The Weight of a Name
I have made this point before, more than once, but there is a matter that a capable informant called Myeong-gae holds to be vital in the handling of information — namely, that objectivity and consistency are everything.
Something devoid of those two qualities is, from the very start, nothing more than a thing that cannot be called information. And the first gate through which objectivity and consistency pass intact is the act of naming. A name, after all, is a vessel that must hold its essence. Whoever grasps that mechanism in full may be said to have taken their first step unscathed as a beggar of the information trade — so it looks, at least, through the eyes of a true informant.
Take the Great War of Righteousness and Evil. Even that name, I would say, carries a great deal of information.
First, the pairing of righteous and demonic itself: it tells you that those two were the protagonists of the event. Stop there, and you are merely an ordinary beggar. But layer on the eyes and the background knowledge of a seasoned beggar-informant like Myeong-gae, and a few more things can be wrung out of it.
Righteous and Demonic. From the fact that Evil — one of the Three Powers — appears nowhere in that name, one can infer that the Evil faction either did not intervene in that war or did so only passively. Had it been a clash between the Central Plains and the Demonic rather than between Righteous and Demonic, the course of the war might have turned out differently — which is to say, the Evil faction chose silence.
Consider it from the standpoint of the Evil Path Alliance, long since entrenched in the Central Plains' murim. To them, the Demonic faction — a boulder rolled in from beyond the borders — was bound to be more unwelcome than the Righteous Path forces with whom they had been contending all along. That they did not move is, plainly, strange. From which one may further infer that the Evil Path forces had circumstances of their own that kept them out of the Great War.
Second, the word war.
The Jianghu breeds countless disputes and sees fierce battles waged without end; it is a place where dozens of lives are squandered for nothing, and no one blinks. Yet such incidents are ordinarily called a blood calamity or a bloody affair — the word war is rarely reached for. It is a term that belongs less to the Jianghu than to the imperial house and the army. Which meant the Great War of Righteousness and Evil had erupted on a scale that evoked nothing so much as a war between nations, and that, unlike the usual feuds of murim folk kindled from emotion and flimsy justification, it resembled the wars of armies and states. It signified a struggle built on ideology and conviction, waged to seize territory and gain. The word war captured that substance whole and entire — a truly fitting choice of name, I would judge.
In truth, though, the most important information in that entire naming resided, I would rate, in a single character: dae — great.
The reason was none other than this: the war of Myeong-gae's era was named a great war of Righteous and Demonic, not a war of Righteous against Demonic. The dae of great, not the dae of against. It meant that a great war had broken out between the two — not merely that they had stood opposed in war.
There was, naturally, a reason it had been named so, and that naming implied a wealth of information. From the name — a GREAT war of Righteous and Demonic — one can infer that a small war or a middle war of Righteous and Demonic might equally exist. Nobody would deign to coin such absurd titles as the Small War or the Middle War, of course, but they serve as grounds for inferring that a steady friction has always smoldered between the righteous and the demonic. Had it been a war erupting out of the blue, for the first time, it would have been christened with the dae of against, not the dae of great.
Reasoning from that, the correct inference is that conflicts large and small — short of a Great War — have continued to break out between the two. Perhaps even at this very moment. In truth, the countless Demonic Cult spies burrowed into the Central Plains and operating in the dark prove the point indirectly.
And yet the majority of murim folk call the present age a golden age of peace. They know a great enemy called the Heavenly Demon Cult exists — but believe it merely crouches in the depths of the Tianshan range, unable to set so much as a foot in the Central Plains. I know that this is thanks entirely to the labors of the Murim Alliance's Special Operations Unit, with Singija at its head. Information so deeply buried that, back in my Myeong-gae days, I would never have learned of it had I not been a member of the Secret Pavilion.
The Murim Alliance's Special Operations Unit. Its other name: a special intelligence unit dedicated solely to the Demonic Cult. That was the true face of the organization that would one day become the forerunner of the Secret Pavilion. If anyone could safely erase even information as dangerous as the manifestation of the Heavenly Demon, it was them. They are called a special intelligence unit because they are a group capable of more than gathering information — they can expand it, warp it, bury it, and erase it from existence. In the murim as it stands today, no organization holds more intelligence on the Demonic Cult than the Special Operations Unit. At the least, that will remain true until the Secret Pavilion is founded. It helps, too, that the information networks of the Beggars' Sect and of Haomun are trained on the Central Plains rather than on the cult.
