STAB—!
His chest suddenly stung.
It burned as though seared by fire.
When Se-jin checked his chest, he found a small dagger embedded in it.
His gaze followed the hand gripping the dagger to the child he held on his left.
“W-why did you.......?”
The child grinned at Se-jin's words.
“The Earth Killing Sect never loses its target.”
The child pulled out the dagger and tried to stab Se-jin again, but Wi So-baek, who had appeared without warning, stopped the blow.
Wi So-baek seized the child's head and hurled him away.
THUD—!
Lying on the ground, the child twisted his joints with a series of cracks.
“It is the Bone-Contraction Art.”
He had used martial arts to shrink his body, disguised himself as a child, and targeted Se-jin.
The child in Se-jin's right arm shook his head wildly to say he knew nothing, then fainted.
It seemed the impostor had traveled with a real child so that he would not draw all the attention alone.
Even as blood poured from him, Se-jin carefully laid the child in his right arm on the ground.
Wi So-baek gritted his teeth and supported his younger brother.
“You fool! Is that what you care about right now?!”
“Ha, ha.......”
But the sight of his younger brother's weak smile made fire surge inside him.
“Cough!”
When Se-jin spat blood a moment later, Wi So-baek's face went deathly pale.
He had seen blood all his life, yet seeing it flow from his younger brother was different.
“B-blood... You are bleeding, Se-jin. There is blood. Does it hurt? Does it hurt badly?”
Wi So-baek gathered Se-jin into his arms and ran without thought.
He had to reach a physician at once.
He would go there, go there.......
Yes, he would go.
He would tell them to save his younger brother.
He would tell them he would kill every last one of them if they did not.
Wi So-baek could not understand.
Why had this happened?
He had been delighted at the thought of seeing his younger brother when the Grand Martial Conference convened. Even when he came to search after hearing that Se-jin had disappeared, he had worried that the fool might be hurt.
But never had he imagined that he would encounter the sight of him dying.......
“...Elder Brother.......”
“What? What is it? Wait just a little. I will make the pain go away soon. Do you know who I am? I am the Demon Alliance Leader, for whom nothing under heaven is impossible.”
“Elder Brother.......”
“No. Do not say any more. You will only waste your strength. So.......”
“Elder Brother.......”
As the hand tugging at his clothes grew steadily weaker, Wi So-baek finally gritted his teeth and looked down at the younger brother in his arms.
“What... what is it?”
Jang Se-jin smiled without guile.
“You know, do you not?”
“Know what?”
“That it is too late.”
Ah.
Tears spilled from Wi So-baek's eyes.
“This is the first time I have seen you cry, Elder Brother.”
“There have been exactly three times in my life when I almost cried.”
“Three times?”
When Se-jin asked in surprise, Wi So-baek gradually slowed and looked around.
He spotted a place to rest beneath a large tree and moved toward it.
He carefully seated Se-jin so that he could lean against the trunk, then continued.
“Once when I was trapped in a formation and had to sleep on the dirt. Once when I had to chew some nameless weeds. And once when I emerged from the formation and watched you crawl back into the Martial Alliance, which always felt like a grave to you even if you never said so. Those were the three times.”
Se-jin knew that, regardless of the righteous or demonic divide, his elder brother was born of the oldest and noblest bloodline in the history of the martial world.
Yet for that very reason, Se-jin knew how many trials Wi So-baek had been forced to endure.
He also knew how much pain Wi So-baek had been forced to pass through because of it.
For some reason, the fact that none of it had been enough to make his elder brother cry filled him with sorrow.
“But this is the first time tears have truly fallen.”
The anguish on his elder brother's face as he said those words made Se-jin regret, just a little, that he had been unable to look away that once and had ended up hurting him.
Even if he could go back, he would still have been unable to do otherwise.
Still.
“Elder Brother, do you think you will be very angry after I die?”
“Do you even need to ask? Even now, I am holding myself back from charging out and killing them all. Once you die, I will lose my mind and rampage. I will begin by tearing the Martial Alliance's leadership to pieces.”
Next would come the headquarters of the Nine Great Sects and One Gang to which those leaders belonged.
Ah, he would annihilate the Earth Killing Sect and every sect connected to them as well.......
One by one.
He would hold everything his hands and eyes could reach accountable.
“Why? Is there anyone you especially want me to spare, Se-jin? Surely not? You will not ask on behalf of your personal guards, who could not even serve their master properly, or that faction of yours, which could not so much as keep the other leaders in check at the Martial Alliance's headquarters, will you?”
