Chapter 349

After a brief silence, the Heavenly Power Demon parted his lips.

“……A public-urination criminal? Do not address this old man by such a disgraceful name.”

Ah. I messed up.

It seemed the former fiend who had once made his name known throughout the world found that name rather unpleasant.

After thinking for a moment, I offered him a more suitable term than public-urination criminal.

“Hmm. Or how about a bedwetter?”

“Y-you little…”

“If you don’t like that, then Little Pee-er of the New Nation.”

“This old man did not piss himself!”

“Then The One Who Peed. A Midsummer Night’s Pee, featuring the Kunlun Sect.”

“……!”

I clicked my tongue as I looked at the Heavenly Power Demon, who couldn’t even come up with a proper retort.

“I don’t know what got into you that made you suddenly start talking to me, and I don’t want to hear it or exchange words with you. So eat your food and shit as much as you like. Shit or piss, I don’t care. Do both at once, for all I care.”

“W-wait.”

Good grief. What a pain.

I had finished handing out the food and was just about to leave the underground prison when I turned around with an irritated expression.

“What?”

“There is something I wish to ask.”

“If you have something to ask, am I obligated to answer?”

But the Heavenly Power Demon, seized by an inexplicable desperation, refused to back down. Wearing scraps of what might once have been called clothing, he opened his mouth with a gleam in his eyes.

“The Divine Cult. What has become of the Divine Cult?”

“The Divine Cult?”

“Yes, the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult!”

“Oh. The Demonic Cult.”

I had been momentarily confused because the two sides called it by different names.

To most Murim warriors, including me, it was your Demonic Cult. But from the Demonic Cult’s perspective, it could only be our Divine Cult.

Especially for the Heavenly Power Demon standing before me. Wasn’t he a fiend whose notoriety had once been considerable even among the Demonic Cult’s members?

“What, have you been locked up so long that you’re feeling homesick?”

“Tell me.”

“That’s not difficult.”

I gave a short laugh and continued.

“I don’t know either.”

“……What did you say?”

“How would I know what that Demonic Cult buried way off in the distance is doing? If some new inmate from the Demonic Cult ends up using the cell next to yours, you can ask him.”

The Heavenly Power Demon looked at me as if he couldn’t understand me at all.

“You are the Fire King’s successor. Yet you claim to know nothing about the Divine Cult?”

“……How did you know that?”

“Although my dantian is ruined, these old ears still function.”

“You’re quite spry for a man old enough to have one foot in the grave. How much do you know?”

“That the Fire King is here receiving treatment for his injuries.”

“Hmm.”

He was a rather perceptive old man.

Cheongpung had mentioned Jeok Cheongang’s name several times, but never loudly enough for the other prisoners to hear. Even if the Heavenly Power Demon had heard him, it would have been difficult to infer the circumstances from their conversations.

He keeps his mouth shut but his ears open.

He was different from the other prisoners, who tried to persuade anyone they could at the slightest opening.

I found myself growing slightly interested in the old man before me.

“But why are you so curious about news concerning the Demonic Cult? You’ve been captured for a long time already.”

“It has been more than forty years.”

“The Great Faction War had already ended around then. Don’t you have some idea of what happened?”

“Some idea?”

The Heavenly Power Demon gave a bitter smile and continued.

“Few people know the Divine Cult better than this old man.”

“Sounds like you pissed on things there too.”

“This old man was once an Elder of the Great Heavenly Demon Divine Cult. It was I who, obeying the solemn command of the Cult Leader, subjugated Qinghai Province and opened the first front of the holy war.”

“Holy war my ass.”

Despite my curt response, I was secretly surprised.

He’s a bigger deal than I expected.

From the bits and pieces I had heard, the Demonic Cult had something called the Ten Elders or the Seven Elders—great fiends who held tremendous power.

