SSS-Class Revival Hunter

Chapter 68: The Heavenly Demon (3)

The Chemist examined the Murim Alliance's leader. Her expression slowly hardened throughout the examination. She was like a doctor who knew that there was no hope for the patient but was continuing her examination only to say that it wasn’t treatable.

“I’m sorry,” the Chemist said. “There’s nothing I can do about your current condition.”

The Heavenly Demon silently looked down at the Murim Alliance's leader. Perhaps she didn’t have any hope anyway. She had a blank expression as she opened her mouth.

“Stand up.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That isn’t what I want to hear. Stand up, Buwolseon, leader of the Murim Alliance.”

The Heavenly Demon breathed quietly. It seemed like poison spilled out of her lips every time she opened her mouth.

“You made a pact with me. You said that you would challenge the Heavenly Demon Cult’s rule and rebuild the Righteous Faction’s murim. You even united the Nine Sects, the Beggar Gang, and the Five Prestigious Clans to fight against me. After all you’ve done, you can’t die in your bed. You can’t do this.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stand up.” The scent of poison around the Heavenly Demon grew stronger. “Stand up and grab your weapon. You don’t need your stupid ax. A wooden sword, a whip, a cane, or a stick. Anything will be fine. Grab it and fight me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I told you to stand up.”

“Demon.” The Murim Alliance's leader sighed; he looked like he’d aged a decade in one night. “I’m sorry I’m weaker than you. I tried to hold out for as long as possible, even if it was for only one more day, but it’s too hard now. You must have noticed that I was already using my vital force. My qi is all gone and now my vital force as well. You might be able to hold out for another year, but...this is it for me.”

The cave fell silent.

“I’m weaker than you,” the Murim Alliance's leader muttered again. “Please kill me.”

The Heavenly Demon’s face twisted.

“I don’t want to become like that Shaolin abbot. Please kill me before my body rots and falls apart. If I become a jiangshi, neither my eyes nor my life will be mine, so—”

The scent of poison rolled off of the Heavenly Demon in suffocatingly thick waves.

“So you want me to kill you on your deathbed? Is that what you’re saying now?”

Her qi made itself known as tongues of black fire; it smelled of ash and cinder—the smell of the life this small woman had been suffering through. It, too, was thick with venom.

“Is this how you’re going to end the great war you promised me?” she demanded, her body radiating death. “You should have gathered everyone from my cult and the Righteous Faction and ordered them to commit mass suicide long ago. Why did you endure it all this time? What glory did you seek that made you insist on living until now?”

The Murim Alliance's leader couldn’t answer. His tears drew streaks across his cheeks.

“I—”

“Namgung Woon. You were born with the Divine Martial Body, so you were both praised and envied by many martial artists from a young age. At the age of twenty, you reached the zenith, and you became the head of the Namgung Clan before you were even thirties.

“When the Heavenly Demon Cult dominated murim, you were elected as the leader of the Righteous Faction. The essence of the Righteous Faction’s values and grudge of all those on the Righteous Path are with you. Yet despite all that, you offer me your head?”

The Heavenly Demon rose.

“Alright, I’ll kill you. But you won’t die peacefully.”

She disappeared into the cave. Even when she was gone, the air was choked with the acrid stench of fire. The Chemist and the Medicine King were unfamiliar with aura, so they looked particularly pained.

A moment later, the Heavenly Demon returned with an ax in her hand. “Old man, here is the Jade Ax you cherish. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten it already.”

“Soh Baekhyang...”

“Say it.” The Heavenly Demon raised the ax. “Murim has forgotten its code of honor, and the code of honor has been lost in murim. Say it. Then I’ll kill you like you wish.”

Saying it would mean the end of the Righteous Faction’s murim. In other words, the heaven of the Heavenly Demon Cult was telling the Murim Alliance's leader to acknowledge the fall. Only then would she take his life by cutting off his head using his cherished weapon.

“Say it.”

“...”

“Say it already!”

