Chapter 546

“The Alliance Leader is entering.”

At the sound of that deep voice, five doors opened one after another. A figure approached slowly from beyond them, and everyone rose as one, as though they had rehearsed it.

“Chomp, chomp. Smack, smack.”

“……”

Everyone except this bastard.

The more I look at him, the crazier he seems.

I wasn’t exactly a model of etiquette myself, but even I could read a room. I leaned toward Cheongpung, who was determined to store every last morsel of food safely in his mouth, and whispered, “What the hell are you doing? Got a problem with society? Don’t like the Murim Alliance?”

Cheongpung swallowed and stood up before answering.

“But there’s still food left, Benefactor.”

“Then stop eating.”

“But the dumplings will get cold.”

“……”

You bastard, Cheongpung. You Guan Yu¹ bastard. You know when dumplings are getting cold, but you haven’t noticed everyone’s stares turning cold…

Well, he’s always been like this.

Cheongpung wouldn’t be Cheongpung if he cared what anyone thought. I sighed, poked him in the side, and muttered, “If you’re done eating, pay attention. Our esteemed Azure Dragon Pavilion Master.”

At the words Azure Dragon Pavilion Master, Cheongpung pouted and nodded. His reply came out in a tiny, thoroughly disgruntled voice.

“Yes, Benefactor.”

The name Two Dragons Pavilion remained unchanged, but it had been divided internally into my Fire Dragon Pavilion and Cheongpung’s Azure Dragon Pavilion. On our way to the conference, Cheongpung had told me he’d wanted a different name. Mungyeong had fiercely opposed it.

“I don’t like that name.”

“Why? I think Azure Dragon Pavilion sounds pretty cool. Still, it’s a little unfair. You’re the Pavilion Master. Shouldn’t you at least get to choose the name?”

“I thought so too, but Grandpa Mun hated my idea. He threatened to quit if I used a name like that.”

“It was that bad? What name did you want?”

“Dumpling Pavilion.”

“……”

“Or Sweetmeat Pavilion.”

“……Oh. Right.”

“Hoo. I hate Grandpa Mun. What’s so great about Azure Dragon Pavilion, anyway?”

It was ridiculous even now. You should be grateful, you lunatic.

Why not just call it Gim Bugak?² The words reached my throat, but I swallowed them. Not because the matter was already settled.

The highest authority in orthodox Murim had finally entered the conference hall.

Step.

Footsteps crossed the silence. Murim Alliance Leader Mae Jonghak reached the seat of honor and smiled at everyone.

“You’re all here.”

Unlike the previous meeting, this one included the heads of the key organizations under the Alliance Leader’s Office. The Murim Alliance’s internal reorganization was finally complete.

That’s quite a crowd when we’re all together.

I swept my gaze around the room. Some faces were unfamiliar—masters whose names and sobriquets I’d heard but whom I’d never met. Among the familiar faces were more than a few I was glad to see.

“You’re awfully late. My backside was about to cramp up.”

Even if you turned the whole world upside down and shook every soul out of it, you could count on one hand the people who could talk to Mae Jonghak like that.

Jeok Cheongang was the foremost among them. Standing with his weight on one leg beside the seat of honor, he spoke in his usual surly tone. Across from him, Jin Wikyung glanced around uneasily before speaking up.

“Great Hero Jeok.”

“What?”

“Well, you know…”

“Good grief. Now that you’ve got a title, are you taking the Alliance Leader’s side?”

Jin Wikyung paused for a moment and gave an awkward smile. In the space of just a year and several months, he had taken the helm of the Jin Family of Taiyuan as Acting Family Head and brought astonishing growth to a family that had been slowly declining. Before anyone knew it, he had become one of their number.

“It’s not that—”

“I know. I know. Now both brothers are making a fuss.”

Mae Jonghak smiled at the grumbling Jeok Cheongang.

“Don’t be like that, Great Hero Jeok. Or should I call you the Five Kings Hall Master now?”

“……Hmph. I get your point, so stop. There are too many people watching.”

“And here I am, wasting busy people’s time with idle chatter.”

It was hard to imagine anyone busier than Mae Jonghak, but he wasn’t wrong. Every person gathered here was a vital cog in the vast Murim Alliance.

The Two Halls, Three Divisions, Five Pavilions, Five Gardens, and Ten Squads.³

The only organization standing shoulder to shoulder with the Alliance Leader’s Hall, led by Murim Alliance Leader Mae Jonghak, was the Five Kings Hall, now headed by Jeok Cheongang. Beneath them were the Three Divisions and Five Pavilions belonging to the Inner Hall, followed by the Five Gardens and Ten Squads, which were occupied by people from the Five Great Families and the Nine Sects and One Gang.

And there are more besides.

Remarkably, this wasn’t everyone. Add the unit heads and commanders of the Outer Hall, and even this spacious conference hall wouldn’t hold them all. They’d have to use the training ground.

It showed how enormous the Murim Alliance was. It also meant Cheongpung and I had been recognized as part of its central leadership.

Even if it’s basically an honorary position with no real authority.

A difference between title and standing, perhaps. My title was Pavilion Master, but in the actual pecking order, I was near the bottom of this gathering. Of course, no one else my age held a position like it.

Ah. There was one other person besides Cheongpung.

One-Ride Heavenly Dragon Murong Yeonghwi, a genius who had been called Murim’s greatest young prodigy only two years ago. He was the Lesser Family Head of the Murong Family and had recently been appointed a Squad Leader of the Murim Alliance’s Outer Hall. I had heard that instead of following his father, the Family Head, to Henan, he had remained in Liaoning to oversee the family’s defenses.