I had assumed he wasn’t an ordinary fiend after seeing him piss all over the Kunlun Sect’s signboard. But I had never imagined that the shabby old man waiting to die in an underground prison had once been an Elder of the Demonic Cult.

“You knew nothing about this old man, I suppose.”

“Of course not. That was ages ago. I heard the title Heavenly Power Demon for the first time today.”

“……Heh. Has it truly been that long?”

As I watched the Heavenly Power Demon let out a hollow, self-deprecating laugh, I leaned my back against the wall of the prison.

“So what does a former Elder of the Demonic Cult from forty years ago want to ask me?”

“Tell me everything you know about the Divine Cult. All the news you have heard recently, without leaving anything out.”

“I don’t know. Something about this feels unpleasant.”

“This old man has already passed his ninetieth year. Both body and spirit are exhausted. This is the final request of an old man who has already been given his day to die.”

“The request of a fiend who committed all kinds of atrocities, you mean.”

“Atrocities…”

“I will willingly accept punishment for the lives I have taken. But what, exactly, does it mean to be a demon? The Divine Cult and your people opposed each other for many years, each relying on its own beliefs, and we merely lost a battle in which we wagered our fate. That is all.”

The Heavenly Power Demon continued in a clear voice, almost lamenting.

“Do you claim that such a thing alone is enough to determine who was right and who was wrong? The world back then was like a keg of explosives that could go off at any moment. If your side had been the first to cross Gansu and Qinghai and reach the Divine Cult, you would have slaughtered our followers under the shabby pretexts of the greater good and rooting us out at the source.”

“But from what I’ve heard…”

“Boy.”

I closed my mouth at the quiet voice.

A pair of eyes, blazing more fiercely than ever, stared at me.

They did not belong to an old man whose martial arts had been completely crippled and who was waiting for the day he would die.

They belonged to a general and Supreme Peak master who had once led an entire force and swept across the world.

“This old man saw it and experienced it firsthand. I saw how cruel human beings could become in a war of killing and being killed. Neither the followers of the Divine Cult who shouted for a holy war nor the Sect Leaders of the Nine Sects and One Gang who called for the destruction of demons were exceptions. Even…”

At that moment, the fire in his eyes faded, and only his bitter voice remained, scattering through the air like ash.

“Even the Cult Leader of the Divine Cult was like that. He lost the beliefs he had started with and fell into corruption. Yes. Perhaps, as you orthodox faction warriors claim, the Divine Cult really was a Demonic Cult.”

The Heavenly Power Demon’s words left my thoughts tangled.

In a way, what he had just said overlapped with something I had realized recently.

There are good people and bad people everywhere.

The Demonic Cult and the orthodox Murim had been at odds for ages, each holding a match and watching the other beside a powder keg that could explode at any moment.

The Demonic Cult had been the one to light the fuse in the end. But what if the orthodox faction had lit it first?

Would the Roaring Fury Swordsman and the Taeeul Merciless Sword have left ordinary Demonic Cult civilians who knew nothing about martial arts alone?

No way.

For a moment, those two men and the Heavenly Power Demon overlapped in my mind.

Who was white, and who was black? Was there something unknown hidden in the history that had already passed?

Damn it. I don’t know.

I bit my lip hard and pulled my back away from the cold wall.

“Telling me things like that won’t do you any good.”

The Heavenly Power Demon nodded weakly.

“……I know. Nothing is more futile than talking about the past that has already passed.”

“I’m not as well-versed in the Demonic Cult as you think. If a knowledgeable beggar had been here in my place, he might have been able to give you the news you want.”

“Did the Divine Cult fall?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem that way. From what I’ve heard, it has managed to maintain its existence somehow.”

It was only because the name Dark Heaven had been attracting so much attention lately, but the Demonic Cult was still the orthodox Murim’s eternal archenemy by default.

On top of that, with its connection to Dark Heaven now under suspicion, the Murim Alliance’s headquarters in Henan was probably busy investigating both the Demonic Cult and Dark Heaven.

