A short while later, Neunghyu entered.
“This subordinate has come at the Demon Venerable’s summons.”
Our gazes turned to his waist. Sure enough, the Ghost Fan carried by practitioners of ghost arts was not there.
“Where is your Ghost Fan?”
“I lost it yesterday.”
At that, the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable threw him the Ghost Fan he had been holding.
“It’s mine. Where did you get this?”
He did not dare ask the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable, and instead directed the question to me.
“Several corpses were discovered yesterday, and this was found with them.”
When Neunghyu heard my answer, he flinched in surprise. It was a different sort of shock from the ordinary surprise one would feel upon learning that one’s belongings had been found at the scene of an incident.
And Neunghyu, too, did not ask where the bodies had been found, nor what the cause of death was.
‘Ah, so Neunghyu is the one in charge of disposing of the bodies!’
It was the moment I confirmed that the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable had been carrying out the Heart-Soul Great Art.
“Given the circumstances, you will have to come with me and be investigated.”
Neunghyu was not afraid of me. He looked at the only person he feared and awaited his decision.
The Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable merely stared at him in silence, but I could tell he was sending a sound transmission in some peculiar manner.
Soon after, Neunghyu said to me,
“Understood. Let us go together.”
He was arrested obediently, without protesting his innocence or resisting.
I gave the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable a courteous bow.
“Thank you for your cooperation. I will see you again.”
The Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable nodded without a word. His expression was utterly calm, so there was no telling what he was thinking inside.
* * *
As soon as I returned, I ordered an investigation into Neunghyu.
The special investigators took turns questioning him, but he only said that he had lost his fan and refused to say anything else.
“It won’t be easy to make him open his mouth.”
At Seo Daeryong’s words, I nodded. I could tell just by looking into his eyes. His loyalty to and fear of the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable were so strong that neither persuasion nor interrogation would work on him.
“We have no proof that he killed them, so we won’t be able to hold him for long.”
“In any case, he’s nothing more than a lackey. If we’re going to catch someone, it has to be the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable.”
Perhaps reading the force in my eyes, Seo Daeryong said worriedly,
“Please be careful. Your opponent is the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable.”
“Do you remember what I told you when I first took office? That even if my father did wrong, I would go to arrest him.”
“Yes.”
“Then he is the one who should be careful. Go and tell him. Tell him to be careful.”
“I only wish I had that kind of courage.”
That day, an unexpected person came to see me in my office.
Seo Daeryong entered with a startled face, even stammering as he spoke.
“The C-Cult Leader has come to visit.”
I was shocked as well. I truly had never imagined Father would come here.
“Show him in at once.”
Seo Daeryong left, and soon Father entered the office.
“Father? What brings you all the way here?”
“I was passing by, so I stopped in.”
As if. Father had come because he had something to say to me.
“There is tea, and there is wine.”
“What wine in broad daylight? Let us have some tea.”
I brewed the tea myself and brought it out. In the meantime, Father stood by the window behind my seat, looking outside.
“Please have some tea.”
Still gazing out the window, Father said,
“You must not touch the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable yet.”
I knew then. He had come to say this.
He knew that I had gone to Seohwanjin and arrested Neunghyu. And he knew that, now that the bodies had been found, I had no intention of leaving the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable alone.
“Why not?”
“Because with your martial arts, you cannot kill him.”
“I can cut him down when his guard is down. If that doesn’t work, I’ll stab him in the back and kill him.”
“Standing behind his back will be harder than killing him.”
“Is the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable really that strong?”
“He is both the weakest and the strongest.”
I understood what those words meant.
If one could overcome his soul-capturing art—that is, if one mastered martial arts impervious to his sorcery, or reached a realm of martial learning where such sorcery had no effect—then he would become the easiest opponent. Without his sorcery, the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable’s martial arts would be nothing special.
Seen from that perspective, the weakest Demon Venerable to Father would likely be the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable. The Soul-Capturing Demon’s sorcery would have no effect on Father at all.
“Will you help me overcome it?”
“It is impossible in a short time.”
“As you have seen so far, am I not a quicker learner than you expected?”
“That is nowhere near enough. There are two ways to block the Soul-Capturing Demon’s soul-capturing art. The first is to master the Nine Flames Demonic Art. The degree to which one can withstand it differs according to the aptitude of the one who has mastered it, but in your case, even reaching the fifth level would make the soul-capturing sorcery ineffective.”
“I do not wish to hear the second. Please let me block it with the first.”
Pretending not to hear my request to make me his successor, Father spoke of the second method.
“Or you must achieve great completion in the Heavenly Demon Protection Art. Both are impossible right now, which is why I am telling you to step back.”
At that moment, one solution arose in my mind. There was one method I knew because I had regressed.
‘Father, in truth, there is a third method.’
A method a hundred times easier than the first two.
The problem, in fact, lay elsewhere.
“Is the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable truly indispensable to our cult?”
Father must have sensed it—the killing intent contained in my calm question.
“Among the Eight Demon Venerables, the one the orthodox faction finds most troublesome is the Soul-Capturing Demon.”
He spoke indirectly, but he was saying that he was indispensable.
“Even though he is ripping out living people’s hearts for his Great Art? Did you perhaps know?”
Father shook his head.
“I learned of it this time as well.”
How would Father handle this?
Would Father, of all people, like a man who pulled out hearts from living bodies?
However, from the position of one who led the cult, he could not recklessly eliminate someone who would be among our strongest forces when facing the Martial Alliance. This was not a matter to leave to Father. It was a problem I had to solve.
