Yise bound the unconscious Kang Gyuyoung with spiritual energy and left him suspended in the air. Seol Ryeong approached and tapped the crown of his head with her spirit-commanding staff. He shuddered back to consciousness.

"... Hah!"

"You. What did you do with the bodies?"

When Kang Gyuyoung merely rolled his eyes about, still dazed, Seol Ryeong glared at him.

"Want another hit? Getting hit in the same spot will hurt several times worse."

"... Mount Bongnae."

Kang Gyuyoung finally spoke. The drool spilling from his mouth made for a decidedly undignified sight.

"Near Mount Bongnae... I buried... them."

Mount Bongnae was a small mountain rising some ten li east of Jinju Fortress. It was a common name for mountains, drawn from the famous legend of a mountain where Immortals dwelled.

Yise moved a finger to send Kang Gyuyoung ahead of them.

"Which way?"

By the time they reached a valley near Mount Bongnae, the sunset was beginning to color the sky. In one corner stood a boulder easily taller than a man. It did not belong there naturally; the signs that someone had deliberately dragged it over were plain to see.

Yise frowned at the boulder and lifted it aside, revealing two bodies crushed beneath it.

"What? You buried them?"

Seol Ryeong's spirit-commanding staff struck the back of Kang Gyuyoung's head.

"If only I could just bury this bastard..."

The bodies were in a horrific state. The woman's dismembered corpse lay underneath a man who had died clutching the pieces, his back pierced through. Amid the remains, fragmented like their broken fate, the man still held his lover's severed hand tight.

"The man died here. There's lingering resentment coming out..."

Faint wisps of lingering resentment rose from where he lay, steeped more in grief and anguish than anger. That must have been why his soul had not become an evil spirit, remaining trapped over his lover's body instead.

Seol Ryeong placed a talisman between her palms and channeled spiritual energy into it. As it shone with a brilliant yellow light, a faint spirit body emerged from the man's corpse and slowly rose toward the glow.

JINGLE, JINGLE.

The spell-bell orb shook violently in the windless mountains. Only then did the spirit body slowly float upward, becoming a faint streak of light that scattered into the sky.

* * *

Back at the Flower Pavilion's annex, Yise flung Kang Gyuyoung onto the center of the wooden floor. Even in that brief interval, the Demonic Energy inside had thickened. It was spreading far too quickly. Had they been even a little later, a true catastrophe might have occurred.

Dark red blood seeped along the grain of the rafters, and the pool on the floor steadily widened. Seol Ryeong was just laying out her shamanic tools to perform a rain rite.

WOOOOOO!

Her face went deathly pale. The instant Kang Gyuyoung touched the floor, the Demonic Energy had begun running wild. Dark red blood poured from the rafters all at once, a veritable downpour.

"Impossible... It isn't raining, and the sun hasn't even set!"

Every being had a mandate imposed by heaven. Evil spirits were no exception.

Night, and rain. Those were the laws of nature that the Demon known as the Courtesan’s Grievance Demon had to obey. Yet this evil spirit was venting its fury in defiance of heaven's mandate itself.

AAAAAAAH!

The scream shook the entire annex. Its limbs bending at disjointed angles, the evil spirit rushed at Kang Gyuyoung.

"I'm sorry... I'm sorry...!"

He screamed at the Courtesan’s Grievance Demon.

"I was wrong! I'm begging you, please forgive me!"

He bowed so low his head nearly touched the floor, pouring out apologies. But the spirit's lingering resentment only released ever deeper Demonic Energy. The Courtesan’s Grievance Demon's severed limbs, not yet even joined together, surged forward as one to crush him.

"Yise! Stop it!"

Yise reacted instantly to Seol Ryeong's cry, sliding in front of Kang Gyuyoung. He repelled the approaching spirit with the Vajra, then drew and swung the Clear Shadow Sword. The Courtesan’s Grievance Demon screamed and retreated.

Seol Ryeong immediately unfurled a talisman and attempted a spirit-guiding rite. After repeatedly letting out screams so horrific they sounded mournful, the Courtesan’s Grievance Demon dissolved into black smoke once again and retreated into the rafters. Even now, its lingering resentment continued to pour out with mounting intensity.

After dragging Kang Gyuyoung outside, Yise asked Seol Ryeong,

"Why did you stop it?"

"... We can't just let the evil spirit devour the killer. That would only make its resentment stronger."

Seol Ryeong gazed up at the spot in the rafters where the Courtesan’s Grievance Demon had vanished.

"We have to summon the soul with a proper ritual. There's no other way now."

"Right. No other way."

Having reached that succinct conclusion, Yise turned his gaze to Kang Gyuyoung. His mind had already been largely made up from the moment he saw those two bodies.

This bastard deserved to die. No, he had to die and disappear.

"What? Surely you don't... No! You can't!"

Kang Gyuyoung flinched and tried to back away across the dirt. But his legs, bound by spiritual energy, would not budge.

"This is outrageous. My father won't stand idly by while you—"

Yise did not answer a word. Instead, he swiftly swung the Clear Shadow Sword. Blood spurted, and Kang Gyuyoung's head rolled onto the dirt. His mouth froze in its final attempt to call for his father.

Seol Ryeong lifted Kang Gyuyoung's head with spiritual energy and set it upright in the middle of the annex. She placed an upturned bowl over it, forming a makeshift altar.

