Book 12: Chapter 12: Promise for Salvation

Part 12 Promise for Salvation

“Fuu-.”

Luoyang underground drainage system.

Somewhere in the deep layer.

“Fuu-.”

In that space where not a single point of light could be found cotton clothes dyed in a pitch-black darker than that fluttered in the wind filled with a rotten stench passing along the drainage system.

“Fuu-.”

Yeon So-hyeon, the Dark Venerable, slowly managed his breath, which was about to become rough, and took a step.

And then he was taking another step.

“Fuu-.”

Downwards.

Although the long passage heading further down continued without an end in sight, it could not stop the Dark Venerable's steps.

“Grruuuh-.”

Hands reaching out from the walls of the passage grabbed the hem of the Dark Venerable's clothes.

Hands from the wall.

But it was not a particularly strange thing here.

To begin with his surroundings had already become something too bizarre to be called a human-made sewage facility.

Since the passage the Dark Venerable was walking through was made of corpses tangled together and rotting away that long passage was as good as an internal organ crafted from corpses.

Grab, grab.

The hands of the corpses rising from the sewage flowing along the slope grabbed the Dark Venerable's feet.

And hands dripping with rotten pus seemed to climb up his body.

“Fuu-.”

However even so, nothing could stop the Dark Venerable's steps.

“Fuu-.”

He was taking steps slowly, just like at the beginning.

Yet, he took his steps firmly, and instead, the corpses that had grabbed the hem of his clothes and his body were dragged along.

“Kruuuh-!”

“Fuu-.”

Corpses grabbed other corpses and other corpses grabbed the corpse that held the Dark Venerable's body but even in the midst of the corpses biting tails and stretching endlessly long, the Dark Venerable was advancing forward, step by step.

“Is it difficult?”

A voice was heard in his ear.

Among the corpses being dragged while holding onto the Dark Venerable, a corpse that at least maintained its shape spoke.

“It cannot not be difficult for you.”

A corpse crushed above the nose was talking to the Dark Venerable, moving its long-stretched tongue and lower jaw.

“To break the Cult's barrier in a single blow, indeed, even I had no choice but to be surprised, but…”

It was now even snickering.

“You could not help but have your strength exhausted that much.”

“Shut up, Geum-jil.”

The Dark Venerable's hand flashed and with a crushing sound, accompanied by the sound of skin and flesh twisting and tearing, the snickering corpse exploded.

However, soon, another newly clinging corpse began to wag its snout.

“Come to think of it.”

“Does your body not feel heavy?”

Instead of answering, the Dark Venerable took his next step.

“Fuu-.”

At that heavy step, the clinging corpses were dragged along again.

“Well, of course it must be heavy.”

The Dark Venerable's hand flashed again thump-.

And Geum-jil's corpse puppet that had been wagging its snout was smashed, but this time, the corpse of a child with only a head remaining and the corpse of a mother holding that head opened their mouths to continue.

“These corpses are all… not the result of delusion and illusions,” the weight of those corpses, and the texture of the rotting flesh and the discharge flowing from the corpses, which he was experiencing vividly, did not elicit a response from the Dark Venerable.

“But real corpses with physical forms.”

“Fuu-.”

One step.

Another step.

Now, the passage sloshed every time the Dark Venerable took a step.

The passage was made of corpses, and since those corpses hung onto the Dark Venerable one after another it was natural for the entire passage to slosh every time he moved his steps.

“Then, the next question.”

Although the Dark Venerable did not give any answer like that Geum-jil did not care and chattered as if he were excited.

“Where did all these numerous corpses come from?”

Pause.

The Dark Venerable's steps, which seemed to halt for a moment at that question, began to move slowly again.

“In this deep underground waterway, that is. Just how, and from where, did so many corpses come?”

Geum-jil knew clearly that the Dark Venerable would not answer, even though he knew the answer.

He moved the corpses of the baby and the mother to ask and answer himself.

“The underground residents!”

“That is right! These are the underground residents of Luoyang.”

At those words the Dark Venerable's sharp teeth ground together, casting sparks.

