WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: BerageeBomb
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◈ I Obtained the Martial God’s Book ◈
Chapter 7: Crossroads
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The footsteps of the pursuers faded away.
In the darkness, a Demonic Cult foot soldier with half his face burned passed in the opposite direction.
He saw me but did not stop, and I did not stop him either.
Like me, he was a specter who seemed to have barely escaped the mouth of the valley.
I collapsed onto the dry creek bed.
My entire body was scorched, and half my eyebrows had burned away.
The skin on the backs of my hands had peeled off, exposing raw flesh.
Even so, I did not have a single fatal wound.
That intactness was somehow even more chilling.
Gasping for breath, I looked back along the path I had come.
The entire valley had become a river of fire, staining the night sky red.
Twenty thousand were trapped in there.
Jang Pal was there.
Du Chil and Samdol were there.
Everyone who had briefly let me stand at their side was sinking into that fire.
A shadow stood atop the ridge with the flames at its back.
It was a man in a white scholar's robe patterned with cranes, holding a fan.
He looked down at the burning valley without a trace of emotion.
His eyes were like those of someone checking whether the hunting ground he had arranged was going according to plan.
It was him.
I burned that sight into my memory.
* * *
As the firelight died down, the shadow on the ridge vanished as well.
Lying in the creek bed, I stared up at the murky night sky.
The blood-red sky cooled into ash-gray.
The energy churning in my chest settled too.
It had not gone out.
It was coiled beside my heart, pulsing faintly.
In the game, the Book of the Martial God had been nothing more than a scrap of writing tucked into a corner of my inventory.
Here, it was something that had taken root in my body and soul.
I still could not tell how far this power might reach.
When I closed my eyes, I saw the boy's eyes reflecting that ash-gray sky.
This time, I did not erase them.
It was a burden a survivor had to carry for the rest of their life.
I was among fewer than a hundred survivors.
I staggered to my feet.
My legs trembled, but I endured.
I had nowhere to go.
Still, I had to walk.
All a survivor could do was keep surviving.
With every step, the thing in my chest warmed my blood.
Behind me, Blue Stone Valley, now a grave, burned through the night.
* * *
Before dawn, I hid in the shadow of a rock at the foot of a mountain, about ten li from Blue Stone Valley.
After running all night, my legs hung limp like wet laundry.
Even after draining half a waterskin, my throat still tasted of smoke.
Then the western sky rumbled.
Rumble.
Lightning flashed beyond the distant mountain range, and thunder shook the earth.
Lightning could not strike on a cloudless dawn.
It had to be a clash between a Transformation Realm master and an Ultimate Demon.
That meant the Blood-Hand Demon Venerable was alive.
Only then did I recall the western end of the valley at sunset on the new-moon night.
The demonic cultists taking down their tents and loading their horses. The flag still fluttering over the central command tent.
The higher-ups had already been at the western edge of the valley before the fire started.
Even a demonic foot soldier like me could see the terrain we had been shown on the first day. The strategists could not possibly have failed to notice it.
They must have known and still left twenty thousand inside.
While the Orthodox factions' eyes and blades were fixed on the burning valley, the Blood-Hand Demon Venerable had likely led the cultists through the western encirclement.
Those twenty thousand had been kindling to light the way.
Even on the timeline of the Demonic Cult route, Blue Stone Valley was only one line.
“Blood-Hand Demon Venerable binds Mount Hua's Transformation Realm master at Blue Stone Valley, then withdraws west.”
The names of those twenty thousand appeared nowhere in that line.
The Divine Cult had always been that sort of place.
At the beginning of the Demonic Cult's setting description in the game was the Gu-Raising Cave.
It was an ancient Divine Cult practice: cram a thousand children into a cave and never open its doors until only a hundred remained.
They raised people as one cultivated gu poison, locking venomous insects in a jar until only the final creature remained.
The central headquarters claimed to have shut those caves long ago.
Yet several demonic clans still kept their doors open deep in the mountains of their own lands.
In a way, Blue Stone Valley was a Gu-Raising Cave filled with twenty thousand adults.
A bitter smile came to me, but a calculation was a calculation.
The Orthodox factions' eyes would be fixed entirely on the west.
They had no time to count where a single demonic foot soldier might have slipped away.
Leaning against the rock, I caught my breath.
First, I had to decide where to go.