His eyes curved gently as though smiling and his tone could not have been softer, but his words were utterly vicious.
More than anything, Se-jin could see that his elder brother was forcibly suppressing the violently tangled energy within him just before it ran wild.
As far as Se-jin knew, his elder brother had already been the greatest martial artist under heaven before the Righteous-Demonic War. Afterward.......
He had reached a realm where it would not be excessive to call him the greatest of all ages.
What if his elder brother fell into qi deviation, became seized by heart demons, and began slaughtering people?
‘The world will be ruined. He will destroy everything with ease.’
Would the Martial Alliance's leaders ever know?
Would they know that in trying to capture Jang Se-jin alone, they had placed the entire world in danger?
They would also never know that Se-jin was trying to set it right.
No. It was better that they did not know.
Nothing Se-jin was about to do took them into consideration.
Nor was it for the sake of the world.
Throwing himself away had been his own choice, and he alone was enough.
He would never place such a yoke upon his elder brother.
Se-jin looked up at his elder brother, who was beside himself over the blood flowing from his chest, and spoke.
“Elder Brother, I have one wish.”
“...A wish?”
“I want you to grant it, no matter what.”
Wi So-baek answered the firm resolve in Se-jin's eyes.
“Tell me.”
Wi So-baek assumed his younger brother would make another foolish request.
Help someone, save someone, forgive... someone. Something of that kind.
But it was not.
“You know me better than anyone, Elder Brother, but there is one secret even I could not tell you.”
“A secret?”
“It was not my story alone, and another person was involved, so I remained silent all this time... But not long ago, I learned by chance that something had happened on the other side as well. So I must ask you.......”
“.......”
“I have a child.”
“...What?”
When Wi So-baek asked again, Se-jin offered a feeble smile.
“Just before I became the Heavenly Strike Unit Captain, I nearly died while carrying out an assignment in Shanxi under orders from above. A woman saved me.”
“She was a good person. Truly admirable.”
When Wi So-baek said that, Se-jin nodded in agreement.
“She truly was. She and I fell in love. But in the eyes of her father, the master of a renowned escort bureau in Taiyuan, I was nothing more than a wandering warrior with no possessions.......”
Se-jin slowly closed and opened his eyes.
Perhaps the memory had returned, for his already bloodless face seemed to grow even paler, making Wi So-baek frown.
“You would have shone even when you were a wandering warrior. That bureau master truly had no eye for people if he could not see it. Of course, the woman who did see it was exceedingly wise.”
“Ha ha. Elder Brother, honestly.”
Pleased that this arrogant man took his side without question whenever it concerned him, Se-jin laughed, then coughed up more blood.
“Se-jin!”
When Wi So-baek cried out in alarm, Se-jin shook his head to say he was fine and hurried to continue.
“Her father forced her to marry the man chosen for her if she wanted to give birth to my child and raise it. He also said he would kill a worthless wandering warrior like me if she refused. In the end, he made us swear never to meet again.”
The entire ordeal had been painful and difficult.
Yet Se-jin had always wanted to recall it and turn it over again.
Because he still loved her, and missed her and their child desperately.
“The oath held until the Righteous-Demonic War. Later, while looking through the forces connected to the Martial Alliance once more as part of my search for the undercurrents within it, I happened to learn about Huaming Escort Bureau in Taiyuan. I heard that the daughter they had married off returned after her husband cast her out, then wasted away and died.”
“Was she the woman who saved you?”
“Yes. Jeong-hui... is dead. They say Jeong-hui returned with her first child, who did not even know his father, and a second child she bore to a man of the family she married into....... Elder Brother, before leaving to run the dumpling shop with you, I wanted to see those children just once.”
“So if they were living well, you meant to leave them there, and if they were not, you meant to take them with you?”
“Yes. I thought you would readily accept two children, Elder Brother.”
“Of course. They are your children, are they not? If they are yours, they are mine as well.”
“You must not forget those words.”
Se-jin reached out and clasped Wi So-baek's hand, which had been occupied with wiping away his blood.
“Even without me, you will not be alone, Elder Brother. You have a niece or nephew too. Never forget that.”
“You.......”
“Please go see them in my place, Elder Brother.”
Wi So-baek sensed instinctively that this was his younger brother's final will.
At that, the reality he had kept avoiding struck him full in the eyes.
My younger brother is truly dying.
“No. I will not. You do it. Se-jin, you do it. If you die, I will kill them all, destroy everything, and take revenge. If you do not want to see that, then live.”
