Dark Sky Lord

Nam Jo-Gyeong accepted the ten sheets of sheepskin paper handed to him by Dok-Go Mu-Ryeong and spoke in a cold voice towards Yu Baek-Ha.

"Castellan, you should come and check. If it's a mess, you never know what might happen, right?"

He never bothered to examine the sheepskin paper. He knew it was something that shouldn't be looked at.

"Don't worry. I don't want to suffer any more torture from this kid."

When Yu Baek-Ha nervously replied, Nam Jo-Gyeong turned his head and looked at Dok-Go Mu-Ryeong.

Dok-Go Mu-Ryeong, who stood silently, had no expression on his face.

'Little Devil, he really is like a devil. To open Yu Baek-Ha's mouth in just one day after not hearing a word for five days.'

Anyway, having achieved his primary goal, Nam Jo-Gyeong asked Dok-Go Mu-Ryeong with satisfaction.

"Is there anything else you need?"

"Starting tomorrow, please provide him with a day's worth of meals in the morning. The sound of coming and going is bothering me. And give him the interpretation once every ten days."

That wasn't difficult at all.

"Understood. And since you've handled the mission well, I'll tell to pay more attention to the food."

Clang!

After the sound of the iron door closing at the entrance of the passage, Dok-Go Mu-Ryeong carried the food and approached the bed.

Although the food was contained in a wooden barrel, the quality of the food was better than expected.

He scooped out the food from the small barrel and placed it on the bed. It was a meal for Yu Baek-Ha.

Yu Baek-Ha sat up on the bed. His feet were still shackled, but his hands were free.

Yu Baek-Ha forced himself to eat the meal that Dok-Go Mu-Ryeong handed him, chewing it with difficulty.

Wasn't he the one who had endured excruciating pain? He couldn't chew the food freely because his teeth had weakened.

Dok-Go Mu-Ryeong ate the food in the bowl without paying much attention.

The quiet meal between the two ended after half an hour passed.

Dok-Go Mu-Ryeong took out an empty wooden barrel through the hole in the iron door and sat on a chair next to the bed.

“Do you know how I obtained the Thousand Characters Martial Scripture?”

Yu Baek-Ha slowly opened his mouth to speak.

Dok-Go Mu-Ryeong sparkled his eyes and leaned closer to listen.

For the past ten days, Yu Baek-Ha had been deciphering ten characters a day and talking about various things he knew.

Most of it was about basic ways of living in the world and fundamental studies like the Four Books and Five Classics.

I listened to all of it without complaint. No one had ever bothered to tell me such mundane and trivial stories before.

But what I was more curious about was the Thousand Characters Martial Scripture. And finally, Yu Baek-Ha brought up the topic of the Thousand Characters Martial Scripture.

“Haha, you probably don't know. Well, if it wasn't for a coincidence, I wouldn't have obtained it either.”

Baek-Un Confucian Academy was the oldest academy in Zhengzhou.

Five years ago, when Yu Baek-Ha took office in Zhengzhou, Baek-Un Confucian Academy was in ruins with only ten scholars left.

As soon as he became the principal of Zhengzhou, he made several plans to revive Baek-Un Confucian Academy.

The first plan was to repair the old buildings of the academy and renovate the garden. He believed that creating a study-friendly environment was crucial to prevent scholars from leaving.

The problem was funding.

Baek-Un Confucian Academy had been struggling for a long time, so there was no money to renovate the garden.

He decided to start by finding something he could solve on his own, and first on his list was organizing the bookshelves.

The rainwater had been leaking into the library for some time now, so on rainy days, it was always damp. Moreover, since there was no one specifically in charge of managing the library, the classification was a mess.

How can one call themselves a scholar if they can't even properly manage the books?

With determination, he meticulously sorted and organized the tens of thousands of books.

And then one day...

While moving the rotten bookshelves to one side because of the rainwater, the ceiling, which had turned black, collapsed.

At that moment, a small chest with a lock and a skeleton with only bones remaining fell from the ceiling along with decaying clothes.

It seemed like it wouldn't be good if rumors spread about this.

