Chapter 78 - The Scent of Snow (1)

1

... Baraya, Baraya, Agabaraya...

... The heart is a candle; burn this place...

A prayer handed down from ages past.

Just as Buddhist monks invoked Amitabha, the people of the Demonic Cult chanted Baraya.

... Baraya, Baraya, Agabaraya...

... The heart is a candle; burn this place...

No one knew what “Baraya” meant. So Baekhyang did not know. Neither did the old man who had brought her to the Demonic Cult. They chanted without knowing.

To So Baekhyang, Baraya was the song of the common people. A scream. Screams had no inherent meaning. Was it not only natural, then, that the song of the common people should have none either?

That one could chant without understanding.

That one did not need to know much to scream.

That people had to learn propriety to behave courteously, and learn righteousness to act justly, yet screams alone were an exception: even common folk who had learned and mastered nothing could scream.

... Baraya...

... Baraya...

... Agabaraya...

Screams were an essence shared by every nation.

The world So Baekhyang saw was screaming.

["I have nothing more to teach you,"] the old man said.

["Go forth into the world."]

["Where shall I go?"] So Baekhyang asked in a quiet voice. Before she knew it, she had grown into a woman.

The eleven-year-old child was no longer here. Ink-black hair, ink-black eyes, ink-black robes. The woman was as dark as a well at midnight.

She wished to become a hell unto herself.

To become a hell for the people, she had grown that much deeper.

["Where do you wish to go?"]

["Where there are hungry people,"] So Baekhyang answered. ["Where there are thirsty people, people who cannot breathe, people who are cold, people addicted to drugs, people stricken with illness, people beaten with rods at government offices, people burning to death."]

So Baekhyang gazed into empty space.

["That is where I wish to go."]

["..."]

Far, far away.

The sound of prayers came from outside the main hall. Members of the Demonic Cult were bowing in prayer. Their voices. Their trembling. Baraya, Baraya, Agabaraya... They became vibrations that traveled through the wooden floor.

["Then, Baekhyang,"] the old man began, ["all the world is yours to go to."]

So Baekhyang. Twenty-one years old.

She entered Murim.

That winter, thirty-one martial artists, forty-seven officials of the imperial court, and fifty-five local magnates lost their heads.

2

“Our Cult’s rites are unusual.”

The Heavenly Demon quietly dismissed the others, sending away the Murim Alliance Leader and Viper. She headed somewhere with me alone.

“Do you know how to perform the Rite of Nine Bows?”

“No, I don’t.”

“In our Cult, a disciple bows nine times upon taking a master.”

We headed to the cave—the cave with the hot spring. It had already become as familiar to me as home, but the place the Heavenly Demon led me to was unfamiliar.

A place our party had never been permitted to enter.

She walked into the deepest recesses of the cave.

“Hmm.”

The Heavenly Demon waved her hand. Her loose sleeve fluttered once, and candles lit throughout the darkness. Countless flames illuminated the cave’s stalagmites and stalactites.

“But bowing alone does not finish the rite. Whether to accept those nine bows is entirely up to the master. A master may demand the Rite of Nine Bows as many times as necessary, until satisfied.”

The Heavenly Demon smiled.

“In short, it depends on my pleasure.”

“Um... Is there a particular standard?”

“There is.”

At the end of the passage.

“In matters of propriety, the heart matters more than outward form. Child, the only reason rites require a certain time and place is that the human heart is fickle and frivolous.”

An enormous library stood there.

With each step the Heavenly Demon took, candles lit on either side of her path. As they lit one by one, the library’s true scale emerged. The cave ceiling towered overhead. Books and bamboo slips were stacked in layers all the way up to it.

“It is not easy to anchor a frivolous heart.”

The Heavenly Demon walked on.

Candlelight shone on her ankles.

“That is why people choose sacred times and holy places. They rely on time and place. They lean upon heaven and earth to give weight to a weightless heart.”

“Heavenly Demon, what is this place...?”

“Our Cult’s secret martial arts repository,” the Heavenly Demon said. “And that of the Nine Great Sects and One Association, as well as the Five Great Families. I call this place the Hall of Heavenly Martial Arts.”

The attendant spirit’s jaw dropped.

“Fucking amazing. This is a whole treasure trove! Zombie, I’m going to look through those martial arts manuals! Don’t mind me. Do your thing. Try to stall until I’ve read them all!”

The martial-arts-obsessed attendant spirit dashed off.

“Hell yeah! All this world’s secret martial techniques are mine now! I’ll scoop up every last insight! Bwahahaha!”

Whether or not she knew a ghost was running wild in her library, the Heavenly Demon remained composed.

