Part 34 - Netherworld Mado (1)
Up until just a moment ago, this place had been no different from a small battlefield.
Orders and reports had flown back and forth in a frenzy, mixed with shouts meant to raise morale—the clash of weapons, screams, and groans until it was enough to make your head spin.
But then the Dark Heaven Venerable One appeared, and like a tidal wave, he swept everything away.
As if the world had snapped back to the moment before any of it happened.
Now, only the occasional moans of the wounded could be heard, and the quiet, measured exchanges between couriers and adjutants as they coordinated the cleanup—those faint voices alone piercing the silence.
There had been people who fought, people who bled, people who died…
And yet not a trace of the enemy remained.
No corpses. No bloodstains. Nothing.
It was an unreal sight.
Faced with something so far outside the normal order of things, Se-a felt a brief wave of dizziness.
"Pavilion Master."
The report from the on-site commander yanked her back to reality.
"Measures for the casualties are underway, and reorganization to maintain the street's blockade is also in progress."
"Good."
Se-a replied briefly, then called to the on-site commander as he turned away.
"This scene… even to someone like you, who's stood on so many battlefields—doesn't it feel strange? No, of course it does. It has to."
At her question-that-wasn't-quite-a-question, the on-site commander halted.
He turned and swept his gaze around.
Everyone was immersed in their duties; no one was paying attention this way.
With a short sigh, he removed the leather helmet he'd been wearing and tucked it under his arm.
Heat and the sharp scent of sweat rose from his head in a faint steam.
"It does. Just as you said—this is insanely strange."
Scratching at his jaw, where white was beginning to creep into his stubble, he continued.
"And it's ominous, too. It makes you uneasy. Almost like you've been bewitched."
It was an honesty so blunt it felt unexpected.
Se-a looked surprised, and he gave her a calm, faint smile.
"But strange things happen on battlefields all the time. Things you can't understand in the moment—things you couldn't understand even if you tried."
He started to add more, then seemed to blame his own curt, military way of speaking, and chose a method he was used to.
"Forget it."
"Pardon?"
He tightened the loosened leather straps of his armor again.
"On a battlefield, your vision narrows. It's natural. And if you fixate on something strange, you're likely to ruin what needs doing."
Se-a nodded slowly, accepting it.
"Later, when time has passed and you look back, you can make sense of things. You can explain them well enough. Because you start seeing what you couldn't see back then."
"Is that so…"
He glanced around once more, then patted Se-a's shoulder in a quick motion.
"So for now—forget it, Commander."
Se-a nodded again.
"That's good advice. You can tell it comes from long years on the battlefield."
He put his leather helmet back on and gave a wry smile.
"Though I don't know if something this grotesque will ever be explainable, no matter how much time passes."
That was true, too.
But either way, the conversation helped.
Se-a returned to her work and asked.
"Is there still no word on the Dark Heaven Venerable One and Geumju's whereabouts?"
It had only been moments since the Dark Heaven Venerable One had eliminated the martial artists of the murim—and vanished.
"That is…"
At that moment, Gyu, who had been waiting quietly behind them, answered instead.
"Geumju disappeared not long after the Dark Heaven Venerable One revealed himself. And as for the Dark Heaven Venerable One…"
She cast a sharp gaze toward the front.
"His qi is far too distinct. I can't pinpoint an exact location, but…"
Her mouth went dry as she continued.
"He is still, without a doubt, somewhere on this street."
Se-a nodded.
She was just about to issue an order when—
"Then…"
A tremendous explosion roared, and a violent tremor slammed into them.
Gyu, faster than anyone, wrapped Se-a in her arms to shield her and shouted.
"Over there!"
From the wreckage of a building blasted into splinters at the epicenter, something sprang up.
A woman in a red palace robe—Geumju.
"You—You! How dare you! How do you know my name?!"
Her voice boomed across the street.
And then, a laugh—made of that distinctive harsh metallic sound—rolled through the entire street, cold and eerie.
***
At that laughter, the dust cloud scattered quickly, revealing the Dark Heaven Venerable One.
Geumju, perched atop a building opposite him, pressed him again.
"Who told you my name?! Speak—now! Are you not going to answer?!"
In that instant, his laughter cut off—sharp, abrupt.
Twisting his neck sideways to look up at her, the Dark Heaven Venerable One spoke.
"Did you truly believe that no matter what you did, no matter where you hid, I would not know your name?"
As he asked, blue ghostfire flared to life above the unpierced eyeholes of his white mask.
"D-Don't be ridiculous!"
He was clearly standing down there, looking up at her on the roof—and yet, for some reason, it felt as if he were the one high above, looking down at her.
"Did you think hiding your name would hide your evil deeds as well?"
The eyes burning with ghostfire were seeing a scene unlike what anyone else saw.
[Se-yu-hwa! Give me back my older brother! Give me back my family!]
A woman with her eyes gouged out, blood spilling from the empty sockets, clutched Geumju by the hair and wailed.
[You bitch, Yu-hwa! Over a measly twenty jeon, you did this to the one who raised you?!]
