Rebirth
Evil is unspectacular, and always human, and shares our bed and eat at our table.
Evil is ordinary. It sleeps beside us and eats at our table.
It is always people who are evil.
A few weeks later.
Outside Luoyang’s western gate.
A long line of people stretched out, waiting for the procedures that would let them pass. Horses and oxen hitched to heavily laden carts lowed and stamped. Familiar faces spotted one another and exchanged greetings.
“Well now, you! It’s been a while.”
“It has. I was just coming back from a trading run to Kaifeng this time.”
Strangers struck up conversations simply to pass the tedious hours.
“Haha, you’ve come a long way.”
“I heard the Sect finally has a holy land—I couldn’t sit still. The moment the news reached me, I ran here as fast as I could.”
On a day like this, pickpockets had a field day too.
“There—grab him!”
“My purse!”
Yet even amid the crush of bodies and the clamor at the gate, one place remained strangely quiet.
A traveling merchant kept his mouth shut, rolling his eyes nervously toward the source of that silence.
Tall. Face hidden beneath a large bamboo hat. A small bundle. Clothes neither shabby nor particularly fine. And an ancient sword strapped firmly across the back.
The sword itself looked a little extraordinary, but this was Luoyang—home of the Luoyang Sword Family. A single blade was not enough to make everyone fall into such uncomfortable silence.
The merchant’s eyes drifted lower, to the leather pouches hanging at the swordsman’s waist.
Those pouches…
There was nothing special about them—except that the bottoms were still soaked with blood, crimson drops pattering onto the ground. A few had dried to a dark, stiff crust, but there was no mistaking the stains for anything else.
He swallowed hard; his Adam’s apple bobbed.
The shape, the size…
They were exactly large enough to hold human heads.
Everyone nearby had reached the same conclusion. Yet no one was bold enough to ask the swordsman outright whether those pouches really contained heads. They could only pray the line ahead would shrink quickly so the gate guards would notice.
“You there!”
When a sharp-eyed guard finally spotted the suspicious figure and shouted, every bystander—including the merchant—scrambled aside at once.
“Drop your weapon and prove your identity!”
In the space that emptied into a sudden circle, guards rushed in and leveled gleaming spear points as if ready to strike.
The swordsman remained perfectly calm. Instead of answering, a hand slipped into a sleeve and tossed something toward the young squad leader.
“?!”
A hidden weapon? Poison?
Without the slightest hesitation the young leader threw himself to the ground the moment he saw the object leave the hand—reflexes and judgment far too sharp for someone without internal energy.
“…Oh?”
A spark of interest glittered under the brim of the bamboo hat.
The one truly shocked, however, was the young leader himself.
He was certain he had dodged whatever had been thrown—yet with a soft thud the object landed squarely against his chest.
“What in the…?”
Was this the legendary technique of Heogongseobmul he had only ever heard of in rumors and stories?
Before he could speak further, a gesture from the swordsman prompted him to pick up the object that had fallen against him.
“An identity plaque?”
It was a plaque carved from precious jade. A long gold cord glittered from it; silver fittings flashed in the afternoon sun. Without thinking, the young guard read the name engraved clearly upon it.
“…Yeon Seo-rin?”
That name, and the single sword. Everyone present knew the alias that went with them.
“Cheon-ui-mubong…!”
Yeon Seo-rin tossed the blood-soaked leather pouches onto the ground and spoke.
“These are the heads of wanted criminals with bounties in the Luoyang area.”
Once it became clear that the swordsman was the renowned Second Young Lady of the Luoyang Sword Family, even the gate commander himself came running out.
“I had heard the rumors, Second Young Lady—that you have been traveling around Henan Province hunting the most notorious black-path ruffians!”
Yeon Seo-rin disliked empty formalities. Claiming a prior appointment, she entered the city at once.
Yet her steps soon slowed under the sheer press of the crowd.
“…I know Luoyang’s streets are always busy,” she muttered, scratching her cheek under the brim of her hat. A small cut was healing and had begun to itch. “But has it ever been this much of a sea of people?”
She almost wondered whether the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering, scheduled for autumn, had somehow been moved up without her knowing.
“And most of them look like travelers.”
A few weeks earlier she would not even have been able to tell a traveler from a merchant by their clothes. The experience she had gained since first stepping into the martial world now showed.
“The number of people visiting Luoyang has increased dramatically. Most of them are pilgrims.”
The answer came from the young squad leader who, on the gate commander’s orders, had been assigned to escort the Second Young Lady of the Sword Family for her convenience.
“Pilgrims?”
“Because of the Goddess Sect’s holy land. They keep pouring in from every corner of the Central Plains.”
“Ah.”
Yeon Seo-rin understood at once.
“You mean Sin Valley.”
