TSBIRBV Ch 92

Chapter 92 Heaven above, Suzhou–Hangzhou below (4)

It was a gaze too desperate to be called greed.

“They’re all dead, aren’t they?”

He tossed the words out carelessly, and when Je Haryang fell silent, at a loss for words, he pressed on.

“Disciple Mun is dead, and Disciple Cheong-u is dead—so now you can give it to me, can’t you?”

Only then did the Kunlun Cloud‑Dragon seem to realize what the other was saying.

“…There is none. I threw it away.”

“I’m hungry. I said I’m hungry!”

He was one of the Kunlun disciples who, if nothing else, did not blame Je Haryang; at the same time, he was precisely the test subject into whom the demonic physician had instilled hunger.

“I know everything.”

He clawed at Je Haryang’s sleeve. There was nothing inside; scratch marks from fingernails bloomed on the wrist. He had raked so viciously that blood was already welling out.

“I said I know everything! You hid it and shared it only with the other disciples. I—I’m hungry too. Senior brother… senior brother…”

Throwing his body forward and knocking Je Haryang over, he brightened at the sight of a rice ball fallen from his breast. It had rolled over the dirt floor and become a mess, but anything that could fill a starving belly would do.

The demonic cultivation he had learned was the kind that turned a human into a hungry ghost.

“How will the Kunlun Cloud‑Dragon react?”

With a quickened heart, Jinpal watched the scene in secret.

As the Taoist picked up the rice ball from the ground and moved to devour it in a frenzy, Je Haryang, rising, lunged. He struck the disciple’s hand away. And as the food fell again to the floor, Je Haryang dove upon it and, with no time even to use his hands, tore into it with his mouth.

The look of using only his mouth—he was no different from a dog.

“Senior brother, senior brother, senior brother! Aaah!”

The young Taoist screamed at the rice ball vanishing before his eyes. As if he could no longer bear it, he swung his fists wildly at Je Haryang.

“He’ll never again put into another’s mouth what was given for him to eat.”

Now Jinpal thought he understood what the master had told him to watch.

Ridiculously, at the time, Jinpal admired the demonic physician’s keen insight.

“What—what’s going on?”

Those who had fallen asleep in a faint from their ordeal woke one by one. Before they even grasped the situation, they scrambled to stop the blows, bustling to separate Je Haryang and the fellow.

“Senior, are you mad? Why are you suddenly— to senior brother—! Aagh!”

“Disciple! Disciple! What are you doing? Stop!”

“Senior, don’t just sit there—help!”

Though the captives rushed to intervene, it was hard to overcome the frenzy of the famished.

With dirt smeared at his lips, the Kunlun Cloud‑Dragon endured the pummeling hands entirely. His lips split and bled; the clothes he had always kept immaculate bore muddy footprints; his hair was disheveled, making him look like a madman.

Even so, Je Haryang’s face was expressionless. His eyes were deep and numb, as if ignorant of pain.

Jinpal thought—without knowing it was not a lake pooled by sorrow, but a bottomless pit—

How beautiful.

—

“U‑using drugs in the food—th‑that was the master’s order. It wasn’t my will! It wasn’t.”

Muttering, Jinpal scratched his arm. Scars like crawling red worms were scored down it—the traces of nightmares that had dogged him since leaving Xinjiang.

He had long suspected a day like this would come.

“Was there such a thing.”

Je Haryang tilted his head slightly and murmured. It likely wasn’t a lie. People, when their time came, wept as they confessed their sins.

But the other’s sentiments were of no importance to Haryang.

“I did not come for revenge, nor to pass judgment.”

As the demonic physician’s last remnant, there was something fixed he needed to extract.

“What do you wish to know?”

Bowing his head, Jinpal asked. In Haryang’s eyes, looking down at the trembling man, there was not a trace of hatred.

“The Asura Blood Jiangshi. I want to know the method of its creation.”

The Asura Blood Jiangshi was a kind of living jiangshi made from a human being.

Jinpal’s master, the demonic physician, had sought to complete the Asura Blood Jiangshi before dying. But in the end, he did not succeed.

The demonic physician’s final failure took his life.

“I too—left the master’s side early, so I—I don’t know the details—”

The instant Jinpal moved to say he did not know, a cold blade touched his throat.

“I will tell you everything. I will tell you all.”

Stammering, he began.

“F‑first, it begins with selecting a human subject.”

Ordinary people could not endure the process and died each time. Thus, the human to be used as material had to possess exceptional martial sinew and be a master.

He must not have studied only demonic cultivation, nor must he have studied only pure orthodox methods.

They took a master who had trained in an orthodox method within the righteous sects, implanted in him a demonic cultivation that clashed the least, and nursed him to survive. From that point, his inner strength would increase explosively, so they “adjusted” him—instilling solitude and prohibitions so he could neither escape nor rebel.

As Jinpal rambled on, he flicked a glance at Je Haryang’s face. Yet the man, though hearing of what he himself had undergone from the “maker’s” point of view, showed no sign of agitation.

