Morning Comes To The Black Path Too

I stared at the main hall, endlessly burning as it was swallowed by a scarlet inferno, and laughed.

“Wow, look at it burn. Burns real well. Yep. That’s how it should burn. Burn, burn away.”

A dangerous building like that was better off burning to the ground. What possible reason was there to keep a main hall where you couldn’t even eat a single meal in peace?

The same went for the Gang Leaders who’d had urgent business in heaven and ascended ahead of everyone else, and for the Black Serpent Gate Master who’d gone to the next world after throwing a fit all by himself.

Just as a main hall that couldn’t serve as a main hall was better off burning away, bastards who wore human skin while constantly doing things no human should do were better off disappearing from the world.

Either way, both the main hall and the villains were now disappearing into the flames, so I clasped my hands behind my back and lost myself in the flickering fire.

In other words, zoning out while staring at a fire. Fire-gazing, for short.

Why did staring into flames always make me feel like my mind was drifting away somewhere? Was it because there were still hot embers left inside my heart as well? I had no idea.

At that moment, I sensed someone approaching from behind.

“Sect Master.”

I turned around and saw a fairly well-built middle-aged man walking toward me.

The man was none other than the Black Serpent Gate’s Deputy Sect Master, whom I’d hired as a cleaner.

Perhaps blood had splattered onto him while he cleared away the corpses, because the Deputy Sect Master’s black robe had turned dark red. He approached and continued speaking.

“As you ordered, we pushed the bodies into the main hall and cremated them together. My men and I also cleaned up all the bloodstains scattered around. Once dawn breaks, I’ll hire workers to repair the collapsed walls and the damaged training ground.”
“Do that. Good work.”
“Yes. Is there anything else you’d like me to do……?”

I looked straight at the Deputy Sect Master’s face.

He had brown eyebrows and hair, and just from looking at his face, he seemed like the trustworthy sort.

That was how honest an impression the Deputy Sect Master gave off.

It would have been one thing if it were only his appearance, but the Deputy Sect Master had actually handled all the cleaning I’d ordered without a single complaint, and he was good at leading his men too.

In short, he was an impressive man whose appearance matched his words and actions. Naturally, I couldn’t help asking his name.

“Deputy Sect Master, what’s your name?”

The Deputy Sect Master swallowed dryly before answering.

“Seok Yong.”
“Seok, huh? That’s unusual.”
“Yes.”

I turned my head back toward the roaring flames.

“……Deputy Sect Master Seok. Once I leave, you’ll be the Sect Master of the Black Serpent Gate.”
“Pardon?”
“That perverted snake bastard is in the next world now, so that’s only right. But there’s a condition. Want to hear it?”
“Please tell me.”

I’d always been a man with a rather free-spirited tongue.

There was plenty I wanted to say to Deputy Sect Master Seok Yong, but most of it came spilling out without much order.

“From now on, the Black Serpent Gate comes under the Dokgo Gate. That’s the condition. But for the time being, I don’t plan to touch the wealth you’ve piled up. So what do you think you should use that money for?”
“……Please enlighten me.”
“Pull out of every illegal business you’ve been running, shut those operations down, and use the money to clean up all the shitty messes the Black Serpent Gate Master left behind.”
“…….”
“With what’s left, build a proper new building instead of that main hall full of idiotic mechanisms. And if you’ve still got money to spare after that, donate some of it as penance or something. You understand me? You bastards don’t even deserve to call yourselves men of the Black Path.”

As I spoke the words Black Path, the faces of countless Black Path experts I’d encountered in my previous life surfaced randomly in my mind.

“You aren’t true men of the Black Path. If you were proper men of the Black Path, instead of joining in on bullying the weak, you should’ve thought about the men and younger brothers beside you and devoted yourselves to training and growing stronger.”
“…….”
“Sometimes you roll around in the dirt and get the shit beaten out of you, but in the end, you sweat and bleed together and grow stronger together. That’s what the Black Path means to me. Am I wrong?”

That was the essence of the Black Path as I saw it.

I was no Grandmaster of the Black Path, but every Black Path man I’d ever seen had this peculiar tendency to grow stronger through some mysterious power called camaraderie

It was a trait found in neither the White Path nor the Demonic Path, something unique to the world of the Black Path itself.

When a bunch of pathetic fools gathered in one place, rolled around together, laughed together, and cried together, even brotherhood that hadn’t existed before would eventually bloom. And the deeper that brotherhood became, the closer they came to being truly strong Black Path men.

Maybe it was because everyone was equally stupid and pathetic that their bonds somehow became stronger than anywhere else.

From that perspective, the Black Serpent Gate hadn’t been Black Path at all. It was the same reason I’d judged the Black Serpent Gate Master to be nothing more than an idiot instead of a Black Path expert.

Being pathetic and being evil were different things.

Living in the Black Path was already far removed from a normal life, but being abnormal didn’t necessarily mean you were walking a path so wrong that you deserved to be beaten to death.

That was also why I’d given Seok Yong and the other Black Serpent Gate disciples a chance. They weren’t evil bastards. They were pathetic ones.

