The One I Trust Most
Who do I trust most?
I know all too well that this seemingly trivial question is, in truth, a remarkably difficult one. To name the person you trust most is little different from naming the person you love most. Keeping such trust tucked away in your heart is freedom; speaking it aloud is a rather mortifying affair.
For Myeong-gae, whose circle had always been narrow, choosing the one he trusted most had never been hard. It was Chwipung-gae, without question. It was Chwipung-gae, and no one else — for Chwipung-gae had been his master, his parent, and his friend all at once. To a boy left alone in the world, the man called Chwipung-gae had been the only rope to cling to.
For Dancheon Myeong, however, the question demanded far more deliberation than one might expect. Somewhere along the way, my life had filled with people too precious to weigh against one another.
And yet the answer came without much struggle. The person I trust most is my uncle, Bang Yeo-hae. Not merely because he had been the first to extend a hand to me when I was at my lowest — but because he was, in every sense, the very image of the adult I had so desperately wished for. The way a small child declares, "When I grow up, I want to be just like my father," I wanted to become a man like Uncle Bang Yeo-hae. If that feeling did not deserve the name of trust, then nothing did. Naturally, it remains a secret from my father, Dancheon Gang.
"The one I trust most in this world is you, Uncle."
Spitting out those faintly embarrassing words, I held out a wooden chest to him.
"What's this?"
"The Taecheong-dan — the Supreme Clarity Elixir."
"What?"
The reason I had been agonizing of late over the question of trust was simple: I had a treasure that needed entrusting. With the remaining pills of the Five Great Murim Pills still to be recovered, I would have to roam the length and breadth of the world, and carrying such treasures against my chest at every moment was a burden I could scarcely afford. Nor could pills of that caliber be left in just anyone's hands — hence all the deliberation over who I could trust most.
"And just what do you trust me for?"
Uncle Bang Yeo-hae asked, his expression sly — or perhaps mischievous.
"I trust everything about you, Uncle."
"Heh heh."
He had clearly been gearing up to tease me, but my earnest answer seemed to make him abandon the joke altogether.
"I'll keep it safe."
Uncle Bang Yeo-hae tucked the Taecheong-dan away into his own bosom. Bang Yeo-hae, Escort Captain of the Dancheon Sword Clan — a guardian by very nature, and the man I trusted above all others. There could be no one better to hold the Taecheong-dan. Until every one of the Five Great Murim Pills was gathered, I meant to leave each pill I recovered in his keeping while I traveled on, and by the time I set out for the last of them, the Blue Pine Divine Pill of Kunlun, I suspected Uncle Bang Yeo-hae might well be the wealthiest man in all of Jianghu.
"Thank you."
"It's giving me the shivers, so come collect it as soon as you can."
"I will."
He jokes, but I know full well that no one alive would guard my pills more steadfastly than Uncle Bang Yeo-hae.
"Thank you. Always."
"Ahem."
Uncle Bang Yeo-hae cleared his throat for no particular reason and turned his gaze aside. The sight drew an involuntary smile from me.
Once more, a small realization settled into my mind. From Yang Su-rin, I had received the promise of a life that would go on after my mission to stop the Great War of Righteousness and Evil was done. To Uncle Bang Yeo-hae, I had entrusted the seed of a future in which that war would be stopped at all. The Tyrant Emperor Yeom Gi-ha and Chief Strategist Singija were still rushing to and fro to smother the war's embers, and the venerable elders of the Nine Sects were locked in fierce battles of life and death with the Heavenly Demon even now.
Now, at last, I understood it clearly. I had never been fighting alone. Ours was a road walked together, and there was no need for me to shoulder every burden by myself. Just as Brother Chun-baek had solidified his conviction in his own sword path through my words, so too should I carry certainty in my own steps, buoyed by the people around me.
The turbulent currents of the celestial signs had kept Wi Su living practically full-time in the Demon Sky Tower of late, but now, for the first time in an age, he came down from the mountain. His destination was the Hall of Subduing Demons, where dwelt the sovereign of ten thousand demons — the Heavenly Demon, Seol Cheon-sang. The era he had awaited waking and sleeping had finally arrived.
"Where is the Cult Leader?"
"He is in the innermost depths."
"My thanks."
