Chapter 78: The Scent of Snow (1)

... Whish, whish, iwish... The heart is a candle, and it shall burn this place...

This prayer had been handed down for a very long time. Just as monks chanted

Amitabha

, the people of the demonic cult sang this prayer.

...Whish, whish, iwish... The heart is a candle, and it shall burn this place...

No one knew what prayer meant, not even Soh Baekhyang. Even the old man who had brought her to the demonic cult didn't know the meaning, but they both chanted it together.

To Soh Baekhyang, the prayer was the song and the scream of the grassroots. It was easy to memorize the prayer even if people didn’t know the true meaning. A scream had no meaning, so wasn’t it natural that the grassroots’ song didn’t carry any meaning?

People had to learn manners to be polite, and righteousness to practice justice, but screaming was not learned. There wasn’t a lot to know for people to scream, so even the uneducated masses could scream.

...Whish, whish, iwish...

Screaming was common everywhere in the world. In Soh Baekhyang’s eyes, the entire world was screaming.

“There is nothing more to teach you,” the old man said. “Go out into the world.”

“Where shall I go?” Soh Baekhyang quietly asked.

The eleven-year-old child was gone. She was now a grown woman with dark hair and eyes and an equally dark uniform. The woman was as dark as the depths of a well at midnight. Her wish was to become hell, so her darkness deepened to become people’s hell.

“Where do you want to go?”

“The place of the hungry and the thirsty,” Soh Baekhyang answered. “Where the drowning gasp for air and the freezing shiver; where the drug addicts and the sick are left to rot; where people are beaten in government offices and burned to death.”

Soh Baekhyang stared into the distance. “That is where I want to go.”

From far, far away outside the main hall, she and the old man could hear the sound of prayer.

...Whish, whish, iwish...

Demons were bowing and praying. Their voices made the wooden floor shiver.

The old man opened his mouth. “Then the whole world is where you should go, Baekhyang.”

At the age of twenty-one, Soh Baekhyang went out into

murim

. That winter, thirty-one martial artists, forty-seven government officials, and fifty-five local aristocrats lost their heads.

***

The Heavenly Demon quietly sent away the Murim Alliance's leader and the Viper and took me elsewhere.

“There is a special ceremony in my cult. Do you know how to do Nine Bows?”

“No, I don’t,” I answered.

“In my cult, a disciple bows nine times to the person they accept as their teacher.”

We headed to the hot spring cave. It felt like home now, but I was unfamiliar with the place the Heavenly Demon took me. The Hunters and I had never been allowed to go as deep as she took me.

The Heavenly Demon waved her hand, her loose sleeves fluttering. Countless candles lit up the darkness, illuminating the cave’s stalagmites and stalactites.

“However, the ceremony doesn’t end just because the student bowed nine times. It’s entirely up to the teacher to accept their student’s Nine Bows. The teacher can ask their disciple to bow as many times as they want.” The Heavenly Demon smiled. “In other words, it depends on me.”

“Mmm... Is there a standard I should meet?”

“There is. Manners are more about the heart than appearances. Child, the reason why time and place are important parts of manners is that people’s minds are cunning and frivolous.”

At the end of the passage, there was a library. With each step the Heavenly Demon took, more candles lit up on both sides of the path. As each candle lit up, the enormous size of the library was further revealed. Books and bamboo scrolls were arranged in piles that reached all the way to the cave’s high ceiling.

“It isn’t easy to control the frivolity of the mind,” the Heavenly Demon said as she walked. The candlelight played around her ankles. “That is why people choose sacred times and places. They rely on time, place, and the heavens to weigh down their frivolity.”

“Lady Heavenly Demon, this is...?”

“This is my cult’s martial arts library, ” the Heavenly Demon said. “It also stores the martial arts of the Nine Sects, One Gang, and Five Clans. I call this place the Heavenly Martial Arts Hall.”

—This is a fucking awesome treasury! Zombie, I’ll be reading some martial arts books! Don’t worry about me, do your business. Try to buy some time until I finish reading all of them if you can!

The Guardian, a martial arts maniac, ran over to the piles of texts.

Hell yeah! all of the ultimate martial arts of this world are now mine! I’ll have every enlightenment I can get! Bwahahahahaha!

