Soo's Jianghu — 12
The midday sun had grown fierce.
Goodness.
Summer had arrived before I knew it, and nothing at all had happened inside the Heavenly Demon Cult. The trouble came from outside instead — from the place they call the murim, or the jianghu.
To come straight to the point, Oh Myung-sung had at last become a harvest. Not that he had held out to the very end and only then ripened into one. Something the monks did, in whatever place they were keeping him, nearly brought the coat I was laying over him to a stop.
Unknown arts are a frightening thing.
But people live there too, and where people live, things happen. A tournament was convened to merge the sword factions of the Five Great Mountains, and Oh Myung-sung took part. He was one of those swordsmen himself.
Call them swordsmen, though, and the faded memory starts glittering and flashing. What is so strange about calling a sword sect a pack of blade-thugs? They are gangsters in the end, aren't they? They gather among themselves to fight some still larger pack, pick the strongest, and make him chief — a contest of rank of the simplest, most childish kind.
He entered that contest. Once, there. When he was defeated, I — whom the monks had held frozen — was able to move again. And before much time had passed, once more.
A man named Yu Jo-young, said to have been his former master, ambushed him. He could not overcome Yu Jo-young. He took a mortal wound and fell. But when Yu Jo-young moved to kill his lover — the daughter of Goo Sung-yong, who had died here about a year before — he called on me.
He did not single me out and summon me by name. He only spoke toward a terrifying power. He had simply resolved to use it, whatever the price.
Words have power.
So, through the connection, I recited the words of the contract, and he accepted.
Yes.
He rose with every wound regenerating, drew on my power at once, and killed Yu Jo-young.
For some reason the faded memory, finding this unlike anything it knew, offered up the one summary it had ever read. I keep telling it the real world and the story are different things. Why will it not understand? However alike they may seem, when the names are different, everything is different. That is simply how it works.
Anyway, events took an interesting turn. The very people on the monks' side who had defended him so stubbornly branded him a demon, and the Five Peaks Sword Sect that Yu Jo-young had forged by merger branded him a criminal.
Yes.
A matter of killing, and of being killed, began.
He fled together with Goo Sung-yong's daughter, Goo Mil-mil. The two were lovers. But no matter which village he entered, swordsmen came running, shouting that he was a public enemy of the murim. At first Oh Myung-sung measured his strength and killed no one. In the end, he cut people down, because Goo Mil-mil was in danger.
The first time is the difficult one. After that, it was easy. See someone blocking the road, and cut them down at once.
Now he walks a road made of blood and corpses. Worse, Goo Mil-mil at his side bends his heart, telling him that of course one does such things to an enemy. Born of the Heavenly Demon Cult, no quantity of good deeds had been enough to break the notions already driven into her. She may have said it only to comfort him. If she had truly wanted Oh Myung-sung turned back into what he had been, that was the moment she should have taken him to task.
And so Oh Myung-sung changes. In order to live.
At first he killed only the enemies who meant to kill him. But little by little his heart grows dull, and once a certain stretch of time has passed, he kills anyone who merely stands in his way. The man who once sorted friend from foe in fine detail, who would slip past with words whenever words could do it — that man is nowhere to be found. Now the slightest show of hostility, and he cuts down whoever stands before him.
Hunted without a single day's rest, with pursuers endlessly trying to kill him, it is hardly strange that the mind grows barren. I suspect the original intent was to wither him to death that way. But he began at once to scoop me out of his upper dantian and spend me. So long as he insists upon living, his power will never run dry.
Strength cannot stop him.
And so the wheel of hatred, once it has begun to turn, rolls on and gathers speed. A road of blood opens, long enough that I find myself thinking I might remain a little longer in the Heavenly Demon Cult and give this place a shake. Men of the Five Peaks Sword Sect come, and die. Monks come, and die. In the end the whole world has become his enemy.
They drag a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood behind them, and little by little they are turning this way. Not in a straight line, of course. But this is a place the vast collective of the orthodox murim has never quite laid hands on, and geographically it is the one place they still more or less know. Strictly speaking, it is the place Goo Mil-mil knows.
And the Heavenly Demon knows that.
The Heavenly Demon Cult. The era of Goo Sung-yong. Perhaps because they have been trying to take the jianghu in hand since even before then, they possess the means to obtain information. The Heavenly Demon was acknowledged by strength alone, and yet in the year since that day — perhaps because she has done, without any particular incident, what a cult leader ought to do — the people of the Heavenly Demon Cult, the hall masters included, now serve her as their leader. So when information of that kind exists, she obtains it at once, with nothing in particular standing in the way.
A purple-haired man dyeing the murim in blood. A master who overcomes every opponent with power that has no end. People think at once of the Martial God — the legendary martial artist who entered the jianghu under the name of Heavenly Demon and left it under the name of Martial God. There is no chance that story fails to reach the Heavenly Demon Cult.
