Golden Ring Immortal Realm, Master of the Eastern Forbidden Zone

Chapter 10.

A secret realm. The Golden Ring Immortal Realm. The law of that realm—the rule governing what may exist within it.

I had pieced together every inference drawn from the words the cultivators had let slip, and out of them forged a single certainty. The place where I was born: this place was the Golden Ring Immortal Realm. And the law here forbade any being of the Third Realm or higher from entering or leaving. Which meant the secret realm itself stood at Third Realm or above—and by the same token, no cultivator of Nine-Spirit rank or beyond could exist within it.

Granted, the orthodox immortal world had its old monsters who would forcibly suppress their own realms just to slip inside—but even that level, I could handle.

Even if such a being had come, it would find no freedom within the Silverfeather Desert's prohibition. So the right move was to cut them down before they broke through it completely. To me, the prohibition meant nothing; to them, it was poison itself.

My odds were more than good.

And to think I'd end up doing something Ingan-sirheo would actually approve of.

I slot a talisman between my fingers and chant a demon incantation. My step carries me through the Silverfeather Desert, the distance collapsing to a breath—and as the talisman leaves my fingertips, I draw my blade and sweep the heads from the cultivators' shoulders.

A few minutes before Gyo Ran launched her ambush.

There were those whose charge it was to guide the way through the prohibition known as the Silverfeather Desert of the Golden Ring Immortal Realm. The elder of the two was Geum of the Seo family; her twin younger sister, Hyeon. Seo Geum and Seo Hyeon—twin sisters born on the very same day, daughters of the rat demon clan.

For generations the Seo family had mastered the Demon Gate Dunjia, and their blood—known as the Celestial Blood—made them a lineage famed for finding paths through prohibitions and formations. Yet perhaps for that very reason, they had never commanded much power.

It was the fate of a guide. They knew the way, but it was always a road walked to lead someone else; never once could the Seo family walk a road of their own. Seo—the word meant rat. It was the limitation bred into their very nature.

That, too, was among the reasons the Seo twins had come seeking the Golden Ring Immortal Realm. For their cultivation, and for their family. If they could find the way into the realm and claim its opportunities, they believed they might yet pull the Seo family back from the brink of ruin.

"Sis! Do you really think we can do it?"

"We can. We're together, aren't we?"

And so Geum and Hyeon of the Seo family waited for hour and season to align, and sought out the secret realm that opened only on the day of the eclipse, when the Golden Ring rose. Even within that vast realm, their divination gave up a reading: an opportunity lay waiting at the easternmost edge. Through hardship upon hardship they reached this place—and at long last, they had found it. Their joy, however, was short-lived.

The Seo family had always been unlucky. They ran straight into a band of human cultivators—no, into ones who had secretly trailed the very path the sisters had found. And so, once again, the Seo family ended up showing someone the way. The twins, Second-Realm demons both, fought with everything they had, but holding out against a band that counted two Golden Core cultivators among it was never a real prospect. They were captured, and left an inch from death.

Then the Celestial Blood of the Seo line was discovered, and the sisters were made to lead the search for a path through the Silverfeather Desert's prohibition.

Wham—!

A boot between the shoulder blades sent Seo Geum pitching forward. Directly before her the dreadful Silverfeather Desert swayed and rippled, fluttering close enough to brush her face, and her bladder simply gave out.

"Haha! Look at this thing. A demon beast, pissing itself in fear of a prohibition!"

"Well, even a lowly beast knows to fear the prohibition, it seems. A mere Second-Realm demon, at that—the moment it touches that barrier, its soul will be snuffed out, barred from even the wheel of reincarnation."

"Sis!!"

"You there, girl! Hold still. If your sister is bled dry and dies, you'll be the one to take her place. Why else would we keep something so useful alive?"

Without a thread of color in her face, Seo Geum nodded—then, smothering the cold rage seething beneath, she spoke.

"I will do it."

"Sis..."

As the eldest daughter of the Seo family, Seo Geum was a fairy who bore that house's duties and burdens. Unlike her rather more freewheeling sister—and Seo Geum loved Hyeon's freedom. So she endured.

Wringing out her essence blood again and again, she found fleeting paths through the Silverfeather Desert. To an outside eye it might even have looked as though she were tearing the prohibition down, but in truth she only found hairline seams and widened them into a road. Even that alone was extraordinary—a Second-Realm fairy capable of such a thing. Without the mystic bloodline of a demon clan, it would have been outright impossible.

