Chapter 260 - Your Names Are

I shared a meal with Father for the first time in a while.

I love these moments. Whether we are playing Go or eating, these quiet moments of wordless conversation with Father.

For all my usual banter, perhaps it is because these moments bring me closest to my true self. I had lived almost an entire lifetime in silence, after all.

“Was the training difficult?”

“Not physically, but enduring the tedium of repetition was hard.”

“How did you endure it?”

“In the end, I emptied my mind. Repetition would be my lifelong task, and even if I escaped this tedium, another kind would be waiting. So I decided to simply keep going. Eventually, it felt as though both the repetition and the tedium had become part of me.”

Father smiled. It was not a mocking smile, but one of sincere congratulations for finding the right path.

I explained in detail how I had interpreted the first form, what trials and errors I had gone through, and how I had practiced it over and over.

I spoke excitedly, as though showing off, but I was actually giving Father information.

Something he could draw on.

Father would compare my interpretation with his own and strive to create a better form. Please, let him succeed.

I had not regressed to become stronger than Father or to defeat him. I had come back so that we could survive together.

“If you’ve finished eating, let’s go work off the meal.”

I followed Father outside. Looking at the distant summit of Mount Daecheon, he said,

“Let’s race to see who gets there first.”

For some reason, Father had proposed a contest of lightness arts.

“You haven’t forgotten that I asked for a race once I attained complete mastery of Swift Step.”

“Well? Are you confident?”

“Of course. For the record, even the Demon Supremes all lost to me.”

“You may start first!”

“Then you’ll have to spend the whole race looking at my back.”

I dashed off the instant I finished speaking. This way, even if I happened to win, Father would have an excuse.

Using Swift Step, I raced ahead at a terrifying speed.

With complete mastery, Swift Step was so fast that I wondered whether even Father could keep up.

It happened just then. I thought I heard a fierce rush of wind behind me.

When I turned my head, Father was beside me.

He was flying upright through the air, his robes billowing. Speed was no longer the point.

'He looks magnificent!'

While I was running for all I was worth, Father flew with proud, lofty grace. His completely mastered Heavenly Demon's Flight Art suited him so perfectly that it seemed made for him.

Right. If I couldn’t look impressive, I couldn’t afford to be slower, too.

I raced with every ounce of strength I had. I truly thought I was moving as fast as light, but Father reached the summit first.

“I lost. In style and in speed. Even the Wind God is no match for the Heavenly Demon.”

As I hung my head, Father said,

“Swift Step is fast, too.”

He never acknowledged other martial arts, but the Wind God's Four Steps was an exception.

Then he said something unexpected.

“Once you attain complete mastery of the Heavenly Demon's Flight Art, you will achieve the same result.”

Those words acknowledged my abilities, but there was a reason both for his proposing the race and for what he had just said.

“I will teach you the Heavenly Demon's Flight Art.”

I understood. It was because of what I had told him about the first form earlier. Having learned something from me, he wanted to teach me something in return. Father never simply accepted a gift.

“Thank you, Father.”

I prostrated myself on the spot.

“At your current level, having grasped the ultimate principles of lightness arts, you should learn it without difficulty. Complete mastery should not take very long, either. Now, listen carefully.”

Father imparted the formulas of the Heavenly Demon's Flight Art right there. He only finished after checking several times that I had memorized them properly.

I gave him a deep bow.

“I’m so happy, Father.”

I was not this happy merely because the Heavenly Demon's Flight Art was the finest lightness art in Murim. Nor was it because I might combine it with the Wind God's Four Steps to move even faster.

I was happy because I was now inheriting all of Father’s exclusive martial arts. The Nine Calamities Demonic Art, the Heavenly Demon’s Body-Protection Art, and now the Heavenly Demon's Flight Art. I had learned every core martial art Father practiced. My heart swelled.

“You may get up now.”

“Yes, Father.”

We stood side by side on the cliff at the summit of Mount Daecheon.

In the distance, the entire Divine Cult of the Heavenly Demon lay before us.

“When I became young lord, I came up here with my father.”

I looked at Father beside me. I pictured him in his youth, with Grandfather standing at his side.

“My father dreamed of unifying Murim.”

That was something I had never known.

