An Earnest Wish Must Be Granted (3)
Jin Yigang stepped back a little and studied the wall.
The flame of the lamp was slowly growing.
Fwoosh!
Then, at some point, the fire spread out and ran along the wall in a straight line, as if someone were drawing a line across it.
Jin Yigang followed the fire. Moving ten spans to the right, the flame curved downward, then back to the left, and finally upward.
"A gate."
A gasp of admiration escaped his lips. What the flames were tracing was the character for gate.
He placed his hand inside the gate character and pushed.
Grrooom!
With a deep rumble, the stone wall swung open.
A narrow passage appeared, just wide enough for a single person. Inside, a staircase climbed upward.
Jin Yigang pulled out a thick book and wedged it into the stone door to keep it from closing, then headed up.
The narrow stairs zigzagged on and on in a switchback pattern. It occurred to him that they might lead all the way to the surface. Holding the lamp out before him, he kept climbing until at last he stood before a door. Two holes had been bored into it, one above the other — one large, one small.
He pushed the door.
It didn't budge.
"Looks like... ugh, no way. It can't be."
Shaking his head, he took out the Blood Yellow Demon Umbrella and the Red Thunder. The two holes matched their shapes exactly. First, he tried fitting the Blood Yellow Demon Umbrella in.
"You've got to be kidding me."
Astonishingly, it fit perfectly.
Clack!
Immediately, something came unlocked with a click.
This time he plugged the Red Thunder into the lower hole.
Clack!
Again came the sound of a mechanism releasing. Jin Yigang pushed the door, and it opened easily.
Inside was a square chamber, each wall roughly ten spans long.
Lamps hung along the walls.
Even the lamps were different from the ones he'd seen so far — beautiful beyond words, as if a stonemason had carved them with utmost devotion. He lit the lamps mounted on all four walls. Before long, the room brightened and revealed itself: a child's room, furnished with a small bed, a wardrobe, a table and chair, and an array of charming little toys.
On the wall behind the bed, three figures had been carved in relief: a man holding a child, and a woman. The sculpture was so vivid it seemed the figures might come alive and move at any moment.
"Huh?"
Jin Yigang started.
The child in the arms of the broad-shouldered man looked exactly like the girl he had seen in the coffin — as if they were twins.
"No, surely not."
He shook his head and looked around the room again. On one wall stood a bookshelf packed full of thin stone tablets.
He pulled out the one at the very front.
My beloved daughter Saha,
Forgive your father for what he was forced to do to you. Your daddy and your mommy cannot bear to let you go like this. And so we have decided to come find you ourselves.
"What in the world..."
Jin Yigang's eyes went wide.
He quickly flipped the stone tablet over.
To the one fate has brought here,
I am Dam Si-hu, once known as the Blood Sovereign.
I was old when I finally gained a daughter. As is true for anyone, the child born to me in my twilight years was more precious to me than anything in this world. My wife and I always said we would gladly lay down our lives for Saha.
Then that daughter fell incurably ill.
They told us she could not be saved. That she would die before we did.
Heaven collapsed, and everything else vanished with it. What remained was a life without joy, without delight.
Then one day, the thought struck me: I could not let her go like this. I searched, and searched, and searched again.
And at last, I found one way. Only one.
Even if the sickness were cured, they said, she would lose her mind and not even know who she was. Some told me to let her die. But how could I leave my daughter to death when a way to save her existed? I knew it was a forbidden ritual, a cursed art. Still, I could not send her off like that.
And so that she will not be lonely on her journey, my wife and I intend to follow her.
Everything of the Blood Sect lies within this room. The martial arts on this bookshelf are the Ten Great Arts of our Blood Sect, and the contents of the jar at the very bottom of the shelf are elixirs that will make you the strongest under heaven.
All of these were prepared for you.
Accept them all, and then grant one request: help my wife and me meet our daughter again.
I prostrate myself before you in pleading.
To reach us, my wife and I have hidden behind the picture at the head of Saha's bed. Simply push it.
Jin Yigang's gaze dropped to the bottom of the shelf.
A small box sat there.
"Elixirs are exactly what I need."
He picked up the box and slipped it into his pouch.
"No idea how this works, but let's at least take a look."
He walked to the picture and pushed it. A dark passage opened up before him. Grabbing a single lamp, he stepped inside, and the door closed behind him. The passage descended by way of more stairs.
