The Demonic Cult Took the Wrong Disciple novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Wrong Face
Si-hyeon puts on the prodigy's silver mask so the boy can run, and the Heavenly Demon tears it off, looks at his plain face and smiles.
The silver mask was too small for Ryu Si-hyeon's face, and it smelled like the kid's hair oil.
He stood at the top of the Azure Cloud Sect's gate stairs, wearing Tak Ha-neul's white robes and Tak Ha-neul's name.
Below him, four hundred guests of the Spring Sword Gathering were trying not to stare at the Alliance's famous prodigy.
His master, Gye Dong-pil, had said they needed the boy's face on display all night.
His master had also called him the dull one for ten years.
So Si-hyeon had a plan, and it was a simple one.
Ha-neul was twenty, brilliant, and three hours gone over the back wall with a travel pouch and a borrowed horse.
Si-hyeon would stand here in the mask until sunrise, nod at old men, and let everyone think the prodigy was sulking.
Then every lantern on the gate went out at once.
Somebody screamed.
A moment later every torch along the wall burned red, and four hundred martial artists went silent.
Nobody drew a sword.
They stood frozen.
A man came up the gate stairs in a black robe with a red lining.
He was a head and a half taller than anyone in the courtyard, with shoulders as wide as a door.
His black hair hung loose to his waist, and he walked.
Behind him, the Azure Cloud sentries lay in neat rows, unconscious but breathing.
Nobody had bled yet, and Si-hyeon understood that this was a courtesy.
"Tak Ha-neul," the Heavenly Demon said.
His voice was soft, and it carried to the back of the courtyard.
"The Jade Sword. I've come to collect you."
Si-hyeon put his hand on his plain iron sword and pitched his voice young and cold.
"Try it."
He felt a little proud of that, saying it in front of everyone in the voice of a twenty-year-old with a better haircut than his.
Gye's hand closed on his sleeve from behind.
"Hold him here," Gye whispered in his gentlest voice, "or the sect is finished."
Si-hyeon thought his master meant to hold the line.
He drew his sword.
The Demon didn't even look at the blade.
He caught it between two fingers, and Si-hyeon's whole arm rang.
Then the Demon let go.
Si-hyeon stepped back and cut again, and the Demon walked straight into the cut.
When he was afraid, Si-hyeon got precise.
He used the first move of the Cloud Parting Form, then the second, and the Demon tilted his head a little to one side.
He looked like a man hearing a song he knew.
On the third move the Demon stopped using his fingers and used his palm.
Si-hyeon felt the blow in his teeth.
On the fourth move the Demon stopped dodging altogether.
Si-hyeon's sword cut through the sleeve of the black robe and drew a line along the Demon's forearm.
A bead of blood rose on the skin.
The Demon looked at it with pure delight.
"Again," he said.
Si-hyeon gave him the fifth move and the sixth.
At the seventh, the Demon caught his wrist and twisted, and the iron sword rang down the stairs, step after step, to the bottom.
The silence after it was the worst sound Si-hyeon had ever heard.
The Demon's other hand came up and took his jaw.
His palm covered the whole lower half of Si-hyeon's face.
It was warm.
Si-hyeon had expected a hand that felt cruel, and it felt like a hearth.
The Demon lifted, and Si-hyeon's heels left the stone.
"Let go," Si-hyeon said in the boy's voice, and it cracked halfway through.
"Soon," the Demon said.
His thumb moved along Si-hyeon's cheekbone, under the edge of the mask, slow and almost thoughtful.
Then he hooked the mask with it and tore it away.
It clattered down the stairs after the sword.
Si-hyeon hung there before four hundred guests, a plain man of twenty-seven with a once-broken nose and hair coming loose from a boy's topknot.
Behind him, Gye made a small sound.
Si-hyeon didn't look back.
"He isn't here," he said.
He said it loudly, because the guests were listening and one of them might be a spy who could carry the news to the boy.
"Tak Ha-neul left this morning for the capital. You're holding the man who stood in his place."
"Is that so?" the Demon said.
"Yes."
"A decoy."
"A senior brother," Si-hyeon said, "who is going to ruin your evening."
Every second he kept the Demon looking at him was a second the boy had to get away.
He held on to that thought with both hands.
The Demon looked at his face for a long moment.
Si-hyeon had braced for rage, or disgust, or the flat cold stare of a man who had just lost his prize.
The Demon didn't blink.
He studied Si-hyeon from his crooked nose to his tired eyes, slowly.
Then he smiled.
It was not the smile of someone who had made a mistake.
It was slow and warm, and it reached all the way to his eyes.
"Nobody told me," he said, "that you'd be so plain."
Then he threw Si-hyeon over his shoulder and walked back down the stairs.
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