Part 39 - Avici Hell
Geumju let out a horrific scream and lurched to her feet.
Darkness filled everything around her, and an icy wind sliced past with a shrieking whistle.
"Haah… haah…"
Cold water was dripping onto her head, drop by drop.
When she looked up, she saw droplets falling from long-grown stalactites.
This was the very same cave where she'd lost consciousness.
She didn't know why she was back inside the cave, but it didn't matter.
After sitting there blankly for a while and scanning her surroundings, she finally spoke.
"...Did I survive again?"
If she had to guess, it seemed the effects of the great sorcery were still lingering.
She ran her hands over her body.
Nothing was wrong.
Her fingers were all still there, and her heart pounded insistently, loudly proclaiming she was alive.
Even her face—torn to shreds in the final moment when that thing bit into her—was perfectly intact.
She let out a sigh of relief.
But this wasn't the time to relax.
She hurriedly got up and made her way out along the cave.
The moment she stepped outside, bright sunlight greeted her.
She stared up at it with a deeply moved expression for a moment, then followed the narrow path down through the forest.
A slum came into view, and after passing it, she found herself in the back alleys of Luoyang's commercial district.
She needed to get out of Luoyang as fast as possible.
Disguising herself as an ordinary housewife, she slipped into a merchant caravan and managed to leave Luoyang without trouble.
Once she left Luoyang behind and entered a sparsely traveled mountain, she killed the entire caravan.
Then she took only the valuables worth carrying.
It looked like she'd have no problem starting over.
Leaving Henan behind, she headed as far away as she could.
Whenever her travel funds ran low, she ambushed caravans or attacked lone travelers to refill her purse.
As time passed, she eventually reached Yunnan Province.
There, she raided a mountain stronghold and took it for herself—becoming its new leader.
Competition wasn't particularly fierce, and the authorities' eyes didn't reach this far, but tea merchants passed through often, so the take was decent.
Before long, she became a bandit queen who ruled the region.
It wasn't as lavish as Luoyang, and her body wasn't as comfortable—but day to day, life was enjoyable in its own way.
"Boss! Boss! The caravan coming this time is a big one!"
"I told you—don't call me 'boss'. Call me the stronghold chief!"
She gave the idiot underling a swift kick and barked her orders with vigor.
"Alright, you lot! Get ready to welcome our guests!"
"Yes!"
She was watching her people bustle about with a satisfied smile when—
"You look like you're having fun."
Without thinking, she nodded.
"Well, more or less—"
Her entire body froze.
A thick stench of sulfur filled her nose, and a bone-chilling cold—utterly out of place in Yunnan—wrapped around her.
"Y-you…?!"
She turned her head, and a white mask came into view.
The scorching sun and that eerily terrifying white mask were so alien together it made her skin crawl.
"One."
She screamed.
***
"Haah! Haah!"
This time, too, she woke up inside that cave.
She fled Luoyang at the fastest speed she could manage.
This time, she didn't kill anyone.
That monster would have tracked her through the traces she left behind.
So if she left no trace, that would be the end of it.
She hunted beasts, quenched her thirst with stream water, and kept moving east.
She encountered a mounted tribe, beat down their warriors, and took command of their small clan.
Carried away by momentum, she attacked neighboring clans and unified them.
She didn't get too greedy.
If that thing came again, it would be disastrous.
But in the end, it found her anyway.
"One."
***
This time she resolved not to commit slaughter.
She judged that if she truly changed her ways, it wouldn't come for her.
She entered a temple and became a Buddhist nun.
Nothing about it suited her, but it was also true that some corner of her heart felt lighter.
Then, on a night when the moon shone dazzlingly bright, she met it.
"One."
***
She was wronged.
This time, the moment she stepped out of the cave, she vented her fury across the streets of Luoyang.
"One."
***
She tried living like this, and like that.
But no matter how she lived, it came.
Living kindly didn't make it come later, and indulging in evil didn't make it come sooner.
It truly came at any time it pleased.
She begged. She demanded reasons. She let go of everything.
But the answer was always the same.
"One."
***
She realized it.
She had been trapped forever inside a nightmare she could never wake from.
Again and again—again and again—only the horrific cycle of being devoured would repeat.
She didn't know when it would end.
Maybe—
Maybe it would last forever.
***
She could never know, but she wasn't the only one caught in that dreadful shackle.
Everyone Yeon Sang-hyeon had devoured was inside the same shackle.
Through countless methods that existed only in imagination, through punishments so horrific they defied description.
Every evil person would have to feel agony that shattered their soul in proportion to the evil karma they had piled up.
And they weren't alone in there, either.
Countless evil people—too many to number—were in that place, devoured by all the Disciples throughout history.
They screamed, they shouted, they wailed.
But they couldn't escape.
They couldn't even go mad.
They were never permitted the mercy of a broken mind—never allowed to flee reality.
***
In the dim reaches of an ancient past—
Perhaps at some point in antiquity.
Perhaps somewhere in myth.
