***
Dan Se-min's body reflected the firelight and glittered like the Milky Way.
"Sword Control Through Qi!"
The Sword Saint hurriedly raised his hand.
His sword rose into the air.
"Mind Sword."
Dozens of swords formed from the Sword Saint's qi bloomed in the air.
He swept his hand through the air.
Dozens of mind swords drew a vast half-circle and converged on Se-min's neck all at once.
WHISH-WHISH-WHISH. It was a speed faster than light.
The signature technique that had earned him the alias Shadowless Sword Saint was unfolding.
"S-Se-min, you have to dodge!"
The shadowless swords poured down.
Not one of the onlookers doubted that Dan Se-min's head would fall to the ground under the Sword Saint's blades.
But at that very moment.
CLICK-CLICK. Thick silver scales rose across Dan Se-min's hands, neck, and face, all that showed above his clothes.
The moment the Sword Saint's swords touched the silver scales.
KABOOOOM. An enormous explosion erupted.
The earth split, and a storm burst out.
The sky was dyed red.
WHOOSH. With a tremendous blast, flames surged up like a waterfall.
"Wh-what is this?"
Even the Sword Saint's eyes stung from the massive blaze, and he raised a hand to shield them.
The dozens of mind swords the Shadowless Sword Saint had made vanished without a trace.
In their place, a black shadow moved within the great flames.
It was the shape of Dan Se-min.
That shadow slowly warped.
KRRRK!
Its back split open, and silver scales covered its whole body.
The red flames that shot into the sky formed the shape of an enormous dragon.
KRRRUMBLE!
A huge blaze rose and buried the whole area in fire.
The grain stacks piled around the estate burned, and the firelight surged into the heavens.
"A fire dragon?"
Even the Shadowless Sword Saint was startled and could only stare at the sky.
Then the enormous blaze poured down from the sky.
"D-dodge!"
Even the Sword Saint cried out in fear as he looked at the colossal pillar of fire pouring down toward him.
CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!
The Shadowless Sword Saint swung his sword through the air to save his disciples.
But there was no way to block all of the falling flames.
The great fire swept in every direction.
And as he watched the vast pillar of fire pour down on him, the Shadowless Sword Saint shook with fear. It was the first despair he had known since he first stepped into the martial world.
The great blaze swept through and passed.
It was nothing short of a natural disaster.
As the flames burned on every side, the estate of the Dan Clan, proud of its long history, turned entirely to ash and vanished.
And so did the masters of the Diancang Sect who had stood there.
A short while later.
FLUTTER, FLUTTER.
On the ground where the flames had barely died, only ashes remained.
Collapsed pillars, blackened earth, and the burned symbols of the Dali Kingdom's royal house.
When the wind brushed past, only ash-gray smoke drifted quietly.
SWISH. Just then a woman in black abruptly revealed herself.
She looked around with a stricken expression.
"Oh no...... I am too late."
Could she have stopped this if she had come only a little sooner?
Only a sigh escaped her lips.
The woman's identity was Dan Cheon-hwa.
She was the elder sister of Dan Cheon-hwi, Clan Head of the Dan Clan.
Her present standing was the Demon Empress, fifth among the Ten Great Demon Lords of the Demonic Cult.
Dan Cheon-hwa had come running in a single stride on hearing that the Diancang Sect had obtained information about the Ten-Thousand-Year Ice Crystal.
But she was already too late.
Not a single trace of the clan remained.
Just then, the air stirred at the center of the shattered estate.
"A breath?"
Dan Cheon-hwa flew toward it at once.
In the ashes she found a boy.
"......!"
Dan Cheon-hwa's pupils shook.
She recognized at a glance that the last survivor was her brother's son.
Identifying him was not difficult.
His skin still shimmered faintly silver.
In that moment, the Demon Empress's coldness and the dignity of one of the Ten Great Demon Lords vanished from her face without a trace.
All that remained was pity for the thin thread of blood that still connected them.
"Se-min was the name, was it not."
Silver scales still lingered here and there in patches, but the skin revealed beneath them was clean, without a single wound.
In that ghastly scene where the flames had swallowed everything, this boy alone was whole.
Most likely the instinct of the dragon blood had protected him.
Dan Cheon-hwa roughly shoved aside the fallen pillars and debris and pulled Se-min's body, half buried in ash, free.
Heat still came off him.
Dan Cheon-hwa took off her long robe and carefully wrapped him in it so that he would not be hurt.
