For a moment, she was at a loss for words.
The girl who had called herself Seohong gazed softly at Ogyo, who stood there blankly.
“What is your name?”
“……Ogyo.”
The other had introduced herself at length, but the wild dog had nothing much to say of herself, so she simply offered up those two syllables.
Seohong repeated Ogyo’s name on her lips a few times, as if savoring it.
“A good name.”
Suddenly, the girl closed her eyes and sniffed at the air.
“You smell of blood.”
“……This whole place reeks of blood.”
Ogyo had no particular intention of hiding the fact that she had killed people, but for the moment, that was what she said.
Seohong opened her eyes again, tilted her head, and smiled innocently.
“Is that so? This Daoist’s nose must be numb, for I cannot tell.”
Seohong turned her glittering eyes straight toward Ogyo.
“Have you killed many people?”
“Yeah.”
“I see. Then you are like this Daoist.”
“You don’t look like it.”
Seohong smiled bitterly.
“Hehe, you simply do not know. There is likely no one under heaven as wicked as this Daoist.”
“Is that why you’re locked up?”
Seohong glanced down at the shackles on her ankles, then shrugged.
“This is nothing of note. ……What happened to the villagers?”
“I killed them all.”
Seohong’s eyes trembled.
“Why?”
“Because they tried to kill me first. They were bad people.”
At those words, Seohong’s expression sank with sorrow, yet at the same time she looked as though she understood well enough.
“They were not that sort of people to begin with. They merely fell onto an evil path.”
“Everyone’s like that. I’m not going to blame them.”
People were greedy and selfish by nature.
Even a scholar learned in propriety, once a layer was peeled back, was no different from a beast in the end. Even amid plenty, people fought to have more than one another, and there were countless cases of men staking their lives on empty shells like pride or honor.
How much more so, then, for the people of this region, who had suffered famine for years?
Perhaps Ogyo’s answer was unexpected, for Seohong blinked in surprise.
Soon, she smiled warmly.
“Will you take this Daoist out of here? I wish to feel the wind.”
Ogyo nodded.
“There should be a key somewhere.”
“No need.”
Ogyo drew thread from the spool within her bracer and sent inner power flowing into it.
When she brought the crimson-stained thread against the bars, the iron slowly melted away.
After easily removing the bars, Ogyo walked inside. She could feel a chill.
How could they have locked a person up in a place like this?
Ogyo tried to cut the shackles around Seohong’s ankles in the same way.
“Stay still. Don’t move.”
Before long, Seohong lightly wiggled her freed foot in the air.
“……What remarkable skill.”
Ogyo reached out to help her stand.
“Ah.”
But Seohong could not rise properly and immediately sank back down.
She looked up at Ogyo with an embarrassed smile.
“It seems I was locked up so long that I have forgotten how to walk.”
“……Fine.”
Ogyo let go of Seohong’s hand, lowered herself in front of her, and bent her back. It meant she would carry her.
Seohong understood Ogyo’s intention, but hesitated for a moment.
“Will that be all right?”
“I’m stronger than I look, so don’t worry.”
That was not exactly what she had meant.
Seohong giggled softly, then draped her thin, white arms around Ogyo’s neck.
“How kind you are.”
When Ogyo slipped her arms beneath Seohong’s skirt, she felt the touch of gaunt thighs.
As she stood, the girl was as light as if she had shouldered an empty carrier frame.
Had she not carried Cheongdam on her back the entire time they had traveled together too?
For some reason, she felt as though this sort of thing had been happening often lately.
*
Outside, the night was still pitch-black, and the unceasing drizzle soaked the ground.
After leaving the underground chamber, the two did not go far and stood beneath the eaves of a house.
Since all the villagers were dead, everything in sight was an empty house.
Yet Ogyo did not want to enter any of them.
She only desperately wanted to leave this village as soon as possible.
Perhaps because of the rain that had fallen day after day, the air was cold despite it being spring.
Their exhaled breaths turned into faint wisps of smoke and scattered.
For a while, Seohong only stared silently at the falling rain. Her gaze was somehow gloomy.
Ogyo quietly studied Seohong’s profile.
But it was difficult to know what that dark look meant.
She was bad at reading other people’s expressions. Hostility or killing intent she could read easily, but that was not reading emotion so much as reading presence, so it was different.
“Is there something on this Daoist’s face?”
Perhaps because Ogyo had been staring far too openly, Seohong finally looked back with a bitter smile.
