Soo's Jianghu — Part 1
Hehe.
I obtained the memories of the man called Jung-ha, and the memories of the man called Goo Sung-yong, both.
When the Heavenly Demon killed with a beam of light, I worried whether warmth could still be gathered from something like that. The warmth came in just fine. So did the memories, whole.
With the memories of two cult leaders in hand, I learned all sorts of things. If Eunjae was the third Heavenly Demon, then Jung-ha was the sixth. Goo Sung-yong had taken the traces Eunjae left behind with deadly seriousness. Things of that sort. I learned, too, that Choseol was in truth Eunjae's granddaughter.
A descendant, then. This body. And a descendant is not something I can simply look at. The contract itself still runs on, but if I am to see through their eyes, they have to contain me. Think it through logically, and it is only natural that I cannot see what does not hold me. I learned a great deal, and yet the more I learn, the more I find I do not know. If they are a harvester's descendant, can I enter them? Once I am inside that world, a harvester's descendant would be easy to reach — but beneath the surface, is a hand hard to extend? Fill in questions like these one by one, and someday I will be able to build an automatic warmth-harvesting system. There is time enough. I will go carefully, step by step.
Which is another way of saying the priority is low.
What stands highest now is how the Heavenly Demon sees me.
Just before she became a harvester, she looked at me and did not see a girl. She saw a vast sea turned upside down above the sky, and she was afraid of it. But that sea is me.
Once, the Heavenly Demon was the cult leader's personal guard, under the title of Goo Sung-yong's Right Emissary of Light. Which is to say she confirmed Eunjae's traces at his side, and so she knows what that sea is. Just as Goo Sung-yong was horrified when he looked at me, she has reason to fear me. I did look through Eunjae's eyes myself. I thought perhaps dementia had come over him near the end — I never imagined he had been seeing me as a terrifying monster. I am, in fact, a monster, so the skill with which Eunjae grasped that is honestly impressive.
I watch her while I think about what to do next.
She examines her own naked body, and the self reflected on the water. She touches that body again and again, then lifts her head, looks at me, and asks.
"What's wrong with this skin color?"
I pointed to where the shattered corpse lay. Once, it had borne the name Jeonyang.
"If there's a fatal wound bound up with your life, it turns out like that. Why it's blue, I don't know either."
I do not even know why the hair turns purple. Nor why the skin turns white. At first I thought it was only regenerating soft and smooth, and that the whiteness was nothing more than that. But even people whose skin was dark to begin with turn white. It is not vitiligo, either — none of the harm that sunlight does to skin ever follows. After they become harvesters, I have no memory of them suffering over their skin. Honestly, I do not know very much about harvesters at all.
"Is that so."
She said it, and walked slowly toward what remained of Jeonyang. Little enough was left, but she lifted the lump of meat that was only an upper body and looked up. Far above, a few people were looking down. A short while ago Eunchun had set a sword against them, and in that opening Jeonyang had taken the Heavenly Demon and leapt, smashing through the wall. And yet they were simply standing there, gazing down.
Yes.
Eunchun died fighting. He could use the Heavenly Demon Divine Art, if only in part, but he could not win against the three of them together — Oh Myung-sung, Goo Mil-mil, and Yeong Jedok, the Left Emissary of Light.
There is something strange, though. According to Goo Sung-yong's memories, Oh Myung-sung uses a martial art called the Great Art of Star Absorption. It draws qi out of another person and makes that qi his own. And he attacked Eunchun. He attacked Eunchun, who fights by burning me as fuel, struck him with that art, and drank his energy in. Perhaps that is why the world shows, just barely, through Oh Myung-sung's eyes. Compared with the other harvesters it is like watching through a broken television, hardly visible at all — but it means I can feel him, if only a little.
Hehe.
In other words, he drank me in with the Great Art of Star Absorption. That art is a technique for drawing in qi. Which means there is a good chance I am something like a mass of qi. And little by little, the picture is clearing. Perhaps, if enough time passes, Oh Myung-sung could become a harvester too.
Hmm.
Mm.
At this rate those three will die at once. The other two, I don't particularly care about. But I am interested in what becomes of Oh Myung-sung, so first I have to let them live. Jeonyang may as well have died fighting them; if the Heavenly Demon feels like it, they die. Even together they cannot beat her. They likely could not even run. If I want to see what becomes of Oh Myung-sung, I need time. I will have to make that time.
"Heavenly Demon. Are you going to burn Jeonyang?"
At that she clutched the corpse and drew back from me, as if I meant to seize his body.