“The poor of Luoyang cannot rest from work even under those harsh working conditions.”

“But when their bodies are eventually damaged and they rest from work, they cannot afford meals,” a responsible family, or a deeply caring neighbor might help them barely scrape by in the slums and prolong their lives, relying on that family or neighbor.

“And what happens to those whose bodies are so damaged that they cannot labor?”

However it was merely putting off the problem for a while.

It was not a solution.

“As the number of mouths to feed increases, the burden on the supporter increases.”

“Such supporters suffer from even harsher labor, and soon realize that they have no choice.”

They get injured in even harsher labor, likewise only adding to the mouths in the neighborhood or else…

“These are those who were abandoned alive.”

Geum-jil giggled and laughed.

“These are those who were discarded by their families and neighbors, thrown into the underground drainage system.”

It was the same story for those who lost their lives.

Since even the firewood to warm their bodies in winter cost money, they were people who had to hold onto each other to maintain warmth.

How could such people obtain firewood to light a fire for a deceased person's corpse?

Those who could not bear to touch the corpses of their family or neighbors sent the corpses down the sewer only praying for rebirth in paradise.

Although the Houses of Benevolence and Love in various places operated free crematoriums to prevent the outbreak of epidemics and show minimal respect for the deceased there were too many people dying.

Too, too many.

“These are those who drifted in this underground drainage system while dying, and then came to seek refuge in our Cult!”

As if replying to his words, the corpses wailed, wrapping themselves even tighter around the Dark Venerable's body.

“Grruuuh-!”

“Uuuuh-!”

“So…”

When the Dark Venerable opened his mouth first for the first time, the mother-child corpse controlled by Geum-jil made a gesture of listening.

“So, you approached those who were dying like that, those who had lost all hope,” in the midst of the screams let out by the corpses, the Dark Venerable's voice, which sounded like boiling metal, echoed clearly.

“And made false promises of salvation?”

Even while throwing the question, even though too many corpses hung on him now, creating a situation where it seemed the entire passage was being torn off, and even so, the Dark Venerable was advancing.

“The most helpless people in the world.”

“Did you deceive those who desperately need help the most in the world?”

“Deception? False?”

The end of the passage was approaching.

“What do you mean, false promises?”

Geum-jil's corpse puppets turned serious.

“Do not look down on the determination of our Cultists, Dark Venerable.”

Geum-jil's corpse puppets scratched the Dark Venerable's body with their remaining fingernails and bit his body with their remaining teeth.

“Our Cultists chose, by themselves, to become the foundation for opening a new world.”

“We chose to become sacrifices ourselves.”

The ears of the Dark Venerable were filled with the sounds made by corpses that could produce anything close to a voice.

“Like Buddhism, Daoism, or any other religion on earth, we have never made commonplace promises about the afterlife and salvation,” it was Geum-jil's voice, and the voice of those who had voluntarily offered their bodies to the Demonic Cult as sacrifices and sought refuge.

“Nor have we ever received them.”

“I know the truth!”

“We know the truth!”

The Cultists, or the corpses of the Cultists, shouted.

“That there is no such thing as an afterlife…!”

“That there is no such thing as causality…!”

The Dark Venerable's eyes narrowed.

“Those who wear human skins and are more vicious than demons!”

“That they are not punished by heaven even after death!”

“We know it!”

The immortals who had long escaped the secular world and ascended the truth of the universe that the immortals who created the Scripture of Controlling Darkness and Shaking the Heavens were said to have found a fragment of that truth, was also coming out of the mouth of the Demonic Cult.

“What I want is…!”

“What we want is only one thing!”

The passage woven from their corpses filled the passage with the sounds of wailing from those full of resentment and anger, and their corpses writhed violently, shaking the entire passage as if it were alive.

“To destroy the entire world and purify it to its primordial state!”

“To those who made me, who made us die like this…!”

“We will take revenge on this world!”

Standing at the end of the passage crafted from corpses Yeon So-hyeon understood their doctrine.

And he realized.

