……To put it in dressed-up terms: the escort who had to come whenever called, in every season, at every moment; the messenger; the assassin; the strategist; the godfather of the heirs; and the only one among the Eight Great Demons under the Heavenly Demon who held no faction of his own, no children, no clan.
“Geon Gon.”
My body reacted before anything else.
I was ninety years old now, somehow.
I've lived long enough—
Then again, is that something to say with her standing there?
The Heavenly Demon, Cheon Yu-wol, her hair still a deep crimson beneath the moonlight.
She was a hundred years of age, yet her skin was smoother than a woman in the bloom of youth, and her eyes were clearer and more intense than most moonlight.
She rolled those dark red eyes and looked down at me through the iron bars.
“Why did you do it?”
A question with a great many things packed into it.
When I gave no answer, the Heavenly Demon, normally a woman of few words, spoke at considerable length.
My betrayal, after more than seventy years of loyalty.
Because on the surface it had looked like an unplanned ambush, it had come close to working far more dangerously against her.
Though in the end it failed.
“You had only to remain as you were. The jianghu knelt beneath my feet, the new emperor trembled lest he offend my mood, and the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains became the innermost sanctum of the world. When you were bored, you had only to tour the world each winter, and when spring came, comb the world as one combs for lice and root out every seed of a man who might challenge me.”
I ground my teeth with a low growl.
“How many times do I have to say it?”
With death right in front of me anyway, I could bare my true heart even before the Heavenly Demon, the absolute ruler of destruction who held all creation beneath her feet.
“I said I don't want that.”
“The situation being what it is, I shall permit the informal tongue this once.”
“Yes.”
A meek answer slipped out before I knew it.
Decades of habit… tsk.
“Why did you do it? I permitted you everything. The most celebrated beauties under heaven, every priceless spiritual medicine and treasured blade, authority and power enough to crush all things save this body. Even my heirs scrambled in the shadows to win your trust. What was lacking?”
“…….”
Lacking….
She was right; there had been nothing in particular that was lacking.
I had not done it out of want in the first place.
“In days past, it was you who came seeking me. How laughable. Do you regret it now? Do you wish to sit in my seat?”
“Yes, I covet it. So much so that regret is not the word for it; I am nearly out of my mind. I am of a mind to undergo even that regression that has gone about as a false rumor all my life.”
At my answer, the Heavenly Demon waved a hand.
It meant that everyone was to leave.
The torches wavered for a moment.
The group that guarded the Heavenly Demon from the shadows, and the strongest armed force within the Heavenly Demon Cult.
The Dark Heaven Evil God Spectres, whom I had commanded and trained myself, withdrew.
“Have you been getting by?”
For a brief moment a note of pity rode in the Heavenly Demon's indifferent voice, then vanished.
“How could I be? Still, as a place to speak with an open heart, it seems suitable enough. There are certainly no watching eyes or listening ears. Since not even the Dark Heaven Evil God Spectres I led from the front can be easily trusted, this truly is the best place.”
“No doubt. No one can harbor suspicion over the interrogation of a criminal.”
“So…… did you find them?”
“Some of them. Under the pretext of seeking out those who sympathized with your impulsive treason, I rooted out and seized every faction that had been quietly gathering strength. Half of the Eight Great Demons were tangled up in it, and my own children had joined hands to drive me out. Because of you, I was able to execute them before they could unite. However….”
The moment I heard her trail off, I was certain.
“You failed to catch the ringleader. Then the same thing will happen again. No, whoever is behind all of this must be far ahead of us.”
I clicked my tongue in regret.
It was a stratagem that had required sacrificing even me, her right arm.
Without that, the interior could not have been calmed so swiftly.
Dragging out a civil war would only have compounded the dangers outside.
And yet the most important thing had been missed.
“You do not believe the ringleader is among those executed this time.”
“Not one of them holds the authority to unite everyone and dare to covet the Cult Leader's place. More than that, half of those who have served as my eyes and ears vanished or turned into corpses in an instant. Such a result is beyond the capability of anyone inside.”
“The Imperial Palace? The Unorthodox Demon Alliance, split and shattered again? Orthodox sects blinded by greed? Or is it the aftermath left by the countless martial paragons I have brought to their knees?”
“From what I have looked into so far, my conjecture is this.”
“...........”
“The previous Cult Leader, whose head you severed with your own hand, is on the move. I have not found a perfect thread with which to persuade you, but my instinct is certain of it.”
Hearing that one's own father had been resurrected and was moving to kill them, no one would easily have opened their mouth.
No, most would have fallen over in shock and horror.
They would be bound to show some weakness of spirit.
But the Heavenly Demon laughed instead.
“Heh heh.”
The heat of a fighting spirit so fierce it felt like a scalding volcano about to erupt wrapped itself around her.
Then the Heavenly Demon drew out a blood-stained handkerchief and covered her mouth.
COUGH—
With that brief fit of coughed blood, a fair amount of blood soaked the handkerchief.
“No wonder. For quite some time now the movements have been those of someone who knows me well.”
“You have been… poisoned? When on earth?”
“All this while, you were the only one who knew my weakness. The rest I killed, every one.”
