Chapter 2

"...What became of my younger sisters?"

The scholar, who could fully predict their tragic ends, asked in a self-mocking tone.

[Your first younger sister tried to restore even a little glory to the family name by hunting down demonic fiends. Then she encountered a demon of the previous generation and was torn limb from limb. Your second younger sister lost her twin sister in that way, lost her mind, wandered the streets, and froze to death one day in the pouring rain.]

"I see..."

Yes.

That was only natural.

The family had been torn into several pieces, reduced to a state no different from annihilation.

There was no way those children could have remained safe.

[But fortunately, your youngest sister is still alive.]

The scholar brightened.

"Is that true?! Nani is alive? Where is that child now?"

[Your youngest became addicted to drugs. Most likely to flee from reality. To earn the money she needed for them, she now lives as a prostitute in a pleasure house in Luoyang.]

The voice gently consoled him.

[Still, she is alive, so that is good. Very good. I am glad I can finally deliver some good news.]

"Kuhaha..."

The scholar burst into laughter as though coughing blood.

No, he convulsed as though he were laughing.

Each time his body shook, the chains tightly fastened through his shoulder blades screamed horribly.

The chains were as thick as a grown man's forearm and gleamed with a deep ink-black color.

Without a doubt, they were made of Black Iron, a metal unmatched in hardness.

After shedding blood-mixed tears for a while, the scholar made an excuse to the voice.

"I... I had no choice."

That had been the path they chose, and its result.

"I resolved long ago to sever all ties with the world."

[I already know. Your resolve, and the process that led you to that resolve.]

The scholar sank briefly into reminiscence.

He recalled the memories that had settled deep within the darkness.

They were memories from long ago, but to him, they were as vivid as if they had happened yesterday.

[The human world is undoubtedly filthy and ugly. And the ones who made such a world were none other than humans themselves. Ending the Age of Myth, building civilization, and opening the Age of History—all of it was mankind's great fall.]

"...I wanted to become Laozi."

[You wanted to remain like him, a figure who merely passed through. He founded the great philosophy called Daoism, yet left almost no trace of himself behind, ultimately ascending as an immortal and disappearing.]

"I merely wished to live without action and without desire. I did not want to involve myself in the secular world."

[And so you lived as the One Without a Sword, did you not? Though you were the eldest son of a sword clan, you never held a sword. You shut yourself in your room and lived for the joy of reading. Did your wife not understand that as well?]

"...Come to think of it, my wife? What became of Unjeong?"

His wife, Moyong Unjeong, and he had never truly shared their hearts.

But that did not mean she had treated him carelessly.

Even though she suffered because of a useless live-in son-in-law like him, she had shown him many considerations so he could live comfortably.

Though they had been nothing more than a married couple in name, never even sharing a bed, she was one of the few people for whom he felt deep gratitude.

[In the end, she lost the political struggle. All of her forces were expelled.]

"...Did she lose her life?"

[It happened not long ago. While serving in the bedchamber of the Fear King, she bit into his manhood and tore it apart. Even at the execution ground, she laughed boldly. Truly, she was a remarkable woman. Had she been born in an age of chaos, she would surely have become a great ruler.]

The voice laughed heartily.

"...She lived without a single thing to be ashamed of before the heavens, yet the heavens did not help her in the end."

The voice sneered.

[Nonsense. What she needed was not the heavens. It was you. The one who abandoned her was you.]

"...There was a time when I divined my own fate."

The scholar raised his unseen eyes toward the heavens.

"I was born under a fate ruled by the Heavenly Killing Star. If someone like me involved himself in worldly affairs, many people would have shed blood because of me."

The voice answered.

[Do you still not understand? That fate of yours has already come to pass.]

"...What?!"

The scholar suddenly realized.

Everyone he had cherished had been wounded, suffered, and died.

He had tried to do nothing for them.

But precisely because he had tried to do nothing, all of them had fallen into the abyss.

"...In the end, as nothing more than a mortal being, I could not escape the solemn shackles of fate."

If there was one tiny, utterly insignificant difference, it was only that he had not stained his own hands with blood.

[Do you understand now?]

The scholar lowered his head.

"...Then from now on, I have no choice but to entrust everything to the will of heaven."

[How pitiful!]

It was a roar unlike anything he had ever heard before, so thunderous it seemed to tear his ears apart.

[Do you still not understand?]

Unlike the atmosphere until now, the voice was clearly agitated.

It was furious.

[Heaven and earth are not benevolent. They do not care for insignificant humans!]

The voice rebuked the scholar without restraint.

[Then at the very least, humans should help humans. Yet even sages are not benevolent! Looking at you, does that not fit perfectly?]

The scholar opposed the voice.

"But it is also said that the net of heaven is vast and wide-meshed, yet it misses nothing. Even if I do not act, those who commit evil will surely be judged according to the law of cause and effect."