After a pause, I asked,

“What about you, Father?”

He did not answer. I knew that he dreamed of unifying Murim. And he knew that I knew.

I brought up something difficult to say. It was something I would have to say someday.

“Even if you accomplish the great undertaking of unifying Murim and earn the praise and respect of everyone in the world... you will not earn mine.”

He could have flown into a rage at those words, but he said nothing. By now, he understood what lay in his son’s heart.

In silence, we looked at the distant Divine Cult of the Heavenly Demon, then at the horizon and sky stretching beyond it.

To lighten the heavy mood, I spoke cheerfully.

“Father, please give my friends names. I’ve been trying to think of something impressive myself. I considered a ghost theme—Night Ghost, Blood Ghost, White Ghost, and Heavenly Ghost—but on reflection, those sounded too sinister. So I thought I might choose something more refined, with a moon theme: Bright Moon, Waning Moon, Hidden Moon, and Glimmering Moon. Or perhaps a color theme...”

Just then, Father abruptly spoke.

“East, West, South, North.”

I flinched.

“You’re joking, aren’t you?”

Father looked at me without a trace of humor.

“Not even Plum, Orchid, Chrysanthemum, and Bamboo? Or Clear Breeze and Bright Moon? East, West, South, and North?”

I couldn’t tell whether he meant I should not bother naming evil spirits, whether this was because of what I had said about unifying Murim, or whether he genuinely liked those names.

“East, West, South, North!”

He repeated them as though settling the matter.

What could I do when Father insisted?

Ah, forgive me, my evil spirits!

“Oh, now that I hear them, they sound good. East Ghost, West Ghost, South Ghost, North Ghost. Easy to remember, too. Perfect. If anyone asks, I’ll proudly say, ‘My father named them!’”

I’m going to tell everyone you came up with them! Even so, Father did not budge.

And so the four evil spirits’ names were settled: East, West, South, and North!

* * *

After descending Mount Daecheon, I headed straight to Heaven-Reaching Pavilion.

I wanted to hear from Chief Strategist Sima Myeong what I needed to do next.

The strategists I encountered as I entered greeted me respectfully.

Their gazes were friendly. Given the nature of their work, they knew more about me than anyone, so any change in the way they looked at me was worth noting.

After passing through several layers of strict security, I entered Heaven-Reaching Pavilion’s operations room. Sima Myeong was meeting with the strategists in the conference room.

The strategist who greeted me offered to notify him, but I said not to disturb him and waited in the operations room for the meeting to end.

The place was a hive of activity.

Messages kept arriving through a dozen or so openings set into one wall, each assigned to a different region, and the strategists sorted them according to subject.

One strategist hurried about carrying documents, while another wrote busily. Yet another moved flags in dozens of different colors around a topographical map of the Central Plains. Not a single person was idle.

Murim was peaceful, but this place was a battlefield. No, perhaps Murim was peaceful precisely because this place was a battlefield.

A little later, Sima Myeong emerged from the meeting and was startled to see me.

“Young lord, when did you arrive?”

“A little while ago. I said I would wait until your meeting ended and asked them not to interrupt.”

“Let’s go to my office.”

“Let’s talk here. I love watching the strategists at work. It makes me feel I should work harder, too.”

“That hardly seems fitting for someone who has just emerged from closed-door training. You should rest now.”

“And that hardly seems fitting for someone with a mountain of assignments waiting for me.”

Sima Myeong and I smiled at each other.

“How was your training?”

“As soon as I came out, I ran to Father to show off without even shaving.”

The words “show off” told him everything about the result.

“My congratulations.”

“It’s thanks to you adjusting my outside commitments. I must have quite a backlog. What should I do first?”

“First, you need to visit the Hunan and Jiangxi branches. The Hunan branch will be the first point of conflict if war breaks out with the Orthodox Martial Alliance, while Jiangxi is a strategic stronghold for confronting the Unorthodox Alliance. Your first duty as young lord is therefore to visit both branches and meet their heads.”

“Understood.”

“I will send the official assignment document tomorrow morning.”

“Very well. I’ll see you when I return.”

As I turned to leave, Sima Myeong spoke.

“From now on, you will have a great influence on the Cult’s fate.”

