Chapter 894

“Benefactor. No, Pavilion Master.”

At the sight of Jin Taekyung rising to his feet with a hardened expression, Ju Hwaran hurried to stop him.

Or tried to.

“Let him go.”

A quiet voice slipped into her ear.

The hand reaching toward Jin Taekyung froze in midair. Ju Hwaran looked at the door, firmly shut once more after a gust of wind and rain, then turned away.

“Was it really all right to let him go like that…?”

Jeok Cheongang, who had stopped her at the last moment, answered calmly.

“Who knows? How should this old man know?”

“Old Master!”

At Ju Hwaran’s reproachful cry, Jeok Cheongang gave a faint smile.

For a century and several decades, he had roamed Murim. He had seen all kinds of people over those years, and the enemies he had brought down were too many to count.

The name Fire King Jeok Cheongang belonged to history, past and present.

Even the leaders of the Nine Sects and One Gang and the Five Great Families wouldn’t dare raise their voices in front of him.

So what had made that child so angry in front of the Fire King himself?

Jeok Cheongang knew the answer.

He also knew why his one and only Disciple had stormed out.

“I knew a monk for quite a long time. Night after night, he’d sneak off somewhere secluded to drink liquor and eat meat. A sham monk if ever there was one.”

Ju Hwaran paused at the abrupt story, then spoke carefully.

“Could you be talking about…?”

“That’s right. That sham monk was Hong Dao, the Dharma King.”

Their friendship was widely known.

Fire King Jeok Cheongang had a temper as fiery as his title, and hundreds—no, thousands—more enemies than friends. Of the few friends he did have, Hong Dao was the only one who could calm him with a few words.

Jeok Cheongang didn’t know it, but apart from his martial arts, Hong Dao’s ability to keep Jeok Cheongang’s foul temper in check had played a large part in earning him the title Dharma King.

Of course, the most decisive reasons Hong Dao was respected by all the Murim were his gentle nature—worthy of a great and virtuous monk—and his mysterious prophetic ability.

“Sometimes he’d read the heavenly patterns and learn the will of Heaven. It was a wondrous thing to watch.”

By now, everyone—including Ju Hwaran—was quietly listening to the story that had begun so suddenly.

The Dharma King was that symbolic a figure in the Central Plains Murim. Even if he hadn’t been the Abbot of Shaolin Temple, the very Mount Tai and Northern Dipper¹ of the Murim, that wouldn’t have changed.

“But one year before that sham monk entered Nirvana,² he told me something.”

Jeok Cheongang drew out a memory etched deep in his mind.

It was the memory of a night he could never return to, one that came back whenever he thought of the friend who had died before him.

“He said the heavenly patterns were becoming distorted. They had been for decades already. Before long, clouds of an unknown calamity would gather and cover the sun, the moon, and even the stars.”

“Dark Heaven…!”

A single cry slipped from someone’s lips.

Jeok Cheongang nodded and continued in a low voice.

“That was when I began to take the existence of Dark Heaven seriously.”

But that wasn’t all.

Four months before that conversation, Hong Dao had looked up at the sky and seen something shining amid the turbulent darkness.

“The Morning Star.”

Jeok Cheongang let out the breath he’d been holding.

A morning star was supposed to shine brilliantly for a moment, then fade.

But the one that had begun to shine clearly in the north never faded.

If anything, its light grew larger with each passing day.

It kept shining as Jeok Cheongang and Jin Taekyung—an old man and a young man who had met by chance as though by fate—left Shanxi and reached Henan.

It kept shining through the year they spent together on Mount Jiuhua, until the venerable monk who had first discovered it became a handful of relics.

And perhaps it was still shining now.

“Do you know what the Dharma King said when he told me about the Morning Star?”

No one answered, and Jeok Cheongang didn’t wait for them to.

“He said that one insolent brat I’d kept by my side was the master of that Morning Star.”

“…!”

“He said that even if the whole world were plunged into darkness one day, that Morning Star would never lose its light.”

Everyone stared, mouths agape.

The subject of this astonishing secret from the past, unknown until now, was someone they all knew well.

Jin Taekyung.

The same name struck every one of them.

The shock was greater than any of them could have imagined.

Hong Dao himself, the Dharma King, had named him the master of the Morning Star that would light the world. A star that would never lose its light, even at the end.

But the Morning Star pointed neither to the Martial God, now a legend of the past, nor to the Sword Saint, who was writing a legend of his own as the new Murim Alliance Leader.

It pointed to Jin Taekyung.

A young man barely past twenty who had nevertheless shone brighter than anyone amid the calamity sweeping the land.

Clunk. Whoosh.

In the silence that had settled over the pavilion, a fierce gust of wind and rain flung open the firmly shut door.

Rain and wind swept among them, no weaker than before, but no one spoke.

As if by agreement, they turned their heads and gazed into the darkness outside, their eyes still wide with shock.

At the place where the star had been.

Toward the master of the Morning Star, somewhere out there.

“I once heard someone say this.”

