Well, What an Unexpected Windfall
"Then I have a favor to ask."
"Aigoo, of course, of course... I'll take good care of them."
For the time being, we had ferried the children to the Dang Clan's residence in Yunnan and were resting a while. Dang Giyeong had gone off to send a messenger pigeon, reporting the current situation back to the clan, while I turned over, one by one, the questions still lodged in my skull.
"The Demon Cult... were they searching for an inner core to feed their young leader? Though I can't say that makes sense either."
As for the Demon Cult's raid, I could stretch the logic — a desperate bid to chase the inner core's trail all the way into Nanman — but still.
"Haah... why on earth would they leave only the little ones behind? Children that age couldn't survive out here on their own no matter what."
Why had this abduction case in Nanman — with the children pointedly excluded — happened at all? If they'd snatched the kids alone, there would have been far less suspicion; instead, strangely enough, they'd left the children and carried off everyone else.
But no matter how hard I wracked my brain over it, nothing more was going to come of it...
"Young Master, the atmosphere has gotten even stranger in just a few days, hasn't it?"
"It has, hasn't it... You think they're holding some kind of summoning ritual?"
The Nanman we returned to after only a few days apart had grown bleaker and more sinister than ever. A clammy, clinging feeling rode in on the wind as though the air itself had soaked up moisture; threaded through that wind came the faintest whiff of something rotting — and beneath even that, a dim undercurrent of blood...
Perhaps I was simply reacting too sharply, but with even Dang Giyeong calling it strange...
"This... the other villages aren't in the same state too, are they?"
"I'd rather hope not... but things always do seem to work out exactly that way at moments like this, don't they?"
"Tsk....."
"There's another village a little further ahead — let's go see it for ourselves?"
An ominous premonition had already begun creeping into the back of my mind, and I quietly raised my hand...
Thwack—
"Agh! What on earth did I even say this time...?"
"Mosquito."
"Excuse me? My neck, what about it?"
"No — there was a mosquito. I'm saying, since when are there this many mosquitoes..."
Swatting insects as we went, we hewed our way through the jungle — and when we reached the next village...
"This one's even worse. Not a single living soul."
Another ruin, gutted just the same... and the only things left behind were children grown cold and stiff.
Perhaps that loathsome sight had soured my mood without my even noticing...
"Young Master, do relax that expression. Anyone who laid eyes on you right now would take you for a wrathful demon."
Apparently my face had twisted badly enough to earn that remark from Dang Giyeong.
"Ha... those fucking bastards, really..... Dushik, let's go."
"Yes, Young Master..."
With my face scrunched up hard enough that you'd have believed a demon of slaughter had descended upon it, I set off again alongside Dushik.
A very long time ago... or at least, as far as my memory was concerned, a very long time ago.
Was I eight back then... or nine.....
Anyway — back when I was about the age of that little one, Rin or Min or whoever he was, whom I'd seen only days ago, calamity found me. The sky had bled red, and the earth had turned black. From the smallest hamlets all the way to the lord's fortress, the dead lay strewn about where they'd been slaughtered...
"Uwooooooargh"
The rotting husks rose again and threw themselves upon the living. Those who abandoned the homes they'd known all their lives to flee barely scraped through; those who stayed to hold their ground all died.
In that world, I was one small child with no strength and no power of any kind.
"Mom... Dad... get up. Please!!!"
And I was a child who had lost the very parents meant to shield him.....
"Young Master! I can sense signs of people over there!"
Just as I was being swallowed whole by memory—
"Huh? What did you say?"
Dang Giyeong's voice had yanked me back into the present...
"It looks like there are people still left in that village?"
"So there are... twenty or so, give or take."
When I looked toward the village his finger indicated, I could indeed make out living figures within.
"Shall we go have a look? We ought to find something out, shouldn't we?"
"Right, let's go. That one, at least, isn't only children."
And so, as we set foot into the village, an old man came forward to intercept us.
"Who goes there!!!"
An old man — merely one who happened to be built rather... substantially, at that...
At the challenge, Dang Giyeong answered with practiced ease.
"Well now, elder... we're from a place called the Dang Clan of Sichuan. Might you have heard of us?"
"The Dang Clan? Them poison-peddlers from upcountry?"
"Yes, yes. Those very poison-peddlers from upcountry, that's us."
"Then what business brings you here? This village, as you can see, is already smashed to bits — there's nothing left worth taking?"
A look around confirmed things were in better shape than the previous villages — but this place, too, had been well and truly wrecked. If there was any difference from those earlier villages at all...
"Dushik. That old man is Transcendent Realm."
"Er... sorry — what?"
...it was that the old gentleman over there, brawny muscles bared as he flaunted his physical splendor, was a master of the Transcendent Realm.
"Elder, all the other villages were left in utter ruin — what exactly happened here?"
"Hmm... and why would you be asking that?"
