***
The Demon Empress's residence was always quiet, which made it good for training.
Dan Se-min kept his eyes closed and focused on his breathing.
The energy flowing around his body circulated naturally, without a hair's disturbance.
SWISH. Something like a small thread seemed to show itself within the white mist.
Just as he was about to fall into a state of no-self.
"Young Master!"
The sound of the gate flying open came together with a lively voice that tickled Dan Se-min's ears.
The mist of the mental image that had risen in his head began to clear.
The young girl would not know.
How great an enlightenment that moment could have yielded.
But without a trace of anger, Dan Se-min slowly opened his mouth.
"......Yeon-hwa."
"Yes!"
Yeon-hwa came running into the room without even catching her breath.
"What in the world is it? Has something urgent happened?"
"Young Master, they say a market is opening in Sacred Flame Village today."
"......A market?"
"Yes, it's the day the merchants who went out on trade journeys come back too, so they say it'll be an enormous one!"
At Yeon-hwa's thoroughly excited voice, Se-min slowly opened his eyes.
"Let's go and see it together."
"......"
Even Se-min, who rarely showed emotion, raised his eyes slightly.
"See it?"
"Yes."
"I am not interested."
"No. You have to go."
"What......?"
He had refused firmly enough, but Yeon-hwa showed no intention of backing down.
"Young Master, you're from a famous clan of the murim, aren't you?"
Dan Se-min thought for a moment about how to answer.
It had once been called a great clan, so it could be called a famous house of the murim.
But its fortunes had already fallen far before he was born, and now it was nothing more than an exterminated clan.
"You don't have to say it, I know. You have that air about you. So you must have seen all sorts of rare things, right? But the Demon Empress said it herself. To take an interest in how ordinary people live. Anyone else who came into the Divine Cult would be curious about how the people here live, wouldn't they? And on a day when a big market opens, you can see so many people."
Do not lose the duty of a human. The Demon Empress's words surfaced in his head.
'......How the followers of the Demonic Cult live, then.'
Will watching how the Demonic Cult's people live really be of much help to me? Se-min could not help but tilt his head.
"Ordinary people like going to see a market when one opens?"
"O-of course they do."
Yeon-hwa's voice returned, somewhat deflated.
"Actually, I...... haven't been very often either."
"......What?"
"It's no fun going alone."
Yeon-hwa's story came back to him.
A child who lost her whole family to bandits and followed the Demon Empress into the Demonic Cult.
And with no one at the Demon Empress's residence, she could not help but always be lonely.
"If we go together...... I think it'll be more fun."
'More fun if we go together, is it.'
Se-min let out a short sigh as if there were no helping it and slowly rose to his feet.
"All right, let us go and see."
Yeon-hwa's eyes flew open.
"Really?!"
As if afraid he might change his mind, she rushed in, caught his sleeve, and pulled.
"I got spending money from the Demon Empress too."
Yeon-hwa's steps toward Sacred Flame Village were light.
***
Sacred Flame Village.
It was one of the villages formed at the entrance to the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains.
It was a place where ordinary followers who had not learned martial arts gathered and lived, and many of them worked in commerce.
They went slowly down the road, taking in the village.
It was fairly large in scale.
They walked down a little further. The scene of the market set up along the village's largest street came into view.
The market that had opened in Sacred Flame Village was much larger than he expected as well.
Stalls lined a single street, and the space between them was packed dense with people.
Not only the people of Sacred Flame Village but also followers and demonic practitioners living elsewhere seemed to have come out to look.
The calls of the stallkeepers, the laughter of children, the smells of food mingled with spices. It was no different from a market of the Central Plains.
"Come taste the freshly caught venison!"
"Silk brought in from the Central Plains."
"Glassware from the Western Regions!"
Even among the followers of the Demonic Cult, the way people lived was not greatly different.
If there was one difference.
It was that a fair number of people could be seen coming and going with weapons at their waists and their demonic qi unhidden.
That those who had learned demonic arts strode so freely through the streets was certainly an unfamiliar sight for Dan Se-min.
'If this were Yunnan, a Diancang Daoist would have leapt out from somewhere.'
"Did you not know this is Diancang Sect territory?!"
With a great shout, people of the orthodox would have appeared here and there, drawing swords and rushing at the demonic practitioners.
But this place was peaceful instead.
'It seems I really have come into the Demonic Cult.'
The merchants and the young children did not seem to pay the demonic practitioners much mind either.
"Young Master! Look at this!"
In her hand was a small ornament. A hair ornament that looked to be made of silver. Red thread and small beads hung from it, glittering in the sunlight.
"Isn't this pretty?"
Yeon-hwa held it up to her head and smiled. The ornament was rather showy, but it suited her fairly well.
"Yes, with that on, you're at least passable to look at now......"
Yeon-hwa had a face anyone would have called cute, but Se-min answered indifferently, as if uninterested.
"Aw!"
Yeon-hwa puffed out her cheeks.
