The stench of blood filled the air in every direction.
The lake was stained red as if by the setting sun, and countless corpses bobbed upon it like buoys.
At the center of that gruesome scene stood a man.
As if to prove that all this slaughter was his own doing, a crimson light blazed from his eyes, and in his hand he held a sword shrouded in a baleful aura.
“......The Heavenly Slaughter Star.”
The star of calamity that butchers all life and leads it to ruin.
In the murim, one born with that ominous energy was called the Heavenly Slaughter Star.
The man who towered atop the mountain of corpses was Jeok Geon-ho.
His alias was the Heavenly Slaughter Calamity.
Corpses piled up along every road he passed.
So many had died by his hand that rumor claimed they outnumbered the stars in the night sky. He was the murim's living calamity incarnate.
By nature, the Heavenly Slaughter Star cannot control the murderous urge that boils within.
Since such people all too easily became monsters who slaughtered regardless of their own will, it was an unwritten rule of the murim to kill them on sight.
Jeok Geon-ho was no exception.
The Murim Alliance had long ago declared him a public enemy of the murim and issued a kill order, yet even after ten years, no one had managed to bring back his head.
In the end, an elite subjugation force was formed to put him to rest.
Azure Cloud Sword Dragon Namgung Do-jin of the Namgung Clan.
Ice Flower Fairy Baek Un of Wudang.
Immovable Wisdom King Hyegong of Shaolin.
And other renowned masters of the orthodox sects as well. A hundred joined in total.
“The Heaven-Subduing Hundred Saints Corps, wiped out without even putting up a fight.......”
That was the name of the subjugation force.
No one had thought they would lose.
Was not each and every member a master who served as a pillar of their sect?
With a hundred masters gathered, they had believed without the slightest doubt that this time, the atrocities of the Heavenly Slaughter Calamity would finally end.
But reality was gruesome.
Once they succeeded in driving Jeok Geon-ho to the lake, it took less than half a double-hour for the matter to be settled.
With, of course, the annihilation of the Heaven-Subduing Hundred Saints Corps as the result.
Perhaps even their sense of triumph at having driven him to the lake had been an illusion he had permitted them.
Swish—.
The sole survivor of the subjugation force, Alliance Leader Yeon Ha-gwang, looked around with a pale face.
The comrades who had sworn themselves to justice were swaying on the ripples as cold corpses.
“......You monster.”
“.......”
“You are not human! After committing such horrific slaughter, do you truly feel no guilt at all?!”
Jeok Geon-ho's gaze moved sluggishly.
When his eyes, brimming with killing intent, met his own, Yeon Ha-gwang trembled without realizing it.
“Let me ask you the reverse.”
“......?”
“Why is it that you seek to kill me?”
It was the first time Jeok Geon-ho had opened his mouth.
Unlike his blood-reeking appearance, his voice was that of an utterly ordinary human.
Yeon Ha-gwang was taken aback, but soon shouted with a sharp gaze.
“Killing the Heavenly Slaughter Star is the law of heaven! It is as natural as the rising of the sun and the flowing of the river!”
“Why is that natural?”
“Because if the Heavenly Slaughter Star is left alone, innocent victims will follow. You yourself have already killed countless innocents!”
“I, too...... am a victim.”
A victim?
Yeon Ha-gwang looked puzzled, as though he could not comprehend such sophistry at all.
“Do you know of the Hyeon Family Manor?”
“How could I not?”
That place was the very starting point of the infamy Jeok Geon-ho had built up as the Heavenly Slaughter Calamity.
“The Hyeon Family Manor was a family of high virtue even within the Alliance. Its Clan Head, Lord Hyeon Yu, was so esteemed for his character that he was even granted the Azure Cloud White Jade Plaque.”
The Azure Cloud White Jade Plaque was the highest honor in the murim, granted only to those who possessed both skill and character.
Its conditions were so strict that a recipient emerged only once every ten years, so Lord Hyeon Yu's reputation had been nothing short of absolute.
“You killed Lord Hyeon Yu. And as if that were not enough, did you not wipe out the villagers as well, every last one of them?!”
Jeok Geon-ho did not deny it.
It truly had been his own hands that butchered them.
Soon, a cold sneer spread across his lips.
“The Hyeon Family Manor, a family of virtue?”
“......?”
“It was all a facade. Are you not curious why I massacred that place?”
“Are you saying there was a reason?”
No one had ever asked for a reason.
They had simply believed he killed because he was the Heavenly Slaughter Star.
“I had a young sister. We grew up without parents, and I raised her as tenderly as if she were my own daughter.”
“What are you suddenly.......”
“Hold your tongue and listen.”
When Jeok Geon-ho let his energy seep out, Yeon Ha-gwang had no choice but to shut his mouth before that cold, overwhelming pressure.
“I was a laborer at the Hyeon Family Manor. I lived by doing lowly work, chopping wood and drawing water.”
“I heard that Lord Hyeon Yu showed mercy by taking in those with nowhere to go.”
“At first, I too thought it was a kindness.”
The truth was ugly.
