It was a truly desolate death.

Having lost all his elder and junior brothers-in-arms, his elders by courtesy, and his fellow disciples, the man ranged the battlefield alone to at least gather their bodies.

He looked after his people until the very instant his breath stopped.

Until the very instant his breath stopped, he did not discard them.

“He’s not... someone to be cast away like that...”

Still less someone to be easily thrown aside for the seat of Heavenly Demon and then used to preserve vested power.

“That man is...”

“Do not expect too much of me. The posterity of the Demonic Sect is no concern of mine.”

Across dozens of lives, the man had never looked upon the Demonic Sect’s next generation.

For one who repeats the same life, picturing a posterity that may as well never come was a useless act.

“Do you know the feeling of one who can no longer scheme for the future?”

Once, he too had labored for the days to come.

He had forged ties with new people and tried to raise fallen clans and sects.

To shield Central Plains martial society from the Blood Demon’s hand, he had sworn brotherhood with masters renowned across the land.

Yet the only one who ever returned was himself.

Those to whom he had entrusted his back at the risk of his life did not even remember him.

The woman who had whispered love to him looked at him as if he were vermin.

“As time passes you cut down dealings with people and come to avoid relationships. The deaths of others hardly feel like deaths at all.”

After all, when time rewinds, they will live again.

“When the same human being no longer even feels human, how is one to live as if normal?”

With a trace of bitter laughter at his lips, the man looked lonely.

That he, that the Demonic Sect, had cast off Yu Gang still made fury surge up—but she could not press this man for accountability.

“You are the same.”

Now Seolhwa too would repeat this life.

“Do not think to grow attached to people. It is a bond that will be crushed in a single life anyway.”

“...”

At the man’s words, as if he were thoroughly indifferent, Seolhwa felt her boiling anger settle instead.

He acted as though he had no interest in the affairs of the world or relationships with anyone.

Bonds that, once life rewound, would not be remembered anyway—as if it did not matter what became of them.

But—

“You’re pitiable. You look very lonely.”

To Seolhwa’s eyes, the man was simply wretched.

He must have had precious ties as well.

How great must the sense of loss be, at failing to protect those precious ties and losing them, to drive him to isolate himself.

“It seems you do not properly understand me. Not rewinding your life is not your choice—it is only that he...”

“I won’t let it be so.”

In this life she would protect her people.

She would end this life as her only life. Together with her people.

“That is what you, too, are staking your possibility on for me.”

So that her efforts, her relationships, would no longer become nothing.

He had dragged his painful body—one that could not endure a single instant without paralytic poison—to seek her out.

The man did not answer.

Only his gaze, fixed on Seolhwa, sank deeper.

Seolhwa turned and left the man’s quarters.

Lingering for a moment to take in the estate whose edges he had honed so that none might approach, she then made for Yu Gang’s and her own quarters.

“Seolhwa!”

From afar, Yu Gang’s delighted voice reached her as he spotted her.

Lost in deep thought as she walked, Seolhwa turned a faint smile toward the sound.

Yu Gang was with someone.

It was White Shadow.

Yu Gang, who ran to her in a bound, wore a face brighter than ever.

He must have gone to meet his father.

Had they not told him the truth?

They wouldn’t have told him properly...

“Did it go well?”

At Yu Gang’s question, Seolhwa nodded with a light smile.

“Mm. You?”

“Me too.”

Yu Gang looked as if he had much to say.

But as White Shadow came up, he swallowed his words.

“Why are you still wearing a Human-Skin Mask?”

White Shadow asked in puzzlement.

At that, Seolhwa and Yu Gang exchanged equally puzzled looks.

“A Human-Skin Mask?”

“Surely you don’t mean to say that face is your real one? You expect me to believe that?”

Seolhwa and Yu Gang traded another glance.

Then, at the same time, they tilted their heads.

White Shadow, who had chuckled heh-heh at their reactions, slowly let his expression harden.

In a moment that hardened face turned to shock.

Staring at Seolhwa with his mouth agape, he let out a faint sigh and said,

“Honestly, I didn’t expect you to be this young.”

He had thought her young—yet she was a Flowering-realm master.

Young, yes—but this young?

“I thought the monster was only the Strategist... Seeing it, I still can’t believe it. It seems the world truly has turned over.”

To be a master of this level at so young an age.

At so young an age...

“Heh... Perhaps I’ve spent far too long only in the Heavenly Mountains.”

