Chapter 85
I took Soo and left that place exactly as we were. The more I open my mouth here, the faster the mystery thins away, and if scarcity is added to the mix, the regeneration of flesh turns in an instant into a commodity of staggering price. It is easy enough to see, if you think of the people who buy health tonics or fling themselves into fraudulent faiths on nothing but the hope that they might be cured. When a person hits the bottom, judgment dulls for the sake of staying alive. That is all the old phrase means—grasping at straws.
Show them a performance like this, and the desperate will come running at once. The quick-witted will notice something else: the one who grew suddenly strong, and the man who was restored, both of them with purple hair and white skin. Anyone with imagination enough might even infer why the Heavenly Demon turned into a woman. Besides, it would be a shame to ruin Jeonyang's funeral. The only one mourning is the Heavenly Demon herself, and yet it is a fitting place to call back what I did in the first world—going to the dead at the very last.
Of course I cannot know whether people will think as I hope they will. I scatter what I can, then go on gathering, piece by piece, whatever is there to be picked up. When someone who holds knowledge as vital as hers is about to vanish outright, you go first and think afterward—but that time, I was desperate. To force a regeneration I had to throw myself in, even if it cracked the world. A fine crack did form. Given time, though, the split knits itself as if the world were alive. Whether it heals completely, or whether, like a human scar, the ruined place stays ruined and only the surface is covered over, I do not know.
On the way home with Soo, I looked at the world through the eyes of the Harvesters. First, Gapjae. He has gone back to carrying out his duties as a Guardian with diligence. He had been trying to attach himself to the Earth Hall Lord, but after he saw the sword art that reshaped the terrain when the Heavenly Demon fought the Heavenly Demon Cult, he stopped making contact. The Earth Hall Lord, for his part, has made no separate approach either. That does not mean he has given up. Every night, in the Cult's private training ground, he trains hard, copying techniques from the memories of Eunjae that I sent him and honing his martial arts upon them. His desire has not gone out. I like that.
Next, Byeongil. He has become like a man whose strings were cut all at once. The things the other Hall Lords used to send him every day have been severed completely, and his subordinates no longer acknowledge him. They whisper, instead, about when he might die. His character is warping in a way that almost deserves applause. He has taken to deliberately grinding his subordinates down beneath his authority and tormenting them, and once, simply because his mood had soured, he cut down a servant who happened to pass in front of him. Even in a world like this, killing a person is wrong—not from the standpoint of human rights, but from the standpoint of labor. You join a company, they hand you a computer, and you do not smash the CPU merely because it displeases you. That is property damage, and they arrest you for it. The first time, explain yourself well enough and it ends with a deduction from your pay and a mark on your record. The next time, you may be on your way to a police station. In short, it is conduct that deserves condemnation. And when he is condemned, Byeongil only grows angrier. Listen to what he mutters when he is cornered, and he says they used to flatter him, and now they have suddenly changed their attitude, and that is what enrages him. Little by little. He is deteriorating, isn't he? I hope he twists further. That way he will give me more warmth, don't you think?
Meanwhile, the Guardian of the Heavenly Palace Hall Lord and the ordinary believer under him are training their martial arts with great zeal. In the ordinary believer's case, it would be more accurate to say the arts are being forced into him than that he is training; they cram the study down his throat. And yet, surprisingly, he himself is fairly satisfied. How curious. He can see himself growing stronger, so his will to continue rises. Through the conversation between the Heavenly Palace Hall Lord and his Guardian, I was also able to hear what became of the elixir made from a Harvester. They say it was garbage, without a single effect. Nothing at all happened to the one who took it. I had hoped, at the very least, that the contract might be passed along. It was not. A pity.
Still, I gained something. From them I heard a new way of looking at Harvesters. They speculate that when a person becomes a Harvester, they grow strong by drawing in every possibility that person was ever meant to possess, and that an elixir therefore has no effect, because those possibilities have already been used up entirely. That is very likely not the answer. I have an example. In the first world there were countless people who became Harvesters, and they kept growing even after they did. Since the claim can be disproven, it is not the answer. Still—if one said it was the greatest possibility available in that moment, would that be right? Then what of the Heavenly Demon, who turned into a woman?
Hmm... Swallow an elixir made from special materials, and a new light stacks atop the light already there, and grows. That light is the light contained in the elixir. I know, because when it clung to the Harvester it was a pure white light, not dyed that dark purple. I should not rush to a conclusion. I need to study this carefully, step by step. Light and warmth are homework I will have to solve someday. Still, I have learned a great deal. If I keep gathering information like this, someday I will be able to see it clearly.
