The next day, Utmost Evil Soma came to see me.
The sight of him slowly crossing the training ground of Hwangcheongak, wearing a white mask, created a truly overwhelming sense of pressure and terror.
The investigators and enforcement martial artists could not even whisper among themselves from afar. They all held their breath, bowed, and passed by. They feared him far more than they had when the Blood Heaven Blade Demon or the One-Flower Sword Venerable had come.
I stood by the window of my office and watched him.
Beside me, Seo Daeryong spoke in a trembling voice.
“Just what happened yesterday for that terrifying person to come to our pavilion?”
“Investigator Seo, the scariest place in our cult is Hwangcheongak. The person coming here should be the one trembling. Why are you trembling?”
“Yes, let’s say that’s true. Am I in a situation where I should evacuate or not? For the sake of our bond until now, please tell me. Please!”
Seeing that he still had the leisure to make jokes like this, he must have been learning martial arts well from the Blade Demon. Well, since he was putting his life into it, I expected he would soon show me a transformed self.
“It was only yesterday that you told me to keep worrying about you.”
“I’ll worry about you from afar, like yesterday.”
“Go and bring him in. My right arm should go.”
“I can only pray that Utmost Evil Soma doesn’t know I’m your right arm, Pavilion Lord.”
Seo Daeryong went outside like that, and my gaze returned to Utmost Evil Soma.
I knew he would come looking for me, but to think he would come this quickly, and in broad daylight, directly to Hwangcheongak.
Acting impulsively according to instinct was no different now than it had been back then. That was what made him an entertaining opponent, and that was what made him difficult to deal with.
A moment later, Seo Daeryong spoke from outside the door.
“The Demon Venerable of Utmost Evil has arrived.”
“Show him in.”
Soon after, Utmost Evil Soma entered, guided by Seo Daeryong.
“Welcome, elder.”
“You’re calling me elder again. I told you to treat me comfortably, like a friend.”
“I couldn’t possibly do that. Then I’ll call you Lord Soma.”
“Good.”
Utmost Evil Soma laughed aloud. As though nothing had happened yesterday, his behavior was completely natural.
When Seo Daeryong, who had shown him in, was about to leave, I quickly said,
“Ah, that fellow over there is Investigator Seo, my right arm.”
Seo Daeryong screamed with his expression, then, when Utmost Evil Soma looked back, greeted him with a calm face.
“I am Seo Daeryong. It is an honor to meet someone I respect.”
“Oh, I’ll remember you.”
“Thank you.”
Seo Daeryong walked out with an expression as though the world had ended. In his heart, he was probably screaming, Please don’t remember me! I laughed as I watched him.
Utmost Evil Soma abruptly asked,
“Isn’t it normal to hide someone you cherish?”
“If the other party is an enemy, yes. But you aren’t my enemy, Lord Soma, are you?”
“That doesn’t mean we’re friends yet, either.”
“If someone sets his mind on killing, would hiding ever keep anyone hidden, no matter how thoroughly? Lord Soma, have you ever failed to kill someone you intended to kill just because he hid?”
“No.”
“Exactly. Since life is uncertain and we never know when we’ll die anyway, shouldn’t he live properly as my right arm while he can?”
A peculiar light flowed through Utmost Evil Soma’s eyes.
“That is quite an interesting thing to say.”
Utmost Evil Soma rose from his seat and looked around the office. He looked over the piles of documents on the desk and the booklets inserted into the wall cabinet, then smelled the fragrance of the flowers in the pot by the window. It was the potted plant the One-Flower Sword Venerable had given me as a gift.
“The fragrance is pleasant.”
“Something recently made me come to like flowers.”
“The successor of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult liking flowers… If those bastards from the Murim Alliance come charging in, does that mean we’ll die in a flower field?”
Even at his mocking words, I responded calmly.
“Dying forlornly in some nameless field would have its own style, but isn’t this fine too? If the scent one smells in the final moment as breath leaves the body is not the smell of blood, but the fragrance of flowers.”
Instead of answering whether that was good or bad, Utmost Evil Soma burst into his habitual laughter.
“But what brings you to me?”
Utmost Evil Soma, who had been facing the flowers, turned back toward me.
“After the Second Young Master left yesterday, I thought about it carefully, and I found it deeply regrettable that we could not become friends.”
“I feel the same.”
“So I came to see if we might search for a way to become friends.”
“You came at the right time. So, did you find a way?”
“The method I thought of is for each of us to yield one thing.”
“How?”
“I will yield when it comes to the Second Young Master’s perspective on good and evil. I will try to understand the Second Young Master’s new demonic path.”
