she liked me.
Most people in the Demonic Cult had skulls so thick they simply didn't bother thinking.
That was a slightly different problem from being stupid — their martial arts were simply so overwhelming that they never saw the need to reason when they could just crush things with raw force.
Meaning their ability to respond flexibly to any given situation was catastrophically lacking.
On top of that, they were all Heavenly Demon-crazed fanatics, so if the Heavenly Demon did something absurd, not a single soul would try to stop her.
Take one of those cult warriors out into the Central Plains?
They'd be spotted instantly, and the Orthodox Sects would launch their Heaven-Net Earth-Trap campaign on the spot.
Which meant the Heavenly Demon took only me along because the cult brought it on themselves. That was all.
But life, of course, is never reasonable.
Even after I'd laid the situation out step by step, not one of them understood.
And since the Heavenly Demon herself maintained complete silence on the matter of why she kept me around, there was no one to speak up in my defense.
Under those circumstances, I suffered quite a bit.
The spear soldiers holding emergency summits and formal assemblies on top of my bedroll? Daily routine.
Whenever the Poison Demon Pavilion developed a new product, clinical trials inevitably began on my dinner table.
There was even a vile conspiracy going around of burying the Secret Demon Pavilion in mission overload, trying to work me to death.
All of it, every last bit of it, because of the Heavenly Demon.
"Yeah, that thing is a hazardous animal. The Heavenly Demon. Just thinking about it gives me chills..."
Granted, it was the Heavenly Demon who put me through Complete Body Reconstruction, but I wasn't particularly grateful.
That, too, turned out to be her sinister scheme to squeeze every last drop of labor out of me.
To me, the Heavenly Demon was nothing more than a piece of traaaash that happened to be insanely gorgeous.
"Hello, Teacher. I'm Cheon Yua."
"Baek Si-woo, at your service."
While I'd been lost in old memories, Cheon Yua had marched right up and extended her hand to me.
Damn it — I almost dropped to one knee and clasped it with both hands on pure reflex.
This cursed slave reflex, seriously...
I'd wondered why a top actress who'd finished filming hadn't left yet, and it turned out she really had come looking for me.
What on earth is this?
Sensing something was off, I quietly observed Cheon Yua's every move.
Even after only a brief exchange of greetings, it became all the more certain that Cheon Yua was not that Heavenly Demon.
If she were, there's no way she would have shown no reaction whatsoever upon hearing my name.
Besides, my current face was none other than the Medicine Immortal.
A mysterious Orthodox master whose existence the Heavenly Demon could not possibly have failed to know.
What's more, in the critical moment just before my cover was blown once, I'd made an emergency disguise escape as the Medicine Immortal traveling with his granddaughter — so the Heavenly Demon knew this face intimately.
Pretending not to recognize me while knowing full well was behavior utterly inconceivable from that Heavenly Demon, so it seemed confirmed: Cheon Yua was not her.
"Would it be all right if I observed your performance for a while? I'd like to learn from the kind of deep acting my seniors spoke so highly of."
"Heh heh. I only worry I'll end up disappointing you."
"Oh, come now. As if that could happen."
So that's how it was.
I'd been wondering what Cheon Yua's deal was, and apparently some of the mid-career actors had been talking about me.
Probably because of the script reading, right?
Once you've racked up a decade or so of acting experience, you can gauge an opponent's skill(?) to some degree even through a reading — and if a veteran actor they'd never seen before looked seriously formidable, they'd be a little startled on their end.
And the story reaching Cheon Yua's ears was what sparked her curiosity about me.
Well, this is awkward. What a burden.
She wasn't the Heavenly Demon I knew, true, but having a person who looked every inch the Heavenly Demon watching my every move made me tense up and wear myself out for no good reason.
PTSD? Trauma? Whatever you want to call it, one thing was certain — I did not enjoy it.
So is that woman a Heavenly Demon even so?
Either way, this-year-that-year, when it came to exhausting people, no one could touch her.
"Mr. Baek Si-woo, then we'll begin filming. Ms. Seo-eun, please get ready as well."
"Understood, PD-nim."
It was admittedly uncomfortable, but I had no grounds to refuse letting her observe my acting.
If I were genuinely a veteran actor, that would be one thing — but in truth, I was a rookie actor, not a veteran at all.
Had the production side wanted to cut her off, maybe things would be different, but PD Yoo was smiling ear to ear, practically encouraging it.
He probably wanted the title of the PD who even charmed Cheon Yua.
In a situation like this, what could I do?
All I could do was soothe my churning stomach and throw myself into the role.
This whole affair had cemented my conviction once more.
The Heavenly Demon is a creature hazardous to my health.
Vowing never to entangle myself with a Heavenly Demon in this world, absolutely never, I dissolved into my character.
*** (Cheon Yua)
When had it started?
Cheon Yua had been plagued by nightmares.
