Rebirth of the Heavenly Demon

“It’s me. I’m bringing Young Master Ma and the great hero Nameless to enter for a moment.”

He stated precisely who was entering. This showed how much he respected and was careful of the person inside.

When Number Two opened the door, it opened smoothly. This time, it wasn’t locked.

“Let’s go in.”

He left without entering, as if he had completed his duty.

I entered with Ma Ryeong-in. Not knowing what was waiting for us, I was on high alert.

The room was filled with objects I had never seen before. Before I could examine each one, a strong smell assaulted my nose.

An ordinary person might think it was the scent of medicine from a doctor’s office, but I could identify the exact nature of this smell.

It was a mixture of two scents I knew best. The odors of elixir and poison were strangely intermingled.

Amidst this smell were all sorts of objects. The first thing I noticed was a large sphere. About a dozen bamboo tubes were connected to the sphere, and at the end of each tube were several containers.

The containers were of different colors, and it seemed that various elixirs or poisons were being gathered into the central sphere through these containers. As if it wasn’t just collecting the substances in one place, there were devices attached to the box for boiling and cooling.

The mysterious energy I had felt earlier was coming from that sphere. More precisely, it was emanating from the substance inside the sphere.

On one side were piles of various medicinal ingredients, and there were boxes containing venomous creatures like snakes and centipedes.

On the opposite wall was a large paper covered with unfamiliar characters and numbers. It looked like some kind of calculation was being done, but it was beyond my understanding.

There was a desk placed against the wall with the paper, and books were piled like mountains not only on the desk but all around it.

Among them sat a woman with her back turned. She was reading a book and didn’t even turn her head when we entered.

Of course, I had noticed her presence first when I entered the room, but an ordinary person probably wouldn’t have noticed her existence.

There were so many eye-catching things in this space, and conversely, she was sitting still like a doll. She blended into this space so well that she almost felt like part of the background.

Ma Ryeong-in spoke to her.

“When people come, you should at least face them and greet them.”

The woman spoke without turning around.

“You’re not people, are you?”

Her voice was clear and resonant.

As if he had heard this many times before, Ma Ryeong-in wasn’t offended at all.

“That’s why I brought a person here.”

“It’s probably the same old story.”

Ma Ryeong-in smiled faintly at me. He felt fondness for her. She must be someone essential to Ma Ryeong-in.

“The test failed again.”

Suddenly, the woman’s voice lost its strength.

“I know.”

Only then did she stand up and turn towards us.

The moment I saw her, I was startled. She was far more beautiful than I had imagined. Moreover, she was wearing clothes that revealed her figure, which was incredibly sensual. Her breasts were large, her waist was slim, and her legs were straight and long.

With such looks, you wouldn’t expect her to be poring over books in a place like this, and this contradiction made her appear truly alluring.

And one more thing.

Her face made it impossible to tell how old she was. At first glance, she looked like she was in her early twenties, but from another angle, she could have been in her thirties. If she was in her thirties, she had an incredibly youthful appearance.

And decisively, she was an extremely skilled master.

She was far more skilled than Ma Ryeong-in or Joo Do-chi. Of course, she couldn’t compare to me, but it had been a long time since I’d encountered such a highly skilled woman.

She looked at me, then came closer and sniffed.

“Is this the new candidate? His scent is good.”

Ma Ryeong-in laughed and said:

“No. He’s my friend.”

“Friend? You have such things?”

She glanced at Ma Ryeong-in, then said to me:

“If you get close to someone like him, you’ll die early.”

It wasn’t a joke, but it wasn’t entirely serious either, so it was an ambiguous statement that was hard to know how to respond to.

“I’ve been feeling that keenly lately.”

“Then why do you hang around with him?”

“I’ve been caught in a trap.”

“Traps are scary. Especially his traps are very powerful.”

She spoke bluntly, but Ma Ryeong-in showed no reaction.

The woman stared at me quietly.

