BXBX NOVEL Chapter 67: The Heavenly Demon (2)
Chapter 67: The Heavenly Demon (2)
“Yes, I want to repay what you did for me. I won’t think about anything else but making the cure... But I’m really not aware of my surroundings when I’m occupied with my work. I probably won’t keep my manners. Still...”
“It doesn’t matter.” I nodded. “Do whatever it takes to bring out your best.”
This wasn’t the time to worry about manners. I needed the future leader of the Alchemist Office.
“...Okay.” The Chemist adjusted her glasses and then turned to look at the Medicine King. “Sir.”
“Huh? What is it?”
“I’ll need your full assistance from now on.”
The Medicine King scowled, his deep wrinkles reflecting his stubbornness. “Assistance? Assistaaaaance? You insolent girl, there is a proper order for everything! How dare a greenhorn like you ask the Medicine king to assist you—”
“Open my Skill Cards,” the Chemist quietly said.
“...What?”
One golden card and three silver cards floated above the Chemist’s palm. An ordinary Hunter would kill to have one Skill, but she had four of them. On top of that, all of them were above Class B.
The Medicine King’s eyes widened. “W-what? Are you trying to show off your Skills? Tsk, tsk. Young people nowadays think Skills can solve everything. Your true ability—”
“You can see them,” the Chemist said.
“What?”
“You can see what my Skills are.”
For a moment, the Medicine King was too perplexed to answer. For Hunters, Skills were their ace in the hole. They should never be discovered by others until the last moment. Revealing their Skills equaled exposing all of their strengths and weaknesses at the same time. In summary, the Chemist was making a very foolish move.
However, the Chemist flipped the cards anyway and showed them to the Medicine King.”Or do you want me to show them myself? This one is the Mobile Hospital. It can conduct any test in real-time, from blood tests to EEGs, and I can even store and retrieve medical herbs at will—but there is a two percent chance of misdiagnosis. This one is Life Analysis. It tells me a patient’s condition down to the genetic level. I use these Skills together to minimize the chance of misdiagnosis—”
“Now, wait, wait, wait!” The Medicine King finally pulled himself together. “Why are you showing me your Skills? Aren’t you worried that I might tell the Alchemist Office or the partners in my shop?”
“It’s okay. I promised I wouldn’t worry about the trivial things,” the Chemist said. “If you want to tell others, do it, but I want your full assistance until I make the cure.”
“Why would you go this far...?”
“Because I need you to speed up development even if it’s just by a day.”
The Medicine King stared.
“I’m an eyesore to you, aren’t I?” The Chemist looked him in the eyes. Her eyes weren’t just distant, they were cold. She often floundered before, but her face now was completely expressionless. “You’re angry that a young girl like me doesn’t know her place but keeps shoving better results at your face. You’re annoyed that someone like me has a gift. But I have a lot more years to live than you and I’ll be respected a lot longer than you are. That makes you mad, right?”
The human voice was often compared to a bird’s, but I was certain that the Chemist’s voice could not be imitated by any animal. If I had to pick one...yes, her voice reminded me of the fire ant’s sizzling chattering.
“If you give me your full assistance this time...” The Chemist adjusted her glasses. “...you can have all of the potion recipes I’ve ever made. I won’t tell anyone they’re mine. Take them, and use them. Tell people that you invented the recipes—”
At that moment, the Medicine King slapped her on the cheek, knocking her glasses clean off of her face. The Chemist silently picked up her glasses and wiped them on her sleeve before putting them back on. After that, she looked at the Medicine King in silence.
The Medicine King trembled with anger. “Shame on you...”
“I’ll analyze the zombie virus.”
“You’ll see that there is always a bigger fish.”
“Please follow my instructions.” The Chemist’s voice was monotonous.
“The day will come when your pride will be broken and rancid.”
“I’ll write down my instructions first and give them to you.”
“Someday, you will also...meet a person who is better skilled than you are.” The Medicine King gritted his teeth.
He and the Chemist spoke at the same time.
“Then please find what I need and bring them to me, sir.”
