Episode 87: Soo's Jianghu — 7

The Heavenly Demon really did start coming the very next day. When she came to the house, she would watch Soo train, or else recite strange lines she claimed were the mnemonic ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠verses of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art.

At first she taught the verses to me as well and told me to try interpreting them. The moment I answered with whatever happened to come to mind, she stared at me with the look of someone who had never, in all her life, met a human being this stupid.

Honestly, it was a shock. No — but I really don't know!

What's funnier is that Soo has started to understand them. Why does studying literature turn a person into an athlete? I can't make sense of it. Isn't there some fatal error in the laws of physics?

No. Qi and mana were always like that. I'll just tell myself that's how it is.

"Why can't I use it?"

The more I thought about it, the more it rankled, and when I grumbled aloud, the Heavenly Demon sitting beside me turned her head and looked at me with a thoroughly unimpressed face.

"You're not lying, are you?"

"I don't lie."

She studied me, not quite convinced, and then seemed to realize something all on her own.

"Well. With a head like that..."

She's saying I can't use it because I'm stupid.

"Eunjae drew on me through the upper dantian and used that. Shouldn't I be able to use it too, then?"

At my words, the Heavenly Demon sat down in a strange posture. The faded man's memories chose exactly this moment to light up the words lotus position. I don't see why it needs to be specified so particularly, but what can you do? Memories are like that.

It isn't that some separate personality lives inside me. There is a mass called memory, and those memories link together like a spider's web until they form a consciousness. It's easier to grasp if you compare it to the universe.

Planets are scraps of trivial information. The sun is a memory that serves as a center. A star cluster is a single event, and a galaxy is a single episode. A group of galaxies becomes one's school days; a cluster of galaxies, one's childhood. Become a Great Attractor, and you have the memories that make up the self. Become the universe entire, and even the memories one has almost wholly forgotten are included.

And the gravity spread across that whole universe is my consciousness. The phenomenon of interaction itself becomes consciousness and springs forth, which is why there is no separate consciousness. Even the gravitational field of a very small region is still, in the end, part of a vast gravity, isn't it?

There is only this. If the solar system is the memory of the days when I was the faded man, then every other star filling the sky is a memory from the time of the cold sea. The Andromeda Galaxy would be the memory of the first world.

Most of those memories are nothing but pain and despair and cold, so they are difficult to tell apart — but if you look at the proportions inside my head, that is how it is.

Memories that shine, you ask? That's it. Exactly that. You lie down in bed and pull the covers up, and suddenly your brain announces that tonight we will be appreciating a classic memory — and puts on one of your most mortifying ones.

Anyway, classic memories seem to have been surfacing often lately, but that is probably because there is so much in the present capable of stirring them. Thinking so, I watched the Heavenly Demon where she sat with her eyes half open.

"What are you doing?"

Soo broke off her training, circled wide around the Heavenly Demon, and came over to me. From the way she was trembling, some energy I couldn't feel must have been leaking out again.

"I don't know. She just suddenly got like that. Aren't you training?"

I pointed at the yard, meaning she ought to stop fretting and go back to it, but Soo shook her head.

"They say if your qi shakes like this, you take an internal injury, or fall into qi deviation."

Qi deviation. Was that when the qi flowing through the body gets tangled? I can't really understand it, but if that is reality for the people of this world, then so be it. I nodded and looked at the Heavenly Demon.

Soo seized me tight around the waist. Little by little the strength climbed until this flesh began to feel pain. Keep that up, and the body would be hurt.

A scolding should come at once.

I flicked Soo's forehead with my finger.

"Hold on that tight and it hurts."

"Ah! Um — I'm sorry."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Polite speech, out of nowhere? She was capable of that?

Flustered, Soo waved her hands this way and that, like someone who had forgotten what hands were for.

"Control your strength. Understood?"

When I told her what to do, she crept closer and took hold of the hem of my robe. I couldn't see what she was being so careful about. At first her grip was awkward, but as the quiet stretch of watching the Heavenly Demon grew longer, she gradually clung the way she had before. She was regulating her strength, though. That was enough.

A little time passed like that, and the Heavenly Demon rose.

Blank-faced, she lifted her hand. A violet bead formed above her palm, and as it spun it slowly became a ring. She closed her fist, and it thinned into a line.

Taking hold of it, she walked off toward the ground behind the manor. Curious what she meant to do, I followed, and found her standing on the cliff, swinging that line at the stone pillar that rose on the far side.

At first I thought nothing had happened. Then the pillar began, slowly, to slide sideways.

Half the stone pillar collapsed. What remained had been sheared on a diagonal through the middle, and the cut face gleamed smooth as a pane of glass.

The Heavenly Demon opened and closed her hand, again and again. Then she looked at me.

"How much of your power did I take?"

My power?

I couldn't understand the question. No — she had clearly done as Eunjae did, taking power from the upper dantian and using it. I can't feel that power directly, but I can feel it indirectly, because I can tell when a body warped by qi begins to distort. So I know that a great deal of power is flowing out. I also know that the power is me.

