The New Star
Roughly six years remained until the Great War of Righteousness and Evil.
Even so, I knew that to pour out all six of those years and only barely manage the pacification of the world would not do. It was because my goal was not to sweep across the Great War in a blaze of glory, but to make the blood calamity called the Great War of Righteousness and Evil a thing that never was.
"I say, Jegal."
"If it isn't Myeong-gae. What brings you here?"
The Secret Pavilion where Myeong-gae had made his home was a place that drew all manner of people. It took in anyone whose background checked out and whose abilities were proven, without discrimination. It had been a time of war, after all—all the more so in an era short of hands.
"There is something I would like to ask you."
"Ask away."
Among them, the member called "Jegal" was a peculiar one. As his name made plain, his origins in the Divine Strategy Jegal clan, one of the Five Great Clans, were peculiar enough—but his true specialty lay not in information, rather in military strategy.
"The Great War of Righteousness and Evil, I mean. To make it a thing that never was—what ought to have been done?"
"Hmm."
Seemingly intrigued by my question, that Jegal fellow pondered for a moment.
"Myeong-gae. Do you know 'that'?"
"I don't."
In the first place, I hadn't the faintest idea what "that" which Jegal spoke of even was—and even had I known what "that" was, my answer would have been no different. The knowledge and thinking of that Jegal fellow left an ordinary man like me far, far behind. That was all there was to it.
"I thought as much."
In any case, that Jegal fellow nodded and accepted my I don't know as a matter of course.
Which meant he had known full well I wouldn't know and asked anyway—so, when it came down to it, that Jegal fellow clearly belonged to the insufferable sort. This was why ink-slingers were so unpopular.
"A war does not break out unannounced, you see. There are always omens, and preparations. Considering the scale of the present Great War of Righteousness and Evil, its concrete preparations must be judged to reach back at least a year—which is to say, the signs ought to have been caught and stamped out a full year before the war ever erupted. If one wished to make the war itself a thing that never was, that is."
"A year?"
"It is not exact, but that is my inference. As for how I arrived at it—"
"I see. My thanks."
A year. With the answer I wanted in hand, I rose from my seat.
"Hold on. Ought you not to hear the grounds and method of the inference?"
"It's quite all right."
"No, truly, this is a genuinely fascinating story—"
"It isn't."
I was no strategist like that Jegal fellow, so what use was there in hearing the explanation? I would clearly grasp less than half of it—and so, without the slightest regret, I was able to take my leave of that unpopular ink-slinger Jegal.
In any case, six years remained until the Great War of Righteousness and Evil. If that Jegal fellow was right, the war's signs had to be wiped away a year before it began—which left five years.
Was the time sufficient?
Fortunately, there was slack in the calculations. By the plan drawn up under Myeong-gae's identity before my regression, I was due to reach the pacification of the world in another four years. There were deviations here and there, but since I was not straying far from the plan drawn up in my Myeong-gae days, it was a favorable sign.
And so far, no great variables had emerged...
I knew that my existence, flowing against the current of time, was bending the river of history little by little. But at the same time, I was certain the timing of the Great War of Righteousness and Evil would not change. I had realized that the ripples I had sent through fate were not enough to knock so vast a storm off its course—that was why.
It was less the realm of calculation and inference, as with that Jegal fellow, and more the intuition of a supreme-grade master—call it what you will. I even suspected that a spiritual sense, blossomed awake, was whispering the flow of heaven's secrets to me.
Next, the Taecheong-dan.
After the Beggars' Gang's Chwigu-hwan, the Intoxicated Dog Pill, the next prize to claim was the hidden treasure of Wudang: the Taecheong-dan, the Supreme Clarity Elixir.
There was still time to spare, so...
There was no call for impatience. I would wait for the right moment—for I knew that was the fastest path. And was patience not also the posture of an information broker? The me of this moment was no different from Jiang Taigong of old, who cast his line and waited for the moment to come.
I believed that before long, fortune would come dangling from my line. Fortune. Brother Gwak So-and-so had once put it: the right moment.
As I have said before, the Beggars' Gang was a group with a very high rate of illiteracy. Unlike those who walked the martial path, people who had built up learning rarely ended up beggars—that was simply how it went.
And so an organization like the Beggars' Gang, which poured its very identity into information, was perpetually starved for literate men. Inevitably, beggars who could handle the written word were the number-one priority recruits for headquarters.
"Myeong-gae. You can read and write, can't you?"
"That I can, sir."
"Have you, by any chance, given thought to coming up to headquarters?"
"...Are you perhaps telling me to become an ink beggar?"
Ink beggars who went up to headquarters compiled the Jianghu Register of a Thousand Names, belonged to the Hall of Martial Arts hand-copying the gang's secret martial manuals, and belonged to the Hall of Rumors recording information of superior grade and above. Truly weighty duties.
