Chapter 102: Zhuge’s Move (5)

Soyak slowly nodded.

It was not the look of someone fully convinced.

There were still questions left. Too many things were still uncertain.

She unfastened Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge from her waist.

Then she drew it into her arms, still in its sheath.

She lowered her head slightly and pressed her forehead to the sword...

Then let out a quiet breath.

Eunsong’s eyes narrowed.

This was unlike her usual self.

He could not say what she had been like before coming to Mount Hua...

But the Soyak he had known here at Mount Hua had always been calm yet firm, composed yet proud.

And now she looked almost afraid.

But of what?

What in the world was she afraid of?

Eunsong did not know.

“Are you all right?”

“Master. I truly felt that I am the Heavenly Killing Star.”

“Did you.”

“That fierce smell of blood... that endless exaltation rising until it filled my lungs... I...”

Something brushed the tip of her nose.

A smell of blood, and yet not blood.

A sign of the coming Blood Calamity, the kind her instincts as the Heavenly Killing Star warned her of.

Soyak bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Are you afraid of yourself?”

“...Yes.”

“If you remember who you are, you will not lose yourself.”

Eunsong quietly stroked her head.

This pitiful child was still afraid of herself.

Of her birth. Of the fate she had been born with. Of the instinct carved into her body from the moment she entered the world because of it.

“You are my disciple, and Cheonjeong’s and Cheongak’s and Cheonju’s and Cheonju’s junior sister...”

Each time he named another one of her identities, one by one,

Soyak slowly lifted her head and looked up at Eunsong.

“You are a martial artist of Mount Hua.”

Eunsong smiled.

Soyak could not.

But she was comforted.

“If you think straight and deeply only of who you are, then you will not be shaken by the fate laid upon you.”

“Will that really be enough?”

“It truly will. Because no person is alone.”

“No person is alone...”

Soyak murmured his words back to herself.

“That’s right. That is why thoughts are carried on, why people take revenge, why they repay grace, is it not?”

“Is that so?”

“Soyak, why is it that you seek revenge?”

“That’s...”

“Is it not because you are the daughter of Cheon Baekgyeong, the Black Plum Sword Lord?”

Soyak tried to understand what he was trying to say.

But even Eunsong had only learned this much by reading it in books.

How could anyone, working through it alone in their own head, fully understand the many faces of a person?

“You are not merely Cheon Soyak, the Heavenly Killing Star. You are Cheon Soyak, daughter of Cheon Baekgyeong, the Black Plum Sword Lord. Cheon Soyak, disciple of me, Eunsong. Cheon Soyak, benefactor of the Shandong Ak Family. Cheon Soyak, friend of Gong-eop, the Little Divine Monk. Cheon Soyak, ill-fated companion of Namgung Seon, the heir of the Namgung Household. And Cheon Soyak, the youngest junior sister of Cheonjeong and all your other senior brothers and senior sisters. Are you not?”

One by one.

She faced the other sides of herself.

“A single name contains the sum of all its ties. Your name does too, Soyak. Why do you think I took in someone like you, a Heavenly Killing Star, taught you the sword, and kept you at Mount Hua? Because I believe.”

“...Believe in what?”

“That something like the burden of a star one is born with can be twisted out of shape by human ties, by grace and resentment.”

It ran along the same current as what Soyak herself had once said.

If she was the Heavenly Killing Star, a being fated to bring forth a Blood Calamity,

then at the very least, she would bring forth a Blood Calamity in the direction and form she chose.

Soyak accepted that.

She had not been left alone in this world.

There were so many people who had bound her in place with strong cords and chains and kept her standing.

If she remembered that,

how could she forget herself, lose herself, stumble, and collapse?

“...Thank you, Master.”

“I only read it in a book myself.”

“When all of this is over, I think I’ll live by reading books too.”

Soyak answered with a faint snort of laughter, making a joke of it.

At that moment, the doors of the guest hall swung wide.

Soyak and Eunsong turned toward them, thinking Zhuge Yeon had returned...

But the person standing there was a tall, slender middle-aged man.

“You’re the ones who came to see my Yeon?”

It was the Family Head of the Zhuge Household.

Zhuge Won, the Heaven-Communing Enlightened One.

*****

They had originally been meant to go to the office of the Internal Affairs Pavilion Lord.

That is to say...

none of them had ever intended to come to the Family Head’s chambers.

Not Eunsong. Not Zhuge Yeon. Not even Cheon Soyak.

Zhuge Won knew everything.

There was no need even to mention the information he received from the Beggar Union.

To begin with, the only reason Zhuge Yeon could become the Society Head of the Reverse Heaven Society and carry out its work at all...

was because Family Head Zhuge Won had silently permitted it.

Eunsong and Soyak told Zhuge Won everything they had deduced.

Zhuge Yeon also reported what she had learned from watching over Soyak with Namgung Byeok up until now.

Zhuge Won’s brows rose.

Not because of anything else.

It was because Soyak, at the age of fourteen, was a martial artist advancing toward the middle stage of Transcendent Apex.

And because it had taken her only three or four months to rise from the completion of Apex to where she stood now.

Zhuge Won was measuring it too.

That this tiny, frail, slender, pale girl before his eyes...

could grow into a monster capable of piercing the heavens, dragging them down, and slaughtering them.

“You want to bring this girl the Dark Emperor wants dead into the Reverse Heaven Society?”

Zhuge Won asked it lightly.

Eunsong and Zhuge Yeon nodded.

“Aren’t you the Society Head, Yeon?”

“That’s why Eunsong came to find me.”

“Yes. That part is for you to decide. The second matter is what concerns me.”

Zhuge Won leaned forward.

