Rise of The Four Guardians

Iksanun caught his breath. The battle was over, but it was hardly a victory. There was no saving Highland Central. It was all they could do to seal the corruption within the land, to prevent it from spreading to the rest of the Eastern Continent. The fight against the demons, corrupted soldiers and risen dead of the withering necropolis would have been all but impossible with just three Guardians, but Hong, Jiwan and Iksanun were not alone. They had not only the Sacred Beasts on their side, but their old friend Mushin. Together, the heroes made short work of the monsters seeking to escape the Highland and wreak havoc in the lands beyond.

By the gods, Mushin was finally back! While Iksanun found Jiwan distant, and Hong Sokyun to be rigid and no fun, he had always felt at ease around Mushin. Mushin had been a general in his own time, and had a good sense of humor about him. He was also noble to a fault. The last time the Dark Gate was opened, when the Dark Lord attempted to enter the Earthen Realm, it was Mushin's sacrifice that saved the day. Mushin bravely threw himself into the Dark Gate and sealed it from the other side. Seeing that Mushin had survived all these centuries only to fight once more at their side made lksanun ecstatic. Mushin's escape from the Dark Realm was the only conceivable silver lining to the tragedy that had befallen Highland Central.

Now that the corruption was sealed away, there was one thing that still troubled lksanun: the matter of the little girl Jiwan pulled from the rubble of Highland Central. The girl was already corrupted. Before long she would be transformed into a fiend and would be lost forever. The only merciful thing to do was to kill the girl before that happened. That was when Jiwan did the unthinkable, infusing her own chi into the girl in an attempt to purge the darkness from her. Jiwan had always been hard to read, but her actions had come as a great surprise to lksanun, who could see no conceivable good in them. Not only had Jiwan given up a considerable amount of her own power, but she was acting in contradiction to the will of the Heavens. She was forming an emotional attachment to the girl, one which might be exploited by the enemies of good.