Perseverance and Passion
So if you have perseverance and passion, you can really do anything?
Perched on a rock, I swept a hand back through my wrecked hair and turned the question over in my mind.
Really, you should never get involved with a man who smiles out of slit eyes...
The suspicion I'd long been nursing had finally hardened into certainty, and what welled up inside me was less rage than a weary, well, of course he did.
"Ha! Unbelievable... For him to pull a job this brazen out in the open, I suppose he's finally made up his mind to jump ship to the Demonic Cult. Ha... that little bastard."
The more I turned the man over in my head, the more aggrieved I became, until I could only laugh hollowly — and then I rose to my feet. I'll need a view from somewhere higher...
Pitter-patter... I clambered up the great tree beside me, shaking loose snow as I went, stood at the very top, rubbed the corners of my eyes once, and then flexed them with everything I had.
"Now, let's see..."
The eyes with which I scanned my surroundings were no longer my usual black ones with their faint reddish sheen — they had been dyed a vivid scarlet.
Red as a red spider lily — the flower some call the higanbana — my eyes now showed me not merely a dark mountain buried in snow, but the flow of blood through every living, breathing thing, rendered in crisp relief.
"Not that one... not that one either... that one's already dead..."
My gaze darted about so frantically you could practically hear the eyeballs rolling, but not a single living soul appeared.
"Ha... he's already bolted, has he? What a shame..."
If not one living person remained, it meant Dang Giyeong had already fled the area. Swallowing my disappointment, I climbed back down from the tree.
Hoo-hoo... hoo-hoo...
To the soft cry of an owl echoing through the tranquil mountain, I set my steps downhill.
"Head that way and something's bound to turn up."
I aimed for the spot where, from my perch in the tree, I'd spotted what looked like a sizable crowd gathered. And as I ambled along on pure autopilot, stray thoughts began drifting in.
Well... the clan's bound to examine those corpses. I should probably steer them toward the fact that the Demonic Cult attacked me. First, cleanup for the mess I'd already gone and made...
Is the Elder Council Head with the Demonic Cult too? Good grief... this family really runs like clockwork. The Clan Head is going to turn the whole house upside down this time. Thoughts of the Dang clan's future — one I could already see being razed into a wasteland.
Then again, who knew the day would come when even Demonic Cult bastards would call me a monster... All the way to those dagger-like words that had carved such a cruel wound into my tender heart.
I was trudging down through the mountains, lost in these musings, when something abruptly surged up in my chest.
"Seriously? You people rip the hearts out of children, and you're in stitches over me eating one old man's heart?"
The Demonic Cult was a pack that strutted down the crooked path more brazenly than anyone, committing every atrocity imaginable in pursuit of power — and yet they'd been foaming at the mouth with such gusto over that one little scene. The sheer injustice of it came bursting out of me.
Having vented my indignation, I heaved a deep sigh and muttered.
"This is exactly why I tried to use it as sparingly as I could... Fuck. How does it make any sense for the young master of a great clan representing the righteous sects to pull stunts that would make even the Demonic Cult blanch?"
Just as I was grumbling on, clawing at my own hair—
"There's someone over there!"
Figures came into view somewhere below, shouting by torchlight.
"Ugh... now what."
At the shout so rudely interrupting my monologue, I looked over with eyes brimming with irritation — and saw a group of people wearing uniforms I'd seen somewhere before.
"Wh... what the...?"
While I stood there dumbfounded, one of the men who'd been shouting came sprinting toward me, gasping for air.
"Hah... hah..."
Panting like a dog coming home from a full day's summer walk, he was such a sight that I spoke in a voice laced with concern.
"First things first... try breathing in nice and slow, then out again."
At my words, the warrior — dressed in a green martial uniform with the character for Dang stitched across the back — took a moment to steady his breathing before speaking.
"Hah... Young Master, thank goodness."
He'd appeared out of nowhere only to blurt that I was safe; I tilted my head.
"What on earth is going on that you all came swarming up here like this?"
Instead of a proper answer, he turned and bellowed over his shoulder.
"Over here!"
Only after the Dang clan warriors came surging up at his call did the man finally respond to me.
"The Green Heaven Squad Leader came to the clan's main gate drenched head to toe in blood and ordered every available warrior sent up this mountain at once."
At that, I pulled the face of a man wondering what brand of nonsense he'd just been fed, and repeated it back.
"Dang Giyeong, dripping with blood, scraped together a rescue party?"
"Yes..."
"That makes no sense..."
"Pardon?"
While my mind was still churning over this bizarre report, the Executive Clan Head came hurtling in out of the dark.
Thud—
Touching down as softly as a blanket drifting from the sky onto a small snow-covered rock, he seized me by the shoulders and gave me a thorough shaking-down, like a rug being beaten clean.
