Hell.
This place is nothing short of hell.
Tang Hyun-cheol stood precariously at the summit of the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains and looked around.
A mountain of corpses, a sea of blood.
A graveyard of those already dead and those whose last breath would soon fade, orthodox, unorthodox, and demonic alike.
Every one of them had belonged to the Death Corps, who braved death to stand against the Heavenly Demon at the very front line.
'Am I the only one left.......'
Tang Hyun-cheol smiled bitterly.
The rise of the Demonic Cult.
Under the Heavenly Demon's order to build a world ruled by the Demonic Way, the Central Plains had been struck by attacks on every front at once.
The Murim Alliance joined its strength together, but many died, and even in that taut contest of strength the defensive lines buckled.
In response, the orthodox and the unorthodox forged an unprecedented alliance and formed a Death Corps drawn solely from their elites.
The result was mutual destruction.
The Orthodox-Demonic War, stretching a full ten years, was brought to a close with the Heavenly Demon's death, bought with countless lives.
'Either way, we stopped the Demonic Cult, so the plan succeeded.'
The faintly raised corner of his mouth dropped again at once.
"Cough!"
Blood surged back up his throat.
His body cried out that it had reached its limit.
'Is this where it ends.......?'
Tang Hyun-cheol accepted death calmly.
A body scorched black by demonic arts, rotting away in places, hung with cuts great and small, could not possibly hold out for long.
"Heh heh. Do you truly believe this is the end?"
The Heavenly Demon's voice came from not far off.
He lay sprawled on the ground, spitting out intermittent coughs.
Tang Hyun-cheol looked at the man letting out faint breaths just as he was, and creased the corners of his eyes.
A final thrashing of desperation.
You and I both.
"The Demonic Cult will not vanish. It will rise again and again, gather anew, butcher all of you, and build a world ruled by the Demonic Way!"
"Your tongue runs long."
Tang Hyun-cheol limped forward.
He drew a dagger from his robes, cut his hand with it, and smeared his own blood over the blade.
"And from a loser, no less."
Then he drove it straight into the Heavenly Demon's heart.
"GRAAAAAAAGH!"
For a martial artist of the Tang Clan, blood is poison itself.
Poison taken in from birth and gathered over long years in the poison essence could hardly have the same effect as ordinary poison.
Heat and chill came by turns, and at the sensation of insects crawling along his blood vessels, the Heavenly Demon writhed.
"If your kind appears again, then I too will come back to life again and again and bury a blade in your heart just the same."
Tang Hyun-cheol put his weight behind it and drove the dagger deeper.
"And even if it is not me, someone else will appear and take your head."
The voice, chewing out each word one at a time, rang low.
"Because history will remember your defeat, and it will be handed down to become the foundation of tomorrow."
At that crookedly raised corner of his mouth, the Heavenly Demon's body jerked.
But he no longer had the strength to strike back, nor an arm left to seize Tang Hyun-cheol's throat.
"Monster of a bastard......! When you, kh, when you first made your name as the Poison Lord, I should have dealt with you......."
The Heavenly Demon vomited blood in agony.
Red blood ran even from his bloodshot eyes.
"In my next life, I will most certainly have you......!"
The Heavenly Demon died without finishing his words.
Tang Hyun-cheol waited until the breath had ceased entirely, then pushed himself upright.
Death was drawing near to him as well.
"No one in sight, as expected."
The sky was clearing, and yet there was no sign of anyone come to confirm the war's end, nor anyone to gather up the bodies.
The Central Plains lay hidden behind cloud and mountain, so perhaps that was only to be expected?
"If no one comes, who will soothe the souls of these men.......?"
With death before him, a great many things clung to his eyes.
The murim after the war. Mourning for the dead and the lives of those left behind. The turmoil society would fall into, and the rebuilding of all that had collapsed.
And above all,
'The Tang Clan...... my family.......'
They had not been an affectionate family, but neither had they been a heartless one.
That was why, at the very end, they came to mind all the more.
If I had reached out a little more, would things have been different?
Could I have saved them?
If only I had studied the poison arts more.
