The Ghost Gate

Bonjwa. The Blood Demon, Cheon Yujin.

When I opened my eyes, I was lying in a hospital room inside Rachel Lee's research institute. The crown of my head hurt. It hurt quite a lot.

"Ugh…."

Throbbing.

Was it just a headache? Except the pain felt less like something deep inside my skull and more like something on the outside. I raised a finger and prodded the aching crown of my head.

"Hnggya, hnggyagagagh, my head, my heeaaad…! My head's, split, split opennn…!"

What inhuman agony was this! My head had clearly been split open. Short of a critical wound bad enough for my brains to spill out, how could any pain be this inhuman…! I couldn't feel any stitch marks, but it had obviously been cleaved apart and sewn back together with a monstrous number of stitches!

Just as I was about to tumble off the pristine white hospital bed, wailing, and roll straight onto the floor, my eyes met Rachel's dead-on, her blue gaze fixed on me and her brow furrowed in sheer disbelief.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"Um, Cheon Yujin? That's just an ordinary bump. Could you maybe not overreact…?"

"Ah. Ahh."

Awkward.

Mortified, I scratched the back of my neck and meekly climbed back onto the bed. Hm. So it was just a bump. Hearing that, somehow it didn't hurt all that much anymore…. Still, every time I prodded it, a sharp sting shot through me, and this wretched body of mine leaked a tear or two in spite of itself.

"Your condition is perfectly normal, so there's really no need to worry." Rachel, white coat over her shoulders, shrugged and went on. "That nosebleed had Se-ah raising such a fuss, insisting you must have taken some terrible hit to the head, that I ran a full workup. And, well… it turned out to be a kind of overexertion."

"O-over… exertion…?"

"Yeah, 'overexertion' about sums it up. Push yourself too hard and sometimes your nose bleeds, you know? Though bleeding from nothing more than a run is a little remarkable."

Honestly, this body. Granted, the nosebleed hadn't actually come from the running alone, but this body's frailty was, truly, the stuff of legend….

"Mmm, and…." Rachel, who had been explaining in the same easy, unhurried tone as when we'd last met, went briefly rigid. As if hesitating over something, the finger she'd tucked into her coat pocket tapped out a faint rhythm. Then, hunching her shoulders almost imperceptibly, she spoke. "Um, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Cheon Yujin?"

"……?"

"This is just in case, but when the nosebleed happened… aside from the bump… did you have any pain inside your head, or a bad fever… anything like that?"

"A fever…?"

Why was she asking this? Had the season of medical examinations returned for a second round…! I shook my head for my very life, whipping it back and forth until my hair stood in wild tangles. My crown already ached from the bump; submitting to another workup was absolutely out of the question!

"It never, ever happened…!"

"Really? Then that's a genuine relief." Rachel exhaled, a clear smile settling on her lips. For a doctor relieved to hear her patient wasn't sick, it was a bit much.

Blood was the symbol of life itself. To temper one's blood was to temper a yang energy, hot as flame, within the body's very veins. The Forged Blood Art would be heating this body up plenty in the days to come. But since that wasn't something about to happen inside me this very moment, I decided there was no pressing need to mention it. What if I spoke up and she came lunging at me demanding more tests…!

Just then, from the corridor beyond the room, the sound of someone barreling toward us reached my ears, crashing and clattering the whole way.

Rrrrk, BANG!

The door flew open as if it would break clean off its hinges.

"O… Oppa!!!"

And immediately after that.

Se-ah yelled at me, scolded me, snapped at me, threw a fit, and even seized me by the hair and shook me, but in the end she wound up clinging to me, bawling her eyes out and apologizing through the tears. Not the composed front she had worn for the past ten years, but the crybaby Cheon Se-ah I remembered: the girl who used to trail after her oppa, eyes welling up at the slightest thing. Ridiculously enough, only after seeing that crybaby Se-ah of my memories, a full month after returning to my homeland, did I finally feel like I had truly come home.

"So, when can I be discharged…."

"Absolutely not for the time being!"

And so, despite being perfectly healthy, I spent the next several days confined to the hospital room. Though even I had to admit the stay served some purpose. Because….

"My memories are hazy…."

