"Don't talk nonsense!"
Murin knew nothing about martial arts, but even he had heard tales of what the Heavenly Kill Star was.
When a Heavenly Kill Star appeared, not only the martial world but the entire world would be drenched in blood.
That was why even country folk hid themselves away and would not come out whenever they heard that a Heavenly Kill Star had appeared.
And he was supposed to be the Heavenly Kill Star!
"Heh, you reek of blood wherever you go, and you still deny it? And do you think the Martial Alliance is such an idle place that it would lock a fledgling like you in its worst prison?"
Murin did not know who the old man was, but his words were quite persuasive.
He had not confirmed exactly where this place was, so he could not blindly believe him... but if the old man was right?
And since he had not known why the middle-aged man who knocked him unconscious had thrown him in here, he had no choice but to find the old man's words credible.
Murin was trembling at the unbelievable story when the old man spoke again.
"In any case, tell me about the outside world! I've been locked in here for so long that I am bored to death!"
"I'm not in the mood to talk."
"Why? Keh keh, are you unfairly wronged to death?"
Murin furrowed his brow at the old man's taunting words.
"I only killed those who deserved to die."
"Tsk, tsk. Do you think you were locked in here merely because you committed murder? Didn't I tell you? You are the Heavenly Kill Star."
Murin's brow furrowed.
The darkness was too deep for the old man to see his expression, but he must have sensed the displeasure in Murin's voice.
"There is no guarantee that I am the Heavenly Kill Star, and I do not know why I should be imprisoned in a place like this."
"How foolish! Would you leave a plague alone just because it had not spread yet?"
"People are not plagues!"
"The Heavenly Kill Star is something worse than that! Keh keh keh!"
Murin clamped his mouth shut.
The old man's attitude of immediately branding him the Heavenly Kill Star was unpleasant, but it was more urgent to think of how to escape from here.
Then the old man addressed him again.
"Doesn't it feel exhilarating? Heh heh."
When Murin did not reply, the old man continued in an even more insinuating tone.
"When you saw blood, that is! Didn't it feel as though your chest would burst and every hair on your body stood on end? No matter how much you cut and cut, wasn't the thirst in your chest not only unsated, but growing worse?"
Grit—
"...."
Murin bit his lower lip hard and tried to ignore the old man's words.
But he could not help paying attention to them.
The old man spoke as though he had clearly seen Murin at the scene that day.
Because his words were true, Murin could not refute them.
The old man's voice continued quietly.
"It means you are a born killer. That is why those old fools in the Martial Alliance locked you up!"
"...Close your mouth."
Murin spoke in a low growl, his eyes glinting blue.
Strangely, after he had gone berserk in his bloodlust, it felt as though he could no longer control his emotions properly.
It was as if the urge to tear apart and kill anyone who crossed his path at once had taken control of him.
Perhaps that was why he could not speak civilly to the old man.
The old man clicked his tongue lightly.
"You would do well not to think of getting out of here! This old man has been imprisoned for a hundred years already!"
"...!"
Murin's eyes widened as he stared toward the old man's voice.
"What did you just...?"
"Did you not hear me? I mean that I have been locked in the Heavenly Prison for a hundred years."
"...Don't talk nonsense! You're really starting to anger me."
"The foremost man of the Demonic Path, Jin Mudo. That was my name. But the gossips of the martial world gave me another name as well."
The old man's words continued slowly.
"Unopposable."
Murin glared into the darkness for a moment, then snorted.
"If that is true, why have you been imprisoned here for a hundred years?"
Murin thought the old man had gone senile.
Anyone would go mad after being locked in a place like this for only three days.
"One who stands alone at the summit inevitably becomes a public enemy, whether those around him are allies or enemies. Keh! Every human being wants to pull down anyone above them."
Murin shook his head.
The old man had gone senile and was spouting nonsense.
What did he mean, he was the foremost man of the Demonic Path and Unopposable?
He looked like an old man without even the strength to lift a finger!
'The old man is lonely and needs someone to talk to. What utter nonsense!'
The old man's voice continued.
"Yet this is the very place that I, a man like that, have been unable to escape from for more than a hundred years, fledgling."
"How can I believe that? Someone with such a reputation could not escape from a place like this?"
"So you do not believe me."
"Would you, if you were me?"
The old man chuckled softly.
Then, all at once, the space before Murin's eyes began to brighten little by little.
No, to be precise, the place where the old man was gradually came into view.
"...!"
Murin's eyes went wide.
The old man.
When he had heard only the voice, Murin had assumed he was merely an old human.
But the figure before him now was...!
"What is this?!"
It was horrific.
Where his two arms and two legs should have been, what had once been arms and legs hung limp like dry branches from a withered tree, and a black hole gaped open near his qi center.
Moreover, someone had already gouged out both his eyes, and his face was only a little better than a bare skull.
In short, he was a being scarcely different from a corpse, one whose being alive at all was astonishing.
"Keh, did I not tell you? This is what happens when a man who stood at the peak of the world falls all the way to the bottom."
So that was why he had said he could not escape the Heavenly Prison for a hundred years—Murin understood at once.
How could a person survive in such a state for a hundred years?
"How did you end up like this?"
Even if not everything the old man who called himself Jin Mudo said was true, he certainly seemed to have been an extraordinary figure in the past.
"At the time, I was the sovereign of the Palace of Ten Thousand Demons, whom nothing under heaven could frighten. Everything beneath the sky lay in the palm of my hand. But a disciple I raised made me drink poison, and as you can see, I became this. Keh! Is life not truly fleeting?"
