Chapter 522

Fuck. One problem after another.

I felt like I’d been walloped in the back of the head.

Nothing in this world was absolute, but I had still thought the events in Hubei had been wrapped up properly…

The Water God Dragon wasn’t the only thing affected by magical power.

Had another Gate opened somewhere? Or had magical power the Water God Dragon failed to absorb leaked out and affected something else?

Looking at the drawing left my mouth feeling gritty, as if I’d been chewing sand.

I wasn’t the only one who understood how serious this was.

“What in the world is that?”

“One thing seems certain. Whatever it is, it cannot be called human.”

The Thunderbolt Saber King and the Azure Sky Sword King muttered to themselves. Mae Jonghak spoke up.

“According to Wudang, that bizarre creature is the Killing Ghost that has been terrorizing Hubei of late.”

“The Killing Ghost?”

Jeok Cheongang frowned and looked at me. I understood the question in his eyes and nodded.

“It’s probably the one you’re thinking of.”

“Damn it. Darkest beneath the lamp, indeed.”

He was right. This was exactly what that saying meant.

But in this case, we couldn’t have noticed. The lamp had been so bright we could barely open our eyes.

With hundreds of people dying across Hubei Province, it would have been strange to pay much attention to a Killing Ghost Wudang was already pursuing. Especially when the culprit we’d finally uncovered was an imugi¹ driven mad by magical power.

We didn’t have time to worry about anything else.

It hadn’t occurred to me that another monster might appear. I’d assumed the Killing Ghost was just another lunatic of the kind you found all over Murim.

But what kind of monster is this bastard?

Drawings from this era looked about like the ones in history textbooks. The drawing on the bamboo slip was no different.

Whoever had made it had clearly tried to be accurate, but it fell short in all sorts of ways, including any sense of depth.

There was only one thing I could tell from it: as the Azure Sky Sword King had said, this thing wasn’t human.

A horn jutted from the middle of its forehead. Its arms and legs were absurdly long and thick. Its eyes, the only part drawn in color, were red. This was beyond anything you could explain with the words demonic, heterodox arts.

Definitely a monster. But had magical power mutated it, like the Water God Dragon?

Tap. Tap.

I drummed my fingers anxiously against the wall.

“Are there any other drawings?”

Thousand-Faced Fox, who’d been watching me closely, nodded.

“Unfortunately, no. That was the best Wudang could do.”

“That’s a shame. But I doubt this is all you have.”

“You’re quick. A second letter arrived from Wudang two days ago.”

At a glance from Thousand-Faced Fox, the middle-aged scholar pulled the ring again.

Whoosh! Thunk!

An oval wooden case slid down the round tube. Inside was a letter densely covered in writing.

“Read it yourself. You were at the center of what happened in Hubei. You may spot something the Hidden Shadow Pavilion and I missed.”

“I was planning to do that anyway.”

“This old man will read it too,” Jeok Cheongang said.

We put our heads together and read the letter. Once didn’t seem enough, so we read it a second time, then a third. Only after fifteen minutes did we look up.

“What do you think?” Thousand-Faced Fox asked.

Jeok Cheongang frowned. “Hard to say.”

“I see.”

“…Why aren’t you asking me anything else?”

Because I wasn’t expecting much from you in the first place.

Not that I had much to add myself. From what the letter said, Thousand-Faced Fox and the Hidden Shadow Pavilion had already pieced together some of the circumstances behind the monster’s appearance.

“As you’ve read, this monster was once a fisherman who lived at the mouth of the Yangtze,” Thousand-Faced Fox said.

I pointed to the first line of the letter. “Jang Sam. In his fifties, with a family.”

Wudang hadn’t assumed a monster like this had simply dropped out of the sky. They’d examined its corpse closely, found several distinguishing features, and investigated. That had led them to a fisherman from a village less than a hundred li² from Mount Wudang.

“They say he went out alone to fish more than a month ago and vanished without a trace. When he failed to return after several days, his children petitioned the local authorities.”

The authorities probably couldn’t have found him. Fishermen did die now and then, and Hubei Province had been gripped by fear and chaos after one disaster after another.

When even high-ranking people were dropping dead here and there like minions in some canyon, who was going to worry about one fisherman?

Even if they had actively searched for him, they probably couldn’t have found him.

Even Wudang’s masters had taken quite some time to catch Jang Sam. The local authorities would have had no better luck.

How had an aging fisherman, once as ordinary as they came, become a hideous monster known as the Killing Ghost?

“Any idea what caused it?” Thousand-Faced Fox asked.

“The Blood Fish seem the likeliest cause.”

“I’ve already received the report on them. I sent several Hidden Shadow Pavilion agents to Hubei with orders to capture a live one.”

“Good call. Jang Sam, who became a mon—who became a monster, was originally a fisherman, and Dongting Lake is connected to the tributaries of the Yangtze…”

Mae Jonghak, who’d been listening quietly, murmured, “He might have eaten a Blood Fish that came down one of those tributaries.”

