Chapter 96 - There Was Nothing at the End of Your Life

The next day, the Wicked Laughing Demon came to see me.

The sight of him slowly crossing Yellow Springs Pavilion’s training ground in his white mask inspired an overwhelming sense of dread.

Neither the investigators nor the enforcement martial artists dared even whisper from a distance. They all held their breath as they greeted him and passed by. They were far more frightened than when the Blood Heaven Saber Demon or Single Flower Sword Supreme visited.

I stood at my office window, watching.

Beside me, Seo Daeryong spoke in a trembling voice.

“What on earth happened yesterday to bring that terrifying man to our pavilion?”

“Investigator Seo, our Yellow Springs Pavilion is the most frightening place in the Cult. The visitors should be trembling. Why are you trembling?”

“Yes, let’s say that’s true. Do I need to flee for safety or not? For the sake of everything we’ve been through, please tell me. Please!”

Seeing that he could still afford to joke like this, his martial training under the Saber Demon seemed to be going well. He was working himself to death, after all. I expected to see him transformed before long.

“It was only yesterday that I asked you to keep worrying about me.”

“I’ll worry about you from a distance, like yesterday.”

“Go and escort him in. That’s a job for my right-hand man.”

“All I ask is that the Wicked Laughing Demon never learn that I’m your right-hand man.”

Seo Daeryong went outside, and my gaze returned to the Wicked Laughing Demon.

I had known he would come, but not so soon—and certainly not to Yellow Springs Pavilion in broad daylight.

His impulsive, instinct-driven behavior hadn’t changed from my previous life. That made him an interesting opponent, and a difficult one to deal with.

A little later, Seo Daeryong spoke from outside the door.

“The Wicked Demon Supreme is here.”

“Show him in.”

The Wicked Laughing Demon entered, escorted by Seo Daeryong.

“Welcome, Elder.”

“Calling me Elder again? I told you to treat me casually, like a friend.”

“I couldn’t possibly. Then I’ll call you Laughing Demon.”

“Very well.”

The Wicked Laughing Demon laughed aloud. He behaved perfectly naturally, as if nothing had happened yesterday.

As Seo Daeryong turned to leave after escorting him in, I quickly spoke up.

“Oh, that fellow there is Investigator Seo, my right-hand man.”

Seo Daeryong’s expression screamed. Then, as the Wicked Laughing Demon turned toward him, he composed his face and bowed.

“I’m Seo Daeryong. It is an honor to meet someone I hold in such high esteem.”

“Oh, I’ll remember you.”

“Thank you.”

Seo Daeryong walked out looking as though the world had ended. He was surely screaming inside. ‘Please don’t remember me!’ I smiled as I watched him go.

The Wicked Laughing Demon abruptly asked,

“Don’t people usually hide those they care about?”

“From an enemy, perhaps. But you aren’t my enemy, are you?”

“That doesn’t make us friends yet, either.”

“If someone is determined to kill them, can they really stay hidden, no matter how carefully you conceal them? Have you ever failed to kill someone you wanted dead because they hid from you?”

“Never.”

“Exactly. We never know when we might die anyway. Shouldn’t he live his life properly fulfilling his role as my right-hand man?”

An unusual gleam passed through the Wicked Laughing Demon’s eyes.

“That’s quite an interesting thing to say.”

He rose and looked around my office. After inspecting the documents piled on my desk and the books lining the wall cabinet, he smelled the flowers in the pot by the window. It was the pot the Single Flower Sword Supreme had given me.

“They smell lovely.”

“Something recently gave me a reason to grow fond of flowers.”

“An heir to the Divine Cult of the Heavenly Demon who likes flowers... If those bastards from the Orthodox Martial Alliance invade, are we to die in a flower bed?”

Despite his mocking tone, I answered calmly.

“Dying alone in some nameless field might have its own appeal, but wouldn’t this be nice too? If the last thing you smelled as you drew your final breath was flowers rather than blood?”

Rather than agree or disagree, the Wicked Laughing Demon gave his habitual laugh.

“So, what brings you here?”

He turned away from the flowers to face me.

“After you left yesterday, Second Young Master, I gave it some thought. I found it terribly disappointing that we couldn’t be friends.”