"State your terms."
Singija pressed me on. I could hardly leave a man that busy waiting indefinitely, so I brought the matter to its point.
"I'd like to borrow the strength of the Special Operations Unit."
At that answer, Singija's expression went unreadable.
"Did I not promise you authority equal to the Unit Leader's?"
"I need something beyond that."
What Singija had granted me was authority on par with the Special Operations Unit's Unit Leader — though to be precise, it amounted to no more than the right to read their information, with no power to command. I knew full well that seeking anything beyond that without joining the unit was a tall order. But obtain it I must. I had no intention of enlisting in the Special Operations Unit and squandering time; what I meant was to put them to work and take the information I wanted. Now that my goal was to pursue the Sixth Stage of the Yakseon Heart Decision in earnest, things would go far more smoothly with the unit's aid. Yeo Wol and Ma Sok were my friends, but a man cannot lean on his friends forever. Besides — did not the old sage himself teach that the more, the better?
"I'll need to know the Demonic Cult in rather more detail. I need information. Not gathered passively — I intend to dig for it actively, so I'll need your active cooperation. That is my condition."
At words he cannot have anticipated, Singija pondered for a moment, then asked:
"May I ask the reason?"
At Singija's question, the Sovereign of Destruction — curiosity evidently stirred as well — nudged his paperwork aside and inclined an ear toward us.
A secret, properly speaking — but one that Singija and the Sovereign of Destruction could be permitted to know. They already held fragments of it, after all.
"I must achieve the Sixth Stage of the Yakseon Heart Decision."
I had first put those words to my lips when I spoke of my encounter with the Heavenly Demon, so my purpose would have reached Singija plainly enough. I had braced for follow-up questions on what the cult's intelligence had to do with the Sixth Stage, but neither man asked. Nor did I volunteer an exhaustive account, and the conversation passed on. Planning laid upon the intelligence of my Myeong-gae days, and the reach and the execution of the Murim Alliance's Special Operations Unit — the two laid together, one step closer to the Sixth Stage. That was my design.
Singija gave his answer. "What would you have me do?"
That answer could safely be read as consent.
"A Divine Demon will have set foot in the Central Plains. Track his movements."
"Consider it done."
At the word Divine Demon, Singija did not quite hide a flicker of alarm — but he nodded, and with that, every objective of my visit to the Murim Alliance was accomplished. As for the voice of Yeom Gi-ha, the Sovereign of Destruction, muttering "The Heavenly Demon is mine to take, you brat" as he grappled with his mountain of paperwork — I elected not to hear it.
The Hall of Subduing Demons — the name of the colossal hall hewn from the Tianshan range itself, seated in the innermost depths of the Heavenly Demon Cult. Measured against the Demon Sky Tower raised upon the sheer crest of Tuomuer Peak, it was nothing special, merely vast; and yet it was the space its cultists revered above all others, the place they called sacred ground. The reason was simple: it was where the sovereign of ten thousand demons, the Heavenly Demon Seol Cheon-sang, made his dwelling.
Out in the reaches of the vast hall, Seol Cheon-sang was soaking his body in a furiously boiling hot spring. The Heavenly Demon's expression, ever listless and insensate, was set a shade too stiff.
Splash. From beneath the water he lifted his right hand. Gazing at the chain-marks etched vividly into that arm — marks that showed no intention of ever fading — his brow creased, just slightly. Nothing performed; a sliver of genuine feeling had shown through. That alone made it a rare thing indeed.
"Hm."
Splash. Having worn the feeling down to nothing again, the Heavenly Demon lowered his arm into the spring and closed his eyes.
Before long — footsteps, unhurried. A visitor arrived at the Heavenly Demon's side. His eyes remained closed, and so the visitor made no sound of arrival, standing mute at his side like a stone set to keep watch. A long while passed. Then, with a soft stir of water, Seol Cheon-sang opened his eyes at last.
