UGGH—

Late evening. Seop Mugwang woke and sat up, leaning against the bed.

“Ai— my whole body aches....”

Every muscle throbbed and hurt.

But especially his stomach burned so badly a groan slipped out.

“You shouldn’t have pushed yourself like that. You have to think about your age now.”

Seop Mugwang narrowed his eyes and glared at the figure sitting on the edge of the bed.

Seolhwa held out a cup; water sloshed softly as she offered it, her expression unreadable.

“You showing off because you’re young?”

Seop Mugwang grunted and took the cup, drinking.

When the water went down his throat the stomach burn flared again and he let out a low, painful sound. Seolhwa took the cup back with a small smile.

“Still, I’m glad you weren’t badly hurt.”

Especially when they’d been caught in the explosion.

If she and the Imoogi had arrived a moment later, Seop Mugwang and Chor Yeon would have been consumed by the blast and there’d have been nothing left of them to find.

How fortunate it had been to arrive when they did.

SHEEIK—

“?”

Seop Mugwang glanced toward the foot of the bed.

A black snake was crawling up onto the mattress.

It brazenly slithered up to his legs and flicked out its tongue. Seop Mugwang’s brow twitched as he watched.

“All right.”

HOO...

A black veil of Qi slipped and settled around the room.

Seolhwa had placed the veil to spare Seop Mugwang from his internal injuries.

“Now tell me—why is the Imoogi that walks with the Shadowless Demon God here?”

“You probably expected it....”

“Not at all.”

“....”

“Not at all, I didn’t expect it.”

Even when rumors spread that Seolhwa was tied to the Sado Union, Seop Mugwang had been the one least likely to believe them.

“Is that so? I’m surprised. I thought, since you saw my childhood, you’d already know I was linked to the Sado Union.”

“Why?”

“Because you saw me before I pushed out my blood-qi. You’ve seen me since I was a child, so I thought you’d notice.”

“So—you are the Shadowless Demon God?”

Seolhwa nodded carefully.

Why—

For some reason, telling Seop Mugwang now made her more nervous than if she’d revealed it to Namgoong Mucheon or Cheongun.

‘Somehow you seem angry....’

She’d noticed he hadn’t smiled even once since the Imoogi appeared.

He who’d been cheerful even in life-or-death fights hadn’t smiled at all from the moment the Imoogi showed up.

Seop Mugwang’s face was colder than it had ever been.

“I founded the Sado Union to prevent the Black-Path forces from being absorbed by the Blood Cult.”

Seolhwa calmly explained why she’d founded the Sado Union and what the Union had done.

Each time Seolhwa paused, Seop Mugwang nodded and listened.

When her explanation finally ended—

“So. With the Imoogi’s help you were able to show that kind of power.”

“It’s not that I can put two currents into one dantian, after all.”

“Right.”

Thinking that way, it wasn’t strange that anyone had suspected Seolhwa of being the Shadowless Demon God in the first place.

“...I never thought you really were the Shadowless Demon God.”

My student... the head of the Black-Path...

Seop Mugwang let out a long sigh.

Seolhwa watched his expression and spoke cautiously.

“I’m sorry. I should have told you before. I tried to several times, but there was never a proper chance.”

“That’s fine. I’m not here to scold you for that. I just... ha...”

Seop Mugwang rubbed his forehead.

His reaction was so different from Namgoong Mucheon’s or Cheongun’s.

It was almost as if—

“Are you... angry?”

Seop Mugwang turned and stared at Seolhwa.

Then he suddenly chuckled and ruffled her hair hard.

“I’m not angry. Knowing what kind of person you are, there’s nothing to be angry about.”

He inhaled deeply and stared off into the distance.

“I had younger siblings. No—saying I had siblings is more accurate.”

“!”

Seolhwa was slightly surprised.

Seop Mugwang had rarely spoken of himself.

Most of what she knew had come from Chor Yeon.

He had seemed to avoid talking about the time before he entered the Namgoong household, so it was the first time he’d brought up his past of his own accord.

“My hometown was Ganghwa.”

“Ganghwa....”

“Yes. It’s where your grandfather drove out the Black-Boat that started from there.”

