What kind of insane nonsense was that?
My mind went blank at the Heavenly Demon’s words.
What had this lunatic just said?
“...I heard you wrong?”
I had to have heard him wrong.
There was no other explanation that made any sense.
Right?
“How could our blood be mixed? Of course it isn’t.”
The Heavenly Demon’s blood ran in me?
How was that supposed to make sense?
I’m a son of the Bang Family.
That much I couldn’t deny.
No matter how strange my father was.
You can see inheritance with your own eyes.
I resembled him.
His features were plainly in mine, and this distinctive good looks of mine had definitely come from that man.
In that case—
Maybe my mother’s side?
Even that meant nothing.
Thousand-Mile Divine Eye. I already knew «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» I came from that bloodline.
No matter how I looked at it, there was no connection whatsoever to the Heavenly Demon.
Of course there wasn’t.
The Heavenly Demon’s real bloodline...
...was probably Yu Yeon, off training somewhere right now.
This man knew all that too, so the fact that he was saying this anyway was what made it strange.
“...What exactly do you mean?”
[What do I mean?]
“You’re saying I might have that side’s blood in me?”
[To be precise, it may not be my blood. I told you already.]
The Heavenly Demon spoke after a brief pause.
[It would be the bloodline of the Heavenly Demon. Not necessarily my personal bloodline.]
“That’s even stranger.”
The Heavenly Demon’s bloodline?
How was a son of the Bang Family supposed to have anything like that?
[The Divine Sword and the divine arts are things with will inside them. You should know that much already. The sword is not filled with mere emptiness.]
“...”
I didn’t deny that.
I had known it the moment I touched the Divine Sword.
This wasn’t just a sword.
It was something warped by the weight of long history and accumulated records.
Something people called a divine artifact.
So—
[Then it follows that I could be contained within it as well.]
As the Heavenly Demon himself had said, it was entirely possible that his spirit form had become contained inside the sword.
I had known that already, but—
“...So you’re saying the reason I can wield the Divine Sword isn’t purely because of your will?”
[Perhaps.]
“What kind of vague answer is that?”
This was a pretty damn important issue on my end.
[At the very least, it means such a factor exists within the qualification itself. Which means there may well be something in you too.]
“...”
[Besides, have you not been harboring doubts yourself?]
“What doubts?”
[Doubts about your own family.]
“...”
[The Bang Family, was it?]
I admitted that much.
Yes. I had been wondering about my family lately.
No matter how I think about it...
There was nothing normal about that place.
The fact that Yoo Cheongil had been suspicious of it, for one.
And the more time passed, the stranger the state of my family looked.
The relationship between the supreme master of assassination and my older brother had been strange too.
Though Father was strange to begin with.
Even setting that aside, the whole house was just...
off.
And besides...
Given the durability of the ring wrapped around what was inside me, it felt like I needed to go home at least once.
The time had come, and there seemed to be things I needed to find out.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I need to seriously entertain anything involving the Heavenly Demon...
No matter how many times I turned it over in my head, that part was nonsense.
The Bang Family connected to the Demonic Cult?
No matter what, we’re orthodox faction.
Orthodox faction?
It wasn’t as if we’d ever actually behaved like it, but still, orthodox was orthodox.
So the Bang Family having some point of contact with the Demonic Cult—
Come on. No way.
Even as I thought it, I still found myself wondering.
No way...
Probably not.
...Unless that damned man pulled something again?
I had been told my mother was from Thousand-Mile Divine Eye’s bloodline, but who knew.
Maybe he got one of his stupid urges again and did something with someone from the Demonic Cult.
If it were anyone else, maybe not.
But if it were my father, then yes, absolutely possible.
That wasn’t suspicion anymore.
That was faith.
Faith that he might have caused some kind of disaster.
“...”
Hopeless.
In more ways than one.
“Hah...”
I sighed and lay down on the bed.
The sword was already wrapped in cloth and put away.
“...But if that’s the case, doesn’t that mean I can’t just pull out the Divine Sword in front of those bastards anymore?”
It would be bad if somebody caught a glimpse of it for no reason.
When I brought that up—
[Pay it no mind. I have already taken care of that as well.]
“...Taken care of it?”
What was that supposed to mean?
I looked at him, puzzled.
Taken care of it how?
[Khk-khk-khk.]
Even when I asked, the Heavenly Demon didn’t answer.
I stared at him in disbelief, but he wore the attitude of someone who truly thought there was nothing to worry about.
And just like that, the night passed.
At dawn, the first person I went to find was the Tyrant.
Muk Yeokseong looked oddly tired when he received me.
“So you came.”
“Yes... though why do you look like that?”
“Why else?”
Tsk.
The Tyrant clicked his tongue briefly.
“Because of you.”
“Me? What did I do?”
Had there been anything tying me to the Tyrant lately?
No.
For the past several days, I’d been tied up with Demonic Cult business.
Which meant I’d had absolutely nothing to do with him.
“What exactly did I do...?”
“It’s not that you did something. The Alliance Leader candidate matter has simply become a little bothersome.”
“Why would that become bothersome?”
“It would. Why wouldn’t it?”
The Tyrant looked at me as though asking whether I really didn’t know.
“To rise as an Alliance Leader candidate means they have to look at how fit a person is for the position itself. Because of that, it becomes inevitable that the Alliance’s old monsters start making a nuisance of themselves.”
“...Hm.”
A nuisance, huh.
I didn’t get any of that, though.