Terrible nightmares in which, dressed in strange martial robes and wielding a single sword, she slaughtered people by the score.
Kill, kill, kill, kill.
She killed so many people they could not be counted, painted the whole world red with blood, and then the Cheon Yua inside the dream would burst into mad, shrieking laughter.
Mad laughter — or perhaps a grieving, anguished wail saturated with pain.
Even though it was only a dream, that feeling alone was unbearably vivid.
When a deep nihilism, a crushing helplessness, and a hollow emptiness cinched tight around her chest, her heart grew so suffocated it felt as though she might truly die.
And on the mornings after those nightmares, she was so drained she couldn't do anything at all.
This was dozens of times more tormenting and painful than even that curse that struck her once a month.
In the old days, even when the nightmares came, she had somehow managed to keep her acting career going.
Their frequency had been no more than once or twice a month.
Of course it was agonizing enough to die from, but she'd gritted her teeth and endured, telling herself she only had to get through this much.
But the past year had been a continuous descent into hell.
The nightmares came without warning, again and again, until life itself didn't feel like living.
When nearly half of every month was ruled by nightmares, how was anyone supposed to endure it?
Naturally, her acting had ground to a halt.
The year that everyone assumed had been her sabbatical was, in truth, a period when the nightmares made acting impossible.
She had tried everything, of course, in search of a cure.
Psychiatric counseling went without saying, and — humiliating as it was to admit — she had even leaned on folk shamanism.
But nothing worked, and her heart only grew heavier.
"So? What did you find out?"
"Yes, my lady. However..."
"However, what?"
"We investigated every theater company in the country, and not a single person had ever heard of a veteran actor named Baek Si-woo."
"Then what is he? Working overseas?"
"On that point..."
"Ha. Fine. PD Yoo still hasn't responded, has he?"
"No, my lady. He only said we'd know in time."
"Why can't they understand that even that time is precious to me? I suppose I can't blame them for not knowing my circumstances."
It was the day she took a cameo role in PD Yoo's drama as a way of lifting her spirits.
That was when Cheon Yua experienced something strange.
The veteran actor she'd met on set — Baek Si-woo — appeared in her dream.
His hand stroking her hair as though he were her own grandfather had been so warm and gentle, and she woke in better condition than usual, as if she'd finally slept deeply.
This was a truly momentous thing.
It was the first time since the nightmares began that she'd dreamed of anything other than them.
Left as she was, it was a miraculous change that had arrived just before both her career and her life itself collapsed entirely.
It was only natural that even someone as composed as Cheon Yua couldn't keep her cool.
Baek Si-woo might well be the one and only being who could end her nightmares.
But the man's identity remained shrouded in fog, and even PD Yoo — the only person who knew how to reach Baek Si-woo — was holding his tongue.
"We must find him."
"Would it not be faster to simply go to the set yourself?"
"True. That would be the quickest and surest way. But..."
There was, in fact, a very simple solution.
The drama was still filming, and Baek Si-woo, being an actor, would show up on set one way or another.
If she went to the set herself, meeting him would be no difficult task.
"I have this feeling that we absolutely must not do that."
"Hmm... A difficult position."
"It is, isn't it. A genuinely difficult one."
"But your premonitions, my lady, have an accuracy rate that borders on prophecy."
"Which is exactly why you should think of another way."
The problem was that Cheon Yua's instincts were telling her that going about it that way would end in ruin. Unconditionally.
Cheon Yua had always had sharp instincts, and she relied on her feelings considerably — every project she'd chosen by instinct had been a success, which only reinforced the habit.
But now her intuition was warning her, in no uncertain terms, to never meet Baek Si-woo — and so she couldn't take the easy road.
"For now, I suggest we observe the situation a little longer. PD Yoo said only that he needed time — never that he wouldn't share information."
"Hoo. Fine."
"And beyond that, there should be a proper vetting process for this Baek Si-woo, shouldn't there?"
"Vetting..."
"At minimum, we need to know what manner of man he is before we can make any plans."
"Very well. I'll wait a little longer. I'm counting on you, Secretary Ju."
"Yes, understood."
From Secretary Ju's perspective, this Baek Si-woo was a strange one as well.
Slipping out from under their surveillance tails as if he'd sensed them like a ghost was suspicious enough on its own.
They'd learned he commuted in an assistant director's van, but then he would vanish like a phantom the moment he left — they hadn't even managed to confirm where he lived.
Introducing someone this suspect to her lady was out of the question, which meant they needed time as well.
Since strong-arm methods were not an option, all they could do was a background investigation.
Secretary Ju fully intended to squeeze every scrap of information about Baek Si-woo out of the world.
And once everything became clear...
"Then we'll spring the noose."
And so, in a place Baek Si-woo knew nothing about, a strange scheme was quietly taking shape.
Had he known, it was exactly the kind of scheme that would have made him click his tongue and mutter, 'Ah, right — this is not how a Heavenly Demon does things, is it?'