Chapter 995

Some conversations don’t need many words.

Especially when the matter is urgent.

That was true of my conversation with Jin Wikyung, who’d come to my room out of the blue. It lasted less than fifteen minutes.

But what he told me weighed as heavily as a massive boulder. As soon as he left, I called everyone together—the people who could help me bear that weight.

Rattle.

“Well, I’ll be damned. Live long enough and you see everything. Who’d have thought martial-world lowlifes like us would ever lay eyes on the Marquis of Shangshan?”

Namho tossed out the silly joke the moment the door opened, and I couldn’t help laughing.

For two reasons.

First, seeing Namho again—or rather, seeing all of them—felt good. Comfortable, too, as though it had been ages since we’d met.

Second, because Namho was sitting astride Taishan’s shoulders as though that were the most natural thing in the world. It was ridiculous.

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like? Sitting.”

“I can see that. Why are you sitting there?”

“Easy. It’s incredibly comfortable. This fellow’s a real find.”

Namho smiled with the satisfaction of an inventor who’d made a world-changing discovery, then patted the top of Taishan’s head.

“What are you waiting for? Get inside.”

Taishan stood blankly in the doorway. He glanced off into the distance before answering.

“Taishan. Feet won’t move. Must be hungry.”

“What the hell are you talking about? The jerky you stuffed into your mouth barely fifteen minutes ago amounted to a whole calf.”

“……”

Apparently, the ride was pay-as-you-go.

And the mileage was terrible.

“Don’t remember. Hungry.”

“You bottomless pit…”

With a deep sigh, Namho pulled a piece of taffy from his sleeve and waved it in front of Taishan’s eyes.

“There. Will you move now?”

In that instant, Taishan’s eyes narrowed to razor-sharp slits.

“Just one?”

“Damn it. I’ll give you another as soon as we get back.”

“Three.”

“You little bandit. Not a chance. Two. That’s my final offer, so think carefully.”

Taishan’s resolve was beginning to waver when a voice sounded from behind his enormous body, ending the negotiations.

“Move. Now. Or I’ll personally stab each of you twice.”

“……!”

“……!”

“What, two stabs each aren’t enough? Should I make it three?”

Her voice was low and calm, which somehow made the warning more dangerous. Taishan swallowed hard and hurried into the room.

He even snatched the taffy Namho had been waving in front of him.

With the doorway finally clear, Ju Hwaran—the one who’d put an end to the rush-hour jam—strode toward me. She called out in a voice suddenly thick with emotion, as though nothing had happened.

“Young Master Jin! No, Benefactor! No, Pavilion Master!”

“……”

I was pretty sure I’d asked her several times to pick one.

It was funny, but her sudden change of attitude caught me off guard. While I floundered, her eyes filled with tears.

“I’m sorry I arrived so late during the last battle. You must’ve had such a hard time.”

Over Ju Hwaran’s shoulder, Sama Pyo stood like an invisible man and muttered to himself.

“I’d guess the enemies had a harder time.”

Song Ilseom, arms crossed and his willow-leaf saber tucked against his chest as always, nodded.

“Judging by the aftermath, he was a monster. The enemies were smashed to pieces.”

Jaw clenched, Ju Hwaran ignored the voices behind her and continued.

“Were you hurt? Are you all right now?”

Sama Pyo and Song Ilseom at least had some sense. They slipped away at the right moment instead of barging in like Hyuk Mujin.

“Come on, Young Lady Ju. Why ask how someone’s feeling when he went through Bone Transformation just the other day—”

A chill settled over the room.

I didn’t know what expression Ju Hwaran had on her face as she slowly turned around, but I saw terror spread across Hyuk Mujin’s face as his voice trailed off. I decided I’d go on living without ever finding out.

“Mujin, shut your blabbering mouth. Young Lady Ju, I’m fine. Completely fine, so please don’t worry. And Taishan, I have something important to say, so swallow that taffy before we start—oh, you’ve finished it already. Did you chew it, or drink it?”

With Taishan’s magic trick over—and me wondering whether taffy might actually be a liquid—I’d finally sorted out the traffic. Namho gave me an uneasy look.

“Something important, huh? For some reason, I already have a very bad feeling about this… Am I just being an old worrywart?”

“If only that were all.”

I wasn’t the one who said it.

The last guest, Jeok Cheongang, strode into the room and gave me a nod.

“Tell them what’s happening beyond Shanxi Province.”

His grave eyes told me he’d heard the same news I had.

I looked silently from one face to the next in the now-crowded room. At last, I spoke.

“Something troubling is happening in the west.”

