Chapter 55 - I Know You

The violet radiance signaled the use of a forbidden demonic art.

He had unleashed Mind-Reading Soul-Stealing Sorcery, which compelled truthful answers from its target.

Mind-Reading Soul-Stealing Sorcery was forbidden from being used on Cult members without the Cult Leader’s permission. Since it could read another person’s mind and even draw answers out of them, it offered ample opportunities for abuse.

Yet the Soul-Seizing Demon had violated that prohibition and cast it.

All higher-level ghost sorcerers could use Mind-Reading Soul-Stealing Sorcery, but its success rate depended on their skill and internal energy. The greater their skill, the deeper the violet became.

That dazzling violet radiance told me the Soul-Seizing Demon’s sorcery could extract even things its target no longer remembered.

“Who are you?”

“Geom Mugeuk.”

“How do you know about me?”

“I investigated you. Your personality, everything.”

Mind-Reading Soul-Stealing Sorcery entered through the eyes, so it had no effect whatsoever on me after I had applied Blood-Eye Purifying Water.

Even so, I answered as though I were under its influence. His questions might tell me something about him, too.

“Is the Cult Leader behind this?”

“No.”

Relief flickered across the Soul-Seizing Demon’s face. As expected, Father was the one he feared most.

“Why have you come?”

“To kill you.”

“Who did you tell you were coming here?”

“No one.”

The Soul-Seizing Demon released the sorcery. Apparently, he had decided that if the Cult Leader hadn’t sent me, there was no reason to keep expending internal energy on it. Mind-Reading Soul-Stealing Sorcery consumed more internal energy and mental strength than any other sinister sorcery.

His question about whom I had told revealed something: he had decided to kill me.

“Second Young Master, today you will disappear from your world.”

“Never mind me—can you deal with the consequences of killing me?”

“Why should I deal with them? The Blood Heaven Saber Demon will have to. I won’t be the one to kill you. You will try to kill him and die at his hands.”

He meant to put me under soul-seizing sorcery and order me to kill the Blood Heaven Saber Demon. Since he believed I couldn’t defeat the Saber Demon, he had concluded that I would end up dead at his hands.

“That’s just like you.”

“What do you mean, like me? Why do you keep talking as though you know me so well? You investigated me? The very fact that you think you can kill me proves how worthless your investigation was.”

The instant he finished speaking, the world spun.

Brilliant, intense lights flew at me, so blinding I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Then I was standing alone in a dark space. Someone spoke as though whispering in my ear.

—“Kill the Blood Heaven Saber Demon!”

Those words repeated endlessly.

First in the Soul-Seizing Demon’s voice, then Father’s, Yi An’s, and Seo Daeryong’s. Every voice I knew repeated the command. I even heard my own voice, and the Blood Heaven Saber Demon’s.

Even covering my ears couldn’t stop those words from burrowing into my head. It felt as though the command was being hammered into my brain. The pain made my head feel ready to burst.

It was this bad even with the Heavenly Demon’s Body-Protection Art active. An ordinary person would already have succumbed to the Soul-Seizing Demon’s sorcery.

I looked around.

Far away in the pitch-black darkness, I saw a bluish light. I instinctively felt that it was the way to break this soul-seizing sorcery, and walked toward it.

The closer I came, the larger it grew, until it was big enough for a person to pass through. Without hesitation, I stepped into it.

The Soul-Seizing Demon stood outside, staring at me in surprise.

“How did you open your eyes on your own?”

Apparently, walking out through the light had translated into opening my eyes in reality.

“You cannot open your eyes before the soul-seizing sorcery is complete!”

“I must have grown quite attached to the Blood Heaven Saber Demon. I don’t want to kill him.”

Once again, my surroundings spun and intense light flew at me. I was back in the darkness.

—“Kill the Blood Heaven Saber Demon!”

This was a stronger soul-seizing sorcery, fueled by more internal energy. If the first attempt had driven the command into my brain with a small hammer, this one battered it with a huge one.

But the bluish light was still there, and I could escape through it. Even after emerging, I was so dizzy my head felt as though it would split. That alone showed how powerful the Soul-Seizing Demon’s sorcery was.

“Why in the world won’t the soul-seizing sorcery work on you?”

“I told you. It’s the deep bond I share with the venerable Saber Demon.”