The gate's rampage. Everything up to that point I remembered with perfect clarity. But from the moment of the rampage onward, after I saw the star of transcendence, something about my memories felt smudged. My spirit had transcended the flesh, yet the instant that moment ended, it seemed to have been thrown back into the body's shackles and dragged along in the flesh's wake.

I had gleefully beaten someone to a pulp. I had exchanged words with Namgung Ye-rin for a while. Memories like those remained. But those moments felt like something out of a dream; no matter how hard I tried to recall them, parts of them stayed blurred. Above all: I distinctly remembered merrily pummeling some Kang Mu-jin or other, so why on earth was there a lump on my head…? Try as I might, the final moments simply would not surface.

"Oh, the bump on your head? I asked Ye-rin about it right afterward. She said Kang Mu-jin hit you."

"Ye-rin…?"

"The wonderful hunter who saved your oppa twice, remember? We've decided to be sisters now."

"I-is that so…."

Was that how it went? So that was what had happened. Kang Mu-jin. So it was you after all…! With Se-ah saying it, it did feel like that must be the truth of it, since my last memory was, after all, the moment I had left Kang Mu-jin behind and struck up some conversation with Namgung Ye-rin.

You wretch, Kang Mu-jin. Like the petty orthodox small-fry you were, master of nothing but flimsy orthodox techniques, you couldn't stomach defeat, so you ambushed me from behind, is that it?!

And Namgung Ye-rin. I had taken her for a lapdog of the orthodox faction, but at this point I might as well recognize her as an honorary unorthodox-faction member. She had bought me macarons and shielded me while I was unconscious; it was time, perhaps, to strike her name from my kill list….

Throb.

"Owie…!"

The instant I thought it, the bump gave a strange, prickling ache, but surely that was my imagination. Se-ah had told me the chief perpetrator of the terror, Kang Mu-jin, had been arrested and would rot for the rest of his days in the Cheongju Underground Penitentiary on a life sentence. We would likely never cross paths again. But Bonjwa, the Blood Demon Cheon Yujin, never forgot an old grudge. With a single flourish, I inscribed the name of Kang Mu-jin, that bump-and-bolt criminal who had cracked the back of my skull, raised a lump, and fled straight to prison, upon the kill list.

"Gal!!! Kang Mu-jin…! I shall never forget the grudge of this lump…!"

Somehow, my memories had gone hazy, my head hurt, a lump had bloomed on it, and I had been hospitalized against my will, a situation of nothing but losses. And yet in truth I had gained something surer than anything else, enough to set my heart pounding without my meaning it to. A certain gain: the possibility of reclaiming my martial arts.

"The Forged Blood Art…!"

An incomplete art. But the day I completed it, mind and body would find their balance once more. And above all, now that the possibility of reclaiming my martial arts had appeared, one more task demanded doing. I found myself wanting to resolve the questions I had deliberately turned away from all this time, and the new one born from this affair.

…The star of the heavens. The Blood Demon Star.

I had, beyond any doubt, failed to transcend. And yet the Blood Phoenix Constellation had unmistakably risen into the heavens, clear proof of that transcendence. Did entering a gate invariably connect one to the star? Or had the gate's rampage and the Superposition Phenomenon linked us by pure chance? Might there even be gates connected to Murim itself? The only way to answer any of these questions was to become a hunter, someone qualified to enter gates. Of course, until now, "hunter" had been a thing I could not become no matter how I longed to. Now it was possible.

Bonjwa, who had mastered the Forged Blood Art, was an awakener… roughly speaking! Strictly speaking, I couldn't exactly be classified as one, but in a world with no Murim folk, where only Martial Arts Awakeners existed, who alive could tell the difference? It was the perfect crime. A perfect crime worthy of the Blood Demon's dreaded name…!

Mounting the hospital bed, arms crossed, looking down upon all under heaven, Bonjwa burst into deranged, unbounded laughter.

"Fwahahahahahaha!"

Rrrrk, CLANG!

"…Huh?"

"Cheon Yujin. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I've been waiting right outside this whole time, because Se-ah wouldn't stop raising hell. And it is nighttime right now. Understood?"

Rrrrk.

Rachel left, and I pulled the blanket over my head.

"Fwahahahahaha… khhk, kgh."

