The One Who Becomes the Abyss
Officially, the headquarters of Haomun stood in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province.
It was a place one had to travel a full province farther south than the Sado League's headquarters in Hunan, which already lay below the Yangtze.
I say officially because the Haomun headquarters in Guangzhou was, in truth, a place of symbolism and nothing more. In practice, wherever the Haomun Leader resided was the headquarters of Haomun. It was much the same as the Beggars' Gang, whose main helm was wherever the Dragon Head happened to stand — one more piece of proof that the Beggars' Gang and Haomun, who seemed to occupy opposite poles of the world, resembled each other more than anyone.
In any case...
Geographically, Guangdong was skewed too far south to serve as a convenient base for overseeing information across the realm. And so the Haomun Leader — no, the man who was now the former Haomun Leader — Baekmyeon had kept bases scattered throughout Anhui, Shaanxi, Henan, and Hubei, the very heart of the Central Plains. That was why he had been able to set foot on the scene without delay.
A quiet corner of Anhui. For the first time in a very long while, a guest had entered Baekmyeon's secret residence.
"Is the wine to your taste?"
At Baekmyeon's question, Wiji Han's gaze dropped to his cup. He was no connoisseur of wine, but he could tell it was yellow wine. He took a moment to admire its color, and then—
Gulp.
"Good."
He drained the yellow wine in a single swallow. At such audacity, Baekmyeon asked, "What would you have done if it had been poisoned? You drank it without so much as a pause."
"Was it?"
"It was not."
"Then all is well."
Wiji Han did not boast — not that he could burn away any poison that invaded his body whenever he pleased, nor that his cultivation had in truth drawn near the realm where ten thousand poisons cannot invade. It was the unadorned confidence of a man who stood at the head of the unorthodox path.
"It is called Guangzhou Pearl Red — a specialty of my homeland."
"Is that so? A fine wine."
It was a slight nod, but sincerity lay within Wiji Han's words. Baekmyeon answered the sentiment with a smile and continued. "Yellow wine resembles the unorthodox path."
Having opened with that, Baekmyeon promptly fell silent.
"Go on."
It was a masterful play of tension and release, the kind that could not help but stir a listener's interest — it would be right to call it superb rhetoric.
"It resembles the Sado in how it veils its true nature behind its color, but the deepest resemblance lies in how utterly unartificial it is."
"Unartificial?"
"White liquor employs a technique called distillation — no doubt for the sake of that distinctive clarity, that austere pallor all its own. To become clear, it carves away at itself." Baekmyeon paused for breath, then met Wiji Han's eyes. "But yellow wine is savored exactly as it is made. Which is to say, it never severs the desires it was born with — no different from the unorthodox path."
With that, Baekmyeon poured more wine into Wiji Han's cup.
Gulp.
Wiji Han drained it in one swallow again. "Good."
It was the same yellow wine, yet it seemed to carry an entirely different flavor.
"So — what was the business that brought me here?"
In truth, this meeting had come about at Baekmyeon's earnest entreaty. He had begged the Sado League Leader, who was on the verge of departing once his affairs concluded, to stay his feet a while longer.
"Excuse me for a moment."
With those words, Baekmyeon's face began to warp, little by little. Subtly, his very frame shifted as well, until a man far taller and broader than the Baekmyeon of before sat in his place.
"Hoo—"
Before long, a middle-aged man of some fifty years stood in that spot. Wiji Han, whose martial arts had attained the Realm itself, perceived at once that Baekmyeon had fully released the disguise arts and the Bone-Shrinking Technique.
"Your humble servant Baekmyeon — Yeochungjo greets the League Leader for the first time."
This was the first time even Wiji Han had come face to face with Baekmyeon's true face and true name, so the man's greeting was no error. Baekmyeon was a man who had hidden himself his entire life; the very name Baekmyeon — Hundred Faces — had proven that fact through long history. And at last, that unwritten rule had been broken. But the Sado League Leader Wiji Han let nothing show. A giant's footsteps, after all, must fall measured and slow.
"League Leader, what do you intend to do with them?"
Yeochungjo's gaze had fallen on the figures lying unconscious nearby. They were Eunyeong operatives the Walpae had barely managed to take alive — men whom Wiji Han himself had requested, receiving them into his custody from Gang Pae and Yeo Wol. If they had truly touched the Demonic path, it was only right that the Sado League step in directly rather than leave them to Haomun.