At the bottom of the staircase opened a spacious chamber. Unlike the child's room with its clutter of belongings, this place held only two coffins and a large bed-shaped platform.
The coffins were covered edge to edge in writing.
Jin Yigang turned his eyes to the text.
By chance I met the Heavenly Demon, and I begged of him: let me see my daughter again.
He said he could not guarantee the Great Art would succeed, and that even if it did, we too would lose our minds — that even with Saha standing right before us, we would not recognize her.
But... if we can live in the same world where Saha lives, that is enough for us.
Once more, I bow my head and beg of you.
Let us live in the same world as Saha.
Beneath it, alongside the words Heavenly Demon Soul-Guiding Great Art, was written a dense column of incantation verses.
Jin Yigang read the verses slowly.
He read them again and again until he had memorized them all. The Heavenly Demon Soul-Guiding Great Art was a method of awakening the soul by writing incantations in blood across every inch of a corpse's body.
I will grant the request, though I can't say it's a wise thing to do. Speaking as the one who created the Heavenly Demon Soul-Guiding Great Art, I'd rather see it succeed. As a token of my thanks to you who reads this, I leave behind one martial art: the Crimson Death Heart Art. The Crimson Death is the Blood Sovereign's art; the Heart Art is mine.
In any case, the odds of them awakening are fifty-fifty.
I sincerely hope you succeed, and that their wish is granted.
You must take the elixir I have prepared. It was made using the divine medicines and my own inner power, so it will help you if anything — it certainly won't harm you.
He memorized the martial art the Heavenly Demon had left behind as well.
"Now, then..."
Jin Yigang lifted the lid of the coffin on the right.
Inside lay a broad-shouldered man. He had died over a thousand years ago, yet the body looked as though it were merely sleeping. Jin Yigang prodded the skin lightly with a fingertip. It was still soft and supple.
Do my wife first, please.
The words were written across the corpse's chest.
"That's a lot of asking, friend."
Jin Yigang chuckled and opened the lid of the coffin on the left.
'Whoa!'
Inside lay a woman of devastating, almost violent beauty.
"Pretty women do all seem to have a taste for power. Well, the man is handsome enough, I suppose."
He lifted the woman into his arms. She looked so lifelike that calling her asleep would have raised no objection.
"You said the incantations have to cover the whole body, so..."
He gazed at her for a moment, then undressed her.
'She's an absolute menace, that one.'
He squeezed his eyes shut.
"You are the finest."
He cracked one eye open and thrust his thumb up.
"I've only seen three women in my life, but I can say with certainty — you're number one."
The word perfection had been coined for this woman. From her ample chest, past her stomach and hips, down to her long, unbroken legs — there was not a single flaw anywhere on her. Jin Yigang stared at her, mind blank. It felt as though he were being pulled in, swallowed whole.
"Ngh!"
He shook himself back to his senses, then carried the man over and laid him beside the woman, undressing him as well. The man's body was every bit as imposing.
"Still, there's one thing I've got on you."
A wide grin spread across Jin Yigang's face.
'And you're proud of that? Proud, are you?'
It felt as if Dam Si-hu were sneering at him from the grave.
'Absolutely not. Sure, I never married — hell, I've never even dated a woman at my age — but I feel fantastic right now. Even being generous, mine's easily double yours. So yes, I'm going to laugh about it.'
"Pfft! Hahahahaha!"
After a good round of laughter, he went and fetched the Heavenly Demon Vessel the Heavenly Demon had described. The vessel and the Soul Brush had been sealed inside a box, which held a small dish, a single brush, and one elixir pill.
"Take the pill first, then draw the blood. That was the order."
Jin Yigang popped the pill into his mouth. Like the divine elixirs before it, it melted at once and slid down his throat.
He felt it vividly — a prickling, faintly burning sensation spreading through his whole body. The medicine he had just swallowed was coursing through him.
The moment he felt it reach his fingertips, he sliced open his wrist with the dagger.
"There goes my precious blood."
The blood ran down in a steady stream.
"This is poison blood, though. Wonder if that'll be all right."
It suddenly occurred to him that his blood was nothing like an ordinary person's.
"Well, living or dying is your fate, not mine. Honestly, if you hadn't written that line about wanting to live in the same world as your daughter, I never would've done any of this."