Wi So-baek spoke with his forehead pressed to Se-jin's shoulder, and Se-jin patted his elder brother's broad back.
“Having you with me, Elder Brother... truly made me happy.”
“Do not die.”
“Elder Brother, please.......”
“Do not do this. Do not do this to me. Se-jin, I... I.......”
Wi So-baek could not finish.
The hand that had rested on his back slid down and dropped limply to the ground.
“Ah.......”
Grief and lament spilled from his open mouth.
His eyes reddened, and streams of ferocious energy erupted from his entire body.
RUMBLE—!
The ground shook, and a vortex soaring toward the sky tore through the clouds.
“Ah.......”
He was alone once more.
KABOOM—!
With a thunderous roar, the mountainside where they had rested began to collapse.
Wi So-baek closed his eyes with Se-jin's corpse held in his arms.
***
Several months later.
“So what conclusion did the Grand Martial Conference reach?”
“What conclusion could it reach? They say the Martial Alliance Leader is missing, and the Demon Alliance Leader suddenly ran off and cannot be found.”
Important figures from the Martial Alliance and Demon Alliance remained in Wuchang, but.......
Unlike the Martial Alliance, where the other leaders wielded more influence than the Alliance Leader, the Demon Alliance was entirely controlled by the Demon Alliance Leader. There was no chance its members would continue negotiations with their master absent.
“I heard the second Righteous-Demonic War nearly broke out in Wuchang.”
“What in the world happened? I can understand that an assassin sect attacked the Martial Alliance Leader, but why did the Demon Alliance Leader disappear?”
“That is why everyone is frantically searching for him. And is it true that the Demon Alliance in particular is offering an enormous reward to anyone who reports the Demon Alliance Leader's whereabouts?”
At that moment, one of the men exchanging stories glanced around and lowered his voice.
“But have you heard the rumor that the Demon Alliance Leader plotted everything, beginning with the attack on the Martial Alliance Leader? They say he ordered the Martial Alliance Leader killed, then went to do it himself in anger when the assassins let him escape.”
“What? There is a rumor like that?”
“That's... urk!”
THUD—!
The man was answering when someone brushed his shoulder and sent him sprawling.
Furious from the pain and humiliation, he sprang up to shout, only to suck in a hollow breath and close his mouth beneath the other man's presence.
The fellow was tall but looked completely like a beggar, his blank expression making him seem out of his mind. The man wondered why he had been frightened and tried to summon his courage again, but.......
“Hic!”
The moment he met the long eyes and pitch-black pupils visible through the tangled hair, goose bumps rose across his entire body.
He was fortunate he had not pissed himself.
When the man shrank back, the beggar swept past them.
“What is with that bastard?!”
His companions scowled fiercely, but the man stopped them.
“Leave him. Just leave him. He does not seem to be in his right mind.”
That was what he said, but in truth, he simply did not want anything more to do with the man.
The chill that had settled in his shoulder where he had been struck would not fade.
***
Wi So-baek came to his senses before a great gate bearing a plaque that read Huaming Escort Bureau.
Is this Taiyuan?
How did I get here?
He remembered only that he had watched over Se-jin's corpse until he feared it would decay, then encased it in cold energy and buried it deep underground. After that, his mind was black.
Nothing came to him, yet when he regained his senses, he was here.
Wi So-baek stared up at the plaque and hesitated.
Should I go in?
Or should I simply leave?
It had been Se-jin's dying wish, but did he really need to find a niece or nephew here who was a complete stranger with whom he had no relationship?
His thoughts were tangled.
It seemed he had not escaped his heart demons.
Perhaps it would be better to go to the Martial Alliance at once, kill them all, kill still more, and take revenge!
Just as rough, heat-haze-like energy rose from his entire body.
CREEEAK.
The door opened, and a boy walked out.
His clothes were shabby like a servant's, yet they could not conceal his jade-smooth face or steadfast eyes.
“What business do you have here?”
The boy asked.
Wi So-baek reached toward the boy, who looked about ten years old.
“What are you doing?!”
The boy shouted sharply and tried to retreat, but could not move as he wished.
Wi So-baek held the boy's face in both hands and brushed his thumbs beneath the boy's eyes.
“Here you are.”
“What?”
“Your eyes resemble his. Your nose does too. Your mouth as well. Yes. Here you were.”
My nephew.
The family Se-jin had left me.
The sole reason the world must not be destroyed.
“Yes. It is you.”
Wi So-baek pulled the boy into his arms.
The boy frowned at the tears pattering onto him, yet his expression also suggested he was thinking deeply about something.
And so another bond began.