They had said they were putting me up as a candidate, but no one had really interfered with me or lectured me about it.
Ah.
Then something occurred to me.
Wait.
Had they never actually planned to make me a real candidate in the first place?
Or—
More likely, the higher-ups in the Alliance judged that my chances were so low there was no reason to bother.
And if not that—
Then Thousand-Mile Divine Eye and Divine Spear may have been blocking them.
To me, the second explanation seemed the most likely.
Even if I was put up as a candidate, the odds of me actually becoming Alliance Leader were damn near zero.
So the upper ranks had felt no need to step in.
And then I went and brought the Tyrant in...
Which meant they had only now started moving on that side.
“Sorry about that.”
By that logic, it really was my fault.
I nodded, accepting it.
“As long as you understand. So then—did things go well?”
“...It’s hard to say they went well exactly. But more or less?”
“Khk-khk... The world really has changed.”
The Tyrant let out a low laugh and took a sip of the tea in front of him.
“The Demonic Cult walking boldly into the Murim Alliance to talk about a pact... Yoo Cheongil. If that man had seen it, how hard would he have laughed?”
Sarcasm, mockery, bitterness—
maybe all of them at once.
Several emotions were tangled together in the Tyrant’s voice.
“Does it bother you?”
“Not especially.”
At my question, the Tyrant shook his head.
He was one of the beings beyond heaven.
A martial artist who had won glory in war.
So I’d wondered whether the matter of the Demonic Cult might still weigh on him.
But he was unexpectedly firm.
“It is already a matter beyond my hands. It became so the moment the war ended. I do not look kindly upon them. But I do not concern myself with them.”
“...Can you really do that?”
These were people who had spent their lives committing sins.
It was hard to imagine someone like the Tyrant, who had even fought a war against them, being unaffected.
Then—
“Inheritor of the Sword Saint.”
The Tyrant looked at me with a grave expression.
“Yes.”
“What do you think the difference is between the Demonic Cult and the Alliance?”
“...What?”
The difference between the Demonic Cult and the Alliance?
“Well... there are too many differences, aren’t there?”
Weren’t they different in everything from one to ten?
If you started listing differences, there would be no end to it.
So I didn’t understand where he was coming from.
Maybe he saw that on my face, because he continued.
“If you look at the tree, yes, they appear different. But if you look at the forest, they are not so different after all. If one must define the difference... then yes.”
A negative emotion surfaced in the Tyrant’s eyes.
“It would be more accurate to say the difference lies in who is more honest.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the gap is not so large, whether you speak of sin or conviction. Do you think the orthodox faction is clean simply because it is orthodox?”
“...”
I couldn’t answer.
The word no rose immediately in my mind.
But that was only from my perspective—from someone who had lived through another life and seen all kinds of things.
From the Central Plains’ point of view...
the orthodox faction was absolute good.
And the Demonic Cult and the unorthodox faction were absolute evil.
Which made the Tyrant’s words, coming from a master of the orthodox faction—
“I do not think so.”
—something that shattered that common sense outright.
“There is no such thing as a sheet of paper that remains perfectly white forever. In the end, it stains. In the end, it clouds. The Alliance is no different.”
“Senior, isn’t that... a rather dangerous thing to say?”
“Ha ha ha. Dangerous?”
The Tyrant laughed.
“If I were the sort to worry about that, then I too must still be clean.”
“...Tyrant.”
“Anyway, that is the point.”
Tap, tap, tap.
The Tyrant found his smile again and drummed his fingers on the table.
“Do not look at the orthodox faction and the Demonic Cult as though they are completely different things. And do not trust the orthodox faction too much. Very little will rot you from the inside faster than that.”
“...”
I gave a small nod at the warning that sounded almost like advice.
That part, at least, didn’t need worrying.
I...
had never trusted the Alliance to begin with.
*****
I left the Tyrant’s quarters.
At the end, he had also brought up the matter of going to the Mo Family once all this was over.
Given what was wrapped around my arm, it looked like I really would have to go to the Mo Family.
The problem was—
I need to stop by the Bang Family on the way.
I had to go back home first and deal with one problem involving my body.
The Tyrant and I agreed we would talk more about that part later.
Technically, the Mo Family came first by prior arrangement.
But right now there are still Alliance-side problems too.
There were things that had come up because the Young Cult Leader had shown himself, and there were several other matters bothering me.
Today, I meant to look into one of them.
“Hoo...”
I let out a breath and headed somewhere.
The stables.
The horses all looked at me.
I ignored those subtly burdensome stares and kept walking.
I was looking for the Sword Emperor.
If it were him, wouldn’t he be here?
That was what I’d thought when I came, but—
“What is it?”
“...”
I flinched.
The voice had come from right behind me.
I hadn’t sensed him approaching at all.
When I carefully turned around, the Sword Emperor was standing there.
“It should not be our day today.”
Today wasn’t one of the training days.
I nodded.
“Yes. That’s right. I just had something I wanted to ask you, Sword Emperor.”
“What is it?”
The Sword Emperor asked with a questioning look.
Meeting his eyes, I asked as calmly as I could.
“Sword Emperor.”
“Speak.”
“If...”
And then—
“Would you happen to know anything about the supreme master of assassination...?”
“...The supreme master of assassination?”
I regretted it immediately.
The very moment I asked him about the supreme master of assassination—
“Why are you asking that?”
—a savage killing intent began to spread through the Sword Emperor’s eyes.