“But you, there’s something strange about you.”

She seemed to sense something from me. The strange feeling was mutual.

As she looked at me, she glanced at Ma Ryeong-in. Her expression seemed to ask, ‘This guy?’

Ma Ryeong-in smiled and said:

“A friend I want to keep even if I have to set a trap.”

It was an answer to the earlier conversation, and at the same time, a response to her silent question.

At this moment, I could sense it. That “that” which he had mentioned before was related to this woman. That they were planning to subject me to the test they had done on those men before.

I looked at Ma Ryeong-in, pretending not to know anything. He was smiling at me with a kindly expression. The test subjects had died bleeding from their seven apertures. To think he could smile like that while planning to kill me.

Having lost interest, the woman returned to her seat. And she started reading her book again.

Ma Ryeong-in and I looked around the room.

Standing in front of some venomous creatures on one side, I asked:

“What exactly are you making here?”

“Medicine.”

“Medicine?”

“Medicine that makes the user invincible. At the same time, medicine that will save your life.”

“No way? Is this the place?”

“Yes. This is where research is being conducted to remove the word ‘Unrepentant‘ and replace it with ‘Invincible’.”

In other words, they were researching how to eliminate the side effects of the Unrepentant Demonic Spiritual Pill.

“You deceived me. You made it sound like you already had a solution.”

“It would be stranger if there was a solution for such a drug. But we will definitely succeed within a year.”

Ma Ryeong-in looked at the woman and asked:

“Isn’t that right?”

The woman replied without turning around:

“Since you two came and disturbed me, it might take a day or so longer than a year.”

Ma Ryeong-in smiled at me.

“Don’t worry. We will definitely succeed within a year. Do you now understand why I wanted to show you this place?”

I nodded.

Ma Ryeong-in spoke again:

“Trust me.”

At that moment, the woman suddenly said without turning around:

“Do you know how to drink alcohol?”

Not sure if she was talking to me, I looked at Ma Ryeong-in with a confused expression.

Ma Ryeong-in nodded as if to say yes.

Only then did I answer her:

“Of course. But I don’t drink alone.”

She got up from her seat and picked up a coat hanging on one side.

“That’s good. Have a drink with me.”

Lest Ma Ryeong-in try to join, she spoke first:

“We’ll drink just the two of us. So don’t even dream about it.”

***

Half an hour later, we were drinking at a tavern. Number Two had brought me here blindfolded.

When she moved, Number Two followed. Even now, he was waiting in the carriage parked outside the tavern.

Now I thought that Number Two’s main duty might not be to monitor Ma Ryeong-in, but to protect her.

She said it had been a long time since she’d had a drink, and made sure to eat some food with every sip of alcohol.

“If you just drink, it ruins your stomach.”

“If you’re thinking of your health, you shouldn’t be cooped up underground like that.”

“It’s work. Work I have to do whether I like it or not.”

“Is there really such a thing as work you have no choice but to do? Couldn’t you just close your eyes tight and run off somewhere?”

“Run away?”

I expected her to say something like ‘How carefree’ or ‘How irresponsible’, but she smiled brightly and said:

“It feels good just thinking about it.”

At this moment, her expression was so bright that I could tell it was something that could never come true.

Looking at her again, she was a strange woman. She had an intellectual air that didn’t match her sensual appearance. She possessed a mysteriousness as enigmatic as the mysterious energy emanating from the sphere.

One thing was certain: this woman was in charge of the underground tests. Judging from how Ma Ryeong-in treated her and how Number Two followed her, she held an important position in this organization.

“What’s your name?”

“Are you in any position to ask for someone else’s name?”

She said this because Number Two had introduced me as the great hero Nameless when we entered the room.

“It’s frustrating enough that I don’t have a name, but not knowing the name of the person I’m sitting across from is really frustrating.”

I didn’t think she would easily tell me her name, but unexpectedly, she did.

“It’s Im Yeon-jeong[1].”