But Seo Geum's condition was, even at a glance, wretched. As time crawled by she turned whiter and whiter, her lips began to stain violet, and the hollows beneath her eyes darkened like those of a woman hours from death—and Seo Geum understood her fate perfectly well.

They were never going to let us live. Not me—and once I'm spent, they'll kill my sister too.

She herself was beyond hope. Too much essence blood had already left her. Her sister was another matter. If she could carve out a single moment's opening, then Hyeon alone might find her own road out of this place smothered in prohibition.

So she waited for her moment. The heart of the prohibition—the instant they reached the seam where it sealed shut before and behind.

"Seo Hyeon!!"

And that moment was now.

As though wringing out the very last of her strength, Seo Geum screamed. Scattering her demonic energy like a life she no longer needed, she brought the sect elders leading the disciples rushing to the fore.

"That demon bitch is up to something!"

Within that sliver of an opening, Seo Geum pressed her heart into her sister through her eyes alone. Live—someone has to. Live, get out of this place, and keep the Seo name breathing. Between twins, there are moments when the heart crosses over without a single word.

"Sis...!"

It's all right. They were never getting out of this prohibition-choked Silverfeather Desert anyway. Sealed fast before and behind, nowhere to run, they'll endure and endure against the ever-shifting barrier until it grinds them down and kills them. This is what I came here to do ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠from the very start. Never once did I mean to die opening a road for them.

Only one thing still sat heavy on her heart: her twin sister, Seo Hyeon. In the world of immortal cultivation, twins are a byword for misfortune. My lovely little sister. With this big sister going on ahead, brightness will find the road of your cultivation too.

While Seo Geum threw the prohibition into chaos, Seo Hyeon—tears brimming—wrung out her own essence blood and opened a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠way. So don't make that face. Right now, I feel lighter than I ever have. Death stood an arm's length away, and she had never once been this free. No family duty, no crushing weight of eldest daughter—nothing at all. Nothing but the sheer freedom of existing, savored to the very last. Really... it's far too brief.

A Golden Core cultivator's sword came flying at the hollowly smiling Seo Geum. She closed her eyes, slowly. Still—her sister would live. This much is enough... It had been a good life, for a demon.

"...?"

Something had gone wrong. A life that should have ended did not. The sword that should have cleaved her neck in two—no sound of it anywhere. Bewildered, she slit her eyes open.

"Huh?"

Before her, a fountain of blood was geysering skyward. And the head doing the spraying belonged, of all people, to the Golden Core cultivator. Through the haze of violet lightning, a young girl drifted into Seo Geum's sight—still a child, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠snow-white skin, silver hair tied back. But the pair of horns rising from her brow and her violet eyes proclaimed her a fairy.

A fairy who parts a Golden Core cultivator from his head in a single stroke... No ordinary existence—of that there was no doubt. And she had appeared, unmistakably, from inside the prohibition, from within the Silverfeather Desert's barrier as it surged and billowed in every direction. The implication was as clear as day. The master of this prohibition—or else a guardian of whatever lay at its heart.

"H-haha. Hahaha...!"

Dread and delight flooded Seo Geum in the same breath. She was a dead woman either way; if she had one regret, it was that she would die without watching these people die—and here it was, unfolding before her eyes. That her executioner should be so beautiful a being left nothing more to ask. Not a single grain of regret remained in her heart.

Flinging herself prostrate before the girl, Seo Geum declared:

"For the crime of daring to violate your forbidden domain, I beg you—exact whatever price you see fit."

The instant she bowed—

Shff.

Gyo Ran flicked the blood from her blade, let her gaze drift once, lazily, over her surroundings, and threw the talisman pinched between her fingers.

"The Smoke-Thunder Talisman...? No!! Everyone, get clear!!"

The moment the talisman loosed its uncanny demonic power in midair—

"Impossible... a mere Second-Realm talisman, with that kind of power? What in the world is a Smoke-Thunder Talisman?"

"Even I have only ever read of it in old tomes—a spirit talisman whose art was lost long ago. Forging one demands thunder qi of rarefied, singular purity, so no one has made them for ages. And a thing like that, in a demon's hands..."

Eight smoke-qi disciples and two curse-qi disciples were wiped out in the space of a single breath.

"Even for a thunder talisman, that was never a force it could produce—how in the world...!"

The elder's eyes shot wide. Where the talisman had flared, a nameless insect lay fallen, crawling about as though it had lost its wings—and it carried, beyond any shadow of doubt, the qi of the Smoke-Thunder. Could that be... a thunderwing bug? If so, the power explained itself. In any case, what remained was one Golden Core elder and two curse-qi disciples. Something, anything, had to be done.

