“Who are you?”

“Ah, I am not physically present right now. I promised to delay this poor fellow’s death for a short while in exchange for his service as my vessel. I am Heavenly Lord Won of the Ten Heavenly Lords. We met during the assault on the Martial Righteous Alliance.”

The Blood Immortal Cult!

Jin Cheon-hee’s eyes widened, the realization striking him cold.

“…So, you were the architect behind this war?”

“Oh? You aren’t surprised? I expected you to freeze for at least a few seconds. As expected of the one who disturbs the Heavenly Will. Not many can shame us with such composure.”

The voice hissed like a snake, sounding as though the speaker were physically squeezing the borrowed vocal cords to wring out speech.

“Believe it or not,” the entity calling himself Heavenly Lord Won continued, “we did not ignite this war directly. We merely offered some… assistance to the Khan of the Suksin Tribe. But was accepting it not their choice? After all, they are a people who consider hunting and looting to be virtues. Even without the Blood Immortal Cult, war would have erupted regardless.”

“Wordplay. You don’t seem to possess much loyalty to your allies.”

“Kukuku. True enough. No matter what I say, the Seed of the Half-Immortal wouldn’t listen. I like that. I like seeing you maintain your sanity even in a situation like this.”

Jin Cheon-hee pressed his fingers against his tired eyes, the exhaustion of the battlefield weighing heavy on his brow.

“So, why send this message?”

“Calm, upright as always… Ah… How beautiful is the soul that maintains its chastity for over half a century.”

Is he a bastard? Jin Cheon-hee thought, a vein pulsing in his temple. Is he mocking my lifelong single status, spanning from my past life to this one?

“…If you have no business, I’m leaving.”

Jin Cheon-hee had no intention of entangling himself with them unnecessarily. He turned to cut the conversation short, but Heavenly Lord Won’s voice urgently intervened.

“Wait, wait just a moment! First, I came to inform you that the Blood Immortal Cult has officially resumed its activities. Since you are, essentially, our cult’s nemesis.”

Jin Cheon-hee paused, regarding the possessed messenger with a gaze as cold as glacial ice, waiting for whatever nonsense was about to spill forth.

“Defier of Heavenly Will.”

“…?”

“That is what we call you. And those Followers of Heavenly Fate… they will likely target you soon. How about it? Why not join hands with us instead?”

At that absurd proposition, Jin Cheon-hee asked calmly, stripping all politeness from his tone.

“If I do, can you stop further evil deeds?”

“Evil deeds… We merely grant the wishes of those who follow us. Eternal life, health, wealth, glory, even eternal youth. Aren’t these the things everyone desires?”

Jin Cheon-hee smirked darkly. “Slitting open people’s bellies to feed intestines to beasts, eating the remaining flesh amongst yourselves, and raining arrows out there to cause tens of thousands of deaths—can you honestly say these aren’t evil deeds? The only way you could justify yourselves is by claiming you’re culling the population to reduce carbon emissions centuries later.”

“…Carbon, what?”

In that instant, Jin Cheon-hee’s hand snapped out, clamping over the skull of Heavenly Lord Won’s messenger.

Krr-ack.

Through the strands of hair flowing over his fingers, Jin Cheon-hee’s eyes looked down with terrifying coldness. To Heavenly Lord Won, watching through his puppet’s senses, those eyes resembled a cross-section of perpetual snow.

Yet, Heavenly Lord Won grinned. “Hmm… I’d like to discuss the justification of our actions with you, but I suppose time is limited. I’ll say a few things before I leave.”

Crunch.

“Speak.”

Jin Cheon-hee applied slow, crushing pressure to the hand holding the burn patient—the spy of the Blood Immortal Cult. It was truly disgusting to know that the patient he had treated with all his might, fighting to save his life, was actually in league with the Cult. There was a high probability that all information regarding the barracks had already been leaked.

Fortunately, I don’t know the detailed troop logistics, so critical intel remains safe.

Military secrets were compartmentalized for this very reason; soldiers only knew their own deployment, not the grand strategy. That was the only saving grace.

Heavenly Lord Won continued, undeterred by the crushing grip on his vessel’s skull. “The Khan of the Suksin Tribe is old and despises his rotting body. To regain his youth, he consumed our cult’s treasure, the Blood Creation Fruit. This fruit only ripens after a special ritual involving the sacrifice of roughly a thousand people. It can maintain peak youth for about five years. In other words, we brought it because he begged for it.”

“You didn’t just give it for free.”

Snap.

As Jin Cheon-hee increased the pressure, the skull groaning under his grip, Heavenly Lord Won spoke hurriedly. “Ah, we can’t afford to lose profit either! Therefore, when we distribute one Blood Creation Fruit, we demand approximately ten thousand lives in return. Please understand. It’s a monopoly, so isn’t it reasonable to charge a high price? Surely you understand, Young Pavilion Master of the White Qilin Medical Pavilion, who monopolizes the White Qilin Elixir?”

“Crazy bastards.”

Blue eyes filled with absolute contempt bored into the messenger. Facing that gaze sent a shiver down the real Heavenly Lord Won’s spine, miles away.

Was this the extent of his audacity? Facing the Seed of the Half-Immortal head-on…!

Perhaps it was the resilience of a soul that had remained a virgin for half a century—a supreme sacrifice, and the talent the Blood Immortal desired most.

