Only Regret Remained
"Where in the world is this place...?"
"This—!"
My teeth ground together fit to crack, and the nails of my clenched fist bit into flesh until blood began to well. Nor was that the whole of it. My body was a map of wounds, one arm severed clean away, and yet I felt no physical pain. The anguish of looking upon the corpses of my disciples, lying all around me, was more than enough to scour every lesser hurt from my mind.
"Hyeon... Yul..."
Hyeon, who had always lifted the weariness from my heart with a smile as bright as sunlight, who had kept the air around us warm, had died in wretchedness—her head severed from her body. Yul, grown beyond her years and the one who had led the rest, had taken a blow that burst her upper body apart until not even her shape could be known.
"Seol... Cheong..."
Seol, who seemed unfeeling at a glance and yet had the smallest kindnesses steeped into her very bones, had been poisoned until tears, blood, and flesh could no longer be told apart. Her whole body had melted. Not even a fragment of the corpse could be gathered. And Cheong—the most spirited of them, adored by all, and audacious enough that her skill in medicine let her take her martial sisters to task, and me as well—had forced her inner energy in a desperate bid to save me, and died of qi deviation.
All of them were dead.
I had promised to protect them. I had failed.
If I had known it would come to this, I should have done nothing but soothe them. Trust this master, I should have said, and wait. If they would not be turned aside, I should have slipped away in secret, or bound them fast so they could not follow.
I had been arrogant.
I had founded the Heaven-Breaking Path, won myself the arrogant title of Heaven-Breaking Sword Saint, and risen even to the seat of Number One Under Heaven—and still I could not protect my own disciples.
I wanted, in that very moment, to bury the corpses that no longer held so much as a shape, and give them rest. I could not. The enemy stood before my eyes.
The root of all of it. The Heavenly Demon Divine Cult—a congregation of fanatics sworn to wash the world in blood and purify it in fire, and raise a world for none but their own. And the master of that cult: the greatest demon of all ages, a devil who called himself Heaven.
Cheon Ma. The Heavenly Demon.
At first I had not been particularly on my guard. The state religion was Taoism, and I thought few would put their faith in a creed like that. One could not cast a doctrine out merely for being extreme, and false religions of that sort sprang up by the dozens in a day and vanished just as quickly. I had assumed this one would do the same. In the beginning they had even gone about good works, the better to widen their influence, and so I had paid them still less mind.
The martial world of that age was not watching cults. It was too busy in a scramble of its own—how to take in more disciples, how to win a greater name, how to raise stronger masters. I had been no different.
But the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult—no. The Demon Cult rose all at once.
The moment they proclaimed that the Heavenly Demon of the age had descended, they began to slaughter, to devour human flesh, and to abduct commoners who were not of the martial world at all. And with that, the Heavenly Demon of whom the cultists had spoken showed himself. True to the name, he brought down Kunlun of the Nine Great Sects and the Sichuan Tang Clan of the Five Great Families single-handed, and made a spectacle of his power.
The emperor of the age took alarm and declared the Demon Cult a forbidden faith. The martial world, faced with an enemy of such might, resolved for the first time in its history to form an Alliance, and named as its leader the Number One Under Heaven—me.
I refused. I had disciples to raise. They persuaded me otherwise: if the Heavenly Demon was not taken now, the danger would pass beyond my disciples and swallow the world. I accepted. I became leader of the Heaven-Breaking Alliance, and under that name I put the cultists to the sword.
While the Nine Great Sects, the Five Great Families, and the lesser sects held the cultists back, I climbed the Hundred Thousand Mountains alone to take the Heavenly Demon. I believed then that I had completed the Heaven-Breaking Path, and that I held power to match it.
"Master, please take us with you."
"You've told us over and over, Master. There are things no one can do alone, so we have to join our strength."
"I'm not watching you walk off to die by yourself."
"If I'm not enough as a swordswoman, then I'll go as a physician."
But my dear disciples, afraid to let this unworthy master go alone, wished to follow.
"It is dangerous, so remain here. Stay quietly until this master returns, and I shall buy you sweets besides."
Even at that, they would not be left behind.
"What could possibly be dangerous, with you there, Master?"
"You said it yourself, Master. We are strong."
"I won't get in the way."
"If you won't take us, we'll follow anyway. Even if we have to force it."
I should have refused. Even if it meant roaring at them. Even if it meant binding them somewhere so they could not follow. Then, at the least, they would not have died so wretchedly.
"It will be dangerous. You may die. You may watch a comrade die before your eyes. Even so, will you follow?"
But I did not stop them. I trusted my own skill, and I trusted theirs.
"Yes!"
