Chapter 923

How many people feel no fear in the face of death?

Very few.

No—none.

Of course, if you turned the whole world upside down and shook it out, you might find a few. But even among Murim warriors, whose guts are in a league of their own compared to ordinary people, I’d swear there wasn’t a madman like that.

After all, it’s only natural to fear death when you’ve lived a life of your own.

A battle-hardened veteran who’s survived countless brushes with death and a green kid who hasn’t even lost the down on his face are equals before it. Both are afraid.

All the more so if death comes with a full course of unspeakably horrific torture first.

But there are exceptions to everything.

Like the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord, laughing at the top of his lungs before the Emperor.

“Ha! Hahahahaha!”

Sprawled on the ground without his limbs, he was a wretched sight.

Yet his laughter rang out like a victor’s.

The final death he’d put off once—perhaps dozens of times—was at last upon him. Still, I couldn’t find a trace of fear in him.

Was it simply because his body couldn’t feel pain?

No.

Even if he’d been an ordinary human instead of a monster, he would have laughed just the same.

He would have cursed the imperial family and the Great Nation that had taken everything from him, and gladly accepted torture and death.

After all those years, the only thing the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord had left was his grievance.

Self-reproach and regret that he hadn’t completed his revenge with his own hands.

That was all.

The only truth, the only outcome. Nothing more, nothing less.

“It’s over. Completely.”

Jeok Cheongang’s mutter was clear enough.

No sweet words or kind gestures would get information out of the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord now.

Like a horse galloping across a wilderness without looking back, his path had been set long ago.

“I’ve seen eyes like that before. Don’t waste time. Kill him now, before he can cause any more trouble.”

He wasn’t speaking only to me. Jeok Cheongang was speaking to everyone here.

It was the greatest respect he could show the people who had fought beside him on the same battlefield—and a proposal addressed to one man.

The ruler of this vast continent.

The Emperor.

“Your Majesty.”

Jeong Hogun, a Thousand Captain of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, stepped forward with a sword broken in half. Blood covered him from head to toe.

“Please, give your command.”

But the Emperor didn’t answer.

He stood with his lips pressed shut, gazing down at the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord, exhaustion on his face. Some time passed before he spoke.

“What do you think?”

At first, I didn’t know who he was asking.

But as the Emperor’s gaze settled squarely on me, and the people around us erupted as if a dam had burst, I understood.

The Emperor was asking me, of all people, what should be done with the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord.

“Y-Your Majesty!”

“You mustn’t!”

“How could Your Majesty, the sovereign of all under Heaven, ask a mere subject—not even a minister of the court, but a lawless ruffian from the martial world—”

“Lawless ruffians from the martial world, you say.”

The Emperor repeated the words quietly and looked around. Officials in court robes had gathered on every side of him.

He studied their faces one by one. Many had survived because he and the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord had been focused solely on each other.

“How strange,” the Emperor said at last. “The ruffian you speak of fought so hard he’s covered in blood. Yet you ministers of the court have come through this fierce battle looking remarkably untouched.”

“……”

“……”

Silence fell in an instant.

Having shut everyone up with a few words, the Emperor turned back to me.

“Now answer me. I want to hear what you think.”

I didn’t know.

I didn’t know why he’d singled me out, or what answer he wanted.

But I didn’t dwell on it. As always, I could just say what I had to say.

“If I opposed killing him, would you let him live?”

A single, explosive question that no one had expected. I heard people around us catch their breath.

Even the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord stopped laughing and opened his eyes wide.

The Emperor’s gaze didn’t waver.

No.

“Why not?”

I wasn’t asking because I didn’t know.

Everyone here needed to hear the answer, even if the people beyond the palace walls never did.

I trusted the Emperor to understand what I was doing.

“He is a traitor without equal in history. For years, he kept My Father blind and deaf to what was happening. He used poison to slowly drive most of the imperial family to their deaths, including My Eldest Brother, the Crown Prince.”

Shock rippled through the crowd.

Everyone held their breath as the Emperor revealed a history that had remained hidden. Until now, the world had believed that he himself was the root of all the evil.

“By the time I learned the truth, it was too late. Traitors bent on destroying the Great Nation had seized control of the imperial family and held most of the real power.”

Everyone here could imagine what had followed.

An Emperor reduced to a puppet. Princes already poisoned.

Those heirs to a noble bloodline had neither time nor people left to turn to.

Except for one old general who had protected the Embroidered Uniform Guard with unwavering loyalty, and the Great Nation’s fourth prince, who was far from the throne and had been wandering the provinces.

“There was only one way left.”

And so a restoration took place under the guise of a rebellion.

More than a decade ago, right here in this grand banquet hall.

In a single night, several hundred high-ranking court officials died. Before long, tens of thousands more were exiled or executed.

The fourth prince wielded the blade of the purge without hesitation.

He climbed the bodies of the traitors who had tried to destroy the Great Nation, with the unseen glares and curses of its people at his back.

All the while, he promised himself he would soon reveal the truth and wash away his disgrace.

“Then the late Emperor and the other members of the imperial family were confined because…”

“I tried everything to cure them, but even the Imperial Physicians couldn’t determine what was wrong. They spoke of a great physician who wandered the world like a cloud and could drive away even the Grim Reaper. If we found him, they said, there might be a way.”