"Then how about this one?"
Just as Yeon-hwa said that and reached toward another ornament laid out on the stall.
The mood of the market suddenly sank heavy.
It was because of the two old men who had appeared in the middle of the road.
With each step they took, people naturally cleared the way.
"The Blood-Soul Twin Fiends!"
Someone shouted their alias.
The Blood-Soul Twin Fiends.
Demonic villains famous in the previous generation. They moved as a pair, and had been declared public enemies of the murim by the Murim Alliance on the charge of killing two Plum Blossom Swordsmen of the Mount Hua Sect and more than ten third-generation disciples.
"The Blood-Soul Twin Fiends? Weren't they locked up in the Law Enforcement Hall's dungeon?"
"It hasn't been long since they got drunk and beat the Jang family's son to death. They've been released already?"
Listening to the people around them murmuring, Dan Se-min studied the Blood-Soul Twin Fiends closely.
'It seems they could not break the habit of causing trouble even after coming to the Demonic Cult.'
But the strange thing was that the blatant killing intent the Blood-Soul Twin Fiends gave off, the flow of that energy, was aimed at Dan Se-min.
'The Blood-Soul Twin Fiends appeared here targeting me?'
It was strange. They were demonic villains of the previous generation who had vanished from the Central Plains long ago, so they had no connection at all with Dan Se-min.
"Well now."
One of the Blood-Soul Twin Fiends, who had drawn close before he noticed, stared into his face and laughed grotesquely.
"So this is the brat."
The second old man tilted his head and examined Dan Se-min's eyes as well.
"Are you the child the Demon Empress newly took in?"
"Let us see, up close he's only tall, and his face is far too young."
'Just as I expected.'
The reason they had come was the Demon Empress.
"The Demon Empress does strange things too. Taking a young man like this into her residence all of a sudden. Have her tastes changed all at once?"
"Kikikik. What nonsense is this madman spouting?"
"Is it a flaw for a woman to like a man?"
The Blood-Soul Twin Fiends looked at each other and laughed.
Even their laughter was so grotesque that Yeon-hwa trembled with fear.
"Y-Young...... Master."
When she realized the old men before her showed no fear even at the Demon Empress's name, Yeon-hwa's fear seemed to reach its peak.
"Be at ease. It is me these men are after."
"Young Master, please be careful. They really look like frightening people."
To set Yeon-hwa at ease, Dan Se-min patted her head lightly and hid her behind his back.
'More to the point, why in the world have these men appeared here?'
However great the infamy the Blood-Soul Twin Fiends had won, targeting the Demon Empress made no sense.
Which meant there was certainly someone behind them.
'Who could it be?'
"Child, you had better come along with these elders."
"Do you know me?"
"Do you happen to have heard who we are?"
"When you arrived, I heard the people nearby say you were the senior Blood-Soul Twin Fiends."
"That is right. We are the elders known as the Blood-Soul Twin Fiends, whom even the masters of the Mount Hua Sect feared."
The Blood-Soul Twin Fiends looked with satisfaction at the people around them keeping their distance in fear, and went on.
"Do not think of resisting; just follow quietly. Bringing you alive was the condition of the deal, so we will not kill you."
The Blood-Soul Twin Fiends did not seem to hold the possibility of defeat in mind at all.
Admitting so readily that they had come here at someone's instigation meant they did not regard Dan Se-min as an opponent.
And that fact made Dan Se-min quietly displeased.
"I will go, but there is something I am curious about. May I ask?"
"Being young, it seems he has a great many curiosities."
The Blood-Soul Twin Fiends nodded as if granting a favor.
"I heard you fled to the Demonic Cult because you were afraid of the masters of the Mount Hua Sect. Have you been living like this here too, without ever coming to your senses?"
"......"
A brief silence.
The eyes of the Blood-Soul Twin Fiends turned fierce.
"The young one has a sharp tongue."
Dan Se-min smiled slightly.
"Because it is the plain truth."
Se-min stepped forward once.
It was such a slow movement that the Blood-Soul Twin Fiends did not even think to avoid it.
"I heard you were demonic villains of considerable infamy in the Central Plains, yet in the Demonic Cult you have been reduced to this. So, whose dogs did you become?"
Hearing Dan Se-min's words, the people around them gasped aloud.
"To say such a thing to the Blood-Soul Twin Fiends, that boy is a dead man!"
"Why on earth would he make enemies of such vicious men?"
"He had better beg forgiveness even now."
The killing intent of the Blood-Soul Twin Fiends surged for an instant.
Seeing the reaction of the crowd and of the Twin Fiends, Dan Se-min's aim seemed to have struck home.
"They said you came into the Demonic Cult not long ago, and here you are running wild like a day-old puppy, not knowing what sort of place this is!"
"In the Demonic Cult, if the head of a lowly bastard like you fell to the ground right now, it would be no trouble at all. Wag your tongue carelessly and great misfortune will find you."
