Yeon Ihwa
As with most martial arts tales, a hidden force of evil lurked even within the world of The Disciple of the Greatest Under Heaven — neither the orthodox sects, nor the unorthodox, nor the Demonic Cult, but a fourth power. In this world, that fourth power, branded evil without the slightest ambiguity, was the Blood Heaven Cult. And its most notorious victim was Yeon Ihwa.
The role the original story assigned her was never that of a heroine. She was a fortuitous encounter laid down as a stepping stone for the protagonist and the heroines — a prepared villain, if one were honest about what she had been made to be.
Yeon Ihwa's fate had been tragedy from the very beginning. Born an orphan and a beggar, she was dragged off by the Blood Heaven Cult in childhood, put through experiment after experiment, and given a single martial art.
Its name was the Crimson Blood Demon Scripture — one of the failures the cult produced while striving to create a peerless divine art of its own.
According to the original, once she had learned it, every night she felt worms writhing through her brain. A murderous impulse boiled up without cease, and only by taking blood and swallowing it did the pain recede. That was the side effect of the Crimson Blood Demon Scripture.
To undo it, Yeon Ihwa tried many paths. She hired outstanding martial artists in the hope they might amend the Crimson Blood Demon Art, and she tried to improve it herself through her own training. It was impossible. A failure it might have been, but it had still been devised to become a divine art, and an ordinary martial artist could not even read its formulas.
She turned from the art to the body and sought out physicians, and that was no different. Short of a Divine Physician, erasing Blood Flowering — the scripture's side effect — was impossible.
That was why she had no choice but to fall.
Unable to endure it, she killed and killed without end. She took the living blood of human beings and became a villain past all redemption. She threatened the heroine who carried a Divine Physician's token, and tried to kill her, and she would not stop until that token was in her hands. In the end she caught the protagonist's eye, and met a wretched death.
"How does the young hero know of this?"
Did this pitiful woman have any idea? That the liberation she had yearned for so long would arrive in the most horrific form she could never have imagined.
"...So you mean to give me no answer."
A hairline crack split her fine brow, and emotion surfaced for the first time. What rose was a deep, thick irritation — proof of just how desperately sincere she was about the Crimson Blood Demon Scripture.
Coming back to the present, Hwa Baek answered.
"Does the reason matter?"
"It does."
She had never spoken of the Crimson Blood Demon Scripture to anyone. It was a problem she had always kept sealed in her own heart, something she meant to solve alone, and now it had leaked. If only to learn how, she needed to hear the reason.
"I can't tell you."
"If you will not tell me that, then I cannot make a deal with you either."
"Then don't."
"Then this conversation is finished. If that is all, I ask that you leave."
Yeon Ihwa said as much, but Hwa Baek knew she could never abandon this deal. At least until she confirmed how he had come to know of the Crimson Blood Demon Scripture, she would keep the talk alive, even if it remained only talk of a transaction.
That she still held this posture was to seize even a slightly higher ground in the bargain. Reason ahead of emotion, even when the man before her might be a mortal enemy she could never share the sky with — that was the woman called Yeon Ihwa.
To the very end, Hwa Baek did not bring up the Crimson Blood Demon Scripture. There were things he could have said, but he did not think he needed to say them now. There would be chances enough. The one who had to do the thinking was Yeon Ihwa — not Hwa Baek.
"Fish-fragrant shredded pork, coming through!"
The food arrived, and Hwa Baek took a great bite of the stir-fry, vegetables and pork tumbled together. The savor of the pork wrapped his mouth in warmth, and the seasoning soaked into the meat tapped lightly at his tongue. It was a Sichuan inn, so the dish ran a little hot — but when he bit into the dumpling set beside it, the spice hidden beneath the richness struck him as all the better for it.
If only there were rice.
Regrettably, a meal of rice did not exist in the murim. There was grain, but it went almost entirely into gruel and other dishes, and the staple here was thin noodles, or else dumplings. A shame — and yet it was ten thousand times better than a fasting pill, warmthless and tasteless.
A few days later, Hwa Baek was still at the Irangsoi Inn, eating thin noodles. The difference was that three emptied bowls stood stacked beside him. Set on taking three square meals a day, he had finished adapting to the new food, and his appetite had come alive.
