I stood in the middle of the training ground with my eyes closed.
Through my spar with the Sword Venerable, the Flying Heaven Sword Art had crossed the wall of Tenth Stage Great Completion and entered a new realm.
Until now, whenever I thought of the Flying Heaven Sword Art, it had been tightly woven from beginning to end without the slightest deviation. Now, however, it felt as though something once taut had loosened. As doubts arose about the sword forms I had believed perfect, my certainty vanished.
I slowly drew the Black Demon Sword and began to execute the forms of the Flying Heaven Sword Art. That did not mean my existing skill had disappeared or diminished.
Brilliant sword light filled the training field. If this dazzling martial art were to reach Twelfth Stage Great Completion, what form would it take?
Most crucially, my goal was to achieve Twelfth Stage Great Completion in the Guhwa Demonic Art.
That was why I expected that the experience of attaining Twelfth Stage Great Completion in the Flying Heaven Sword Art might one day be of great help in reaching the same realm with the Guhwa Demonic Art.
When I finished a round of training, Seo Daeryong hurried over and reported.
“An incident has occurred.”
“What kind of incident?”
“I think the Pavilion Lord should see it for himself.”
The place Seo Daeryong led me to was a nearby mountain.
Enforcement martial artists had already arrived and were controlling the area.
Gok Myeong, the special investigator who had arrived at the scene first, reported with a grave expression.
“More than ten corpses that seem to have been buried not long ago have been discovered.”
The problem was that they were not ordinary.
“The hearts of all the bodies are missing.”
The moment I heard that their hearts were gone, one great art came to mind.
The Heart-Soul Great Art.
It was a great art that absorbed life force from a person’s heart, and its process was said to be truly brutal. It was, in other words, an art that ripped the heart out of a living person.
And in our cult, there was only one person who could use such a great art.
The Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable.
When I had returned to save Bimahon, there had briefly been a rumor that the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable was using the Heart-Soul Great Art to gather ghostly qi.
But it had only been a rumor, and the truth had never been revealed. At the time, I had been running toward Bimahon and nothing else, so I had had no room to dig into it either.
‘Could that rumor have been true?’
The image of a living person’s heart being pulled out made my brow furrow on its own. But the reason I was truly angry lay elsewhere.
Seo Daeryong reported cautiously.
“But after examining the corpses, they appear to have been people who had not learned martial arts.”
“Civilians?”
“Yes. They’re mixed together without regard to gender…”
Seo Daeryong let out a sigh and added,
“Among the bodies… there is also a child.”
In that instant, my heart went cold. This was the thing I hated most.
A martial artist laying hands on people who had not learned martial arts—even children. This was an utterly unreasonable, one-sided violence.
When it came to martial artists fighting one another, whether by ambush or by swarming in groups, they were people who had thrown themselves into the chaos of the ruthless jianghu knowing what they were in for.
In truth, if you looked closely, I was not such a righteous person. Yet at points like this, strangely, I could not endure it.
What if these corpses truly were victims of the Heart-Soul Great Art?
When I returned to the cult to find Bimahon, I had heard rumors that the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable practiced the Heart-Soul Great Art. That meant he had been carrying out this great art for decades. There must have been thousands of victims, perhaps more.
If that was the case… The face of the old man who sent me back suddenly came to mind. Revenge was important, and so was my life, but—
‘I understand. I don’t know about anything else, but I will stop this first.’
Just then, another investigator came and reported.
“Look at this.”
What he brought was a fan. When I opened it, it was covered in an indecipherable language and grotesque drawings.
“It is a Ghost Fan used by ghost sorcerers.”
It was a fan used by the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable’s disciples for evil arts.
“Where was it found?”
“It was with the corpses.”
It was a moment that made it even more certain that the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable was behind this.
But at the same time, suspicion arose.
The person in charge of disposing of the bodies dropped a fan and left it behind?
“Where is the herb gatherer who discovered the bodies now?”
