The objects around me began to ripple as if they were alive. The writing desk, the display cabinet, even the sword and fan set against the wall all melted and ran. It was as though they had softened and sagged under a scorching heat.
The floor, too, heaved like waves. In a place where even walking was difficult, it seemed impossible to perform any footwork technique.
The walls and ceiling were also undulating, and lines like those on a go board appeared, dizzying my vision.
The Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable’s voice rang out, deep as something echoing from within a cave.
“The world you lived in was nothing but an illusion. This place you see now is the real world.”
The Heavenly Demon Protective Divine Art activated naturally. If I had not learned it, he would already have begun stealing my mind.
That did not mean I was in a situation where I could escape the crisis by attacking blindly.
Because the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable standing over there was surely an illusion.
He had not yet unleashed his most powerful sorcery, so I could still keep the situation under control. Regulating the ghostly energy, I spoke calmly.
“It’s a world where one can save on drinking money. I feel this dizzy, as if drunk, without even drinking.”
Seeing me calmly make a joke when I should have already collapsed, the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable looked surprised.
The next moment, his whisper reached my ears. It was an overlapping voice, like several people murmuring and spreading rumors.
“So the rumors were true. They said the Second Young Master had become a hidden dragon and begun to ascend.”
Before I knew it, he was beside me.
I could not tell whether the one standing next to me was an illusion or the real thing.
I would have to cut him to know, but first came the doubt of whether I could truly cut him at all. If such thoughts arose before I had even drawn my sword, then if a fight broke out with him, it would be a truly difficult battle.
I understood clearly why Father had come to warn me.
Even with the Heavenly Demon Protective Divine Art activated, my mind was this unsettled; if he attacked on top of that, how in the world was I supposed to defeat the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable?
I turned my head toward the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable standing beside me. His face was so ordinary that it seemed extraordinary instead.
“I have no intention of ascending. I want to live thin and long, enjoying this world for a very long time. That is why I seek to grow stronger.”
More precisely, it was the life the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable pursued. He had survived, thin and long, until the very end. Before he died, he left many words behind, and the following was something he had often said as well.
—The reason I strove my whole life to become stronger was so that no one could kill me.
He was a man who truly cherished his own life. The Mind-Soul Great Art was also an expression of that self-love.
The Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable grinned at me.
“A splendid thought.”
At the same time, the rippling around us stopped. The surroundings darkened, then brightened again, and before I knew it, everything had changed.
The space that had seemed enough to drive one mad disappeared, and this time a vast plain spread out before me. It was a sight that lifted the heart just by looking at it.
The Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable stood far away in the middle of the field.
I shouted toward him.
“It truly is a splendid martial art.”
Ordinarily, if I wanted to twist his mood, I would have called it sorcery or trickery instead of martial art, but I deliberately did not do so now. In his world, yielding him a move was the wise choice.
“It is a martial art that only I in this world can perform.”
He spoke proudly. But that was not true.
The leader of the Wind Heaven Cult could also perform the exact same martial art. I had learned that fact in the past while rescuing the Yin Thunder Sect. The roots of the martial arts the two had learned lay in the demonic arts of the Blood Cult.
“What do you think? Do you not wish to live in a world like this?”
He was standing far away, yet his voice sounded right beside me.
“If you teach me, I will gratefully learn.”
Then the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable appeared in front of me in an instant.
“You are more insidious than I expected. Trying to obtain a divine art of the world for free.”
“In return, would you not be able to obtain me?”
He looked into my eyes. His pitch-black pupils shrank until they were as small as dots.
“I can see clearly what you are thinking. You may deceive an idiot like the Blood Heaven Blade Demon, but you cannot deceive me.”
“What am I thinking?”
“You want to grab me by the hair and slap me across the face. You are saying this as you strike my cheek. You bastard, who the hell do you think you are to disobey me?”
“Close, but wrong. You bastard, who the hell do you think you are to kill people? Let’s start by pulling out that shameless heart of yours! How is it? A little different, right?”
The Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable did not get angry. Because he was confident he could kill me, he displayed the composure of the strong.
“You are the Cult Leader’s son, so it must be hard for you to die, is it not? That is why you want to die by my hand.”
“Of course not. Isn’t it better to be a living third-rate nobody than the dead greatest under heaven?”
This, too, was something the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable had often said.
The Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable’s expression seemed to change subtly.
Then the pupils that had shrunk to dots returned to normal, and he withdrew all of his ghostly energy as well.
The surroundings returned to normal. Once again, we were facing each other in the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable’s room.
“What I showed you just now was merely a taste. If I wished, I could open a place like hell and trap you there for the rest of your life. Even so, do you not fear me?”
“I do fear you. I am afraid. That is why I said I would persuade Father, did I not?”
The Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable stared at me blankly for a moment, then burst into loud laughter.
“Hahahahaha.”
Even his laughter was not ordinary. It was a bizarre laugh that rummaged through the listener’s heart. My insides churned, and nausea rose within me.
“At this point, I must acknowledge it. No wonder the Blade Demon was making such a fuss trying to attach himself to you.”
As expected, he had been watching my relationship with the Blade Demon. Well, it would not only be this Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable. The other Demon Venerables were surely the same.
“Listen, Second Young Master. You should return now.”
“Even if only out of regard for Father, please restrain yourself for the time being! Then I shall take my leave.”
Since it was a threat made using Father, it would work for two or three months.
“If you see me again, you will never return to this world.”
I walked out without replying. Our conversation in words was now over.
* * *
Seo Daeryong, who had been waiting outside, asked me,
“Was the matter you came for resolved well?”