What had moved Jin Yigang wasn't the Blood Sovereign — it was the desperate longing of a father. Reading the words the man had left behind, he found himself thinking of his own father, who had bowed to him a thousand times a day or more.
"Focus."
He sat cross-legged on the spot and chanted the verses of the Heavenly Demon Soul-Guiding Great Art.
Whooosh!
A sound like wind rising from nowhere filled the air, and a black mist bloomed up from Jin Yigang's body and spread outward. Before long, the chamber was thick with it.
Flash!
When Jin Yigang opened his closed eyes, a black radiance spilled from them. His pupils held no white at all — only the deep black of his irises.
"Haaah!"
Drawing a deep breath, Jin Yigang moved to the woman.
Just as Dam Si-hu had asked, he would perform the Great Art on the woman first.
The Great Art is not the natural way of life flowing into death, but the defiling way of dragging life back out of death. Thus everything must be done in reverse. Begin the incantations at the tip of the left foot; fill the left side completely before moving to the right.
He began writing the incantations from the tips of her feet.
Each stroke of the sigils gave off a black gleam that flared and faded.
The black mist pouring from his own body and the aura of death around him grew stronger with every character he wrote — but Jin Yigang didn't notice. He poured all his strength into carving the sigils as if engraving them into stone. Before he knew it, beads of sweat were dotting his forehead.
When the front was done, he turned the woman over and wrote on her back as well. Once every sigil was inscribed, he laid her down again. When the woman was finished, he carved the incantations onto Dam Si-hu's body in turn.
"Pheww!"
He set down the Soul Brush and stepped back.
He was drenched in sweat from head to toe.
"And now..."
He watched the two of them, his face taut with tension.
Fwoosh!
Without warning, a silver radiance burst from the writing. One by one, the sigils began to sink into their bodies. And that wasn't all — the black mist that had filled the stone chamber also began seeping into the two of them.
"Now all they need to do is open their eyes..."
He watched for a long, long while, but neither of them opened their eyes.
"Looks like a failure."
Scratching his head, he walked over to the bodies, dressed them, and placed each back where they belonged, inside the coffins.
"Your daughter seems to have awakened already, so I'll go look for her. Rest in peace, both of you."
He pressed his palms together toward the two coffins.
"Ta-da!"
he shouted, lifting his head.
"Usually people wake up when you go 'Ta-da!'... I'll be going, then."
He tucked the stone tablet into Dam Si-hu's coffin, left the chamber, climbed the stairs, and returned to the room where he had first come in.
"Huh?"
Two people who had been poring over the stone tablets looked up at him. They were Ji Gon and Ju Chuchu.
"H-how did you find this place?"
Ji Gon asked, his face flushed with excitement.
"I'm just good at finding things."
"Do you know where this is?"
"The Blood Sovereign's tomb. This room belonged to his daughter, Dam Saha."
"Then the tomb itself..."
"I searched high and low, and there's nothing in there. What's here is everything, I think."
"You're right. The martial arts here are the Ten Great Arts of the Blood Sect."
"We can't exactly take the stone tablets with us, so I suppose we memorize them?"
"That's the way."
Ji Gon nodded.
"How long will it take?"
"There are ten of them. If the three of us split the work, we'll be done by tomorrow morning."
"I don't really need to... Never mind. Let's start."
Jin Yigang grabbed a stone tablet at once and began committing it to memory. Just as Ji Gon had predicted, by the time dawn crept in, all ten of the martial arts had been memorized.
Ji Gon took the first through third arts, Ju Chuchu the fourth through sixth, and Jin Yigang the seventh through tenth.
"What do we do about these?"
Jin Yigang asked, lifting one of the stone tablets.
"Leave them."
Ji Gon said.
"If someone ever discovers this place, they'll learn from them."
"That wouldn't be such a bad thing."
"Good thinking."
Jin Yigang smiled broadly.
The three of them left the tablets where they lay and headed back down.
A long while after the three had gone, the frame carved with the three figures seemed to shudder — then swung wide open. And two people stepped out. They were Dam Si-hu and his wife, Sa Hwa-yeong.
The two of them looked around the room.
Their faces might have been utterly blank — or perhaps they were steeped in nostalgia.
Then, without a word, both of them wrinkled their noses and sniffed the air. And then they turned to look at each other.