And then the two Hunters fell silent. The Chemist sat on the left and the Medicine King on the right, with the corpse of the Wudang Sect’s leader between them. When the Chemist mumbled something, the Medicine King wrote it down. The air grew still; the two Hunters looked more like objects from a still life than people from a portrait. The only words they spoke were related to their work.
“Mr. Death King, I’m sorry, but please leave,” the Chemist requested as she pressed her scalpel against the corpse’s head. “I find the sound of your breathing disturbing. Very, very disturbing.”
“Grab six more zombies on your way out.” The Medicine King peered into the dark inside of the corpse’s mouth. With a tweezer, he pinched the zombie’s purple and black tongue. “We need more samples. Children, adults, and seniors. Get one of each gender—and when I tell you I need herbs, go get it.”
I nodded. “Leave it to me.”
From that day forward, we were in a state of war. Eating was a waste of time, and bathing was a luxury. Even with an open hot spring right by their side, the Chemist and the Medicine King didn’t bathe. Day and night, the two Hunters studied the zombie as they nibbled on grain pills.
“Hmm... The air in here is drastically different.” The Heavenly Demon looked at the Hunters, confused. “Are you trying to gain enlightenment? You all are still young, but very eager.”
“Are you not going to cook any more clam soup or the dish you called doripal[1] risotto or something?” The Murim Alliance\'s leader furtively nudged the Medicine King. “The Imperial Chef would have cried if he witnessed your skills. If the world was still in order, I would have appointed you as the head chef of the Great Namgung Clan.”
“I’m busy. Get lost.” The Medicine King didn’t even look up. He stuck his hand into his subspace inventory and pulled out a water bottle, which he tossed to the Murim Alliance\'s leader. “If you’re hungry, drink up. It’ll still fill your belly somewhat.”
The Murim Alliance\'s leader caught the Bling H2O, smacking his lips. He looked disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to taste the Medicine King’s cooking. Still, he readily emptied the water bottle.
“Old man, don’t bother them. They’re busy.” The Heavenly Demon gestured at him. “Let’s go.”
“Alright, alright. My body hasn’t been cooperating with me lately,” the Murim Alliance\'s leader grumbled. “I wonder how far the jiangshi
have gotten today...”“Even if they tried, they can’t go a thousand meters in one night. Stop complaining and get out here.”
“Alright.” The Murim Alliance\'s leader continued to grumble as he left the cave with the Heavenly Demon.
Like they had done yesterday, they were going to gather the zombies for the 991st day of the Great War of Good and Evil.
Another day passed, meaning that we were another day closer to the end of the world. Time ticked away, a countdown to the world’s demise. The world was nothing but a music box waiting for its springs to run out of energy.
Exactly one week after we had arrived in the apocalyptic book, the Heavenly Demon looked up at the cave’s ceiling. “Hmmm... I guess I won’t be able to go outside today.”
A blizzard was raging outside the cave. The snowy wind blew in all directions, blurring the distinction between the sky and the earth. Looking at the dark, featureless world of snow, I realized for the first time that white could be dark.
“Well, there are days like this.” The Heavenly Demon shrugged as if it were no big deal. “We’ve actually been lucky that the sky has been sunny for the past few days. The blizzard lasted more than thirty days one time. There wasn’t a single trace of sunlight, so we couldn’t move a step.”
“Then the jiangshi will keep moving,” I said. “Are you okay with that? If they go too far, you won’t be able to retrieve them.”
“Then it is what it is. We lose them.” The Heavenly Demon sighed. “Three years ago, my cult had almost a thousand members, and the old man brought a similar number of the Righteous Faction’s goons. But as the years went by, some of the jiangshi went so far away that we couldn’t retrieve them.”
Several corpses of the Heavenly Demon’s and the Murim Alliance\'s leader’s subordinates would go missing—no, be lost during every blizzard.
“That must scare you the most,” I remarked.
“Hmm?”
“You wake up and go out into the field, but a jiangshi is nowhere to be found.”
The Heavenly Demon stared at me for a moment. “Do you think I have fear?”