“So did I.”

“So I came to see if we might find a way to become friends.”

“I’m glad you came. Have you found a way?”

“I thought we could each make one concession.”

“How so?”

“I’ll yield on your view of good and evil. I’ll make an effort to understand your new Demonic Path.”

“Then what should I concede?”

“You said I would have to remove my mask for us to become friends. Could you yield on that?”

“Before that, let me ask one question. Why do you want to be my friend?”

“I want there to be no barriers between us.”

In truth, I knew why the Wicked Laughing Demon was doing this. First, he wanted to find out how I had killed the Soul-Seizing Demon. When I had returned to the Cult in my previous life, both the Soul-Seizing Demon and the Wicked Laughing Demon had still been alive.

This was what I had felt then: the more evil they were, the longer they survived.

The Wicked Laughing Demon valued his own life, too, so he would want to discover how I had killed the Soul-Seizing Demon by any means necessary. If the Soul-Seizing Demon could fall victim to me, he would reason, so could he.

The other reason was his nature. He became obsessed with people who provoked and intrigued him. He approached them, made them his friends, and killed them the moment he grew bored. It was a pathological predilection unknown to everyone but me.

That was why I mustn’t read anything positive into his offer of friendship. “Let’s be friends” meant “I’ll play with you, then kill you.”

Those two reasons had brought the Wicked Laughing Demon all the way to my office in person. They were why he told the absurd lie that he would try to understand my Demonic Path.

“I want to be your friend, Second Young Master.”

Yes, I would become his friend in this life as well.

Only once we became friends would he stand at a point where he was neither enemy nor ally.

That was the kind of man the Wicked Laughing Demon was. Only by becoming his friend could you barely escape being his enemy.

“Very well. Let’s both make a concession.”

At my answer, the Wicked Laughing Demon burst into loud laughter. To anyone listening, it would have sounded like a hearty laugh of delight. But through the New Eye Procedure, I was watching his eyes. He was looking at me with the coldest of gazes.

Laughing Demon, there was nothing at the end of your life.

He had claimed he had no regrets even as he died, but that was a lie. The moment he recalled his childhood, he was already regretting it.

The Blood Heaven Saber Demon, the Single Flower Sword Supreme, and the Wind Heaven Cult Leader were all changing, but this Wicked Laughing Demon would not change easily. Not only had he been born with an evil nature, he had been raised under his master’s brainwashing from childhood.

It was just then that Seo Daeryong’s voice came from outside.

“The First Young Master is here.”

“Show him in.”

The Wicked Laughing Demon said with a laugh,

“I invited him.”

He had summoned my brother here while coming to visit me? Only the Wicked Laughing Demon would do such a thing.

Whenever the thought occurred to him—‘Shall I try this?’—he acted on it without a moment’s concern for the consequences. Despite that impulsive nature, he had been one of the Demon Supremes who survived to the very end. That showed just how formidable his wicked heart was.

A little later, Geom Muyang came in. He greeted the Wicked Laughing Demon first.

“It’s been a long time, Laughing Demon.”

“Welcome, First Young Master. Now, I assume you two need no introductions?”

I played along with his teasing.

“Perhaps we brothers are precisely the people who need to be introduced. We know less about each other than you might think.”

A flicker of tension crossed Geom Muyang’s face at the easy way I spoke to the Wicked Laughing Demon.

Taking it one step further, the Wicked Laughing Demon told him,

“I was just pestering the Second Young Master to become my friend.”

He watched Geom Muyang’s reaction with eyes that said, Let’s see how you respond.

My brother responded exactly as I would expect.

“We all need a little diversion now and then.”

At Geom Muyang’s perfectly composed response, the Wicked Laughing Demon laughed.

“That’s why I intend to enjoy my diversions with your younger brother. Our First Young Master is far too proper to be any fun.”

“Mugeuk is full of wit. You’ll find him more than suitable as a friend.”

My brother really did have it rough. He wasn’t the sort to come running at someone’s summons and sit through remarks like that. His determination to become the successor was making him endure it all.

Yes, well done, Brother.

The moment you let him get under your skin, you lose. You’re doing well.

