Chapter 70
The cloth that had wound me round and round and hung me in the empty air, as if someone meant to spin a spider's web out of it, went slack, and my feet met the floor.
"You were the Chaos of the Four Seasons. The one who gave power to the Martial God."
The Heavenly Demon said it.
I looked around. The place was still packed with people in those stifling clothes—black garments that bared not an inch of the body, and pure white cloth hiding every face. The mages of this world. I would have liked to eat one of their lights and take a technique for myself. Moving that way here, though, seemed unwise. The culture was different from the first world's, and I had a feeling that if I did nothing, the way I had done there, I would end up stuck.
A contract needs someone to stand surety for it. If you do not want to be cheated, you need the power to break the other party the moment they break the contract. That is the minimum condition. A contract without it is not, in any real sense, a contract. There is only the one who is fooled and the one who does the fooling. An agreement that rests on a single party's goodwill? That is no contract. It means the thing can vanish the instant a mind changes. Doesn't it? So the minimum condition is this: breaking the contract must cost more than keeping it.
"The one who took me in is strong, isn't he?"
So I began with the profit. I would not, of course, call it a blessing with my own mouth. If someone later claimed I had, I would say I had stated only the facts—and I would go on stating only the facts. That way, even if they someday caught me taking their warmth, I could answer without flinching that I had never said anything but the truth.
At my words the Heavenly Demon's brow twitched. He was taking my measure. The question could be heard as asking whether I was pleased with the person I had given power to, or it could sound as if I knew nothing at all, sealed away as I had been. I had thrown it out with no context on purpose. Let him choose. Whichever way he went, I hoped it would be a direction I had already expected. Only then could I move him as I wished.
"Were you the one who gave the Martial God the Heavenly Demon Divine Art?"
The Heavenly Demon Divine Art? I didn't know what that was, but I assumed it was a method of circulating qi. I had poured Eunjae's memories of moving qi into three people. That could be read as my having given them a way to use it, couldn't it? If I said yes here—no. That would be a lie. If they asked me to teach them the verses the way they taught one another, I couldn't. And I had no way of twisting the thing into a shape that complicated.
"No. He drew on me through it."
Yes. From the head—ugh, fine. The faded-gray man was shouting the proper word at me, so I would use the term I knew. He had drawn on me through the upper dantian.
"Indeed. So that is why the text spoke of drawing power out of chaos. The Heavenly Demon Divine Art was a martial art only those who received your blessing could use."
I nearly laughed. The Heavenly Demon had come to see what I gave as a blessing. I had steered him there, and now, at last, he was calling it one. A blessing has the feel of a gift. It looks like a gain, not a loss.
Hehe. Perfect.
Still, from the way he spoke, Eunjae seemed to have left something behind. I looked through Eunjae's life once more and found writing from his later years—not plain sentences, but the sort of knotted prose they put in books called secret manuals. No wonder I hadn't remembered it. Even when I had looked at it then, I couldn't tell what it was saying, so I had passed it by. Encryption is a problem. A simple sentence can be understood if even one person receives the memory. Anything that has to pass through another process is another matter. This was a weakness of mine. I would have to be careful of it.
And what, then, was the Heavenly Demon thinking?
"There is someone you will give your blessing to."
Just as I thought! So that was it. In that case I ought to explain, once more, what could be gained when my harvest came.
"All right. Bring them. Lost limbs or a grave illness, they'll be healed."
They would also, along the way, gain an ability suited to granting a wish. That was still a secret. It was true that this was something I could sell, but I didn't know the exact principle—Tisha's regenerative power least of all. I don't sell what I don't understand.
"Wounds heal?"
"Eunjae's did."
So he hadn't known everything after all. Back then, fleeing the people who meant to catch him, Eunjae had been stabbed all over. Even the place called the dantian had been ruined, and the moment the harvest came, it healed. Were they telling me to bestow a blessing simply because they had seen him grow stronger? And who was I supposed to give it to? It didn't seem likely he had a child.
"Follow me."
With that, the Heavenly Demon let qi out of his body. Something poured off him in waves. I didn't know what it was, but behind me people groaned, and some of them folded to the floor. Was this the killing intent I had only ever heard about? Why was he staring straight at me?
"Aren't you coming?"
Oh.
For an instant, bewilderment crossed the Heavenly Demon's face. Reading the situation, he had meant to press me with his presence and take the lead. It hadn't worked, and that had rattled him. However strong a person's aura is, it only ever goes so far. He put on the look of a man who had understood something on his own, and walked ahead. I followed.