Either way, I chose to believe in the hearts of these pathetic men and gave them a chance. What they did with that chance was up to them, not me.

Because I respected their choice, I deliberately stayed silent instead of forcing an answer from them.

I didn’t know how much time had passed. As I continued watching the flames burn beautifully, Seok Yong’s voice reached me.

“……Sect Master. I’ve made my decision.”

I stared at Seok Yong’s face. Now that I looked, he too was gazing endlessly into the crimson flames with a contemplative expression.

I asked.

“What is it?”
“I’ve thought about it deeply, and I believe…….”
“…….”
“We should walk the Black Path.”

In the end, Seok Yong wasn’t a villain. He was a man of the Black Path. I had no idea exactly how he’d interpreted what I’d said about the Black Path, but either way, that was his answer.

Maybe it was his trustworthy face, or maybe it was his declaration that he would walk the Black Path. Only now did I see him not as some subordinate of the Black Serpent Gate Master, but as a man in his own right.

Naturally, a man’s resolve, once formed deep in his heart, deserved respect.

Without a word, I turned my gaze back to the flames.

The conversation abruptly ended because I didn’t answer, but men communicated with their hearts rather than words anyway, so it didn’t really matter.

Either way, simply living in the Black Path was already far removed from a respectable life.

That applied to me as much as it did to these bastards. We lived lives that weren’t exactly upright, which was probably why they called it the Black Path.

Even so, I hoped there would still be some goodness within that life.
For Seok Yong and every Black Serpent Gate disciple, I hoped they would at least live without crossing the line beyond which they could no longer call themselves men of the Black Path.

I shared in the fire-gazing with Seok Yong, now the Sect Master.

Drowsiness and hunger were washing over me, yet strangely, I didn’t feel tired.

Before dawn could break like this……I neatly summed up my thoughts for the day one last time.

The Black Serpent Gate’s infamy ends today. The perverted snake bastard’s evil deeds end today. The Black Serpent Gate is Black Path now. A sensible Black Path life starts today.

Morning Comes to the Black Path Too.

After more or less leaving the cleanup to Seok Yong, I immediately left the Black Serpent Gate.

There were two reasons I wasn’t planning to interfere too heavily with the Black Serpent Gate right away.

First, I wasn’t responsible enough to take charge of that many subordinates all at once.

Second, I thought Seok Yong was a trustworthy man.

Actually, the second reason mattered more than the first.

That trustworthy man had declared that he would walk the Black Path, so rather than forcibly absorbing the Black Serpent Gate into the Dokgo Gate like the Sword Hero Gate and Righteous Sword Gate, I decided to respect it as a sect in its own right, so long as it remained under the Dokgo Gate.

Of course, if Seok Yong ran the sect like shit, I’d dismiss him……but as I’ve said before, dismissal meant execution.

After returning to the Sword Hero Gate and roughly explaining what had happened, I began by circulating my qi and regulating my breathing. Both my body and mind were exhausted, but I needed to organize my thoughts, so I had no choice.

I sat cross-legged on the edge of the bed and closed my eyes.

Within the pitch-black realm of my imagination, I replayed my battle with the Black Serpent Gate Master and reviewed it from beginning to end.

Even after picking the fight apart again and analyzing it piece by piece……the Black Serpent Gate Master was simply a man who was fairly good with chain weapons. Overall, he wasn’t an especially skilled martial artist.

The outcome of a fight depended on all sorts of factors. It wasn’t just a difference in martial prowess. Subtle psychology, gaps in experience, the environment, the terrain, and countless other things could ultimately make one side lower their guard, and that would lead directly to defeat.

From that perspective, compared to me, the Black Serpent Gate Master lacked internal energy, lacked experience, lost in psychological warfare, and even had sloppy external cultivation. All in all, he was an impressive bastard in just how inferior he was to me in every field.

Literally just an idiot, you could say.

Besides being impressively devious and perverted, there wasn’t really anything else memorable about him. The Black Serpent Gate Master had never been a match for me in the first place.

The martial art the Black Serpent Gate Master had used, however, was fairly useful in itself.

It was an unorthodox martial art brimming with vicious killing intent, especially full of the nasty intention to find an opponent’s openings and torment them relentlessly.

Generally, the quality of an unorthodox martial art was judged by how many curses it earned instead of compliments. After all, the unorthodox factions, like the Black Path, were far removed from anything resembling a normal path.

Who the hell had come all the way out to a backwater like this, and for what purpose, just to teach martial arts of that level to an idiot like the Black Serpent Gate Master?

Come to think of it, before he died, the Black Serpent Gate Master had spoken as though he had a master and martial brothers…….

Various thoughts came to mind, but I erased them all for now.

I’d dealt with the Black Serpent Gate, the greatest threat in Yongmyeong County, in my own way for now. Whatever happened next, I’d think about it when the time came.

Whether the dead Black Serpent Gate Master’s junior brother came, his senior brother came, or his master came, I’d try talking sense into them first. If that didn’t work, I’d simply kill them.

Once I reached my own conclusion, my mind felt at ease. This was truly……problem, solved.

I didn’t wake up until I’d slept through the entire night.