"What a cruel fate this is."
Holding him close against her, she clenched her teeth.
To her, the illegitimate child of the Dan Clan, the only one who had ever turned a warm gaze her way was her half-brother Dan Cheon-hwi.
And the gift she had given him because of that had become a disaster instead.
"There is no help for it......"
Her eyes turned cold once more.
"......Let us go to the Demonic Cult."
Holding the boy, Dan Cheon-hwa's figure vanished.
***
Some time later, a tale like a bolt from the blue spread through the murim.
The Diancang Sect, overlord of Yunnan Province, had declared a closure of its gates for thirty years.
The Diancang Sect held one of the seats among the Nine Great Sects, so people wondered at the reason.
But the Diancang Sect, and the Murim Alliance as well, kept the reason strictly sealed.
Yet in the murim, rumor flies faster than a bird.
Rumors began to spread through the martial world that the Sword Saint, Sect Leader of the Diancang Sect, had taken internal injuries that would require ten years to heal, and that some two hundred disciples, an Elder among them, had been gravely wounded or killed.
Shocking news followed on its heels.
The Yunnan Dan Clan had suffered extermination on the same day.
Its fortunes had fallen far by now, but it had once been one of the Five Great Clans, and people were badly shaken.
Opinions were divided over who the culprit was.
Before long, a rumor that only the Demonic Cult bastards could have done such a thing spread out from the Murim Alliance and began to drift through the martial world.
***
Faint light seeped between his eyelids.
Dan Se-min felt as though he had slept deeply for the first time in a long while.
But it was an unfamiliar feeling.
The soft touch wrapped around his body was especially strange.
"......Mm."
Dan Se-min slowly opened his eyes.
The patterns and colors of the ceiling were unfamiliar.
Thinking on it quietly, the colors and shapes were foreign.
'Rather like the ornaments of the Western Regions I saw in books.'
And he felt power on every side.
A strange power flowed around him, as if formations had been set in place.
'Where is this?'
Soon Dan Se-min found a woman seated at a table some distance away, watching him.
A cold, sharp gaze.
Yet in some corner of it, a pity difficult to explain was turned toward Dan Se-min.
"You are awake."
Her voice was beautiful, yet strangely forlorn.
Se-min pushed himself up and asked.
"Where is this?"
"The Radiant Divine Cult."
"The Divine Cult......?"
Dan Se-min soon realized this was the place the orthodox called the "Demonic Cult."
'The Demonic Cult......!'
"Who are you, that you saved me?"
The woman walked over without a word, studied Dan Se-min's face in silence for a while, then asked.
"You look just like Cheon-hwi."
"You know my father?"
"My name is Dan Cheon-hwa. Have you ever heard of me?"
Se-min shook his head slightly.
"I have not."
The woman nodded as if she understood.
A brief silence flowed.
"Your father, Dan Cheon-hwi, is my younger brother."
Se-min's breath caught.
'Father's elder sister?'
Se-min shook his head and asked. He had never once heard such a thing.
Besides, his father's elder sister would already be middle-aged, yet this woman did not look even thirty.
"This is the first I have heard that my father had an elder sister."
Dan Cheon-hwa watched his reaction, then went on slowly.
"To be precise, your father is my half-brother."
"That, too, I am hearing for the first time."
"Many regarded my birth as an illegitimate child of the Dan Clan as a blemish on the house, so it is no strange thing that you do not know me. I left the clan long ago, and your father would have had no particular reason to speak of me to his children."
She let out a short sigh.
"The ice crystal of the North Sea Ice Palace. I was the one who stole it and handed it to Cheon-hwi."
"Ah......!"
Se-min's eyes shook violently. He raised a hand and gripped the ice crystal hanging at his neck.
'She stole the ice crystal and gave it to us? Then what the Diancang Daoists said was true?'
"Then......, could you be the Demon...... Empress?"
Dan Cheon-hwa drew a cold smile at her lips.
She was a woman the alias Demon Empress suited well.
Beautiful, yet looking endlessly merciless.
"I gave it when I heard you had been born, to help you govern the fire qi of the Blazing Heaven Divine Art. I never imagined matters would come to this."
"Then......"
Se-min asked in a trembling voice.
"What happened to my father...... and to the others of the clan?"
A brief silence followed.
Dan Cheon-hwa slowly shook her head.
"When I arrived, there was nothing alive there but you."
