How to Trust - 3
The depths of the cave were dark. Even so, that didn't make moving through it difficult. Chae Jin was a seasoned master—and mere darkness was hardly enough to blind eyes like hers.
"Ah—careful there."
I very nearly tripped. Right. Chae Jin might be a seasoned master, but I certainly wasn't, so it was only natural that I'd be less at home in the dark.
"I was thinking we might use a fire striker..."
"Yang Myeong could spot the light and ready herself, you know."
"That's true."
Even our conversation had to be carried on in whispers. We were already walking with the footwork of Chae Family Tai Chi Chuan, muffling our footsteps as much as we could—so having come this far, it was better to keep the secrecy intact if we could.
Not that it would matter much if we got caught anyway.
"Oh—the cave's opening up."
The descending passage grew wider, and from somewhere deep ahead a faint glow was seeping out. Not torchlight, though. A night-luminous pearl, perhaps? The light had a dull cast to it—didn't look like a particularly expensive one.
"How long do you think it'll take to deal with Yang Myeong?"
"Hmm... even if it drags on, I'd have her inside a hundred seconds."
Chae Jin answered without holding anything back—the sum of everything the world knew about Yang Myeong, pieced together with what Ha-no had told us earlier.
A hundred seconds, hm.
"Could you manage it in eighty? You are, after all, Chae Jin—the Moonlight Blade, eldest disciple of the prestigious Moon Lotus Pavilion."
Pfft. A smile tugged at the corner of Chae Jin's mouth. Without bothering to smooth away that prettily curved smirk, she fixed her black eyes on me and said evenly,
"Aren't you trusting me a little too much? All right, then. I'll finish it in eighty."
"Good."
If Chae Jin unleashed the Moonlight Blade Technique, she could certainly take Yang Myeong inside eighty seconds. I gave a light nod and walked on, calm and unhurried.
And then we found them.
The Soul-Lost Humans.
And an old woman, hemmed in by those puppets, compounding some manner of medicine in an enormous iron cauldron.
She was a hag with a grotesque face—a long nose, eyes slitted into narrow lines, a back bent double. Her hands looked as hard and dry as dead wood, and her long, sharp-looking nails were painted black.
Stirring the long ladle in the cauldron with a grave expression, she heaved a deep sigh.
Then she shook her bell, and one of the Soul-Lost Humans stirred.
A girl, still young—she looked even younger than Sa Yun.
She drew the girl close, reached out, and opened a wound along her arm—then lapped up the red blood that came trickling down with a long, damp tongue.
And in that same instant, life kindled in the crone's face.
"...How revolting."
Well. That's old monsters for you.
The world had no shortage of creatures that stole the vitality of others to sustain their own lives. If there was any comfort to be had, it was that this crone—Yang Myeong—belonged among the weaker of their kind.
"Hmm... though the Soul-Lost Humans do worry me. I had no idea there'd be that many."
"Leave the Soul-Lost Humans to me. I have a way of dealing with them—"
That was when it happened. Perhaps the girl's blood had failed to satisfy her—Yang Myeong flung her ladle to the floor, loosed a grotesque shriek, and stretched out her hand. And shuffling out at her call, step by step, came another girl, dressed somewhat more cleanly than the last.
Oh Yuna. Daughter of Oh Chil, Hall Master of the Jin Fist Hall.
Yang Myeong seized the girl—standing there with dull, clouded eyes—yanked her close, and opened her mouth. Sharp teeth gleamed in the pearl's dim light. She meant to bite into the girl's arm, drink deeper of her blood, and drain her vitality all the harder.
Seeing that, I knew I could delay no longer.
"No help for it, then. Let's go."
Shing!!
At my word, Chae Jin asked nothing more. She simply proved herself through the blade, as any warrior would. The moment the saber came sweeping from its sheath, its silver edge was already diving for Yang Myeong's skull.
"Kyahk!!"
But just as Chae Jin had said, Yang Myeong was a master in her own right. Dark energy coiling into her dead-wood hands, she knocked aside the crescent-shaped blade and growled in our direction.
"Who goes there!!"
Her shrill cry rang through the cavern. Chae Jin, already darting in, answered not with words but with a sweep of her blade.
Ting...!!
Chae Jin's ambush seized the momentum. Yang Myeong hastily rattled her bell, and at its summons the Soul-Lost Humans began pressing in on her.
"Kekeke!! A wench of Moon Lotus Pavilion, is it?! Come on, then—try and kill me!!"