* * *
About a meal's time after sunrise, the bushes rustled.
I gripped my sword hilt and hid behind the rock.
A man in black demonic robes, a red sash across his chest, emerged from the bushes.
One of his ears had melted and crumpled in the fire.
He saw me too.
For a long while, we glared at each other with our hands on our sword hilts.
The man was the first to let go.
“Did you come out of Blue Stone Valley?”
“Yes.”
“Your unit?”
“Third Squad.”
“I am An Du-sik of the Seventh Squad.”
The man dropped down beside the rock and took a rice ball, blackened on the outside, from his clothes.
He split it in half and held one portion out to me.
“Eat. It's a little burnt, but it's decent enough to ease your hunger.”
I accepted it and handed him my waterskin instead.
An Du-sik gulped down the water.
We sat side by side against the rock, chewing our rice balls.
Until yesterday, we had not even known each other's faces.
Yet the fact that we had escaped that fiery hell together made us feel like old comrades.
It was like coworkers sharing cigarettes outside a convenience store after finishing overtime.
“How many survivors did you see while leaving Blue Stone Valley?”
An Du-sik asked as he swallowed a mouthful of rice.
“I passed one person during the night.”
“I saw three. As if by agreement, they all scattered in every direction to find their own way to survive.”
He absently scratched at his fire-mangled ear.
“I intend to head north. There is a branch altar of the Cult about a hundred li from here. I plan to join them and report my return. What will you do? Will you come with me?”
I did not answer carelessly.
An Du-sik's eyes narrowed sharply.
“Surely you are not entertaining other thoughts at a time like this?”
“...I'm sorting out my thoughts.”
He stopped chewing and stared straight through me.
“If we belonged to the Orthodox or Unorthodox factions, it might be different. Even if defeated soldiers hid in the mountains out of fear, no one would bother pursuing them. But the place we belong to is none other than the Divine Cult.”
He lowered his voice.
“If they learn that you survived and failed to return, you will be a deserter that very day. In the Divine Cult, desertion means a pursuit order. Have you heard of Pursuit Ghosts? Once your name goes on the Extermination Register, those hunting dogs will come for your head even after ten years. If you have a wife and children someday, Divine Cult law will take their lives as well.”
He made a slicing motion across his throat with his index finger.
I knew that already.
Even on the Demonic Cult route in the game, desertion was one line.
[Desertion: Immediate execution. Entry into the Extermination Register.]
What had been a line of red warning text beyond a monitor was now a blade against my throat.
I calmly shrugged.
“I don't think the Cult is in such a leisurely position that it can dispatch Pursuit Ghosts just to kill one demonic foot soldier.”
An Du-sik gave a short laugh.
“Well, you're not wrong. But winter is coming soon. Freezing to death in the mountains, starving to death, or dying to a Pursuit Ghost's blade, death away from home is still death. Wouldn't it be better to return, have at least one spoonful of warm rice, and then die?”
He looked deeply into my eyes.
“What are you hesitating over so much?”
I swallowed the last piece of the dry rice ball and answered calmly.
“Because I know all too well what will happen to me if I return.”
“What will happen?”
“I'll become a meat shield.”
An Du-sik pressed his lips tightly together.
“Twenty thousand people became ashes in one night. The Cult will try to fill that hole. As always, the first ones used to fill it will be grunts like us. They will put the surviving defeated soldiers in the very front ranks and demand that we prove we did not run away.”
“That is...”
“Don't you already know that painfully well?”
For a long time, he rubbed the area around his burned ear.
“...I know. But what other choice is there? Since our names are already on the Divine Cult's rolls and our livelihoods depend on it, all we can do is return.”
An Du-sik stood and brushed the dirt from his trousers.
“Everyone has a road they wish to walk. Do as you please.”
As he turned to leave, he nodded toward the sword at my waist.
“Come to think of it, that sword looks familiar too. Isn't it that ugly thing left in a chest at the supply depot? They say it sent three owners to early graves.”
I calmly nodded.
“I chose it because I intend not to die.”
An Du-sik gave another short laugh.
Then he began walking heavily north.
Before disappearing into the bushes, he paused and looked back.
“Survive. No matter which path you choose.”
“I hope you remain safe as well.”
His back vanished beyond the bushes.
In the game, everyone dressed in black demonic robes had been a monster worth experience points when killed.