But.

"I don't know. I can't feel it."

There was no sensation at all of anything being drawn out of me. A faint fear frosted over her face.

"I pulled out more energy in a single stroke than all the true qi I've gathered in my life, and I used it. And you still can't feel it? Not at all?"

Even if it was the true qi of a lifetime, she must have spent it every time she fought, so it couldn't have been all that much stored up. Or do the amount recovered each hour, and the total capacity, rise as one's skill improves? Even granting that, it didn't seem as though it would be so very much.

"At this rate I might just keel over at some point. I have no sense of it whatsoever."

The Heavenly Demon stared at me, grave — the look of someone weighing whether I spoke truth or lies. But I was telling the truth. That we were connected was certain. I simply, truly, had no sensation of it.

"I can only hope it is because you have no sensation. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠If it is because the amount was too small to perceive..."

She said that much, and swallowed the rest. Then, facing me straight on, she slowly opened her mouth.

"I suppose I, too, will follow after the three Heavenly Demons."

Does she mean she will resist, the way Eunjae did?

He called it resistance, but honestly, from where I stood, it had only ever looked like minds gone turbid with age. So even when they left behind words saying they feared me, I had simply thought, well, that's how it is.

In any case, I have only one answer.

"Do as you like. I don't force anyone."

There is no need to force them. So long as they live according to their desires, I trust they will give me warmth.

"At a time like this, you seem an immortal."

"Do I? So — did you come to understand me? From what I've seen, people take the wrist and look inside."

I said it because I remembered how Gija-cheon, after examining me, had fled in a panic. Interest kindled in the Heavenly Demon.

"You'll let me look?"

I held out my arm, obedient. She pointed at the house instead. Did she mean to do it in there? I followed as she walked, toward the house standing a little back from the cliff, leaving Soo where she was, staring blankly at the pillar cut in half and brought down. Once she had looked her fill and come back to herself, she would come.

We sat beneath the eaves where we had been watching Soo earlier. The Heavenly Demon turned me so that my back faced her, drew off my upper robe, and laid her hand over the place where my heart was.

Through the Heavenly Demon's eyes, I see Choseol's back. The skin is snow-white. Well, Choseol is Eunjae's descendant, so if that is only to be expected, then it is only to be expected.

As expected, even seen through the Heavenly Demon's gaze, no qi can be felt. Traces, though, are visible. Just as you can infer a river even when the water itself cannot be seen, so long as you can see the sand and soil shoved aside by it, I know that something is being pushed into my back.

And then it stopped. At once. Truly, at once.

On top of that, the Heavenly Demon was trembling. It didn't seem that anything was wrong with her body, and yet her back was soaked with sweat, and her face was the face of someone who had seen a thing impossible to believe.

"Heavenly Demon?"

Whether she could not hear me, she slowly took her hand from my back and looked down at her palm. Through her eyes, there was nothing particularly strange about it.

Why is she like this?

I turned. The Heavenly Demon's face had gone a bloodless blue.

"Cold."

With that one word she curled her whole body into a ball, as if the cold had left her no way to endure it. Her body could feel that the air around her was warm, and still she shook. Warm enough to sweat — and yet, somewhere, she felt cold.

Mm. This is a feeling I know well.

Aigoo.

I caught hold of her. She wasn't actually cold, but at a time like this, the image of warmth ought to ease it a little. It wouldn't be like mine, a cold that goes on and on, growing.

I held her, took her to the kitchen, and set her before the fire. She was sweating so heavily that I peeled some of her clothes off, then scooped water from the earthenware jar into a bowl. Even so she could not escape the cold, and kept on shivering, so I called for Soo.

"Soo! Could you come to the kitchen for a moment?"

"Huh? Yeah! I'm coming!"

I don't know what she thought was so worth staring at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in that pillar, but I brought her in first and pointed at the Heavenly Demon.

"Ah — she's naked!"

I had only taken off the upper half. What was she calling naked? The breasts were quite large, yes, but they were both women; was there any reason to be that startled? Was it because their coloring was different?

No. This was not the moment for thoughts like that.

"Go and hold her. Quickly."

"Huh? Uh... yeah. Got it."

Soo, who had been looking from me to the Heavenly Demon with the expression of someone caught on some private objection, shuffled over and wrapped her arms around her. The kid's face had gone bright red. Embarrassed, it seemed.

With a person's warmth, the Heavenly Demon ought to settle a little. The warmth that lives in the light was still there, unchanged, so she couldn't truly be cold.

A long while passed, and the Heavenly Demon uncurled. Even then she reached out, caught hold of Soo, and for another long while could not bring herself to let go.

Time went on. The Heavenly Demon rose from where she sat and looked at me.

She still wasn't in her right mind; even her manner of speaking kept lurching from one register to another. I held the bowl of water out to her.

"Drink some water first."

Nothing brings a person back to their senses like water.