“You told me to inform you in advance before killing a Demon Venerable, did you not?”
It was the promise Father had demanded when he permitted me to teach Ian the Flying Heaven Sword Art.
“I am telling you now. I will kill the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable. Among the Eight Demon Venerables, he will be the first to die.”
In the world before my regression, the Demon Venerable who lived the longest was the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable. Now he would live the exact opposite fate.
“This is different from killing someone in a fit of rage because I dislike him. It is worse than a madman roaming around killing people. He is killing people systematically and regularly while perfectly sane. If his goal were grand, I might at least understand. But is he not doing this madness merely to become a little stronger? This is not human, Father. You have your position with the Eight Demon Venerables, so please leave this to me. You placed the hilt in my hand, so allow me to swing the blade to the end.”
I did not know how much Father would sympathize with what I had said. I wanted to walk the same path as Father, but just for this matter, I decided to think of it this way.
On a long journey, there are times when, from this road to that road, one must part from one’s companions for a while and meet again later.
Father stared at me in silence for a long time, then left the room after saying something I had not expected.
“If you become skilled enough for that… then you will be the one to fill his absence, so there should be no great problem.”
“!”
It was permission to kill him. In one stroke, he had given me the advice to step forward if I had the ability, and the pressure that I must fill the vacancy afterward.
A smile formed on my lips. Since he had already left, I thanked him in my heart.
‘Thank you, Father.’
Father was Father after all. Yes, this was not a journey that would split apart over something like this. Father and I were still walking the same path.
Though it would never happen, if I were to become a father in this life… for a very brief moment, I thought I would like to give my son that same thrill Father had just given me.
Of course, I would live alone in this life as well.
* * *
“Please, please spare me. I have children. If I die, my children will…”
The man quietly looked into the eyes of the woman pleading before him.
The woman stared at the man in terror.
The gaze of this ordinary-looking man was horrifying.
But thinking of her children, she mustered her courage. She was raising them alone. If she did not care for them, her young children would not survive the winter and would die.
“Please let me go. I’ll do anything you tell me. Just please let me go. Please! Spare me.”
Tears streamed down the woman’s face.
Then the woman saw the man’s pupils turn black. Within that black shadow, she saw her children.
For an instant, she smiled brightly in joy, but soon her face began to fill with agony.
The children suffered from hunger, were beaten by other beggars, and were dragged away by a madman and tormented.
“No! Please! No!”
The man’s pupils were cruel. As if determined to draw out every last bit of her sorrow, he staged even the final moments of her children.
The children were collapsing on the frozen winter road, breathing their last. From their mouths came the words, “Mama, I’m hungry.”
“Aaah! No!”
When her grief and despair reached their peak, even her heart was stolen.
Her heart was beating in the man’s hand.
More than the sorrow of losing her own life, the sorrow that she would never see her children again became bloody tears that splattered in every direction.
Her breath ceased, and the ordinary-looking man’s internal energy increased by the slightest amount.
* * *
The next day, I took Neunghyu from the interrogation room and went to Seohwanjin.
I had decided to use the third method to kill the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable.
But to do so, I needed roughly two months. I had to arrive somewhere on a fixed date. Until then, I needed to buy time by any means necessary. Just two months.
This time, I brought only Seo Daeryong. He said he was too scared to go, but I dragged him along by force. I had to take him with me. The next Lord of the Yellow Springs Pavilion needed a variety of experiences.
The black pupils of the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable, who greeted us, had grown grotesquely large.
“We judged Neunghyu innocent. We found no evidence that he killed them.”
“Then you need only release Neunghyu. Why have you come?”
“I have something to tell you.”
“Speak.”
“Dismiss everyone nearby.”
I had Seo Daeryong wait outside. What I was about to say was important enough that the other party might respond by killing me to silence me.
When only the two of us remained, I said to him,
“I know that you are performing the Heart-Soul Great Art, Demon Venerable.”
“What is this Heart-Soul Great Art? I have never heard of it.”
He lied without even a flicker in his gaze. Since he was a man who had risen to the position of Demon Venerable through the manipulation of people’s minds, there was not the slightest emotional disturbance.
“Stop the Great Art.”
“Second Young Master, what in the world are you talking about?”
His words rang noisily from every direction.
“If you refuse my proposal, you will die.”
As the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable laughed as if it were absurd, the words I had spoken echoed back as though mocking me.
—If you refuse, you will die. If you refuse, you will die…
The words “you will die” were heard in the voices of many people I knew.
I calmed my mind with the Heavenly Demon Protection Art and said firmly,
“It will not be I who kills you, Demon Venerable.”
—It will not be I. It will not be I…
Once again, my words were repeated in the voices of many people, mocking me.
“I will persuade Father.”
At the mention of Father, the echoes abruptly stopped.
A silence came over the room.
The one and only person he feared.
The only one who could restrain him, even for a while, was Father.
“Every morning, I will go to pay my respects and make my request. Please kill the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable. The next day, I will go and say it again. One who removes the hearts of living people is only someone who lowers the dignity of our cult. The day after that, I will go and say it again. I will give up my claim as successor, so please kill him. The next day, and the day after that, I will persuade him with every word I can think of. Then one day, when you make a grave mistake before Father, perhaps he will agree.”
The moment my words ended, the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable’s black pupils shrank until they were like dots. It was a grotesque sight, as though his pupils had been sucked away somewhere and only dots remained. At the same time, powerful ghostly energy burst from his body.
Kihihihihi.
The sound of ghosts rang out as the surroundings darkened, then brightened again.
Before I knew it, everything around me had completely changed.