"E-Elder..."

"What are we supposed to do..."

Perhaps because an elder and his disciples had been annihilated in the blink of an eye, terror brimmed full in the curse-qi disciples' eyes.

"Pull yourselves together. You were ambushed, that is all. One demon—nothing more. Answer calmly, and there is nothing we cannot overcome."

"But in a place like this... we can't even ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fight properly, can we?"

...The curse-qi disciple was right. They stood inside a prohibition that punished the slightest careless movement—while she crossed it as if it were her own front yard. Hadn't she appeared out of nowhere and taken a Golden Core elder's head in one stroke, then erased the smoke-qi disciples with a single talisman? The situation was beyond despair. Worse, she had already melted back into the prohibition. With no way of knowing where she was or where she would surface next, they were mice in a jar, plain and simple.

Judging by her speed and demonic power, she must have attained dual cultivation of Law and Body. And of all the arts in all the world, her main method had to be thunder qi—famed above all for its destructive might... A violet lightning qi he had never once laid eyes on; a single glimpse had been enough to tell him it carried demonic power far beyond the ordinary. Even in the heart of a Golden Core elder, the embers of fear began to roar.

Then it happened.

"GYAAAAAH!!"

One of the curse-qi disciples screamed.

"What is it now!"

The demon was nowhere to be seen.

"Th-the prohibition—it touched me!"

Faced with sudden mortal danger, his vigilance against the prohibition had thinned—and he had brushed against the Silverfeather Desert's barrier as it fluttered and shifted on the wind. The arm that had touched it: the right. But that alone was enough. Every vein in his body stood out as his vitality was siphoned away, his entire right arm blackening and rotting.

"The arm comes off—now!"

The elder knotted a dharma formula, a sword of spirit energy sprang into being, and in an instant the right arm fell away. But the true essence already lost would not return; the disciple gasped, eyes rolling white, teetering on the brink between life and death.

"Hahaha, hahahaha!! Serves you right, you humans!"

It was Seo Geum. Laughing in open delight even as she lay dying, she turned the Golden Core elder's face a blotchy red and blue.

"Damned wretch...!"

Just as his temper crested—

Schlick.

With a sound that turned the blood to ice, another curse-qi disciple crumpled. Only the blade itself had sprung from within the prohibition, and it had opened the disciple's throat.

Before the Golden Core elder could so much as blink, he found himself closing the eyes of the disciple whose head had rolled to a stop at his feet.

"May your next life treat you more kindly."

Snap—!

And with his own hands he severed the last breath of the armless disciple still rasping his way toward death.

"So be it. My cultivation ends here, in this place. I am Piseokdo, elder of the Ghost Path Sect! Nameless demon—what is your name! Surely you are not such a coward that you cannot even speak it!!"

The Golden Core elder, Piseokdo, drew a small pagoda from within his robes—his lifebound dharma treasure, the Four-Lotus Treasure Pagoda. It spun round and round in his palm, swelling steadily larger, and four lotus blossoms rose to cradle it and grew vast in turn. When he threw his head back and spewed forth his essence blood on top of it all, its aura surged to something monstrous.

"Kgh!"

A subtle, crushing weight spread across the whole area, swelling until it bore down on every living body. Seo Geum could hold out no longer; flattened against the ground, she felt as though the bones of her entire body were about to give way.

"Come out and face me, then! A demon too craven to give her name! If you mean to hide inside that prohibition your whole life and live like a rat, then by all means, stay there! You who won't even show your face to the parents who bore you or the master who raised you, you wretched—"

Then—

KUUUGU-GU-GU-GUNG.

Pzzt—.

A tiny flash of light skimmed past him.

"Wha—"

KWAAA-CRASH—.

The Silverfeather Desert's prohibition shattered and fell away. Between the tumbling shards of the Four-Lotus Treasure Pagoda, the elder's vision rocked wildly—and in that view toppling down into nothing, he saw her. A girl, blade in hand, wreathed in purple lightning. Like shards of glass falling beautifully, scattered sunlight glittered and broke apart. The instant his eyes met those of the fairy—eyes as mysterious as a half-remembered dream—her lips parted, just barely.

Her name—she who had shattered even the Silverfeather Desert's prohibition—was Gyo Ran. Of the Golden Ring Immortal Realm, she was the master of the Eastern Forbidden Zone.