"We will have to interrogate them, I suppose."
"Will you entrust them to me?"
A strange heat could be read in Yeochungjo's eyes. "I do not mean that you should hand them over to me. I mean that I wish to place myself under your command, League Leader."
"Hm?"
"I am a man retired from the world, having laid down my leader's post — there will be no complication. I beg you, take me in."
With those words, Yeochungjo prostrated himself before Wiji Han. It was the unmistakable rite of a subordinate.
"Hm."
In truth, it might not have mattered even had he not laid the post down — for no one in the Jianghu knew the name Yeochungjo, only Baekmyeon.
"Your reason?"
Baekmyeon was a man whose ability, resourcefulness, and martial prowess had all been widely acknowledged; that he had seized the leadership of Haomun by his own strength was proof enough of it. He could hardly take such a man into his service without knowing why. All understanding begins with knowing — that was why. Relationships, too, are no different.
"For someone to peer into the abyss, someone must become the abyss. That is a path you cannot walk, League Leader. A path you must not walk."
Much was condensed in those few words. Demonic Cultists were, by nature, vicious fanatics, and it was well known that ordinary torture would pry nothing out of them. To stand on equal footing with such men, one had to walk an equally inhuman road — and Yeochungjo had volunteered himself for that thorn-strewn path.
"Hm."
Wiji Han, the Overlord Martial Emperor, knew himself. And Wiji Han, the Sado League Leader, knew the unorthodox path. And so he knew, too, that he did not know the Demonic path — for a man who must pursue the Way of this present world had to remain human. As Baekmyeon had said, the inhuman path was a road Wiji Han must never come to understand.
"Then I take you in."
Wiji Han, having poured the Guangzhou Pearl Red into his own cup, handed it across to Yeochungjo.
"Thank you."
Without hesitation, Yeochungjo drained the cup.
"You knew from the start, didn't you."
Yeochungjo smiled sheepishly. "I was still the Haomun Leader, after all."
That single sentence explained a great deal. Why Baekmyeon had been present in that place. How the great undertaking of transferring the leadership had been accomplished so smoothly. No — above all, Wiji Han could now guess why such a hale man had used illness as a pretext to set a succession contest in motion. Yeochungjo must have sensed the Demonic path's stirring long before. He must have known they were infiltrating Haomun. And with Yeo Wol's affair having carved out the festering limb that was Geom Bigak, Haomun would remain safe for some time — that, too, was part of what he meant.
Baekmyeon. Yeochungjo. A man more capable, and more truly of the unorthodox path, than Wiji Han had imagined. Even if he gazed into the abyss by his own will, he would remain a man of the Sado.
"What shall I call you?"
"Thank you, League Leader."
Yeochungjo was sharp enough to grasp that the question was, in itself, the acceptance of his petition. After a moment's deliberation, he spoke. "Cham-ma — the Demon Slayer — would be fitting."
"Good."
It was a name steeped in the full weight of Yeochungjo's resolve.
"Cham-ma, then. I'm counting on you from here on."
"Yes."
The two men shared the yellow wine once more. For the first time in a very long while, the Overlord Martial Emperor Wiji Han had gained a subordinate. In truth, the only man he had ever counted as a true subordinate was Sama Ui, the Heavenly Brain — so it would be no error to call Cham-ma his second.
"May I place my hopes on you?"
"I will repay them with everything I have."
"Good."
The unorthodox path had sensed the stirring of the Great War of Righteousness and Evil. No — it would be more accurate to say they had moved beyond sensing it and begun preparing in earnest. Unlike the timeline Myeong-gae had lived through, Cham-ma now occupied a key post in the Sado League. Not that the man himself would ever know it — this was a current of history that one Dancheon Myeong had bent out of shape.
Wi Su, the Demonic Divine Conduit, had ascended the Demon Sky Tower for the first time in a long while. Not to read the heavens' secrets — only to soothe an ominous premonition. The Demon Sky Tower was, after all, the place that granted him the greatest peace.
"It seems we have failed."
Wi Su said it in a flat, even voice.
"Did the heavens tell you so?"
Wi Su shook his head. "The heavens' secrets are not so obliging as all that."
At that, the Heavenly Demon's smile turned enigmatic. "And yet what makes you think so?"
"Simply... my intuition tells me so."
