A Five-Thousand-Character Letter Makes Its Recipient Uneasy
The sun had slipped away beyond the horizon, and dusk was settling over the world...
I had just delivered the final-final-final draft of the letter to Dang Mulin and was about to finish off the tea left in my cup. Pale green liquid sat pooled inside it...
"Green... green...?"
The longer I stared into the cup, the faster someone who wore green from head to toe every single day of his life popped into my head.
"Ah...? Du-shik! Sis, I've gotta go catch Du-shik. See you tomorrow..."
"Who the hell is Du-shik...?"
Dang Mulin shouted after her brother as he scrambled off to who-knew-where, but he didn't so much as glance back. He just bolted.
"Seriously, who is this Du-shik supposed to be....."
Creeeeak.....
"Du-shik, you in here?"
Night had well and truly fallen by then, so mindful of not waking anyone needlessly, I eased the door open and called for the Green Heaven Squad leader...
"*Sniff*... Young Lord? What took you so long! I nearly froze to death waiting out here."
Dang Giyeong, who had been crouched off in the corner scrawling something into the dirt floor, came bounding toward me, sniffling.
Whap—
"Where do you get off, throwing yourself at another man like some—"
The instant he came charging at me with both arms flung wide, I hammered a knife-hand strike straight into his forehead...
"Ow!"
Dang Giyeong let out a single yelp, but I paid it no mind and urged him along.
"Let's go. It's late, so we need to move. Chop chop."
"Yes sir..... That was still uncalled for, you know."
"Uncalled for, my ass! Remember that Paeng San guy? You think I wouldn't smack him if he suddenly wrapped himself around me?"
"If he had, you'd have slit his throat on the spot."
"Exactly my point... If you're going to hug someone, hug a pretty woman. What kind of bastard with a dick between his legs goes around hugging other men, for God's sake."
"Even so, that's harsh..."
"Shut up and keep up already!"
Dragging the still-grumbling Dang Giyeong along, I headed for my destination.
"Young Lord, but why are we here of all places... Ah! You wanted to knock back a few drinks, didn't you? If that's all it was, you should have said so from the start."
The place I'd brought him to was a hermitage steeped in the freshest of memories—the very one where my head had once enjoyed a solo flight through the sky.
"One little gesture like you were tipping a cup, and I'd have had everything laid out nice and proper for you..."
Behind me, Dang Giyeong kept snickering away, his mouth flapping open and shut without pause...
"*Sigh*... You're noisy. Go stand right there."
"Yes sir!"
Plop—
Leaving him planted up front, I settled onto the steps leading up to the hermitage and began to speak.
"The reason I've dragged you all the way out here in the dead of night is..."
"Shall I run down and fetch us some drinks?"
"What I'm trying to say is..."
"Oh! And I'll need to get snacks too. How about those chicken skewers we had last time?"
"Ha..... Can you not shut that damn mouth of yours before I sew it shut for you?"
Watching him snicker away while trampling every one of my sentences, I clenched my fist as if seizing something out of empty air...
"Mmmph!!!!!"
Only then was Du-shik's catastrophically chatty mouth unable to produce a single word more.
Of course, he still seemed to have plenty left to say, mmph-ing away for all he was worth—but with me having forcibly sealed it shut, 'mmph' was the entirety of his vocabulary for the time being...
"*Sigh*..... There. Finally some peace and quiet."
I gave my face a dry wash with both bare hands and started over.
"I think I explained things far too sloppily last time, but anyway—the bottom line is, you're not human anymore."
"!!!!!"
"To put it precisely, hmm..... how should I phrase this."
"Mmmph..."
"Maybe just think of yourself as a monster wearing a human face..."
Now that I thought about it, the Central Plains, regrettably, had no word that precisely described what Du-shik and I were...
Even racking my hazy memories turned up nothing remotely similar, so I simply lumped us together as monsters in human form and said,
"For now, just think of yourself as roughly a blood ghost."
"Mmmph?"
"Anyway, the main features? We don't die, more or less. If a limb gets blown off, we don't just sew it back on—we can grow an entirely new one..."
"Mmmph!!!"
"Ah... talking about this is dredging up old memories for no reason. Back in my younger days, even when my body was torn into a thousand pieces, one blink and everything snapped right back into place. *Sigh*... And look at me now. What a sorry state this is."
Lost in old memories, I simply gazed up at the night sky, eyes gone distant.
".........."
Before I knew it, a thick silence had settled over the hermitage...
"Oh, right. I forgot to let you go."
"*Pwah*... Young Lord, this is genuinely too much! If you want to chatter, then chatter together! You talk on and on by yourself, then seal my mouth shut like you expect me to just sit here and listen—"
"Let's close it again."
"Mmmph!!!"
Lamenting that the Central Plains' one and only thrall turned out to be an even worse chatterbox than me, I sealed Dang Giyeong's mouth shut once more and picked up where I'd left off.
"Now, where was I..."
"Mmmph..."
"Ah, right. We hardly ever die. Physical abilities shoot through the roof... and we can wield blood. Something like that?"
With that, I raised my hand, palm facing upward.
Ssssaaa—
A bead of pure blood took shape above my palm.
"Mmm...mmph?"
Dang Giyeong stared at it in open wonder, so I twirled the orb this way and that, smirking as I carried on the lecture...
"Honestly? Every one of my cultivation realms is a straight-up cheat."
"Mmmph?"
"While everyone else is out there bleeding and grinding away, my body just keeps getting stronger from breathing alone... Though I'll admit, those few months of training with my sister did cut that timeline down by quite a lot."
