Chapter 78
Gija Cheon was cruel, too. The moment he returned, he ground humans raised as livestock into elixir pills.
Not that he threw them into a grinder. He set them in a strange jar and shut the lid. This Harvester stepped inside without a struggle, as if that were only natural, and died just like that. I took the warmth.
Becoming a Harvester ought to have made that warped body stronger. Far from it. I had the distinct sense that death had come much sooner instead. A human body is tougher than it looks, and a Harvester's body is tougher still, yet the brain remained exactly as shriveled as it had been.
If I had to guess, this was an ability. Abilities arise to grant wishes that strengthening the body alone can never fulfill. At least, that is what I believe. The Harvester had been living in order to die from the very beginning, and so, upon becoming a Harvester, gained an ability that made dying easier. A creature stripped of every right from the start dies even after becoming a Harvester.
I cannot see the outside through a dead person's eyes. So, the next one.
The odd-job man had begun to learn martial arts. Considering that Gija Cheon had ordered him to study them, this, too, had to be an experiment.
The last one. The man who had once served as Gija Cheon's Guardian checked his internal energy and explained to Gija Cheon what had changed, and by how much. That his body's abilities had improved was something I already knew. Then he brought up something I did not.
Beaming, he explained that his internal energy had become astonishingly easy to wield. As if he had been reborn in flesh and bone, his inner qi traveled far more readily through the meridians, and the channels had come clean.
Of course, even looking through his eyes, I could not feel qi at all. Where his brain accepted that something was present, there was no special passage. Perhaps these were not bodily organs that existed in any material sense. Or perhaps they were organs I was simply incapable of perceiving. Even so, ought they not to be connected to the brain? Did a power like that exist somewhere I could not reach?
I did not really know. I trusted that a world would appear, someday, in which I could make sense of it.
That aside, Soo was stuck fast to me and would not come loose. When I asked why, she only shook her head. Was it because the days had turned cold? It would have been hard to blame it on meeting someone frightening. We had exercised together to our hearts' content earlier that day, and thinking of that, I did not believe she was only growing scared now.
Another day passed. Even with the moon hanging at its zenith, nothing in particular happened, so through the night I spent awake I looked in on the other Harvesters.
After only a few days Eunchun rose from his bed and began cultivating again.
Gapjae happened to notice my Harvester in passing and clenched his fist. He followed, and in the end watched the man enter the Celestial Palace Hall. Gapjae went straight to the Earth Office Hall and told the Earth Office Hall Master what he had seen. The Hall Master said he already knew, and sent Gapjae away. So Gapjae came outside and sighed. Clutching his head, he said aloud that one wrong step and he himself might be cast out.
But I knew. However carefully a person hides an expression, I can read it. The Earth Office Hall Master had been shaken. In all likelihood, he did not know that the Celestial Palace Hall Master had made a new Harvester. I read that far. Why he had claimed to know, and why he had sent Gapjae out, I could not tell, nor what he meant to do from here.
Now and then I found myself wishing my head were cleverer. If only I could grasp what these people were thinking, and what they would do next...
Hmph. Wishing for an ability I did not have was a hollow thing. Better to consider what I could do with what I already held.
Byeongil, for example, who was growing stronger at a rapid pace by taking elixir pills. The pill Gapjae had obtained last time was one that could admit a person to the Crystallization Realm. Byeongil, though, had been given as a gift a pill that could open the Golden Elixir Realm. And he had taken it.
When a Harvester swallowed an elixir pill for the second time, I learned more than I had at first glance. The pill laid light over what was already there. It did not expand the original light. Even so, however much was added could be overwritten at once, and so a Harvester remained a Harvester. From this I understood what an elixir pill actually did, and also why a person was required to make one.
If light was the soul, then they smeared a new soul over it and swelled their own larger. A technique akin to human sacrifice.
I wondered what would happen if someone ate a Harvester. For the moment, it was difficult to know. The instant a Harvester became a pill, I could no longer see through his eyes. But I had taken the warmth, so I was curious how it would be twisted. Would the one who ate the pill become a Harvester? Would there be no effect at all? Or would it make no difference?
Meanwhile, Jeonyang was training with the Heavenly Demon. Unlike the others, though, Jeonyang took no special medicine. You would think that someone of the Heavenly Demon's standing could hand over the very best. Perhaps Jeonyang simply had not reached a level where it was safe to take any. To my eyes, Jeonyang already seemed plenty strong.
That was when it happened. All at once, a great commotion broke out through the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult. Fire. People ran about, shouting that a fire had started.
Eunchun and Byeongil seized their swords at once and burst outside, but neither of them could leave the place where he had been staying. The woman who slept beside Eunchun every night stood in his way, and Byeongil was stopped by the Hall Master of the office corresponding to bamboo among the Ten Symbols of Longevity. The ones blocking them explained the situation. The Cult Leader had returned.