But I was nearly naked. Was that all right? A few scraps of cloth like bandages still clung to me, yet I was extremely tall for a child. Wasn't this indecent? If the Heavenly Demon thought it was fine, then it was fine. Or perhaps he simply wasn't treating me as a person. The girl called Choseol had never been handled as one. Turning that over, I went after him.
We passed down a long corridor of wood, and when the door opened the walls changed to stone no human hand had touched. I had thought it was a building. It was a cave.
Huh? Through the eyes of those three, they had gone out the other way, not this one. Back then they had moved from inside a building, deeper in, and an immense building in the eastern style had stood there, towering and vast. A cave? Perhaps this place was built like a labyrinth. Somewhere meant for flight.
At least the floor was well kept, and the moment the Heavenly Demon emerged, two men with lanterns fell in at either side, so the walking was not difficult. We went a little way and found water running through the middle of the cave. We followed it for a long time. The stream grew wider and wider until the path broke off, but there was a small dock, and a small boat waiting.
The Heavenly Demon pointed, so I boarded. The thing rocked so violently I felt ill. He was watching that very closely. Was he trying to see what I could do?
What to do, then. I considered it for a moment. Was it better to keep the face of a powerful monster all the way through, or to let something human show? Hunger, for instance. A display like that. Someone you can understand is easy to make careless. In the first world, that was how I had closed my teeth on a prey's throat. But if I did it here, there was a good chance I would not get what I wanted. This society ran far too much on raw force. I would hold back. I needed the lead, and it would not be too late to decide after I saw whom the Heavenly Demon was taking me to.
The boatman set the boat moving. We did not travel long. When we came out of the cave, I saw stone rising like pillars, and around those stone mountains magnificent buildings clung. Peaks jutted up here and there like posts of wood, buildings stood on them, and passages linked the buildings together. With water below, the place was a fortress entire—one difficult for any person to invade. The boat stopped where a building hung overhead.
I stepped off after the Heavenly Demon, and the boat turned back toward where it had waited. And there, to my surprise, was an elevator. We boarded, and it climbed faster than I had expected. Not manpower. A machine. Devices worked and clattered on every side; yes, it was machinery. In my head I revised this world's technology sharply upward. In memory, the words mechanical array glittered.
The elevator reached the upper level, but everything around was shut tight. I was looking about, wondering what he meant to do, when the Heavenly Demon went to one wall and reached out. Something caught with a clack, and the wall opened along a shape that was not a straight line. A passage appeared. Fascinating.
Glancing this way and that, I followed him through the building. It was wound together with considerable complexity, and the directions had been twisted on purpose—easy for anyone who did not know the place to lose their way. Then we came to a room.
Inside, a large, muscular man was swinging a blade, sweating. The moment he saw the Heavenly Demon he set the sword down and came running.
"Lord Jung-ha!"
He bowed his head. If he called the Heavenly Demon Jung-ha, that must be the name. I had heard this was some generation of Heavenly Demon, so the title was an inherited one. Which meant there was a name besides it. And I was only learning it now.
"Jeonyang, stand. I've brought someone who can make you strong."
A hand on his shoulder, and a voice softer than before.
Oh? Well, now. Someone he was in love with?
The faded-gray man was shuddering, demanding to know whether the historical accuracy was really meant to go that far—but isn't it a fine scene when people love one another?
The same gender?
Is that a problem? And love with a fatal flaw is very likely to twist. People die in the process. Which is to say, the warmth comes away cleanly. That is enough for me.
I stepped in beside them on purpose and pointed at the man called Jeonyang.
"Am I to do it to him?"
Jeonyang startled and stared at me. Then, watching the Heavenly Demon take his hand from that shoulder, he asked, careful.
"Lord Jung-ha. This girl... what is she?"
"Jeonyang. That one will help you complete the Heavenly Demon Divine Art. Make a contract with them."
The Heavenly Demon said it gently, in a high voice, as if copying a woman. Jeonyang wavered. He did not understand what was being said. So, to make it easy, I spoke the contract.
I will give myself to you. In exchange, later, once you have finished everything you must finish, I will take all that you have.
How about it?
Jeonyang turned his eyes to the Heavenly Demon. At a nod, he came to stand before me. The way the Heavenly Demon's mood soured just then was extremely funny. In any case, he answered me.
"I will."
His hair flushed purple. The skin on the outside cracked, and from within a stark white skin showed through.
One harvest.
Complete.