“If you do not kill the Eldest Young Master, you will die.”
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon still remembered it vividly. Geom Ujin’s answer when he said those words, and the look on his face.
“I don’t want to kill my brother.”
They were words one could never hear from the current Cult Leader. No one could even imagine the Cult Leader hesitating to kill someone.
Yes, even the Cult Leader had once had such days.
“I know.”
Because the Blood Heaven Blade Demon was someone who had felt the heat that dwelled in Geom Ujin’s heart.
Within the cult, Geom Ujin was more popular. Cold, composed, and proud as he was, all the demonic practitioners liked him. He was handsome, intelligent, and above all, possessed a natural talent for martial arts.
He had every quality demonic practitioners admired, and people said he was the greatest of all those who had ever inherited the Heavenly Demon’s bloodline.
The Eldest Young Master had joined hands with his master to kill Geom Ujin because he knew that if things continued as they were, he would have no chance of victory.
“Very well. Let us find a way to resolve this without killing the Eldest Young Master, no matter what.”
At that, Geom Ujin spoke firmly.
“Brother, stay out of it. This fight is mine.”
How could the Blood Heaven Blade Demon not know those words came from concern for him?
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon shook his head. Now that his master had become involved in this matter—
“The moment I told you of the Eldest Young Master and Master’s plan, this fight became mine as well.”
Their gazes tangled in the air. Eyes filled with a youthful fervor they could no longer even imitate.
“I want to live as a Demon Venerable of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult led by you.”
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon still remembered the tremor he had felt the moment he spoke those words.
He wanted to return to that time. To the youth of those days, hot as a midsummer night and refreshing as an autumn wind. To the days when he had risked his life without desiring anything, when he could read emotion on the Cult Leader’s face.
The one who dragged him back out of the past was Gyo Cheon.
“Meeting you was the greatest misfortune of my life.”
At the words of his master that reached his ears, the image of the young Geom Ujin vanished.
In its place stood the figure of his enraged master.
Even if his master had not said so, he had lived with that feeling.
After all, the words he had spoken to Geom Mugeuk—that his entire life had been accompanied by misfortune—had also come from his master.
Though it had been to save the Cult Leader, in the end he had never been able to escape the yoke of having betrayed his master.
“Do you know why I came after receiving your message, Master?”
“You came to kill me, I suppose.”
Despite the mocking reply, the Blood Heaven Blade Demon remained calm.
“If that had been my intention, I would have contacted the Cult Leader.”
But the Blood Heaven Blade Demon had quietly come alone to Chongqing.
Gyo Cheon looked at the Blood Heaven Blade Demon with eyes that asked for the reason.
And that reason was something Gyo Cheon had never imagined.
“I wanted to see you, Master.”
“!”
Gyo Cheon’s deep wrinkles twitched.
It was the Blood Heaven Blade Demon’s sincere feeling. Of course, it was not because of ordinary longing.
How should he express this desire to see him?
Was it like the feeling of his younger self extending a hand to him, now standing in the twilight of life?
Yes, it was not the master before his eyes who had called him, but his own self from his youth.
Gyo Cheon laughed. There were especially many wrinkles around his mouth, making it difficult to tell what he felt when he laughed. But the laugh now was clearly a sneer.
“You say such nonsense knowing why I came?”
The sneer soon turned into open laughter. Was it because of old age? Or had he contracted some illness? His cracked voice gave off the sound of scraping metal, and the laughter soon turned into a fit of coughing that would not stop.
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon waited for him to stop coughing.
“You wanted to see me?”
Gyo Cheon slowly rose from his seat and loosened his robe.
His body was shriveled. It was a body that made one wonder whether he could truly perform martial arts with it. And for that reason, it was all the more frightening. When one thought of the tremendous power contained within that insignificant body.
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon’s gaze went to the very center of his chest.
There was a large scar there. A scar far wider and deeper than one left by a sword thrust.
“Now, look.”
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon silently gazed at the wound.
And then he conveyed to him the words he had long held in his heart. Words he had never spoken to anyone, not even once.
“I am sorry, Master.”
“!”
He knew that even if it had not been him, his master had always been willing to take another disciple as his chief disciple. He knew that if he had continued to resist, his master would have killed him. Above all, it had been to save Geom Ujin.