Thanks to Se-ah's status as a 1st-Generation Hunter, it was better that my standing as a Returnee stay hidden. Hence the need to play the part of an ordinary Martial Arts Awakener. Of course, no one would ever discover that Bonjwa, the Blood Demon Cheon Yujin, was no mere awakener. There were only Martial Arts Awakeners. This was, after all, a world where Murim folk simply did not exist…! At ease, I began drafting a plan for a future destined to shine brilliantly.

Murim.

A wasteland swept by bleak wind. In midair, a crack in the shape of a door shone with dazzling light. Before it stood two figures, rooted in place, unable to hide their bewilderment: the Abbot of Shaolin Temple, Hangma-sinseung, and the Palace Lord of the First Demon Palace, Cheongang Geom-ma. Two peerless masters, representing the twin pillars of the orthodox and unorthodox worlds.

Peerless masters, that is. Both had been hollowly defeated by a single hand and a single step of the Blood Demon, mightiest under heaven, and their dreaded renown had dwindled into empty lament. Yet the victor himself had vanished. He had knocked upon heaven's door to fling open the path of transcendence, and then, no one could say what had happened, he had spouted blood and disappeared into the crack before their eyes.

"The Ghost Gate…." the monk murmured, his voice threaded with a groan.

The Ghost Gate. An absurd legend of the Murim. A young man had opened a door that appeared without warning before his eyes one day and vanished; a week later, he returned. Astonishingly, he came back an old man bent double at the waist.

Then, leaving those words behind him, he died on the spot. Those who saw the man, aged to death within a single week, spread the legend of the "Ghost Gate," saying he must have visited not the immortals' realm but the underworld. And so the crack before them looked for all the world like the Ghost Gate of that absurd legend.

Then it happened.

"…Palace Lord! Compose yourself and stop this! Do you know what that uncanny door even is… what on earth possesses you?!" Seeing Geom-ma drift toward the crack as if bewitched, the monk hurried to restrain him. Geom-ma turned, and one look into those eyes made the monk retreat a step without meaning to.

"…Compose myself, you say? Hold your tongue! Did you not see the state of him? This is the last chance we shall ever have to destroy him! I will hunt him to the very end!"

This was no warrior's pride. Jealousy. Inferiority. An overwhelming gulf that a lifetime of effort could never cross; the despair of knowing that while the Blood Demon lived, he would never be first under heaven. He had been born to a conqueror's fate, destined to burn his one life upon ambition and old karma, but what mottled the eyes of Geom-ma, fallen now to the status of the defeated, was a pure madness congealed from a knot of dark emotions.

"Amitabha…."

Leaving the monk's chant behind him, Geom-ma flung his half-shattered demon sword to the ground and hurled himself, with his whole body, at the crack. The very crack into which the Blood Demon had vanished.

A thick darkness blotted out the world and dropped his consciousness into the abyss. Even unconscious, Geom-ma felt the violent agony of his body being torn and compressed, his flesh and bone scattering. Whether eons passed, or whether only the briefest instant slipped by, he could not tell in that undifferentiated dark. The demonic energy that had once shaken heaven and earth left not a trace behind; he lacked the strength to lift so much as an arm. A body of boundless weight. Strain as he might, marshaling every scrap of his lifetime's accumulated experience, he could not move a single finger.

How long did it go on like that? A low murmur of voices snapped Geom-ma's drowning ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠consciousness wide awake.

"Guild Master, sir, you'd better come take a look at this."

"…Now what? Seriously, ugh. Wait, is that breathing?"

"It's beyond what we can handle… pretty sure there's a survivor on the other side, probably."

A language he had never once heard in his life. He could not tell what they were saying, could not even tell whether it was human speech at all.

"This kind of thing is Cheon Se-ah's specialty. Haah, honestly… what's the point of having friends, I swear. Hey, hey, hey, everybody step aside."

Shff, shk.

A single red line drew itself before his eyes.

Krrk, krrrk!

A line stripped of every wasted motion. He had no time to so much as ponder the déjà vu that blade-light stirred in him before brilliance came pouring in. He might be under attack. That sense of peril roused the warrior's instinct sleeping in him, and Geom-ma managed, barely, to stretch a hand toward the light.

What entered his bleared, wet vision was a small, white hand.

…A small hand?

Then, following the light, his hand and his gaze drifted slowly downward. And then.

…Soft. Squishy.

"…Ghhk!"

That was Geom-ma's final memory.