“I entered Murim at twenty-one. Can you guess the very first thought I had when I did?”

“Uh... I’m going to smash the heads of all those obnoxious righteous-path bastards in the orthodox factions? Something like that?”

“That was my third thought.”

“I’ll prove the Demonic Cult is the greatest...?”

“That was my second thought.”

The Heavenly Demon winked her left eye.

“You see, ever since childhood, I truly despised the word ‘Murim’—the martial forest.”

“What?”

“Murim is the name given to the world that reveres martial prowess. Yet how could that world contain martial artists alone? There are boatmen and farmers. Merchants live there, and prostitutes. Countless trees make up a forest. Each tree has a different name and a different grain, yet the Nine Great Sects and One Association and the Five Great Families chose to call it a forest of martial arts.”

“I did not like that,” the Heavenly Demon murmured.

“So I decided to take their martial arts away from them.”

“You took their martial arts away...?”

“I stole every last one of the martial arts manuals those bastards revered like ancestral tablets!”

The Heavenly Demon grinned impishly.

Her smile brimmed with mischief.

“Hehehe. I still remember the looks on those Kunlun Taoists’ faces. They begged me to leave the books containing the mysteries of the Cloud Dragon alone, even if I twisted their necks clean off! And what sort of person am I? I gladly buried the Taoists in the ground with only their heads sticking out. Then I packed up all their martial arts manuals and made off with them before their very eyes!”

Wow.

My master had one hell of a temper.

“I did that for decades. Now this place is Kunlun, and Wudang. It is the Sichuan Tang Clan. The Zhuge Family. The Maoshan Sect. All the martial arts under heaven form a forest here, so it is worthy of the name Murim. I...”

The Heavenly Demon slowly sat down.

“...wish to receive your bows here.”

“...”

“Will you offer them?”

“Yes.”

“I will not judge the outward form. Child from beyond the borders, bow as your body leads you.”

I did so.

I took off my shoes and set them neatly aside. I knelt. Just as I was about to touch my forehead to the floor, the Heavenly Demon spoke.

“Offer nine bows in all, but place a different feeling in each.”

A different feeling in each.

“In the first bow, place the feeling of hunger.”

“...”

“Do you understand?”

So that was it.

“Yes, I understand.”

The bond between master and disciple was truly profound.

In the Demonic Cult, this ritual was not simply a matter of bowing nine times.

The Rite of Nine Bows.

It was no different from the Divine Art of the Demonic Heaven itself.

“Whew...”

Slowly, I drew in a deep breath.

I painted an image at the very center of my heart.

A farmer swinging a pickaxe. A riverbank. Mud.

「Hunger is children waiting for the sun.」

I bowed.

“Mm.”

The Heavenly Demon nodded. She had accepted my first bow. There was no falsehood in my hunger; it was more than enough to serve as an act of reverence.

“The Demonic Cult’s realms are broadly divided into four.”

The Heavenly Demon imparted an ancient teaching to me, who would soon become her disciple.

“The first is the Demon-Entering realm. One who enters the demonic is one who can speak of their own suffering. Members of our Cult speak not with words but with swords. Thus, the Demon-Entering realm signifies one who can speak of their own suffering through a sword.”

I bowed again.

After hunger came thirst, so I painted seawater in my heart.

“The second is the Demon-Ultimate realm. One who reaches the ultimate demonic is one who can speak of another’s suffering. Thus, the Demon-Ultimate realm signifies one who can ease another’s anguish through a sword.”

The Heavenly Demon silently accepted my second bow as well.

Imagining the drowned father in my heart, I bowed again.

“The third is the Demon-Transcending realm.”

Once again, the Heavenly Demon nodded.

She had gladly accepted my third bow.

“One who transcends the demonic is one who can speak of everyone’s suffering. As they walk the roads, they must be able to sense what pains each person they meet.”

I offered my fourth bow.

“Exceedingly few have reached this realm! Even in our Cult’s history, those who have transcended the demonic would not fill the fingers of one hand. This is the realm I occupy.”

Again, the Heavenly Demon accepted my bow.

“Finally, there is the Divine Demon realm. A divine demon can speak not only of the suffering of all people, but of all things. In other words, of everything in creation. Yet this realm remains unproven! We merely surmise that such a realm might exist. No one has actually reached it.”

I was about to offer my fifth bow.

“Stop.”

“...”

“Bow again.”

“...”

The fifth sword path of the Divine Art of the Demonic Heaven was the form of death by poisoning. The gestures of those dying from drugs. I had not yet learned the fifth sword path.

The Heavenly Demon spoke softly.

“I said, bow again.”

I bowed.

