The Heavenly Demon Goes to See the Plum Blossoms (8)
The only survivors from that day were Pung Sa-yul and a handful of other sect members. There was only one reason they had lived: the Heavenly Demon had never intended to kill them.
The Heavenly Demon had stood at the center of the Mount Hua Sect, surrounded by corpses, and even though he knew some still clung to life, he simply turned his back and left. To this day, Pung Sa-yul still did not understand why the Heavenly Demon had spared them. All he knew was that his comrades had given their lives so he could survive, and for their sake he had resolved to live on. The other surviving disciples of Mount Hua felt the same. They all agreed to dedicate what remained of their lives to the sect. They swore an oath to repay a debt of life with their own lives.
Yet each of them envisioned a different way of offering that life. Various opinions were raised, but the one who ultimately made the decision was Pung Sa-yul, who had been an elder at the time. The decision he handed down that day was this:
First, we shall rebuild Mount Hua while gathering the strength needed for revenge.
With their current power, they could not possibly take revenge on the Heavenly Demon. Even when the entire sect had attacked together, they had failed to defeat him. Rushing at him now would only result in meaningless deaths. That could not be allowed. It would be nothing more than a glamorous suicide play performed under the name of revenge.
The survivors agreed that building strength came first. Yet not long after they made that resolution, they slammed into a wall. There was no one left to teach them martial arts. The Heavenly Demon had destroyed everything belonging to Mount Hua—the secret manuals, the elixirs, the precious artifacts. Nothing remained.
The only person who still remembered Mount Hua’s martial arts was Pung Sa-yul, but his talent was pitiful. Even among the elders, he had been mocked as the fool who had only become an elder through accumulated merit. He did not possess the ability to recreate Mount Hua’s techniques with his own hands. The others were no different. They had the will, but the world was not something that could be overcome with willpower alone.
Everyone realized it. At this rate, they would never achieve revenge. Worse, they would not even be able to rebuild the sect.
It was then that the man who called himself the Blood Sect Leader appeared.
“What troubles you so?”
The voice came without any sign of presence. Pung Sa-yul flinched and looked up. Standing before him was a man wearing a black veil. He had never seen the man before, but the distinctive stench of a jiangshi that clung to him revealed his identity.
“Blood Sect Leader.”
After the Heavenly Demon, who had completed his revenge, vanished from the murim, this new evil had emerged. A madman who delighted in desecrating the dead, a being who sought only to spread chaos throughout the murim without any clear purpose. At the same time, he was the one who had declared he would help Pung Sa-yul and the others of Mount Hua achieve their revenge.
“Your expression does not look good.”
Perhaps because he was borrowing a jiangshi’s body, the Blood Sect Leader’s voice was so repulsive that it made the listener’s stomach churn.
“None of your business.”
“If you tell me about it, I could offer some advice.”
“I said it’s none of your business.”
“My, my. You seem quite angry.”
The Blood Sect Leader chuckled softly and dragged a chair from the corner of the room, sitting down across from Pung Sa-yul.
“Then let us change the subject. How has your training been progressing lately? Is it going well?”
“...It is.”
Pung Sa-yul had been growing with the help of the Blood Sect Leader’s power. The method could hardly be called righteous. Human sacrifice. A sorcery that gained inner energy by offering human lives. An evil art that would condemn its user to wander hell for eternity. Even Pung Sa-yul knew this was not the right path. Had the Blood Sect Leader not offered the method of sacrificing users—those who could resurrect even after death—he would never have accepted the proposal.
Among all forbidden arts, the worst of them—human sacrifice—had granted Pung Sa-yul astonishingly rapid growth. The bottleneck that had trapped him at the entrance of the Transcendence Realm had been shattered, allowing him to now gaze upon even higher realms. All of it was thanks to human sacrifice.
“Did you come all this way just to ask after my well-being?”
It was true that he had benefited, but Pung Sa-yul still found the Blood Sect Leader repulsive. The way he never revealed his true face. The way he stole lives indiscriminately from outsiders and murim folk alike. The way he desecrated the dead. Though they were forced to cooperate, Pung Sa-yul had already decided that once everything was over, he would take the Blood Sect Leader’s head and make him pay for his sins.
“Is there anything more important than the well-being of a comrade?”
“...You and I are not comrades.”
“That is correct. We are not mere comrades—we are fellow passengers on the same boat.”
At the Blood Sect Leader’s playful remark that their relationship was better than expected, Pung Sa-yul closed his mouth. Continuing the conversation would only make his mouth hurt.
“It seems you might truly draw your sword if I continue, so I shall get to the point. Has an outsider not visited this place today?”
“Do you think visitors to Mount Hua number only one or two?”
“Among them, there must have been someone who stood out.”
“Someone who stood out, you say.”
Pung Sa-yul thought of the female martial artist he had just driven away. Given how much of a fuss the outsiders training at Mount Hua had made, she was clearly one of them.
“I don’t know.”
But Pung Sa-yul had no desire to mention the female martial artist. Whoever she had inherited it from, she was someone who might carry on Tae Hang-un’s will. He did not want the Blood Sect Leader’s filthy hands to touch her.
“Is that so?”
