Homecoming
"And so the Heavenly Dragon Sword Hero severed the head of the Heavenly Demon, that incarnation of absolute evil, and restored justice to the murim. The people of the world came to praise him as the Martial God!"
The storyteller rattled on with a tale I'd heard so many times it had worn calluses on my ears. Every corner of the Central Plains was buzzing with the news that the Heavenly Dragon Sword Hero had brought an end to the Orthodox-Demonic War — a conflict that had raged for more than a decade.
"Tsk."
I clicked my tongue before I could stop myself. I'd heard that same tired story a hundred times over on the road home.
"It wasn't nearly that romantic, you know."
It wasn't some inferiority complex toward the Heavenly Dragon Sword Hero talking. I said it because the battle that had actually taken place was nothing like the version the loudmouths loved to tell. The Heavenly Demon had been far stronger than anyone imagined, and even at the very end, the Heavenly Dragon Sword Hero had not overcome him alone.
"Oh... were you perhaps a martial artist who fought in the Orthodox-Demonic War?"
The old man sitting beside me must have caught my muttered sigh. His gaze was fixed on my empty left sleeve, so the question came with no small amount of certainty.
"That's right."
No reason to hide it. I nodded.
"My word! To think I failed to recognize a hero of the Orthodox-Demonic War!"
The old man raised his voice for no good reason, and every eye in the tavern swung toward me.
I didn't like it.
"Would you do this humble old man the honor of sharing your tales of valor?"
I liked even less that the old fool kept talking, utterly oblivious.
"Ooh, I'd like to hear that too! Did you ever cross paths with the Heavenly Dragon Sword Hero? He must be as righteous as the rumors say, yes?"
And I liked least of all the words that kept dredging up memories I'd rather leave buried.
"Can't say I've got much to tell. As you can see, I'm not exactly the type you'd go around bragging about."
Still, I decided not to take it out on them.
"Captain! Please, just think for half a second before you cause a scene!"
That had been the promise.
"Nngh... I was being thoughtless. Forgive me."
The old man looked genuinely sorry, and the irritation that had been building in me eased a little. Fortunately.
"Ha! A hero of the Orthodox-Demonic War? He's nothing but a one-armed beggar!"
Well. Then some lunatic decided to pick a fight out of nowhere, and my mood went straight to hell all over again.
"Looks like you picked up some third-class martial arts somewhere, but you shouldn't go around telling lies. Do you have any idea how great the heroes of the Orthodox-Demonic War truly were? For a third-class nobody without a scrap of internal energy to dare..."
The young man lecturing me with that arrogant tilt to his chin wore lavish martial robes and carried a sword hung with an ornate tassel.
"...A martial artist of the Cheongun Sect, then."
The moment I spoke the name of the orthodox sect that ran this neighborhood, he puffed up like a rooster.
"That's right! I am Jin Yuha, young master of the Cheongun Sect! My fellow martial artists of the jianghu call me the Young Azure Sword."
He introduced himself with a haughty little nod, thoroughly pleased with himself.
"Yeah, I've heard of you. The Young Azure Sword, and the Cheongun Sect both."
The name wasn't unfamiliar to me.
"Ha, so you've at least heard of us somewhere!"
It had been a sect connected to the kind of work I used to handle, once upon a time.
"One of the Five Great Sects of Jiangxi Province. The sect leader is Jin Yeon, the Great Blue Sword. His martial prowess sits at the Peak Realm."
In Jiangxi, where the orthodox factions had never been particularly strong, the Cheongun Sect was a name that carried some weight. Under ordinary circumstances, they wouldn't have been worth my attention.
"Opportunists who, while the order of the murim was shaken by the Orthodox-Demonic War, oppressed the other sects of Jiangxi and robbed them of their interests."
Ordinary circumstances, however, had not included the things they'd done during the war.
"Y-you bastard! How dare you spew such slander, and in whose presence?!"
The young man who had just announced himself as the Cheongun Sect's young master flushed scarlet and ripped his sword from its scabbard.
"Hah..."
Truly, he was pathetic.
"Brat. Didn't the adults ever teach you that if you do bad things, the ghosts will come to take you?"