“Nonsense!”

“You’re getting anxious. That isn’t like you.”

“Then I, who have no such attachment, will have to do it myself.”

The next instant, my surroundings darkened.

Something writhed in the darkness.

The floor heaved, and black shadows rose to their feet. With long, slit-like eyes and mouths and elongated limbs, they were monsters that chilled the blood merely to look at.

Those things, which looked as though they had crawled up from hell, lunged at me.

I slashed them with the Black Demon Sword.

Dots of bluish light marked the black monsters’ bodies—on one’s head, another’s belly, another’s arm. Blood-Eye Purifying Water showed me exactly how to counter this sinister sorcery.

When I thrust precisely into those lights, the monsters dissolved into clusters of white light. They must have been evil spirits that would never die unless struck squarely in their vital spots, continuing to attack their opponent to the very end. Martial prowess alone could never have stopped these enemies.

Once I had cut down every monster, the darkness lifted, revealing the Soul-Seizing Demon standing with a grave expression.

Without a word, he unleashed his next sinister sorcery.

The surroundings darkened, then brightened again, and I was startled.

I stood on a large log in the middle of the sea.

It was real seawater. Surely this was an illusion created by manipulating the human mind, yet it was a real sea where falling in could kill me.

Then I heard waves in the distance.

I turned my head and saw something bearing down on me from far away. Astonishingly, it was an enormous tidal wave.

ROOOOAR!

Nature’s fury, utterly beyond human power to stop.

Now I understood exactly why orthodox martial artists considered the Soul-Seizing Demon their most troublesome opponent. How could a mere human overcome this immense illusion?

The approaching tidal wave towered like a cliff, so high its crest seemed impossibly distant.

Yet nowhere on it could I see a way to break the sorcery.

There was nowhere to escape, and the wave swept me up. Its tremendous impact crushed me beneath the water. Without the Heavenly Demon’s Body-Protection Art, that blow would have knocked me unconscious.

I was swept helplessly this way and that underwater.

How much time had passed?

“Pah!”

I thrust my face above the surface and released the breath I had been holding.

Just as I thought I could finally breathe again, another tidal wave began rolling toward me from the distance. If these waves kept coming, even the greatest master would eventually die of exhaustion. I had to find the counter and escape before that happened.

I searched my surroundings and dove underwater, looking for a bluish light. But the sea below was nothing but darkness.

The second tidal wave swept me up as well. After minimizing its impact with the Heavenly Demon’s Body-Protection Art, I raised my head above the water again. Wherever I looked, there was only the boundless sea.

Searching this vast ocean for the counter seemed nearly impossible.

Where on earth could it be? There were no gulls, no rocky islands—nothing in this endless sea but the seawater and me.

‘There has to be something for me to search.’

At that moment, a thought flashed through my mind. Come to think of it, there had been one thing.

‘Could it be?’

I launched myself out of the water. Kicking off the sea, I rose into the air to search for that one thing. But I failed to find it and was caught in the third tidal wave.

Before the fourth arrived, I leaped above the sea again and searched desperately.

At last, I found what I had been looking for.

‘Please! Let this be it!’

It was the log I had been standing on when I first arrived here.

I rolled it over and found a bluish light glowing underneath.

Blood-Eye Purifying Water always showed me the counter swiftly and precisely, but this time I had overlooked what was right under my nose. The sole thing protecting me in the boundless sea was the very key to breaking the sorcery. No wonder I had missed it.

Or perhaps the light had originally been on top, and the waves had rolled the log over so that it faced downward.

Just before the fourth tidal wave struck, I cut through the log with the Black Demon Sword.

At that very instant, the approaching wave vanished as though it had never existed, and the sea disappeared with it.

That must have been one of his trump cards, but the Soul-Seizing Demon gave me no glimpse of his despair.

A new space unfolded immediately. He was pouring out his lethal secret arts.

Some thirty mirrors stood around me.

My life was reflected in them.

There was my childhood self, my present self, my middle-aged self, and my elderly self. It was as though the mirrors showed my entire lifetime at intervals of three or four years.

I walked slowly among them, looking at myself in each mirror. Most showed ages I had already experienced before my regression, but at some point they began showing ages I had never reached. In the final mirror, in particular, I was so old that I could barely recognize myself.

