Chapter 291: Great Ming (4)
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I closed my eyes and felt for demonic qi. Even when the energy was the same, its density differed. My goal for now was to find the place where the demonic qi was as pure and concentrated as possible.
Before long, I found where the demonic qi had condensed.
As expected, the core of the demonic qi was felt from the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the main hall of the Forbidden City. There was no need to search every place anyway. How was I supposed to go through nearly ten thousand rooms one by one?
I passed through the Taihe Gate, the main gate of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. I deliberately took the central path only the Emperor could walk. I would never get to walk it in the real Beijing, so I thought I might as well try it here.
The Forbidden City was astonishingly realized down to the finest detail. That meant this was not a formation made by someone who only knew the surface of things.
‘Is it something like that formation beneath the sea?’
I had to move quickly, but the Forbidden City was realized so well that it was hard to act rashly. Unconsciously, I felt the oppressive weight the name “imperial palace” carried.
Inside the Forbidden City as well, energy was distorted in the same way, so my energy sense was not accurate either.
Then suddenly something lunged at me all at once. It was not something with a nature that could be avoided.
“Find the Emperor! Kill the Emperor!”
“Arghhh!”
When I looked around, the Forbidden City was burning. On the plaza before the Hall of Supreme Harmony, corpses in official robes lay strewn in wretched heaps.
“Kyaaaah!”
A merciless massacre was unfolding without distinction of age or sex, from the palace maids to the ministers.
“They are rebels! Stop the rebels!”
It was utter chaos. I stood dazed before the plaza of the Hall of Supreme Harmony and took in the sight.
I thought I more or less understood the situation. This was probably the scene of a rebellion, the moment Great Ming became the Imperial State.
The Imperial State, in other words the rebels, were merciless, while Great Ming’s ministers and imperial clan fled for their lives. The rebels slaughtered every person who ran.
Rebellion was cruel by nature in any case. I had expected as much, but the Imperial State was a nation built from blood and corpses.
When I blinked once, the thick scent of blood and the corpses crowding the surroundings all vanished. Once again I stood alone in the plaza of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, filled only with demonic qi.
I entered the Hall of Supreme Harmony while staying as wary as possible.
The moment I stepped inside, the demonic qi gathered and soldiers holding spears appeared before me. Startled, I gripped the hilt of my sword.
The soldiers did not charge at me. They only kept looking at me as though searching me out. Before long, a voice came from their direction.
—Lord of the formation. We have awaited you.
The soldiers split left and right and formed ranks. At the end of the path they had opened, the grand preceptor’s chair reserved for the Emperor shone from its exalted position.
What I possessed was the Heavenly Demon’s aura, connected to the bloodline of Great Ming’s imperial clan. That they treated me as their master was perhaps only natural.
Probably only those with demonic qi could pass through here, so Kongya and the others would not have been able to come this far.
“Can I speak with you as well?”
I asked the soldiers. But the soldiers did not answer. It seemed conversation was beyond them.
I walked boldly toward the Emperor’s seat. So this was what it felt like to sit in a grand preceptor’s chair in my lifetime. No one would ever know, yet for some reason my chest swelled.
“That is my seat. Where do you think you are sitting?”
The moment I tried to sit in the grand preceptor’s chair, a familiar voice rang at my ear. I stopped halfway into sitting and looked left and right in an awkward crouch.
“Here. You seat thief.”
The voice came from above. When I looked up, a jade-colored ghost was descending toward me.
“Ah. So you were the Heaven-Venerating Emperor, or whatever it was.”
“Your rudeness reaches the heavens. Had you not possessed the Heavenly Demon’s aura, I would have punished you myself.”
The ghost was, astonishingly, the immortal I had met in the formation beneath the sea. I seemed to remember his name was Zhu Wenjing.
“You ran off without a word when your power ran out beneath the sea. And how did you get here this time?”
“There is no speech one cannot make to an immortal.”
The jade-colored ghost sighed.
“Part of it is that I have regained my strength, and this is a place filled with Great Ming’s aura, so I can manifest without expending much power.”
“I see.”
I answered and dropped heavily into the chair. I had history with the immortal anyway, and I too possessed the Heavenly Demon’s aura, so there was nothing particularly awkward about it.
The jade-colored ghost, Zhu Wenjing, spoke as though resigning himself.
“Yes. That may be your seat as well. You are not of the Zhu clan, but you stand above the Zhu clan.”
“I am grateful you recognize that.”
I smiled. Meeting an old acquaintance in an unexpected place eased my tension a little.
But I could not relax. What I had to keep in mind was that Myeong-gyeong was waiting outside.
“By the way, there is something I would like to ask. I should ask quickly, before your strength runs out again.”
“What is it?”
“What is this place?”
My question was a fundamental one.
“Normally, if you do not want anyone to come in, you hide the entrance and pay no attention to the exit. Yet here the entrance is wide open while the exit is said to be blocked.”
“It is nothing special. The formation has been twisted.”
“Twisted, you say?”
“A formation is resistance against nature. Nature does not simply let that be. In the Great Desert, for instance, it would disrupt the formation with something like a sandstorm. One might call it nature’s restorative action.”
“I see.”
This place being out of the ordinary was simply because it had been twisted. The fact that the entrance was open and the exit blocked from the start meant that had not been part of the formation’s design.
“But that is something I cannot understand. No matter how badly a formation is disrupted, the exit cannot be blocked.”
“Eh?”
I narrowed my eyes.
“A formation must have a life gate through which one can leave. Without a life gate, would that not be Avici Hell?”
“Is this not such a place?”
“That cannot be. Someone is hiding the life gate.”
“Hiding the life gate?”