Here, that monster had given his name and split a rice ball with me.
The fire that swallowed Blue Stone Valley would have burned the personnel ledgers, the Extermination Register, and the clerk's brush.
The name Seo Jin-hyeok had become ash in that fire last night.
The Cult had no way of knowing whether I had died or fled.
Until my whereabouts were revealed, I was not a deserter.
I was only a nameless corpse added to the list of dead.
Even if they found out later, all I had to do was grow strong enough to tear apart any Pursuit Ghost before then.
The question was where, and by what means, I would become stronger.
I picked up a branch and drew three Chinese characters in the dirt: Orthodoxy, Unorthodoxy, and Demonic.
There were three divine arts in the Records of the Martial God whose superiority could not be ranked.
The Azure Heaven Sword Scripture of the Orthodox factions was sealed in the deepest part of the Sword Tomb, in the snowy mountains at the far end of the Western Regions.
The Nine Nether Saber Canon of the Unorthodox factions lay at the bottom of the sea around Ghost Island in the Southern Sea.
The Heavenly Demon Divine Art of the Demonic Cult was located in the deepest part of the Cult's sacred sanctuary.
Only one raised as the Heavenly Demon could inherit it.
Only Orthodox martial artists could obtain the Azure Heaven Sword Scripture, and only Unorthodox martial artists could obtain the Nine Nether Saber Canon.
In the game, the path of possessing all three was completely barred by the rules.
Once you chose one faction, the other two doors closed forever.
I was a blank page now.
Put differently, none of the three doors had closed for me yet.
A laugh escaped me.
A demonic foot soldier who had never properly held a sword was weighing the three strongest divine arts under heaven.
Each was a chance encounter that required reaching at least the Transformation Realm just to brush its hem.
By the Unorthodox factions' scale, that realm was called Full Balefulness.
The monsters guarding Ghost Island's deep sea were that strong, and the blizzards at the Sword Tomb were even worse.
Only someone at the level of an Ultimate Demon or Full Balefulness could even attempt to explore such dangerous places.
Still, I had to choose the destination before I could decide the direction of my first step.
I rubbed out Orthodoxy first with my foot.
My heart kept leaning that way.
The Orthodox route was the one I knew best, and I understood every last detail of its strategy.
But the shadow on the ridge last night came to mind.
It was a white-clad scholar holding a fan.
When I played the Orthodox route, that scholar had often been my character.
In runs that began with me as a strategist of the Zhuge Clan, I had personally chosen and arranged the trap at Blue Stone Valley.
I had been the one to order oil spread through the reed field, and the one to choose a new-moon night when even the moon vanished.
When the flames surged, the scholar on the screen folded his fan, and I checked the figures in the battle merits window.
I had felt no guilt then.
They had been numbers on a screen.
The people who had burned to death now had blood and flesh.
That was the first reason I abandoned Orthodoxy.
The second was survival.
I was already a lowly member of the Demonic Cult sent into the Orthodox-Demonic War.
Even if I changed my identity and defected, the label of Demonic Cult origin would follow me for life.
If the hypocrites of the Orthodox factions caught even one fault, I would be finished that day.
I erased Unorthodoxy as well.
The Unorthodox factions were survival of the fittest taken to its end.
They would never shelter a useless demonic foot soldier.
If I stepped into that swamp where betrayal happened as naturally as breathing, I would never know when a hole would be punched through my back.
Only Demonic remained in the dirt.
It was not what I had chosen.
It had been decided like a brand from the moment I opened my eyes in this world.
That did not mean I intended to return to the Divine Cult.
I would learn demonic arts, but I would never again become anyone's kindling.
Still, the fact that they were demonic arts weighed on me like a stone.
Demonic arts brought progress abnormally quickly.
That speed always came at a price.
In the game, that price had been numbers.
[Heart Demon flare-up probability: 5% · Risk of qi deviation: 20%]
When the red warning window appeared, all I had to do was click a spiritual elixir in my inventory.
Here, that warning was poison flowing through my veins.
If I was unlucky, I would go mad, rampage, and die with my blood vessels bursting.
I would be lying if I said I was not afraid.
Still, there was no other path.
Twisting fate was the privilege of those who held overwhelming power.
If a demonic foot soldier struck at fate without knowing their place, they would sever their own lifeline first.
Beside Demonic, I drew a long, clear line toward the west.
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