“And the successful subject—what becomes of him?”

Feeling the blade bite into his flesh, Jinpal clenched his fist to keep from shaking.

“It is only a hypothesis—but. If you will permit…”

At Jinpal’s barely forced‑out words, Haryang jerked his chin: speak.

“The recuperative power improves. Even if limbs are broken or severed, they recover. Even if the breath stops, they do not die.”

Haryang lowered his gaze. He had already experienced Yegyeol’s abnormal recovery.

“Moreover, they become sensitive to the qi‑sense of those around them. They reveal a belligerent disposition and hunger for blood.”

This he had not confirmed.

However, he had received intelligence that the Yin‑Soul Demon had been found dead atop Kunlun.

Since hoofprints marked the chest of the corpse, Haryang knew Red Thunder had contributed to the Yin‑Soul Demon’s death.

Only—until Red Thunder arrived, how had his disciple survived?

“But their body is fixed at the age at which they can display their greatest skill. T‑to some extent, it mimics rebirth and transformation.”

“And can they possess a self?”

To Haryang’s question, Jinpal answered with a puzzled face.

“To begin with, all memories from before becoming a living jiangshi are erased. S‑so as to make them more readily receive their master’s commands. Thus, immediately after creation, they would be like a child, unable to tell friend from foe.”

But Haryang’s disciple had memories from before.

Some things aligned, others did not.

In the first place, the Asura Blood Jiangshi had never once produced a success; perhaps Haryang’s suspicions were misplaced.

“By ‘master,’ you mean the one who created the Asura Blood Jiangshi?”

“Everything created within our cult is for the Heavenly Demon; the Asura Blood Jiangshi belongs to the Lord as well.”

Haryang fell silent for a moment.

“As was said before, I feel anxiety in contact with others. Especially when it is unilateral, unexpected contact—the anxiety grows worse.”

When he had come to the Black Spot, Yegyeol, pale, had confessed thus to the Black Ghost. Other men were not acceptable.

He had said that, aside from Je Haryang and the Black Ghost, all other men were terrifying.

Considering that those two were the same person—what a peculiar coincidence.

The longer Haryang’s quiet stretched, the more Jinpal felt cold sweat run down his spine.

He had sensed something “different” upon Je Haryang’s face, usually so bland.

“How is that possible?”

“Because the senses of the Asura Blood Jiangshi r‑respond to the Heavenly Demon Divine Art!”

Jinpal spoke so hard his palate dried.

“If made according to the master’s theory, the Asura Blood Jiangshi would lose only all memories from before its making. The heart beats; there is warmth to the touch. There is no need for inner strength—thus, no dantian exists.”

How that came to be—even Jinpal did not know. He only remembered his master’s mad voice saying the clashing of demonic cultivation and orthodox inner methods would induce rebirth and transformation.

Only, humans in whom those two forces clashed generally suffered deviation and died. The vessel the demonic physician desired was never completed; only shattered, time and again.

“Therefore, the only way to distinguish a commoner from an Asura Blood Jiangshi is to bring them before the sole being to have mastered the Heavenly Demon Divine Art—in other words, the Lord. The Asura Blood Jiangshi can only smile and weep and respond in the hands of one who has mastered the Heavenly Demon Divine Art!”

The Yegyeol he had met again was blind in his devotion to Haryang. Strangely, he followed him; if Haryang was not in sight, he always hovered nearby.

He remembered his disciple’s plea, asking him to stay by his side.

“I have never done anything to deserve such blind devotion from my disciple.”

Haryang slowly closed and opened his eyes.

To Jinpal, that span felt endlessly heavy—as if a thousand, ten thousand years.

“Outside Xinjiang, where else were the experiments on the Blood Jiangshi conducted?”

“G‑getting the material was difficult, so usually it was conducted within the Ten‑Thousand‑Demon Mountains… however!”

Haryang, wearing a bored face, moved his hand. Having claimed the whole of the Ten‑Thousand‑Demon Mountains, he had surely erased all traces of the Asura Blood Jiangshi within the Sun and Moon Divine Cult.

Jinpal ransacked his mind in haste. Surely—surely there was something he still knew.

“The master, in case of emergency, once ordered his most beloved first disciple to prepare a certain place. I don’t know if e‑experiments were conducted there as well, but documents or records would surely remain.”

What was there would be more detailed than what he knew.

“If it were a rat, I have already killed him… Still, I can at least find where he wandered in the Central Plains.”

Muttering as if to himself, Haryang asked his final question.

“…Can an Asura Blood Jiangshi be turned back into a human?”

At that, Jinpal looked at Je Haryang.

At once the master’s most perfect work, and the being that had turned him into his worst failure.

“Can you… return to the Kunlun Cloud‑Dragon you once were?”

Without answering, Haryang brought his sword down.

Without even the chance to see a morning sun that had not yet reached the threshold, Jinpal closed his eyes.

At last, his yesterday had caught up with his today.