Resting his elbow on the desk carved from yew wood, he propped his chin on his hand.

His eyes narrowed, and a furrow formed between his brows.

“You said you felt traces of the Kill Veil on the corpse.”

He was looking straight at Cheon Soyak when he asked.

Eunsong kept his mouth shut and left the answer to Soyak.

“...Yes, Family Head.”

“How are you so certain?”

“As I said, my Head Senior was once struck by the sword of someone who inherited the Kill Veil’s martial arts.”

“The Soul-Slaying Sword, then.”

Zhuge Won clicked his tongue.

Then he muttered,

“It’s a wonder he lived. If not for Shaolin’s Heart Sutra power, he would’ve died without a chance.”

“I’ll always be grateful to the Little Divine Monk Gong-eop.”

“You should be. The problem is, with even the Hall Lord and Deputy Hall Lord of Night-Heaven Hall dead, there shouldn’t be any assassin left for them to move.”

Eunsong and Soyak nodded.

So did Zhuge Yeon.

“And yet. Do you know whose disciple Byeoksagok, the One Sword of Extreme Night, Hall Lord of Night-Heaven Hall, was?”

“...Surely not.”

Zhuge Yeon clapped a hand over her mouth.

Even Eunsong’s eyes widened.

It was a heavy name.

“Yes, Yeon. Your guess is right. He was the disciple of the assassin once called the Dark Sovereign, the Dark Emperor.”

“But, Family Head... if the Dark Emperor himself has moved...”

“Don’t worry too much, Daoist Eunsong. This is the Zhuge Household. This is the estate itself.”

This was the stronghold of Zhuge Won, the Heaven-Communing Enlightened One.

The estate of the Zhuge Household, where the finest, oldest, most brilliant formations and mechanisms in all Nine Provinces under Heaven were gathered.

And then...

Zhuge Won drew his sword.

When he raised his internal energy, though it was incomplete...

a blaze of power far clearer and fiercer than Sword Qi flowed along the blade.

“Sword Force...”

Zhuge Yeon stared blankly at it.

The heads of the other great households had, for the most part, at least stepped into the entrance of the Transformation Realm.

But the Zhuge Household—

In the entire long history of the Zhuge Household,

only two masters of the Transformation Realm had ever emerged, even counting the Family Heads themselves.

Now the third had appeared.

“Father... don’t tell me...”

“Yes. It is the Heaven-Revering Gate-Opening Art.”

A thing the Zhuge Household created, standing somewhere between a heart method and a great art.

It was said that by mobilizing both formation methods and heart methods to their utmost, concentrating on the upper dantian, and opening the crown point, one could connect with heaven.

That was why it had been given the name Heaven-Revering Gate-Opening Art.

It could only be attempted after one had reached full maturity in Transcendent Apex.

One also had to bring the Great Heavenly Star Art, the Zhuge Household’s supreme heart method, to full completion.

Only the Family Head was permitted to train it.

And the odds of failure were so high that becoming crippled was a very real possibility...

But it was, without question,

the distilled essence of the entire history of the Zhuge Household—

the art that guaranteed entry into the opening stage of the Transformation Realm.

“The Zhuge Household has long been slighted for having weak martial strength. Has it not?”

Zhuge Won looked at Eunsong.

Eunsong too had been unable to pull his eyes away from the Sword Force burning on the blade.

“...It has.”

“That is exactly why we took those vaunted minds of ours, gathered them across centuries from ancestor to descendant, and pieced this together.”

“But it was said no one had practiced the Heaven-Revering Gate-Opening Art since the Family Head sixty years ago was crippled.”

“That was true, once. But I succeeded.”

Was it luck?

Or had he used some formation or mechanism to make that result reproducible?

If it was the former, then only Zhuge Won would stand in the Transformation Realm.

If it was the latter, then every future Family Head of the Zhuge Household—

so long as they fulfilled the conditions of full Transcendent Apex maturity and complete mastery of the Great Heavenly Star Art—

would all, all become masters of the Transformation Realm.

“It still isn’t perfect. There are several more obstacles left before the risks of the Heaven-Revering Gate-Opening Art can truly be reduced.”

“You attempted it even though those issues were still unresolved?”

“What else was I supposed to do?”

Zhuge Won lowered the sword.

He returned the precious blade to its scabbard, then looked at his daughter, Zhuge Yeon.

“My youngest daughter dreams of standing against the Sword Sovereign.”

“...Father.”

“You said the Dark Emperor? Even in our day, he was already known as an assassin who had reached the Transformation Realm.”

Zhuge Won slowly closed his eyes, then opened them again.

Those were unmistakably the eyes of a martial artist.

Not the eyes of a strategist.

“Judging by the years, there is a high chance his realm is around the middle stage of the Transformation Realm. He vanished for thirty years after that, yes, but martial skill that has already reached the Transformation Realm does not grow much further with ease. Especially when one considers he was already an old man even then.”

Soyak quietly nodded.

If the Transformation Realm was a state forged by pouring the whole of sixty years into one’s cultivation,

then even thirty more years of training after that would not necessarily bring dramatic change.

The body had already passed its prime.

The mind had long since stiffened.

The bones and muscles would creak and soften.

The spirit, after all, belongs to the body.

“So even if I cannot defeat him or force a draw... I will not lose easily.”

With all the mechanism-formations of the Zhuge Household, and with the Family Head himself having reached the Transformation Realm,

the difficulty of an assassination rose sharply.

The Dark Emperor may once have killed even masters of the Transformation Realm in his prime,

but that was when it was a surprise attack, an assassination from the shadows.

Not when the target was hidden deep behind layers of defense, fully prepared, and waiting for him to come.