Chapter 165

“What happened? Did you try blowing yourself up with a Thunderclap Bomb?”

Those were Ju Ok-hwa’s first words the moment I arrived at the Ink-Needle Hall.
It was an understandable reaction.
I really did look like a complete wreck.

My entire body was covered in scorch marks and burns, with only the areas protected by the Protective Armor relatively intact.
Even those areas throbbed as though they were covered in bruises. Du Jung-baek had pushed me away, but the shock wave had still been incredibly powerful.
I should probably be grateful that all four limbs were still attached.

“You’re lucky you’re still breathing. Take off the Protective Armor and lie facedown.”

Ju Ok-hwa clicked her tongue, but her hands moved quickly.
She inserted needles into dozens of points, brewed medicinal decoctions, and applied ointment.
She did all of it in barely any time at all.

“Ugh. What is this ointment? It stings like hell.”
“It’s good medicine, so stop whining. You won’t heal quickly without it.”

“Keugh!”

A deep groan came from the next room.
It was Ak Mu-jin. He and Im Yeon were being treated as well, and apparently it was painful.
Of the four of us who had been at the explosion site, Du Jung-baek alone refused treatment.
He claimed an internal injury that minor would disappear after a good nap.

‘Not even qi circulation. He says a nap will do it?’

I knew why he was refusing treatment.
He probably thought it would make him lose face. The Guardian Court Master receiving treatment at all, that is.
Apparently, it wasn’t just his martial realm that had reached the Extreme Demon Realm. His pride had too.

“All done.”

Ju Ok-hwa set down her acupuncture tools and looked down at me with apparent admiration.

“How can it be this clean? Even I amaze myself sometimes. Who else in the Cult could get you healing this quickly?”
“Exactly. Forget the Cult. I doubt there’s anyone in all of Murim as skilled as you, Hall Master.”

I didn’t miss the chance to slip in a little flattery.
I was bound to owe her dozens more favors in the future, so I might as well earn points whenever I could.

“By the way, Seventh Young Lord, you can afford to get hurt even worse next time.”
“Even worse……?”

My voice trailed off.
Apparently, all that flattery hadn’t worked at all.
She had gone straight to mocking me.

“I think there are all sorts of things I could experiment with. Which combinations of medicinal ingredients work best on severe injuries in someone with severed meridians, how imperfect qi and blood affect recovery. Your constitution is so unusual, Seventh Young Lord. You’re an ideal research subject. Honestly, what I’ve had to work with until now has felt a little mild.”

……Apparently, I had misunderstood.
Ju Ok-hwa was thinking something far more terrifying than sarcasm.
Surely I wasn’t going to suffer the same kind of human experimentation from Ju Ok-hwa that her disciple had put me through in my previous life?

“Um, Hall Master. Can I ask you for a favor?”

I hurriedly changed the subject.

“What is it?”
“Could you arrange a special treatment for me at dawn tomorrow? What I need is-”

I explained briefly.
Ju Ok-hwa blinked.

“Why do you want that? It’ll barely have any therapeutic effect.”
“Because of my training. I need it if I’m going to get through the training properly.”
“You really are strange. Fine. I’ll have the people under me take care of it.”
“Thank you.”
“If you’re grateful, come back even more badly injured next time. A corpse would be even better.”
“……What?”
“Get some rest.”

Ju Ok-hwa chuckled as she left the treatment room.
Apparently, she really had been messing with me.

‘Time to get some rest.’

“Um, Young Lord.”

Just as I was about to lie down and rest, Im Yeon entered.
I sat up.

“Why are you here? You should be resting.”
“My duty is to guard Young Lord.”
“You can set that duty aside for today. There are plenty of people who can guard me besides you.”

I pointed outside the door.
The guards other than Im Yeon were standing there as though they had committed a capital offense.
They were blaming themselves for having remained trapped until everything was already over.

‘It was understandable.’

From what I heard, they had fallen about fifteen meters underground.
Fortunately, the bottom had been dirt, so no one was seriously injured, but the walls were sheer. Without something like the Gecko Wall-Climbing Art, neither they nor the Longevity Ten had been skilled enough to climb out.

‘Hwang Seung-hyu looked incredibly ashamed too.’

I had brought him specifically to break formations, yet in the end he hadn’t been able to help at all.

