Black Swan Chapter 12

The shamans of the Eastern Peninsula without exception serve a personal spirit; I speculate that the reason Lee Hwa chose to refer to himself as a ‘god’, of all things, is also closely related to this. Lee Hwa is a personal spirit descended upon the northern part of the Eastern Peninsula, and the people serve him and pray for blessings. Lee Hwa has transformed an entire nation into a shamanic shrine.

Lee Hwa (李火) is a name formed by combining the surname Lee (李) and the given name Hwa (火), and it is bestowed upon only the head of the bloodline generation after generation. Using a childhood name while a successor, upon ascending the throne as king, one inherits the name Hwa (火) and becomes Lee Hwa….

The young snake closed the book and opened Deng Li’s report once again.

Lee Hwa. The prophet who rules the ‘Kingdom of God’. The king of the northern part of the Eastern Peninsula.

Overthrew his brothers 49 years ago and was proclaimed Lee Hwa. Exceptionally cruel and suspicious, he killed every single one of his blood relatives, and it is said that the bloodline is currently in danger of dying out. The current Lee Hwa’s power of prophecy is evaluated as the strongest among the thirty-six Lee Hwas who have ruled the ‘Kingdom of God’….

The most prominent characteristic of the current Lee Hwa was secrecy. Wary of assassination, he altered his face through plastic surgery as soon as he ascended the throne, and it is said that he has never revealed his appearance to the outside world even once to this day. To the extent that among the Ho Clan (虎族), the noble class of the ‘Kingdom of God’, a joke circulated that the current Lee Hwa must have undergone as many plastic surgeries as his age in years. The inner circle permitted direct access to him was also extremely small, and one of those people was Major General Lee Hwanmae, commander of ‘Mae-Ran-Guk-Juk’—the secret society unit that guarded the border for seven years—and Lee Hwa’s proxy.

The young snake quietly looked down at the report. In the photo attached to the report, Lee Hwanmae was staring straight ahead with a soft smile.

Hwanmae (煥梅)….

It was a name that suited the female protagonist of a classical novel better than a man. This fair and elegant name held the young snake’s gaze with strange persistence. Fire Hwan (煥), Plum Blossom Mae (梅).

Fire and a plum tree; what a strange combination for a name. Isn’t fire something that burns trees? Because they are mutually incompatible, they are not suitable to combine into a name. Why did that bastard’s parents give their son a name like this?

The young snake kept staring at that name. He wondered why this name—fair and elegant, yet awkward in its combination—kept catching his eye.

Every phenomenon has a cause. Wanting to strip away the veil concealing that cause, the young snake sank deep into contemplation.

∞ ∞ ∞

Lee Hwanmae looked beyond the reed field. Countless feathers were fluttering from the overwhelmingly massive body of a python. It was on a scale incomparable to the snake he had first witnessed seven years ago. Atop the python, hundreds of birds of prey flapped their wings, letting out sharp shrieks. A gust of wind passed by, scattering the hair that draped long over Lee Hwanmae’s forehead.

Are we finally meeting?

Tonight, he will finally come face to face with the young snake. In truth, Lee Hwanmae was not particularly pleased with this meeting, but even so, he could not avoid it. Because this meeting was now fate. No… destiny.

A destiny newly designed by Lee Hwa. Into that destiny, the young snake and Lee Hwanmae would soon be swept irresistibly.

The time when the current Lee Hwa first recognized the existence of the young snake was seven years ago, when Mukso made its first attempt to invade the peninsula. Even then, Lee Hwa did not pay much attention to the young snake.

A fellow who seems moderately usable, at best, in the Mukso camp.

That single line was the extent of the evaluation Lee Hwa gave the young snake. The young snake, who had shown somewhat unusual behavior such as carrying out land reclamation work along the Insal River border line, returned to the main force after two years and quickly faded from Lee Hwa’s memory.

It was merely one year ago that Lee Hwa began paying attention to the young snake in earnest. Around that time, Lee Hwa was examining the figures of the Mukso camp one by one for intelligence-gathering purposes when he discovered a secret hidden in the young snake’s destiny. And….

