Just then, rain fell.

The fine, steady drops put out the fires clinging to the village.

Most of the houses were already burned beyond use.

Thankfully, not all of them.

Some had gone out early, some hadn’t spread far.

The village headman vacated one of those for Cheon Soyak and Eunsong.

Eunsong buried the body.

The head and the torso separately.

It would likely take time to find them.

The idea had come from Cheon Soyak.

Some would call her vicious or cruel...

Well.

It was not something to say to one who’d held a funeral without a head because the Alliance took her father’s.

Eunsong quietly spread a blanket on the floor and lay down.

The floor was hard and cold.

“...Will you sleep on the floor, Master?”

Cheon Soyak, freshly washed, blinked as she returned.

Her still-damp hair caught the lamplight.

She seemed quite surprised.

“Then what? Should I put a fourteen-year-old disciple on the floor?”

“...Thank you.”

“Sleep now. Once we return to Mount Hua, you’ll eat plenty. That’s how you’ll grow taller, isn’t it?”

“I’m already fourteen, Master.”

Not wrong.

If she was this small at that age, she wouldn’t be very tall at nineteen either.

Barely over five feet, maybe.

If she reached it, she’d be lucky.

Cheon Soyak gave her hair a light shake to dry it a bit more, then crawled under the covers.

The chill of her hair tickled her neck.

The fact that, come morning, she wouldn’t have to grip rags or wine cups—

it still didn’t quite feel real.

...I’m getting out. Truly.

It had been a life full of resignation, not one of active escape.

No one but that place had taken in a body so young and frail.

She’d chosen it knowing full well how that path might end in hell.

Even so, she had never not dreamed of escape.

Even those resigned to reality and adapted to the world still dream.

Only—they’re dreams.

Like a butterfly unable to cross the sea, they were dreams that, naturally, could not be realized...

For some reason, tears welled up all at once.

“...Mm.”

The sob she wanted to hide kept teasing her throat.

Even clamping her eyelids shut, the tears leaked out.

In the end, she covered her face with her black hair and buried it in the pillow.

“...Hhh, hic, mmm...”

Eunsong was not yet asleep.

On a blanket over the hard floor, he listened to his young disciple cry.

He had not a hair’s worth of comfort to offer.

Above all, because that was not a cry of sorrow.

To be honest, he even felt relief.

That child could cry.

The martial world is a place where debts and enmities are counted.

That’s true.

To weigh them and take a head for them—

that is only natural.

...So long as she doesn’t grasp it at so young an age.

Even so, the child cried because she did not want to forget her parents’ faces.

She cried, overcome, because she was escaping her dreadful lot.

There would likely be little time for her eyes to dry, even going forward.

Being born under the Heavenly Killing Star did not mean she lacked humanity.

So...

even after she cut off the Alliance Leader’s head and split this gilded world,

there would still be a place for her to return to.

If only that place could be Mount Hua.

A sect is a second home in life.

Those who spend their entire childhood there cherish it more dearly than their birthplace.

Eunsong was the one who chose Cheon Soyak as the blade of Heaven-Toppling.

But he did not wish her entire life to be paved in killing.

When all was finished, he wanted her to return to Mount Hua...

Yes—fall in love, build friendships, and take on disciples of her own.

As if she weren’t the Heavenly Killing Star.

As if she were a common wanderer of the martial world.

We have a long road...

At some point Cheon Soyak’s crying stopped and she fell asleep.

Her soft, raspy breaths reached even here.

Eunsong rose slightly and checked on his young disciple.

She had kicked the covers once; her white nightclothes showed at the shoulders.

“You’ll catch a cold.”

A martial artist with inner energy is tougher than an ordinary person...

but that child is something of an exception.

Nine-tenths of the energy she carries came from her father.

She has not yet digested it into her own.

And she has lived under harsh work and scant meals.

He quietly pulled the blanket back up to her delicate shoulders and chin.

Then he returned to his place and tried to sleep.

Just a few more days of running like this and they would reach Mount Hua.

Yes, from then on, it would be a little better.

There would be turmoil, of course, but better than a night spent in a burned-out village after killing an executor of Blasphemy.

That was enough.

That night, Eunsong dreamed.

In a sky of eternal, bright-blue day, a black qilin drove in the night.

He had never seen a moon so bright and beautiful.

****

At the rustle’s end—

Cheon Soyak, hugging the quilt, rolled over and opened her eyes.

Wakefulness came in an instant.

She sensed she was alone in the room.

“...Master?”

She looked around anxiously.

Only her sword leaned slantwise against the wall.

“Ah—no. It won’t be. It can’t be.”

She bit the left corner of her lower lip hard.

Still in her white nightclothes, Cheon Soyak hugged her sword, opened the door, and stepped into the corridor.

She searched around for the master she’d known a single day.

Dawn had only just broken.

The sky was not fully bright.

She felt like tears might break loose in this hour.

Then—

a sharp sound cut the wind.

Ssshhh—

She could never mistake it.

It was the sound of a blade parting the dawn air.