At an answer so unlike Wi Su, the Heavenly Demon's smile deepened further. He knew. The Heavenly Demon Seol Cheon-sang had never once said this stratagem would succeed. He had only said it was not bad. And yet, witnessing the Heavenly Demon's bearing — as though he had foreseen the failure all along — Wi Su could hardly feel good about it.
"Hoo..."
With a sigh, Wi Su poured the five-grain nectar, Yojaseolgok, into his cup. Whatever the undertaking, the first time is always the hardest. A waste, to be sure — but Yojaseolgok savored atop the Demon Sky Tower had lately become one of Wi Su's few remaining pleasures. In times as burdened with worry as these, all the more so.
"Pour me a cup as well."
"There is no cup."
Naturally, he had omitted it on purpose. As if to disregard the answer entirely, Seol Cheon-sang reached a hand toward the bottle of Yojaseolgok. As water flows from high to low, as a leaf falls to the earth — the bottle came to rest in the Heavenly Demon's grasp. The sight was like the very order of nature at work.
"Cult Leader, you must observe decorum."
Even the Demonic path, it would seem, had its own Way of Wine. This was no cheap swill from a back-alley tavern; Yojaseolgok ranked among the Eight Famous Wines Under Heaven, and Wi Su could not tolerate seeing it swigged straight from the bottle. Because the offender was the Heavenly Demon, he could hardly punish him outright — but in his heart, at least, he had no intention of forgiving it.
"Worry not."
Seol Cheon-sang's elbow lifted, tilting the mouth of the bottle toward the floor. It was, unmistakably, the posture of a man pouring wine onto the ground — and yet.
Glug, glug, glug.
The wine that left the bottle gathered in midair, shaping itself of its own accord into the form of a cup. Seizing objects through the void. Molding qi into form. Commanding water with qi alone... That much was the limit of the martial principles Wi Su could fathom. The Heavenly Demon Seol Cheon-sang, it seemed, now trod a realm beyond even Wi Su's measure.
Gulp.
"A famous wine indeed."
With those words, the bottle of Yojaseolgok settled back into Wi Su's hand. A furrow deepened between his brows — partly because his precious Yojaseolgok had been pilfered from him yet again today, but the greater reason was that he was already racking his brain for some other means by which he might keep the wine from being stolen without ever providing a cup.
It was then—
A new figure appeared atop the Demon Sky Tower, where no soul should have been.
"I greet the Sovereign of Ten Thousand Demons."
The figure — Ma Pyeong-sam, having confirmed the presence of the Heavenly Demon Seol Cheon-sang — flattened himself against the floor. It was a gesture bearing the utmost reverence. Though his condition was plainly far from whole, there was not a hair's breadth of disorder in the rite with which he paid homage to the Heavenly Demon. Eunyeong stood under Wi Su's command, but in truth Ma Pyeong-sam was a being who served the Heavenly Demon alone — his faith pointed to one object, and one object only.
"Rise."
Wi Su gave the order, but Ma Pyeong-sam did not stir.
"Rise."
Only at the Heavenly Demon's command did Ma Pyeong-sam lift himself. It displeased Wi Su, but he let none of it show — a cultist following none but the Heavenly Demon, Sovereign of Ten Thousand Demons, was hardly a fault to be censured.
"What happened?"
Wi Su asked. In truth, he felt he could have guessed without asking. First, because Ma Pyeong-sam had come to the Demon Sky Tower alone. Second, because even Ma Pyeong-sam's condition was far from whole. Reading the man's state, Wi Su could all but see it before his eyes: Ma Pyeong-sam had barely escaped with his life, and only after unfurling his life-preserving ultimate technique. Knowing his capabilities as he did, Wi Su could only surmise that there had been a flow of fate he himself had failed to read.
"We have failed."
Wi Su's instinct had not been wrong. If there was any fortune in it, it was only that the loss stung a little less for having been anticipated.
And then came Ma Pyeong-sam's next words.
"He knew about us."
"Hm?"
That, even Wi Su had not anticipated.
"Speak. All of it."
"Yes."
In his trademark monotone, devoid of any rise or fall, Ma Pyeong-sam laid out the situation. It was not vivid enough to sketch before the eye, but it lacked nothing for grasping the whole of what had transpired.
"Hm."
Having heard it all, Wi Su understood that the plan would need to be revised. The new star they had taken for a minor variable would have to be judged a fatal one.