He first took care of the corpse and buried it in the backyard. Then, that night, he opened the chest.

The lock was so old that it easily broke after a few strikes with a hammer.

Inside the chest, there was one book.

Upon seeing that book, Yu Baek-Ha felt greatly disappointed.

He secretly hoped that there would be something valuable inside, but it turned out to be just a thin book.

However, he was born to be a scholar.

Curiosity arose as he looked at the book. What kind of book was it that was found alongside a corpse?

Driven by curiosity, he examined the book closely.

The text was written in electronic font. It felt strange and fascinating, but it definitely couldn't be called handwriting.

The total number of characters was one thousand. It was barely ten pages long, even if you called it a long book.

But the content was completely incomprehensible. There were no breaks or connections, and the sentences didn't flow together.

He couldn't even grasp the meaning of the content, which was only a thousand characters long, despite claiming to be able to read it with five fingers in Henan!

With frustration building up, he postponed organizing his desk and poured all his mental energy into deciphering the contents of the booklet.

One day, two days... one month...

He only looked at the book, reducing even his sleeping time.

After six months like that, when his face became gaunt, people started to worry about his health.

But one day, after a hundred days had passed, as he absentmindedly stared at the book, blood suddenly poured out of his nose.

In a hurry, he wiped away the blood with his sleeve. However, the blood had already soaked deep into the paper.

It was at that moment when he saw the writing on the other side due to the seeping blood.

"Huh?"

His eyes widened in surprise.

If an ordinary person, or even someone who had studied some writing, had seen what he saw, they would have casually overlooked it. The characters on the opposite side appeared upside down, and there were only a few characters at that.

But in his eyes, which had been staring at the booklet day after day, the characters on the front and back seemed to connect as one.

He wondered, 'Could it be?' and tried inserting the characters on the back between the characters on the front one by one to read them.

He couldn't understand the content right away, but one thing was clear.

The characters on the front and back had to be inserted in between to form a proper sentence.

Filled with excitement, he deciphered the sentences that continued from that day on.

Each sentence consisted of about ten characters. Upon briefly examining the content, it seemed to be about medicine and also seemed like secret techniques of xian cultivation.

The content was far from the pure knowledge he had acquired.

In order to interpret the writing, he searched for medical texts and studied xian cultivation and Buddhist scriptures.

Sometimes, the content was so absurd that he doubted whether he had interpreted it correctly.

After three years, when Yu Baek-Ha was halfway through deciphering the untitled book, a friend from Shanxi stopped by on his way.

He subtly talked about the book he had discovered to his friend, Yu Baek-Ha.

Perhaps he didn't know whether he was trying to boast under the influence of alcohol. Or maybe he didn't know if he was trying to make excuses. After promising to establish the White Cloud Confucian Academy, he had wasted three years doing nothing.

“It was a very strange book. It only had a thousand characters, but I struggled for three years to decipher it, hehehe.”

“Really? Show it to me.”

Only then did he realize his mistake.

It wasn't just a simple book, but a book related to people's deaths. It could have easily caused bloodshed.

After much hesitation, he showed the book.

'As long as you don't tell me how you deciphered the contents, it doesn't matter.' He thought that way.

After reading the book for a while, his friend lowered his head and put it down.

“I have no idea what the content is.”

On the evening when his friend left, he finally decided to burn the book after much hesitation.

And one year later, at a time when everyone was asleep, the masters of Gangho came to the White Cloud Confucian Academy.

“That friend lived in Tae-Won. It seems like he went back home and transcribed what he memorized and a few words I told him. But even after a year, he couldn't decipher the contents of the writing, so he went to find Lord Castle's cousin. And ten days later... he died. Three days before I was brought here.”

Yu Baek-Ha's eyes trembled with a cold gaze.

He seemed to think that his friend's death was his fault and felt guilty.

“But how did you know it was the Thousand Characters Martial Scripture?”

“It was because of a few words I told him. The phrase that I thought was just a secret technique turned out to be a martial art technique.”

If those two knew, it wouldn't be a secret anymore.

