Return Home
Demonic Cult.
On the outskirts of the Ten Thousand Great Mountains.
Wolunryeong, at the Heoksan Fortress construction site.
The laborers and the whip-wielding overseers. The site manager’s yawns were as much a part of the day as the dust and sweat.
“Unnie! So-yeon unnie!”
Mok-i, still all childish eagerness, called out to me as I climbed the rise with a wooden bucket of water balanced on my head.
“What is it? Did the old man ask for help?”
“No. He said to borrow Man-seok uncle for a bit. He says it won’t take long.”
Man-seok, who was mixing the water I’d hauled up with earth to make a thick clay, grimaced at once. “Ah, good grief. We’ve barely even started.”
“We’re short-handed. Building a wall with just the two of us was never going to be easy.”
With both of us refusing him flat out, Mok-i pouted so hard his lip practically stuck out to his chin, then turned his head away.
“Hmph. I’ll get scolded by the overseer, you know.”
“Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. If it comes to that, just say it was my stubbornness. They’ll let it go.”
I wiped the sweat from my brow and let a sly smile tug at my mouth.
That smile—bright as a fairy’s, if you could call me that—made the child freeze.
His mouth fell open, and he stood there dazed, helplessly caught up in that easy grin.
“Ah! Y-yeah…”
Mok-i hurriedly gathered himself. His innocent little reaction was so adorable that I couldn’t help but snort a laugh.
—
More often than not, the women of Go-chon weren’t dragged into labor. They eked out their days with housework and weeding the fields.
But I was different.
Fifteen years ago, when they’d called me out just because they were short on hands, I’d startled everyone.
A scrawny little girl, not even old enough for the blood to have dried on her head, had hoisted a packed dirt sack as if it weighed nothing. It had become a scandal in its own right.
Everyone who saw it had been left speechless.
And the site manager, who’d personally seen that child laugh while lifting a sack taller than she was, started looking for me from that very day.
That was how I came to start work on the fortress.
I was lively and quick-witted, and even when the adults tried to stop me, I insisted on taking the hard jobs.
There was a certain pleasure in startling people with strength they could hardly believe was real.
As time passed, I rose to become the center of the Heoksan Fortress worksite, and I changed the atmosphere there completely.
I never shrank back. I stood up to injustice head-on and fought back against the lash. Violence almost vanished. It was the fruit of all that hard-won struggle.
Unfair beatings disappeared, and even the overseers and managers began to soften toward the laborers.
Whips and blades faded into nothing but a threat from the past.
Or so we thought.
The world was never that kind.
For all our efforts, we couldn’t protect everyone.
From time to time, a man called a Banghosa would come around.
He’d drive a knife into the earthen wall. If the blade sank in a chi or so—about thirty centimeters—they’d drag every laborer who had helped build that wall away and bury them alive inside it.
Only then did I learn that killing a person was far easier than anyone wanted to believe.
With a single jab of the Banghosa’s finger, one life would sink into the earth.
It was hopeless beyond words. Could I even describe the grief that made my chest ache so badly it felt like it might split open?
If there was anything more infuriating than anything else, it was that we were always the ones who got hurt.
Unless the heavens themselves split in two, there was no way to strike back.
We could trample the faces of martial artists into the dirt only once in a lifetime, if ever.
If we were forced to crawl on our bellies every day, every year, then what were we if not insects?
Nothing more than flies whose lives were worth less than a magistrate’s dog.
—
After climbing atop the earthen wall, I drove a long wooden post into place.
Then, when I came down to fasten the crossbeam, Man-seok called to me.
“You hear about it?”
“About what?”
“The Banghosa bastard’s coming tomorrow. New man.”
“What, they changed him again already?”
“How should I know? Must be because things outside are a mess.”
“Things outside?”
“Yeah. That war they’re always blabbing about—the one between the demonic and righteous factions, or whatever the hell else.”
“I’m not interested in martial-world politics. Anyway, so that’s why.”
We kept working as we talked, the rhythm of the day unbroken.
“But seriously, where’d you hear that?”
“You can trust it. I heard it from that fool over there.”
“Seriously? And you call yourself a manager, yet you still never say anything? Lazy as a dog, you are.”