The Valley of Sin—or Sin Valley—was also her destination.
“I heard the rumor that while I was away, His Majesty the Emperor declared the Valley of Sin a holy land.”
She had broken with her master, who had led her down the wrong path, severed her ties with the captain of the guards, and left Luoyang that very day. News of the declaration had reached her only as hearsay.
“…We call it the Sacred Valley now. The old name is no longer used.”
“I see.”
The young leader’s fingers absently turned the prayer beads of the Goddess Sect around his wrist—something Yeon Seo-rin did not miss.
Before she left, she had found the Goddess faith strange. The Medicine Goddess was her late aunt, Yak So-yoo; she had seen the woman with her own eyes while she still lived. Yet as this endless tide of pilgrims proved, the faith had sunk deep roots into the lives of ordinary people she had met out in the martial world.
She had set out simply to empty her mind, to escape the shackles that had bound her life. Even that journey would have been stopped before she ever left Luoyang if not for the quiet help of her younger brother Yeon So-hyeon; the family’s people, worried for her safety, would have held her back. Still, she had gained much.
“…Do you follow the Goddess faith as well?”
The young leader nodded calmly.
“Yes, I do.”
A short, simple answer. Standing beside the Second Young Lady of the Luoyang Sword Family—Cheon-ui-mubong Yeon Seo-rin herself—he remained composed in a way that did not match his youth.
“Were you a veteran of the war?”
He was far too young to have fought in the northern campaigns, yet his composure belonged to someone who had crossed the line between life and death in real combat. That was the only explanation for how he had become a squad leader so early; proving himself on a battlefield would have made it possible.
“No.”
A bitter smile touched his lips—another expression that sat oddly on his young face.
“…Not long ago I simply went through something very much like it. Especially deeply. That was when I found my faith as well.”
It was an evasive answer, but she did not press. She was not the sort to pry into matters others preferred not to discuss merely out of curiosity.
Instead they moved with the crowd, slowly yet steadily, under a sun that had grown noticeably harsher.
“We’ve arrived.”
At last the young squad leader stopped. They stood before the Joint Business Headquarters of Grand Prince Yeon So-hyeon and Fourth Prince Yeon Bi, located at the entrance to the valley.
“Thank you for guiding me. This place is new to me…”
“Not at all.”
He offered a polite farewell with the same calm demeanor.
“Then I shall take my leave.”
Yeon Seo-rin called after him one last time.
“What is your name?”
He hesitated a moment, then answered honestly.
“…Jang Sam.”
Jang Sam. A few weeks earlier he had been a guard under the Luoyang administration’s security detachment, one of those who fought in the battle of Sin Valley. Trapped inside the illusion barrier woven by the Demonic Cult’s arts, he had endured countless battles that repeated over and over. Of all those caught in the barrier that day, he had suffered more savagely than most.
Yet misfortune had turned to fortune. The ordeal had given him combat experience no ordinary guard of his age could ever possess, and he had recently been promoted.
“Jang Sam…”
Yeon Seo-rin murmured the name and watched him disappear into the crowd. How could someone without internal energy move against the flow of people so naturally? The curious sight stirred the martial fanatic in her, but she turned her gaze away from the vanished figure and toward the Joint Business Headquarters of Yeon So-hyeon and Yeon Bi.
The scars still visible across the outer walls of the building were vivid enough to let her imagine the desperate fighting that had taken place only weeks before.
How shameful…
However deep her own reasons had been—however tightly the leash around her neck had bound her freedom, forcing her to live each day like a hamster on a wheel—the fact remained. While her younger brothers suffered every hardship here, this was the first time she had ever set foot in the place.
That was why she could not bring herself to step inside.
How could she face the brothers who were waiting for her within?
Will they resent me…?
It was the same question that had haunted her on the road back to Luoyang—no, even earlier, while she hunted black-path martial artists with bounties on their heads through wind and rain. A question that had never found an answer.
“…Do you have some business here?”
Someone spoke to the figure standing blankly at the entrance, bamboo hat pulled low, unable to go in or turn away. She had been so lost that she never even noticed a person coming close enough to address her.
“Ah—no, I…”
Why did that voice sound so strangely familiar?
When she turned in confusion, she found herself looking at the younger brother she had not seen in weeks—taller and more striking than before.
Yeon So-hyeon.
“If you’re back, you should come straight inside. Why are you hanging around like some uninvited guest?”
That characteristic blunt tone. As always, he spoke as though he already knew every worry that had been troubling her.
“Hurry up and come in.”
He turned away and added, still gruff:
“…Welcome back.”
It was not only to hide his own embarrassment. It was also so he would not have to see the tears that had slipped, unbidden, from Yeon Seo-rin’s eyes.
In that single sentence lay a power that rendered every fear she had carried utterly meaningless.