“Then what should I yield?”
“You said we could only become friends if I took off my mask. Can you yield on that?”
“Before that, let me ask you one thing. Why do you want to become friends with me?”
“I wish to get along with the Second Young Master without reserve.”
In truth, I knew why Utmost Evil Soma was doing this. First, he wanted to find out how I had killed the Soul-Seizing Demon Venerable. When I returned to the cult, Utmost Evil Soma had been alive along with the Soul-Seizing Demon Venerable.
What I felt then was this: the more evil one is, the longer one survives.
Utmost Evil Soma was also someone who valued his own life, so he would want to find out by any means how I had killed the Soul-Seizing Demon Venerable. If the Soul-Seizing Demon Venerable had been done in, then he would think he could be done in as well.
The other reason was his personality. He became fixated on those who provoked him and piqued his interest. He approached them, made them his friends, and when he grew bored, killed them immediately. It was his pathological taste that no one knew about, known only to me.
That was why I must not attach any good meaning whatsoever to his words about becoming friends. When he said he wanted to be friends, it meant he would play with you and then kill you.
These two reasons had made Utmost Evil Soma come personally all the way to my office. They were the reason he told the absurd lie that he would understand my demonic path.
“I want to become friends with the Second Young Master.”
Fine. In this life as well, I would become his friend.
Only when we became friends would he finally stand at a point where he was neither enemy nor ally.
That was exactly the kind of person Utmost Evil Soma was. A person who could barely escape being an enemy only after becoming a friend.
“Very well. Let’s each yield.”
At my answer, Utmost Evil Soma laughed loudly. To anyone listening, it was a hearty laugh of delight, but I was watching his eyes with the Divine Eye Art. He was looking at me with eyes that were endlessly cold.
Soma, at the end of your life, there was nothing.
He had said he had no regrets even in the moment of death, but that was a lie. The moment he recalled his childhood, he was already regretting it.
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon had changed, the One-Flower Sword Venerable had changed, and Cult Leader Pungcheon was changing too, but this Utmost Evil Soma would not change easily. He had been born with an evil nature, and from a young age, his master had brainwashed him as he raised him.
It was right then.
Seo Daeryong’s voice came from outside.
“The First Young Master has arrived.”
“Show him in.”
Utmost Evil Soma said with a smile,
“I called him.”
He came to see me and called my elder brother here? Truly, it was something only Utmost Evil Soma could do.
If the thought Shall I try this? occurred to him, he was the sort who would carry it out no matter what came afterward. Despite this impulsive personality, he had been one of the Demon Venerables who survived to the end, so one could tell just how extraordinary his malice was.
A moment later, Geom Muyang came inside. He greeted Utmost Evil Soma first.
“It has been a long time, Lord Soma.”
“Welcome, First Young Master. Now, I don’t need to introduce the two of you, do I?”
At his playful words, I played along.
“Perhaps we brothers are the very ones who should be introduced to each other. We know less about each other than you might think.”
When I treated Utmost Evil Soma comfortably, a slight tension crossed Geom Muyang’s face.
And then, taking it one step further.
Utmost Evil Soma said to Geom Muyang,
“I was in the middle of pestering the Second Young Master to become friends with me.”
Utmost Evil Soma observed Geom Muyang’s reaction with eyes that seemed to say, Let’s see how you respond.
My brother responded like my brother.
“At times, one does need such amusements.”
At Geom Muyang’s response, without the slightest disturbance, Utmost Evil Soma smiled and said,
“That is why I intend to enjoy my amusement with your younger brother. Our First Young Master is too upright, so he is no fun.”
“Mugeuk is overflowing with wit, so he will not be lacking as a friend.”
My brother had it hard too. He was not the type to come just because someone told him to, only to listen to words like that. He was enduring it all through sheer obsession with becoming the successor.
Yes, well done. Brother.
If you get on edge here, you lose in that instant. You’re doing well.
Whether he knew that feeling or not, Utmost Evil Soma provoked Geom Muyang.
“The Second Young Master came to see me yesterday. He asked me to support him instead of his elder brother.”
Even with me present, he did not hold back.
“Lord Soma, you said you wanted to be friends, so why are you driving a wedge between brothers? At this rate, we won’t be able to become good friends.”
At my words, Utmost Evil Soma giggled and said,
“There is nothing in this world as entertaining as sowing discord, so how do you expect me to hold back? I can hold in a shit, but I can’t hold that in.”
“If you’re going to sow discord, don’t do it to us. Do it to the Murim Alliance and the Unorthodox Alliance over there.”