Even so, he was sorry.
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon bowed his head respectfully. The head he lowered only to Geom Ujin was lowered now.
As Gyo Cheon looked at him, a gleam burst from his eyes, and the fine wrinkles on his face deepened.
“You… were hypocritical even when you were young.”
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon understood his master. He was someone who would never believe that he had purely liked a man named Geom Ujin, and he was someone who would not believe his apology either.
But it did not matter. In the end, he had spoken those words for his own sake.
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon looked up at the sky.
‘Thank you for allowing me to say the words I meant to convey only after going to hell.’
Gyo Cheon did not take the Blood Heaven Blade Demon’s apology as sincere. And even if it were, what meaning would it have now?
“If you help me kill the Cult Leader, I will spare your life.”
“What lingering attachment could I possibly have to this old life?”
At that, Gyo Cheon threatened him with Seo Daeryong.
“If you do not listen to me, I will kill your disciple.”
“Is that why you called that child here as well?”
Of course, this threat did not work.
“Then he, too, will live a life without fortune in his master.”
In the Blood Heaven Blade Demon’s gaze toward his master, there dwelled both love and hatred.
“You looked at me with those eyes in the past as well.”
“That too is a misunderstanding. Because you hate the present me, the past must all be distorted as well.”
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon had a premonition. The end of this matter would be one of only two things: either he would die, or his master would. And so there was nothing he could not say. If what he had spoken earlier had been love, then what he would speak from now on was hatred.
“One might think that the older one grows, the wiser one becomes, but that was not so. Judgment grows clouded, and only stubbornness becomes stronger. I tried to prevent even a little of that by diligently reading books, but it was not easy to stop my mind from growing numb.”
After a brief pause, the Blood Heaven Blade Demon spoke.
“You are probably far worse, Master. If someone who did not know you saw you, they would think, How formidable must that old master be? He must possess tremendous wisdom. He must see through the hearts of people. How extraordinary must his insight be? They would think such things. But I know. Your mind must be filled with a hazy fog.”
Anger rose on Gyo Cheon’s twitching face.
“In that fog, only hatred must be shining. If even that were absent, Master, you would have lost your way.”
“Still putting on airs, I see.”
“You distort things again. I never once put on airs before you, Master. Then tell me. The Cult Leader, myself, and the events of that day. Aside from those, have you ever thought of anything else? Whether the history of the murim or matters of life, or at the very least, Ah, summer has gone, autumn is coming. Have you even had such interests?”
Gyo Cheon’s eyes grew colder, but he could not offer any rebuttal.
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon continued to say what he wished to say.
“In the past, I would not have known either. But recently, through the Young Cult Leader, I realized something. Ah, I had been walking through the fog out of habit all this time. Because the path was so familiar, because the fog was so familiar, I merely walked without falling. Even though the fog had been growing thicker with every passing year.”
After meeting Geom Mugeuk, the stagnant waters of his heart had begun to flow. He trained in martial arts even more diligently, read more books, took in a disciple, and his relationships with the other Demon Venerables changed. He even tended a flower garden.
All of that had been an effort to clear away the fog. Though even with effort, it did not disperse easily.
“That is why I am not afraid of you, Master.”
And so he did not speak the other true feeling—that he did fear his master.
If Geom Mugeuk had met his master even a little earlier, could his master’s heart have changed?
He thought perhaps it might have. If it were Geom Mugeuk? Perhaps that clever fellow might know a way to unravel this deep grudge.
The fact that such thoughts came to him showed just how regretful he was. Even though his master had remained a wound deep within his heart.
This fate, in which they had met again like this and had to open the final chapter without any intervening process, was too regrettable.
“You insolent wretch!”
Gyo Cheon, on the other hand, was furious. How could his life be explained with such words?
Yet he could not think of anything to say in rebuttal. Surely countless words were circling in his mind.
But truly, as though it were filled with fog, he could not tell what he ought to say.
Within that place, only the emotion of hatred shone brightly.
“What if I said I would kill that great Young Cult Leader of yours?”
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon laughed. If you can kill him, then go ahead and try. You will likely collapse clutching the back of your neck while talking to him before that happens.
“That seems like a threat you should make to the Cult Leader, so save it.”