“Hey now, you little brat. Everyone else already knows except you. Don’t you know how much the adults worry about you?”
If a Banghosa was rumored to be coming—someone who might show up only once or twice a year—the first thing everyone did was probe the wall they’d built with their own hands, again and again, checking for any weakness. The second thing they did was worry about me.
And that wasn’t hard to understand.
If that pretty face of mine caught the Banghosa’s eye, it was obvious what kind of filthy thoughts he’d get.
Ever since a similar thing had happened years ago, I’d hidden myself in some dark corner and kept out of sight whenever a Banghosa was due to appear.
Of course, that was thanks to the consideration of the people I worked with.
And by that I meant the managers and overseers, who knew full well and still chose to look the other way.
Still, whatever else, the important thing was that he was coming tomorrow.
After hearing the news, I fell silent for a long while.
I seemed to be thinking about something deeply. Only after about one gak—roughly fifteen minutes—did I finally lift my head.
“Uncle. I think I have to go.”
“You little shit, at least finish what you started before you leave.”
But then I simply twisted at the waist and bolted.
“Hey! Hey, where do you think you’re going?!”
“It’s fine, I’ll be right back!”
“Well, would you look at that. Now you don’t even see me, huh?”
I ran past the overseer, who’d been dozing on a suitable boulder, and disappeared somewhere.
“Hah. I’m the only one who suffers.”
Man-seok picked up the rope left lying there all alone.
—
“Jang Dae-bu!”
“Hm? So-yeon?”
The site manager, with his mild, warm face and easy manner, glanced up from the plans in his hands.
His drooping eyes and protruding belly gave him the look of a giant panda, and his voice matched it—soft, heavy, and unhurried.
“Dae-bu, I heard the Banghosa’s coming tomorrow.”
“I’m busy enough to die over here. Ain’t just one thing I gotta keep in my head.”
He really was as languid as he looked.
“Then why’s he coming? I thought things were hectic over there.”
“For one day only, could you let me off? I haven’t missed a day up till now, have I? Please?”
“You’ve been sneaking around just fine until now. Why’s this sudden?”
“It’s not just him. Lately, Father’s gotten a lot worse. I think he needs someone to look after him.”
“Hm. Sam-cheong…”
Sam-cheong, the man I called my father, was the oldest person in Go-chon—a man of considerable age.
He hadn’t been to the worksite in a long time, but Jang Dae-bu seemed to have only a hazy idea of his situation.
“The women come and take turns looking after him, don’t they? Don’t you need to go as well.”
Jang Dae-bu sounded uncertain, half-hearted.
“That’s cold! The aunties are busy. It’s hot, and it’s farming season. We all have to eat, don’t we?”
It was early summer in the fifth and sixth months of the year, when everyone had to be bent over the fields if they didn’t want to starve.
“Hm. Well, I suppose there is a lot of work.”
“So since it’s come to this, I want to stay home and take care of him properly, even if it’s only for one day. Besides, every night he—”
“He keeps calling for his dead wife so pitifully. Hic…”
A single tear, squeezed out on command and falling like a chicken’s dropping.
Jang Dae-bu broke into a cold sweat as I worked my lip as though I were holding back a sob.
“N-no! That’s not—”
Without question, a woman’s tears were a weapon. And if it was the tears of a beautiful woman, all the more so.
“Hehe. You’re worried someone’ll notice the shortage, aren’t you, Dae-bu?”
I studied him for a moment, then changed my expression in an instant.
I really was a woman to reckon with—face and all.
“Well… yes, if I’m honest.”
“Tell them I’m sick. Please?”
“...Really?”
“Ugh. I-I’ve got a stomachache….”
“Fine, fine, I get it. I understand, so stop.”
In the end, Jang Dae-bu threw up both hands and gave in.
—
“Father. I’m home.”
“Father!”
Under the ragged straw roof—if it could even be called a place where people lived, or just a storeroom—I pushed open the crooked wooden board that served as a door.
Sam-cheong, sitting down on the straw-covered floor, welcomed me.
Moonlight spilled in through the gaps in the roof and caught on the old man’s gaunt back, making it stand out sharply.
Before long, his muttering reached my ears.
“I, I am…”
“I am the sword hero of Kunlun…”