Only after walking all the way into the depths of the Hall of Subduing Demons did Wi Su at last find Seol Cheon-sang.
Splash.
"You have come."
"Cult Leader."
The Heavenly Demon Seol Cheon-sang was soaking his body in a hot spring at a rolling boil. Wi Su knew full well that the Heavenly Demon, whose sacred duties never ceased, was not indulging in a hot bath for mere pleasure. The spring in which Seol Cheon-sang now steeped himself was the Sosaengcheon — the River of Resurrection — counted among the great mysteries of the Heavenly Demon Cult.
"Has something happened?"
For the Heavenly Demon to immerse himself in the River of Resurrection could only mean he had suffered an injury that no breath-circulation art could readily shake off, and so Wi Su asked, his voice laced with worry. When the cult had raided the Dancheon Clan some time ago, the celestial signs had been misread, and recuperation had been understandable. But the signs of late had shown not the slightest omen of anything threatening the Heavenly Demon. Setting the celestial signs aside, Wi Su could not begin to guess who in this world might leave a wound so deep upon the Heavenly Demon that recuperation would be required.
"I went out for a stroll."
"……A stroll?"
Splash.
Offering no answer to the counter-question, Seol Cheon-sang rose from the water. The body of Seol Cheon-sang, whose age no one could fathom, was truly that of a sculpture. But it was not the profound beauty of the Heavenly Demon's form that seized Wi Su's gaze.
"This is……"
It was the scar of the Cotton Palm, carved into the Heavenly Demon's chest. Wi Su himself was no stranger to the martial arts, and so he had little difficulty recognizing that the mark belonged to a Taoist's art.
"It is nothing."
Seol Cheon-sang tried to pass over the matter as though nothing were amiss, but that was impossible.
"Cult Leader, I am the Chief Strategist of this cult. I must know."
Loyal as he was, Wi Su was pedantic in equal measure, and this was not a matter he could simply let pass. No — that he had not even known his sovereign had taken a wound until he laid eyes upon it meant he ought to be judged disqualified as a strategist outright. The proper course was to prostrate himself and beg forgiveness.
Thud.
"I beg you — take my life."
Wi Su flattened himself against the floor like a condemned criminal.
"Rise."
"I cannot."
"Would you defy my command?"
"……"
Caught between two conflicting edicts, Wi Su slowly raised himself. For the command of the Heavenly Demon Seol Cheon-sang stood at the apex of all things.
"It is nothing of consequence. I merely kept those Mal-ko fellows company for a time."
"The Mal-ko fellows…… you mean……"
Deducing the identity of the fellows the Heavenly Demon spoke of was no great challenge. He surely meant the secluded elders of a previous generation — those who sought to fathom the Boundary of Ascension. Their understanding had passed beyond the worldly, and they did not hesitate to stand against the cult. And yet, for that very reason, none of it made sense. Had the Heavenly Demon and the previous generation's elders truly clashed, the upheaval would have shaken heaven and earth; there was no way it could have slipped past the cult's intelligence network.
"Whether by some meeting of minds or not, their Original Spirit Bodies gathered as one and fell upon me. I had little choice but to receive them."
"Hmm……"
Original Spirit Bodies. Even for Wi Su, they were something he grasped only as a concept — a feat permitted solely to the rarest of monstrous beings, those with half a foot already through the gate of Feathered Ascension. In Wi Su's own terms, it was a phenomenon best described as astral projection: consciousness or soul shedding the flesh and manifesting within the material world. The trouble was that, unlike ordinary spirits, which cannot touch the material world, the spirits of such beings on the cusp of Feathered Ascension could, on the strength of their sheer spirituality, exert influence upon the material world itself.
"This wound……"
"I took a blow from Mugeuk, that is all. It is nothing. I returned far more than I received."
"It is not nothing."
Wi Su knew as well as anyone that Mugeuk dwelt at the very summit of Jianghu under the awe-inspiring title of Sword Emperor. But this could hardly be called an equal exchange. Sword Emperor Mugeuk was one among the countless masters of Jianghu — but the Heavenly Demon Seol Cheon-sang was the one and only, absolute sovereign of the cult.
"It will mend."
For the first time in a long while, the Heavenly Demon Seol Cheon-sang answered with a resolute voice.