“The west? Where in the west…?”

As expected, Namho was the first to react. His brow furrowed as he spoke, then his narrow eyes widened.

“Y-you don’t mean…?”

“Yes. The place you’re thinking of.”

I nodded, then spoke in a heavy voice.

The far western edge, the birthplace of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult—called the Demonic Cult in the Central Plains—and now the home base of Dark Heaven. That accursed land.

“Xinjiang.”

“……!”

“……!”

A massive shock swept through the room like an invisible wave.

When did Murim—that other world within the world—and the martial artists who lived in it first come into being?

No one knew for sure.

Oral traditions passed down through the generations, along with the few surviving lines in records from the distant past, led many to claim that Shaolin Temple in Henan had begun Murim’s long history. In time, that became the accepted account.

Jeok Cheongang had told me something different while I was enduring grueling training on Mount Jiuhua.

“History is shaped and pieced together. People believe what they want to believe—whatever suits them.”

Back then, Jeok Cheongang had been suffering from the infirmities of old age, and he’d begun reminiscing more often. Or rather, I’d half-begged him to. I thought I’d read somewhere that recalling and revisiting old memories whenever he had time might slow the illness’s progression.

And among Jeok Cheongang’s vast store of knowledge were secret histories of Murim that few people knew.

“Light and darkness go hand in hand. The idea that martial arts were born in Shaolin, packed with fellows trying to become Buddhas, is absurd enough. But did you think no one would try to use such power for evil?”

“Are you saying…?”

“That’s right. According to records left by our sect’s forebears, the Demonic Cult came into being that way, too. No one knows exactly when, but it was probably around the same time as Shaolin Temple.”

Murim could only have become a mountain of sabers and a forest of swords because the age itself was so chaotic.

The Shaolin warrior monks learned martial arts to protect. Others, on encountering that astonishing power, learned martial arts to conquer the world.

“People of every stripe must’ve gathered from all directions, in droves. They used martial arts to wield such mysterious power that they hardly seemed human. Just imagine how astonished everyone must’ve been.”

There must have been only a few dozen of them at first.

The world around them was dark even in daylight. Having encountered a power like a great light, they soon became followers and spread in every direction.

They told others what they’d seen with their own eyes. When people refused to believe them, they took hold of their sleeves and led them to him.

To the man with that unbelievable power. To the leader who would protect them in this wretched age of chaos.

The followers grew to hundreds, then thousands, and finally a hundred thousand. Their leader declared himself the Cult Leader and a divine man sent by Heaven.

“That was the beginning of the Heavenly Demon and the Demonic Cult.”

Jeok Cheongang had also said that they probably hadn’t called themselves the Heavenly Demon or the Demonic Cult from the very beginning.

What mattered was that the first Heavenly Demon never conquered the world. He and his followers settled instead in a desert on the western frontier.

Over nearly a thousand years, they sometimes turned their blades on one another. After several divisions and reunifications, they brought about the Great Faction War, a calamity of enormous scale.

Throughout those long years, the scorching desert ruled absolutely by Fiends became a Land of Ruin that even Murim of the Central Plains couldn’t hope to challenge.

And so it remained, even now that a new shadow called Dark Heaven had fallen across it.

But…

“Something unprecedented is happening in that Xinjiang?”

A long silence had followed my brief account. Namho’s question finally broke it, and I nodded.

“That’s what I heard.”

“Where did the information come from?”

“Where do you think?”

I pointed upward. Namho let out a weary breath.

“The Murim Alliance… No, the Hidden Shadow Pavilion.”

“I heard they lost more than thirty elite agents. After their first and last messenger eagle, all contact was lost.”

“Damn it. Then there’s no room for doubt. How many enemies are we looking at?”

“That…”

Even I couldn’t bring myself to answer right away. Namho groaned at the look on my face.

“I see. The Hundred Thousand Demonic Disciples all over again.”

“Maybe more than that. At least, that’s what the information I received suggests.”

More important, these enemies would be far stronger and more terrifying than the Demonic Cult’s followers had been fifty years ago.

The desert no longer belonged to the Demonic Cult. It belonged to Dark Heaven.

They weren’t merely the successors of the Demonic Cult under a different name. They were a new group of followers, ruled by a power incomparably stronger and more dangerous.

Could that be why Logout was suddenly blocked?

The thought crossed my mind, but I shook my head.

No. That wasn’t it.

The Quest hadn’t appeared yet, because I hadn’t made my choice.

Now was the moment to make it.

“From this moment on, we’re heading west.”

Ding.

An alert sounded, announcing a new Quest.