“Young Lord, how is your condition?”
“I’m fine. What about you, Guard Im?”
“As for me……”

Im Yeon let the answer trail off.
She clearly wasn’t fine.
But the way she hesitated made it obvious she had something she wanted to say.

“Sit down for a moment.”

I pointed to a chair on one side of the treatment room.
Im Yeon sat down.
Silence passed for a moment.
When I waited without pressing her, she spoke first.

“Young Lord.”
“Go ahead.”
“About those dolls from earlier. How do you think they ended up like that?”
“Hmm. I’m not sure.”

How they ended up like that?
That was broad enough that I wasn’t sure exactly what she meant.
Was she asking where they had come from?

“They might have kidnapped healthy people. Or they could have dug up graves and obtained corpses.”
“I have heard that these kinds of dark arts favor the bodies of powerful martial artists. The resulting creation can be made stronger that way.”
“That’s what I’ve heard too.”

She fell silent for a moment, then asked again.

“Do you think there is any chance they might find a list of test subjects at the Soul-Bewildering Forest base?”

‘A list?’

I studied Im Yeon’s face.
She felt distinctly different from usual.
Apparently, this was the real reason she had come to see me.

“It’s possible.”

Im Yeon repeatedly started to speak, only to swallow the words.

“Um, Young Lord, if perhaps- No. B-but if perhaps-”
“Should I ask the Grand Strategist to share it with us if they find a list?”

Im Yeon’s expression brightened slightly.

“W-would you do that?”
“I don’t know when they’ll raid the base, but once there are results, I’ll ask.”
“Thank you, Young Lord!”

Im Yeon bowed her head deeply.
Her voice trembled strangely with a mixture of relief and anxiety.

“Go rest. You need to recover quickly if you want to guard me properly.”
“But……”
“You’re in the Ink-Needle Hall Master’s territory. So relax.”
“……Yes, understood. Please rest well, Young Lord.”

Im Yeon stood, gave a fist-and-palm salute, then headed back to her room.
I watched her leave and thought,

‘Was this her connection to the Heaven Rebelling Society?’

Whenever something involved the Heaven Rebelling Society, Im Yeon had acted unlike herself.
The hallucination in the Ice-Soul Demonic Realm. Her hostility whenever she faced Heaven Rebelling Society members.
I had long suspected that the reason was closely tied to her grandfather.

-The truth is, I had a grandfather, but he has passed away now.

That was what she had told me in the Ice-Soul Demonic Realm.
And now she wanted a list of test subjects.
Could she be thinking her grandfather’s name might be on that list?

‘Did the Heaven Rebelling Society kill her grandfather?’

I had already suspected as much.
Seeing her make a request so unlike her only made that suspicion seem more likely.

‘But what am I supposed to do about that?’

If her grandfather’s name really was on that list, I couldn’t imagine how she would feel.

‘Would destroying the Heaven Rebelling Society make her feel any better?’

I had already decided to destroy them a long time ago.
Adding one more reason to the pile hardly changed anything.

I lay back down on the bed.
I wanted to sleep, but my thoughts were far too tangled.

Hwaak-
For an instant, Soul-Bewildering Forest seemed to unfold before my eyes again.
Everything that had happened today came flooding back.
Words like calculation, self-destruction, seed, struggle, and blooming drifted through my mind.
What exactly had the Ink Scholar and the Heaven Rebelling Society wanted?

‘……I don’t know.’

My head throbbed.
It had been like this ever since the proclamations appeared.
Every time I untangled one question, two more became knotted together. And when I untangled those, something else sprang up.

‘This isn’t going to work.’

This wasn’t a problem I could solve alone.
I needed someone sharper than me.

‘Someone like Gal So-ye.’

Her thoughts were hard to read, and she could be utterly ruthless.
There was no telling how she might use whatever information I gave her later.
But even so, Gal So-ye was the only person likely to give me an answer.

‘That can wait.’

I shook my head as though brushing thoughts of Gal So-ye away.
The real problem was tomorrow morning’s training.
How was I supposed to endure it with my body in this condition? But if I said I couldn’t and asked for a break, there was no telling what the Heavenly Demon might make me do instead.

‘……I should just sleep.’

I forced my eyes shut.
That was when it happened.
A guard’s voice came from outside the door.

“Young Lord, are you asleep?”
“No. Why?”
“The Grand Strategist is here.”

For a moment, I was baffled.
What kind of timing was this?
The very person I had just been thinking about had come to see me?
And someone who should have been busy planning the operation to wipe out the base, no less?