“If you say it went well, it went well; if you say it did not, then it did not.”
“I think the fact that you came to find that terrifying Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable like this and tried to seek a solution is already something well done, Pavilion Master. Whatever it may be… no one else had done it. I think there is meaning in that.”
To think I would be comforted by this dark and crooked fellow.
“You were very angry, weren’t you?”
“Do I look that way?”
“Yes.”
“When I first saw the corpses, I was very angry, but I am fine now. I have already made up my mind.”
Seo Daeryong looked at me for a moment, then started walking again.
“You are not going to ask what decision I made?”
“I have already heard it. It is the look in your eyes that you have always shown until now. The look you had before accomplishing the impossible.”
I smiled awkwardly.
“This is why one must have a right arm.”
“You keep calling me your right arm, but isn’t Martial Artist Ian your right arm, Pavilion Master?”
“Ian? Ian is not my right arm.”
“Then am I your right arm, ahead of Martial Artist Ian?”
There was a slight trace of expectation in him.
“You are my right arm, but you cannot surpass Ian.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ian is my heart. My heart.”
“Now I feel disappointed even though I am the right arm.”
I laughed loudly, and Seo Daeryong laughed along with me.
“I will buy you a drink today.”
“Really? Are we finally going to a top-class pleasure house?”
“The Pungryu Tavern.”
I stuck out my lower lip, and Seo Daeryong cried out about his meager salary.
“Fine, then. Since our miserly Inspector Seo is buying drinks for once, let us call my left arm, my heart, and even my left wing to drink together.”
“The left arm must be the Demon Army Lord, and the heart is Martial Artist Ian. Then who is the left wing?”
“There is someone. Come on, let’s go.”
I strode ahead. After walking some distance ahead, I looked back at Seo Daeryong.
“Aren’t you coming?”
Standing where he was, Seo Daeryong spoke with an apologetic face.
“I am sorry. This is all I can do for you. If my heart had its way…”
“If your heart had its way?”
He looked toward the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable’s residence. His eyes looked as if he wanted to go in, grab the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable by the hair, and drag him out. I could feel the heat in him, as though he would have done so if only he were strong.
Our gazes met in the air.
These days, I had come to rely quite a bit on this small, gloomy man.
“I will accept the thought.”
“You should!”
Leaving Seohwanjin, we headed together for the Pungryu Tavern.
“It looks like it is going to rain.”
Indeed, dark clouds had gathered thickly, and it seemed as though rain would pour down at any moment.
“You picked a fine day. With rain coming too, the drinking bill is going to be no joke today, isn’t it?”
“If it is at the Pungryu Tavern, it is fine. There are no women, so there is nowhere to spend money.”
“Ah… that is too sad a thing to say. This won’t do. I should buy the drinks.”
“Second Young Master, you do not have a woman either, do you?”
“I have Ian, don’t I?”
As if he had not expected Ian to come up, Seo Daeryong blinked.
“She is your guard, is she not? If you put it that way, I also…”
“You have that junior from back then?”
Seo Daeryong’s face reddened slightly.
“I told you, it is not that junior!”
We took the largest table on the second floor of the Pungryu Tavern.
“Welcome, Pavilion Master.”
These days, I was the best customer for the owner, Jo Chunbae. He said his sales had doubled thanks to the Hwangcheon Pavilion branch. Not only that, but the tyranny of martial artists had greatly lessened, making life worth living, he said.
“Do not worry today. No tables will be broken.”
“Haha, what if another one breaks? As long as no one gets hurt, that is enough.”
“Look forward to it. Today is the day this friend here opens his hidden purse.”
“I will prepare something delicious and send it up.”
Before Jo Chunbae brought out the proper dishes, he brought the alcohol first.
For a while, we said nothing and quietly drank. Seo Daeryong was lost in his thoughts, and I in mine.
The Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable came to mind.
Whenever I thought of him, along with the desire to kill him, fighting spirit surged fiercely within me.
If it had been the old me, on a day like today, I would not have been sitting here drinking. I would have run to the training grounds and swung my sword without rest.
In my youth, when I suffered setbacks, I exhausted all my heart and mind in the effort to overcome that hardship. Back then, I did not know that when a person is desperate, they can also flee into effort.
But I no longer do that.
The more anger wells up, the more I strive to become calm. Because now I know that drinking with my people strengthens me just as much as training does.
Then Seo Daeryong said,
“But today, for some reason, I feel a little strange. My heart keeps pounding.”
“Did you see a pretty woman? Where?”
When I glanced around playfully, Seo Daeryong laughed.
“You do not even like women, do you?”
“Who says I dislike women?”
“Is that not so? I thought you had no interest in women, Pavilion Master.”
Women, huh. In my past life, I lived alone all my life, so I was lonely, and because of that, I was also not lonely.
“Are you lonely these days?”
“What is there to be lonely about when I live alone? I am just bored. Isn’t loneliness an emotion you feel when you are with someone?”
“Oh! I should use that line later.”
“Use it on the junior you like.”
“I told you I do not like her. And I have no reason to meet her.”
“Shall I put you in the same squad and have you work together?”
“No, thank you. A bond should come about naturally.”
“See? You do like her.”
“That is not it… Forget it. Whew, I should stop talking.”
He drank.
“Is your heart still pounding?”
“Yes.”
“Something fated must be about to happen today.”
“Surely not.”
In the meantime, Jo Chunbae brought the dishes.
At that moment, Seo Daeryong did not yet know. He did not know what kind of change today’s decision to buy drinks would bring to his life.
“Let’s drink ourselves senseless today!”
Even though he could hardly hold his liquor.