The Heavenly Demon was calm, unaware that a ghost was running wild in her library.

“I went out to

murim

when I was twenty-one. Can you tell what I thought first?”

“Uh... ‘I will destroy all those cocky Righteous Path bastards’ heads?’ Was it something like that?”

“That was the third thought I had.”

“‘I will prove that the cult is the best’...?”

“That was the second thought I had.” The Heavenly Demon winked. “You know, I’ve hated the word ‘

murim

’ since I was young.”

“Huh?”

“

Murim

is the name of the region that worships martial arts, but martial artists aren’t the only ones in

murim

. There are also other people, like boatmen, farmers, merchants, and prostitutes. Countless trees make up the forest we called

murim

.[1] Each of those trees has a unique name and texture, but the Nine Sects, One Gang, and Five Clans named the region the ‘forest of martial arts,’” the Heavenly Demon muttered. “I didn’t like that, so I decided to take their martial arts away from them.”

“By taking away their martial arts, you mean...?”

“I stole all of their precious martial arts manuals!” The Heavenly Demon laughed mischievously. “Haha, I can still see the looks on the faces of those Kunlun sages. They begged me to snap all of their necks but please leave the books that contained the exquisite principle of the Cloud Dragon! But who am I? I buried the sages up to their necks. And then, I wrapped up their books and ran away right in front of their eyes!”

Wow, my teacher was quite a personality.

“I’ve done that for decades. Now this place is Mount Kunlun, the Wudang Sect, the Sichuang Tang Sect, the Zhuge Clan, and the Mount Mao Sect. All of the martial arts in the world have formed a forest here, so this is worthy of the name of

murim

.” The Heavenly Demon slowly sat down. “I would like to receive your bows here. Will you do it?”

“I will.”

“I won’t judge how your bows look. Child from outer

murim

, bow as your heart leads you.”

I took off my shoes and gently set them aside before kneeling. As I was about to touch the ground with my forehead, the Heavenly Demon spoke again.

“Bow nine times, but perform each bow with a different heart. Put the heart of hunger into the first bow. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I understand.”

The relationship between a teacher and a disciple was of utmost importance. In the Heavenly Demon Cult, the ceremony wasn’t just a matter of bowing nine times—their Nine Bows were the Demonic Heaven Arts.

I took a deep breath and pictured a farmer swinging a hoe, a riverside, and mud.

“Hunger is the children waiting for the sunlight.”

I prostrated myself, and the Heavenly Demon nodded, accepting my first bow. Everything about my hunger was true, so it was more than enough to be considered a respectful bow.

“Demons are largely divided into four levels,” the Heavenly Demon instructed me, who was soon to become her disciple. “The first level is Entry Demon. They know how to speak of their suffering. My cult’s demons speak with their swords, not their words. Therefore, my Entry Demons are those who can speak of their suffering using their swords.”

I placed my forehead on the floor to bow again. After hunger came thirst, so I imagined a sea in my heart.

“The second level is Extreme Demon. They’re people who are capable of talking about others’ suffering, so they also know how to end the suffering using their swords.”

The Heavenly Demon wordlessly accepted my second bow as well.

I bowed again, thinking of a drowned father.

“The third level is Transcendental Demon. They know and can speak of everyone’s suffering. A Transcendental Demon should be able to know what every passing person is suffering from.” The Heavenly Demon nodded again, gladly accepting my third bow.

I offered my fourth bow.

“It’s extremely rare to find those who reached this level! Even in the history of my cult, there were less than five Transcendental Demons, one of them being me.”

The Heavenly Demon accepted my bow this time too.

“Lastly, there is the level of Divine Demon. A Divine Demon is someone who understands the suffering of all beings and things in the universe. However, this level hasn’t been proven yet. People just assume that such a level exists. No one has actually reached the Divine Demon.”

I was about to offer my fifth bow.

“Stop.” The Heavenly Demon calmly raised her hand. “Do it again.”

The Demonic Heaven Arts’ fifth form was Poisoning Death, which was the movement of those who were dying from drug addiction. But I hadn’t learned the fifth form yet.