As the puppets swarmed to bar her way, Chae Jin gritted her teeth. Then, with a single thudding stomp, her internal energy burst outward and sent the oncoming Soul-Lost Humans sprawling. But it only slowed the assault for a breath—and Yang Myeong, a wily old master, was not about to let that opening pass.
She drove the puppets at Chae Jin to pin her down, hunting for a gap to strike through herself.
And was I going to just stand there and watch?
Fwoosh!!
Thanks to the internal energy I had steadily built up through training, I had tempered the Five Animal Frolics to a serviceable degree.
Which meant that through the form of Fire, I could conjure flame—just as Sa Yun had done before me.
"You dirty son of a bitch!!"
I could make Yang Myeong blow her top, all right.
The puppets that had been moving to attack Chae Jin rolled their eyes back and came charging my way instead.
"So tell me—why were you so obsessed with the Soul-Lost Humans, a failed line of research?"
I sneered at Yang Myeong as she ground her teeth.
That's right. A failed line of research. The Soul-Lost Humans were, in the most literal sense, a failure.
The Empire had pursued countless studies against the Demonic Cult, and one of them was the soldier who knew no fear. Every person alive carries fear, and the Imperial Research Bureau traced the cause to the emotions bound up in the soul. Then what if you froze the soul itself and stripped the emotions away? If you could forge soldiers who felt nothing, whose intellect was sealed off so that they merely followed orders—might you not raise warriors strong enough to face the demonic arts without ever taking a step back?
The research that began thus enjoyed generous backing, yet it arrived, in the end, at failure. They succeeded in administering a special drug that dammed the flow of the Five Elements—freezing the soul, erasing fear, fortifying the body, and producing soldiers who obeyed.
But that was precisely the problem. Just as water flowing downward is natural, and night following day is natural, it is supremely natural for a human being to respond to the Five Elements. Continual commands and the caster's unbroken concentration could suppress that nature—but the moment such control lapsed, the Soul-Lost Humans reacted to the Five Elements with deadly sensitivity.
For that fatal flaw, the Soul-Lost Human project was ultimately written off as a failure, and the Empire struck out on a new line of research built upon the ruin. But those who had carried the work were never the sort to swallow a verdict of failure easily—least of all researchers brilliant enough to earn imperial backing, people with pride to spare. And so, one after another, those who kept the research alive to escape the name of "failure" slid into corruption.
We did not fail.
We were not wrong.
We simply lacked funding, lacked test subjects, and had yet to find the method—that was all.
So they consoled themselves, and carried the research on in their own fashion. But how was such work to continue without the Empire behind it? In the end, they kidnapped commoners to secure test subjects, and set upon the innocent to obtain the medicinal ingredients their experiments demanded. Beneath the delusion of achieving some great work, they crossed the line.
Countless incidents erupted in the course of it, and as the murim dealt with the fallout, countermeasures against the Soul-Lost Humans took shape. One of those countermeasures was to turn against the puppets the very Five Elements to which they responded by instinct.
Scholars believed the Soul-Lost Humans despised fire. Perhaps because they judged that no flame could ever melt and save those frozen souls? Left without orders, the moment a puppet laid eyes on fire, it would be drawn to the flame like a moth—as though the fire were its mortal enemy of a thousand lifetimes.
I strung along the puppets charging madly at me, buying every second I could—and in between, stole a glance toward Chae Jin.
Every time that saber, like silver moonlight, flashed, Yang Myeong spewed curses and gave ground. Just as I had expected, she was no match for Chae Jin—and she didn't even have the leisure to issue commands to her puppets. The moment she focused enough to give a single order, her head would leave her shoulders.
Which left exactly one thing to do.
"Kyaaaak!!"
With a horrific shriek, a haggard-faced woman caught up to me and lunged.
She came at me on nothing but instinct, trying to snuff out the flames I had conjured—but I wasn't about to be felled by anything of the sort.
If I went down to that, Chae Jin would stretch my training hours to double. At the very least.
The fist hurtling toward me carried none of the principles of profound martial arts. No dominance, either.
It didn't even carry emotion.
It was merely the blow of a soul frozen solid and strengthened in the process—nothing but a beast's instinct.
Having slipped past that attack, simple to the point of emptiness, several times over, I reached out my hand.
There was no need to block. To redirect—that was simply the way of Tai Chi.
In a flash, the fist that spared no thought for its owner's well-being spun around off my left palm.