Here, Lee Hwanmae stopped his thoughts and knitted his brows slightly.

The greatest utility of prophecy probably lies in imparting true enlightenment to human beings. The Industrial Revolution, which fundamentally changed human life, caused a tremendous disaster from a macro perspective. Resource depletion. Explosive population growth. Abnormal climate phenomena. World wars. Even while running toward a path of death, people harbored the illusion that they were running toward a path of survival. In ‘those days’, people believed. Though not every country, a considerable number of nations did not worry about starvation, and since the majority of people enjoyed high-end mobile phones and the internet, the world would change for the better as time went on.

To the people of the 29th century, ‘those days’ are a biographical movie of Marie Antoinette. In the movie, Marie Antoinette trails the hem of her extravagant dress as she roams the banquet hall. While the audience envies Marie Antoinette, they also deeply sympathize. Because they know all too clearly what kind of end awaits the young, beautiful queen.

Just as the people of those days enjoyed appreciating ancient works of art in museums, the people of the 29th century enjoy watching movies produced in those days. While envying the splendor of ‘those days’ in the movies, they feel regretful. They even feel fury, saying that because the people of the past wasted resources so recklessly, the people of this era suffer.

In this era, even the country with the world’s largest economy has a standard of living inferior to that of the Third World in the mid-20th century. In the late 20th century, fighting with guns and swords on horseback occurred only in places like Africa, West Asia, and the Middle East, but after World War III ended ‘those days’, ancient combat methods established themselves as the global mainstream. The prophecy of a certain great scientist who said, ‘The Fourth World War will be fought with sticks and stones,’ had come true.

Even values had changed drastically, so the people of this era are obsessively attached to nature protection. There are even a considerable number of countries that have not paved roads for hundreds of years. This is because, including the abnormal climate phenomena that grew even more severe after ‘those days’ ended, they are still suffering to this day from the lingering effects of radiation caused by nuclear war, infertility, and the birth of deformed infants. If human beings had possessed the power of prophecy, none of these disasters would have occurred.

A human being is a creature that cannot see even an inch ahead. But Lee Hwa was different. As a prophet, he caught glimpses of the destinies of countless people. Even the terrifying destiny prepared in the young snake’s distant future.

The young snake who had always remained quietly silent and stepped back. For the next five years, he would pay more attention to the kingly way than the despotic way, and to farmland rather than the battlefield. But starting from age 34, he would gradually change. He would transform into a type that the current young snake would probably utterly despise—a butcher of men who would be counted among the worst of his present self. His interests would deviate toward the despotic way over the kingly way, and toward the battlefield over farmland. At age 38, he would finally pull out and brandish the sword he had kept hidden only in his heart for a long time, and ascend to the throne of king himself. After that….

Here again, Lee Hwanmae stopped his thoughts. The future after that was chilling enough that even Lee Hwanmae, a born cold-blood, did not want to continue thinking about it.

You are a black swan. A black swan that will bring an extreme shock no one anticipated. That is what you are.

Only after catching a glimpse of the black swan did Lee Hwa gain true enlightenment. As to the real reason the goddess of fate spun her wheel to weave a massive, complex net. Through that, Lee Hwa finally found the key to turning a path of death into a path of survival.

The business designed by the great god begins now.

In truth, Lee Hwanmae personally did not feel inclined toward carrying out this business at all. One of the drawbacks of prophecy lay in the fact that it imparted prejudice to a person. The young snake was now twenty-eight years old. A young man who still had more interest in the kingly way than the despotic way, and in farming than in war. Perhaps if he knew his own destiny, the one who would be most shocked and shed tears might be the young snake himself.

Even so, Lee Hwanmae already loathed the young snake. Starting from the fact that the guy was a born pederast like his own half-brother Yoo Nanoh, it did not sit well with him. Even as a professional engaged in politics—the domain of villains—Lee Hwanmae disliked the young snake. From his perspective, the future snake was the worst kind of tyrant.