Chapter 663

“That day, you people showed me which path I should take.”

With those words spat out in a bitter voice, his story—neither short nor long—came to an end. I silently stared into Baeksang’s coldly gleaming eyes.

What did I want to say to him?

I wasn’t sure.

The man standing before me in dazzling white robes had lived through a darkness I couldn’t begin to imagine. He had fought for a righteous cause, only to be betrayed. He had lost the child he cherished more than his own life.

There could only be one reason he had kept living.

Revenge.

Baeksang wasn’t wrong. After he lost his only child, the betrayal of the Central Plains people had lit a torch in the darkness where he wandered. By its light, he’d found the only path he could see.

The path of revenge.

He had followed that thorny road of pain and fury all the way here. Looking at him, I suddenly remembered someone else.

“…The Head Elder.”

Confusion flickered in Baeksang’s eyes at my involuntary mutter. I clicked my tongue bitterly.

“It’s nothing. You just reminded me of someone I used to know.”

“How so?”

“He was a fucking idiot, too. Just like you. A puppet controlled by Dark Heaven.”

“What?”

“But I could understand him. He had his reasons.”

“…He was betrayed.”

“Yeah. By his own flesh and blood.”

Baeksang looked down at me in silence. Then he asked, “What happened to him?”

“I killed him. With my own hands.”

“…!”

“He was an elder of my family, but I had no choice. Things had already gone too far.”

“Do you wish to condemn me?”

I let out a short laugh.

Condemn him? What would that change now?

“Condemning someone with words alone doesn’t do a damn thing. It wouldn’t stop you. That was the main reason I had to kill the Head Elder.”

That was how an avenger met his end.

They stepped onto a path they had never wanted to take, then lost their way forever. They were like moths rushing toward a single torch—the torch of revenge.

“After I killed him, I wondered something. If the Jin Family of Taiyuan and I had lost that battle… would getting his revenge have finally made him happy?”

“That…”

“Probably not. He lived only for revenge, but at some point, his anger must have dulled, and watching innocent people be sacrificed must have left him feeling guilty.”

I didn’t wait for Baeksang to answer.

“Just like you do now.”

“…!”

I calmly looked into Baeksang’s twisted face.

“I definitely don’t understand you. I’ve never gone through what you did, and I’ve never burned with revenge for decades. But at the same time, I admit it. At least as far as I’m concerned, your anger toward the Central Plains people and the Han Chinese is justified.”

“Justified?” Baeksang repeated, his face rigid.

He clearly hadn’t expected that answer, but I meant every word. I meant what I said next, too.

“Yeah. I would’ve done the same thing if I were you. No—if I had been in your place, perhaps the entire Central Plains would already have been my enemy.”

I remembered the day I’d gone to the Ares Guild.

I had been alone then, but there hadn’t been the slightest hesitation in my steps.

It wasn’t because I had possessed enough strength to make that choice. It was because I had been genuinely furious over Kim Hwajong’s death.

And I had brought down the Ares Guild.

If I’d been Baeksang instead of Jin Taekyung, I would have fought to bring down the Central Plains.

But…

“Is that anger of yours justified toward the people of Nanman, too?”

“…!”

“Some of them might understand you. But what did the people killed because you joined forces with Dark Heaven do wrong? What about their families? Their lovers and friends?”

Baeksang jerked. I kept my voice steady.

“When I first set foot in Nanman, I heard some news. A Miao village had been massacred by a group of Han Chinese. Those Han Chinese had slaughtered a hundred people, men, women, and children alike, but in the end, both sides had been destroyed by poison.”

Being locked alone in an underground prison gave me plenty of time to think. I’d gone over everything that had happened since I arrived, and I was certain of one thing.

“No matter how I look at it, it’s strange. Even if there was a fight, how did not one person survive?”

It had been planned from the beginning. Wipe out a Miao village, and hostility toward the Han Chinese would boil over across all of Nanman.

“And that’s not all. There were the Thousand-Year Spiders suddenly leaving the Poisonblood Grounds, and what happened at the Western Yao Estate. Add the Miao village, and the dead number well over three hundred.”

All that had happened in just seven days and nights since I came to the Nanman Beast Palace. Compared with the decades Baeksang had spent consumed by revenge, it was barely any time at all.

What frightened me more was what lay ahead. If Baeksang was to have his revenge in full, war with the Central Plains wasn’t merely possible. It was inevitable.

“Just how…”

I looked at him, torn between pity and anger.

How much more blood are you going to spill, Baeksang?

Splash. Splash.

With each step, foul water long pooled on the prison floor splashed in every direction. The man walking through it paid no attention to his snow-white robes getting dirty.

No—his mind was so full that he hadn’t noticed.

Splash…

His already-soaked leather shoes came to an abrupt stop.