“Or been eaten by one.”

“…!”

“…!”

“Either way, that seems likeliest for now. It would explain his appearance and how he grew strong enough to evade Wudang for days.”

Thousand-Faced Fox’s expression hardened. “What about the possibility that the same thing happened somewhere else, as it did with the imugi¹ you defeated? What you call a ‘rift.’”

“…”

“Tell me. I wanted to hear it from you.”

They called it a rift here. I called it a Gate.

Of course I’d considered the possibility. I just didn’t want to think about it, let alone say it aloud.

I wasn’t superstitious, but there was that saying about speaking things into existence. Honestly, I wanted to rule out even the slightest chance.

Still, I could not avoid answering. I opened my mouth with an uncomfortable expression.

“I can’t be certain, but I think it’s unlikely.”

“Why?”

“If the same thing had happened, it wouldn’t have ended with just this.”

No second Gate had opened. That was my conclusion.

We should have been relieved. Yet the few of us who knew what a Gate meant—including me—looked grim. They’d understood what I was really saying.

Put simply:

It hasn’t happened yet. But if another Gate blows, we’re truly fucked.

“A powder keg,” Thousand-Faced Fox murmured. “A powder keg, indeed.”

A powder keg was safe as long as no fire touched it. But that also meant it became more dangerous than anything else the moment someone set it alight.

You’d wonder what kind of lunatic would do that, except the lunatics of Dark Heaven had already set Hubei Province’s powder keg alight once.

Murim as it stood was like a vast powder keg on the verge of exploding.

And the second and third Gates would be the enormous sparks that set it off.

There is one small mercy.

I didn’t know who the bastard called the Lord of Heaven really was, or how the Southern Heaven Demon Empress had opened a Gate. But I could make one guess.

Opening a Gate isn’t easy for them either.

A Gate wasn’t an inn door. If Dark Heaven could fling them open whenever they pleased, Murim would already be a complete disaster.

Orcs would have founded sects, while Lycanthropes and ogres would be walking arm in arm down the main roads of Henan.

Before the Murim Alliance could even be formed, everyone would be shouting, Uh, fuck, what are those things? Then we would have fallen apart completely.

But Dark Heaven hadn’t done that.

Why? Because it was hard.

Which meant we had to hurry. We had to stop them before another powder keg blew.

And there was a second mercy: this vast group, united under the Murim Alliance’s banner, had the strength to do it.

“…Calamity has come to Murim,” Mae Jonghak murmured with a sigh. “On a far greater scale than I imagined.”

Thousand-Faced Fox turned to him, his face set. “There’s something I must look into at once. Alliance Leader, forgive me, but would you and the others move elsewhere?”

“Of course.”

“Understood. I’ll report to you later. Until next time, everyone.”

That was the last he said to us.

Before we had even left the pavilion, urgent shouts rang out from every direction. The people who had been worn down by exhaustion opened their eyes wide as though they had never been tired and began moving according to their orders.

The Hidden Shadow Pavilion, which had kept itself alive even after the Murim Alliance’s dissolution, was moving again.

They weren’t the only ones about to get busy.

“I should go as well,” Mae Jonghak said. “There will soon be a mountain of work waiting for me.”

The Azure Sky Sword King nodded. “The same goes for me. May I tell my good-for-nothing son what I heard here today?”

“You seem to have forgotten who brought you here.”

If the information were too secret to share with anyone, the Alliance Leader and the Chief of the Hidden Shadow Pavilion wouldn’t have brought us all here themselves.

The Azure Sky Sword King understood and clasped his hands in salute.

“Thank you.”

“Everyone will know in a few days. Until then, take care that nothing gets out.”

“Of course. I’ll keep that in mind.”

The Thunderbolt Saber King seemed to grasp the gravity of the situation too. His face was stiff as he spoke.

“Hey, Sword Saint. I have something to ask as well.”

“The Hebei Peng Family may be told too. There’s no reason—”

“No, not that. What in the world were you all talking about in there?”

“…”

“…”

Is the Hebei Peng Family’s Grand Family Head really this low on Intelligence? My pecs are swelling with pride…

Everyone, including me, gave him a cold stare. The Thunderbolt Saber King mumbled a defense.

“You could at least talk about something a man can understand. I know a great pleasure has come to Murim, but…”

“Peng.”

“Yeah?”

“Then shut your mouth for a while. This old man thinks that would help.”

“What did you say?!”

Jeok Cheongang heaved a sigh at the Thunderbolt Saber King, then looked at Mae Jonghak.

“I’ll handle this stupid old man. Go on. You must be busy.”

“Thank you. By the way, Great Hero Jeok.”

“Speak.”

Mae Jonghak took Jeok Cheongang’s hand and held it tight.

“Are you sure you won’t be Alliance Leader?”

“…”

“…”

Be honest. You and Cheongpung are blood relatives, aren’t you?