Seeing the Blood-Soul Twin Fiends, Dan Se-min felt anew where he was standing.
'Yes. This is the Demonic Cult.'
The strong are exalted. That was the order ruling this place.
And according to the doctrine of the Demonic Cult, strength is good and is light, is it not?
In that case, there is no need to hesitate. Dan Se-min drew a faint, bloody smile.
SHING!
Without a hair of hesitation, he drew his sword.
The draw, and the principle of the fast sword that followed.
There was no such thing as hesitation.
He rushed at Blood Fiend, who stood nearer, and swept his sword up to the upper right.
SHK!
SPLATTER. Blood Fiend's wrist was severed, and blood scattered through the air.
Since he had come to the Demonic Cult, Dan Se-min intended not to hesitate in drawing his sword.
"The way to survive in the Demonic Cult?"
"Yes. The way of living here must be different from that of a great clan of the murim, must it not?"
At Dan Se-min's question, the Demon Empress had answered with a serious expression.
"If your eyes meet, you must always strike first."
Dan Se-min had agreed entirely with the Demon Empress's advice.
For a hunter who has entered a dangerous forest to survive, he must first loose his arrow. Because whatever appears before him is likely to be a threat.
The Demonic Cult was the same. Striking first would be the way to survive here.
THWACK-THWACK-THWACK!
Having succeeded in taking the initiative by cutting off the enemy's arm, Dan Se-min drove straight into Blood Fiend's guard.
GRIP. With his left hand he seized Blood Fiend's forehead.
"Y-you bastard!"
Dan Se-min poured blazing yang qi into the forehead of the thrashing Blood Fiend.
WHOOSH. The blazing yang qi surging along his arm caught on Blood Fiend's head.
"GRAAAAH!"
A horrific scream, torn from a burning head.
It was hard to believe it came from the mouth of a demonic villain who had once made Shaanxi Province tremble in terror.
Blood Fiend's howling filled Sacred Flame Village.
"......Good."
The corner of Dan Se-min's mouth rose ever so faintly.
"The scream of a wicked man. So even wicked men like these can make such a feeble sound. I like it."
Dan Se-min wore the expression of one appreciating Blood Fiend's screams as though they were a beautiful melody.
And that sight was enough to unnerve even Soul Fiend, a great demonic villain.
He had no intention of avoiding a fight brought to him first. A real battle with masters like these would only make him stronger.
THUD!
Se-min's toes stamped the ground.
CRUNCH. With the sound of the stone paving cracking, his figure scattered into the air and vanished.
SWISH. A sword along an invisible path sought Soul Fiend.
But Soul Fiend's reaction was unlike Blood Fiend's, who had been off guard.
He was already prepared for Dan Se-min's attack.
SLIDE!
Soul Fiend reacted half a beat faster and slid backward. His feet grazed the ground and left a long trail.
'I can't see it.'
Soul Fiend's toes moved swiftly.
Formidable footwork unfolded.
Soul Fiend's movements were utterly unpredictable.
Even Dan Se-min's eyes could not easily follow them.
'Facing both at once would certainly have been dangerous.'
The Blood-Soul Twin Fiends were not to be taken lightly after all. Soul Fiend's movement technique and leg technique in particular were known as peerless in the martial world.
The fortunate thing was that Soul Fiend's attacks did not reach Dan Se-min either.
Through the flow of a sticky current aimed at his back, through the shattering sound of air ripping as it flew in, Dan Se-min was able to let his opponent's attacks slip past.
SHWEEEK—!
A shadow appeared from behind and aimed a swift kick at Dan Se-min's head.
"You bastard! Try blocking this one too! This is the leg technique of an elder who crushed the skulls of Plum Blossom Swordsmen!"
The technique of Soul Fiend's prized leg art, Soul-Slaying Shatter Leg, unfolded.
Kicks at a speed the eye could not follow fell one after another toward Dan Se-min's head.
CRASH!
Se-min raised his arm and blocked, but the attacks came several times over.
The impact climbed straight up through his bones.
For a moment his arm trembled numbly.
'Heavy.'
The technique of Chained Soul-Slaying Leg unfolded.
Soul Fiend's legs did not stop, and attacks continued from several directions in succession.
THWACK-THWACK-THWACK!
Dan Se-min's body was pushed back again and again.
He rolled along the ground to evade, let blows slide off his shoulder, and blocked with his sword.
"Bastard, how long do you mean to keep running away?!"
The problem was Soul Fiend's swift legs.
A speed enough to knock the soul out of an opponent. He is not called Soul Fiend for nothing, Dan Se-min thought, drawing a bitter smile as he evaded with the lazy donkey roll.
And so it went for some twenty exchanges, with Dan Se-min unable to gain the upper hand, hard pressed simply to hold a defensive line.
As time passed, Dan Se-min drew a smile at his lips without realizing it.
At some point, the flow of true qi running around Soul Fiend's legs had begun to become visible to his eyes.