"I am. I guarantee you quality meals."
"Hmm."
Quality meals—honestly, it was tempting. What greater luxury was there for a beggar? But from what I knew, the ink beggars were said to be gaunter than the beggars begging on the streets. For all their quality meals, ink beggars were driven far harder than they were fed.
"I'll think on it after learning the work at the front lines a while longer."
"Not a bad notion. Say the word whenever you like."
"Yes, sir."
An ink beggar would handle information far weightier than a Third Knot like Myeong-gae, but he would lack the freedom to move. And so—I remembered—I had chosen the option of deferral.
In any case... So how did the field get by, its ink beggars poached away to headquarters? When you have no teeth, you gnaw with your gums—that is the human lot, and the beggar's instinct, is it not?
That's right. The Beggars' Gang handled most of its information by word of mouth. This guaranteed speed, and made the Beggars' Gang the jianghu's foremost bulwark of information. But had there been no flaw, why would the importance of the written word have needed such emphasis? Information handled by mouth carries one great flaw: it is all too often lost.
"Hey, First-Knot. What was that information about the Ak Family Manor in Shanxi that came up a while back?"
"The Ak Family Manor in Shanxi, sir?"
"That's right."
"Dunno?"
"Is there no one here who happens to remember it?"
"Dunno?"
"Boo."
I wanted to smack the First-Knot's skull with my begging bowl, but I did not. It was such a common occurrence that it could not even be called a mistake. It meant that though the Beggars' Gang gathered countless pieces of information, what remained was no more than a handful.
The treasure maps of the master artisan Cheon-gong, and the many treasure maps that had brought to light his legacy—the Dancheon Sword and the Blood Record. A colony of He Shou Wu roots more than a century old. The utter massacre of the Ice Palace's delegation. Unless information was of a scale to shake the jianghu and the murim to this degree, it left no record in the Beggars' Gang—that was what it meant.
"What the hell—what kind of dog-shit bastards are these?"
"C-comparing us beggars to dog shit is a bit much, don't you think?"
"What was that?"
"Apologize to the dog shit."
"...Fine."
I had combed through a great deal of the Beggars' Gang's information, and the reason I knew only the major events from the moment of my regression up to the present—my twenty-third year—was precisely this. So little information survived in the records.
But Myeong-gae at twenty-three—a branch master with the Third Knot still knotted at his waist—was a different matter. Having attained the standing of branch master, Myeong-gae had been able to devour all manner of information on his own initiative, with his regression in mind.
It meant I had crammed it all deep into my head before it could evaporate. Partly it was because I trusted my natural aptitude, and partly because I knew I could not carry written records back through my regression.
From now on, it would be different.
The reason I could be so certain was that the vast trove of information I had gathered and organized with my own hands, in my capacity as branch master, lay dormant within my head. The hour had arrived, at last, to wield a regressor's privileges in earnest. One might even say that from here on, it was my age.
"Hm?"
Lost in these thoughts, I turned my head at a familiar presence—and there stood Ma Sok, the Soul-Chasing Life-Taking, a hidden master of Haomun.
But... Ma Sok's bearing was gravely awry. The composed, tranquil air—so unlike a martial artist of the unorthodox factions—was gone without a trace; in its place stood a warrior lurching unsteadily. His qi and blood had plainly been thrown into violent disorder.
Paying no heed to the thread of blood wetting the corner of his own mouth, Ma Sok spoke.
"Young Master Myeong. I need your help."
I hurried to him and took his arm, steadying him. "What in the world has happened?"
Ma Sok clenched his teeth hard enough that the grind of them was audible, and went on.
"The Pavilion Master... has been abducted."
"...!"
Something that had never happened in my past life had come to pass. It was a variable even I had failed to foresee.
The summit of Takmoki Peak—the Demon Sky Tower.
Glug-glug— Wi Su filled his cup with Wuliangye.
The Wuliangye now held in Wi Su's hand was a liquor made by the Yao family of Sichuan—and so it was no ordinary drink, but one deserving the name of a famed vintage. Liquor brewed from five grains—sorghum, glutinous rice, rice, buckwheat, and corn—is called Wuliangye, the Five-Grain Liquor; add the Yao family's secret brewing method, and it becomes a famed vintage known as Yaozi Xuequ.
Wuliangye was, by and large, a common mixed liquor of assorted grains—but this Wuliangye, having met in the Yao family a craftsman of the rarest kind, took the name Yaozi Xuequ and became a wine renowned the world over.
For that reason, Wi Su loved the Wuliangye of Sichuan—Yaozi Xuequ. It was because he saw in it a resemblance to the Demonic Path.