In childhood at the Flower-Halo Sect, she’d heard it until she was sick of it.

When she headed for the inner courtyard, Eunsong was unfolding the Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword.

Each time he embroidered the air with a sword path, pale pink plum blossoms burst into full bloom all around.

Slow, then swift; singular, then manifold, the tip of the blade.

All nine forms passed like that.

Eunsong lightly put the sword away and called to Cheon Soyak.

“Already awake, Soyak?”

“...Ah.”

Caught watching, dazed, she tucked her shoulders in neatly.

Her master only smiled and beckoned her over.

“What trouble is there if a disciple watches her master train a bit?”

“Ah... Thank you, Master.”

“You really don’t act cute at all, do you.”

His words said that, but his eyes only laughed.

With his large hand he stroked her black hair.

“But this form of address has stuck to my tongue.”

“I don’t mind it, but those at Mount Hua will.”

“...Once we reach Mount Hua, I suppose I’ll have to call you ‘Master.’”

“That’s right.”

Master.

A word built from teacher and father.

Perhaps it meant: regard your teacher as you would your father.

“In that case, I’ll go there and call you that.”

There was mischief in her voice.

But Eunsong did not scold Cheon Soyak.

“Do as you like.”

They were master and disciple...

but at the same time, companions who shared a goal and an enemy.

Shipmates in the same boat.

Only the positions of giving and receiving instruction differed.

“Then go finish dressing. We should leave early.”

“...Right.”

Since Ak Seowon had not returned through the whole night, Ak Jupae would have sensed something amiss by now.

If the Thirteenth Unit of the One-Under-Heaven Corps descended in force, they could not handle it.

The villagers who had lived here had long since fled in the night.

“Then I’ll head up, dress, and come down.”

“Good.”

“Ah—Master. I have a favor to ask...”

The way she gently averted her gaze made it clear it was quite a personal request.

“Say it, and I’ll hear it.”

“...Please don’t play hide-and-seek.”

She had likely been startled when he slipped out of the room.

The way his disciple glanced up at him was truly endearing.

Eunsong ruffled that hair again and laughed.

“I won’t leave your side. Don’t worry.”

“...Yes, Master.”

“Go change and come back.”

Cheon Soyak nodded and went back into the room.

It doesn’t take long to get dressed.

But it always takes time to turn over old memories.

At Eunsong’s one remark, Cheon Soyak was retracing the past.

Her father, when he first taught her an inner method.

Her father, when he passed all his inner energy to her.

Her father, when he asked her to look after her mother...

“...Father said the same.”

A small voice within the room.

Eunsong would not have heard it.

Even so, he quietly watched the room Cheon Soyak had entered.

“I should have left a note...”

Please don’t play hide-and-seek, she’d said.

At the end of those words he’d glimpsed sorrow and tears.

Cheon Soyak soon came out properly dressed.

The antique long sword in her arms caught the eye.

Hugging an object as tall as she was looked truly adorable.

“Let me see the sword for a moment.”

“...The sword?”

Cheon Soyak’s eyes went round.

Not wanting to hand over a sword was a good habit.

“I won’t take it. I won’t.”

“Ah.”

Cheon Soyak handed over the Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge.

A blade longer and lighter than a common long sword.

As a test he gripped the hilt and tugged, but it did not draw.

...As expected.

Eunsong tied straps to either end of the long scabbard.

Then he handed it back to Soyak.

“Sling it across your back like a bundle. It’ll be easier.”

“Ah... It really is easier, Master.”

“Good. Easier to walk long. Let’s go.”

Eunsong sprang lightly toward the northeast.

Cheon Soyak followed after.

What remained was the faint scent of plum.

Even that vanished on the cold morning wind.

****

In the heart of the burned-out village, the rain having put out the fire—

a group of people in the same uniform as Ak Seowon arrived.

The most striking among them was, of course, the Flame-Saber Lord, Ak Jupae.

A beard that billowed.

Eyebrows like flames.

A middle-aged man with a rough, fierce cast.

“...Are you alright, Grand Chief of the Heaven-Net?”

“Be silent. Quiet...”

The sound of his teeth grinding stilled the assembly.

No one dared so much as breathe.

Beneath the One Sovereign stood the Three Emperors.

Beneath the Three Emperors, the Seven Lords.

Few could hear his name without trembling.

He was trembling.

Not from fear, but from rage.

“...Seowon.”

At his feet lay the headless corpse of his son.

The chest was hewn wide, split in two.

No more blood flowed from the cut neck.

The Flame-Saber Lord bit his lip and clenched his fist.

In that fist, flames of the Flame-Dragon Saber Canon bloomed.

His vital energy boiled with his violent fury.

“Who... who did this.”

He spoke to his dead son.

There was no answer.

To kill an expert at Apex required a martial artist.

These clean traces proved it.

But...

“Who was it—!”

The problem was the marks left on the corpse.

They matched none of the arts he remembered.

The Flame-Saber Lord, Ak Jupae, could not tell who had killed his son.

“Who—who did this!”

He, too, was a human writhing in the pain of loss.

A mere human.

Chapter 5

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