Perhaps in some other world—
There were those who, through endurance and long suffering, obtained lofty spirituality and immortality.
They found it intolerable that the world's irrationality, corruption, and injustice were always ignored.
They cursed heaven and earth. And offering themselves as sacrifices, they gave birth to a fiend that had never existed across a thousand ages.
And the thing that was born that way, without anyone's help, endlessly nurtured its own growth.
It developed.
It improved.
It refined.
It advanced.
And thus, after a span of time beyond counting, it became so vast that no one could find those who knew its true nature.
Even the Disciples were no exception.
The Ruler Of Darkness did not exist for the sake of the Disciples.
It merely existed in the present world through them.
Once a Disciple had served their purpose, they too were devoured by The Ruler Of Darkness, just like every other evil person.
They were imprisoned in that microcosm.
A place no one could ever leave.
A place where no existence could escape the shackle of pain.
A place where all evil karma had to be liquidated—waiting only to vanish.
Some called that place—
Hell.
***
"What do you think? Do you like it? Personally, I call that closed world a Hell Furnace."
The fallen immortal spread his hand toward Yeon Sang-hyeon.
Fear and madness—both—clung to his face as he spoke of the wondrous existence known as The Ruler Of Darkness.
"Inside there, they suffer without end, providing nourishment to The Ruler Of Darkness. And on that nourishment, The Ruler Of Darkness is still growing even now."
"I see."
Yeon Sang-hyeon's expression was calm.
The old man, his excitement cooled, gave a bitter smile at that calmness.
"You… you're thinking something else."
"It's nothing."
The old man looked at him like he understood.
"Right. It weighs on you—the people you couldn't save."
"..."
Yeon Sang-hyeon didn't answer.
In his mind, the mask artisan's family rose into view.
So many people hanging in a human-flesh factory.
The innocent people who died in the time it took him to eliminate the Black Bone Sect.
The enormous heap of corpses he'd seen in the underground cavity.
"You're thinking that if Dark Heaven Venerable One had been able to act just a little more, maybe you could've saved them."
Yeon Sang-hyeon gave a silent, bitter smile.
"But your judgment was right. If you had pushed harder and used the power of The Ruler Of Darkness more—"
"I would've been corroded by The Ruler Of Darkness's madness and demonic energy."
In a sense, it was only natural.
The Ruler Of Darkness and its Disciple were not an inseparable pair.
To The Ruler Of Darkness, a Disciple was nothing more than a consumable.
From the start, how could a mere human—originally nothing but a human—receive power from an existence of the outer cosmos and expect there to be no price?
"You…"
The old man's unfathomable eyes rested on Yeon Sang-hyeon.
"The Ruler Of Darkness is showing you their forms."
Yeon Sang-hyeon sensed something strange in the old man's words.
"...Wasn't The Ruler Of Darkness originally showing me the vengeful spirits?"
The old man let out a hollow chuckle.
"No, no."
He waved his hand in denial.
"What you're seeing aren't vengeful spirits of the victims."
"...What do you mean?"
Yeon Sang-hyeon's voice grew heavy—he'd already guessed something from what he'd heard.
"They're only the memories of a world The Ruler Of Darkness is showing you. A human soul doesn't cling to the material world so easily."
It was all just The Ruler Of Darkness's sorcery.
A way to make its Disciple devour more evil people—faster.
"...In my case, it was my family."
The old man's gaze drifted outward.
Yeon Sang-hyeon didn't dare ask what he was seeing or hearing.
It was clearly bound to the heaviest pain in the old man's life.
The old man shrugged and forced a playful grin.
"As I thought—you truly are a compassionate man. Even though they have no direct connection to you, you still see those spirits."
The old man chuckled.
Yeon Sang-hyeon also smiled bitterly.
"...The moment I became a Disciple, I thought I'd lost all my humanity."
The old man shook his head.
"You didn't lose your humanity. Your humanity was only twisted by The Ruler Of Darkness."
Then he added.
"Be wary of humanity being consumed. And also be wary of humanity in excess."
Yeon Sang-hyeon nodded.
"If all humanity is consumed, only The Ruler Of Darkness's madness will remain. And if humanity is excessive, I'll go mad even faster."
The old man clapped his hands.
"Exactly. Sharp as ever!"
Then he asked Yeon Sang-hyeon.
"The way you control demonic energy was also fascinating. I never imagined you'd devise a method to distinguish yourself from Dark Heaven Venerable One—even I didn't see that coming!"
He looked genuinely delighted.
What was it he expected from Yeon Sang-hyeon?
"And the name of that heart art you referenced at the start was…?"
"Two Principles Heart Art."
The old man cried out, flushed with excitement.
"Yes! An excellent application. In martial arts, you might be several moves ahead of me."
To compare him to an existence that had been an immortal—
"It's nothing but a trivial trick."
"Useless modesty!"
The old man scooted closer, leaning in.
"Then now you can use both demonic energy and internal energy, can't you?!"
At that, Yeon Sang-hyeon only smiled.