"Forgive me."
The one who had kept his post like a standing stone finally spoke. It was Wi Su, the Demonic Divine Conduit.
The Heavenly Demon's gaze, which had not so much as stirred at the apology, swung toward him. A moment, and then: "Are you well?"
At that, Wi Su's eyes drifted to his own left arm.
The arm now caught at the end of the Heavenly Demon's gaze had turned into something like the branch of a tree long dead. That description may fall short, in fairness. The withered shape recalled an old branch, but the color and grain were nearer to the shrunken corpse of a starved man — and yet here and there the flesh writhed, breathing out faint threads of life, so that the corpse seemed to move of its own accord. Wi Su's left arm was dead and yet lived; still, and yet in motion. Chaos. Apart from that single word, there was no describing the state the arm had fallen into — which is to say it was grotesque enough to wring a grimace from any who beheld it.
Wi Su regarded the arm a moment, then gave a thin, dry laugh. "It is the price of misusing celestial secrets. I shall bear it myself."
His words were right. Celestial secrets are not granted to human beings; they are things that cannot be seen, and things that must not be seen. Such is the rule of the world, and its karma. But the Demonic Divine Conduit had not stopped at peering into celestial secrets through the heaven-defying arts — he had bent them to his use, sought to twist them. And Heaven had caught him in the act. Even the Heavenly Demon, who stands at the very summit of all things, was soaking in the hot spring to mend himself after the blow Heaven's Mandate dealt him. That Wi Su, the instigator, had paid for Heaven's wrath with only a single arm was fortunate beyond complaint.
"What came of it?" Wi Su asked.
A question with subject and object both stripped away — but the Heavenly Demon seized its meaning at once.
"He has not yet ripened."
Naturally so. It was precisely because he knew the thing unripe that the scheme had been set in motion — before it could ripen, harden, and stand in the way. But it had failed.
"An amusing fellow, he was."
Seen one way, that impression of the Heavenly Demon's might be the very reason the plan had not succeeded — for it was Seol Cheon-sang himself who had declined to cut the unripe boy down with a single stroke. But that could not be counted the cause of failure. The Heavenly Demon is a singular existence; to such a being, error is not a thing that can occur. It was true that time had been drawn out to sate the Heavenly Demon's curiosity, but there had been no mistake along the way.
"And firm, besides."
It would be more correct to lay the failure at the door of this. Recalling those eyes that had not wavered even in the face of death, no other judgment was possible. The Heavenly Demon knew he had failed, in the end, to bring that unripe whelp to heel. The fact was displeasing — and at the same time it pleased him, so that even the Heavenly Demon could not make sense of his own impressions. At any rate, the important thing was that a new star had stood in that place. A star that would one day surpass the Sovereign of Destruction and shine as wholly, as singularly, as Seol Cheon-sang himself.
"So it was."
Wi Su only nodded, slow and halting, sunk in thought. In hindsight, so it was: this outcome was no error of the Heavenly Demon's, but the flow of celestial secrets that had refused to be twisted. Which meant, in the end, that this too was fate. Perhaps Heaven did not wish Seol Cheon-sang to remain singular at all.
"What will you do now?" Curiosity laced the question — a sign that his emotions had stirred. The difference was vanishingly slight, but Wi Su, who had attended the Heavenly Demon's side his whole life, knew it when he heard it.
"We cannot simply leave it be." To discover the greatest obstacle yet on the road to a world under the Demonic Path and let it stand would be unworthy of the Chief Strategist of the Heavenly Demon Cult.
"Is there a way?" The question was a fair one, seeing as the misuse of celestial secrets had ended in failure — the recoil had cost Wi Su his left arm and left the Heavenly Demon himself in convalescence.
"We shall have to make use of the power of men." At that answer, the Heavenly Demon smiled.
"See that you do it well." The voice seemed to foretell failure, but Wi Su paid it no mind. To defy a fate already written was his life, and his calling.
"It shall be done as the Heavenly Demon wills." Spies burrowed through the murim of the Central Plains past all counting — there would be a way.