Survive Death's Door and You Come Back a Different Person
"Aigoo... aigoo..."
A heartbroken wail drifted in from somewhere out of the dark.
The sound roused me back to my senses, and when I opened my eyes...
"What the..."
...all that greeted them was a world of unbroken black.
I groped through a darkness so thick I couldn't see a hand in front of my face, and my fingers smacked—
Thud.
—against a wall inches away. Flustered, I muttered under my breath.
"What is this... am I trapped inside something right now?"
Still clinging to my groggy senses, I tried to get a grip on the situation, but I flatly could not comprehend the fact that I seemed to be sealed inside some enormous tube.
"Haah... what a pain in the ass."
Irritation flared up in me, but I was still woozy and swimming, and something about the darkness felt inexplicably, strangely familiar. I was just letting my eyes drift shut again when—
CLUNK!
—something came open, and light came pouring down into my eyes.
Squinting against the brutal glare, I looked ahead to find a young woman frozen mid-stare, her eyes blown wide as saucers and her mouth hanging open.
"Hrgk..."
With one last strangled sound, her eyes rolled back until nothing but the whites remained, and she toppled straight over backward.
WHAM.
"Young Lady!!!"
Someone hit the floor with a resounding crash. Squinting hard against the light, my face twisted into a deep scowl, I slowly pushed myself upright.
Raising my upper body little by little and surveying my surroundings, I saw people everywhere — all of them dressed head to toe in black, as though in mourning — and so...
"Huh? What... what is all this?"
The moment I murmured that, the crowd standing around me began to freak out at the sight of my face, each in their own spectacular way.
"GYAAH!"
There was the one gaping with his mouth split wide in shock.
"The... the Young Master... aigoo..."
The one who groaned, clutched his head, and promptly collapsed in a heap.
"Muyeong!"
And the one sprinting straight at me, shouting a name I didn't know.
While I stood there, utterly bewildered by a situation I couldn't begin to understand—
"Muyeong!"
—the person who had been running toward me calling that name suddenly wrapped me in a crushing embrace.
"Khh—"
In that instant, a pressure like my ribs were about to splinter crushed the air right out of my lungs.
"Son of a—!"
My vision washed yellow, and with my curse still half-finished, everything went black all over again.
People had gathered in twos and threes here and there, hashing over what had just taken place.
One of them recounted it in a voice still thick with shock:
"...and then out of nowhere, Young Master Muyeong just shot straight up out of the coffin, I swear? Anyway, everyone standing there came this close to dying of fright all over again..."
Another simply breathed a long sigh of relief at the fact that Muyeong was alive.
"Still, thank goodness... Heaven itself was watching over us..."
And another, amid it all, was voicing his doubts — and getting an earful for it.
"But how in the world does a man laid out dead in a coffin sit back up again? Tell me honestly — do you think any of this makes sense?"
"Everything worked out nicely in the end, so why not just be happy about it... Must you insist on raking the coals on a day like this? Keep it up and the Young Lady catches you at it — congratulations, you'll be planning the next funeral."
Among them, too, was someone who simply erupted.
"GRAAAAAAH!"
And so, thanks to the Young Master's resurrection, a festival atmosphere was in full swing across the Sichuan Dang Clan...
...while from a hermitage some distance from the estate came the furious roar of a man who was most definitely not celebrating.
CRASH!!!!!
A man whose face had flushed red as a ripe persimmon, unable to contain his rage any longer, smashed his fist down on a nearby pillar — and the blow was so savage it split the wood clean through.
Having taken his frustration out on the entirely innocent pillar, the man huffed and puffed for a good long while, finally calmed himself, and turned to the masked figure standing at his side.
"I do believe you told me it had been dealt with. Thoroughly."
The masked man made no attempt to hide the panic seeping out from beyond his thick cowl as he answered.
"It was dealt with thoroughly... I never imagined things would turn out this way."
Hearing that, the man lashed out and struck him across the cheek—
SLAAAP!
—and as the masked man swayed unsteadily from the blow, he spat in a voice brimming with fury.
"Dealt with thoroughly, was it? By your own telling, that man should have died of poison — instead he kicked the lid off his own coffin and sprang out at his own funeral?"
WHAM!
Unable to smother the boiling rage, the man puffed through his teeth and drove a kick square into the masked man's chest.
"Ugh..."