The moment I woke, an enormous hunger hit me, and I was about to tell Gongson Han to bring me some food first……when the door suddenly opened and the bastard I’d completely forgotten about came striding in.

“One-Eyed Ghost, you’re here?”

One-Eyed Ghost, wrapped in bandages from head to toe, stopped in front of me and spoke in a noticeably different tone.

“Sect Master, if you’re not going to kill me, let me go now.”
“Why all of a sudden?”
“I’ll be in a difficult position if I don’t return. I heard you’ve dealt with the Black Serpent Gate Master as well. Is there any reason to keep me here?”

I didn’t answer. I only blinked.

What the hell was wrong with this bastard all of a sudden? Even after getting beaten that badly, had he still not learned his lesson?

Obviously, I had absolutely no intention of letting him go. I’d gone to all the trouble of keeping him alive, and now he wanted to go back and keep murdering people as an assassin? What kind of bullshit was that?

I let out a hollow laugh, then wiped the amusement from my eyes and glared at One-Eyed Ghost.

“……You still haven’t come to your senses? You were doing so well, and now you’re suddenly talking bullshit.”
“You won’t allow it?”
“Now even I’m curious. Why the hell do you want to go back to that beggar’s-footwrap of an assassin organization?”

Depending on his answer, I intended to decide whether or not to kill him right now.

One-Eyed Ghost looked lost in thought for a moment, then after a brief silence, said something surprising.

“……I have a younger sister they’re holding hostage. If I don’t return now, they’ll probably do something terrible to her. They must’ve realized that threatening me with my own life doesn’t work.”

I analyzed what One-Eyed Ghost had just said.

‘Hostage……. Younger sister……. Younger sister? Sister?’

I stared at One-Eyed Ghost with a dumbfounded expression.

“You had a sister?”
“Yes.”

I chose my words before asking carefully.

“……Was your younger sister the reason you became a fugitive too?”

One-Eyed Ghost stared into empty space with his remaining eye and answered briefly.

“……Yes. I tried to escape with my younger sister, but we were eventually caught. Whether they gouged out my eye or took my life, I truly didn’t care. But instead of threatening me, they put their hands around my younger sister’s throat.”

So, roughly summarizing what One-Eyed Ghost had told me, this was the situation.

For some reason, One-Eyed Ghost and his younger sister had ended up bound to the Bloodland Assassin Guild. They had attempted to escape once and failed, and ever since then, One-Eyed Ghost had been forced by their threats to live a life little different from that of a slave.

I suddenly remembered the strange feeling I’d had while fighting One-Eyed Ghost.

At the time, I hadn’t understood why a mere assassin had made me feel that way……but now that I knew his story and looked at him again, I thought I understood.

An assassin could only truly be called one if he was an assassin at heart. From that perspective, One-Eyed Ghost had never been an assassin in the first place.

He hadn’t killed because he was obsessed with money, nor had he slaughtered people because he enjoyed killing. He had simply continued committing murders he never wanted to commit in order to protect his precious younger sister.

‘Seriously…….’

His life had been so miserable and ill-fated that a sigh escaped me on its own.

Once pity took hold, anger surged up right behind it.

Seriously, why were there so many twisted bastards in the Kangho?

I turned my head and looked at One-Eyed Ghost.

In One-Eyed Ghost’s lone eye, which I’d once thought was simply the eye of an assassin, lingered the color of emotions that had tangled and tangled upon themselves until they had turned pitch-black.

Suddenly, the doors to the main hall flew open to either side with a thunderous crash, and Gongson Han made the loudest entrance imaginable.

The moment I saw Gongson Han, I clicked my tongue.

“Why the hell are you running in here like that?”

Gongson Han shouted excitedly.

“You beat the Black Serpent Gate Master?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Wow……. Is this for real? I’m not dreaming, right? This calls for a celebration. Our Sect Master really is the strongest. The strongest.”
“…….”

I swallowed dryly. Why did this bastard have to show up with absolutely no ability to read the room and start blurting out one tactless thing after another?

I furrowed my brow, then signaled Gongson Han with my lips and hands so One-Eyed Ghost wouldn’t notice.

‘That’s not it, you bastard. Please shut up.’

But Gongson Han was even worse at reading the room than I’d imagined.

“Sect Master, there’s no need to be modest. I’ll prepare everything, so don’t worry. No, this won’t do. By my authority as Chief Steward, I’ll arrange a grand banquet…….”

Smack!

My patience finally reached its limit. Before Gongson Han could flap his mouth any further, I grabbed a liquor cup and hurled it at him, urgently cutting off his fuss.

Apparently, he felt wronged at suddenly being smacked in the head, because Gongson Han clutched his forehead and frowned.

“Why’d you hit me?”
“Han, listen…….”
“Forget it, forget it. I’m not looking after you anymore either, Sect Master. Just so you know. Seriously, I’m hurt……”

Without even realizing how badly he’d failed to read the room, Gongson Han turned away in a huff like a bad-tempered little brat.

Amid the awkward atmosphere, only my heavy sigh, carrying all sorts of emotions, filled the main hall.

“Haa…….”