Whether he understood those feelings or not, the Wicked Laughing Demon provoked Geom Muyang.

“The Second Young Master came to see me yesterday. He asked me to support him instead of you.”

He showed no restraint even with me sitting there.

“Laughing Demon, why are you trying to drive a wedge between brothers after asking to be my friend? You won’t make a good friend this way.”

He chuckled at my words.

“Nothing in this world is as entertaining as sowing discord. How can you expect me to resist? I can hold in a shit, but not that.”

“If you want to sow discord, do it between the Orthodox Martial Alliance and the Unorthodox Alliance, not us.”

“I’d like to, but my circumstances don’t allow it these days.”

Geom Muyang simply listened to our conversation from beside us. He was probably hoping I would say something that crossed the line.

“Now that you’re both here, may I ask something I’ve always wondered about?”

My brother readily answered the Wicked Laughing Demon’s question.

“Of course.”

“Then I’ll ask the First Young Master first. If I help you become the successor, what will you do for me?”

The Wicked Laughing Demon was living up to his name. Indulging such a perverse pastime with the two of us right in front of him.

Geom Muyang answered calmly, as though he had prepared for this.

“I’ll triple the support for Villains’ Valley and lift the limit on the number of Faceless Wanderers. I’ll also lift the ban currently forbidding you from leaving the Cult.”

The Wicked Laughing Demon was forbidden from leaving the Cult. Two years earlier, he had massacred martial artists from the Unorthodox Alliance in an incident that had nearly escalated into war.

“Those bastards attacked me first.”

That was how it had begun, but it had ended in a massacre. Afterward, Father had banned him from venturing into the Central Plains for the time being. Almost two years had passed already. He must have been dying of restlessness.

“Oh, those are very attractive terms.”

“Not at all. Whatever else you may want, I’ll give you my full support.”

The Wicked Laughing Demon laughed loudly. Did my brother know? That even as he laughed in apparent delight, the eyes beneath his mask had turned utterly cold?

“Now, I’ll ask the Second Young Master. If I help you become the Heavenly Demon, what will you do for me?”

Both men were curious about my answer.

I gazed at the Wicked Laughing Demon and said quietly,

“I will at least let you live.”

The atmosphere froze instantly. I should have followed with “I’m joking,” but instead I added,

“We discussed this yesterday, didn’t we? The nature of the new Demonic Path I seek. What did you expect me to do with someone who champions wickedness? Did you think I would gladly offer you support? Even at the cost of a political burden, I will at least let you live.”

My brother might have been privately rejoicing. Thinking that youthful hotheadedness had made me ruin this splendid opportunity.

But there was something he didn’t know. The Wicked Laughing Demon was a man who became all the more fascinated when someone responded like this.

As if to prove it, his eyes shone brightly through the holes in his mask, visible to my New Eye Procedure.

I spoke to him even more coldly than before.

“Playing friends suddenly isn’t fun anymore, is it? Games that go too far in disregarding propriety never end well. So please never ask to be my friend again.”

Amid the icy atmosphere, the Wicked Laughing Demon stood.

“If people who aren’t friends sit together, they’ll only end up fighting. I’ll see you another time, then.”

After bidding Geom Muyang farewell as well, he left my office.

Once we were alone, Geom Muyang asked me,

“What on earth are you thinking?”

My brother knew I wasn’t someone who would recklessly anger the Wicked Laughing Demon like this.

“Doesn’t it just piss you off? ‘You successor candidates need to impress us Eight Demon Supremes. Come on, wag your tails. Then I’ll put you in the successor’s seat.’ Doesn’t that piss you off, Brother?”

After briefly considering what to say, my brother rose.

“You’re the one who always pisses me off.”

With that, Geom Muyang left my office too.

Seo Daeryong came in soon afterward.

“Were you waiting outside because you were worried about me?”

“Not you, Pavilion Master. I was worried the flowers might have wilted if he released demonic qi.”

He looked at the potted flowers in relief.

Smiling, I stood beside him.

We could see the Wicked Laughing Demon walking out of the building.

“He seemed angry. Will everything be all right?”

“He’s not angry. Can’t you see the spring in his step?”

“I can’t really tell. He looks as if he wants to stomp someone to death.”