Chapter 104 Demon (4)
Yoon-seok looked in the mirror. At least there was no indication of evil over his head. But it was just that it wasn’t fun to bully someone. Yoon-seok knew there was nothing more to it than that. Nevertheless, was he nervous? He let out a sigh of relief.
“…”
Suddenly, he felt depressed. Why did he put off something so easy until now? Well, the reason was extremely simple: he was scared. He was scared that he would end up becoming a notorious evil. Just like the phrase ‘when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you,’ maybe he would end up becoming someone like Kang Hyung-woo or Lee Chang-hoon.
So he kept his options open and saw what he wanted to see. Although he didn’t think of himself as righteous or a completely good person, just as other people were judged as evil, he defined himself as evil.
“But we’re over the first obstacle for now.….’
Having the will to face himself head-on. In the true sense, that was just the first step.
It seemed the fog in front of him had finally cleared.
Yoon-seok recalled his memories one by one. It felt like he could look back at the past in a rational manner.
“…”
After killing, and more killing, Yoon-seok stopped lying to himself. Nothing could explain what he’d done so far as justice. If he had to put it on good terms, it was a necessary evil. Well, if he were to dive into the details, the term necessary evil wouldn’t be right after all. The motivation of Yoon-seok’s work was his desire for utopia.
‘Does that make me a demon……?’
He was starting to understand now why Cheon-ma insisted on using the word ‘Demon’ instead of other fancy words.
‘I guess she needed some other word that is neither good nor evil.’
What was good and evil in the first place? Was breaking the law evil? Then was abiding by the law being good? In the end, it was a standard to those who considered all aspects. Perhaps knowing that they chose not to be either good or evil.
And this was the fundamental difference between Yoon-seok and them.
‘Demon.’
The one who breaks what needs to be broken. The one who doesn’t think of themselves as righteous. The one who silently walks on their path. Yoon-seok decided then. If that was what it took to become a demon…
He would become one himself.
Yoon-seok questioned the past. What in the world did the Heavenly Sect want to destroy? At that time, Cheon-ma replied — the world full of hypocrisy. Yoon-seok asked why, and Cheon-ma smiled and concluded in one sentence.
—Because I don’t like it.
A simple reason. Maybe he wasn’t that different from her either, because Yoon-seok didn’t like it either. This world was full of people who could calmly smile while stepping on others after seeing them scream. So he decided to change it and punish those whom he thought were inappropriate for the world.
Nevertheless, he constantly contemplated whether his actions were good or evil. How unnecessary. In the end, neither the judgment mark, the laws of society, and even the bracelet could distinguish whether it was good or evil. What mattered was what he thought.
‘What is evil?’
The answer came easily.
‘Those who trample over others.’
Although there wasn’t much of a difference from the evil he defined on the Judgment Sword, there was a slight change. It didn’t matter if they enjoyed it or felt guilty. If they believed in exploitation and tried to harm the innocent, they were a villain. Yoon-seok finally made up his mind. If he had to be evil to get rid of evil, he would gladly accept it with a smile.
That was the right mindset as a person who walked on the Demon Path.
Whoosh!
Yoon-seok pulled out his sword and infused it with the eight-colored sword energy. It was still dazzling with many different colors. Yoon-seok pondered on what Cheon-ma said.
‘She told me to find my color and focus on it…’
Then which of these colors suited him?
‘It’s probably not this.’
Gentleness involved a mindset in embracing all things. However, Yoon-seok had no intention of enduring everything regardless of good and evil. The blue energy faded accordingly.
‘Neither illusion nor speediness.’
Yoon-seok’s path wasn’t multiple, nor invisible. Thus, the yellow and white energy faded. Yoon-seok repeated the same task over and over again.
It wasn’t dominance either. It wasn’t his path to be ruling over someone. Strongness and heaviness? They might be after the same thing, but they were certainly different. He couldn’t describe himself with these words. He decided to move forward even though he would be shaken a hundred times.
Then what was left was lightness and bluntness. But considering their nature, they weren’t able to define him.
Whoosh!
Soon after, Yoon-seok finally realized. It was nonsense. After all, this was not finding his color but fitting himself into a certain color.
‘I still have a long way to go.’
In the end, this was also a type of being At One With the Sword. It wasn’t just about unifying the sword and the body like what he was used to. The only difference was that he had to attach his whole self to the object called the sword. Yoon-seok closed his eyes and spent countless hours observing himself.
When he opened his eyes again.
Whooooooosh!
In front of Yoon-seok, a sword that he had never seen before was floating and exuding presence. Soon after checking the color of the sword, Yoon-seok smirked. Neither black nor white.
‘Gray….’
Although he’d struggled because it was neither one nor the other, gray was the color that suited him the most in the end. But he wasn’t disappointed. He accepted it wholly. If he could accept himself after looking into the mirror, he now knew that gray was one of the decent colors. Was that the reason why?
Yoon-seok was quite satisfied with the murky hue. It laid on neither side but always shook and bent, but its nature didn’t change at all…in a way, it might be the most human color.
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