In truth, when it came to judging a liquor, what weight did origin or ingredients, pedigree or reputation carry? If the flavor and the finish were superb, then it was a famed vintage, plain and simple. It even ran strong enough in proof to be faithful to liquor's true purpose—so the fame of Yaozi Xuequ as one of the very top of the Central Plains' Eight Great Wines was no idle boast. Whether Yaozi Xuequ resembled the Demonic Path or not, the point was that Wi Su would have come to love the Yao family's Wuliangye all the same.
He had said the place of origin mattered little—and yet the fact that it was produced in Sichuan, the region nearest to Xinjiang where the Tianshan range rose, and that this alone let him sit face to face with Yaozi Xuequ like this, was a point that pleased Wi Su greatly.
Gulp—
"Mm."
For all his love of Yaozi Xuequ, Wi Su did no more than moisten his lips before setting the cup down. Considering the barren environment of the Tianshan range and the finances of the Heavenly Demon Cult, liquor was a luxury among luxuries—all the more so for a grain-made liquor like Wuliangye. Grain staved off hunger; liquor did not.
It wasn't simply that he begrudged the grain "wasted" on fermentation—he also knew that procuring the famed Yaozi Xuequ took roughly ten bushels of grain. He could hardly gulp down, like a river, enough food to see ten thousand cultists through a single hearty meal.
"A gift, in commendation of the Chief Strategist's toil."
In the first place, had the Heavenly Demon Seol Cheon-sang not bestowed it with his own hand, this Yaozi Xuequ would never have found its way into Wi Su's keeping.
The Chief Strategist of the Heavenly Demon Cult, the Demonic Divine Conduit Wi Su, wore the outward appearance of a frail scholar, but in essence he was demonic to the marrow. Born in the Tianshan, raised in the Tianshan, and risen within those very Tianshan to a seat below one alone and above ten thousand—it was only natural. One who bore the identity of a demonic being could not possess a temperament that pitied all mankind. This, too, was the workings of nature.
And yet no one was more faithful to a Chief Strategist's duty than the Demonic Divine Conduit Wi Su—his cherishing of the cultists and his care for the cult's finances were genuine. Such was the reason—the reason he could not easily bring himself to swallow the Heavenly Demon's bestowed gift, Yaozi Xuequ, which he had, with no small resolve, taken out for the first time in ages.
Gulp—
"Mm."
Even so, Wi Su wet his lips with Yaozi Xuequ. In the Demon Sky Tower—which had never once permitted the intrusion of anything profane—he was borrowing the savor of Yaozi Xuequ. Such was how tangled Wi Su's heart had become.
"Hoo—"
Borrowing the strength of the faint tipsiness that had wet his lips, Wi Su looked up at the sky. Having climbed to the Demon Sky Tower, there were no clouds to block his view—his gaze took in the heavens and their secrets, whole and undistorted.
"Tsk."
A fading star entered Wi Su's sight. Until only recently, that star had blazed with brilliant light—it was the star of the Blood-Drinking Demon God. That the star was fading meant the soul of the Blood-Drinking Demon God Golu Gwang had crossed the river of the dead—and so his tracks going silent was never a coincidence.
Most likely, the result of an encounter with a new star. He said "most likely" only because he had not witnessed it with his own eyes, but he would not be wrong—such was what the flow of heaven's secrets whispered to Wi Su.
The star of Blood-Drinking had been devoured by the new star.
From the standpoint of Wi Su, who had stolen heaven's secrets and orchestrated the great design, it would have to be called an ill omen. For if the flow of heaven's secrets Wi Su had charted all this while was correct, the star of Blood-Drinking was never meant to perish at this point in time.
Yet neither was it purely a pity—because setting aside the cult's great design, Wi Su as an individual had long found the man called the Blood-Drinking Demon God Golu Gwang deeply distasteful.
Moreover, having peeped at heaven's secrets across long ages, Wi Su knew one thing: the flow of heaven's secrets possessed a resilience of its own. The star of Blood-Drinking had fallen, but it would rise again. The roots of the Blood-Drinking Golu Clan did not tremble merely because Golu Gwang was gone. Rather, among those who had coveted Golu Gwang's seat all this while, someone would now step forward—and he would rise as a new star. The essence of the Five Great Houses of the Demonic Path remained intact, so it was a matter that would settle itself without Wi Su lifting a hand.
Seen that way, it might even prove a blessing. Having foreseen this very situation, Wi Su had long since sown his seeds within the Blood-Drinking Golu Clan. His orchestration would not miss its mark—and at last, a Demon God who could be controlled would ascend within the Blood-Drinking Golu Clan as well. In sum, it would be right to call it a blessing in disguise.
But Wi Su's brow would not unfurrow.
"Tsk."
Because beside the fading star of Blood-Drinking, his eyes had caught a new star shining brilliantly.
A new star, shining brilliantly. That was why Wi Su had come to the Demon Sky Tower today.