Soo's Jianghu — 9
The next day, the Heavenly Demon came by as if nothing at all were wrong.
Seen through her eyes, she showed no particular concern for me. She must have taken it the way I had hoped. It was more or less what I expected.
A dragon that shears between the clouds, spills rain, and vanishes. A tiger in the deep forest that could devour every living thing. Smallpox, which kills children and leaves scars on whoever survives. A monster that crawled in shivering from some strange world. To her, they are all the same sort of thing. Tell her to pick the dangerous one, and she would choose smallpox at once. That is how differently they sit in the body.
It is a question of which one kills more people. Explain something abstract where there is no ground to receive it, and it ends as nothing but strange talk.
A nuclear bomb, and a candle that burns forever without fuel. Ask which is more frightening, and the less physics a person knows, the more surely they choose the bomb. The more they know, the more they choose the flame that never goes out. Without knowledge, you might not even realize that the fire in a hearth is dangerous.
Neither the Heavenly Demon nor Soo seems to feel that anything is badly amiss, which suggests it is not even consuming that unknown energy they call qi. At any rate, the Heavenly Demon does not appear to be thinking of me as anything serious. And so today goes on exactly as the days before it.
I would be glad if Soo simply grew strong like this. But to let the time pass and gain nothing else is too much of a waste. Perhaps because the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult has this place in its grip, no one comes — even though at Jeon-yang's funeral I left behind the impression of someone who could cure disabilities.
Choseol is still only about fourteen. If what I need is time, I have it. It might even be better to tangle myself up with the Heavenly Demon and move with her at my back.
The problem is that the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult is a religion. A religion cannot simply leave another god standing. Even a polytheistic one keeps its principal divinity where it is, demotes whatever godhead wanders in from the side, mixes in its own color, and absorbs it. The way, in a faded memory, Buddhism spread into Hinduism and the Buddha became an avatar of Vishnu.
I do not mind in the least being placed beneath someone. What makes me hesitate is that I would no longer be able to control it. Last time I exercised no control at all. It spread beyond all measure, and the world broke because of that.
Then again, who could possibly have known that if the harvest organs multiplied, the glass bottles would fail to hold and shatter? To keep that in check, a secret society would be ideal — discreet, profiting only among its own. Something in the shape of the Freemasons. If I used healing as bait, drew in politicians, high officials, or the very rich, and made them into harvest organs, the warmth of everyone they killed would all come to me. Shaping that into a structure that turns on its own is the homework I have to finish.
Huh? This is just Cultist Simulator...
That sounds about right. How, really, am I supposed to build an automatic warmth-harvesting system in a second world?
I turned it over while I watched the Heavenly Demon and Soo repeat a particular sequence of movements in the yard, from after the midday meal until just before supper. They were not the only ones training, of course. I exercise on my own as well — not the sort of movements that require internal energy, the way Soo's do, but exercise meant only to move a body. Running, most of all. I do a great deal of it.
I loop the whole area, the way I used to circle the rocky desert back in Rebecca's time. The difference is that Choseol is tall, and perhaps that is why she is fast, so running does not grow dull. Maybe the blood is different, too. She can run very fast, and for a long time, and she does not tire easily. Next to Soo, of course — Soo, who all but flies on a qi art of footwork — I am terribly slow. Nothing to be done about that.
When the exercise is finished, the Heavenly Demon goes back, and Soo and I make supper together. The cult sends provisions, one way or another, so eating itself is no immediate problem. But they send only ingredients, and ingredients have to be cooked. We prepare the meal, eat, clean up, and by then it is the middle of the night. There is nothing to do here, so once the sun goes down we sleep early. A day passes that way. Then two.
Somewhere in the midst of it the air turned sharp, and at last pure white crystals began to fall out of the sky.
Snow.
Winter had come.
The water below the cliff froze solid white, and the trees to the north were blanketed white. Breath showed with every exhalation, and we had to dress thick. The one mercy is that the house is not cold. The flame inside the hearth is still exactly as it was. It is not an ondol, that old underfloor heating, so only the wall on the hearth's side stays warm — but it ought to be enough to get through a winter.
The interesting part is that I am the only one who pays that flame any mind. The Heavenly Demon only stops by for a little while, so I can grant that she might not notice. But Soo has never let her eyes rest on it for long, either, and Soo makes me uneasy. What am I supposed to do if she starts saying things like, "Fire doesn't go out once you light it, right?" In truth, to keep a flame like that burning all winter, one side of this house would need to be stacked full of firewood right now. Soo would not know that. I may have to build a campfire somewhere else, one of these days.
I keep in mind the things Soo still has to learn, and I watch the everyday that goes on and on.
"Let the qi flow faster here. Let it drag, and it may turn back on you and rupture your acupoints."