The punch flung to smash my skull lost its direction and cracked through empty air—and the middle-aged woman, her center gone, staggered toward me as if to fall.
Even then, I did not stop. Taking the momentum of her thrust exactly as it came, I wheeled my body on my right foot as its axis.
The instant her back met mine—she who had been facing me head-on mere moments before—I put a light strength into my own.
Scholars believed the Soul-Lost Humans feared metal. Perhaps out of the worry that it might wound their souls? Chae Family Tai Chi Chuan, unfolded upon the Metal form of the Five Animal Frolics, proved its worth—a light tap was all it took to send the woman rolling across the floor.
"Kraaaah!!"
While I was turning aside the woman's attack, a girl with dark smudges under her eyes came leaping at me. It was the kind of strike that meant to crush me beneath her whole body—but there was no need to take it head-on.
I simply took a single step back.
Scholars believed the Soul-Lost Humans welcomed wood. Perhaps because they believed the life energy dwelling within trees might wake those frozen souls? And so, upon finding wood, the puppets would cling to it as though greeting long-lost family. The moment I unfolded the Wood form, the falling girl tried to burrow into me all the faster. Fire and Wood, both unfolding at once—rather than be thrown into confusion by the two elemental energies, she seemed to take an even greater delight in the Wood.
I caught the girl as she came down on me like a plummeting stone. My retreated foot became the axis, and borrowing its spring, I turned my body with ease.
One smooth turn.
No strength was needed. All that was needed was flow.
The moment I pushed the girl I had caught straight back, she staggered a few steps, lost her balance, and crumpled to the ground.
"Kuuooong!"
"Kyaaaak!!"
The middle-aged woman and the girl. While I was occupied with the two of them, the remaining Soul-Lost Humans came swarming in. Watching them try to bury me in sheer numbers, I slammed my foot down.
Thud!!
The Soul-Lost Humans shun earth. It is the way of things to bury the dead in the ground—then what of the Soul-Lost Humans? Might not those whose souls had been frozen by the drug believe, somewhere deep down, that they were already dead? Perhaps for that reason, puppets without orders reacted sharply even to earthen walls that would crumble at a touch, and did their desperate best to skirt around them. Soil geysered up from the stomp I had detonated in the Earth form, raising a wall of earth, and the puppets that had been swarming in pulled up short and began milling about in confusion.
But.
Among the puppets Yang Myeong had made, there was one with strength enough to clear that wall.
Tak!!
A woman in Taoist robes trod on the heads of the puppets milling helplessly before the earthen wall and vaulted over, twirled once in midair, and immediately drove out a fist swift as a lightning flash. A murim warrior once, perhaps? Quite possibly. Yang Myeong took anyone and everyone for her test subjects. In Cheonsang Myeongwol, some of the Soul-Lost Humans she had captured had indeed been murim warriors—there had even been a linked event quest built on that very connection.
Against a strike stronger and faster than those of the other puppets, I reached out my hand.
What extended was my left hand—the hand of yin. It knocked the fist aside with a light tap, changing nothing but its direction, then settled itself over her face.
The Soul-Lost Humans do not accept water. Scholars believed that water's stilling purity neutralized the drug's dominion over them.
"Mmph—!"
Through the form of Water, the water energy dwelling in nature gathered upon my left hand, drawn out by my meager internal energy. It was a scant amount—no more than a small jar's worth—but this much would be enough. With her face caught in my left hand as the water energy settled into it, she flailed her limbs as though to shake it off.
But those flailing limbs did me no great harm. They were strikes swung on instinct alone, without even the rudiments of technique behind them. Granted, I took a few blows—but I kept my vitals out of reach, and this much I could laugh off. ...Though it did sting, truth be told. Still, it wouldn't do to let that show here, now would it?
Unable to withstand the water energy, she went limp at last. I set her down and stole a glance over the earthen wall.
Shraaak!!
While I strung along the Soul-Lost Humans and bought time—Chae Jin's blade took Yang Myeong's head.
"Fifty seconds."
Spinning the blade—not a single drop of blood on it—and sliding it home into its sheath, she flashed me a weary grin, and I smiled back at her.
"Well done."
Chae Jin vaulted over and threw herself at the remaining puppets. Watching her fists and feet batter them down, I too stepped out beyond the earthen wall.
"Don't kill them. The soul-lost state can be treated."
A giggle burst out of her, and she leveled her fists at the puppets trying to close in on me.
"I know, I know—so you just stay back there."
Well, now. Isn't that dependable.