The physical training with Dang Mulin had, in truth, helped enormously.
Without it, reaching my current state would have taken years instead of months.
"And my internal energy? Please. A guy without so much as a lower dantian doesn't have internal energy—I'm just faking it with blood. The reason my qi glows red mixed with black, unlike my sister's, is simply that blood and poison energy come pouring out together."
"Mmffmmph....."
"But here's the funny part—this cursed Central Plains has every bizarre breathing technique under the sun, so nobody even bats an eye?"
Snap—
At the flick of my fingers, Dang Giyeong finally regained his voice, and this time he asked me carefully:
"Then... can I do it too?"
His voice brimmed with something dangerously close to hope, so...
"Nope? Not a chance."
I obliterated his expectations in a single stroke.
"Why can't I? If that's how it is, I should have just stayed human..."
"If you'd stayed human, you'd already be nothing but bones, rotting away inside the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang."
"...Ah. Fair point."
I mulled over how best to explain it, then soon spoke up.
"It's kind of like internal energy, in a way. You still burn through blood—and the thing is, if I wrung you out right now like a wet rag, how much do you think would come out?"
"A good bucketful, I'd imagine?"
"A bucketful my ass... You'd squeeze out maybe half of that, and then half of that again. And what exactly could you do with that?"
"But I could still make an orb of blood like yours, Young Lord, or..."
"That one orb takes about a hundred people's worth of blood, you know?"
"It takes that much just for one little thing? Talk about terrible value for money..."
Bonk—
Rubbing the fresh bump that had been added to his head the moment midnight struck, Dang Giyeong spoke up.
"Then is there no way to expand my blood supply?"
"There is."
"Then you should just teach me, shouldn't you!"
He shouted at me in a voice that sounded genuinely wronged, and I scratched my head and gave him a vague answer...
"Just eat a lot of things made from blood. It'll build up on its own."
"What? You want me to drink blood? Isn't that strictly Blood Cult bastard behavior..."
"I'm not telling you to go suck down human blood—eat your fill of dishes made with animal blood. Human blood, on the other hand, don't even think about letting it touch your lips. Ever."
"Dishes made with animal blood... You mean things like purple-blood meat?"
"Pig's blood, chicken's blood, cow's blood... Doesn't matter. As long as you eat it, all of that blood will stay stored inside your body."
"Ugh... but my stomach's weak. And why mustn't I eat human blood, exactly?"
"Curious? Do you really want to know...?"
When I answered Dang Giyeong—who was gagging as he asked—with a distinctly meaningful look on my face...
"Yes... is it that drinking human blood turns you into a monster..."
He, too, waited tensely for my answer.
"The truth about what happens when you drink human blood is..."
"Don't tell me you lose your mind and come to crave nothing but human blood—"
"It's because human blood is too sweet."
"What?"
"Too sweet. That's the reason, I'm telling you?"
"Then what does that have to do with not drinking human blood!"
"You said it yourself just now. Losing your mind and craving human blood. That part's exactly right..."
I stared at Dang Giyeong's dumbfounded face with eyes gone flat and cold.
"The moment it touches your lips even once, it's brutally hard to quit. Honestly? Kicking opium would be easier for an opium addict."
"I... I understand."
Dang Giyeong, finally grasping my meaning, nodded with a somewhat more serious expression.
Then, abruptly, his face filled with questions and he said to me...
"But you dragged me all the way out to this hermitage just to talk about this?"
"Oh, right! I was actually going to teach you how to use blood..."
"The sun's about to come up, though?"
"*Sigh*... If you hadn't kept interrupting me every other sentence, I'd have explained everything ages ago!"
"Well... that's only because you showed up so late, Young Lord—"
Grab—
"Mmmph!!!!"
"Ah, forget it. I'll just slam the whole thing straight into your body, so remember it well and practice a little every day."
With that, wearing my most sinister smile, I slowly advanced on my one and only thrall—Du-shik.
"Mmff..."
He shook his head left and right for all he was worth, but...
"Once you can draw your blood out and pull it back in at will, then I'll teach you the rest."
Seized by the nape by his own clan's Young Clan Head, who was grinning away all grim and terrible, he soon let out a scream at the violent convulsion—as though the blood inside his own body had risen up to thrash him from the inside out.
"Mmmph!!!!!"
Of course, the scream never made it past his sealed lips, swirling around inside his mouth instead...
And so, as his consciousness drifted away, Dang Giyeong thought—
Grandfather... forgive your grandson for going on ahead of you...
—and slipped into darkness.
How much time had passed...
"Ugh....."
Dang Giyeong rubbed his eyes against the sunlight stabbing into them, sat up, and looked around.
Whooo—
The empty hermitage held nothing but himself, sprawled where he'd been left, and the biting winter wind.
"Unbelievable... that damn Young Lord..."
He cursed Dang Muyeong, who had dumped his unconscious body at the hermitage and gone home to the Dang Clan all by himself, but...
"So he really did just leave, huh?"
Only the cold wind of the winter mountain swept past him in answer.
Meanwhile, in Dang Muyeong's quarters at that very moment...
"Good grief... what on earth am I supposed to write back to this?"
I had finished reading the love letter with its carefully dried plum blossoms tucked inside, and was now agonizing over how to word my reply...
"But if all I write is 'thank you, and I love you,' it'll come off as way too half-hearted..."
Thanks to receiving Jegal Baekhwa's deranged five-thousand-character letter, I was wracking my brains over how in the world to write back.