[Cause and effect? Did you say cause and effect?!]

Repeating those words, the voice burst into mad laughter.

At the skull-splitting roar of laughter, the scholar forgot even his pain and tried to cover his ears with arms that had lost their fingers and wrists.

It was nothing more than an illusion.

The Black Iron chains trembled with the laughter, ringing all the way into his bones.

[Since you speak of cause and effect, let me show you an old story.]

The space before the scholar grew bright.

A strange landscape suddenly spread out before him in vast detail.

He had lost his eyes, but he could see everything the voice showed him.

In ancient times, in the Age of Myth, there were beings who lost everything to humans.

Even in that era, humans were cruel and selfish.

In the end, the few who turned their eyes away from the horrifying human world devoted themselves solely to cultivation.

They believed that there must be a cause and effect that transcended time and space.

They believed that one day, there would be a great order that would make those who committed evil pay the price.

One day, having attained enlightenment, they became immortals.

And then they came to understand the truth of the world.

Those whose lives had ended simply returned to a handful of dust.

Their souls and spirits merely returned to nature.

There was no afterlife.

No hell.

No judgment that no one could escape.

The wicked committed wicked deeds, lived in fine clothes and good food, and then died.

At times, some of them failed to live out their natural lifespans because of their own evil deeds.

But that was only true for a few.

No matter how one looked at it, most good people lived amid terrible suffering and died before their allotted years were fulfilled.

Those who squeezed even blood and pus from them lived and died enjoying fortune and pleasure that should have belonged to their victims.

It was brutally unreasonable.

There was no heaven to set the tilted scales right.

There was no great cause and effect.

Cause and effect—

The absolute order they had believed in—

[Do you understand now?]

The voice asked again.

[Have you seen the truth?]

The scholar did not answer.

The truth he had faced was far too cold and merciless.

Heavenly punishment, judgment—such things were nothing more than “fiction” created by those who lived without even a single speck of hope.

There was no salvation for them.

There would never come a time when every wicked person, each and every one of them, paid the price for what they had done.

In the end, if only humans could save humans...

Then only humans could punish humans as well.

Then... then...!

The voice asked him.

[Do you want power? Do you want the power to judge them? Do you want to make them pay the true price?]

"I do."

[Do you want a chance? Do you want a chance to change everything again? Do you want to save them all?]

"I do."

[Even if, as the price, your soul suffers eternally with nowhere to go?]

"I do!"

A grotesque scream burst from the scholar's throat along with blood.

"I will take power! I will seize that chance!"

As he thrashed violently, the Black Iron chains clattered and shrieked.

A monstrous roar tore from his throat.

"I will make those who are swayed by mere desire pay the price! I will bring the hammer down upon those who take pleasure in others' suffering!"

The scholar's screams did not cease.

They only grew louder.

"With every ability granted to me, I will rule their fate!"

And in proportion to that, the presence of the voice grew greater and greater.

[At last, you understand! At last, you can face your own true self! Then look at me!]

The voice grew so immense that it seemed to shake even the scholar's soul.

Though he felt his soul tremble like a leaf in a storm, the scholar stared into the pitch-black darkness with eyes that had nothing left but hollow sockets.

[I—we can give you power. We can give you a chance.]

It was in the deepest darkness.

At the very bottom of an abyss so deep it could only be called a bottomless pit, it was looking at him.

It was a book.

It was a scripture.

"I will make the contract!"

[You will never again be able to walk proudly beneath the light. You will never again be able to raise your face and look upon the heavens. Even so, will you make a contract with me?]

The scholar did not think of any other answer for even a second.

"I will. I entrust my soul to you."

The voice—the scripture—burst into mad laughter, seemingly satisfied with his answer.

[One bound by fate, the name of this scripture is the Scripture of Darkness that Commands the Heavens, an antinomian scripture that shall devour all the darkness of the saha world in place of the heartless and indolent heavens!]

Darkness surged from the scripture.

The scholar's soul was swallowed by that darkness in an instant.

As his consciousness faded, the scripture's mad laughter shook his ears.

It was a scripture made by one who bore a grudge against humanity, using their own skin as its cover.

One who bore a grudge against heaven wrote its contents in their own blood.

One who bore a grudge against the earth bound it together with their own tendons.

[From now on, you shall breathe in darkness, bring down the sword of judgment in darkness, and become the Venerable One of Darkness who punishes all evil in the world!]

[Though what you seek and what we seek are different, the path is the same. Contract with us, and we shall give you a new chance!]

***

The next day, the guards found the scholar dead, his entire body drained of blood.

Strangely enough, it was said that the corpse was so light it was hard to believe it had belonged to a human.

As though...

Something profound had completely slipped away from it.