It was an unusually dark night. A night where the starlight shone brighter than the moonlight.
The Demon Physician was waiting for us.
"Your actions have told me something. That a person can change."
"…"
It was only after hearing those words that I realized.
The Demon Physician. The one who had changed his future was none other than me.
Seeing me frozen stiff, the Demon Physician smiled as if amused and continued speaking.
"Heh heh. The karmic debts of the martial world are truly tenacious and vicious things—not easily escaped. I'm sure you, White Moon Sword Lord, know this well. You seem to have ties to the Heavenly Poison Sect, the Beast Palace, and the Centipede Sect alike."
I know.
No matter how it begins, favors are easily forgotten, but grudges are carved into bone.
If you kill a family's enemy, you must keep in mind that the enemy's family will harbor a grudge.
But if I were to refuse to let the seeds of disaster live, to repay them exactly what I suffered, and slaughter the enemy's family as well—then what would make me any different from that enemy?
Every avenger knows this endless, horizonless abyss well. And yet, they cannot stop anyway.
Because…
"Rather than me becoming a better person, rather than an easy life ahead, rather than the great justice the world cries out for—I simply wish for my enemy's future to be miserable. Isn't that the essence of revenge?"
The demonic doctor's words rang true.
Those blinded by vengeance are blind in every way. No matter how much they suffer, no matter how disgracefully they fall, if they can only make their enemy suffer, that is enough.
The path of a vicious demon, not a human. That is why Demonic Cultists are pitied yet shunned.
"I was no different from other avengers. Before my father's death, there was nothing I could do, and as if paying the price for being swept up in emotions I couldn't contain, I lost my wife and my unborn child. Having lost everything, I believed I could do anything."
I am not so different myself. I simply haven't gone completely mad.
The boiling rage in my chest burns my mind, and whenever I sleep, I dream the nightmare of a collapsing hall…
How could I not know that feeling—those days of gritting my teeth in gratitude for being able to meet them again, even if only in such a way?
"And so, I joined the Demonic Cult. There was a time when this old man's medical arts were said to touch the heavens, and I was called a divine physician. But no one paid attention to how many sacrifices it took to earn that name. …I admit it now, but in the past, I committed many deeds that could not be spoken of."
Not every Demonic Cultist fails in their revenge. Some succeed, and those who have brought down their enemies think a certain thought.
That it would be a waste to kill them now.
And so, they carry their enemies across the long road from the Central Plains to beyond the frontier, fretting all the while that they might die or lose their minds.
The moment they arrive at the Demonic Cult, they present their enemies to the Demon Physician.
They ask how to inflict pain without killing. They ask how to restore the sanity of one driven mad by excessive agony.
…Or they offer their enemy's life, asking whether a lost life might be returned.
Some questions the Demon Physician could answer, and some even he could not, but one thing was certain.
The existence of a person one may handle as one pleases sharply advanced the Demon Physician's medical skill.
"All knowledge is built up over a long span of time… or piled up using blood as stepping stones. I have seen more blood than any other physician. That is why I was able to grow so quickly as a healer."
The drafts for the Spirit Blood Pill and the Blood Essence Pill were also born in that process.
When you repeatedly heal the body with medicine and mend the mind with sorcery, your gaze naturally turns toward using the two together.
This was a secret I could not have known, having only been aware of the Demon Physician's approximate whereabouts.
He was a man of tremendous talent, but he was not insane.
It was precisely because he was mad that he could bring that talent to full bloom.
"What would you call a man who focuses more on killing than on saving lives? What name do you give one who delights in making patients suffer more rather than easing their pain? I did not know the answer, but I knew well enough that he was no physician. Yet people called me a Divine Physician."
And so, concealing his true nature and earning a reputation as a Divine Physician, he came face to face with the various powers of the Central Plains, and by healing their ailments, he began to earn even greater trust.
All of it was to infiltrate the Jinju Eonga Clan, his sworn enemy.
The plan succeeded. He was able to enter the Jinju Eonga Clan as a Retainer, receiving generous treatment, and at last he found his enemy dying alone in a remote corner.
"I thought it was the perfect opportunity. The plan was flawless, the timing was right, and all that remained was resolve and execution. …But there was one thing. One thing I had not anticipated."
As I knew, the Demonic Cult had once led the council of elders of the Jinju Eonga Clan, and he had ambushed the culprit who had killed his father and all the remaining members of his family. The problem was—
"He was strong—too strong. We were clearly martial artists of the same level, and I was the one more versed in how to make people live and die. Yet none of my attacks could touch him."
It must have been the difference in fundamentals and real combat experience.
There was a greater gap than one might think between one who had built his foundation from the ground up and one who had raised his level through the unstable explosiveness unique to demonic arts.
"I resented the reality that I could not overcome my enemy before me even with every move I had. But do you know what made me feel even more miserable?"
What truly drove the Demonic Cultist mad. I had thought it was the fact that he had come within reach of his goal, only to fail at achieving his revenge.
I had thought it was because he valued his own life too much to fight to the very last, and so had allowed his enemy to meet a peaceful end.
Because the Demonic Cultist's actions up to that point, and the ravings he spat out while completely consumed by madness, all pointed to a single conclusion.
However, the Demonic Cultist was a man who had hidden his true intentions his entire life, save for a single moment.
No matter how mad he had become, would he really have blabbed his secrets so easily?