The Black-Path force, the Black-Boat, once dominated the southern reaches of the central plains.

Starting from Ganghwa it had seized the region and killed countless rivers-and-lakes men; its infamy remained.

“I was born into an ordinary family, but from childhood I had the luck to learn the sword, and in the region I became a known swordsman. Because of that my family and I never went hungry.”

The village where Seop Mugwang grew up sat on a mountainside and was sometimes raided by large predators and bandit gangs.

Whenever that happened Seop Mugwang stepped forward to fight, and he patrolled the area so the village would not suffer heavy losses.

In return for guarding the village, people gave him food and clothes—he was, in effect, the village’s contracted bodyguard.

“One day I found suspicious traces nearby. Someone had made a fire and stayed there, and there was blood all around it.”

It was clearly human blood, not animal.

Blood left by people who had stayed and then left.

There was only one meaning to that.

“It didn’t feel right. Bandits had come before, but in a place where no murder had occurred, signs of murder were found. I returned to the village straight away.”

At that time the Black-Boat’s terror was not that widely known yet.

Seop Mugwang’s village was deep in the mountains and slow to hearing news.

He returned quickly to warn the villagers.

But the village—or rather Seop Mugwang’s house—was already like a house of mourning.

“Mu-gwang oppa...! The second brother...! They said they found this in the forest... sob....”

What his younger sister handed him was his younger brother’s blood-soaked outer garment.

At that moment Seop Mugwang felt his chest drop.

Surely that blood... those traces....

The brother Mu-gwang had cherished—he had taught him the sword directly and showed him how to track animal spoor.

He had been someone who could be trusted to take care of the family when Seop Mugwang was away; not a weak child. Yet—

“After I hid the villagers in the cave, I went to look for my brother.”

To prepare for the possibility that the bandits would strike the village while he was away, Seop Mugwang had placed the villagers in a cave.

That cave was a refuge only known to those who had lived in the village more than five years.

“I promised, ‘I’ll bring Jagang back.’”

“Be careful, oppa....”

Besides the missing brother, three younger children remained.

Their parents, unlike Mu-gwang, could not use a sword; they were ordinary peasants, so Seop Mugwang’s steps back were heavy.

“I searched every mountain in the area for my brother. But aside from that scrap of clothing the villagers found, there was no trace.”

Fifteen days passed.

When Seop Mugwang returned to the cave with tired steps—

“They were all... dead. The children... and my parents too.”

The bodies, dead more than ten days, had begun to rot; the cave reeked of decay.

Perhaps animals had smelled the blood and come and eaten them; the corpses were all in a brutal state.

Yet Seop Mugwang could tell.

‘They were killed by the sword...’

The people in the cave had been stabbed and cut to death by a sword.

It was clearly the work of humans.

“I felt driven nearly mad with guilt. I went to find my brother and left the villagers—if only I hadn’t done that, they wouldn’t have been left to die.”

“No.”

Seolhwa grabbed Seop Mugwang’s hand firmly.

She had been the one who’d toppled a family with her own hands; she understood his hollow guilt more than anyone.

Her face twisted in anguish.

“That’s not your fault, master. It was the Black-Boat.”

“Heh heh....”

Seop Mugwang gave a hollow laugh and patted the hand that had gripped his.

“Don’t be too sorrowful. It’s been so long I can’t even remember their faces clearly, and I’m living well now.”

But—

‘Master looks pained...’

She could still see that the wound remained.

Seop Mugwang sighed and stared outward.

His voice continued slowly.

“I buried the villagers and my family, and began taking revenge on the Black-Path scoundrels who did this to us.”

He couldn’t identify who specifically had done it, so every Black-Path he met he killed.

“Wandering like that, losing my mind, I ran into those arrogant Black-Boat men.”

How arrogantly they spoke.

Seop Mugwang asked if they knew the village that sometimes hid in that cave.

“Ah, those guys? We cleared out the village because they ran away and it annoyed us. There was some brat who said ‘When oppa returns, he won’t leave us alone.’ So we killed them one by one—didn’t show up until we’d killed everyone, see?”

They chuckled as they spoke, and Seop Mugwang’s eyes almost rolled «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» back.