Having drained even the broth, he wiped his mouth. It was not enough. His body, done with adapting, still wanted protein. He was just about to order, weighing whether several bowls at once would be better than one at a time, when a voice drifted over.
"A modest meal."
Bewitching enough to snare a man on sound alone. Hwa Baek turned his head and met the woman.
Crimson hair hidden beneath a short black wig, dressed not in a dancer's robes but in a merchant's clothes — Yeon Ihwa. The long crimson hair that was her signature lay concealed under the wig, but that beautiful face, features clear and striking, could not be hidden.
"Rather humble, for a wanderer who set down a Night-Luminous Pearl over a little wasted time."
With a soft click, Yeon Ihwa placed the Night-Luminous Pearl in front of him.
"I will return it. The tale was far too suspicious — suspicious through and through — and I find I cannot trust the goods either."
"Have you thought it over enough?"
"......"
At his question, the woman closed her mouth. She still had not reached a conclusion. So Hwa Baek spoke — a lie, meant to press her for an answer.
"I've already waited long enough. If you can't give me an answer, I'm leaving Sichuan right now."
"....."
Hwa Baek knew the minds of schemers like Yeon Ihwa all too well. They always sketched several ideal roads inside their heads. The true nature of the breed called strategists was a twisted habit of preparing a move for when their move failed, and yet another move for when that one failed too. To keep from being led by the nose, you could not give them time to think. Strategists they might be, but they were human, and there was a limit to how far a mind could turn. Shake their reason from the absolute seat of the one holding the leverage, and you could force a choice even on the cleverest of them.
"Then, before I give you an answer, I will ask only one thing."
The problem was that Yeon Ihwa was no ordinary strategist. She only lost her mind at the very end. By the measure of the original, few people under heaven were as sharp as she.
"What is your relation to the Blood Heaven Cult, young hero?"
Contrary to his expectation that she would accept at once, Yeon Ihwa dug in to the very last. He could feel her fixation — that she had to wring something, anything, from him before a deal was struck.
"......"
At that, he had little choice but to answer straight.
"An enemy."
A deal begins in trust. One might say a deal is struck the moment interests align, and yet no one could deny that whether it proceeds well depends on trust above all else. It was a poor thing to call trust, when what he spoke was a lie. But that was not what mattered.
What mattered was whether she could trust the feeling his words carried.
Hwa Baek released his killing intent. A vicious killing intent that prickled the skin — nothing anyone would mistake for a fake. The woman took it in full. Goosebumps rose over her entire body, and yet she found she could loosen her wariness of him, if only a little. A man who bore hatred and killing intent toward the Blood Heaven Cult. Her own hatred of the cult was fierce enough that this single fact could make her look upon him with favor.
"I will hear the terms of the deal."
Acceptance, dropped without a word of explanation about the Crimson Blood Demon Scripture. Hwa Baek went straight to the point, and she spread a qi barrier so the talk would not leak.
"What I'll offer is two things. Five Night-Luminous Pearls, and a way to resolve the side effects of the Crimson Blood Demon Scripture."
"I like that you are direct. Then what is it you will demand?"
"......"
Hwa Baek thought for a moment. From here on, every single word had to be set down with care.
"I'm going to kill ten masters."
"They will not be ordinary masters."
"No. Giants, casting a vast shadow over the world."
Yeon Ihwa would never guess it, not if she died and woke again — what names he was holding in his heart at this moment, and, when he killed them, what she would have to bear in his place.
"So? What is it you want, young hero?"
"Once I kill them, I'll have an epithet of my own."
"You would."
"I'll become a public enemy of the murim. I'll keep killing masters whose names are known, and in the end I'll be put down in the name of the Righteous Martial Alliance."
Even if he were not put down, he would live out his life hunted by the Righteous Martial Alliance. Hwa Baek wanted no such end. Even if he killed ten absolute masters, he wanted a smooth life, free of trouble.
"No one can stop an epithet from spreading. What is seen can be hidden. What is heard, no one can stop."
So what he wanted was a single thing.