The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes.
"Gahk!"
It was a blood-soaked man getting beaten half to death by a group of people.
All of them dressed in the kind of outfits you'd only ever see in a martial arts drama, no less.
"Told you, you should've checked who you were messing with before you jumped in. Hey. You crying?"
"Heh-heh-heh. Isn't this bastard about to piss himself?"
What on earth was going on?
All I could remember was dozing off after reading a martial arts novel all night long.
Its title was Chronicle of Villains.
I'd assumed it was just another Demonic Cult story. Far from it.
It turned out to be an unhinged novel in which a crazy author dumped every trial and calamity imaginable on seven protagonists and forced them to turn dark.
A trainwreck I'd flung aside halfway through, even though I lived by the creed of finishing every book I started.
But why?
Why did the scene in front of my eyes look like it had come straight out of that book?
Especially that baby-faced kid taking the beating.
Maybe high-school age by now? Hair jutting up like thorns, and eyes slit long and narrow like a viper's.
He looked familiar.
Very familiar, in fact.
"No way. Kang Woo-jin?"
"Yeah, it's me...... I won't forget today even if it kills me. I'll pay you back for this, I swear!"
"Huh?"
Don't they say that when something is absurd enough, it leaves you speechless? That was exactly the state I was in.
So that bulldog of a kid, glaring back even while he took a beating, was Kang Woo-jin, of all people.
Kang Woo-jin the Slaughter Evil, the most relentless and vicious of all the Seven Evils.
Wait. Then, could it be?!
I ran for a nearby pond like a man who'd lost his mind.
And the moment I saw the reflection in it, all I could do was freeze.
A pale, pretty-faced young gentleman, haggard through and through, whose eyes reeked of wickedness to anyone who looked.
"It's Baek Do-gyeom......"
Heir to the Baek Clan, the foremost family of Jiangnan, and the scoundrel of the Righteous Heaven Academy.
And.
WHACK!
"Gaaah!"
One of the villains who drive the seven protagonists to turn dark.
Watching Kang Woo-jin spurt a fountain of blood and black out, I thought to myself.
Any way you looked at it.
"I'm fucked......"
That seemed to be the case.
Truly.
***
Perched on the edge of the veranda, I dragged both bloodstained hands across my forehead.
To sum it up, I'd landed inside Chronicle of Villains and become Baek Do-gyeom, the guy who helped give birth to the Seven Evils.
And today was the day I'd pulverized Kang Woo-jin, who would one day be one of them.
The story behind it was simple.
We'd happened to get into a scuffle on the street, and the result was exactly what I'd seen today.
"Young Master, that fellow has been taken to a physician, and I have asked your friends to keep silent about today's incident."
When I looked up, a middle-aged man with big, fierce eyes and a group of warriors were bowing their heads.
Judging by how fast they'd come running, they had to be members of the Baek Clan household.
"He has been given basic treatment, so his life will not be in immediate danger."
For a second, I was dumbfounded.
"Basic treatment?"
Hold on, the kid got beaten to a pulp, and that's all you have to say?
"I know it is not what you would want, but his condition was critical, and we had no other choice."
What is this guy even talking about?
"If this grows any bigger, the Clan Head will not stand idly by either. So I beg you, please be understanding."
Huh? When I raised my head and looked around, every one of them was gazing at me with pleading eyes.
I wanted to explain, but it didn't seem like anything I said would get through right now.
"Please, go about your business."
It was the best I could do.
***
"......It's real."
How much time had passed?
Only after climbing a hill near the Baek Clan estate and pacing around for a long while could I fully accept the situation.
This was no dream and no delusion. It was reality.
In other words, I was Baek Do-gyeom.
And this place wasn't the modern world but a martial arts world.
Everything from the buildings to the clothes was exactly as it had been in the novel.
Awoooo!
Even the mournful howl of that wolf.
I had well and truly transmigrated.
Into this damned Chronicle of Villains.
Well, fine.
Dream or reality, let's just accept it!