“I did hear that it shrank miserably after suffering an enormous blow during the Great Faction War.”

The Central Plains was not called the center of the world for no reason.

Unlike the orthodox Murim, which had recovered a considerable portion of its losses by absorbing the region’s abundant resources, goods, and population like a sponge, the Demonic Cult had been forced into the Tianshan Mountains while bearing the full weight of its tremendous losses.

“……Of course. It was a war that mobilized the full strength of the Divine Cult.”

He muttered quietly, a self-deprecating smile appearing at the corner of his mouth.

“Heh. We once devoured half the world, and now we are utterly pathetic. I should have stopped the Cult Leader, even if it cost me my life, when he accepted vicious criminals like the Qilian Three Fiends and the Yin-Yang Twin Ghosts. Though, come to think of it, that was when the Cult Leader began to change as well.”

“The Yin-Yang Twin Ghosts?”

“You may not know them, but there were men like that long ago…”

“Oh, I know them.”

“What? You know the Yin-Yang Twin Ghosts?”

I nodded as if it were obvious.

“I don’t know much about the Qilian Three Fiends, but I know the Yin-Yang Twin Ghosts.”

“How could someone who has never even heard this old man’s title know the Yin-Yang Twin Ghosts?”

“Well, you see…”

I scratched the back of my head and continued.

“I tend to remember the title of anyone I’ve fought. Especially when they’re masters of that caliber.”

“……W-what? You fought the Yin-Yang Twin Ghosts?”

“Technically, I only fought one of them—the Yang Ghost. Our Old Master—no, Master—killed the Yang Ghost. The Yin Ghost was killed by some crazy bastard and followed his friend to the afterlife. Anyway, do these fucking bastards think Henan is Gotham City…?”

“……!”

The Heavenly Power Demon froze with his mouth hanging open. Then he hurriedly poured out his words.

“T-the Yin-Yang Twin Ghosts! How did those men survive and emerge into the Murim? And in Henan, no less? Did the Divine Cult raid Shaolin?”

“They did make a hell of a mess at Shaolin. But it wasn’t the Demonic Cult’s doing.”

“Th-then who did it? Whose doing was it?”

I had expected as much, but the Heavenly Power Demon really knew nothing about how the current Murim worked.

The only outsider he had spoken with was Old Man Gung.

Well, it’s not like that old man is the type to kindly explain things.

Not unless he considered severing tendons a form of kindness.

After thinking for a moment, I decided to tell him the truth.

The Heavenly Power Demon had no chance of leaving the underground prison before his death anyway.

And now that Dark Heaven, once a top-secret matter, was gradually spreading through word of mouth among several major sects, there was no reason it would cause trouble.

“Um, I’m not sure how to put this.”

“Tell me. Quickly!”

“Wait a second.”

Ah, right.

At last, I found the right term. Admiring my own cleverness, I opened my mouth.

“They changed jobs.”

“……?”

“I’m not sure whether it was a job change or an internal departmental transfer, but until they died, they were working for someplace called Dark Heaven instead of the Demonic Cult…”

In the end, I couldn’t finish speaking.

The sound of hurried footsteps approached, and a familiar face appeared.

“B’factor!”

“Swallow what’s in your mouth before you talk.”

“B’factor! B’factor! Try this too! It’s delish!”

“What’s with all the ‘B’factors’? Are you looking for the police chief who lives in Namcheon-dong?”

“B’factor!”

“Yeah, yeah. You probably hit the sauna, ate together, and did the whole nine yards.”

“It’s weally delish!”

Cheongpung had stuffed both cheeks full of snacks, and he was still carrying an armful of food wrapped in paper.

I pulled out a well-roasted duck leg and was about to bite into it when I held it out toward the person I had momentarily forgotten.

“Want some?”

And at last, I came face-to-face with the sight of the Heavenly Power Demon, frozen like a stone statue.