All four of them answered as one, and they were no different from me. And the result is the wretched reality before me now.
Only a month ago the mountain, chilling as it was, had still held a measure of grace. That grace was gone. Nothing remained to the eye but a red mist born of blood. The dense trees and grasses that ought to have laid a green fragrance on the wind had rotted, and left behind nothing but a black silence.
And yet Cheon Ma, even amid this terrible hellscape, looked at peace.
Death stood before his eyes, and still he watched me without a stir. The sight woke a strange feeling even in me, who prided myself on hating him more than any man in the Central Plains—no. More than any man in the world.
Heavenly Demon or not, he was human. One arm was gone. A hole the size of an infant's head had opened in his belly, so that one could see clear through to the other side, and the swords of my four disciples were buried in his flesh. He could not possibly be at peace.
Every one of them had given their life to bring that fiend to such a state. Even now the Heaven-Breaking Alliance was spending itself to keep the cultists from joining him, laying the ground beneath our feet so that my disciples and I might take him. Even those unorthodox bastards, if only to save their own hides, had done their part in killing cultists. On that foundation we had poured all we had into the clash with the Heavenly Demon, and the result was nothing more than mutual destruction.
Would my disciples be satisfied? Dead so wretchedly in this place, could they accept this outcome, content themselves with it, and close their eyes in peace?
"There is no way..."
I did not know what my four disciples had wished for. They had never told me. But each of them had said she carried a wish of her own, and that someday she wanted to fulfill it by her own strength.
The further I reached into the past, the harder regret and sorrow broke over me. But I had no choice but to master them. Cheon Ma was not yet dead.
Pitch-black demonic eyes fixed on me. Slowly, his mouth began to open.
"Heaven-Breaking Sword Saint..."
The name branded into my chest like a searing iron slipped from that fiend's lips.
"...Heaven-Breaking Sword Saint. To think you killed me. Remarkable—and a fool, both at once. Had you only returned alive, you might have spread the name of Heaven-Breaking across the world. And you gave up even your life."
"Silence."
I forced the word out, strangling the rage that threatened to overflow me. Cheon Ma did not so much as pretend to hear, and went on.
"You may pride yourself on it. Those wenches were of little help. Which is to say that killing me is your achievement alone."
"I told you to be silent!"
They were my disciples. They had sacrificed themselves for me, and they had done their part in killing him—my precious disciples, who would not have been outdone anywhere they went. It was loathsome enough that their names should so much as leave that devil bastard's mouth. And he dared dismiss their efforts, and tear them down?
I hid nothing of my rage, and began to walk toward him.
Cheon Ma was dying. Even as I came on with fury and killing intent laid utterly bare, he took no stance to attack, nor to defend. He accepted it, almost humbly. However his martial might might touch the heavens, however he might be the greatest demon of all ages, once the dantian was pierced and not only the limbs but the very organs cut through, he could not live. The words he spoke now were nothing more than a last testament before death.
And yet—why? For a man at the edge of death, his face was far too much at ease.
I watched that strange sight no longer. I began to lift my sword.
One step. And another.
To end this war, I limped toward Cheon Ma. Even watching me come, he still looked at peace.
"Heaven-Breaking Sword Saint. In the end, you have killed me."
"In the name of the Heavenly Demon, I acknowledge it. Your sword—the Heaven-Breaking Sword—is the greatest under heaven."
"And remember. Demons will return..."
A thunderous burst split the air, and something dropped with a dull, final thud. I brought my foot down on the skull of Cheon Ma—still watching me, those eyes still black—and burst it apart. With that severed neck, a period was put at last to a hellscape that had seemed as though it might last forever.
I had killed the Heavenly Demon. But a death I could not escape had begun to come for me as well.
The strength went out of my legs, and I fell. The arm that might have caught me had long since been torn of its muscle and would not move, and so I had no choice but to take the impact with my whole body. I lifted my face to the sky.
"I am sorry... I became your master, and I could not protect you. I cannot even bury a single corpse..."
What remained to me after killing the Heavenly Demon was not honor. Not power. Not glory. Only regret.
If I had pressed further along the martial way, could I have kept them? If I had not rested content as Number One Under Heaven, and had gone on walking the Heaven-Breaking Path, could I have saved them? No. I should never have brought them in the first place. I should have stopped them, whatever it took. Then they might have hated me. They would not have died.
Fresh thoughts, and regret without end, came down on me in a rush. It was a useless imagining. Even so, I wanted to save them—if only by imagining such things.
"I am... sorry."
My consciousness drew away, farther and farther.
And when I opened my eyes, I was somewhere I did not know.
"Where in the world is this place...?"