"Yes, Master!"
Soo and the Heavenly Demon are getting along again today. I can set aside the fact that Soo has grown fond of her. The Heavenly Demon's own manner has grown very soft. In other words, the Heavenly Demon has grown fond of Soo.
Hehe.
This is very good. Once affection takes hold, it is hard to pull free, and simply by standing beside it I receive the benefit as well. It has only been half a year, and she folded that easily. Honestly, I find myself wondering whether the Heavenly Demon can even lead the cult properly.
Then again, being alone from the start and being left alone after losing someone are not the same thing. They say it is people, in the end, who fill loneliness. Inside the cult's main compound she meets no one in private unless it is for work, which would mean this place counts as private. What a fool.
Anyway. One thing. Perhaps because she does nothing but work while she is at the main compound, opinion of her inside the cult is, unexpectedly, not bad. If anything, it leans favorable.
Yes. Surprisingly enough, it does.
Through the eyes of Byeong-il, of the Hall Master of the Celestial Palace, of the Guardian, there is no one among the hall masters who is deeply hostile to the Heavenly Demon as she is now. Rather, when the hall masters meet, they say they are glad she is acting as a Heavenly Demon ought to act, or that Jeon-yang should have died long ago. As I see it, more than half of the ten halls rose in rebellion against her. That the hall masters are still alive is honestly astonishing. I thought she would execute at least one of them as an example. She simply treated the whole thing as if it had never happened, and there has been no backlash. The cult returned to normal quickly, and affairs drift on without incident. Which is to say that nothing large is happening.
And the people below? They accepted the Heavenly Demon more docilely than I expected. That is how it looks through Gap-jae, through the harvest organs of common birth on the Celestial Palace Hall Master's side, and through the harvest organ who gave us fruit at Jeon-yang's funeral. Some think the Heavenly Demon has been replaced by an entirely different person. Some say heaven lent a hand. Opinions of every color, but the conclusion is mostly the same. They say things are far better than they were in Jeon-yang's time. There are even people who claim Jeon-yang was the only thing wrong, and that everything returned to normal because that person died — the very reaction one gets when a temptress who had been driving a king to ruin finally dies. I find it extremely funny.
They curse only Jeon-yang. Yes. Of the Heavenly Demon, there is no mention at all. As if it were something that must not pass the lips, they say only that the cult is a good place to live now. Not out in the open, and not only at the drinking tables inside the inns — even when they drink in their own houses, they do not speak a single word about the Heavenly Demon beyond praise for the way she handles herself.
I wonder how they look at someone who has changed into something so alien, in sex as well as in form. It is a shame I cannot see that reaction. What I feel from them is awe, and fear, toward an object of worship. That is why they will not speak of the Heavenly Demon except to praise her.
Honestly, I am disappointed. If this were a world where the strong alone had the right to stand above the rest, I would want a melee of people clawing to become strong. Here there are only livestock, content with their place in the order. Any harvest organ could become the Heavenly Demon, and yet no one is trying. The Heavenly Demon Divine Cult is an extremely static place.
I tried once to shake it, and I failed. If time is only going to flow past with nothing gained, would it truly be better to go outside? Soo follows the Heavenly Demon, and the Heavenly Demon holds Soo dear. I could go alone.
I looked down at my body, and then out at the forest far away.
Outside the cult. Far off. Very far. Cross the forest and you come to a city; cross city after city, and you arrive at a place. Oh Myung-sung is there.
He spends much of his time somewhere crowded with monks, taking elixirs or seated in lotus position. Whenever he does, the proportion of me inside him climbs, and then it stops. Even once he is a harvest organ, the only thing taken will be his warmth at the moment of death, so I would rather he became one soon. Perhaps because he is not yet fully mine, the warmth does not come even when Oh Myung-sung kills someone. The view wavers, too. Sometimes the sound does not come through. Sometimes there is only sound. Sometimes I see nothing but the inside of a body. It flickers like a place with a bad connection.
Still, I learned one thing. An in-between state exists. Which is to say that if this state lasts long enough, someone might develop a means of standing against me. A problem I had never once considered. Somewhere along the way, I had grown arrogant — certain that when I inject myself into the light, no one can stop it. But if it can be stopped, then someday it could be driven out as well. Making a harvest organ will have to be done with care.
I will be careful. I am still nothing more than something at the very bottom, fed on what I am given. Even so, I have to go outside, risk and all. Where Oh Myung-sung lives, there are good people, and ordinary people, and bad people. A disordered place like that is exactly where I can gather people with ease. Charging in blindly, though, is what a fool does. Until I can turn aside a certain measure of danger, I need to build strength.
At least, after this body has grown enough to look like an adult...
I will go outside.