Their eyes met. They really were beautiful eyes. Like a glittering river flowing across the night sky. What was that called again?
“Pretty.”
When Ogyo blurted it out, Seohong’s eyes widened.
This wild dog was exceedingly honest and did not know how to speak indirectly, so she often startled people.
Seohong burst into laughter.
“Thank you. You are very lovely as well.”
“……Why were you captured?”
“It is difficult to explain in a single word. Will you hear this Daoist’s story?”
Ogyo nodded obediently.
After bringing two chairs from inside the house, placing them beneath the eaves, and sitting side by side, Seohong spoke.
“It was about a month ago that this Daoist came to this village.”
When Seohong found the village, the villagers were starving to death.
The famine in the Gansu region had already continued for several years.
Recently, rain had finally begun to fall again, but crops would not immediately grow from the dried-out earth, so the situation was still bleak.
Even what little grain remained had all been collected by the officials, so there truly was not a single grain of rice left in the village.
Those with even a little strength to walk had long since left, and only old people without families remained.
When Seohong first stepped into the village, there were hardly any who could even walk properly.
If left alone, all of them would die.
She had to find a way.
“This Daoist had no food with her. Thus, after much thought, I decided to cut off my own flesh and make soup with it.”
“……Flesh?”
Ogyo furrowed her brow. She wondered if she had heard wrong.
But in truth, beneath that well, there had been traces that the villagers had eaten human flesh.
Hunger was not something easily endured.
Ogyo, who had suffered countless bouts of starvation herself, knew that well.
But what was hunger so wretched that a person would devour another person?
Ogyo would do anything to survive, but she also clearly possessed the sensibilities of an ordinary human being.
Of course, when death was right before one’s eyes, what could one not do? Still, if at all possible, she did not want to eat people.
Seeing Ogyo’s frown, Seohong tugged the corners of her mouth into a smile.
“Why such a repulsed expression?”
“People don’t usually think of feeding others their own flesh. A person eating a person is disgusting.”
“That part is all right. This Daoist is not human.”
Ogyo tilted her head.
“Then what are you?”
“Originally, this Daoist was a goldfish that lived in a pond on Mount Kongtong.”
A goldfish?
“Then you’re a spirit beast?”
Seohong nodded slightly.
“It is embarrassing to call oneself a numinous being, but I suppose one could say so.”
The world was vast, and lands untouched by human feet were the realm of spirit creatures and immortals.
There had been spiders like the Blood-Eyed White-Haired ones in the Qilian Mountains, and in the past, when Ogyo stayed with the Miaojiang Five Poisons Sect in Yunnan, she had seen many spirit creatures living in the primeval forest with her own eyes.
But this was the first time she had seen a spirit creature in human form.
“This is Daoist art. Quite flawless, is it not?”
“Yeah.”
“Still, if you smell me, you may notice it a little.”
Saying so, Seohong rolled up her sleeve and held out a white, smooth forearm to Ogyo.
Ogyo smelled it up close, but nothing in particular gave her away.
“You smell sweet and nice. You don’t smell like fish.”
“Then it seems this Daoist’s Daoist arts have advanced somewhat. In the past, I was often teased for smelling like fish.”
Was that really true?
It sounded absurd, but Ogyo did not feel that she was making up the story.
She certainly had never imagined the girl was a fish, but from the start, she had thought that this girl might not be human.
“Are you perhaps the Golden Fish Rain Immortal who brings down rain?”
“……It seems there are some who call me that.”
Seohong’s voice sank noticeably.
Only then did the slow-witted Ogyo realize.
She was reacting to the rain.
A moment ago, she had glared at the falling rain with a dark expression, and now that the topic of rain had come up, her face had quickly darkened.
After a brief silence, Seohong continued her story.
“In any case, this Daoist cut off her flesh and fed it to the villagers. This Daoist’s wounds heal quickly, and my blood and flesh are rich in spiritual power, so the villagers soon recovered their strength.”
Seohong stayed in the village for a while and looked after the people.
She intended to help them until they found a way to live.
But the riverbeds had already dried up, and the land had cracked, so the year’s farming was ruined.
The village was full of old people, so they had no strength left to seek some other means of living now.
Once Seohong left, the villagers were fated to starve again.
They grew afraid that Seohong might leave. And in the end……
“They seized me and locked me underground.”
At those words, Ogyo felt a small question arise.
