***
'A Grand Patriarch.'
Dan Se-min tilted his head.
He had known well since childhood that he was different from others.
No matter how abstruse the martial art, he had never had much difficulty learning it.
But the Central Plains are wide, and outstanding people are many.
There were as many grains of sand as there were men called prodigies in childhood who vanished without leaving a single line of history.
Yet those called Grand Patriarchs are different.
They were beings beyond merely possessing outstanding inborn talent.
Grand Patriarchs appeared once in several hundred years.
Leaving behind a vast legacy that would continue for centuries was not something inborn talent alone could achieve.
'Do I have the makings of a Grand Patriarch?'
He could not be certain even for himself whether he had such a gift.
But if he was to carve open a fate born with a limit on it, perhaps that road was the only road to life.
The Demon Empress spoke.
"Seeing the Way you are realizing for yourself, perhaps your coming to the Divine Cult was no coincidence either."
Dan Se-min snorted a laugh and answered.
"If not for you, Demon Empress, what bond would I have had that could connect me to the Demonic Cult?"
Dan Cheon-hwa shook her head lightly, as if she did not agree.
"At first I thought so too, but now I think that is not it. Fate led you here."
"What does that mean?"
"Have you ever heard of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art?"
"I heard it is a martial art handed down to the Cult Leaders. That it is called the greatest demonic art under heaven."
"Half right and half wrong. The Heavenly Demon Divine Art is the art the Cult Leader learns, but it is not a demonic art. On the contrary, it has the power to subdue demonic arts. That is precisely why the demonic practitioners of the world fear the Cult Leader of the Divine Cult."
Hearing her, a question rose in Dan Se-min.
The Heavenly Demon Divine Art is a demonic art, yet it has the power to subdue demonic arts? Then why is it called a demonic art? It was hard to grasp at once.
"Why did an art that subdues demons come to be called a demonic art?"
"Because it is the art the Cult Leader of the Divine Cult uses. Those orthodox bastards go out of their way to name it lower than it is."
Dan Cheon-hwa smiled bitterly.
"It is the same with calling the Divine Cult a Demonic Cult. They go out of their way to belittle us."
Her gaze brushed the empty air. She seemed to be looking into a distant past.
"Long ago, before the Divine Cult was called the Demonic Cult, it was called the Fire Worship Cult. We are not a tribe that blindly worships fire itself. Its roots are deeper than you would think. It began from a religion that believed in the sacred flame passed on from the Western Regions."
Se-min held his breath.
In the murim it was simply dismissed as the Demonic Cult.
No one tried to learn about the Demonic Cult, and no one wondered about its origins either.
"And at one time it was also called the Sun and Moon Divine Cult. What do you suppose the reason for that was?"
"If it means the sun and the moon, does it signify yin and yang?"
"It does. According to the doctrine of the Divine Cult, the world is divided into good and evil, light and darkness, the strong and the weak. But we do not see them only as opposing things. We understand that darkness exists because there is light, and that light becomes vivid because there is darkness. Good subdues evil, and light illuminates darkness. Strength is goodness, and weakness is evil. That is precisely why the Heavenly Demon Divine Art handed down to the Cult Leaders of the Radiant Divine Cult has the power to subdue demonic arts."
Dan Cheon-hwa looked down at Se-min.
"Perhaps your own situation is similar. The Blazing Heaven Divine Art, which cultivates extreme yang qi, falls easily into the qi deviation of burning meridians, and if extreme yin qi is learned wrongly, the cold blocks the meridians. They are powerful arts, but their limits are clear. Perhaps the true way to reach complete mastery lies in weaving yin and yang into one."
At her words, Se-min recalled the energies that had collided inside his body a short while ago.
The moments when the blazing yang qi of the Blazing Heaven Divine Art and the cold of the Ten-Thousand-Year Ice Crystal pushed at each other and clashed.
An enlightenment came to Dan Se-min in that instant, and he roused fire qi in one hand and cold qi in the other.