“Come to think of it, what led you to enter the Demonic Sect? As I understand, you were the only wanderer among the Ten Masters.”

“So I was.”

White Shadow nodded.

“Before my wife fell ill.”

It was a disease whose cause even physicians could not find.

Watching his wife grow thinner by the day, White Shadow could do nothing.

“When I gave up and was preparing her funeral, I met the Cult Lord. He said he would cure the illness if we came with him.”

Then and there, White Shadow entered the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult with his wife and child.

His wife’s illness truly vanished as if washed away, and White Shadow swore fealty to the Heavenly Demon.

“I see.”

Seolhwa was certain.

That was the man’s doing.

To one who knows the future, buying loyalty with «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» a life is the easiest of tasks.

To empower the Heavenly Demon and build the Demonic Sect’s strength, the man would have lured White Shadow.

“At any rate, I only stopped by to pay respects, so I’ll be going. From what I heard from the Young Master, you were to dine together. For that reason he even put off a meal with the Cult Lord to come.”

Seolhwa looked to Yu Gang.

To think he had put off a meal with his father whom he hadn’t seen in so long because of a promise tossed off in passing.

So very Yu Gang.

Yu Gang averted his eyes for no reason.

The way he did it looked exactly like someone angling for praise—it made a laugh slip out.

“Right. For that reason I, too, put off the remaining business with the Strategist and came.”

“!”

Yu Gang turned to Seolhwa with eyes gone wide.

“Ho...”

White Shadow stroked his chin, looking back and forth between Seolhwa and Yu Gang.

“So that’s how it is. Well, it’s not something I can’t understand.”

With a soft laugh, he began to withdraw by degrees.

As it seemed he meant to tactfully give them space, Seolhwa called him back.

“A moment, please. There’s something I’d like to ask you. Yu Gang, I’m sorry—could you give us a moment?”

“Huh? O-oh... I’ll go in first. Talk and come.”

Quick on the uptake, Yu Gang hurriedly yielded the spot.

Watching him dash into the pavilion, Seolhwa faced White Shadow.

White Shadow arched his brows as if he could not even guess the line of her question, curiosity plain.

“What would you ask?”

The light in Seolhwa’s eyes, which had held a hint of a smile, settled to calm.

A Qi Screen drew about the two of them.

“It concerns Kang—no, my comrade you call the Young Master.”

Supper was laid in Yu Gang’s quarters.

At the word that Yu Gang and Seolhwa would dine together, the Demonic Sect prepared a sumptuous banquet for the two.

“When I was very small, they say they lost me. At the time, Father had thirteen brothers competing with him to become Cult Lord, and one of them bribed the midwife and spirited me away.”

The moment Seolhwa came in, Yu Gang, as if he’d been waiting, began to speak, his expression more animated than ever.

“Since then, he says, he’s searched for me the whole time. He didn’t imagine they’d smuggle me beyond the Heavenly Mountains, so he searched for quite a while only within the Heavenly Mountains.”

The story the Heavenly Demon had spun was convincing.

That he had competed with his brothers to become Heavenly Demon, and that because of it he was separated from Yu Gang—that much was true.

A moving tale of reunion—a braid of truth and lies—was something that, had she not known the truth, even Seolhwa might have been taken in by.

“Mother burst into tears the moment she saw me.”

Yu Gang pressed his lips tight.

Perhaps the feeling of reunion welled up again; his eyes misted faintly red.

“Father told me I’d done well to return.”

“...”

“But doesn’t it sound exactly like your story?”

Yu Gang beamed brightly at Seolhwa.

Seolhwa, who had listened with a set face, forced the corners of her lips up.

“...It does.”

“Right? Maybe that’s why, while I was talking with Mother and Father, I kept thinking of you. When you met your family again, did you feel like this? Were you this happy?”

Yu Gang looked truly happy.

That smile of happiness was dazzlingly lovely—she could not bring herself to break it.

Yu Gang was a man who held a deep loneliness behind his bright face.

And therefore a man who devoted and sacrificed himself all the more for his people.

Now that she knew where that loneliness sprang from, Seolhwa found him unbearably pitiable.

She resented his parents who had made this man so lonely.

“Seolhwa.”

Yu Gang’s voice trembled faintly.

Letting his gaze fall, he exhaled a sigh, and murmured low,

“I... had a family, too...”