“The Divine Physician.”

“Yes.” The Emperor’s expression turned bitter. “But in the end, I could never find him.”

I’d heard the story from the Slaughter Saint himself.

He and the Divine Physician had wandered the land treating its people. Those who remembered their kindness had hidden them from the imperial family’s search.

If the imperial court had found them then…

History would have changed.

Even if the poison that cast its long shadow of death over the imperial family had been the Blood Soul Gu, the Slaughter Saint and the Divine Physician I knew might have found some way to deal with it.

Instead, that twist of fate ended with the deaths of the late Emperor, the crown princes, and several other members of the imperial family. The fourth prince, once so far from the throne, became a usurper and an unfilial son in the eyes of the world.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone? Why keep the truth hidden?”

“It wasn’t that I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. At some point, anything I said or did sounded like a usurper making excuses. It was only when My Father regained his senses at the very end and told Me he would pass the throne to Me that I understood.”

It was a stain he could never erase.

Though the fourth prince had formally received the throne and become the ruler of all under Heaven, people turned their backs on a truth they couldn’t believe.

To them, he was a usurper blinded by ambition, a son who had dragged his father from the throne.

As if that weren’t enough, a murderer and parricide who had led countless families and members of the imperial clan to their deaths.

The traitors who had brought the Great Nation to the brink of ruin became loyal patriots. Those who had tried to protect it were left covered in filth.

And yet…

He had no choice but to go on. He had to pull out the enormous weed that had spread its shadow across the Great Nation, roots and all.

“I took the Imperial Capital and purged countless traitors, but the main stem survived. That restoration was only half a success.”

The Eastern Heaven Demon Lord hadn’t been the monster he was now.

He’d fought the Bow Saint and Baek Yeon, suffering injuries so severe he could never recover. Then he’d proposed a deal.

His life in exchange for the fate of the Great Nation.

“For Me… it was an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

The Emperor was the realm, and the Imperial Capital its center.

But the Emperor and the capital were not the whole realm.

If the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord had been killed that day, the Great Nation would have split in two and plunged into a massive war.

With the country hanging by a thread, the only path the fourth prince could choose would have given those who had conspired with the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord long ago, and had waited for the right moment, another excuse to rebel.

“I had to prevent that. No more blood could be spilled.”

The fourth prince had taken up a sword as soon as he could walk.

By the time the calluses on his hands felt natural and the reins were familiar to his touch, he was marching off to war.

Time and again, he’d led armies with outstanding martial skill and strategy, earning great victories. But whenever he went to the battlefield, he would murmur to himself:

This will be the last war.

It has to be the last.

The throne? Glory as a general?

He needed neither. He’d let go of any desire for them long ago.

His brilliant, kind eldest brother would make a sage king. The fourth prince had fought in dozens of wars, great and small, for one reason alone: he wanted the realm his brother would rule to be at peace.

That was all.

But. But…

“So this is what it came to.”

Shing.

The fourth prince—the Emperor—drew his sword.

He looked at me over its shimmering blade, still spotless despite the countless dead it had cut down.

“Jin Taekyung of the Jin Family of Taiyuan. I ask you again. Do I need another reason to kill him?”

“What you’ve told us is enough,” I said.

The Eastern Heaven Demon Lord wasn’t the only one who had waited for his chance at revenge.

“Then that settles it.”

The Emperor’s voice was calm, though something fierce burned beneath it. He brought his sword down.

Toward his family’s enemy.

Against the traitor of all time, who had plunged his country and its people into misery.

Or he would have.

The Emperor’s treasured sword was moving with enough force to split the man in two when a clear young voice rang out.

“One thing is still missing.”

Whoosh!

The blade hissed through the air.

The Emperor stopped it a hair’s breadth from the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord’s throat. He turned. So did I, and everyone else.

We saw a boy in clothes spotted with blood, his eyes calm and sad.

Prince Shangshan. Zhu Bao.

Everyone was looking at the young prince. He looked only at one person, and his small, still-growing feet carried him toward that man.

“Your Highness! Your Highness!”

Hong Jin, nowhere to be seen until now, called out in alarm. He must have gone to his master’s side as soon as the battle began.

Prince Shangshan didn’t stop.

Step.

One step.

Step.

Another.

No one could stand in his way.

At that moment, the boy they saw was a man.

Not a young prince, but another ruler.

And that man, that ruler, slowly bowed his head.

To someone who could not let go of his anger even before death.

Toward the enemy who had killed his parents and siblings.

Swish.

The hem of Prince Shangshan’s robe brushed a pool of blood. He bent deeply toward the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord and spoke.

“I’m sorry. I know no words can comfort you, but… I sincerely apologize for what my grandfather did.”

“……!”

“……!”

Everyone was speechless.

The Emperor, the Bow Saint, the Fire King, and me.

Even the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord.

“Ah.”

A quiet groan slipped between his parted lips.

He looked at Prince Shangshan with trembling eyes, then smiled faintly.

“What a damnable thing.”

Thrust!

The blade resting against his skin sank into his throat.