“Oh, that’s a nice name. Well, since we’ve met like this, let’s have a toast.”

She cheerfully raised her glass and downed it in one go. She was very good at drinking.

“What kind of research are you doing exactly?”

“Research to make a living.”

But she didn’t make any slip-ups even while drunk. She was flawless. She didn’t say anything that would reveal her identity. She didn’t even tell me her age. Meanwhile, she occasionally threw questions at me.

“How did you get to know Young Master Ma?”

“We met by chance.”

I told her the story of how I discovered the code through Jo Byeok, who was running a brothel with young girls, and came here.

“So you were originally a martial hero.”

“A hero? No. It just happened that way by chance.”

Im Yeon-jeong stared at me quietly. At times like this, she seemed far removed from evil. But one shouldn’t judge or evaluate someone based solely on impressions and feelings.

“Then how did you come to know Young Master Ma?”

“For a much more mundane reason than you.”

Instead of answering, she drank. Like most of my questions, this too fell into the category of questions she wouldn’t answer.

As we talked, she would burst into laughter at times, and look sad at others. Her emotions were hard to pin down, but one thing was clear.

She seemed to have been feeling very stifled lately. It seemed she had wanted to drink like this with someone, laughing and chatting. The fact that she chose me, someone she had just met, for this suggests that her life hasn’t been very smooth.

When you look at Ma Ryeong-in, he gives off a full feeling. Whether it’s evil or ambition, he’s full of it. Number Two is the same.

But she was different. From her, you could sense a kind of emptiness. Like an emptiness in her heart.

Only after emptying three bottles of alcohol did she stand up. We had been so focused on drinking as if it were a competition that not much time had passed.

As she was about to leave after finishing the drinks, she left a final word.

“When you make friends with bad guys in the martial world, you have to become an even worse guy. That’s how you survive.”

“I don’t think Young Master Ma is such a bad person.”

She looked at me quietly, then left with one last remark.

“If you don’t have an eye for people, at least keep your ears open.”

***

When Im Yeon-jeong returned to the mansion, Ma Ryeong-in was waiting in front of her room.

“Did you two have a good time?”

“Not seeing your face made the alcohol go down smoothly.”

“I’m glad I could be of help, even in that way.”

As she was about to enter with a snort, Ma Ryeong-in suddenly said:

“I’m going to have him take the antidote we’re researching.”

For a moment, Im Yeon-jeong’s movement stopped. A hint of sadness flashed across her eyes. She knew better than anyone that taking an incomplete antidote would result in death. The person would go berserk with dramatically increased strength before eventually dying, bleeding from the seven apertures.

“He’s clever. He won’t believe it if you say a cure was developed in just a few days. Just tell him it’s the first medicine he needs to take for treatment.”

“What if I refuse?”

“Then don’t.”

Even without Ma Ryeong-in resorting to petty threats, she was in no position to refuse his request. Finally, with a light sigh, she asked:

“When is he to take it?”

“Ten days from now, on the opening day of the Golden Grand Banquet.”

“I understand, but before making him take it, there are things we need to do after bringing him here.”

“Isn’t that why you drank with him? To make that process easier? That’s what I thought.”

Im Yeon-jeong’s expression soured at his snake-like words implying she should handle it herself.

Ma Ryeong-in took a step back, not provoking her further.

“I’ll help too. So proceed according to the plan.”

When she didn’t respond, Ma Ryeong-in asked as if testing the waters:

“Did you take a liking to him?”

“There are people you get a feeling about at first sight. You, and him too.”

“How about me, and how about him?”

“Just know that they’re opposite.”

“That person received quite a high evaluation. Hahaha.”

As Ma Ryeong-in was about to leave the room, this time she said sharply:

“Didn’t you say he was your friend?”

In contrast, Ma Ryeong-in replied nonchalantly:

“Didn’t you say I’m not human?”

Even though her hand closing the door could have shown some irritation, he closed it quietly and respectfully before disappearing.