“You’re still awake.”

I hadn’t even told her to come in, yet Gal So-ye opened the door and entered.
Her face was as calm as ever.

“What brings you here this late?”
“I’m here to check on you.”
“Oh, come on. No way.”
“What do you mean, no way? You know I’m not that heartless.”
“I don’t know about that, but I do know one thing. You definitely didn’t come just to check on me.”
“As expected, I couldn’t fool you.”

A faint smile touched Gal So-ye’s lips.

“I received the report on Soul-Bewildering Forest. But there are some questions I can’t resolve, so I wanted to hear directly from the person involved.”

Gal So-ye pulled over the chair Im Yeon had used earlier and sat beside the bed.

“What do you want to hear?”
“Everything.”
“Everything?”
“Everything.”
“It’s pretty long.”
“That’s fine.”

I tilted my head, but began telling her what had happened in Soul-Bewildering Forest.
I had intended to tell her eventually anyway.
My encounter with the Ink Scholar, the fight with the strange woman, our escape from the formation, the pursuit, the dolls, the self-destruction.
And the Ink Scholar’s words, whose meaning I still couldn’t begin to understand.

Gal So-ye listened to the end without interrupting once.
At some point, her gaze had sharpened. A gaze befitting the Grand Strategist.

“The Ink Scholar used the word ‘seed’ three times.”

Gal So-ye went straight to the heart of the matter.

“First, ‘the seed has already been planted.’ Then, with My Lord destined to bring ruin to the entire Central Plains, ‘what use is a plow once the seed has already been planted?’ And finally, that Seventh Young Lord was the true seed.”
“Right. That’s where everything started getting tangled. I originally thought the seed was Master’s Demonization, and that the Heaven Rebelling Society was nothing more than the plow used to plant it.”
“That seems like a sound inference.”
“But he called me the seed too. It doesn’t fit.”

Gal So-ye nodded.
Then she leaned away from the back of the chair and bent forward.

“Let me ask you something. What do you think normally causes Demonization?”
“Demonic qi running rampant, isn’t it?”
“Then what causes demonic qi to run rampant?”
“Improper cultivation, maybe. Or a heart demon.”
“And what causes a heart demon to arise?”

I couldn’t tell where she was going with this.
Gal So-ye said,

“That Ink Scholar truly was exceptionally clever.”
“What do you mean?”
“He inferred what could cause a heart demon to arise in My Lord.”

Gal So-ye looked straight at me.

“You, Seventh Young Lord.”

My mind went blank.

“……Me? That can’t be right.”
“My Lord cares for you.”
“He cares for me, yet trains me like he’s trying to kill me?”
“Even that would be difficult without affection.”

Gal So-ye’s voice remained matter-of-fact.

“Before Seventh Young Lord, the only Little Demon he ever trained that harshly was First Young Lord.”

Geuk Mu-hyeok had gone through training like mine?
This was the first I had heard of it.

‘……First Young Lord and me.’

What an absurd pairing.

“But that doesn’t make sense. Someone as cold-blooded and heartless as Master caring about someone? And you’re saying if something happens to me, he might even succumb to a heart demon?”
“I’m saying it could become the trigger.”

Gal So-ye leaned back in her chair and began laying it out point by point.

“Think about the proclamations. They denied My Lord’s legitimacy and identity as the Heavenly Demon. They stirred public opinion within the Cult, inflamed conflict among the Seven Demonic Houses, and planted collaborators throughout the organization. They are using every means available to tear down the things he can trust, one by one. The loyalty of his subordinates. Stability within the Cult. His bond with his disciples. Once all of that has been eaten away, what will remain?”
“……Isolation.”
“Exactly. They are trying to leave My Lord completely alone. They want to create the conditions for a heart demon to arise. And the most important piece of that is you, Seventh Young Lord. The Ink Scholar realized that today.”
“……!”
“And I may be nearly as important. Without me, communication between My Lord and the Cult would be severed.”

It made sense.
Without Gal So-ye, the Heavenly Demon would never have been able to devote himself to training the way he did now.

“So I would like to make Seventh Young Lord a proposal.”
“What is it?”

Gal So-ye looked at me.
Her eyes were not their usual calm.
There was something grave in them.

“You and I should join households.”
“……What? Households?”
“That’s right. Households.”

Gal So-ye quietly held my gaze.
Her expression gave nothing away.