I thought I might finally get to see him in person.

Then again, there was no stupider act than leaving one’s base undefended just to attend a meeting in Henan. Everyone else here must have completed their defensive preparations in the same way.

Swish.

Mae Jonghak slowly raised a hand.

“Come, everyone. Sit down. We don’t have time to stand on ceremony.”

But no one sat. More precisely, no one could.

As Mae Jonghak raised his hand, something drifted up from beyond the doors, which still stood open.

“How can he use Seizing an Object Through Empty Space so effortlessly…?”

Someone muttered under their breath.

The object was covered by a cloth, so its identity could not be made out. But it was obviously enormous and seemed to possess considerable weight. Exclamations of admiration rose at Mae Jonghak’s internal energy as he moved it without effort.

Several faces, though, had already gone rigid. Mine probably had too.

His internal energy isn’t the issue. That thing…

Of my five senses, smell was the first to react. The odor was so faint that even a martial artist with sharpened senses might not have identified it right away. But I knew that stench the moment it reached me.

“Benefactor. Is that smell…?”

Cheongpung’s eyes widened. I gave him a small nod.

“That’s right. Corpse stench.”

“……!”

The reek of a rotting body. I’d smelled it countless times in both the modern world and Murim, and this time I was more certain than anyone. A suspicion about the corpse’s identity flashed through my mind.

If I’m right, that’s…

The next moment, the cloth stained dark red with blood was pulled away, and everyone in the conference hall groaned almost simultaneously.

“Gasp.”

“W-What in the world…?”

“Alliance Leader, what is that thing?”

Voices filled with shock burst out from every corner. Those who already knew about it and those who did not were all forced to feel the same shock at that moment. What the cloth had concealed was that horrifying.

A monster.

There was no other word for it. At a glance, it had a human shape, but unnaturally long, thick joints jutted grotesquely from all over its body. Its wide-open, lifeless eyes were each as large as a child’s fist.

And that wasn’t the end of it.

“Th-There’s a horn.”

“That’s not all. Its arms…”

A black horn rose from the center of its forehead, and four arms protruded from its upper body. The arms varied in length and thickness, perhaps because they’d been severed during the fight. But no one could dispute that they were human arms.

“Hmm.”

“How could this happen?”

As the murmurs of dismay continued, someone spoke up.

“Infinite Life Buddha.⁴ It is hard to believe. I felt the same way at first.”

The speaker was an old Daoist with deep-set eyes and a snow-white beard that reached his chest: the Sect Leader of Wudang. The people who turned toward him looked puzzled.

“At first…?”

“Do you mean…?”

The Sect Leader of Wudang nodded.

“That’s right. Some of you may already have heard, but that man—no, that thing—was once a fisherman named Jang Sam.”

The old Daoist was relating what I had heard earlier at the Hidden Shadow Pavilion. A fisherman with an ordinary name, no different from anyone else, had disappeared. One month later, he had reappeared as a monster and a Killing Ghost that had thrown Hubei Province into an uproar.

“When it was first found, its martial arts were only Third Rate. But its strength and movements were said to be inhuman. Each time it reappeared, it looked more grotesque and had grown stronger. As though…”

After a brief hesitation, the Sect Leader of Wudang continued with a sigh.

“As though it harmed people, absorbed their vital essence, and made it its own.”

“……!”

The shock swept through the hall. Suffocating silence followed, until Jeok Cheongang frowned and spoke.

“Are you saying that goddamn monster learned the Essence-Siphoning Great Technique or something?”

The Sect Leader of Wudang shook his head.

“Infinite Life Buddha.⁴ I can’t be certain of that either. But if that thing is what Dark Heaven intended to create, and it truly can use the Essence-Siphoning Great Technique…”

His voice trailed off. His face was rigid, and so were most of the faces around him.

Understandably.

The Essence-Siphoning Great Technique was a vicious demonic martial art said to have been lost even within the Demonic Cult. To orthodox martial artists, it was the work of a fiend.

If Dark Heaven had revived it and taught it to the monsters they’d created…

A catastrophe. Plain and simple.

Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—the Sect Leader of Wudang’s guess was wrong. At least, as far as I knew.

Most monsters grow fast.

Didn’t they say an Orc reaches adulthood in a month?

Most monsters grew stronger in one of two ways: they were born with tremendous power, or they absorbed magical power from other monsters.

Eating humans might give them a small amount of strength, but most of the people this thing killed were commoners and Third Rate or Second Rate wandering martial artists.

Humans and monsters were born with fundamentally different kinds of energy. If that sort of exchange between the two were possible, modern monsters would already be sold as aphrodisiacs or health tonics.

I can’t be one hundred percent certain since it’s a mutant.

Still, experience told me that explanation was more likely. No—I hoped it was. If monsters that could directly absorb human energy started pouring into the world, we’d never be able to handle them.

While I was lost in thought, Mae Jonghak’s quiet voice carried through the hall.

“Pavilion Master Jin. What do you think?”

I turned my head toward the voice calling for Pavilion Master Jin—and froze when I felt everyone’s gazes on me.

Wait. Pavilion Master Jin means…

Fuck. Me.

I still wasn’t used to it, so I had forgotten.

“Are you asking me?”

“Yes. I’d like your opinion.”

“Well, this is… Hm.”

“It’s all right. Say whatever comes to mind.”

“I’m not sure how to put it.”

“In your own way. Simply and clearly.”

Simply and clearly. I thought for a moment, then spoke carefully.

“I think things are a little—no, maybe considerably…”

“Considerably?”

I stared into dozens of pairs of burning eyes before answering.

“I think we’re fucked.”

“……!”

“……!”