"What in the world happened! Where are the Demonic Cult bastards! Are you hurt!"
He was bellowing loudly enough to echo across the silent mountain — I half-imagined something warm trickling out of my ears as I answered.
"Uncle—... p-put me down f-first..."
My pitiful plea apparently never reached him; he went right on shaking me out like a wet towel.
"Take me to where those mongrel bastards are! I'll smash every last one of their skulls with my own two hands!"
His rampage carried on for roughly the time it takes to finish a cup of tea, and the beating stopped only when dizziness finally buckled my legs.
As I flopped meekly face-first into the snowfield, the Executive Clan Head spoke up with an abashed look on his face.
"Ahem... I suppose I got a bit carried away..."
I shot him a look laced with faint resentment as he scratched the bridge of his nose.
"Uncle. I think I'm about to throw up."
"What? Did those Demonic Cult vermin do something to you?"
Watching him flare up again, genuinely baffled as to the cause, I replied with eyes gone flat and sour.
"No... I was merely roughed up a little, and my insides are feeling none too great."
Sighing inwardly, I beat the clinging snow from my clothes and went on.
"Uncle. The situation's more or less wrapped up — shall we head back to the hermitage?"
The Executive Clan Head gave me a look of pure puzzlement.
"Wrapped up? Weren't you ambushed by those Demonic Cult mongrels?"
"I was..."
"And yet it's all over now?"
"Yes."
"How?"
Picking at his ear as if he were the one who'd misheard, he kept pressing the question, and I answered flatly.
"I killed them all."
The incomprehension on the Executive Clan Head's face only deepened.
"Did only a couple of them come?"
"No? A whole horde of them."
"Then did none of them look to be around the Transcendent Realm?"
"He did?"
As the questions wore on and his face cycled through ever stranger expressions, I found myself thinking, who knew this man was capable of such a colorful array of faces.
"Good heavens... secondhand words alone will never make sense of this. We'll sort it out at that hermitage."
Having given up on understanding altogether, he proposed we head for the hermitage, and when I gave a vague nod, he barked at the line of what had to be several dozen warriors standing behind him.
"Follow me!"
"Yes, sir!"
Not one of them so much as grumbled about climbing a snow-covered mountain in the dead of night; they simply trotted along behind. And just like that, I found myself leading a column of dozens back up the mountain.
How long had we been walking...
A thought abruptly struck me, and with a belated "uh-oh," I turned to the Executive Clan Head walking at my side.
"Uncle..."
"What is it?"
"Come to think of it... I don't actually know the way."
Long, long after we'd begun the climb, at my sheepish confession, the Executive Clan Head's hand rose to my forehead.
Smack—
"Ow!"
"You should've said so sooner!"
"I forgot this was my first time here too!"
His head must have throbbed; he pressed his fingers hard against his temples a few times before speaking again.
"I know that hermitage as well, so I'll take the lead. I was wondering why you kept steering us down such peculiar paths..."
"Then you could have led from the start..."
"What was that?"
Wham—
Having earned a smack on the back of the head for my petulant muttering, I finally shut my mouth and walked on wearing a face that declared, I am sulking very hard right now.
Before long we reached the hermitage, and the Executive Clan Head stared at the men in black sprawled lifeless across the snow.
"Good heavens... what in the..."
I, who had trailed up the slope behind him, scratched my head.
"I told you I killed them all. There was really no need for all this midnight trudging..."
At the reproach in my voice, his hand rose — I flinched and threw up a guard — but he only waved it away.
"Step aside."
He walked over to the corpse of an old man lying face-down, dressed differently from all the rest, and turned the body over.
After studying the dead man's face, he let out a low hum and spoke.
"Mm... I believe this is the one."
He looked like a man confirming something to himself; I sidled up behind him.
"You know his face?"
"No? I haven't the faintest idea who he is."
He said it with perfect composure, and I entirely lost the thread.
"Then what, exactly, was 'right' about it?"
He answered with the look of a man regarding someone hopelessly dim.
"That this is him — the one who seemed to be in the Transcendent Realm."
I simply stood there, blankly offering no reply, and he carried on.
"If he's an old swordsman that Giyeong felled in a single stroke, then Transcendent Realm is about right for him. Anything above that, and there wouldn't be the slightest chance in hell that you, Muyeong, would still be drawing breath..."
The Executive Clan Head paused, stroked his chin, then asked in a voice brimming with doubt.
"So how in the world are you still alive?"
I answered with an awkward smile.
"Um... perseverance and passion?"
Thwack—
"AAAGH!!!"
Deep in the night, in the darkness of a mountain where even the insects had fallen asleep, a cry of pure agony — the sound of a man who'd just been kicked square in the shin — rang out across the slopes.