There were other things as well. Word that a blind man had become alliance leader of the Five Peaks Sword Sect. Word that some sect, having lost too many of its people, had sealed its gates. A rumor that a sect nearby had been erased by a monster. The substance of it, though, was Oh Myung-sung.
And within the Heavenly Demon Cult, they entered into long deliberation over what was to be done with him.
But unlike out there, life here had gone on in its ordinary way.
Soo can wield a blade with a fair sharpness now. She has grown a little taller, of course. I have grown taller as well. I was already a bit above the average woman, and now I am catching up to a man's height. Perhaps because the food has improved, a good deal of flesh has settled onto this body. Back when Choseol was treated as material, they fed her little more than a nutrient sludge close to gruel, so of course proper meals put on weight. Keep growing like this, and I suspect I will end up with quite a feminine figure.
Anyway.
Late afternoon.
Having tossed Soo a task, the Heavenly Demon came to the wooden veranda where I was sitting and sat down beside me. Then, out of nowhere, she produced the name of the man who is so very famous outside just now.
"Do you know Oh Myung-sung?"
I turned my head and looked at the Heavenly Demon. I know why she is asking so suddenly. I thought for a moment about how to handle it, then decided to do as I always do.
"Yes. I know him. The man who used the Great Absorption Art on Eunchun and took a part of me into his hands."
I told the truth.
The moment I spoke, understanding crossed the Heavenly Demon's face. She had wanted to ask how the contract was made, hadn't she? It was a situation well worth suspecting. Knowing what I am, once a suspicion takes root, a long time passes before it can be wiped away. So I gave her a reason she could understand.
"How is it you know his name?"
But the Heavenly Demon asked something I had not expected.
Oh?
Why a question like that, all of a sudden? Well, of course, because someone introduced— ah.
No one had ever introduced their names to me separately!
Hmm. Without telling a lie, I have to hide how much I am able to know. Reading the memories of those I contract with, seeing through a harvest's eyes — those are my weapons. I cannot hand them over.
All right.
Names. I will speak as if names are the only thing I can know.
"Why would it be strange to know the name of someone I have made a contract with?"
By common sense, names are exchanged when a contract is made. There are those who deceive, of course, but on that point I need only press forward as an unidentified monster. With that in mind, I met the Heavenly Demon's eyes.
"Do you know my name as well?"
"Jung-ha. Or should I go so far as the surname Lim?"
The Heavenly Demon's eyes widened.
What the faded memory calls demon eyes — black sclerae, shining pupils. I can see them clearly.
"I don't believe I ever spoke that surname."
"No. You never did. But I know it."
Because I have your memories. The moment I obtain a memory is the moment I touch the light. That is why, when a harvest dies and I carry the warmth away, I do not gain a separate memory then. From the instant they become a harvest, I experience along with them everything they see, hear, and feel. So I know what they thought before they became a harvest, and I do not know what they think afterward.
This is one of my weaknesses.
Bodily reactions. In the technical term, I can infer what someone is thinking by way of cold reading — but still!
"So that is how you knew Oh Myung-sung's name."
"Yes."
I even know that he is drawing nearer to this place. His course wanders back and forth, of course, and sometimes he crosses not a road but a mountain range, or deep forest. Like air flowing from where it is dense toward where it is thin, he comes slowly toward whichever side has fewer people tracking him.
I answered, then kept silent, so she might ask more if she had more to ask. The Heavenly Demon did not ask.
"Master! I finished everything you told me to do!"
"What you were doing yesterday. Forty times. Do it."
"Kyaaa!"
Soo shrieked and went running off again.
It is summer now, and that girl is overflowing with energy. Whether it is the force of the Heavenly Demon's special lessons or the power of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art, she has a considerable tolerance for heat and cold. Since she possesses qi, a separate source of energy, I suspect she uses it to govern the temperature inside her body.
Me?
When it is hot, I live with the heat. When it is cold, I live with the cold. The body suffers, but the heart does not, particularly. And if the body breaks, I regenerate it.
I sat watching Soo grow distant, and the Heavenly Demon opened her mouth again.
"You don't ask. Aren't you curious why I spoke the name Oh Myung-sung?"
Because I may know it in more detail than you do. I swallowed the words.
Fair enough. If people are to talk, there has to be this give and take. Bring up a subject someone does not know, and it is polite for them to ask what it is. I felt that if I kept speaking I would make a slip, so I decided to talk of something else.
"Heavenly Demon. In a few years, I am going to leave this place."
While I was at it, I folded in a shade of meaning that suggested I had no interest in the Heavenly Demon Cult. In truth I am brimming with interest!
"Leave?"
"No one here is looking for me. I want to portion myself out, but there are no people. Then I ought to go outside, shouldn't I?"
Whether the Heavenly Demon, hearing this, offers me members of the cult or tells me to go, it profits me either way. The worst would be a seal. But I know she will not make that choice.
She has grown fond of me.
The Heavenly Demon wore the face of a student confronted with a difficult question. Watching it, I pressed her on inside.
Answer.
What choice are you going to make?