If only I had honed the hidden weapon techniques more.
"......."
Regret remained.
But now it was time to go.
It grieved him to leave without seeing either those already dead and gone or those still left behind.
"I wanted to see them......."
With that small murmur as his last, Tang Hyun-cheol's body pitched forward.
He closed his eyes very slowly, as though waiting for something.
***
By common sense, does darkness not come after a person dies?
Apparently there were people for whom that common sense missed the mark.
That much was clear when a familiar scene appeared after death.
'Now what is this?'
As he lay blinking, his blurred vision sharpened, and a plain ceiling came into view.
That pattern. That color.
It was unmistakably the Tang Clan's.
'But why is it so bare?!'
He shot upright and looked around, and the sight was even more of a spectacle.
There was no gold leaf, and in place of splendid plum blossoms or pine bonsai, noble orchids decorated every corner.
This is the Tang Clan.
But it is not the Tang Clan he knows.
"What the......."
His twisted mouth stopped moving.
"What? Why does my voice sound like this?"
Young. More than it has any need to be.
The hand that reached up to check his throat flinched and drew away.
No calluses.
No scars either.
Fine and supple, as though it had never trained in martial arts, or had begun and given up partway.
He can see it and feel it, but it is not his.
"What kind of nonsense is this!"
His heart beat fast.
The unease that started from within seemed to choke off his breath.
Something. He needs something that will explain this situation.
He braced a hand on his knee, rose, and looked around.
"......!"
Fortunately, a bronze mirror lay within reach.
He snatched it up and thrust his face at it.
Hair as well kept as if drawn in ink, and eyes deep as the far sea.
The features were distinct yet softly rounded, a face that would easily win goodwill, and yet it was so haggard that any praise of a handsome young man rang hollow.
"This is me? This bastard who looks like he has not had so much as a bowl of thin gruel?"
He was bewildered.
An ominous supposition filled his head.
Surely not. Had the Tang Clan fallen?
"Ugh?!"
A pain rose abruptly, as though a great needle were stabbing wildly through his skull.
Then came dizziness, and his vision reeled.
"Kh!"
Scenes he did not know swept past before his eyes as they pleased, and unfamiliar memories poured into his head.
Familiar pavilions, a faint scent of poison and unfamiliar faces, memorial tablets for himself and for his family.
With the inflowing memories as evidence, instinct rendered its judgment.
This was the Sichuan Tang Clan a hundred years later, and he had become Tang Yu-hyeon, second son of the Clan Head.
"I...... really became my own descendant?"
SMACK—!
He struck his own cheek without a moment's hesitation.
"And a crazy bastard like this, of all things?!"
A crazy bastard.
Was there any phrase that captured Tang Yu-hyeon better?
In the course of rebuilding after the Orthodox-Demonic War, the Tang Clan lost the greater part of its secret arts, Heaven-Filling Flower Rain among them, and the family's fortunes declined.
Was that the reason? Hegemon of Sichuan, second among the Five Great Clans. They had held on to that seat, but next to the Namgung Clan, whose name rang out then as now as the world's greatest clan, they had sunk to the level of second-rate.
It was also what he had expected. That is usually how it ends for those who pour out everything to protect what they hold precious.
But the Tang Clan had not given up.
Both their finances and their prestige had shrunk, yet they believed that if they recovered the secret arts, they could rebound at any time.
Everyone toiled day and night to trace those secret arts, collecting all manner of ancient documents, calling upon masters who had gone into seclusion. And in the midst of it all, what was Tang Yu-hyeon doing?
Playing.
And very debauchedly at that.
The Elder Council, resenting that restoring the secret manuals cost money and cut into their own share, laid a plan to manufacture a flaw in the Clan Head so as to stop him.
And they chose Tang Yu-hyeon as the offering.
He was the frailest of the Clan Head's children, so they judged that sending in boys his own age to whisper sweet words would topple him easily.
And that judgment was accurate.
Tang Yu-hyeon fell for the coaxing of certain collateral branches and roamed about, drinking wine in wild extravagance.