Jin Mudo spoke as though he no longer had any emotion left at all.
"The Martial Alliance is truly ruthless. How could they reduce a person to this state...?"
But Jin Mudo unexpectedly denied it.
"It was my disciples, not the Martial Alliance, who made me this way and handed me over. The Martial Alliance merely imprisoned and watched me in the Heavenly Prison. But my disciples...."
In that instant, a chilling aura radiated from Jin Mudo's entire body.
It was an intense, sinister aura, far too powerful to have come from an old man on the verge of death.
Perhaps it was because of his disciples that he had said his resentment ran deep.
"...!"
Murin shuddered without realizing it.
Until just moments ago, Jin Mudo had done nothing but cackle.
But now, as though a demon of hell maddened by vengeance, he was pouring out an overwhelming killing intent.
"Even after more than a hundred years, it seems you still want to tear your disciples apart and kill them."
Then someone's voice came from the entrance.
"...!"
Murin instinctively turned his gaze to the front of the Heavenly Prison, his breath catching in his throat.
He could feel an immense pressure.
Then Jin Mudo gave a cold laugh and said, "Keh, the Chief of the Main Headquarters has come in person. This boy must be someone important indeed."
Before the Heavenly Prison's bars stood more than ten masters holding bright torches, and at their head stood a man with a solid-looking countenance.
He radiated a pressure different even from that of the man Murin had seen at the inn.
His gaze fixed directly on Murin, blazing as fiercely as the sun.
"The Heavenly Kill Star."
Then he uttered a single, terse phrase.
"Yes, Chief. He is the one who carried out the slaughter at the All-Under-Heaven Inn. Five masters of the North Wind Sect died in his rampage. Among them...."
"Wait!"
As someone beside him spoke, Jin Mudo suddenly cried out sharply, cutting the man off.
The middle-aged man looked at Jin Mudo with displeasure.
Under the bright torchlight, Jin Mudo's hollow, empty eye sockets seemed to glare at the middle-aged man as though his eyeballs remained.
"Did you say the North Wind Sect?!"
The middle-aged man replied with a cold sneer.
"Why? Does hearing the name of the sect Cheol Mugeuk established make your emotions boil again? Even after becoming a living corpse, you still have not forgotten your old resentment. You will not die peacefully."
Grit—
Jin Mudo ground his teeth.
"Cheol Mugeuk...! The North Wind Sect he established still exists?"
Watching him tremble with fury, the man outside the bars said mockingly,
"Is it only the North Wind Sect? If you heard that Wi Gangbaek of the Wi Clan had taken the position of the new master of the Palace of Ten Thousand Demons, you would have a fit, would you not?"
Suddenly, a chill spread through the surroundings.
It was an overwhelming coldness that could not possibly be the aura of a man on the verge of death.
But the man merely sneered as if it were nothing.
"Let the news that those who betrayed you are thriving eat away at you from within. It may serve as a small consolation to the previous masters of the Martial Alliance who died by your hand. That aside."
Murin saw it.
At the man's words, Jin Mudo clenched his lower lip between his decayed upper teeth.
He bit down so hard that even those rotten teeth split his lip, spilling dark red blood.
Murin was taken aback by this appearance, so utterly different from the detached air Jin Mudo had shown earlier.
Then the man's gaze turned toward Murin.
"When I heard Heavenly Kill Star, I thought of Nameless, who caused a tragedy in the martial world. But he is only a fledgling whose blood has barely dried! How did the Alliance Leader say he should be dealt with?"
"Yes, Chief. He said that, no matter how young he is, a Heavenly Kill Star cannot be released into the world. That child will probably...."
Memories of Nameless, who had caused a tremendous blood calamity in the martial world two hundred years ago, had seared the existence of the Heavenly Kill Star into the Martial Alliance.
At the time, the Martial Alliance had nearly collapsed. From that day onward, they had ground their teeth and steeled their hearts; they could not help shuddering at the thought of a Heavenly Kill Star.
Thus, he could not say that he failed to understand the Alliance Leader's reasoning in imprisoning such a young boy.
But as Murin heard the words that followed, he felt his mind go blank.
That child will probably.
The words that came after.
'...Rot here for the rest of my life?'
That was what they meant.
Imprisonment here for life.
The Heavenly Kill Star was so dangerous that they had no intention of ever releasing him into the world.
The man nodded and spoke.
"Let us go! My interest has cooled. I thought they had caught a monster with three heads and six arms. Tsk! Keep a thorough watch over him."
"Yes, Chief!"
The Chief of the Martial Alliance's Main Headquarters, Sang Gwancheon, clicked his tongue and turned away.
Only after he turned his back did the tremendous pressure weighing down Murin's whole body finally disappear.
Once the masters following him had left as well, deep darkness returned to the Heavenly Prison, which had been bright for a moment.
But strangely, Jin Mudo said nothing.
"Hey!"
Murin called out to the silent man.
He had just been given what was practically a death sentence.
Because he had been born a Heavenly Kill Star, he would have to remain imprisoned in this prison until he died.
Even if Jin Mudo had failed to escape this place, Murin had to get even the smallest clue from him.
Then Jin Mudo, who had kept silent, opened his mouth quietly.
"You."
His voice was distinctly different from before—low and dry.
"Do you want to get out of here?"
"...!"
Murin's eyes went wide.