I smiled at him.

“That’s why I intend to visit you often.”

* * *

I had left Heaven-Reaching Pavilion and was walking back to my residence.

On a quiet stretch of road, a masked man appeared before me. The man who emerged from concealment was Hwi, Guard Commander of the Heavenly Demon Hall.

“Uncle!”

“Young lord.”

“Please, just call me Geuk like you did when I was little.”

“I cannot do that.”

Seeing him again after so long moved me deeply.

“How long has it been? You have so much more gray hair now.”

“I’m getting older, too.”

“It’s because serving Father is so difficult. He’s terribly demanding, isn’t he? Always tormenting you?”

“It is the greatest joy of my life.”

That was truly the Hwi I knew. A man whose protective duty was everything. A man for whom Father was everything.

“You once carried me on your back on a snowy day.”

Hwi smiled, his eyes curving like crescent moons above his mask.

“You remember that?”

“Of course. I was so happy that day.”

After those greetings, Hwi explained why he had sought me out.

“Please take your guards with you when you leave the Cult this time.”

I could not readily answer. I had intended to go alone. He had come because he had anticipated as much.

“To be frank, this is not for your sake, young lord. I know that with your abilities, guards would only be a burden.”

Hwi did not mince words.

“It is for the sake of my juniors. Those youngsters will grow into excellent guards if they stay with you. I have watched your recent actions. What I saw in you was an ocean—an ocean vast enough to embrace all my juniors.”

Given his personality, coming to me and saying such things could not have been easy. That was how deeply he cared for the Heavenly Demon Guard and his juniors.

That day, they had all died alongside us.

If this was a request from Hwi, who had devoted his whole life to Father, then yes—I would take not just twelve, but twelve hundred.

“I’ll take them with me.”

Hwi bowed his head respectfully.

“Thank you.”

“Not at all, Uncle.”

I bowed my head respectfully in return.

By the time I raised it again, Hwi was gone. He was not a man who repaid favors with words, so someday he would try to repay today’s kindness.

Uncle Hwi, there is no need. You and your juniors have already repaid it with your lives.

* * *

My guards were practicing in the training grounds.

I watched them for a while before stepping inside.

They stopped training and greeted me in unison with fist-and-palm salutes.

“We greet the young lord!”

Their thunderous greeting rang with spirit.

“Have you been training throughout the past hundred days?”

Jeok Yeon stepped forward to answer.

“Yes. We have not missed a single day.”

“Then why are there only six of you?”

“We don’t know when we may be called on for guard duty, so we live in day and night shifts. We switch shifts once a month.”

In other words, the night shift trained from evening until morning. I found that truly impressive.

Since it had been a while, I checked Jeok Yeon’s eye first.

Knowing it was useless to refuse, he obediently removed his eye patch.

I peered into his bright-red eye and said,

“You’ve advanced another level in the Ghost Eye Art.”

Jeok Yeon was startled.

“That’s right. Did you really tell just from the color of my eye?”

“The color has changed.”

“I couldn’t tell, even though I look in a bronze mirror every day.”

The New Eye Procedure had allowed me to distinguish the difference.

It was also part of why his eye weighed on my mind. I had undergone the New Eye Procedure for my own sake, while he had learned the Ghost Eye Art for someone else. And that someone had turned out to be me.

Even if it was all his own choice and fate, sacrificing an eye for another person was never easy.

I fed true qi into his eye to soothe it.

“It feels different.”

“How?”

“The pain has lessened much more.”

If so, it was probably because of the change in my internal energy. It had become far more powerful and pure.

“Tomorrow, you’re leaving the Cult with me. The official assignment document will arrive from Heaven-Reaching Pavilion early in the morning.”

Jeok Yeon and the guards’ faces lit up. At last, they were getting their first assignment.

Their barely contained excitement and joy reached me. Seeing how happy they were, leaving them behind would have been a terrible mistake.

“Thank you for trusting us.”

“Keep me safe starting tomorrow. I’m counting on you.”

With a resounding answer, Jeok Yeon and the guards bowed. Yes, since we were going out anyway, let us return stronger.

The next morning, two carriages left the Cult.

It was my first official departure as young lord, with my own guards in attendance.