"You mean to take Jeonyang from me?"
"Why would I?"
She looked at me, puzzled, mumbled a few times, and then spoke.
"You said that once it was finished, you would receive everything."
Come to think of it, there was a clause like that in the contract. Honestly, once the warmth is taken I have no interest in the flesh or the light and simply leave them, so the question feels terribly sudden. How do I explain it? Say that I take only the warmth, and she may catch on to the game I have been playing with that word all this time. So the words have to be chosen carefully. Nothing but the plain truth — and let her misunderstand.
"It means I come to see the last of the warmth. I watched Eunjae's end as well."
I leave out, neatly, the part about taking the warmth away. A guide of the dead. I bent the words so they might be heard that way, though I do not know if I can keep the lie alive to the end. A god bound up with death is unsettling by nature, and my shape — a sea turned upside down — had looked ill-omened. So I have to read her mood, and move with care.
"I understand that humanity has ways of sending off the dead. Burning them, burying them, or preserving the body. What do you do here?"
Not killing the people up above. Softly, softly, I nudge her toward a funeral instead. She held the corpse and said nothing for a long while. After a good stretch of time, Oh Myung-sung's faint gaze — the one that had been fixed on this place — shifted. And he left.
Good. Oh Myung-sung only has to survive. Now, so long as she does not suddenly announce that she will kill them and set their heads upon the coffin, my purpose is met.
"I'll hold the rites."
She said it quietly.
"Does it take about forty-four days?"
"And what country's custom is that supposed to be?"
She let out a bleak laugh and walked on with the corpse. It is a path I know. I saw it when I first came near this place. The way to the lift.
But.
What am I supposed to do?
I meant to follow, since she was walking across the water, and then all at once it dropped away, deep. I can't do anything like the art of treading water! And so Goo Sung-yong's corpse, already cut in half, was caught by the water and sank. From the countless warmths swarming down there, the fish are in the middle of a feast.
I simply swam. At first I thought I might cross properly. But I need time. And while I am at it, I may as well shape the impression I leave. Of all the strokes there are, I settled on the dog paddle.
When I had crossed about half the water, laughter carried from far off. Near the lift, the Heavenly Demon was laughing under her breath.
"The Violet Radiance Immortal, Chaos of the Four Seasons. I heard that was the name of an immortal — and she can't even swim?"
An immortal?
Ah. Here, gods and immortals occupy that sort of place. Everyone of the kind the faded man knew — the Jade Emperor and the rest — they call an immortal. I want to answer, but if I speak, water comes into my mouth, so I swim in silence. A dog paddle, of course, takes a while. I barely made the landing.
A landing I have stepped onto before. I crawled up, seized my clothes, and wrung the water out. After shaking them off a few times, I went to where she was.
I stepped into the lift, and she was looking at me with a sneer.
"Nothing like the sight that shows beyond you."
She worked a device with a clack, and the lift began to rise. Watching her, I asked.
"My appearance?"
"A cold, deep sea, wide without end."
Through her eyes I am simply a girl. But her focus will not settle on me. It is not that she sees the sea, either. Nor is she tracing back through memory. She is looking at me by some other means. And that remains only in memory. So that is why I never saw what Eunjae saw. I had thought old age made him act strangely, but his gaze was different. Seeing that the memory remains, I may have to be exacting the next time I make a harvester.
For now, I will parry with a joke.
"I'm heavy, so I flow downward. Please understand that swimming is extremely hard work."
At that, her face said she understood.
All this time I have kept my true body separate from the body I inhabit. Speaking of humanity. Speaking of how a human body is. Once you decide something is a monster, the parts you do not understand pass with a simple so that's just how it is, don't they? A human brings their own point of view to bear, but a monster makes that difficult. Even trying to see the alien shape — after an ungainly sight like a dog paddle, can anyone connect it to a powerful monster?
If your imagination is exceptional, then I lose. If not, I win. Not a monster that must be dealt with, and not a monster so stupid that killing it would be better. Holding that balance is difficult.
Click.
The lift opened.
We returned to a room full of the marks of a fight. She laid Jeonyang's corpse carefully on the bed. From the way she sat before it, she could not bring herself to think of chasing Oh Myung-sung. The dead need time to be mourned. In that interval, he will have left the Heavenly Demon Cult.
Hehe.
I stood before the door of the room where she was.
"When people are sad, they should cry."
And I closed the door. A witch came to mind, unbidden, but she is gone now. She twisted in that cold sea until she broke.
I turned my steps toward the place where Soo was waiting.