It wasn't as if my old life had been one I couldn't bear to let go of anyway.
After my parents passed away, the only ones left around me were beasts, forever watching for a chance to see what else they could pick off me.
I'll shake it all off without looking back.
What the heck. Now that I've been born again, I'll live a good, happy life!
But.
"Even so, I won't last more than a few years anyway......"
My shoulders slumped. The novel's plot was far too vivid in my head for me to live a good life.
This crazy author clearly had a lot of grievances with society. A whole lot.
Otherwise, there was no way the author would have turned a world enjoying a golden age into a living hell overnight.
That's right.
If the early part of the story was the birth of the villains, the middle part was the destruction of the world.
The Seven Evils, hit by calamities and fortuitous encounters that came as a set, reached the heights of mastery at an absurdly young age.
And in the end, they declared war on the world.
That was the 'Night of the Seven Evils' that dyed the whole world in terror.
In the process, countless people died, and most of the Murim's powers were razed to the ground.
The orthodox factions, the unorthodox factions, the Imperial Family.
All of them fell, without exception.
And Baek Do-gyeom......
"He meets a horrible end before all that. After getting the crap beaten out of him by the protagonist and falling off a cliff, no less."
Not a single person so much as pitied his death.
If anything, they sneered that he'd gotten what he deserved.
Naturally.
"Because Baek Do-gyeom was a walking inferiority complex who did nothing but act out viciously."
A guy who was greedy despite being a weakling, and vile beyond words.
And that was me.
"Maybe I should just run far away."
If I went far enough away, I might be safe.
But.
"That won't last long either. I've already cracked open the head of the guy who holds grudges harder than anyone......"
This life definitely wasn't going to be easy.
Still.
"I can't just die."
I had to live.
No matter what.
***
The next day.
Morning came.
"Gasp!"
I hadn't been up long, and I'd already screamed twice.
Once when the sight of the room reminded me all over again that this was no dream but a hopeless reality.
And once more when I saw myself in the bronze mirror.
"Anyone would take one look at this and see a villain!"
Eyes slanting fiercely upward under thick lashes, like a starving young hawk's.
Skin as pale as someone who'd never seen a sliver of sunlight.
And to top it off, lips as red as blood.
It was a chilling face without a speck of goodness, even if you washed your eyes and looked twice.
And he was only seventeen.
"At this point, isn't this guy the First Evil?"
Judged purely on aptitude for evil, he passed with flying colors.
"Well, it's not all bad."
Of course, there were silver linings too.
One of them was language.
I set down the brush and glanced at the paper on the desk. Fierce, sharp Chinese characters were scrawled across it.
<Thy Dung Is Exceeding Thick>
I wrote that. It means your poop is thick.
I'd never properly studied Classical Chinese in my life. Much less calligraphy.
And yet it had written itself.
"It's definitely Baek Do-gyeom's handwriting, too. Even the brushwork says bad seed."
Without even thinking, I'd been writing, reading, and speaking this world's language.
As if it had always been that way.
That wasn't all.
"It's surprisingly calm."
The second was this heart.
My head was going wild like a grenade had gone off inside it, but my damned heart didn't so much as flutter, as if it were mocking me.
At this rate, even with a blade at my throat, I could sip tea at my leisure and write out my will.
"So the mind and the body are two different things?"
Looked at another way, you could say I'd inherited Baek Do-gyeom's abilities.
And that was a very important matter.
Why?
However much of a scoundrel bastard he'd been, this was the Murim, plain and simple.
"Then maybe I could......?"
I pictured myself looking as cool as the martial arts masters, then let out a snort and shook my head.
"I can feel how sickly this guy is just sitting still. I get winded just breathing."
As if that weren't enough.
The body was so clumsy that I couldn't even twirl a brush between my fingers properly.
It felt like I had boxing gloves on.
In short, the aptitude was a total bust.
"On top of that, this is the guy who got into the Black Tortoise Corps at the Academy, not the Azure Dragon Corps or the White Tiger Corps."
What did that mean?