Outwardly, he played the benevolent man who took in the poor, but within the household, hellish corruption was a daily affair.
“Hyeon Yu, his family, and even the martial artists who served them treated the servants worse than beasts. If one of them was merely in a foul mood, we were dragged to the torture chamber and flogged.”
“That cannot be. If such things had happened, rumors would have spread long ago!”
“Hyeon Yu was a man mad for his reputation. Anyone who let slip even a careless word vanished without a trace.”
Jeok Geon-ho's voice was calm, but deep resentment lingered within it.
“The sick were buried alive, and the women were called out every night, trembling in terror. They crammed ten of us into a cramped room, and we were used like tools.”
“.......”
“We could not even run. We had seen the wretched ends of those made into examples.”
But even so, Jeok Geon-ho resolved to escape.
He could not leave his sister, who was growing into a woman, in that den of demons any longer.
“I ran for my sister's sake. I begged a villager I had long trusted to hide us. But.......”
“.......”
“The entire village was in league with them. For a few handfuls of grain doled out by the Hyeon Family Manor, they turned their backs on humanity and righteousness. Whether the servants died or not was of no concern to them.”
In the end, Jeok Geon-ho was caught along with his sister and dragged back to the Hyeon Family Manor.
“The fate of a runaway servant was horrific. My sister was made an example before the eyes of every servant. What Hyeon Yu's son did to her...... you cannot even imagine.”
Yeon Ha-gwang could not bring himself to speak.
The crimson light rose once more in Jeok Geon-ho's eyes.
“Have you ever hated someone so much that you wanted to tear them limb from limb? That was when I first awakened the Heavenly Slaughter Star. I was, if anything, grateful to the Heavenly Slaughter Star for giving a powerless older brother the strength to take revenge.”
The Heavenly Slaughter Star was a curse, but at the same time, an absolute talent.
Jeok Geon-ho, who had never once learned martial arts, swept away the masters of the Hyeon Family Manor like fallen leaves, and took the head of Clan Head Hyeon Yu to avenge his sister.
“So that is why you killed the villagers as well, every last one? That alone cannot justify your slaughter!”
“I, too, wanted to stop. But the awakened instinct turned me into a slaughterer mad for blood. No one would listen to me, and they sought to hunt me simply because I was the Heavenly Slaughter Star.”
“Wrong. You are no longer human. You are nothing more than a worm-eaten apple. A thing that must be cut away, for if it is left alone, it rots the whole.”
Jeok Geon-ho did not refute it.
He already knew that the stench of blood soaked into his hands would not vanish even if he washed them a thousand times.
“As Alliance Leader of the Murim Alliance, I will fight to the very end!”
Yeon Ha-gwang wrung out the last of his inner arts, kicked off the water's surface, and charged.
But a blood-red flash was faster than his will.
SQUELCH—!
Before he knew it, a sword was lodged in Yeon Ha-gwang's heart.
Jeok Geon-ho slowly approached and gripped the hilt.
The life slowly faded from the Alliance Leader's eyes.
“You are...... one who must vanish.......”
When Jeok Geon-ho pulled the sword free, Yeon Ha-gwang sank limply beneath the surface, then slowly floated back up.
Now, the only living human on the lake was Jeok Geon-ho.
“......The Heavenly Slaughter Star.”
He had won, but there was no joy.
With the killing intent gone from it, his face was merely that of a middle-aged man weary of life.
“......Is this the only way?”
He did not want to kill anymore.
The young man who had once been unable to kill even a single insect had, before he knew it, become a murderer unmatched in history.
He had tried every means to break the curse of the Heavenly Slaughter Star, but all had failed.
Once word of what happened at the lake spread, it was obvious that the world would close in on him with even greater fear.
“A worm-eaten apple.......”
There was no place in the world for him.
Jeok Geon-ho slowly turned the tip of his sword toward his own heart.
If death at the hands of others was not permitted, only one path remained.
SQUELCH—!
The sword pierced his own chest.
But the wound began to regenerate at a grotesque speed.
The instinct of the Heavenly Slaughter Star refused its master's death, forcibly breathing life back into him.
Jeok Geon-ho did not stop. He stabbed his abdomen and chest dozens more times.
He cut himself apart faster than the instinct could close the wounds.
And finally, he slashed his own throat deeply.
“I...... have won.”
Along with the blood gushing out like a fountain, his body sank deep into the lake.
It was the lonely final curtain of a man who had dreamed of an ordinary life, yet had been forced to live as a murderer to the very end.
.
.
.
A boy bolted upright with a scream.
His name was Cheon Su-rin. He was the son of an ordinary rural martial arts academy called the Heavenly Way Martial Arts Academy.
Cheon Su-rin had been napping beneath a large zelkova tree.
As though he had suffered a terrible nightmare, his martial arts uniform was already drenched in sweat.
“......That dream again.”
The scene of the Heavenly Slaughter Calamity and the Heaven-Subduing Hundred Saints Corps fighting to the death at Fallen Star Lake.