“We have him waiting over there.”
“Let’s go.”
But the herb gatherer had vanished somewhere.
“It seems he ran away out of fear. I’ll search for him at once.”
I had a feeling they would not find him.
Something about this incident was unnatural.
No matter that this was our cult, no one could openly carry out a great art that gouged hearts from the bodies of living people. Therefore, the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable must have handled matters related to the great art with the utmost thoroughness.
And yet the corpses were discovered by an herb gatherer, with even a fan dropped at the site? Impossible. Someone had found out where the bodies were buried and arranged for them to be discovered.
“Now that evidence has been found, we will have to go to Seohwanjin and investigate the owner of this fan, won’t we?”
Seo Daeryong was thoroughly frightened.
“Are you afraid?”
“Yes. In our cult, I fear the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable the most.”
“Why?”
“If I’m caught by ghost sorcerers, my soul will be taken. Rather than be controlled like a jiangshi and die miserably, I’d rather be cleanly stabbed to death.”
“What to do? You’ll have to go to Seohwanjin with me tomorrow.”
“As of today, I resign from Hwangcheon Pavilion. Ah, I really don’t want to go.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll take enforcement martial artists with us too. Pick out a few with strong martial arts.”
Seo Daeryong shouted,
“Those people will go mad and kill me, I’m telling you!”
Someone had gone so far as to deliberately manipulate the scene to inform me that the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable was practicing the Heart-Soul Great Art. I would have to confirm whether it was true, but one person came to mind as the one behind this manipulation.
‘Saujong.’
Saujong, the right hand of the Ilhwa Sword Venerable.
There was a decisive reason I guessed it was him.
It was because of his memorable end, which I had recalled even when I first saw Saujong.
Amazingly, he had been under a soul-capturing spell and tried to kill the Ilhwa Sword Venerable, only to be killed in return. How could I forget an incident in which the most loyal subordinate fell under a soul-capturing spell and tried to kill his master?
After his death, it was revealed that he had loved the Sword Venerable as a woman. And who had placed the soul-capturing spell on him was never revealed to the end. People gossiped about it as a tragedy entangled in romantic obsession, and then forgot it.
Another reason I thought it was Saujong.
By coincidence, I had recently spent three days sparring with the Ilhwa Sword Venerable. That must have provoked Saujong somehow.
‘This is a trick to make me die fighting the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable, or to keep me from paying attention to the Sword Venerable while I deal with him.’
I did not know how he had discovered the body disposal site or stolen the fan, but he had properly shoved me toward the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable. This incident was not something I, as the Lord of Hwangcheon Pavilion, could simply overlook.
But Saujong would not know.
That by pushing the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable forward, he himself had stepped onto the stage as well.
* * *
The next day, I took Seo Daeryong and the enforcement martial artists with me and headed for Seohwanjin.
Since we had sent word in advance, a ghost sorcerer was waiting in Seohwanjin to guide us.
“My name is Lu Can. Please follow me.”
We walked after Lu Can.
After walking for quite some time, the moment we entered a flower garden, I stopped in my tracks.
“Wait. I sense ghostly qi.”
I stopped my subordinates and looked around. The ghostly qi was because of the Ghost Flowers planted in the garden.
“It’s because of the fragrance those flowers are giving off.”
Lu Can was startled. It was likely because only an expert with truly sharp senses could detect the ghostly qi of the Ghost Flowers.
“If someone who is not a ghost sorcerer is exposed to the ghostly qi of Ghost Flowers, their internal energy circulation will be hindered for a while, and they will become more susceptible to soul-capturing arts. They may suffer side effects such as seeing illusions, and if unlucky, they may fall into heart demons. I do not want my subordinates to suffer such a fate.”
When I raised the Black Demon Sword as if to release sword qi at once, Lu Can cried out,
“Please wait a moment. I can suppress the scent of the Ghost Flowers for a very short time.”