“Bow again.”

I bowed.

“Bow again.”

Again. Again. Again. Again.

Sweat beaded on my forehead. Cold sweat gathered around my waist.

The Heavenly Demon’s face remained composed.

“Bow again.”

It took 336 bows to capture, however clumsily, the heart of someone who had died of poisoning.

189 to picture someone who had died of illness in my heart.

510 to picture someone beaten to death with rods and express it through my body.

Sweat ran down me.

Silently, I knelt and bent at the waist.

“... What an upright child.”

The Heavenly Demon smiled.

“Some children are born good and grow upright. Others are born into ugliness, yet become upright through their own will. Child from beyond the borders, you are surely the latter. What life have you lived, that you strive to become so good?”

It was a slightly sorrowful smile.

“What life are you trying to live, that you are becoming so good...?”

The candles flickered.

As the light wavered, so did the shadows.

Swaying, the Heavenly Demon’s shadow overlapped with mine.

“If the sun signifies life, the shade is pain.”

The gaunt shadow parted its lips.

“The outlines of people living their lives are separate, but their pain overlaps, again and again. Thus, humanity is not united by being alive, but by pain alone.”

It was the doctrine of shadows.

“If you say you will give and receive pain with someone, it means you will share your life with that person. Therefore, one who lets everyone wound them wishes only to be with everyone, child.”

A doctrine with only one mouth left in this world to pass it on.

“Gongja.”

That mouth was speaking to me.

“People do not merely decide whom they will hurt. They can also decide by whom they will be hurt. The common people you wish to save will by no means be good. The masses you save will by no means be noble. Those you love will never be perfect.”

The shadow whispered.

Its whisper held the warmth of candlelight.

“If, despite that, you wish to be wounded by everyone. If you willingly offer them your bare skin. When they scratch you with their nails, think only that they scratched you while trying to embrace you too tightly.”

“...”

“Life is suffering. Yet it is only human suffering. Baraya, Baraya. Agabaraya. Your heart is a candle. Burn it, and see the shadows of others.”

Candle wax slipped.

“The eighth Demonic Heaven is death by burning.”

It trickled down.

“Gongja, bow with the heart of someone burning to death.”

I.

「But you know I’m the Flame Emperor, buddy.」

「Then you’ll have to fucking die.」

「Goodbye.」

I bowed.

“...”

Tightly.

The shadow pressed its lips shut.

336 for death by poisoning. 189 for death by illness. 510 for death by beating.

“Bow again,” which had echoed through the cave throughout those 1,035 bows, did not come this time. For my death by burning, a single bow seemed enough.

“... So that was how it was.”

The trail left by flowing candle wax.

A voice seeped into the marks it left.

“The final sword of the Demonic Heaven... is not fixed. It is an Empty Form. Each Cult Leader, generation after generation, engraves their own death into the final sword. That is why the ninth sword path of the Divine Art of the Demonic Heaven varies so greatly from one practitioner to another.”

A place for one’s own death.

“Offer your ninth bow with your death.”

“...”

I.

Over the course of 4,090 suicides, I.

My throat hurt.

My throat hurt where I stabbed it with the dagger. My hands trembled. My arms shook. I was afraid the trembling and shaking would send the blade astray. I feared that a misplaced stab would prolong the pain. So I wound blue tape around the dagger’s hilt.

I wound the blue tape around my right and left hands as well, fastening them to the hilt. Secured them. I thought that would keep them from shaking. I needed to regress 4,050 days. But I died 4,090 times. I had to. Because I had nearly given up along the way. I had spent a few days running away.

But there was someone I could not forgive.

I did not trust myself to go on living after forgiving that person.

I wound the blue tape again. The slower death came, the more my resolve faded, and the longer it took to decide. The longer I delayed that decision, the more days I would have to die. I cut off stray thoughts. Ignored my hesitation.

Desperate to live, I desperately died.

Suicide. Killing oneself.

I painted that as my final image, and bowed to the Heavenly Demon.

“...”

The shadow swayed. It took me a little while to realize that the Heavenly Demon had risen from her seat. By the time I understood, she already had her arms around my shoulders.

“Gongja.”

Two shadows overlapped in the cave.

“My disciple.”

“... Yes.”

“You are my disciple.”

“Yes.”

“I do not care where you came from. Wherever you go, wherever you are, you are the disciple of So Baekhyang, the Heavenly Demon. Our doctrine lives in your heart. Even if the martial world perishes and all under heaven fades, as long as your heart does not stop, the Demonic Heaven will endure.”

I opened my mouth.

“... Yes, Master.”

My throat hurt.

Those had been painful days.

Only now did I understand that.