“Why didn’t you run away or resist? You can…… fight, can’t you?”
There were many in the world who called themselves Daoists, but most used the word merely to mean believers who followed the teachings of Daoism.
Few could truly wield Daoist arts. It would be safe to say there were none.
If one dug into the true nature of martial artists who boasted of having learned actual Daoist arts or immortal arts, at best they were merely disguising mental cultivation methods or martial arts they had devised themselves as something grand in order to deceive others.
But this girl was clearly different. Though she had not seen it with her own eyes, Ogyo could feel it.
She carried a scent similar to Yohwa’s.
Yohwa was the only person Ogyo had ever seen who could use true Daoist arts.
If this girl could wield Daoist arts, then there was no reason for her to be captured by people who did not even know martial arts.
Seeing the question in Ogyo’s eyes, Seohong smiled.
“You are mistaken. This Daoist does not know how to fight.”
“Then what about running away? You could do that.”
“If this Daoist ran away, they would have starved again.”
“You mean you let yourself get caught on purpose?”
Seohong lowered her gaze with a forlorn expression.
“They were only anxious that this Daoist might leave. They did not intend to harm me. So, to reassure them, I behaved obediently.”
To the villagers, Seohong was their only salvation.
Having tasted the pain of hunger for so long, their unease was not impossible to understand.
But to imprison the savior of their lives in such a way—she still could not look kindly upon it.
“After they locked me in the prison, they only came down from time to time to cut away my flesh.”
“They didn’t torment you?”
“Torment?”
“……Never mind.”
They had been vicious enough to trick travelers, kill them, and steal their belongings, but it seemed even they had not been able to bring themselves to lay hands on this immortal-like girl.
Why had they begun doing such things in the first place?
It was true that in this barren land, it was difficult to find an honest way to survive.
But at least while Seohong was there, they could have relied on her and lived on.
No—when people found a place to lean, they began to wish to lie down.
Surely, they could not have gone on living that way.
“While I was imprisoned, I could not know in detail what was happening outside… But I could tell that they harbored dark intentions. I felt that something ill was taking place. At times, screams would come from beyond the bars.”
“…….”
“So in the end, it has come to this. I suppose it should be called retribution.”
Seo Hong let out a long sigh and looked up at the night sky.
“Originally, it would have ended with only the people of this village dying, but because this Daoist came here, even more people have lost their lives. This is my fault.”
In the end, perhaps those words were true.
But it could not be blamed on Seo Hong.
No one can know what lies ahead.
Things done with good intentions often bring about bad results instead.
If responsibility were demanded every time that happened, who would ever dare commit a good deed?
“My master, Chwibyeong Wongun, drew this Daoist out of the pond where I had lived and into the world. And he said this to me.”
—You were born under an ill-omened star. In time, you will become one who causes the fate of a nation to decline. If you have the courage to accept your destiny, you may go out into the world.
“An ill-omened star……?”
“It means I am fated to bring misfortune to those around me.”
Destiny.
She did not believe in such things.
And yet, at times, things occurred under heaven that lay beyond a stray dog’s understanding.
“In truth, this Daoist is one who should not have come into the world. I once swore never to descend the mountain again… And yet, somehow, I am here once more. Because of me, rain has begun to fall on this land again.”
“Rain is a good thing. I heard everyone was waiting for it.”
At those words, Seo Hong turned to Ogyo with a smile sadder than usual.
“It is not always only good. At times, even medicine can become poison.”
“……The opposite can happen too.”
“The opposite?”
Seo Hong tilted her head faintly, then soon murmured softly, Is that so, I see, and nodded.
“You are right as well. This time, I can only hope that this Daoist’s steps become medicine to this land.”
Ogyo closed her mouth, unable to understand what Seo Hong meant.
It seemed she, too, had her own circumstances, but in the end, they were someone else’s affairs.
If she meddled any further, she might become deeply involved again and end up in a position where she had to help her.
Hadn’t her first meeting with Cheongdam been like that as well?
She had things she had to do too.
She did not know when Yohwa would return to the world, but she had to complete Mandok Gwijong in preparation for that time.
Though Ogyo pitied Seo Hong in her heart and was curious about her circumstances, she forced herself to keep silent.
As if that attitude had been conveyed, Seo Hong, too, gradually spoke less.
As time passed, no more conversation went back and forth between them, and the sound of falling rain took the place of silence.