If what she said was true, it was her clan as well, yet she spoke of its extermination without so much as a flicker in her eyes.
"Only ashes. The houses and the people alike. Everything had burned away. There was nothing but the trace of a great fire demon sweeping through, and no survivors."
Se-min's hand gripped the blanket tight.
"Was it...... because of me?"
Dan Se-min recalled his last memory.
There had been a moment when he lost consciousness, unable to bear the enormous fire qi that exploded inside his body.
He had no memory of it, but if they had been caught in that explosion, no one in the Dan Clan, which had no masters of note, could have survived.
Dan Cheon-hwa nodded as if she thought the same.
"Perhaps."
She spoke as if to comfort him.
"There is no need to blame yourself. You did not intend it, and once those Diancang Daoist bastards showed up, extermination would have been hard to avoid in any case."
"......But how...... did I survive?"
Dan Cheon-hwa looked into his eyes and answered.
"I was not there, so I have no way of knowing. But I have a guess."
"What is it?"
"It may be that the Ten-Thousand-Year Ice Crystal let you overcome the fire qi, or...... it may be thanks to the silver scales that wrapped your body."
Se-min closed his mouth.
The glittering silver scales that rose on his body whenever he was in danger.
He had never told anyone about the strange reaction that appeared on his body.
'How does she know a secret even Father didn't know?'
"Yes. The silver scales left here and there on your skin. They wrapped you like some kind of protective barrier. Perhaps that is why you alone were unharmed."
Dan Cheon-hwa's gaze went briefly to the area near Se-min's heart.
"Do you know anything of the clan's history?"
"I was told we are descendants of the royal house of the Dali Kingdom."
"There is a legend that the founder of the clan that built the Dali Kingdom married a daughter of the Dragon King."
'A daughter of the Dragon King.'
It was enough to draw a hollow laugh.
But there had been many dragon-shaped ornaments and paintings throughout the house, so it was not a story he could simply dismiss.
"The royal house of Dali was called 'Dragon Scions,' meaning descendants of the dragon. And it was believed that the blood of the dragon, the 'dragon blood,' ran in their bodies. Perhaps the energy flowing in your body is because of that dragon blood."
"I am a descendant of a dragon? That is a hard story to believe."
Se-min laid a hand on his chest.
His heart was beating no differently than usual. Like an ordinary human's.
At that moment Dan Cheon-hwa swung her hand swiftly without a word.
WHIP. A hidden weapon flew from her hand like lightning.
CRASH!
A blast rang out.
Just as the hidden weapon flung from Dan Cheon-hwa's hand was about to pierce Dan Se-min's throat, silver scales slid up around his neck and blocked it.
"As I thought, my guess was right. Not even a scratch."
Looking at the deflected weapon, Dan Cheon-hwa nodded.
"That throwing knife is made of meteoric iron. Until now there was nothing I could not pierce with it."
Dan Cheon-hwa swept her fingertips down through the air, as if settling the energy in the room, and said.
"How about this?"
Dan Cheon-hwa raised her hand and slowly gathered her qi.
In an instant, a white radiance spread from her fingertips to her wrist and up her whole arm.
The energy of a martial art carried to its extreme.
"Pale Hand Demonic Art."
Her gaze swept sharply over Se-min's arm.
"It has severed the hands of two Elders of the Emei Sect."
In that instant, Dan Cheon-hwa's foot twisted sharply.
SHWAAA. Her body drove forward like lightning.
Her white palm stretched out as if to pierce Se-min's abdomen.
CRASH. A dull impact like iron striking iron rang through the room.
Dan Se-min's body was not driven back.
A soft radiance poured out from him.
It was because of the silver scales risen over his whole body.
WHOOSH. The scales trembled faintly and swallowed Dan Cheon-hwa's force as if absorbing it.
A short breath brushed past Dan Cheon-hwa's ear.
"......Well now."
Unable to hide her astonishment, Dan Cheon-hwa's eyes wavered.
The faint aftershock of the impact still lingered in her palm.
Crushing the joints of absolute masters with the Pale Hand Demonic Art was no difficult matter.
But this time it seemed to have delivered no shock at all.
"To block even the Pale Hand Demonic Art, counted among the Demonic Cult's Ten Great Demonic Arts. At this level, is it not harder than the Diamond Indestructible Body, said to be the strongest outer art in the martial world?"
The Demon Empress, fifth of the Ten Great Demon Lords, called an absolute master in the murim.
She wore an expression of genuine astonishment.