It meant that rather than a martial artist, he was closer to a scholar who studied letters and medicine. Along with mechanisms and formations.
In a word, a guy about as far from martial arts as you could get.
"Of all the bodies I could have landed in, I had to get this sorry excuse for one. What am I supposed to do with this crazy author?"
I was seething down to my toes.
Maybe I'd gotten some kind of perk? Well, I'd tried hoping for that last night too.
- Young Master, may I come in for a moment......
- Status window! My info! Items!
All it got me was the humiliation of watching the servant who'd come for my clothes bolt from the room in horror.
And through it all, why was this damned heart so calm?
"Phew. Anyway, the decisive reason I can call myself lucky despite such awful conditions is the third and final one."
That was the point in time when I'd transmigrated.
Compared to the original, the present was a prequel, part of the backstory.
The real story of Chronicle of Villains was exactly one year away.
It would begin once the true protagonist, Cheon Su-hyeok the Annihilation Evil, dropped out of the Righteous Heaven Academy and turned dark.
So.
"That means I still have a chance to change the future."
Above all, I knew about countless things that were going to happen here.
How I used that knowledge would decide the rest of my life.
Whether I would meet a wretched end, just like in the original.
Or whether I would live out a glorious rest of my life!
Be it aptitude or the world.
Or anything else, for that matter.
Of course.
"Young Master, the Clan Head is asking for you."
Dodging the beating headed my way would have to come first.
***
Rattle.
When the servant slid the paper door open, a dignified middle-aged man was sitting in the Clan Head's Hall, trimming an orchid, just as I'd expected.
Clan Head Baek Chan-seong.
Master of a distinguished frontier family commonly known as the Jiangnan Baek Clan.
The crazy author had described him like this.
'The Dignified Tiger.'
A man who, for all his ability, was merciful if you put it kindly, and optimistic if you didn't.
'Then again, that's probably why a scoundrel son like Baek Do-gyeom is still alive.'
I carefully knelt on the empty floor cushion.
"You called for me, Father?"
"......!"
At that, Baek Chan-seong's pupils shook violently.
"Are you all right?"
Now he was staring blankly, as if he'd seen a ghost.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that orchid. You seem to treasure it."
Only then did Baek Chan-seong realize a leaf had snapped off in his hand.
He had doted on that little one for years.
But the words that followed left him no room to care.
"I made a terrible mistake yesterday. No matter how angry I was, I should never have hurt anyone. However you choose to reprimand me, the fault is mine, and I have no excuse. I am sorry."
It left a bitter taste even as I said it. Apologizing for something I hadn't even done.
But what could I do? Survival came first.
However.
"What scheme are you trying to pull this time?"
"Hm?"
Baek Chan-seong. No, my father roared, his face twisted with anger.
"Until you entered the Righteous Heaven Academy, I asked only one thing of you. That you keep quiet. Even a beast could understand that much. And yet you could not hold out even that long before causing trouble? What will you do now? What will you do about that child you hurt!"
That was when I realized. He didn't believe a word I said.
It made sense. Given everything Baek Do-gyeom used to do, of course it was hard to believe. I wouldn't believe it either.
But I didn't bother adding any explanations.
I simply said.
"I will set it right."
"......!"
"All of it."
I just had to take it one thing at a time.
***
For a long while, Baek Chan-seong could only stare blankly at the spot Baek Do-gyeom had left.
What did the boy mean to set right?
Did he intend to lash out at the household, just to make a point, because they had reported yesterday's incident to him?
Or did he mean to hunt down the unconscious boy and kill him?
"Hah."
These days, whatever he said only seemed to drive him and his son further apart, so it was hard to say anything at all.
Just like the snapped orchid.
Even so, when his wife was still here, the boy had not been this bad. He grew more cunning with every passing day.
"I am sorry, my wife......"
Everything felt like his fault, and his heart was heavy. Would the boy settle down a little once he married and became a father himself?
And yet.
"......Were that boy Do-gyeom's eyes always so clear?"
It was a day that left him feeling strange.