"Yes. Place the two at the same height and match their flows. Bind them into a single circulation. Then...... being called the greatest of all time would not be beyond reason."
The greatest of all time!
The strongest man in several thousand years of murim history. Dan Se-min's heart began to pound.
"The Cult Leader also entered isolated training to find that method, so it cannot be the wrong road."
"......!"
The road being walked by the Cult Leader of the Demonic Cult, counted among the strongest of the present murim. A thread is showing. Perhaps I have found a way to extend my life, Dan Se-min thought.
"I hope you find that road. It may also be the way to overcome the Supreme Yang Body."
His pounding chest would not settle. This feeling was a first for him.
Even living with a numbered life, Dan Se-min had held no particular attachment to living.
The one regret was the emptiness of possibly dying without having achieved anything at all.
So, since he had learned martial arts anyway, he had set himself the extravagant dream of seeing the end of martial arts before he died.
"Why...... are you telling me all of this?"
Blood they might share, but until now they had been no different from strangers.
Moreover, the woman before him was the Demon Empress, known in the murim as an iron woman without blood or tears.
She too was a member of the Demonic Cult, so telling him the road the Cult Leader was searching for was by no means an easy thing.
Perhaps that was why Dan Cheon-hwa did not answer at once.
For a while she looked at Se-min without a word.
That gaze was neither sharp nor cold.
Rather, it was a gaze that held a deep and long-standing regret.
Before long she slowly turned her eyes aside.
She exhaled very faintly, and then her words continued.
"......It is an old story."
Her voice was low, but it rang clearly.
"I left home at a young age. Because I was born the illegitimate child of the Clan Head, that place was like hell to me. I wandered the martial world alone. I wanted to live as I pleased, without anyone's interference. And then I happened to meet a man."
Merely recalling that moment of the past hung a faint smile at the Demon Empress's lips.
"I traveled the martial world with that man. We sought out every corner of the Central Plains. There was hardly a place in the Central Plains our steps had not touched. And when we grew tired of it, we would go into the mountains and spend months together cultivating our martial arts. ......They were happy days."
A brief silence followed.
"Then one day, word came that his father was gravely ill. Of course I went with him. And the place we arrived at was precisely here."
"......?"
'Did she fall in love with a man of the Demonic Cult?'
"That man was the third son of the previous Cult Leader."
"......!"
'She fell in love with a bigger figure than I expected......'
The third son of the previous Cult Leader of the Demonic Cult was none other than the current Cult Leader.
It is common for a young man and woman to meet while traveling the martial world.
But if that partner is the Cult Leader of the Demonic Cult, the story is different.
"We returned to the Divine Cult. Whether he wished it or not, he had no choice but to enter the contest for Cult Leader. Even if one renounces the seat, rivals are never left alive. The Divine Cult split into factions over the next Cult Leader's seat. A fierce war continued for several months. And because he was an outstanding man, he became the Cult Leader."
'The lover of the Demonic Cult's Cult Leader was a person of the Dan Clan?'
If this had become known in the Central Plains, it would not have been strange for our house to be exterminated at any time. Learning that his clan's fate had been a candle in the wind, Dan Se-min let a snort of laughter slip out despite himself.
He could understand why the Demon Empress had never visited the Dan Clan all that time.
'But this is strange.'
One question surfaced, and Dan Se-min tilted his head. The wife of the Demonic Cult's Cult Leader known in the Central Plains was someone else.
'Demon Flower.'
The Cult Leader's wife was a woman called Demon Flower, known in her youth as the greatest beauty of the Demonic Cult.
Perhaps noticing Dan Se-min's curiosity, Dan Cheon-hwa's expression darkened slightly as she went on.
"When we returned to the cult, he already had a fiancée betrothed to him in the womb."
"......!"
"And a woman of a lineage so venerable that I could not be compared to her. Even so, I remained here. I could have left, but I did not. I had no thought of resenting him either. This was the road I chose."
Se-min said nothing for a while.