The ending in which he himself, as the Heavenly Slaughter Calamity, butchered a hundred masters and finally pierced his own heart.
Lately, the same dream had been repeating itself with eerie exactness.
“Why do I keep remembering that time?”
Had it been a mere dream, he would not have shuddered like this.
But it was not a dream. It was a fragment of his past life, lodged deep in Cheon Su-rin's mind.
In the memories of his past life that had suddenly surfaced not long ago, Cheon Su-rin had gone by the name Jeok Geon-ho.
That's right. The unmatched murderer who had stained the lake with blood in the dream just now had been Cheon Su-rin's past life.
“I'm not the Heavenly Slaughter Calamity anymore.”
Fortunately, his body in this life did not harbor that vicious slaughter nature.
It meant he would not have to go mad from the smell of blood and kill someone as he had in his past life.
The ordinary life that Jeok Geon-ho had so desperately craved.
Cheon Su-rin did not know why he had come to remember his past life, but thanks to it, he felt to the bone how precious the humble days he now enjoyed truly were.
Merely recalling the memories of his past life made him shudder.
Cheon Su-rin wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and laid his back down on the grass again.
“Hyung!”
No sooner had he lain down than a familiar voice rang out.
When he lifted his head slightly, a dopey-looking boy was running toward him, kicking up dust.
It was Bong Du-chil, a disciple of the Heavenly Way Martial Arts Academy.
Cheon Su-rin closed his eyes again as if he could not be bothered.
A moment later, Bong Du-chil's large shadow fell over his face.
“How'd you know I was here?”
“Come on, this is the only place you ever nap.”
“Want to lie down next to me? The breeze is just right for sleeping.”
Tempted by those words, Bong Du-chil quietly lay down beside him.
A gentle breeze and warm sunlight.
It was such peace that if he closed his eyes like this, he would need no other paradise.
“Oh, wait, this isn't the time for this!”
Just before drifting off, Bong Du-chil jolted upright in alarm.
“Hyung! This is no time to be napping out here!”
“Then what's it time for?”
“Training! The other kids'll be gathering soon.”
“Father's there, isn't he?”
“Did you forget? The Principal's gone starting today. You said you'd teach us!”
Come to think of it, a few days ago, his father had said he would be away from the academy for a while.
He had left the Heavenly Way Martial Arts Academy in Cheon Su-rin's hands until he returned.
“Ah, so he left today.”
Cheon Su-rin got up.
The Heavenly Way Martial Arts Academy was a small academy with only a handful of members, so his father usually handled everything himself.
With his father away, Cheon Su-rin was now the acting Principal.
“But where does the Principal always go around this time?”
“I don't know either.”
“You're his son and you don't even know that?”
“He didn't seem to want to talk about it, so I didn't bother asking.”
“Geez, you're way too uninterested in the Principal, Hyung.”
“It's not indifference. It's respect.”
Cheon Su-rin picked up the wooden sword he had left on the ground and hung it at his waist.
Bong Du-chil, who had been watching him blankly, asked.
“Hyung, there's something I'm curious about. Can I ask?”
“You've got a lot of questions today. What is it?”
“Why do you only carry a wooden sword these days instead of a real sword?”
In the year Cheon Su-rin turned fifteen, his father had bestowed a real sword upon him.
It was proof that he had been recognized as a martial artist, so Cheon Su-rin had cherished that sword like a treasure and worn it everywhere.
But about a month ago, after some change of heart, he had tossed the real sword into a corner of his room and begun carrying only a wooden sword, so Bong Du-chil could not help but be puzzled.
“You're curious about the strangest things.”
“The strangest things?! Last time I asked to touch it just once, you got so mad!”
“Did I?”
Bong Du-chil nodded vigorously, looking wronged.
Cheon Su-rin let out a chuckle, then answered with an unusually serious look.
“Because it's heavy.”
“Huh?”
“The real sword's too heavy, so I left it in my room. The wooden sword's much lighter and more comfortable.”
“Come on, liar! You used to wear it even when you were eating!”
“I didn't know back then. That a sword is...... much heavier than you'd think.”
In his past life, Cheon Su-rin had cut down thousands.
From the day he recalled the memories of his past life, he had begun to feel the karma of those he had killed added to the weight of the sword.
To draw a sword meant that a killing could happen at any moment.
Cheon Su-rin no longer wanted to be consumed by blood and slaughter.
On top of that, the dream of Fallen Star Lake that had been recurring lately felt like a warning to be even more careful.
“Come on, I lifted it too, and it wasn't that heavy.”
“You'll understand what I mean someday too.”
“.......”
“Wait, you lifted it? Don't tell me you snuck into my room?”
Struck right on the mark, Bong Du-chil's shoulders flinched.
When Cheon Su-rin narrowed his eyes at him, Bong Du-chil spun around and hurriedly left as if fleeing.
“L-let's hurry to the academy! Everyone's going to be waiting!”
Cheon Su-rin laughed lightly as he watched Bong Du-chil's retreating back.
Yes, a life like this was enough.
Tapping the light wooden sword, he walked toward his peaceful daily life.