“Hahaha, crazy! Isn’t that how the world operates? Even Qin Shi Huang made such a colossal sacrifice to find the elixir of eternal life, only to be ultimately killed by those Followers of Heavenly Fate!”

Decent information, Jin Cheon-hee thought. Despite the fire burning within him, Heavenly Lord Won had a loose tongue. Every piece of intel the bastard provided helped Jin Cheon-hee devise his next move.

“Or what? Is what we do the Unorthodox Way, and what the Emperor does the Righteous Way? If your friend Emperor Pung desired eternal life and decided to sacrifice tens of thousands, what would you do? Would you kill him?”

Jin Cheon-hee remained silent. Whatever he answered would be meaningless to a creature like this.

Drunk on his own excitement, Heavenly Lord Won babbled on. “No, no, the story has strayed too far. The Khan consumed the Blood Creation Fruit and initiated this war solely to achieve youth. As I previously mentioned, war would have erupted regardless of our intervention. As a brilliant individual, you must be aware—the Khan’s tribe grew excessively large, and the grasslands alone could no longer sustain them.”

Looting and occupation for food supply—a motive for war so common, so mundane, that it wasn’t even worth memorizing for history exams.

“If not the Khan, his son would have done it. They will loot heavily this time, occupy land, and then enslave the imperial citizens to work the farms.”

“And after that?”

“They’ll attempt another war. There will undoubtedly be immense casualties. Because after five years, the population will increase, and the Khan will desire to regain his youth again. Time marches on, even at this very moment.”

Human greed knows no bounds. Heavenly Lord Won hummed a twisted tune through the dying man’s throat.

Jin Cheon-hee asked, “What do you want from me?”

“If you wish to end the war, join forces with us. Let’s assassinate the Khan and annihilate all the nomads! Sacrifice the Suksin Tribe instead of imperial citizens to safeguard the Empire’s peace!”

Ah, why does the devil’s whisper sound so enticing?

He hadn’t anticipated hearing this, not while his hands were shaking from stitching patients’ torn flesh.

“This war… can be ended?”

“Indeed, you can do it. We are mere beasts, so we lack the ‘Way’ as humans refer to it. But you! You could surely achieve it. You could save tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. Simply kill that Khan. How effortless is that?”

It was fortunate that he hadn’t smoked the herbal cigarette. The herb in the roll was so sweet it numbed the searing pain in his solar plexus; however, if he had encountered this temptation while under its influence, he might have made a different choice.

Some sense of reality emerges only from pain. There are things that only those in agony can recall. It could be called pressure, or responsibility. But a more accurate term would be… self-loathing and guilt that would follow such a choice, coupled with the despair and fear lying beyond it.

Emotions as ugly as mud, yet such was the nature of humanity. The young man refused to wear a crown of thorns woven by another’s hand. If he had chosen the easy path here, he would have eventually dulled the guilt of that choice with the power of herbs once more.

“…Why me?”

The pain was vivid. It wasn’t radiating from his limbs, but exploding from his solar plexus.

It was a Inner Demon.

But it was also the mark that the human being named Jin Cheon-hee was alive. The sensation, which used to feel like a thumb pressing down, now felt like being struck repeatedly with a sharp stone—a crude hand axe from the Paleolithic era hacking at his soul. However, what followed was not a path for one who fled from pain.

“Master would be a better choice than me.”

His master had said he walked the path of iron.

“He is not the Seed of the Half-Immortal, merely one whose fate was altered by the Seed. He cannot compare to the Seed itself.”

“And one more thing. If it were my Master, the moment a strange voice emerged from a patient’s throat, he would have cut off their head without a word.”

“Kukuku, I won’t deny that either. Give me your answer, Seed of the Half-Immortal. Assassinate the Khan and walk the path with us. I don’t know what makes the human path better than the beast’s path, but show me.”

Jin Cheon-hee couldn’t answer immediately. It was certain that this was the most pivotal crossroads of his life. However, the choice was too heavy for one human to bear on his shoulders alone.

Standing at the corner of hell, he looked up as if praying. The sky was not visible; instead, a man-made tent smothered the view.

There were bloodstains on the canvas.

Ah, we couldn’t wipe it all off in the end.

Yesterday, a patient had screamed and thrashed. Whether from a nightmare or the agony of death, blood had spurted like a special effect in a third-rate gore movie as his wounds tore open.

It was a Inner Demon. One of the phenomena caused by twisted Qi and blood; it seemed war was too much even for a martial artist. That patient eventually died—they were short on spare blood, and he had bitten through his own tongue to kill himself before they could intervene.

Indeed, some deaths leave indelible marks. The young man had witnessed too many of those traces on his journey through this living hell.

If hell had clouds, wouldn’t they resemble these black spots on the ceiling?

He pondered this as he gazed at the ominous markings. He didn’t require the image of a literal devil; the bloodstains of a martial artist driven mad by war were more than sufficient to paint the picture. And he recalled the conversation with Cheon Yi-moon.

By forcing his mind, which felt like it was spiraling out of control, to work, he realized that Cheon Yi-moon was somehow connected to these ‘Followers of Heavenly Fate’ they had spoken of.

Regardless of his choice, it seemed that Cheon Yi-moon would inevitably come to kill him again. If what that man had said was true—that they had even killed Qin Shi Huang—then taking Jin Cheon-hee’s head would be a trivial task.

On the railroad where black and white converged, somewhere in the gray corner in the middle, the young man made his decision.