"Ah……"
In those words, Wi Su found his conviction: the Heavenly Demon was finally advancing to the next stage. He understood that this, too, was but a stage along the way — that in the end, even the Original Spirit Bodies of the previous generation's elders would not dare lay so much as a finger upon the Heavenly Demon's jade body. Because the Heavenly Demon stood at the half-god boundary, he had deigned to keep company with secluded elders who had touched the far shore; but now Seol Cheon-sang meant to surpass even that. His lord was not a man who spoke idle words, and so this time, too, Seol Cheon-sang would surely leap clean over Wi Su's expectations. The great enterprise of the Great War of Righteousness and Evil was coming to completion.
"By the way, Cult Leader."
"Speak."
With the matter set aside, curiosity stirred in Wi Su at last — the innate temperament of a born strategist, long buried beneath the duties of his office.
"How strong is Mugeuk Jinin?"
Know your enemy and know yourself, and you will never lose in a hundred battles — or so the old maxim ran. His question could be counted an extension of his duties as strategist, and so Wi Su asked it without the slightest hesitation.
"Hm."
The Heavenly Demon Seol Cheon-sang deliberated a moment, then answered.
"Measured against the Tyrant Emperor, he would fall somewhat short."
"The Tyrant Emperor……"
"Quite. The Tyrant Emperor as he stands now could not leave a wound like this upon me."
What made the Tyrant Emperor dangerous was not what he was, but what he was becoming. It was an odd thing, to speak of future promise in a man who had already reached the summit of Number One Under Heaven — but the celestial signs had said as much, and so it must be an unfailing truth.
As though he understood the tangle of Wi Su's expression, Seol Cheon-sang smiled faintly and went on.
"Are there not many mysteries in Jianghu that cannot be measured by martial arts alone?"
"……I suppose there are."
"And you are one of them, are you not?"
Seol Cheon-sang's words were, as ever, not wrong. Each of the Five Great Divine Demons outstripped Wi Su in martial prowess — and yet Wi Su's worth was more precious than all five of them combined. Such was the dignity of the Demonic Divine Conduit, who reads the celestial signs. Wi Su, too, was a man who had claimed his place through a mystery that transcended the martial. Yet even Wi Su could not perfectly grasp what Seol Cheon-sang meant, so he committed the words to memory instead, certain and whole. It was the wisdom of a man who knew that understanding, more often than not, arrives only with time.
"So — what is it you have come to tell me?"
Only after that question did Wi Su recall the true reason he had sought the Hall of Subduing Demons.
"A crack has opened in the celestial signs."
A crack in the celestial signs. A wondrous event, the first of its kind in an age — and the reason Wi Su had hurried down the mountain to the Heavenly Demon.
"Good news."
For a cult orchestrating a great enterprise, it was indeed a windfall.
"While the opportunity stands open, we should eliminate the variables."
"And where will you strike?"
The cult and the Central Plains murim had always been at war. The Orthodox Path, the Evil Path, the Middle Path, the Mystic Sects, the elders of the previous generation — and more besides. At last an opportunity had come to slip beneath the eye of the celestial signs and bring one of those pillars crashing down, and it was not a chance to be squandered.
"I have already located the strongholds of the Mystic Sects."
The Mystic Sects — the folk who had hidden their true faces even from the murim of the Central Plains. There could be no better target for an annihilation that no one would ever know of.
"Excellent."
Wi Su smiled at the Heavenly Demon's answer — of late, he had not managed to draw anything warmer from the Heavenly Demon than "not bad."
"It would be best to remove any future troubles before they can take root."
"Do so."
The move Wi Su now laid on the table was, so to speak, one of cutting the grass and tearing out the roots. He knew that even with the Central Plains under the cult's heel, the matter would turn truly tiresome the moment the Mystic Sects began their covert workings. With this single move, the cult that would come to dominate the Central Plains would enjoy days of far greater abundance.
For the first time since the Heavenly Demon's divinity had begun to shine through, a smile spread across Wi Su's face. He had waited for this very hour with preparations complete in every particular, and so the murim of the Central Plains would never know of the strange event about to unfold — the Mystic Sects of Jianghu, annihilated in a single stroke. It was a strike through a crack that even the celestial signs could not fathom, and so, surely, that was exactly how it was meant to be.