The Murim Alliance's leader’s lip twitched. He opened his mouth and bared his teeth, but his tongue was still. His mouth opened several times, but his tongue remained lost.

“I can’t.” The Murim Alliance's leader’s voice was hoarse. “I can’t... I can’t say it...”

Again, tears flowed down his cheeks, washing his old, wrinkled skin in another layer of tears. It was difficult to distinguish the tears from his skin, as if his flesh was made from tears and he wept with every fiber of his body.

“I can’t say it... I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Baekhyang...”

The Heavenly Demon swung the ax, and yet didn’t cut the Murim Alliance's leader’s head. Instead, she struck the ground right next to his head. The solid rock floor of the cave cracked as easily as if it was made out of tofu. She had difficulty lifting a stick, so I could only imagine how much qi she had used to cleave the rock.

“You said that your life would no longer be yours once you become a jiangshi,” the Heavenly Demon muttered. “It doesn’t matter. Your death won’t be yours anyway. What is the difference between a life and a death that isn’t yours? I can’t tell the difference. It’s meaningless. It’s all meaningless...” She turned her back on him. “The world has no meaning.”

Namgung Woon, the leader of the Murim Alliance and the Righteous Faction, died at dawn the next day. His cause of death was illness.

***

Ten days had passed since I fell into the world of the apocalyptic book, meaning that the day this world would end had arrived.

“...We received a precious sample,” the Chemist said. “There’s a limit to analyzing the virus with patients who had already turned into zombies two or three years ago. Thanks to this sample, we were able to observe the progression of the viral infection in real-time. This is huge progress.”

The Murim Alliance's leader’s body was lying still in front of the Chemist, tightly bound in metal chains.

“It seems that you don’t become a zombie right away when you die... You awaken as a zombie after a little while. I believe it takes time for the virus to spread throughout the brain.”

“I’ve compiled the research so far.” The Medicine King handed me a file, clicking his tongue. “This girl may have a gift for medicine, but she certainly has no talent for explaining. None. Tsk, tsk. This is the problem with people who are full of themselves...”

“I tried my best,” the Chemist said, ignoring the Medicine King’s criticism, “but it was impossible to develop a cure.”

“Was it due to a lack of time?” I asked.

“Yes. We need at least ninety days. One hundred twenty if possible...”

The chains clashed and creaked. We all turned and saw the Murim Alliance's leader’s corpse thrashing.

We stared at the Murim Alliance's leader for a while in silence—or rather, we looked at what used to be him. It kept throwing around its limbs with its mouth gnashing at the air.

The Heavenly Demon approached. Her footsteps were quiet.

She was a woman of darkness. Her hair, her training suit, and her eyes were all black. She even carried a sword that was darker than her shadow.

“...Pathetic.” The Heavenly Demon looked down at the corpse. “The past couldn’t have been more meaningless.”

We instinctively backed away from her. The venom about her was even stronger than yesterday; her qi not only rose, it entirely enveloped her now.

“In the end, this is what humans are under the mask. We’re no different from animals. We eat over and over until we can’t move, only to disappear. Murim forgot its code of honor, and the code of honor has been lost in murim.” The Heavenly Demon held out her left hand. “Eat.”

The zombie, the Murim Alliance's leader, bit her hand like an animal. Her flesh was torn, and her bones were crushed. Even as her blood spurted out, she watched with an indifferent gaze.

“H-hey.” The Viper took a step closer, taken aback. “W-what are you doing? You might end up becoming a zombie too...!”

“Don’t go near her.” I grabbed the Viper’s shoulder.

“What?”

“It’s already over.”

“It’s over? What are—”

We heard a wet explosion. The viscous sound made us jerk. We slowly turned our heads. The Heavenly Demon was standing with her left hand in tatters, and the Murim Alliance's leader’s body was missing its head.

She had created a qi explosion inside its mouth, obliterating the head.

“Ha.”

We could say nothing.

“Hah. Haha... hahaha. Hahaha! Ha! Ha. Hahahahahaha!”