True. There existed one weakness, a heavenly punishment that not even her overflowing aptitude and training could overcome.
Something surprisingly common and easy to obtain, which, once put through a special method of refinement, became a terrifying poison to the Heavenly Demon.
It was a spiritual herb called the Clear Moon Herb.
To most it was a spiritual herb that helped build inner arts, but to the Heavenly Demon it was a poisonous herb of the worst possible affinity, provoking qi reversal and hardening her body and qi-blood further and further.
Pouring all of my capability outward, I had failed to pay attention to the Heavenly Demon's own safety.
No, I had let my guard down and been at ease.
Because I knew she was strong.
“My apologies. The fault is mine.”
“You know it well. You should have striven harder, without pause, instead of throwing fits at me about retiring now and then. I wasted several years chasing after you.”
“…….”
She tapped the iron bars with long, white fingers, then gripped them as though she would shatter them on the spot.
“I shall ask you one thing.”
“…….”
“Had you stood at the same starting point as this body, do you think you could have dared to surpass me?”
“How would I dare?”
“I know that is not your true heart.”
I, too, was a martial artist with a competitive streak.
If I were to lay my true heart bare, the story was naturally different.
“The Heavenly Demon did not hold everything in hand from the very beginning either, did she? Through overflowing aptitude, you gained the time and the opportunities to grow, by way of varied environments and support. Even before you met me.”
“That is not something one can know until the cards are turned over. I shall make you an offer.”
Life stirred in the Heavenly Demon's dry, flat eyes.
“Become a being this body would have reason to fear. Can you do it? Then my father too would be thrown into confusion by your existence.”
“In this state, waiting only for the day I die?”
The Heavenly Demon produced a talisman from her hand.
It was an unremarkable talisman.
“It is a talisman to be exchanged for my soul. It took long to find. A precious secret record I obtained on my own. And of all days, they say the ‘time’ of defying heaven, which opens once every few centuries, is today.”
I let out a dry laugh at the Heavenly Demon, whose words were making less and less sense.
“Do you actually believe some groundless rumor out of legend that says regression is possible?”
“Once, the rumor that the Heavenly Demon Cult had reappeared was nothing but a groundless rumor too. Yet this body existed. You were one of the few beings who believed that rumor. Did you not find me? So why do you not believe this? You, who even conjecture that my dead father has been resurrected.”
“…….”
“Stop dreaming and limits and frames take shape. You are not what you once were.”
As I lost my words, the Heavenly Demon gave a short laugh and held out the talisman.
“Smear it with blood and tear it. Then you—”
The Heavenly Demon crooked a finger and I was swept up in a gust, flung close enough that her breath could touch me.
CRASH—
My face slammed into the iron bars, and I met the red glow of the Heavenly Demon's eyes.
“—will regress.”
The Heavenly Demon was no clumsy swindler.
Thud. My heart shook.
“…….”
“Because of the difference in age between you and this body it will not be the same starting point, but in exchange you will have more than enough of the future's opportunities. And if you return to the proper time, your potential will change enough to threaten this body.”
“Why not go yourself?”
“I said the medium of that talisman is me. I cannot go of my own accord. Above all, your going would be the more effective in confusing my father. If he truly has been resurrected, that is.”
“My judgment may be wrong.”
“Do you think it is wrong?”
“No.”
“Then my choice will be wise this time as well.”
“True enough. Apart from your eye for men, you have always been wise.”
“There was a time I considered taking you as my companion of the Way. Had I made you one then, you would not have been able to utter such nonsense a moment ago.”
A companion of the Way meant a husband.
I snorted.
“Do you say such a thing knowing what became of the men who passed through the Cult Leader's hands?”
Every last one of them met a cruel and merciless death.
It was all their own doing.
They had indulged a greed too large for their vessels.
And at the end of each of them stood me, acting on the Heavenly Demon's command.
There was a reason I was called the Hell King of Companions.
“Ordinary men bored me.”
“Frankly, well, I am better than they were.”
She was a wicked demon after all.
No, the king of wicked demons.
Still, there was some basis to what she did.
“So you enjoyed it too, as I thought.”
Did it show that much—
Then again, the Heavenly Demon's eye for men was the worst.
Or she simply did not look.
Every one of them arrogant, with capability that never kept up, no sense of their own place, no decency, and so on.
“I may never return to my Liege's side again. The me after the regression will have no need of my Liege's help.”
“Then I shall gain one new enemy. That would be better than living decades in tedium and dying helplessly.”
“I will live a life where I protect what I want and make my choices freely. My martial arts will be profound, and my wealth must overflow. More than my Liege's.”
“That is the path of an absolute ruler. Perhaps it is your age, but you speak foolishly.”
“Then how about this? Surely you are not entertaining the naive notion that I will regress and then guard the Heavenly Demon's side. I have not the slightest intention of doing so, ever.”
I raised my eyes.
“Will you still choose me?”
The Heavenly Demon cackled.
“Go on, then. Do as you please.”
She provoked me with those red eyes.
I snatched the talisman into my hand.
“Do not regret this.”
An exhilaration fierce enough to surpass every emotion and flutter I had felt in my life stood the fine hairs all over my body on end.
I smeared the blood on.
“…….”
I tore it.