He could not fully understand with his heart what she had felt in remaining in the Demonic Cult, so he could offer neither hasty comfort nor pity.
But that choice would certainly not have been easy. Even if he could not understand it with his chest, Dan Se-min could understand it with his head.
"Living in the Demonic Cult as one of orthodox origin is by no means an easy thing. It is a lonely and solitary thing."
The Demon Empress met Dan Se-min's eyes.
"Your life, brought here because of me, will not be smooth at all from now on either."
Dan Se-min had not experienced it, but he could understand her anguish.
"So there is something I want to ask as well. Do you resent me for bringing you to the Demonic Cult?"
Dan Se-min smiled lightly and shook his head.
"I do not."
That is a relief. A sense of ease unsuited to her eyes passed through the Demon Empress's gaze.
"Wherever one is, the way people live is no different."
"Still, living in the Demonic Cult is not easy for one of the orthodox."
"It is fine. I have already seen the true nature of those called orthodox through the Diancang Sect. The orthodox make my teeth grind."
"Even so, any martial artist would have wanted to be a chivalrous hero rather than a demonic practitioner, would he not?"
Dan Se-min drew a self-mocking smile at his lips.
"I never placed much meaning in such things to begin with. With so few days left to live, why would I try to become a chivalrous hero of the orthodox?"
"......Then that is a relief."
"Yes. Coming to the Demonic Cult was a good thing, if anything. Do the orthodox not treat altering an art handed down to them as taboo? The slightest oddity and they dismiss it as a demonic art or evil arts. With training methods stuck in such a frame, exceeding my lifespan would be impossible. This place, where I can cultivate freely, is far better."
Dan Cheon-hwa looked at Se-min for a while without speaking.
His eyes were not the eyes of one telling a lie, so she too could feel a little relief.
Perhaps because a weight had left her heart, her steps were considerably lighter.
***
Somewhere within the Demonic Cult.
Crimson lanterns hung in rows from the ceiling of a vast pavilion.
"......Letters came from the Murim Alliance and the North Sea Ice Palace at the same time."
The one who spoke was a scholarly middle-aged man in black holding a folding fan.
He was the man called the Demonic Strategist, and every strategy of the Demonic Cult came out of his head.
Two letters slid from the Demonic Strategist's fingertips and settled on the central table.
A red-faced young man seated at the head opened his mouth as if sneering.
"The North Sea Ice Palace and the Murim Alliance? The two of them send letters at the same time as though they arranged it? Demonic Strategist, what in the world is going on?"
The scholarly man with the folding fan, the Demonic Strategist, answered with an inscrutable smile.
"While the Right Envoy was in isolated training, there was a great incident in Yunnan Province."
The identity of the red-faced young man was the Radiant Right Envoy.
He ranked third in the entire Demonic Cult and had already reached the realm of Return to Youth.
"What does something that happened in Yunnan have to do with us?"
"The Dan Clan was exterminated."
"The Dan Clan of Yunnan? Do you mean the Dan Clan of the great houses?"
"I do."
The Radiant Right Envoy, Blood Demon, frowned slightly.
Even if the house's fortunes had already decayed, the extermination of a clan once called an orthodox great house was no trivial matter.
And there were not many forces in the Central Plains capable of such a thing.
"That is not all."
"What else?"
"More than two hundred of those Diancang Daoists died as well, and the sect has declared a closure of its gates."
"The Diancang Sect has declared a closure of its gates!"
"Rumor has it the Sword Saint also took serious internal injuries and will not be able to move for the next ten years."
"The Shadowless Sword Saint took internal injuries? What in the world happened there?!"
"The details are still under investigation. But people are already calling the incident the Yunnan Massacre."
At that single phrase, the air grew heavy.
"Is there a force in the present murim that could annihilate both the Diancang Sect and the Dan Clan at once?"
The Demonic Strategist answered with a smile.
"There is only one place in the present murim that could carry out such an operation as a single force."
"And where is that?"
"Our cult."