"I told you to bow again," the Heavenly Demon quietly demanded.

I offered my bow again.

“Do it again.”

I did it again.

“Do it again.”

Again. Again. Again. Again. Sweat ran down my forehead and waist. The Heavenly Demon was still calm as ever.

It took 336 bows to understand a person who died from poison. I needed 189 bows to imagine a person who died of illness. 510 bows had to be offered to depict a person who was beaten to death in a government office.

I silently kneeled and placed my forehead on the floor, feeling the sweat crawl down my face.

“... You’re upright, child.” The Heavenly Demon smiled. “There are children who are upright because of their prosperous births. However, some children are born ugly but become upright through their willpower. Child, you’re definitely one of the latter. What kind of life have you been leading that made you so upright?”

Her smile was slightly sad. “What kind of life are you trying to live that makes you so upright...?”

The candles flickered, making the shadows sway. The Heavenly Demon’s thin shadow overlapped with mine.

“While the sun represents life, the shadows are pain,” she softly intoned. “The outlines of human lives are all different, but their pain overlaps with each other over and over. Humans don’t become humanity because they’re alive; humanity is the sum of their pain.”

That was the doctrine of shadow.

“If you say you’ll exchange pain with someone, that means that you’ll spend your life together with only that person. Those who are hurt by everyone are the people who want to be with everyone for all of their lives, child.”

Only one person was left in this world to pass on the doctrine—the very same woman who was speaking to me right now.

“Gong-Ja, people can not only decide who to hurt but also who will hurt them. The people you seek to save will never be absolutely good. Those you saved were not wholeheartedly noble. The ones you love will never be perfect.”

The woman radiated the warmth of the candles.

“If you’re still willing to let everyone hurt you and give them your flesh, the scratches they leave on your skin must be accidents from trying to hug you too tightly. Life is suffering, but the pain is only for humans to carry.

Whish, whish, iwish.

Your heart is a candle, so let it burn so that you may see others’ shadows.”

The candle wax dripped down.

“The eighth form of the Demonic Heaven Arts is Fire Death. Gong-Ja, bow with the heart of immolation.”

I...

“But you know I’m the Fire Emperor and you saw me killing the Saintess.”

“So you should die.”

“My name is Yoo Soo-Ha. Goodbye.”

I offered my bow.

The woman was quiet. I had heard her say, “Do it again,” 1035 times during my offering of bows, but her voice did not disturb the cave this time. It seemed that just one bow of Fire Death was enough.

“...I see.”

The Heavenly Demon’s voice trailed away like the melting candle wax.

“The last form of the Demonic Heaven Arts... is not decided. In each generation, the cult leader turns their own death into the last form, so the ninth form of each person’s Demonic Heaven Arts is different. Offer the ninth bow with your death.”

During my 4090 suicides, my neck hurt from stabbing it with the dagger. I had been afraid that I would miss the neck because of my shaking hands. I had been scared that I would suffer longer if I stabbed myself wrong, so I had bound my hands to the dagger handle using packing tape. It had seemed like the only way.

The number of days I had to rewind was 4050, but I had died 4090 times. I had to do that because I had almost given up halfway and escaped from my death for a few days.

However, there was someone I couldn’t forgive. I wasn’t sure if I could live on if I forgave him, so I had wrapped my hands in packing tape. My resolve had faded more and it had taken longer to confront my death. That meant that I had to kill myself several more times. I had forced my jumbled thoughts out of my mind and ignored my hesitation.

Because I really wanted to live, I desperately died.

I made suicide my last form and offered my bow to the Heavenly Demon. The shadow swayed.

I noticed a little later that the Heavenly Demon had stood up and wrapped her arms around me.

“Gong-Ja.”

Two shadows overlapped in the cave.

“My disciple.”

“...Yes,” I answered.

“You are my disciple.”

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t matter where you are. Wherever you go, you’ll always be Heavenly Demon Soh Baekhyang’s disciple, and our cult’s doctrines are in your heart. Even if the world falls, the Demon Heaven will continue as long as your heart does not stop.”

“... Yes, Teacher,” I whispered.

My neck ached. I realized now how painful those days were.

1. Murim(武林) means a forest of martial arts. ☜