Jeok Cheongang murmured calmly.

“Where a star shines, darkness gathers. But the star never disappears.”

At first, Jeok Cheongang himself had been skeptical.

A calamity that would dwarf the Great Faction War?

Jin Taekyung, so young he was practically an infant, the light amid that calamity?

But as time passed, and the longer Jeok Cheongang watched Jin Taekyung at his side, the more he came to understand.

This brat is the light. A new star to guide us through the darkness that will one day cover the land.

And…

The only light Heaven has granted this old man.

Just as a star shone brighter in the darkness, darkness always seemed to gather wherever Jin Taekyung went.

Yet none of it had dared touch him. None had extinguished the light he gave off.

And even if such a day came, it would not be this time.

Complete darkness had not yet fallen over the land. Only then would the Morning Star that was Jin Taekyung shine its biggest and brightest.

Until then… find your own path. Shine your light wherever you wish.

Jeok Cheongang smiled faintly.

He had long since passed the age of weighing the rights and wrongs of the world.

There was no justice in the Murim he had known—or in this world at all.

Only monsters consumed by their own causes, pointing spears and swords at one another.

Just like the incomprehensible series of events unfolding right here, in the imperial palace.

This old man is no different.

Growing old also meant growing numb.

Death had become cheap, and the people he had struggled to let into his heart had begun to leave, one by one.

His first Disciple, Jangcheon. The Dharma King.

The justice Jeok Cheongang had chosen, his great cause, was to protect what he had left.

He only hoped to make even a slightly good choice along the way, as his one and only Disciple—who had suddenly come into his life late in the old man’s years—was doing.

To Jeok Cheongang, that was the only difference between the orthodox faction and practitioners of demonic, heterodox arts.

Even if you write it clumsily, all crooked and awkward, does that make its meaning fade?

Even if the handwriting was terrible, the meaning contained in the character for upright remained unchanged. It was simply as awkward as a child’s writing.

And his Disciple, Jin Taekyung, despised the assassins who didn’t even make that effort. He suspected Ma Sanbao’s motives for suddenly bringing martial artists into the cause.

Whatever you decide, it doesn’t matter. This old man will always be at your side.

Jeok Cheongang gazed into the darkness through the door the wind had thrown wide open.

The imperial palace was unknown territory, full of secrets.

Whatever happened next, it wouldn’t surprise him.

No—a storm was already raging, so vast it was impossible to tell friend from foe.

If we can’t avoid it, we’ll have to face it.

Jeok Cheongang muttered inwardly, then smacked Taishan on the back of the head. Taishan had been licking a bare plate clean.

Smack!

“Quit doing the dishes and close the door, you unorthodox bastard.”

It didn’t take long for me to come face-to-face with Ma Sanbao.

He found me before I found him.

“He’s waiting for you.”

I was heading toward the pavilion assigned to the East Depot, picturing the layout I’d already learned, when a eunuch in a close-fitting martial uniform approached and spoke. My eyes narrowed.

How did he know?

I’d made sure to stay hidden using the darkness and the terrain, and I’d kept my movements to a minimum.

No matter how skilled the East Depot eunuchs were with concealment techniques, it was hard to believe they could detect someone of my caliber so easily.

But…

Damn it.

Right now, I had to set the question aside and keep going. I stepped quietly out of the darkness, and the eunuch led me to a small pavilion.

“He’s waiting inside.”

I quickly surveyed the area.

The imperial palace was divided into countless pavilions and sections for its various departments.

But this wasn’t the East Depot’s section, according to the palace map I’d obtained from Ma Sanbao beforehand.

“Wait. This place…”

“It isn’t a building assigned to the East Depot. Officially, that is.”

“…”

“Then I’ll take my leave.”

A secret refuge in the imperial palace, used to avoid people’s eyes. Something like that?

The eunuch vanished before I could ask anything else. I went inside.

Creak.

For once, the foul weather was useful.

The old wooden door’s groan was swallowed by the pounding rain.

Ma Sanbao is… upstairs.

There was only one presence on the floor above. I climbed the stairs, which creaked almost as badly as the door, and saw a lone figure standing in the pitch-black room.

“You came?”

In the darkness, I caught a glimpse of teeth far whiter than those of an ordinary person of this era.

Ma Sanbao glanced around the room, empty of so much as a candle or a piece of furniture, and shrugged.

“Forgive the humble setting. Too many eyes are watching.”

“This is fine. I can put up with this much.”

“This much? Sounds like there’s something else you can’t put up with.”

“Since you already know, we should be able to finish this conversation quickly.”

The voice coming out of my mouth sounded like a stranger’s. My expression was probably just as stiff.

“As expected. You’re astonishingly honest.”

“I hear that a lot.”

How often did anyone speak that way to Ma Sanbao, the East Depot’s de facto leader?

But he didn’t react as I’d expected.

“So, what do you want to hear about?”

His face was calm, as if he’d known this was coming. Then he spoke again, his voice just as composed.

“The assassins I hired? Or… that woman, So Gyo?”

“…!”