While crossing the underground prison alone, the middle-aged man, Baeksang, suddenly looked back over his shoulder.

Dark. Cold. Silent.

Like the path he had walked. Like the path the man imprisoned behind him would have to walk.

But Jin Taekyung would never walk as far as he had. Only two days remained until his public execution. Baeksang’s path had stretched across decades; Jin Taekyung’s was short, with its end in plain sight.

It’s as good as over. He won’t escape.

Baeksang already knew roughly how skilled Jin Taekyung was. A Supreme Peak master who stood out even in the Central Plains, where countless prestigious sects had taken root.

Baeksang hadn’t used his full strength when they briefly exchanged moves a few days ago. Still, he had known instinctively.

Half a move above me. No… perhaps a full move.

Jin Taekyung was a monster beyond anything Baeksang had imagined. But with his internal energy sealed and iron balls of enormous weight restraining him, he couldn’t survive even if his master, the Fire King, came for him.

Besides, something bound him more tightly than the iron balls.

The Han Chinese under his command.

Jin Taekyung cared about his people. That was why he had surrendered and allowed himself to be imprisoned instead of escaping.

What a fool.

In Baeksang’s eyes, compassion was the monstrous young man’s greatest weakness. Nothing made a martial artist less like a martial artist.

And yet nothing made a person more human.

On the day blood stained the snow of Great Snow Mountain, that was what Baeksang had so desperately wanted from his allies.

Come to think of it, Hwi was about his age then.

Baeksang stared blankly into the empty air. In the darkness where nothing existed, a face briefly passed through his mind.

An infant becoming a boy. A boy becoming a young man.

His only child, more upright than anyone, who had shone as brightly as his name, Hwi.¹

The smiling face of the child he would never see again.

Crunch.

Without realizing it, Baeksang clenched his fist tightly. His neatly trimmed nails dug into his flesh, and blood began to flow.

Drip. Drip-drip.

He looked down. Red drops spread through the stagnant water around his feet. Each small ripple traced the outline of a face.

How much more blood are you going to spill, Baeksang?

Jin Taekyung’s last words kept ringing in his ears. But Baeksang’s answer was the same now as it had been then.

I crossed that river long ago. I can never go back.

He had crossed that river a long time ago.

Half-mad with despair and rage, Baeksang had met a beautiful woman whose identity he did not know. She had offered him something more alluring than her looks.

No. Something he could not refuse.

Choose. Do so, and it will surely come to pass.

He hadn’t hesitated. With a purpose to live for, he had gladly taken her outstretched hand. He had never once regretted that decision.

No. He must not regret it.

But why…?

With the fruit of all those decades almost within his grasp, why was he wavering now?

Baeksang swallowed the sound rising in his throat and gritted his teeth. He looked at his filthy leather shoes and the hems of robes that could no longer be called white.

In two days. Everything ends. Everything.

At his feet, drops of blood spread through the pooled water. Dirty long before his blood touched it, the water slowly turned red.

Like the path he had walked. Like the path still ahead of him.

Splash.

Baeksang stamped through the puddle and started walking again, Jin Taekyung’s voice still echoing in his ears through the silence.

Baeksang left, and I was alone again.

The chains pulled taut around me, and the iron balls weighing ten thousand geun² held me fast. My whole body was growing stiff.

Damn.

Now that he was gone, I kind of wished he’d stayed. Maybe I should have begged him to spare me.

Still, I didn’t regret it. I’d said everything I needed to say, and groveling for my life wouldn’t have gotten me anywhere. Baeksang had lived for revenge alone. He wasn’t going to tear up like an auntie watching a human-interest documentary just because I begged him.

That didn’t mean I planned to let them drag me out in two days and quietly put me to death.

Are you crazy? I have to survive somehow.

I’d meant it when I said his anger was justified. That didn’t mean I deserved to die at his hands. As far as I was concerned, the Head Elder and Baeksang were both idiots with tragic stories.

And I intended to stop this new idiot I had met after traveling all the way to a foreign land, no matter what it took.

But how do I get out?

All that talking and thinking had left my throat dry. I was swallowing what little spit I had when something cold touched the top of my head.

Tap.

“Huh?”

It was water. It might have been stale and tasteless, but the important thing was that it was water. The ceiling had probably opened up farther when Baeksang smashed the surrounding walls.

Well, that helps.

I muttered inwardly and tilted my head back toward the ceiling.

The next moment, through the crack in the ceiling, I found myself looking into a pair of eyes I hadn’t expected to see.

Huge, clear eyes like a calf’s.

“…Why are you up there?”

Their owner answered.

“Taishan. Hungry. Got locked in underground prison because they said Taishan eats too much.”

“Ah.”

Fair enough.