Launched backward by the kick, the masked man rose again with a faint groan, his spirit half-drained, and muttered softly to himself.
"That is a poison even the previous Leader of the Murim Alliance couldn't withstand a single sip of..."
At that, the man curled his lips into a cold sneer and mocked him.
"You didn't get swindled by some con artist into buying a load of junk, by any chance?"
"Tch....."
At the click of that tongue, the masked man protested in a voice full of injured pride.
"It truly is a poison received from the Poison Demon himself. I even went out of my way to verify that it was the genuine article..."
Only a long, heavy sigh echoed through the hermitage.
"Haah....."
The man let the lament out, then soon clutched at his head and spoke.
"So... what do we do now? A direct descendant of the Dang Clan poisoned inside their own walls... no, nearly poisoned, so the same trick is off the table for a good while, wouldn't you say? And if that bastard takes the Young Clan Head's seat anytime soon, he'll be surrounded by even more guards than he is now."
"....."
The masked man held his silence for a long moment before speaking.
"I will see it handled somehow, one way or another....."
At his grim declaration, the man burst into scornful laughter and seized his shoulders.
"Hah... hah..."
He stared at him as though he could kill with a look.
"You had best keep that word of yours. Because if you fail... you know very well what will happen to you."
Feeling cold sweat slide down his back, the masked man answered in a single word.
"Yes."
The man soon released his shoulders and gave a lazy wave of his hand.
"Now get out of my sight."
With a brief bow, the masked man vanished to who knows where.
Only the long sighs of the man left alone in the hermitage went on echoing through the dark.
"Sniff... sniff sniff."
Sniffing at the scent of medicinal herbs wafting in from somewhere — as if someone were simmering a pot of herbal duck soup — I came back to myself.
"Ugh... my head... it feels like it's going to split open."
Pressing hard on both my temples with one hand against the hammering headache, I pushed myself up.
"Awake at last, are you!"
A middle-aged man with a goatee came hurrying over from somewhere and asked:
"Muyeong! Are you all right? Anything hurt, anything feel off? Do you recognize who I am?"
Bombarded by that rapid-fire stream of words and spittle, I tried to get my bearings, but—
What... what the hell is even going on. And why the hell is that guy dressed like he walked straight off the set of a historical drama...
Unable to make head or tail of my surroundings, I kept pressing at my temples until I finally sighed and dropped my hand.
Then, struck by a sudden sense that something was off, I looked closely at my hand...
"Huh...?"
My slender, elegant hands were nowhere to be found — in their place was some stubby little paw — and my brain flatlined on the spot.
"What the fuck?"
Shaking myself back to my senses, I examined my whole body from top to bottom — and confirmed that my beautiful body was gone, replaced by the frame of some snot-nosed brat—
"Ahhhhhh........"
With a single shriek, I toppled backward onto the bed.
At the sight of that, the goatee came sprinting over in a panic, seized my shoulders, shook me hard, and bellowed:
"Muyeong! Don't lose your grip... Muyeong!"
Pay him no mind — I was sinking down into a spiraling abyss of my own mind.
"!!!!!"
Mouth hanging open, my composure so thoroughly shredded that I couldn't even properly register the shouting beside me, I eventually managed to grab onto my last fraying thread of sanity and think:
So I took my temper out on one lousy corporate drone and got thrown into another world? This world.... really is a piece of shit.
At that very moment, an ugly thought flashed through my head.
A wuxia-style world... wait. Hold on. Is this... inside Dominating the Murim?
The instant the thought struck me that this world might be the very game I used to play, I felt cold sweat begin to stream down my spine.
Nah... no way. Not that certifiably insane world?
Some eminent psychologist once claimed that a person facing death passes through five stages of mind.
Denial
Oh, come on... that makes no sense. One temper tantrum at a corporate drone and I end up inside the game I was playing? Even a novel written that way would get flamed to death.
Anger
No, wait — the whole problem started because that guy grabbed a busy man and wouldn't shut his mouth in the first place. Fuck — he kept provoking me, so I gently tossed him, and that's the extent of what I did wrong. And this is what I get for it? You motherf—!
Bargaining
Please... if you just send me back to my office right now, I'll do it all — prayers, offerings, ancestral rites, whatever you want — I'm begging you. This can't be right... just look the other way this once...