I was on the verge of death.

I asked my reflection,

“What do you regret so much?”

In the mirror, I lay alone in a large room, withered and shriveled, staring at the ceiling with empty eyes. There was no one to stay beside me as I died. It was a truly lonely, desolate death.

This was not my future. It was an illusion created by the Soul-Seizing Demon. Someone more hotheaded might have smashed this mirror. If they had, things probably would have become even worse.

I reached out and slowly caressed the old man’s image in the mirror.

“You lived with so much blood on your hands, yet you hoped for a happy death? That’s greedy, Mugeuk. If you killed Hwa Mugi and saved the people you needed to save, a death like this is all right.”

I comforted myself. What would my actual death be like? Would I die alone and desolate like that? Or would I die smiling, comforting those I left behind?

“It’s all right. Go in peace. I know you.”

I stroked my reflection, but perhaps I was comforting my present self instead. Telling myself it was all right, that I was doing well.

I returned to the front and stood before a mirror showing my younger years. It reflected me a few years from now, and bluish light shimmered around its edges.

“Now, shall we leave?”

CRASH!

I swung the Black Demon Sword and shattered the mirror.

Beyond its broken shards, I saw the Soul-Seizing Demon’s astonished face.

“How did you know it was this mirror?”

Of the dozens of mirrors, only one offered a way out.

“Break the wrong one, and the number of mirrors doubles. Break another wrong one, and it doubles again. You would never get out.”

“I’m lucky.”

“You escaped through luck? Luck alone cannot break it!”

The Soul-Seizing Demon’s expression had gone completely rigid. Surprise had turned to shock, and he reached the one conclusion that must have been crossing his mind throughout his failed attacks.

He asked in a trembling voice,

“Have you truly learned the Nine Calamities Demonic Art?”

Before I could answer, he decided I had.

“That mad Cult Leader! He chose his successor behind our backs?”

That was his mistaken conclusion. It was inevitable. There was only one circumstance in which his sinister sorcery would not work.

The Soul-Seizing Demon erupted in rage.

“Damn him! Using his own son as a blade to kill me? That filthy bastard! The Cult Leader has never once shown his true thoughts. Always stabbing us in the back.”

“Wait! Let’s clear something up. Apart from this, when has Father ever stabbed you in the back?”

“What?”

“You said he always does it. Tell me about the other times.”

The Soul-Seizing Demon had no answer.

“Father said you were the one orthodox martial artists feared most. That means he thinks highly of you. Would he stab someone he values like that in the back? I don’t think he ever has.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Don’t run your mouth just because you’re angry. Father hesitated over killing you right to the end. This might even cost me his favor.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

“I gave it a lot of thought. People farm, run businesses, attend schools and martial academies. They’re just living ordinary lives. Then one day, they’re dragged away without knowing why, and their hearts are torn out while they’re still alive. Wouldn’t that be terribly unjust?”

“Life is unfair. If they don’t like it, they can become martial masters.”

“Today, you can take all that injustice for yourself.”

Even though he mistakenly believed I had learned the Nine Calamities Demonic Art, the Soul-Seizing Demon remained undaunted.

“You said you investigated me? Yes, you did your research well. I have lived driven by the desire for a long life. Did you think I wouldn’t foresee a day like this? A day when the Cult Leader would betray me and try to kill me?”

He still believed Father had orchestrated this.

“Do you know why I became obsessed with the Heart-Soul Great Art? Merely to gain a little internal energy?”

“Wasn’t that it?”

“Of course not.”

Black, smoke-like qi began rising around the Soul-Seizing Demon’s body.

“You said I had become a monster? Have you even seen a real monster?”

Within that black qi, he began to change. It was a literal transformation. His body grew larger, and his skin turned black. Brilliant white radiance streamed from his long, slit-like eyes, and his ears jutted upward like an evil spirit’s. Inside his chest, I could see a huge red heart throbbing.

Was that an illusion, or was it real?

His transformed self exuded a completely different qi presence: cold and solid. I tensed. This demonic art was a killing move devised to counter the Nine Calamities Demonic Art. That was how powerful it was.

“I’ll tear your precious Nine Calamities Demonic Art to shreds!”

The demonic qi he unleashed swept through the surroundings. It was no ordinary demonic qi, but Dark Demonic Qi.