"Well, in case there's anything we can help with, of course."
"That's enough. It's our own affair anyway, so just turn yourself around and go home."
"Aw, come now, don't be like that. A hard road is lighter when more shoulders carry it..."
"I said turn back!!!"
At the old man's roar, even the unfailingly genial Dang Giyeong shut his mouth.
"This is our problem, so it's best you simply go. See those gentlemen on their way!"
His eyes carried the weight of some old story, as though he were hiding something. Yet buried in that gruff manner, the old man's words seemed threaded with a genuine care for our safety.
"Hey!"
But what business was that of mine?
If he wouldn't listen when I spoke nicely, then he'd listen when I spoke nastily.
I brought the old man up short, a Blood Orb hovering lazily in the air beside me.
"Care to watch this half-wrecked village get fully wrecked? Or will you simply explain things to me?"
".........."
KRA-KOOM—
"Keep clamping that mouth shut, and I might just get upset enough to keep on smashing things?"
With every little gesture of my hand, another house came down...
"F-Father!"
Beasts born of blood turned toward the villagers and began to bare their teeth.
Crunch-krrrk—
"You want to die?"
The old man's low voice — brimming over with rage — rolled over me, but I answered with perfect equanimity, waggling my hand.
"Want to try me? I'm quite confident it would take me less than a quarter of an hour to wipe out every last one of you."
"Young Master... this is going a bit....."
"Dushik, I'll be showing you things I couldn't show you at our last sparring match — so watch closely and learn."
Dang Giyeong made to dissuade me with a face full of misgivings, but I smiled bleakly, raised my hand into the empty air, and spoke.
"Come crawling out."
The moment my white fingers closed on empty air, the ground around me began to bleed red...
Squelch, squelch—
Like divers surfacing from a lake, crimson human shapes began crawling up out of the earth all around. The mood of the place darkened by the moment, and the old man, letting out a long, low groan, drew the spear that had hung across his back.
The earth sank deeper into red with every passing heartbeat, and from it, grotesque things — twisted, malformed things grown nearly to their full and terrible stature — began to lift their heads.
"Whew... I yield. I'll tell you everything, so pray call off those dreadful things of yours."
Declaring his surrender, the old man flung his spear shaft down into the dirt and raised both hands.
"There we go?"
It seemed the demonstration of force had done its work; he'd caved more easily than I'd expected, and I nodded along, satisfied.
And just when I thought the matter was settled...
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud—
Suddenly, from beyond the village — to the drumming of what had to be several dozen pairs of feet — a pack of very strange characters came crashing in.
"Kill everyone who resists! Bind everyone who surrenders and drag them off!!!"
Hearing the madmen's voices before I ever saw their faces, I turned toward the village entrance. There, a band whose every inch screamed Nanman warrior came bounding toward us, spears and Nanman-style blades in hand.
"Well, well... talk about good timing. Wouldn't you say, Dushik?"
"Heheh... so it would seem."
I couldn't help it — the grin spreading across my face was wide enough to hang its corners from my ears.
Maeng Sik, a warrior of the Beast Palace of the Southern Barbarians, had been on the road to raid a certain village, carrying out the orders of his young successor. Ever since the previous Palace Lord had died so pitifully, they had followed his son in raid after raid upon the neighboring villages — and racked up any number of bone-deep failures along the way...
"As long as I stand, there will be no more failures!"
"UOOOOOOH!!!"
The village they were bound for now — well, the last party sent there had all died to some absurdly thick-skulled mad old man, so naturally the great man himself had come to grace it with his presence. And who was he, after all? A warrior ranked among the ten strongest of the Beast Palace — as if he could possibly lose.
Shouting with just such confidence, he came storming into the village — and in that very instant.
"Huh.....?"
Bright-red beasts that were nothing but mouths. Bright-red somethings shaped like men. And among them, a man of the Central Plains, greeting him with a skin-crawling smile.
"You only need one mouth for talking, don't you?"
The instant he saw that figure — red eyes gleaming, saying who knew what — Maeng Sik felt, deep in his gut, that something had gone very, very wrong.
"WAAAAAAAGH!!!!!"
But whether they simply couldn't read the situation, the men he'd brought charged straight past him, hurtling headlong into the village.
"GUWAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!"
Their stirring war cries became stirring screams in the space of a breath.
Whump—
The crushing power of that wolfish beast's jaws — who knew it would be that strong... Watching a subordinate's head drop to the ground right before his feet, like a doll worried back and forth between dogs until the head tears clean off, Maeng Sik steeled his heart and reached a decision.
"Ah. Run first."
And so he wheeled about and began sprinting for the far side of the village.
"Dushik! Catch him!"
"On it!"
Someone began bearing down on him from behind, killing intent flaring at his back.
"Hey! I'll talk my way out of this if I get caught, so stop chasing me!!!"
"MOMMY!!!"