I went cold in an instant. I had never thought of that. And if so, there was only one person who could hide it.
I shot up from the chair and hurled myself outside.
* * *
“…Boring.”
Myeong-gyeong sat on the ground and drew pictures with a tree branch. But that too soon grew tiresome, and he tossed it aside. He was nearly fifteen now. He had grown too old to play with such things. At least, that was what Myeong-gyeong told himself.
He looked at the Forbidden City. This was a moment when he felt somewhat wronged. No matter how strong the demonic qi was, if his own internal energy had been stronger, he could have gone in together.
Should he just follow in even now? But with demonic qi that overwhelming lurking there, the odds were high he would go mad in less than half a shichen.
Of course, not every part of the Forbidden City was filled with demonic qi. Since the demonic qi spread outward from the Hall of Supreme Harmony, Myeong-gyeong could look around the outer areas at least.
As Myeong-gyeong wandered nearby, he suddenly sensed human presence. Startled, he vaulted over the wall behind him and hid.
The footsteps belonged to two people. Fortunately, they did not seem to have seen Myeong-gyeong.
From the ash-gray monastic robes, one was clearly the Mad Buddha they had met earlier.
‘He told us not to come to the Forbidden City.’
They were told not to enter, yet he intended to go in himself. Well, with the Mad Buddha’s level of martial skill, he could probably go a little deeper inside than the outer areas.
The other was a woman in plain cloth garments. Then Myeong-gyeong realized something. This was the first time he had seen a woman inside this formation.
If, as those people said, they were living a second life inside the formation, there ought to have been women as well. Yet no matter how much he had wandered, he had not seen even the tip of a woman’s nose. This was his first time seeing one.
‘Something’s wrong.’
Just as he sensed something strange, a shocking sight entered Myeong-gyeong’s eyes. The Mad Buddha had grabbed a fleeing woman by the hair and was dragging her away.
The woman’s mouth was open, but no sound came out. It looked as though a mute acupoint had been sealed.
Before long, the Mad Buddha and the woman vanished deeper into the Forbidden City.
Something was very wrong. One thing was certain: the man called the Mad Buddha was not that good a person.
That woman looked like a commoner who had learned no martial arts at all. Yet if a commoner entered the inner Forbidden City, where demonic qi was strong, she would surely go mad. The Mad Buddha was a martial artist too, so he could not be ignorant of that.
‘Should I follow him?’
Fortunately, inside this formation one could not sense people through energy perception. If he hid his footsteps well, he could trail behind.
‘Wait.’
But did he really have to follow? If he followed for nothing and landed in trouble, he would only burden his Junior Brother.
Since the Mad Buddha had entered the Forbidden City, Myeong-gyeong could do as he always had and stay outside it.
He thought it might be better to wait until his Junior Brother came out.
Suddenly Myeong-gyeong realized how much he relied on his Junior Brother. Between Myeong-gyeong and Muk Hui-yeong, Myeong-gyeong was clearly the Senior Brother.
A Senior Brother ought to set an example, yet here he was waiting for his Junior Brother. And that too in the face of such an obvious evil act.
Leaving everything else aside, that was not what he had been taught in Wudang. Following the Mad Buddha was certainly frightening. But that was what he had learned. Even when afraid, he had no choice but to move his feet.
Myeong-gyeong steeled himself, gripped his sword, and walked slowly toward where the Mad Buddha had gone. It was the Martial Valor Hall outside the Taihe Gate. Perhaps even the Mad Buddha could not withstand the demonic qi within the Hall of Supreme Harmony.
“Why must you make this so troublesome?”
As he drew near the Martial Valor Hall, he heard the Mad Buddha’s voice.
It was not the relaxed monk’s voice he and Muk Hui-yeong had heard before. It was a cold, merciless voice that sent a chill through anyone who heard it.
“I could cut off their limbs and bring them inside. But I have no taste for bedding someone without arms and legs.”
Myeong-gyeong hid behind the wall and watched the Mad Buddha and the woman. The woman clung to the Mad Buddha’s trouser leg in tears while he detached her with an annoyed look.
No matter how desperately the woman clung, the Mad Buddha was a martial artist. He easily pulled her body away, then kicked her into the Martial Valor Hall.
The moment the Martial Valor Hall’s door opened, Myeong-gyeong saw that many people were already inside. They were all women shrieking like madwomen.
Madwomen. The Mad Buddha knew they would go mad, and that was why he locked women in the Martial Valor Hall.
The Mad Buddha barred the Martial Valor Hall’s outer door with a wooden latch so they could not come out.
“Did you see that clearly, brat?”
Then the Mad Buddha looked straight toward where Myeong-gyeong was and spoke. Myeong-gyeong’s heart dropped.
“You thought I would not know if you kept hiding like a rat?”
The Mad Buddha’s words were not a probe. From the start, it was the voice of someone who already knew Myeong-gyeong had been tailing him.
Myeong-gyeong took a deep breath, set his hand on his sword scabbard, and stepped out.
A thick smile spread across the Mad Buddha’s lips.
“This is why the fools of the orthodox sects are hopeless. They follow along without even knowing it is where they will die.”
“How did you know I was orthodox?”
“You are plainly of Shaolin, yet would I fail to recognize the Wudang Sect’s Songmun Sword?”
Myeong-gyeong thought, Ah. The Mad Buddha had been expelled, but he was still Shaolin-born. Then he would have known the swords given to Wudang disciples as well. He had known, and only pretended not to.
“Very well. I will give you a choice. Will you live pretending you saw nothing, or die miserably here?”
The Mad Buddha spoke in an arrogant voice. Myeong-gyeong gripped his sword hilt tightly.
As a disciple of the Wudang Sect, the answer was already decided.