Depression
Ah... life really is a garbage fire. Maybe I should just die... why else was I choking down supplements every single day like I stood to inherit riches and glory?
Acceptance
Ah... whatever. I guess this is just my life now. Somehow, if I keep on living, a way back is bound to turn up.
Having blasted through all five stages in the span of a heartbeat, I thought with a heart full of bitterness:
Haah... then first thing's first — time for the amnesia cosplay...
I turned the most innocent, guileless face I could manage toward the goatee, who was still bellowing and shaking me, and spoke up.
"Muyeong! Come to your senses, boy!"
"Wh...where am I...?"
At the sight of that, his words jammed in his throat and he went momentarily speechless...
And I pressed on, wearing the most pitiful expression I could muster.
"I can't remember who I am... do you happen to know who I might be...?"
The goatee put on the face of a man with absolutely no idea how to explain any of this, heaved a mighty sigh, and only then began speaking to me, slowly and carefully.
"Haah..... Now listen well. Your name is Dang Muyeong."
"I... I don't know."
"Your father's name is Dang Jihwan, and..."
"I don't remember a single thing..."
"Your sister's name is Dang Mulin, so..."
"I don't remember anyone at all... sob... hic."
Engraving each name that fell from the goatee's lips into my memory, I mulled it over.
The Dang Clan, huh...? So I've possessed the body of that goddamn self-destruct maniac?
While I was racking my brain to piece the situation together, he was racking his brain to make me understand it — and eventually seemed to give up, sighing as he opened his mouth.
"Haah... very well. Rest for now. Your body is badly weakened, so consider this room your home for the time being. If anything happens, scream — anything at all."
With that final word, the goatee said something to the person waiting by the door and promptly left the room.
Haah... so what am I supposed to do now...
Once he was gone, I lay back down on the sickbed and began to brood, utterly at sea, over what on earth I was going to do from here.
In the Clan Leader's Hall, the Dang Clan Head sat deep in conversation with the Medicine Hall Master.
"...and so, it appears he has lost his memories entirely."
At the Medicine Hall Master's report, the Clan Head steepled his fingers and rested his face against them.
"Then is there no way to call his memories back?"
Confronted with the Clan Head's deeply troubled expression, the Medicine Hall Master bowed his head low.
"For now, all we can do is wait. Though I cannot promise you even that — there is no guarantee the memories will return..."
A long silence settled over the room at his words, and he added, half under his breath:
"And yet — the whole world believed him dead, he was laid out in his coffin, and he opened his eyes wide and returned to the land of the living. If that is not a miracle, what is?"
At that, the Clan Head's face softened into a faint smile.
"That much is true... Mulin flung the coffin lid open, saying she wanted to see her brother's face one last time, and then fainted dead away — near gave me a heart attack. And when Muyeong shot up out of it like that, even I thought my heart would stop..."
His mood having eased a touch, the Medicine Hall Master grew a little worked up himself and chimed in.
"Honestly, at that moment I thought Muyeong had risen as some kind of jiangshi — one of those hopping corpses straight out of a cheap ghost story. In this world, when a dead man moves, nine times out of ten it's a charlatan's trick."
At that, Dang Jihwan arched a single eyebrow, making his displeasure abundantly clear.
"Excuse me?"
Sensing the shift in the air, the Medicine Hall Master began to stammer.
"N-not that Muyeong was revived by any such trick, of course... in any case, the point is that all's well that ends well."
Sweat dripping down in rivulets as he gauged the Clan Head's mood, the Medicine Hall Master changed the subject.
"In any case, I'll be on my way to give Muyeong's body a proper going-over. If anything comes up, I'll send the kids to inform you."
With that, the Medicine Hall Master hurried out of the Clan Leader's Hall.
Tap... tap... tap...
Late that night, alone in his office, Dang Jihwan drummed his index finger against the desk and murmured to himself.
"Now who could it be..."
A handful of names surfaced in his mind — but they were suspicions, nothing more.
"Dark Moon."
At his word, a figure poured itself out of the shadows as though seeping from the darkness itself.
"Every limb can be missing when you deliver them, for all I care — just keep enough breath in them and drag them here."
At Dang Jihwan's command, the one who had emerged from the darkness gave a shallow bow and melted back into it.
The dead of night...
...an hour deep enough to leave many a mind tangled in complicated thoughts.