The Creditor Has Come (3)
The door slammed shut behind me with a thunderous bang.
I had run away.
The Heavenly Demon—the one bearing the grandiose title of the strongest under the heavens—fleeing from the gaze of a mere twenty-year-old elder. It was laughable.
No. To be honest, it made me want to vomit.
Cold sweat slid down my spine, tracing an icy path along my vertebrae.
I staggered forward on unsteady legs.
Only after I had closed the door to the Cult Leader's Chambers did I finally release the breath I had been holding.
Nothing but a single sturdy wooden door stood between us, yet it felt as if I had fled into another world entirely.
My legs gave out. I collapsed right there on the spot.
The chill from the wooden floor seeped through my thin silk robes and into my skin.
But compared to the freezing energy already coiled around my body, it was nothing.
Someday, you know… that seat of the Heavenly Demon. It’s okay if I come to claim it, right?
Sowol’s voice from the garden earlier echoed in my ears like a hallucination.
That voice—youthful yet chilling.
Those words pressed down on me like heavy chains, binding me in place.
“Haa… Haa…”
My breathing grew ragged.
It wasn’t simply from fear.
Deep inside my body, from the dantian, an ominous sign was beginning to stir.
A Heart Demon.
The seizure that always came when the horrific memories of the past and the crushing guilt began to devour my mind.
When I was eighteen. The day I had forcibly shattered the wall of the Profound Realm by burning away my life force to kill that insane old man.
The realm I had attained while dancing on the threshold of death.
Behind the flattering title of the strongest under heaven lurked a terrible price.
My meridians had suffered permanent damage from that reckless breakthrough.
I usually suppressed it with my vast internal energy, but the moment my mind wavered and my emotions slipped beyond control, excruciating pain would swallow me whole.
“Ugh…!”
A pained groan leaked between my lips.
The cold energy that had begun in my dantian raced through my meridians and spread across my entire body in an instant.
It felt as if shards of ice were drifting through my blood.
My limbs stiffened. Every breath I drew felt like knives ripping through my lungs.
“Huk… Huuuk…!”
My vision blurred and spun.
I crawled across the floor toward the bed.
I needed medicine—pills to stabilize my qi and blood.
But my frozen fingers refused to obey.
Clatter.
I reached for the medicine bottle on the table and only managed to knock it over with my fingertips.
Crash—
The bottle shattered against the floor.
Black pills scattered everywhere among the shards.
“Ah…”
A despairing sigh escaped me.
I tried to reach out and gather the pills, but my body had already slipped beyond my control.
Thud.
I collapsed onto the cold wooden floor.
My breathing grew shallower.
The metallic stench of blood flooded my mouth.
I couldn’t hold back the hot lump surging up from within and vomited dark red blood onto the floor.
“Cough! Kugh…!”
My pure white hair soaked through with the crimson blood.
My vision slowly faded to black.
Was I going to die?
It felt absurd.
I was the one who had clawed and fought to survive in that hellish place until the very end.
For the sake of survival—only those two words—I had killed, betrayed my master, and climbed all the way to the throne of the Heavenly Demon.
Yet in the end, was I to die so meaninglessly, freezing to death alone in the corner of my room?
Of course I wanted to live.
I didn’t want to die yet.
But.
If it’s by Sowol’s hand…
If that child wished for it and I had to offer my life, I believed I could do so gladly.
Because I carried the sin.
Because I was the one who had shattered that child’s world.
So if someday Sowol drove a blade into my heart, I had already resigned myself to accepting it.
But to die so futilely at the hands of illness instead of the creditor of my sins—
“How pathetic… truly…”
A thin breath carried droplets of blood from the corner of my mouth.
My consciousness grew hazy. My eyelids felt as heavy as lead.
It was then.
Creak—
I sensed the door to the Cult Leader's Chambers opening with extreme care, without a sound.
Footsteps that had perfectly erased any presence.
Yet my senses had not fully shut down and caught the faint ripple.
Who was it? An assassin?
But in my current state, I didn’t even have the strength to turn my head and look.
“Cult Leader, are you asl…?”
A familiar voice brimming with mischief.
It was Sowol. After stirring up such chaos in the garden, why had she followed me straight into my chambers?
To wake me from sleep and remind me once again of that suffocating guilt? Or had she finally come to take my life?
Either way, it didn’t matter. If anything, I felt relieved.
Because I could see your face one last time.
“Huh…?”
The playful tone in Sowol’s voice cut off sharply.
She must have seen me collapsed on the floor, blood spilling from my mouth.
Thud.
Something fell weakly to the floor.
I couldn’t tell what it was.