It was simply that there was no leisure to consider the circumstances of a man already dead, and no desire to understand the circumstances of one who had killed countless people and cracked the union of the orthodox sects.
And so, there was no small number of things I had let pass with a vague "that must be it."
And now. The Demonic Cultist before my eyes was speaking a truth he had never told anyone.
"My enemy said this to me. That he had been blinded by the fear of ruin and had committed sin. That now, knowing full well what he had done, he wished to atone in any way he could… and that was precisely why he could not die here."
At first glance, it was an absurd story. If he had done something deserving of death, and wished to atone, then why not simply die?
However, the story changed when one considered what came next.
If the Demonic Cultist had succeeded in his revenge, then the Eon Clan would have had no choice but to declare him a public enemy.
Because the Jinju Eonga Clan was a group, not an individual.
No matter how wrong their past selves had been, they could not simply let go of someone who had entered as a Retainer and slain an Elder.
And the Demonic Cultist would have either lived his entire life as a fugitive… or created an even greater chain of Karmic Debt in the process of fighting off the Eon Clan's pursuers.
Considering that the Demonic Cultist of that time had been called a divine being and promised a brilliant future, it could never have been called a good ending.
The Elder, knowing this, had spoken to the Demonic Cultist. Because he was aware of his own sin, he could not allow himself to die at the Demonic Cultist's hands.
And indeed, the Elder succeeded in surviving the Demonic Cultist without a single wound.
The fact that the Demonic Cultist was later able to receive an official apology from the Eon Clan—albeit only in words—was possible only because the Elder had come out unscathed.
Even if the alias of Divine Being had been corrupted into a Demonic Cultist, and even if he was regarded with the same wariness as one would a strange and unpredictable thing, he could still wander freely as a figure of the orthodox sects.
Paradoxically, all of this had been possible because the Demonic Cultist had failed in his revenge.
Perhaps he had simply blurted it out because he did not want to die, but at least in terms of the result, that was how it had been.
"I received a future from the one who pushed my world into hell. I could not accept that fact. Nor did I want to."
And so, he had suddenly begun to research the Corpse Puppetry Arts.
A corpse puppet cannot defy its master's command. If Ma-ui could bring the elder back to life.
Then he would finally understand what the elder felt when he ordered the massacre of Ma-ui's family, and the true meaning behind his words that he could not die out of guilt.
Being able to kill him once more with his own hands was merely a bonus.
What Ma-ui truly wanted was the truth.
Yet, to pursue that truth with unwavering resolve, the shadow rooted in his heart was far too deep.
Regret, self-blame, anger, doubt, hatred, sorrow, and more.
All of these are emotions that disturb the human heart. On their own, they are not a problem… but when they run rampant, the story changes.
With a troubled heart, one loses direction in life, and having lost direction, the sword held in one's mind points where it should not.
He wounded what he had sought to protect, cut down those who had nothing to do with him, and in the end, even butchered himself.
Martial artists call this the Simma.
Before Ma-ui could even reach a conclusion on the question left behind by his enemy, he was swallowed whole by the Simma.
And so, drifting between madness and sanity, he wandered for a long time, and having forgotten even what he himself desired, he blindly shoved the fragments of his research into his patients.
"It was in the midst of that that I heard word of you."
"What word was that?"
"At first, there was a great commotion about a remarkable prodigy appearing."
"That doesn't seem like such remarkable news…"
"If that divine being carries killing intent enough to startle even the Murim Alliance Leader, then the story changes."
"…"
"White Moon Sword Lord. I do not know your circumstances. I am not asking you to share yours simply because I shared mine… but surely yours was no ordinary life."
Having said that much, the Demonic Cultist glanced at Seomun Hwa-rin standing beside me before continuing.
"However, instead of being swallowed by your own Simma, you did what needed to be done. You saved people, punished injustice, and resolved the long-standing conflict between the Eon and Paeng Clans."
"…That was not my intention. I acted only to protect a deeply personal bond, not out of any grand righteousness. The outcome merely happened to be favorable."
"That is enough. Did I not just say it? That you moved to protect. …I could not do the same. Born into a physician's family, called a physician all my life, yet all I could think of was harming others."
The Demonic Cultist gave a bitter smile, then looked between me and Tang So-wol in turn before speaking again.
"Now that I think of it… I actually saw what happened after you exterminated the Heavenly Poison Sect. I was curious about the Grand Ritual the sect leader had intended to perform on Flying Butterfly Poison Peak."
"It probably wasn't a pretty sight."
"It wasn't. Even the corpses already dead carried a vicious killing intent. Anyone with a weak stomach would have fainted at the sight, and it wouldn't have been surprising."
"…"
"Anyone who saw it would have thought a Heavenly Killing Star or a Slaughter Ghost of comparable infamy had appeared."
That much…?
The Demonic Cultist had been laughing heartily in front of me while I wore a sour expression, but soon his face turned serious.
"However, something entirely different awaited at the end of it all."
The demon's eyes, gazing quietly up at the sky, glimmered.
It was as if, having chased a faint light to its end, starlight had settled within those eyes—or as if the night sky had been reflected in eyes that had once reflected nothing at all.
A clear, radiant light dwelt within the demon's eyes.
Not bright enough to shine brilliantly… but not so dark as to lose one's way.
Just like this night sky.