Threats did not work on the Blood Heaven Blade Demon.
“But just how do you intend to kill the Cult Leader? He is not someone who can be killed simply because one wishes to kill him.”
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon was curious as to what move he had prepared.
“The Cult Leader is human too. All humans are bound to die.”
As he said that, Gyo Cheon took something from his robe.
It was a small box. Through Void-Seizing, it flew through the air and came to the Blood Heaven Blade Demon.
When he opened the box, what lay inside was a single small vial.
“Put that in the Cult Leader’s wine.”
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon looked down at the vial and asked.
“What is this?”
“You need not know. All you have to do is put it in the Cult Leader’s wine.”
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon was truly dumbfounded. Did he think such a method would work? Was his master truly wandering in a fog?
“That is correct. He is someone who cannot be killed unless such methods are used. Sowing discord with the orthodox factions, threatening to kill a disciple, and now even poisoning him like this. But did you think I would do such a thing?”
“Did you not say you were sorry to me?”
As if there were no further value in speaking, the Blood Heaven Blade Demon tried to pour the contents of the vial onto the floor. Just as he was about to open the stopper, he flinched and stopped.
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon’s gaze returned to Gyo Cheon.
“You must have expected that I would pour it out.”
An ominous thought flashed through the Blood Heaven Blade Demon’s mind.
“Surely not?”
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon threw the vial far away.
Crash.
From the exposed liquid, poisonous smoke surged up at once. If he had poured it onto the floor, that smoke would have enveloped him in an instant.
“This was meant to kill me.”
Gyo Cheon’s eyes were filled with killing intent.
“I cannot let you die gently.”
From the way he spoke, the poison was no ordinary poison. It was a poison that inflicted extreme agony.
He had known that his master intended to kill him, but seeing him use poison so unhesitatingly like this left him feeling wounded. And such a vicious poison at that.
He realized anew that this was what human relationships were like—that even in a situation where they would kill and be killed by one another, one could still feel hurt.
“Do you hate me that much?”
“Did you not say it yourself? That only hatred remains inside my mind.”
Looking at his master, he truly felt as though he were staring at an impenetrable wall with whom words did not get through.
He had wanted to ease his heart somehow. And that desire had not been for his own sake, but for his master’s.
Of course, his master would not believe it. He would think he was scheming because he did not want to die.
‘Master, you do not give me a chance to choose this time either.’
Gyo Cheon slowly clapped his hands.
Then the door in the left wall opened, and someone walked out from within.
Clad in a blazing crimson robe, he was an old man of about the same age as the Blood Heaven Blade Demon, and he too wore a great saber. One could tell just from his steps. He had practiced the Heaven-Destroying Demonic Saber Form for many years.
It seemed likely that his master had taken him in as a new disciple and transmitted martial arts to him.
He was not the only one to appear. The door on the opposite side opened, and someone walked out from there as well.
This time it was an old man wearing a blue robe, and the skill he exuded was in no way inferior to that of the old man who had appeared first.
And the two of them possessed contrasting auras. If the first old man was fire, then this old man possessed an aura like water.
And the Blood Heaven Blade Demon could instinctively tell.
‘They are ones who have achieved mastery of the Heaven-Destroying Demonic Saber Form.’
They were truly experts with the strength of Demon Venerables. Since they were people his master had raised with vengeance, he could imagine their strength without even seeing it.
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon’s eyes sank. He sensed that this would not be an easy fight.
Gyo Cheon looked at the Blood Heaven Blade Demon and said,
“A betrayal suffered at the hands of a disciple should be repaid by disciples.”
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon did not lose his composure.
“It seems I will have to discipline my junior brothers.”
Gyo Cheon sneered and said,
“Who says they are your junior brothers? You were expelled from the sect long ago.”
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon answered calmly.
“Because I have not expelled you as my master.”
Gyo Cheon’s face twitched again. His master would misunderstand and grow angry, but it was the Blood Heaven Blade Demon’s tenderness toward him.
“It was sincere that I wanted to see you again, and my apology was sincere as well. My wish that you would simply withdraw even now and live quietly is also sincere. And this too is sincere.”
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon slowly drew the Heaven-Destroying Great Saber and said,
“For his sake, I can kill again.”