It was the laughter of true madness. It filled the cave and haunted the sky. The snowstorm was still raging outside the cave, eating away the rest of the world, but her laughter reduced it to background noise.

—Zombie, be careful, the Guardian said quietly. That’s Qi Deviation.

The Heavenly Demon turned and smiled at me charmingly, but when she spoke her voice was odd.

“Ha.”

I had goosebumps running down my back.

“You all must be the Righteous Path followers who came to assassinate me.” Her eyes were on us, but it wasn’t us whom she was talking to. “Good. Come at me. Let us cross blades.”

“Everyone, run!” I shouted.

At the same time, the Heavenly Demon swung her sword.

The Medicine King’s blood fountained into the air. His death was instant—he couldn’t even scream as his head was precisely removed from his neck. The Viper watched his fellow Hunter collapse right in front of him and belatedly drew his sword.

“The fuck...!”

I couldn’t even see her sword move. No, I didn’t even understand how it happened. The Heavenly Demon swung her sword and the Medicine King’s neck was cut off without a moment’s gap.

—This is crazy. The Guardian groaned. She’s surpassed the level of a demon. It’s probably because she’s pouring out all her qi and vital force—right now, she’s in the realm of Life and Death, even if it’s only temporary. Even if I were to return to life at my prime and fight her, I would lose at least four out of ten fights.

This was the Heavenly Demon before she was weakened from a jiangshi bite. She was the strongest martial artist in this world.

“You abbot of the Shaolin Temple, do you really think you could stop me with such cheap tricks? The same goes for you, you sage of the Wudang Sect. Do you believe you can handle the karma of my cult?”

The Heavenly Demon approached one slow step at a time.

“Mount Song is swamped with the world’s overflowing resentment. The burning rage ignited Mount Wudang. The Heavenly Demon Cult is the heaven of the martial arts world, and I am the heaven of my cult. Are you truly qualified to discuss the sky above the sky?”

“Damn it!” The Viper raised his sword and charged. “Death King! Take the Chemist and run!”

I was already on it. It was impossible to escape, but I was going to keep running until the end anyway. I wasn’t going to sit on my butt and accept this ending and this death as if it were fate.

“You Righteous Path minions aren’t going to cut it!” The Heavenly Demon’s laughter chased us. “Namgung Woon!”

We heard swords clash once, twice, and three times.

“Where is Namgung Woon!?”

And the sound of swords stopped; the Viper had died after enduring three of the Heavenly Demon’s attacks.

“Call the Grand Patriarch of the Namgung Clan! Bring me the Murim Alliance's leader! No matter how dense the forests are or how vast the sky is in murim, only one person in this world can take on my sword! You, from the Sima Clan! Get Namgung Woon in front of me immediately!”

Her laughter was persistent. Every step I ran, the laughter traveled ten steps. I was no match for it. When the laughter finally caught up to me, the Chemist looked up to me and said, “Mr. Death King, I still believe in you.”

And then something pierced through both of us. The world tilted. I lost my lower body and fell into the snow with only my upper body. We were in the snowfield and out of the cave.

The Chemist was a little further away. The area where she fell was particularly red. In a stupor, I thought to myself that it was like shaved ice with strawberry syrup drizzled on it.

“Ahaha. Hah. Haha!”

It was snowing.

“Hahahahaha! Ha, hahahahaha...”

When it snowed, the earth and sky were indistinguishable. The world was painted entirely in shades of cool, pale white.

Someone was moving away from us, leaving footprints in the snowfield. If they had persevered, their footprints would have divided the earth and sky would have seemed divided. However, the endless snowstorm buried those, too.

The snowstorm left behind no sound, trace, or smell. The world that had burned its people was going to be buried with them. Once all the ashes of the world were buried, only the colorless, odorless, and soundless snowstorm would remain. The snowfield, eternal.

The world reached its end.

[You have died.]

But that was its end. Its end wasn’t mine.

[Rewinding twenty four hours.]

Let’s save your world, I thought.