The Demonic Cult and the Scripture of Controlling Darkness and Shaking the Heavens and the demons and the Dark Venerable were like two sides of a mirror.

“Fuu-.”

Nevertheless even though he understood that terrible resentment and bottomless pain, his steps did not stop.

Rather, even more strength was put into his final step.

Creak-.

The corpses forming the end of the passage that the Dark Venerable reached out to grab with both hands screamed and were shattered.

Creeeak-.

By the boundless, great strength generated by the demonic qi of the Scripture of Controlling Darkness and Shaking the Heavens even the bricks originally forming the wall beneath the corpses crushed in his hands were shattered, and the Dark Venerable broke out of the passage.

There was no such thing as hesitation.

“Fuu-.”

His body fell down toward the lowest floor, which was gaping open even blacker.

And soon with the sound of cutting through the wind, the Dark Venerable landed on the floor.

It was a massive space.

It was the deepest layer, which had been hidden by the Cult's demonic qi and could not be observed by anyone until now.

“Aaaaargh-!”

“Uuuuuh!”

The corpses that had held onto him until the end fell down with a thud behind him.

Crunch!

The corpses that fell to the floor first were miserably smashed and crunch, crunch!

More corpses fell on top of them, flailing their limbs.

Corpses were pouring down like rain.

All the corpses forming the passage had hung onto the Dark Venerable and because of the Dark Venerable, all of those corpses had been peeled away from the passage.

“Fuu-, fuu-.”

“O Dark Venerable.”

The voice calling him as he controlled his breathing came from straight ahead.

A giant figure was moving in the darkness, which was blurry even to the Dark Venerable's eyes.

“You and we are the same.”

Within that fog-like pitch-black demonic qi, hundreds of legs moved and hundreds of hands were moving.

A figure the size of a house was looking at the Dark Venerable with hundreds of eyes.

“You and we are those who have despaired of reality.”

Should that be called Geum-jil?

The giant, bizarre entity created by clumping hundreds of corpses together spoke in dozens of voices simultaneously.

“You and we are those who borrowed power from external universe entities to overcome the harsh truth of this world.”

The bizarre entity reached out dozens of rotting hands simultaneously.

“There is no reason for you and us to bleed and fight each other here right now.”

“Nonsense.”

The answer of the Dark Venerable, Yeon So-hyeon, was immediate, and there was not the slightest hesitation in his answer.

“I fight to forge my own destiny.”

Even amidst his rough breathing, Yeon So-hyeon straightened his back.

“I fight to change the fate of those who are alive now, and I fight to protect the lives of those who will live in the future.”

Yeon So-hyeon, letting out a rough breath, smiled while showing his sharp teeth.

“Unable to change even your own destiny, unable to change the world, and merely blinded by resentment and hatred, wishing for something like the destruction of the world—how dare you say you are the same as me with such childish thoughts?”

Yeon So-hyeon barked at the bizarre entity, which was momentarily at a loss for words.

“That sight is pathetic. You half-baked insect.”

“…How dare you!”

Rumble!

“It is blasphemy!”

“It is an insult to the doctrine!”

As the bizarre entity moved its giant body violently, the entire underground drainage system shook.

“When you are so drained of strength that you cannot even catch your breath properly, how dare you reject the Cult's goodwill?!”

“Me, drained of strength…?”

Since it had been long since it forgot something like the chill that a mere human felt the bizarre entity momentarily had difficulty understanding the sensation it felt.

“How ridiculous.”

Two streaks of pale blue ghost fire bloomed from the white mask and soon soared as if to reach the high ceiling.

Yeon So-hyeon, or rather while the Dark Venerable's body trembled, it began to devour the demonic qi emitted by the bizarre entity.

“I was not catching my breath because I was lacking strength.”

The demon that devours demons.

The demon of a thousand ages to destroy demons.

The Scripture of Controlling Darkness and Shaking the Heavens.

“Until you showed yourself directly before me,” when Yeon So-hyeon let go of the operation of the Dual Principles Mind Art he was barely maintaining, the purest demonic qi began to burst forth uncontrollably.

“I was controlling it until now.”