The woman’s eyes were black. Her hair, her martial arts training suit... Everything black about her seemed to be a desperate attempt to resist the endless white snow.
“Yes, I think you do,” I answered.
“The world has indeed changed a lot. Someone who talked to me like that wouldn’t get to keep their head on their shoulders. You should be glad that the world is what it is right now, child.”
“You and the Murim Alliance\'s leader are martial arts masters. The depth of your mastery in martial arts is so deep that I would be disrespecting you if I compared myself to you two.” I silently turned and looked at the Murim Alliance\'s leader, who was sleeping by the hot spring. “But no matter how skilled you are, your qi isn’t infinite.”
“What are you trying to say?” The Heavenly Demon frowned.
“When will your qi run out?”
Her face darkened.
“You’re blocking the acupoint between your brain and spine, which means that you do everything with your qi: your heartbeats, your breathing, and every other movement.”
The Guardian had said that it was the same as using Sword Telekinesis all the time.
I shook my head. “No amount of qi can help you keep doing that forever. I’ll ask you again. When will you run out of qi?”
The woman had said some time ago, “Everyone dies someday.”
Her words had a weight to them, the kind that spoke of wisdom. The only way for humans to learn wisdom was to go through it themselves.
“...Really.” The Heavenly Demon groaned. “You’re a perceptive one.”
“You only have a few days left, right?”
“...I take it back. You’re too damn perceptive, child.”
How was the Heavenly Demon Chronicle, this world, going to end? It was a surprisingly simple question if I thought about it.
“Once your qi is depleted, it will be impossible for the two of you to move,” I speculated.
“You’re right.” The Heavenly Demon looked up at the sky. From the cave’s open ceiling, we could see the blizzard raging like the sky had vomited.
“Our qi will stop circulating in one body part after another. The parts that our qi don’t reach will rot. First, our toes and fingers will no longer be under our control; next will be our calves and wrists; and then it’s our knees, shoulders, and waists.”
Every part of their body would become necrotic, like a building slowly breaking down piece by piece after the power ran out. At some point, the two wouldn’t be able to move at all.
“Our hearts and lungs.” The woman pressed her finger against the breast of her ragged suit before touching the top of her head. “And our upper dantians. Everything but these three parts will rot. No, our qi leaves them to rot.”
“...You already know what’s going to happen.” I shut my eyes.
“The Shaolin Temple’s monk held out with us for a year.” The Heavenly Demon smiled bitterly. “As if he had to prove he was a monk, he passed away in the lotus position. In his last moment, he didn’t look much different from a jiangshi except for his face. Every other body part was blackened because they were all rotting... His last word was just, ‘Amitabha’.
“You asked earlier if I am afraid. Yes, I am afraid.”
The human voice was often compared to a bird’s, but I could guarantee that no animal could imitate the Heavenly Demon’s voice.
“I’m scared,” she whispered, soft as a falling petal. “I fear the day my qi and life force will wither away. Blizzards and the lack of sunlight scare me. When I go out at dawn, I’m afraid that my subordinates, or rather the creatures that were once my subordinates, might have gone missing. With every breath I take, I wonder how many more I have. Each heartbeat makes me question how many more beats I will feel.”
The Heavenly Demon sighed in lamentation. “I am afraid that I won’t be able to kill the old man and that he might not be able to kill me. The day may come when the old man and I are unable to move in our beds, and it scares me that we would just have to wait for our qi to dry up.”
It would be a meaningless death. Their struggle to the end would be equally meaningless. When they died and disappeared, they would just leave behind a colorless landscape painting, marked by nothing but the snow.
This was the ending that the Heavenly Demon Chronicle, this world, would meet.
“The world is truly filled with terrors.”
Another day passed, marking the Hunter expedition team’s eighth day after falling into the apocalyptic book. That also meant two days were left until the world ended.
“Demon,” the Murim Alliance\'s leader mumbled in his bed. “I can’t move anymore.”
He was laughing and crying at the same time.
“I’m sorry.”
His whisper signaled that their world was coming to an end.
1. It sounds like he misheard truffle. ☜