The Blood Sect Leader’s eyes narrowed above his veil. Had he noticed something? For a brief moment, Pung Sa-yul wondered how he should answer if the man pressed further, but the Blood Sect Leader did not ask any more questions.
“How strange. The outsiders cooperating with me were making quite a commotion about it.”
“Those bastards spout nonsense every single day.”
Most outsiders were halfwits. They hated the process and loved only the result. They knew nothing about martial arts yet sought only convenience. Among them were people like the female martial artist who had visited today, but most were not even worthy of being called martial artists. Though he had no choice but to bring in outsiders to prevent the sect’s destruction, Pung Sa-yul felt not the slightest affection for their kind.
“No, no. That particular outsider apparently even received recognition from the Sword Immortal.”
“Sword Immortal? Wasn’t that a figure from legend?”
Pung Sa-yul knew the story of the Sword Immortal as well. Among sword-wielding martial artists, there were few who had never heard of him. The tale of the warrior who had struck down the sun with his sword was the kind of story that planted longing in the hearts of young martial artists. He had thought it too absurd to be anything but legend.
But the man truly existed?
“He does. It is even possible to meet him if one wishes. Though if one carries impure energy like you or I, one must be prepared to have their head severed the moment they meet.”
The revelation that the Sword Immortal truly existed was truly shocking. It seemed that ever since outsiders began visiting the murim, common sense kept shattering. Recognition from the Sword Immortal. What absurd talent. She had clearly possessed outstanding skill, but her physical body was merely second-class. For someone with such a body to receive recognition from a legendary being like the Sword Immortal… How enviable. If I had possessed such talent, I would never have had to join hands with garbage like this.
“In any case, if such a person comes to stop us, it will cause quite a bit of trouble, won’t it?”
“We must prepare to deal with her.”
“Please do. I have made some preparations of my own, but the more thorough the preparation, the better.”
As he spoke, the Blood Sect Leader took a small orb from within his robes.
“What is this?”
“Please keep it. It is the trigger that will activate the sorcery we have installed on the mountain.”
It was nothing more than a purple orb that gave off no energy at all, yet for some reason Pung Sa-yul felt an uneasy sensation from it. He considered refusing, but then noticed the Blood Sect Leader’s gaze fixed upon him. The usual smiling eyes had vanished, replaced by an expressionless stare.
“I accept it with gratitude.”
Only after Pung Sa-yul answered in a reluctant tone did the Blood Sect Leader’s eyes return to normal. Just what had that gaze been?
“Then I shall take my leave for today. I have work to do.”
The Blood Sect Leader closed his eyes as he spoke. The body he had been using immediately collapsed forward. Since he had been forcibly animating a dead corpse and using it as his own, discarding it was just as arbitrary. Pung Sa-yul fiddled with the orb on the desk for a moment before calling for the person waiting outside.
When I looked down from the tree, I could see the forces the Blood Sect Leader had prepared. There were easily dozens of them, and not a single one lacked killing intent. Several jiangshi were mixed among them as well, but fortunately they were far weaker than the ones I remembered. With this body, I should be able to handle them without much difficulty.
On the ground of the clearing where they were stationed, a formation drawn in red was visible. It was the same kind I had seen often inside the Blood Sect’s buildings. I did not know its exact type, but it was clearly some kind of malicious sorcery.
“Is that giant lizard truly a divine spirit?”
“It is.”
And the most important divine spirit lay at the very center of that formation. The spirit, unconscious and breathing roughly, looked as though it would not be strange if it died at any moment.
How strange. Considering the Blood Sect Leader’s personality, he should have dug a cave nearby and invited us into a labyrinth of countless traps. Yet he had simply left the divine spirit in an open clearing like this. What scheme is he plotting?
Is he relying on the formation drawn below? Or does he trust the ones guarding this place? It would be nice if he simply did not consider this location very important, but that was unlikely.
In the past, I would have blown up the entire clearing without a second thought. It was a crude method, but it was better than playing along with the Blood Sect Leader’s games. I still wanted to do so now, but there were problems preventing it. My current body lacked the power to turn an entire area to ash as easily as breathing, and more importantly, I was currently in the position of needing to rescue the divine spirit.
It seemed I had no choice but to play along with what the Blood Sect Leader had prepared.
“Min-ga. Do you have a plan?”
“I do.”
“Explain it to me.”
“Charge in head-on and smash everything to pieces.”
“...What kind of plan is that!”
Baru scolded me as if my words were absurd, but I was completely serious. There was no reason to take a detour. If I was confident I could break through from the front, why bother with needless schemes? Just destroy everything and be done with it.
“At the very least, you should think about how to deal with them—”
“I have thought about it. Our goal is to rescue the divine spirit, is it not?”
“Yes, so?”
“Rather than bothering with infiltration or other annoying things, wouldn’t it be more comfortable to simply smash everything and then rescue it?”
This way, I could also interrogate them about whatever they had done to the divine spirit and the true nature of the blood formation on the ground.
“You are not even considering the possibility of losing?”
“Why should I consider defeat?”
No matter how weak this body was or how lacking my inner energy, I would not lose. The only one who could carve the word “defeat” into me would be that old man Geomseon, and such a martial artist was not exactly common.