And then, immediately—
“Cult Leader…?! Unnie! Open your eyes, Unnie!”
Sowol’s voice tore through the chambers like a scream.
For the first time—truly the first time—I felt raw terror and desperation radiating from her.
With a clatter of urgent footsteps, Sowol slid to my side.
“What is this… Why are your meridians so twisted! Why is your body like a block of ice!”
Her hands gripping my shoulders trembled faintly.
That arrogant, confident First Elder—that Cheon Sowol who had always toyed with me—was now in complete panic.
“Don’t die… Open your eyes, please! Shut up—just shut up and take my energy!”
Sowol shouted roughly as she pressed her hand against my dantian.
But my hopelessly tangled meridians violently repelled the incoming energy.
The yin energy that had escaped my control was pushing her power away.
“Ah, damn it… Seriously!”
Sowol bit her lip and spat a low curse.
Her usual composure was gone.
Rustle. Rustle.
The sound of silk being roughly stripped away.
Through my hazy vision, I saw her urgently tearing off her outer robe.
Then her rough hands dug into my collar.
Riiip—!
My top was mercilessly torn open.
“It’s going to be hot. Endure it.”
With those words, Sowol lowered her body onto mine.
Bare skin met bare skin without hesitation. Her scorching body heat poured directly into me.
Her full, soft breasts pressed tightly against my small, firm ones with no space left between us.
“Hng…”
A moan slipped from my lips before I could stop it.
With our dantians perfectly aligned, Sowol began forcing her yang energy into my body.
This was no simple transfer of internal energy.
It was a dangerous, intimate healing technique—aligning bodies completely, connecting acupoint to acupoint to forcibly open the blocked channels.
“Ugh… Uaaaah…!”
The lumps of ice clogging my meridians melted under her hot true qi, bringing unbearable agony with them.
The sensation that my entire body might explode.
To survive, or perhaps simply to endure the pain, I instinctively wrapped my arms around Sowol’s bare back.
My nails raked across her smooth skin, but she ignored it and pressed her body even harder against mine.
Our bodies clung together, slick with heat and sweat.
“Haa, huu… Just a little more… Don’t scatter your energy, Unnie!”
Sowol buried her face in the crook of my neck, breathing harshly.
Every time her hot breath brushed my skin, my whole body shivered.
As if trying to circulate the energy, she began rubbing my lower abdomen with firm strokes.
The explicit movement of that burning pelvis pressing against me.
The sensation was so unfamiliar and intense that, even through the horrible pain, my mind flashed white.
All I could hear were the wet, sticky sounds of friction and the ragged breaths we both let out.
How much time had passed?
The agonizing sensations that had felt like an eternity slowly began to recede.
The blocked meridians opened. Warm energy started flowing from my dantian once more.
I had barely stepped back from death’s door.
“Heuk… Haaauu…”
I lay on the floor, gasping for breath.
My entire body was drenched in sweat and blood. The exposed skin between the torn scraps of clothing was a mess.
Sowol, who had been steadying her breath on top of me, slowly raised her upper body.
Her black hair fell in disarray across my face.
I struggled to open my eyes and look at her.
The face that had lost all reason in panic only moments ago had vanished without a trace.
In its place was her usual cool, sadistic smile.
She gently wiped the blood from the corner of my mouth with her thumb.
But the emotion behind that touch was anything but tender.
“Who gave you permission to die?”
Sowol’s voice was low and dangerous.
She wrapped her fingers around my throat—lightly, yet with unmistakable threat.
“Your life belongs to me, Unnie. Even when you die, you die only after I allow it.”
Goosebumps erupted across my skin.
Ah. I had misunderstood.
The reason she had been so desperate to save me wasn’t because she feared losing me.
It was because she could not tolerate her carefully prepared revenge being ruined so meaninglessly.
She had forcibly seized my lifeline so she could drag me through an even longer, more terrible hell.
By shoving her energy deep into my meridians, she was declaring that she would control me completely.
“You need to answer, Cult Leader?”
Sowol whispered, gently biting my earlobe. At the same time, her hand around my throat tightened with dull pressure.
“Kuk…!”
My windpipe was crushed. I couldn’t breathe.
Her skin pressed against me once more, the choking pressure adding to it, and a strange chill mixed with an eerie thrill ran through my body.
The feeling that the power over my life and death had completely passed into her hands.
I felt both terror and a deformed sense of relief blooming in the corner of my heart as I struggled to nod.
“Cough… O-okay… I understand…”
Sowol smiled, bright and satisfied, and loosened her grip on my neck.
The weight of her body lying atop mine felt especially heavy and sweet today as it pressed me down.