And the Heavenly Demon. She is busy. Jeonyang's funeral has her overwhelmed, and since the rites are said to last three days, there is nothing to watch until they end. The funeral is grand and magnificent, and there is a bleak comic grace in the fact that the only one truly grieving is, in all likelihood, the Heavenly Demon herself. In any case, she will keep vigil at the funeral hall. In other words, she will be difficult to move. Someone else may move in the meantime—those who hate her, especially. And since an opportunity happened to present itself, I put up an advertisement on the spot. I spread the word widely: I have a function like this, so if you are interested, come and find me. There are many who wish for their bodies to be healed. Surely someone desperate will come flying. What is more, the person who became a Harvester only a little while ago has been advertising with great enthusiasm, declaring that this is how they were healed. That part succeeded.
Jeonyang's funeral is over. Sadly, not a single person came. No—why isn't anyone coming? The Heavenly Demon Cult is full of people who, for one reason or another, carry fatal wounds! One person was healed in a single stroke, so shouldn't at least one of them have come? The Heavenly Demon has been at the funeral hall all this time and has received no separate report about me. Which means they did not come of their own accord. Why on earth not? The last person to become a Harvester boasts to me every single day about being healed! So why isn't anyone coming?
Aaah. What do I do. I had meant to attach myself to the Heavenly Demon Cult the way I once did with the Future Hope Church. Not in exactly the same way, of course. Do the same thing, and meeting the same failure is only natural. So this time I planned to seize enough of the initiative to keep control, and move from there. But with no response like this, taking the initiative is difficult. Either they believe that even a healed body leaves them nothing they can do, or the Cult is held tightly enough that they will not send believers to someone strange.
The Heavenly Demon has become a Harvester, but I have no authority to command a Harvester. We simply stand in the same place—or rather, I am the lower one. Sending memories fails as well. If the person's consciousness is strong, they never arrive at all. Which means I also cannot control them by flooding them with memories until they go mad. Why are there so many things I cannot do? What can I do about it? These are the only abilities I have. I will simply have to live as hard as I can with the power I possess.
I looked north. A green forest stretched away, so vast that its end could not be seen, and beyond that forest there are cities. The world like a martial-arts tale that lives in the faded man's memories. A place where countless ordinary people go on living. The place where I can seep in most deeply. What should I do? I am torn between walking out as I am and waiting for the future inside the Heavenly Demon Cult. If I were alone, I would have gone without hesitation. But Soo is in my hands. Drifting without a home gives me pause. Or perhaps seeking out the man who looks as though he will become a Harvester soon might open a way forward.
The man named Oh Myung-sung, who absorbed Eunchun's qi with a technique called the Star-Absorbing Great Art. He is not a Harvester yet. But the connection is unmistakable, and it is gradually growing stronger—enough that, after not so very long, I will be able to make him one. No matter how small the fragments I am divided into, in essence they are all connected to me. Like drawing many people on a sheet of paper, tying a thread to each of them, and binding the other ends into one. Why do I have a power like this and still cannot control them? If I only had a technique for brainwashing, I could suck out warmth and live quite well!
"Choseol, what are you doing?"
I was grumbling inwardly when, all of a sudden, Soo poked her head out from behind me. She is still a child, so her words come short. I find myself wondering whether to start teaching her polite speech soon, or to leave her a little longer. Shouldn't she learn how to be a person by talking with humans, rather than with a monster like me? Then again, live here and I suspect all she would receive is a warped education in doctrine. Should I seriously consider leaving the Heavenly Demon Cult?
The Cult now has a mighty weight pressing down upon it—the Heavenly Demon reigns—so the sort of incident I want is unlikely to arise on any large scale. If they dreamed of unifying the Murim, like the Demonic Cult in the faded man's memories, and like the Heavenly Demon before she mastered the Sunflower Manual, I would be willing to keep lending a hand. Since she learned the Sunflower Manual, talk of conquering the Murim has vanished cleanly from her mouth. Even now, the chances are high that she has little interest. At most, a slight possibility of invading the Murim under the pretext of killing the remnants who killed Jeonyang. But I must not say this with my own mouth. Anyone who is not a fool would notice that I spoke with wicked intent—all the more so when it concerns a beloved person, someone already dead. It would almost certainly be a dragon's reverse scale, the one place that must never be touched. So I must not mention it.
Above all, the Heavenly Demon is someone who faintly knows what I am. If things twist the wrong way, she could become the heart of a force bent on eradicating me from this world. They possess a technique that can summon me, which means they may develop a technique that can shut me out. Avoiding dangerous places is the wiser course. Above all, it is best not to make enemies if one can help it. If enemies must be made, they should be made only when they are truly necessary. Of course, this is a world where enemies appear merely because you breathe and someone decides they hate your face.
For now, I answer Soo, who is clinging to me from above and rolling about like a cat.
"I was wondering how I ought to teach you, Soo."
"I don't like that."
Thump, thump. She strikes me with those small hands, and the impact is no small thing. The training has paid off. Thinking that if the Heavenly Demon goes on enjoying this dull peace I may have to cut the Heavenly Demon Cult loose, I caught Soo and pushed her out into the yard.