Dok-Go Mu-Ryeong, who had lived in Room 18 in Secret Prison, knew that better than anyone else. Wasn't it because most of the people who died here were mocked for their mouths?

In his judgment, it was only natural that Yu Baek-Ha was brought here and that his friend died.

‘That's what my father said. Real important secrets should never be known by anyone other than yourself.’

Chapter 2 Escape, Towards the World

As darkness receded and dawn approached, time continued to flow without pause.

The air in Room 18 in Secret Prison had become oppressively humid. The month of June was passing by.

On that afternoon, the air in Room 18 in Secret Prison was unusually heavy and damp.

It wasn't just because of the heat. It wasn't even because the monsoon rain had been falling for three days straight.

After finishing the final letter, Yu Baek-Ha put down his brush and spoke.

"Huhuhu, it's already been a hundred days."

That's right. It had been a hundred days since Yu Baek-Ha entered Room 18 in Secret Prison.

Yu Baek-Ha laughed and looked at Dok-Go Mu-Ryeong.

His expression and appearance were not much different from a hundred days ago. However, there were many changes in Yu Baek-Ha's eyes.

The biggest change among them was in Dok-Go Mu-Ryeong's eyes.

Although it was a subtle change that couldn't be felt from the outside, Yu Baek-Ha could clearly sense the warmth in his previously cold eyes.

"Time flies, they say that time is something you can't catch. It really is fast."

"I'm sorry."

The tone had changed. The voice, which had no emotional change to the point of sounding gloomy, now had a faint emotion.

Moreover, the informal language had changed to polite language.

It wasn't as much resentment, but considering the change over a hundred days, it was somewhat satisfying.

Yu Baek-Ha opened his mouth with a calm voice that seemed to transcend life and death.

“Don't worry about me. Thanks to you, I can spend my last moments happily and die peacefully. So I'm grateful instead.”

Dok-Go Mu-Ryeong silently looked at Yu Baek-Ha.

Yu Baek-Ha knows that the promised date has already passed.

Because a hundred days have passed.

But it's definitely not like that.

Yu Baek-Ha made a promise with Dok-Go Mu-Ryeong on the same day, but didn't he make a promise with Nam Jo-Gyeong for the next day?

The deadline for the promise with Nam Jo-Gyeong still has one day left.

Just one day's difference.

Yu Baek-Ha didn't realize it until now.

How important that one day's difference is.

Dok-Go Mu-Ryeong didn't tell him about it. And he didn't plan to tell him until Yu Baek-Ha died.

Because everything depended on it.

'Instead, I will definitely fulfill your request.'

I have heard, learned, and mastered many things over the past hundred days.

The principles that everyone should naturally follow, things that should not be done, things that must be done, and how to deal with all kinds of people.

Most of them had nothing to do with life in Room 18 in Secret Prison.

But while learning them, Dok-Go Mu-Ryeong could seriously reflect on his own existence such as 'Why am I alive?', 'What will I do while I'm alive?'.

If his father had given birth to him, Yu Baek-Ha would be the one who awakened his spirit.

The person who breathed life into the frozen rocks of the Eastern Land, Yu Baek-Ha is the person.

But... soon he will have to take Yu Baek-Ha's life with his own hands.

A heavy feeling, first emotion he felt after his father passed away weighs on his chest.

But he knows better than anyone that he cannot hesitate.

Nam Jo-Gyeong will come when the day breaks.

No one knows when he will come. He must finish everything before then.

Dok-Go Mu-Ryeong steadied his wavering gaze and quietly opened his mouth.

"If I have the chance, I will definitely pass on your message to your daughter."

"I would appreciate it if you could do that."

“Is there anything else you desire?”

Yu Baek-Ha lay still on the stone bed, his head propped up. His expression, illuminated by the flickering lamp, remained calm.

Dok-Go Mu-Ryeong approached the table and picked up three needles, each five inches long.

At that moment, Yu Baek-Ha turned his head and looked at Dok-Go Mu-Ryeong.

“Come to think of it, there's one thing I've been forgetting all this time.”