“I would like to, but these days, I’m not in a position where I can.”
Geom Muyang simply listened to our conversation from the side. He was probably hoping I would make some verbal mistake that crossed the line.
“Since the two of you have gathered in one place like this, may I ask a question I have always been curious about?”
At Utmost Evil Soma’s question, my brother answered readily.
“Of course.”
“Then I will ask the First Young Master first. If I help make the First Young Master the successor, what will you do for me?”
As expected, Utmost Evil Soma was Utmost Evil Soma. To indulge such a vile hobby with the two of us in front of him.
Geom Muyang answered calmly, as though he had prepared for this.
“I will triple the support for the Valley of Villains and remove the restriction on the number of Faceless Guests. And I will lift the current prohibition forbidding Lord Soma from leaving the cult.”
Utmost Evil Soma was under a prohibition that forbade him from leaving the cult. The year before last, he had committed an incident in which he slaughtered martial artists of the Unorthodox Alliance, and it had nearly escalated into war.
“At the time, those bastards attacked first.”
That was how it began, but it ended in a massacre. After that, Father forbade him from going to the Central Plains for the time being. Nearly two years had already passed since then, so he must have been itching to death.
“Oh-ho, those are very attractive conditions.”
“Not at all. Aside from that, if there is anything Lord Soma desires, I will support it fully.”
Utmost Evil Soma laughed loudly. Did my brother know? That even as he laughed so happily, the gaze behind his mask had cooled to an endless chill.
“Now, this time I will ask the Second Young Master. If I help make the Second Young Master the Heavenly Demon, what will you do for me?”
Both of them were curious what my answer would be.
I gazed at Utmost Evil Soma and spoke quietly.
“I will let you live.”
For an instant, the atmosphere froze. The words I’m joking should have followed, but what I added was this.
“We talked yesterday, didn’t we? About what kind of new demonic path I aim for. And yet, what did you think I would do with you, Lord Soma, who upholds utmost evil? Did you think I would support you happily? Even if I must bear the political burden, I will let you live.”
My brother might have been inwardly cheering. Thinking that, in my youthful hot-bloodedness, I had ruined this excellent opportunity.
But there was something my brother did not know. Utmost Evil Soma was a man who became even more fascinated by an opponent when that opponent came at him like this.
As if proving that, the two eyes I saw through the open holes with the Divine Eye Art were shining brightly.
I spoke to him even more coldly than before.
“Suddenly, playing friends isn’t fun anymore, is it? Games that excessively break decorum never end well. So please do not ever again say you want to be friends.”
In the chilly atmosphere, Utmost Evil Soma rose from his seat.
“If we are not friends, then sitting together in the same place will only lead to a fight. Then I will see you next time.”
After bidding farewell to Geom Muyang as well, Utmost Evil Soma left the office.
When only the two of us remained, Geom Muyang asked me,
“What on earth are you thinking?”
My brother knew I was not someone who would be so rash as to anger Utmost Evil Soma carelessly.
“It just pisses me off, doesn’t it? You successors have to curry favor with us Eight Demon Venerables. Now, hurry up and wag your tail. Then I’ll seat you in the successor’s position. Doesn’t that piss you off, Brother?”
After hesitating for a moment over what to say, my brother rose from his seat and said,
“You are the one who always pisses me off.”
Leaving those words behind, Geom Muyang also left the office.
Soon after, Seo Daeryong came in.
“Were you waiting outside because you were worried about me?”
“Not about you, Pavilion Lord. I was worried he might have emitted demonic energy and made it wither.”
He looked at the potted flowers and was relieved.
I laughed and stood beside him.
Outside the building, Utmost Evil Soma could be seen walking away.
“He seemed angry. Will it be all right?”
“He wasn’t angry. Don’t you see that excited gait?”
“I’m not sure. It also looks like the gait of someone who wants to stomp someone to death.”
“If you’re that worried, put the flowerpot away in advance tomorrow.”
“I should. Pardon? Utmost Evil Soma is coming again tomorrow?”
Because Utmost Evil Soma was the kind of person who chased you to the end if you ran away after saying you did not want to do something.
“He is a person with whom one must settle things, one way or another.”
After a brief pause, Seo Daeryong asked,
“Pavilion Lord, how do you endure all this pressure?”
“I have a right arm, and I also have a left arm aiming for that right arm, and I have a heart, and wings, and now I even have a brain. What would be hard for me?”
I looked at Utmost Evil Soma’s back as he walked alone in the distance and added quietly,
“The one having a hard time is that wicked and lonely soul.”