I looked at the piece of trash who seemed ready to swing that sword at any second, and slowly let my energy rise.
A crushing wave of internal energy unfurled through the tavern, so dense the air itself seemed to freeze. It was the same suffocating presence that had once made traitors of the orthodox path piss themselves in the dark.
Only then did Jin Yuha realize something had gone terribly wrong. His face went ashen.
"Ghhk... this energy... it can't be—!"
In the chaos the Orthodox-Demonic War had left behind, the Murim Alliance had done everything in its power to keep the disorder from spreading. I — we — had been the tools they used to do it. A blade for carving out the traitors of the orthodox path. The Alliance's dirty right hand, despised by the very orthodox murim we served. And in the end, we were thrown away as meat shields in the final battle of the war. An ill-fated fighting force, spent to the last man.
"The Black Tiger Unit..."
"Correct."
That had been the name of the unit I led.
"Don't tell me... you're the Ghost-Shadow Blood Rakshasa...?"
"That's correct too."
That had been my epithet, once.
"Ghost-Shadow Blood Rakshasa. Funny, isn't it? I graduated from Cheonryong Academy, same as anyone, and they stuck me with a title that sounds like some unorthodox heretic."
"Hhhnn..."
The brat who'd thought himself a legend in his own little well was now a pale, whimpering wreck. He had a weaker spine than I'd expected.
"I will now commence the Black Tiger Unit's final mission."
Not that a weak spine was going to earn him any mercy from me.
"Jin Yuha, young master of the Cheongun Sect. In the name of the murim's justice, I will hold the Cheongun Sect accountable for its crimes."
One corner of my mouth tugged upward before I could stop it.
Justice, my ass.
The Murim Alliance had never been all that righteous a bunch, and what I was about to do was nothing more than a simple settling of scores. If this idiot hadn't picked a fight for no reason, I probably wouldn't have bothered doing anything about the Cheongun Sect at all.
I did think about it at least once, though, so cut me some slack.
I offered up that excuse that wasn't really an excuse, and went on.
Considering how my men and I had been sacrificed, the Alliance could damn well understand a little payback.
"UAAAAAH!!"
With a scream that was half battle cry, the young master of the Cheongun Sect swung his sword. I flicked my hand toward him.
A thunderous boom shook the tavern. Jin Yuha's face was pulverized without mercy.
Silence flooded the tavern in an instant.
"Hey, waiter. This should be more than enough to take care of the cleanup, yeah?"
I tossed him a handful of silver and rose from my seat.
"Before I head home, let's go take care of one last job."
Even after retiring, I was seeing my duties through to the very end. A true model of orthodox righteousness, if I do say so myself.
"Nngh..."
Jegal Hui, the Sword Queen of Heavenly Wisdom, who had risen as one of the orthodox faction's heroes through the Orthodox-Demonic War, pressed her fingers to a throbbing temple.
"There's just too much work."
The Heavenly Dragon Sword Hero — no, the Martial God — and the other heroes were typical martial artists through and through. You couldn't expect them to lift a finger for the postwar cleanup. That sort of thing had always been the province of the Jegal Clan, the so-called repository of wisdom of the Murim Alliance. Thanks to that, Jegal Hui was drowning in a workload even heavier than what she'd endured during the war itself.
"Urgent report from Jiangxi Province!"
Even now, the work kept pouring in without a moment's rest. She found herself resenting her father, who had retired without a shred of lingering attachment, cheerfully leaving the aftermath to the next generation.
"Jiangxi? Is this about the Cheongun Sect?"
"Hah...! That's correct!"
Even under a workload that bordered on abuse, her mind was still turning at a blistering pace. She hadn't been born into the Jegal Clan — famed for their divine stratagems — for nothing.
"So the Cheongun Sect finally became the masters of Jiangxi, then? Tch. If it hadn't been for that last battle..."
"P-pardon? N-no, that's not it."
What had actually happened in Jiangxi, however, was something even she — a woman whose very epithet meant wisdom — could never have predicted.
"That is... a few days ago, the Cheongun Sect was annihilated."