The grievance-releasing rite began. Seol Ryeong's voice softly filled the annex. The syllables differed from yesterday's spirit-guiding rite; the melody carried a deeper desire to soothe the dead one's anguish.

The Demonic Energy raging within the rafters slowly began to subside. For a short while, the bloodstains inside the annex gradually faded. Seol Ryeong let out a sigh.

"Yise. Could you find something connected to the two of them?"

Yise agreed and went farther inside the pleasure house.

In the courtesans' quarters, he scanned the nameplates above the doors. They bore the courtesans' professional names.

Song Jinhui.

That was the victim's name, given to him by the outer affiliates' outpost manager. Yise opened the door and entered.

The room was neatly arranged. Its furnishings were sparse, with a small dressing table in one corner. Most of the belongings were necessities for life in a pleasure house: perfume bottles, powder cases, hairpins. Among them, something out of place caught his eye—a small box in the dressing table's innermost drawer.

He carefully took it out. Inside the plain rosewood box, worn smooth with handling, lay a neatly folded sheet of mulberry paper. Yise unfolded it. It was a love letter, bearing a poem in neat, orderly brushstrokes.

When he brought it to Seol Ryeong, she nodded as though it would suffice. She gently placed the love letter beside Kang Gyuyoung's head and lit a scented candle. The consolation rite began.

The blood gradually vanished, and the black traces within the rafters faded little by little. The clinging resentment dispersed upward with the candle smoke. Yise watched in silence.

After completing the final step, Seol Ryeong let out a long, labored breath. Her body promptly tilted sideways. Yise reached out at once to support her shoulder.

"... Sorry. I pushed myself a bit too far for my realm."

"Rest," Yise said simply.

Seol Ryeong shook her head and straightened. Despite her unsteady steps, she began clearing away the scented candle and Kang Gyuyoung's head from the center of the annex. Yise helped her.

Lastly, Seol Ryeong picked up the sheet of mulberry paper lying off to one side and quietly unfolded it. Written in elegant script was a poem bearing someone's heartfelt feelings.

Hard it is to meet, and hard to part;

The east wind is powerless, a hundred flowers fade.

Only in death does the silkworm cease spinning silk;

Only when the candle turns to ash will its tears run dry.

Before the morning mirror, I fret over my disheveled hair;

Reciting at night, I feel the chill of moonlight.

Mount Penglai lies not far from here;

Bluebird, please go and see how my beloved fares.

Something in the verses seemed to touch Seol Ryeong's heart. Her chin dimpled like a walnut, and her lips pushed into a pout.

"What a beautiful poem. Maybe he was studying for the civil service examinations."

"It's by the poet Li Shangyin. It's called 'Untitled.'"

It was a poem deliberately left without a title. That very absence signified a love beyond words—verses often sent to an unattainable beloved, filled with tender yearning.

"A romance kept so secret that even the outer affiliates' outpost didn't know. The man was probably a nobleman. In the mortal world, a courtesan and a nobleman can rarely be together."

Suddenly, Yise recalled a lyrical line he had read in a book, defining people and love.

It said that when a person forms a bond, it becomes a bond of fate; when that bond draws the person close, they become lovers.

What kind of feeling could make lingering resentment so powerful that it transcended prescribed cause and effect and natural limits, enough to rend the heavens? Yise found it difficult to understand.

As in most exorcisms, all he could do was hope they would break that chain of evil karma and pass through the gate of reincarnation. He wished only that, in their next lives, they might wed as an ordinary couple.

When Yise turned his head, he found Seol Ryeong staring directly at him.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Nothing. You just seem rather learned today. Doesn't suit you."

"Don't be ridiculous."

For a long while, the two watched the scented candle burn.

* * *

If only that had been the end of it. After returning to the main mountain, Yise was devoting himself to cultivation when a message talisman arrived. It ordered him to appear before the Law Enforcement Hall and answer the charge of killing a blood relative of the Jinju Kang family without permission.

'So it's finally here.'

Yise sighed and rose. Nothing had happened immediately after the mission, but Seol Ryeong had told him that the mood on the main mountain was troubling.

He headed straight to the Law Enforcement Hall, where a large crowd of Black Tortoise Hall members had gathered.

'Should I have at least reported this to my Hall Master?'

He had not realized they intended to descend on him en masse and gang up on him like this.

Upon entering the courtroom inside the Law Enforcement Hall, Yise was led to the defendant's seat by a Black Tortoise Hall Cultivator. The Law Enforcement Hall Cultivator who was supposed to deliver an impartial judgment was glued to Hall Master Seol Baek's side. They clearly intended to corner him.

"I am legacy disciple Yise. I have come in answer to your summons."

Black Tortoise Hall Master Seol Baek stood with his hands clasped behind his back. Cultivator Kang Ihyeon stepped forward and addressed Yise.

"I've read the mission report. It says you killed Gyuyoung."

"Yes. There was no other way."

"I'm certain I sent you a message explicitly denying permission."

Yise briefly steadied his breathing before answering. Then he gave the reply he had prepared.

"Had I let him live, the evil spirit would have massacred the entire Jinju Kang family you're trying to protect. Would you have been all right with that?"

"That is not for you to judge."

"It was my assigned mission, so it is for me to judge."