A middle-aged man crawled forward, dragging his long-spilled guts behind him, and seized one of Geumju's legs, clinging to it.
[Miss Se-yu-hwa! My children are crying because they're starving! Please—please give me back my breasts!]
A woman with her upper body soaked in blood shoved three crying children toward Geumju.
The children had no heads—yet from their throats, they still wailed with startling force.
[You took the arms of someone like me—someone who only knew how to use strength—so you didn't think I'd survive, did you?]
[My hands! Give me back my hands!]
At first there were only one or two.
But as time passed, they multiplied, surrounding Geumju.
And beyond them, the line of vengeful spirits stretched on—so long the end could not be seen.
Their grief-stricken accusations, their screams—unable to do anything even as wandering souls—wove together into a brutal dissonance.
As their voices grew louder and louder, they became a single enormous roar, impossible to make out as words.
[What sin did my only daughter commit for you to take her?! What hatred did you bear against a child in the flower of her youth, that you made her die so miserably?! Why punish children for the sins of their fathers?! How am I to face my daughter in the underworld?!]
[I will tear you to death! Even if my bones turn to dust, even if I roll in the hellfire pits for countless years, I will curse you and tear you apart—only you!]
Inside the white mask, Yeon Sang-hyeon's expression twisted beyond measure.
Their injustice, their anguish—their grudges and rage—stabbed into his chest with vivid clarity.
The Ruler Of Darkness was forcing those stories, those memories, into him—driving them in like spikes.
The ghostfire blazing from the mask flared even more violently, as if responding to his fury.
With trembling hands, he raised them to cover the mask.
But his sight was not blocked in the slightest.
Even lowering his head did nothing.
The ghostfire showed him everything at its own whim.
Before he realized it, blood was running from the corner of his tightly clenched mouth.
"…There's nothing there! Stop muttering nonsense like that!"
Geumju was shouting at him.
"Answer what I'm asking, right n—?!"
When he snapped his head up, Geumju reflexively stumbled back two or three steps.
Yeon Sang-hyeon roared like thunder.
[Se-yu-hwa!]
A pitch-black demonic energy surged up from his body.
[Resist with everything you have—if you can! Spill out every last thing you possess! Even in death, you will suffer for eternity, until every grudge here is extinguished!]
The demonic energy packed into that voice was so intense that buildings trembled and caked dust burst upward into the air.
"Shut up!"
Geumju reflexively spread a qi barrier, which shook violently under his thunderous shout.
"How dare you—what are you to pass judgment on me as you please?!"
When she drew her qi to its utmost limit, grotesque dark-red veins bulged across even her face.
A terrifying aura erupted from her in all directions, whipping outward like thin blades.
"Save your pathetic hero act for after you die!"
When she whipped both arms down like lightning, everything around the Dark Heaven Venerable One detonated outward.
Amid the ear-numbing chain of blasts, a voice made of metal rang with startling clarity into Geumju's ears.
"First—one."
"What nonsense now?"
At the meaningless words, Geumju raised both hands, her nails poised like claws—and only then did she see that the ring finger of her right hand was gone.
"…?!"
Bright-red blood burst from where it had been.
"W-When—my finger…?!"
The Dark Heaven Venerable One's hollow laugh echoed.
"You, who shattered other people's lives so easily—are you truly that shocked by a single finger?"
As the dust cleared, the Dark Heaven Venerable One was revealed, holding her finger.
"How dare you! How dare you, you bastard—!"
She stomped down, and the ground around them caved in deeply.
It was a fearsome display, but the Dark Heaven Venerable One didn't seem to care about her aura at all.
Even as the earth shook, he maintained his balance with ease and tossed the finger into the air.
It fell into his gaping mouth.
Crunch. Crunch.
The sound of bones being chewed carried clearly.
"…A rare delicacy."
His long tongue slid out, licking up the blood that ran past his lips.
"Was the human flesh of the neighbor's child—the first you ever ate—this flavorful too?"
"Shut up!"
Geumju's body plunged toward him.
The Dark Heaven Venerable One tried to slide back like a ghost to escape her range, but it was already within the movement she had anticipated.
Her arms lashed like whips, shredding the air, striking in with irregular trajectories.
Combo attacks as fast as streaks of light pounded his torso.
With a chain of explosive impacts, his body shook violently, battered without mercy.
"Diiieee!"
Screaming like a beast, she drove in a single strike of an internal qi technique, packing it full of inner energy.
The air layer around them burst outward, and his body crumpled as he was blasted away.
With a thunderous boom, he punched through the outer wall of a building and burst out through the opposite side.
Still not losing speed, he tore through several more walls before finally slamming into the outer wall of yet another building.
Buildings with massive holes collapsed one after another.
The last one—the one he had crashed into—crumbled down and crushed his body beneath it.
"Is that all?! Is that it?! Is that what you were so proud of?!"
As Geumju shouted in her ringing voice, a voice that could not possibly be there whispered into her ear.
"Two."