Whether by misfortune or good fortune, Tang Yu-hyeon's parents did not give up on him.
They scolded his faults, yet waited with the thought that he would come back someday, and thanks to that, Tang Yu-hyeon's honor had not fallen too far.
Tang Yu-hyeon knew as much, and so, even while drifting from one pleasure house to the next and indulging in luxury, he had never crossed the line.
But this time was different.
"This bastard...... actually stuffed his face with a soul-befuddling drug?!"
With no one to restrain him, he had grown more and more insolent, until at last he crossed the line and took a soul-befuddling drug at a pleasure house.
And the moment he came home, he collapsed.
Judging by the absence of any bodily discomfort or leftover residue, the testing must already have been done.
"Can this...... be salvaged?"
This irredeemable piece of trash?
"No. Don't give up. This is the body you'll have to live in."
Above all, hateful or not, was he not a member of the Tang Clan and his own descendant?
If he falls, the clan falls with him.
Long years have passed, but it is my clan, my family.
With the Tang Clan's greatest genius, the Poison Lord Tang Hyun-cheol, sitting right here alive, as if I would let it wither away!
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
His fingers drummed the windowsill at a steady rhythm.
The more he retraced the memories and cast about for a method, the more his head ached.
It was all because of Tang Yu-hyeon's past conduct.
Tap. Tap...... Tap.......
The movement of his fingers slowed.
The solution that finally came to him arrived with a hearty curse.
"It's not as though I'm some specialist in turning over new leaves."
He raked his hair back roughly and changed his clothes at once.
When he flung the door open, his guard startled and moved to block him.
"Young Master! Why are you already out of bed? You must rest longer!"
"Move aside. I am going to see my father."
"Good heavens. The Clan Head is greatly angered! No good will come of seeing him now!"
"It is precisely that matter I mean to see him about, so be quiet."
"Urk!"
In an instant the surroundings fell silent.
No further arms came to hold him back.
As he strode toward the Clan Head's hall, even the gate guards keeping watch there flinched at his uncommon presence.
"What brings you here? The Clan Head is at his work, so unless an appointment was made in advance, it will be difficult to see him."
"I have an urgent word for my father. Open the door."
The gate guard worked his lips as though at a loss.
The moment he made to add something, the door opened.
Head Steward Tang Un-yeop appeared from within.
"Young Master Yu-hyeon. The Clan Head bids you enter."
With the Clan Head's order given, no one was left to object.
'That spares my mouth some work.'
When he followed Tang Un-yeop inside, the Clan Head, the Poison King Tang Gang-heon, was waiting for him while examining a bamboo scroll.
The Overlord of Sichuan and the one who governs poison. As if to prove him a man worthy of that alias, merely facing him was enough to feel a grand and vigorous energy.
"I greet the Clan Head."
"Decide properly whether the one you have come to see is your father or the Clan Head."
It meant he should decide which he would rather hear first, a scolding or an interrogation.
Of course, he had no intention of hearing either.
"My father."
"Very well. Do you have something to say?"
When Tang Gang-heon set down the bamboo scroll, Tang Un-yeop read the mood and withdrew.
CLICK—.
The instant he heard the door close, Tang Yu-hyeon lifted his head.
And then,
THUD!
He dropped to his knees.
"Father! I am sorry!"
Tang Yu-hyeon's voice rang thunderously through the Clan Head's hall.
At the bold apology, Tang Gang-heon blinked.
It was the expression of a man doubting what he had just heard.
"From now on I will live with my wits about me!"
Up to here was the apology offered as 'Tang Yu-hyeon' to his father, Tang Gang-heon.
From here on, the words were for the Clan Head who was his 'father.'
"You must have been quite startled when I suddenly collapsed the moment I came home, were you not?"
Tang Yu-hyeon took care not to let slip the sly tone he had once used to tease his friends.
"But in truth, there was a reason for how I ended up that way."
Tang Yu-hyeon, you had better count meeting me as good fortune.
Because no one but this ancestor will ever clean up your faults.
Your life, soaked front and back in the mire, I will scrub it clean and put it to good use.