Hm? Did that mean the previous Cult Leader's daughter was to become the new Cult Leader? I could not tell what they meant, so I listened.
Hall Master Jukgan. With no apparent intention of explaining in any detail, he told Byeongil that our Cult Leader had returned — that the current Heavenly Demon was a man who had stolen the seat by cowardly means, and that the Cult Leader who had clung to his life had come back. The moment Byeongil heard it, the movement carrying him outside stopped completely. He asked whether all he had to do was watch. Hall Master Jukgan said that would be enough, suggested they drink tea until the matter was settled, and led Byeongil back into the room. Byeongil followed.
Meanwhile, the woman named Miro, who had caught hold of Eunchun, said that the one who by rights ought to stand at the very summit of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult had returned. When Eunchun asked whether it was Seonggo, Miro shook her head and answered that Cult Leader Seong had come back.
Parsing the words, Cult Leader Seong was the previous Cult Leader, and Seonggo was the previous Cult Leader's daughter. The mere name of Cult Leader Seong seemed to have been enough to stop Eunchun. He came to a complete halt, then asked the woman named Miro what Hall Master Mirok had said.
The deer of the Ten Symbols of Longevity. Well, now. I had thought Eunchun did not think about anything at all, and yet he knew who was trying to bind him.
Miro answered that she had not come on that person's orders. She had come to hold Eunchun here, and she told him he must not go outside and be hurt in a fight.
Yes. A lie. She was putting on a desperate air, but she was not worried about Eunchun in the slightest. I could tell that much. Emotions are exceedingly hard to hide.
I was about to lose interest, thinking he would be taken in again, when Eunchun cut Miro's throat with the sword in his hand.
Huh?
Looking down at Miro's corpse, her head severed in a single instant, Eunchun spoke.
"However strange things may look, the one who made me a Hall Master is the Heavenly Demon we have now. Woman. I am no fool who forgets a debt."
With that, he opened the door at once and went outside. An interesting choice.
Flames were climbing from several buildings. Eunchun looked around, then muttered that if the previous Cult Leader — the one called Cult Leader Seong — had returned, his target would be the current Cult Leader. Ignoring the people running all around him, he took up his sword and set off at once for the place where the Heavenly Demon resided.
While Eunchun headed deep into the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult, Gapjae, whatever he may have been thinking as he watched the cult burn, turned toward the outside. No — more precisely, toward his own room, which stood near the outer edge. He went back, and then simply did what a Guardian ought to do in a situation like this. Pretending to know nothing, he picked up a water bucket and buried himself in the crowd. Perhaps that was the best choice of all.
Meanwhile, the Heavenly Demon came into Jeonyang's room. When Jeonyang asked what was happening, the Heavenly Demon shouted that it was only a fire in the cult, and that he should stay and rest. Something welled up in Jeonyang. Ah. They were coming apart. He seemed to think he was being disregarded.
Maybe now was my chance.
I woke Soo, who had fallen asleep clinging to me. I lifted her — still half dreaming, barely able to rise — stepped out the door, and pointed at the buildings of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult as they roared with flame. Soo startled, eyes flying wide. I did not need to see her face to know the expression she wore, and I knew, for certain, that she was awake.
"Soo. I'm going to step over there for a little while, so wait right here."
Soo hesitated, then clutched the hem of my clothes.
"D-do you... do you really have to go?"
She looked up at me in a frightened voice. I did not know why she wore the face of someone about to be abandoned, but I had meant to leave her and go. I would be coming back anyway, and I had already said everything that needed saying.
Then the Faded Man's memory flared through my mind again, like a flash of light. That she would sneak after me and make a nuisance of things? No. I knew I could not predict what a child would do. But it had only been a week. Could someone grow that attached? I had never even tried to earn this child's favor. I could not say the memory was necessarily right. Even so, I had no grounds for denying the Faded Man's memory.
Then what was I supposed to do? Hug her?
Just as the memory said, I hugged Soo. She startled.
"I'll come back, so watch the house. All right?"
At my words her eyes went wide, and then she nodded hard. She sat down with a resolute look on her face. Remarkably simple.
I waved to Soo and left the house. The streets around this commoner's house were quiet, but far off, around the burning buildings, the place was noisy with people. I needed to hurry. That was where the most important thing was happening.
Of course, cult members were running all through the buildings, so if I simply walked in, there was a chance I would be caught. That was why I would use the secret passage Jeonyang remembered. If my luck held, I might even get my hands on the Harvester called the Heavenly Demon.
Hehe.
I started toward the place where Jeonyang was.