While the Murim Alliance had been consumed by the Orthodox-Demonic War, the Cheongun Sect had greedily expanded its power across Jiangxi. And then, suddenly, it was gone.
"The Young Azure Sword, Jin Yuha, was murdered in a tavern. The Cheongun Sect leader, the Great Blue Sword Jin Yeon, and every last one of his disciples... had their dantians destroyed..."
At a glance, it looked like the brutal handiwork of someone from the unorthodox or demonic path. One might even wonder if a new great evil had been born in a murim that had barely found its peace.
"It can't be..."
But to Jegal Hui and the members of the Murim Alliance, the method was all too familiar.
"Th-the Cheongun Sect disciples were interrogated. The culprit... identified himself as the Leader of the Black Tiger Unit."
"I knew it..."
The Ghost-Shadow Blood Rakshasa, her classmate from Cheonryong Academy, and the Black Tiger Unit he had led. It was the unique method of judgment practiced by that ghostlike unit, the one that had handled the Murim Alliance's dark side.
"That man said he was going home! What the hell is he doing out there?!"
Jegal Hui, who had always maintained an ice-cold composure in front of her subordinates, was suddenly on her feet and furious in a way none of them had ever seen.
"Ah, um... how should we handle this matter...?"
"Handle it? Handle it how?"
"Should we not issue a wanted order for the Ghost-Shadow Blood Rakshasa at once and have him apprehended?"
"Hah."
Jegal Hui let out a sigh of pure incredulity at her subordinate's nonsense.
"You weren't on the battlefield during the final battle, were you?"
"...I was defending headquarters. But what does that have to do with—"
"This is exactly why we said his information shouldn't be classified."
"...Pardon?"
"It's nothing."
She shook her head and continued in a tone that brooked no argument.
"Bury the Cheongun Sect incident."
"T-truly?"
"Treat it as a Murim Alliance operation. The Cheongun Sect needed to be punished anyway."
"Even so... the Ghost-Shadow Blood Rakshasa has already left the Alliance."
"Then we'll treat it as if he hadn't. Do not even think about laying a hand on him."
The Ghost-Shadow Blood Rakshasa had already declared his retirement and said he was going home. There was no need to go poking at a sleeping tiger.
Who knows what would happen if we provoked that insane monster...!
Even within the Murim Alliance, those who knew the Ghost-Shadow Blood Rakshasa's true strength were vanishingly few. The Alliance's old leadership had despised him for his humble origins — a background even shabbier than that of the minor sects. They had argued that the Black Tiger Unit, as the Alliance's dark operations division, needed to remain secret, and so they had buried the martial prowess of the man who led it.
A man who offered up his own arm as a sacrifice to take one of the Heavenly Demon's...
Which was why only a handful of martial artists who had survived the final battlefield, and those who had been close to him, knew the truth. The Ghost-Shadow Blood Rakshasa's martial prowess had been enough to threaten even the Heavenly Demon.
"He is a martial artist who has already declared his retirement. There is no need to press charges against a man who rendered meritorious service and washed his hands of the martial world."
The Ghost-Shadow Blood Rakshasa had already lost the Black Tiger Unit, who had been like family to him. He almost certainly harbored a grudge against the Murim Alliance. Jegal Hui had no desire to shatter a peace that had been so hard-won.
"...Understood."
Her subordinate pulled a reluctant face, then bowed his head deeply and said he understood. Perhaps he thought she was forgiving the Ghost-Shadow Blood Rakshasa out of old sentiment.
"I'll say it again. Do not touch the Ghost-Shadow Blood Rakshasa. Under no circumstances can he be allowed to return to the murim."
Even so, it didn't matter. Jegal Hui hoped the tiger that had gone off to find a place to die would not come back. If he returned to the murim, the odds were high that he would become a specter of vengeance.
"...Woohyeok. This is as far as I can go for you."
Of course, she couldn't deny that compassion for a classmate who had lost everything had played a large part in that decision.
A small rural village in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province.
Having returned to his hometown, Baek Woohyeok — the Ghost-Shadow Blood Rakshasa — frowned at the letter lying before him.
Do you not wish to know the truth of this world?
O pitiful victim, toyed with by fate.
"What the hell is this bullshit?"