He took a small cylinder from his robe and placed it in the center of the garden. Smoke rose from the cylinder, and the ghostly qi nearby gathered into that smoke.
“Please pass through quickly now!”
I swiftly passed through with my subordinates.
“If I had not mentioned it, we would have entered while being exposed to the ghostly qi.”
“I apologize.”
At my rebuke, Lu Can lowered his head. Since I knew he too was in a position where he had to follow orders, I did not press him further.
At that moment, Seo Daeryong spoke softly from behind me.
“Thank you for looking out for us, Pavilion Lord.”
When I looked back, not only Seo Daeryong but the enforcement martial artists were also grateful. If not for me, all of them would have been affected by the ghostly qi.
“None of you let your guard down.”
“Yes!”
Ghostly qi emanated from stone statues and towers throughout the place.
As soon as I noticed it, Lu Can suppressed the ghostly qi on his own.
I could understand why Seo Daeryong feared the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable. At this rate, we might die on the way to meet him.
In that manner, we were able to enter the center of Seohwanjin.
The houses built there had peculiar shapes. Most of them resembled snail shells, structures made of overlapping circles—buildings unlike anything I had ever seen anywhere in the Central Plains.
It was Seo Daeryong’s first time here, and at first he admired the exotic sight. But before long, he complained that he felt unwell. The buildings here made one dizzy just by looking at them.
I told Seo Daeryong and the enforcement martial artists to walk with their eyes closed. With their eyes shut, they walked in a line behind me, each resting a hand on the shoulder of the person in front.
Among the strange buildings was one shaped like a cone. This was where the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable resided.
His room was the very extreme of dizziness. The walls, the floor, even the ceiling—everything was covered in whirling patterns. Truly, simply being in that room was painful.
At the center of that room sat the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable.
The Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable, Ye Su.
I had felt this in the past as well, but he truly looked ordinary. He had the sort of face that made one think that if you went to Magachon right now, you could bring back ten people who looked similar. Such ordinariness amid this dizziness?
He seemed like a person who showed, as if by symbol, that all humans who bewitch others are this ordinary.
“I greet the Demon Venerable.”
I greeted him respectfully.
Before my regression, I had had no particular connection with him. Even when I returned to the cult in search of materials for the great art, there had been no meaningful point of contact between us. Only one thing was certain. Among the Eight Demon Venerables, he had been the one who survived the longest.
“Welcome, Second Young Master.”
His voice scattered from every direction. It seemed to come from the left, and then from the right.
“What brings you all the way to the edge of the world?”
This time, it sounded as if he were whispering from behind my back.
Since he was confusing the mind like this, in a sense, one could say the soul-capturing art had already begun.
“I have come to investigate an incident.”
At that, the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable stared piercingly at me.
Suddenly, the black of his pupils expanded. As I looked into his eyes, now entirely dark, I felt my mind grow hazy. The subordinates who had come with me were probably not in their right minds by now.
“Not bad.”
As though it were a thought in my own mind, his voice rang like an echo inside a cave.
“I am often told that I have a firm will.”
Of course that was part of it, but the decisive reason was the Heavenly Demon Protection Art. The Heavenly Demon Protection Art activated on its own and blocked the ghostly qi from invading my mind and heart. Of course, since my attainment in it was not yet deep, the situation would change if the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable exerted his full power.
Before it could turn into an unnecessary contest of wills, I quickly revealed the purpose of my visit today.
“More than ten unusual corpses were discovered, and an item belonging to a ghost sorcerer was found there.”
“What kind of item?”
I showed him the fan.
It seemed each Ghost Fan had its own owner. As soon as he saw the Ghost Fan, the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable summoned someone.
“Call Ling Xie.”
A question that would normally have been asked was omitted. Even though I had deliberately emphasized that the corpses were unusual, the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable did not ask what was unusual about them. Which meant—
‘He already knows what kind of corpses they are.’