Life (4)
One second.
My fist drove into Nok-hyeon's face.
Two seconds.
His intent lashed out, trying to slip free of my trajectory, but I struck the blood points in his legs and sent him rolling across the ground.
Three seconds.
While he tumbled, he coated his iron whip with poison and swung it at me. I knocked the whip aside with a hidden weapon, closed in, and kicked him in the face.
…
Ten seconds.
I stripped every weapon from Nok-hyeon, seized him by the collar, and lifted him off the ground.
“With this level of skill, you still intend to infiltrate the imperial palace?”
“…If I’m prepared to die.”
“Even if you’re prepared to die, you won’t get past the hidden guards. You might manage a mutual destruction against the weakest one, but if two or more activate a joint formation, you’re already a corpse.”
“…”
“Go back. You’re not ready yet.”
He bit down hard on his lip until blood dripped from it.
“…Until when? Until when do we have to keep training?”
“…”
“While we train, do those hidden guards just sleep? Do the emperor’s protectors never grow stronger? Are they all idiots?”
Nok-hyeon shouted, eyes bloodshot. A sinister aura seemed to flow from them.
“They’ll keep growing stronger too! So when? When can we ever take our revenge? Master was right about me.”
“I am that kind of person. Liking Gye-hwa and hating Man-ho is correct. But even if I have to throw away everything else in my life, I still have to take revenge!”
I looked at him with pity.
On the surface he radiated malice, yet his intent was a deep, dark blue.
The color of sorrow.
Thick and heavy.
He was crying without tears.
“What are you telling us to do?!”
Shhhk—
Presences stirred around us.
I frowned.
“…How did you get out?”
“The Grand Coordinator opened the formation for us. He told us to go help Hyeon-ie.”
“…That bastard of a Grand Coordinator.”
I clicked my tongue in irritation and scanned the surroundings.
Man-ho, Hae-ung, Gye-hwa, Cheong-ya, Yeol-o, Hui-a…
Roughly five hundred of my disciples had surrounded me.
“You’re planning to hold me here so Nok-hyeon can leave?”
“Yes. And not just Nok-hyeon—several others will go as well.”
Grind—
I ground my teeth and glared at them.
“Didn’t I tell you it would be suicide? You’re all far too weak.”
“Nok-hyeon just said it. We’re not the only ones getting stronger. Those hidden guards are surely training and growing stronger too.”
“…You’re really willing to go even like this?”
“We can’t just sit around doing nothing while time passes.”
“…Fine.”
I spoke while radiating killing intent.
“Let me make my position clear. I will not send a single one of you. Because every one of you is about to suffer an injury that will force you to rest for several days. Even if I have to put you in recovery, I absolutely will not…”
I drew my sword.
“…let any of you die.”
“Even if we die, we want to settle our grudges.”
Shrrring—
My sword sliced through empty air.
In the next instant, confusion appeared in my disciples’ eyes.
Wansuigungmurok!
The gap between those who had mastered this art and those who had not was like the difference between adults and children.
Could five hundred kindergarteners ever defeat a grown man?
Even without it, I was confident that my combat experience, sword art, and poison could tie down this many Peak-level experts who had only reached the Three Flowers Gathering at the Crown realm.
And now I was adding Wansuigungmurok on top of that.
“Everyone, fight as if you’re facing a mid-to-late Qi Condensation cultivator.”
I unleashed a lion’s roar infused with the Six Harmonies in every direction, severed their perceptions, and vanished from sight as I approached.
As my Three Flowers realm deepened and I continued discovering new colors of intent, the completion rate of Wansuigungmurok kept rising.
Now, unless the opponent was also at Three Flowers Gathering at the Crown, they had no chance of even touching me.
Thud, thud, thud!
I coated hidden weapons with paralyzing powder, sharpened them with intent through Wansuigungmurok, severed perceptions, and scattered them in every direction.
Dozens of disciples collapsed with a single move.
“Don’t panic! Everyone, tighten formation!”
Man-ho tried to steady the center with a shout, but I slipped behind him and struck the back of his neck with my sword hilt, knocking him unconscious.
Whoosh!
After that, I scattered poison powder to obscure vision and breathing, then knocked out the disciples one by one.
It took roughly three quarters of an hour to subdue all five hundred.
Afterward, I appeared before Nok-hyeon, who had been watching the entire battle with a stunned expression.
“Did you see what I just did?”
“…I couldn’t see it.”
“Exactly. That’s your level—your group’s level. You couldn’t even perceive it. With your current skill, you can’t hope to face superior experts. Understand?”
“…”
“Get up and call the servants in the estate. We need to move these people.”
He wore a bitter expression for a moment, then closed his eyes.
“…Understood.”
Some time later, with the servants’ help, I returned the disciples to the training ground.
In truth, they were not weak at all.
It was simply that Wansuigungmurok, the divine technique Kim Young-hoon had created to counter cultivators, was absurdly powerful.
With their current level, if twenty of them moved together they could safely infiltrate the palace, behead the emperor, and return alive.
‘But the cultivator clans will never allow such a large-scale movement.’
The idiotic reason was that it would give the Makri clan justification to attack the Jin clan.
So the Jin clan sent assassins one by one—sometimes two or three at most—without caring how many died.
‘Those Jin clan bastards…’
Treating human lives like nothing.
Perhaps they even viewed the assassins’ lives as mere tools in their political struggle against the Makri clan.
Just tools.
‘Makri clan are livestock. Jin clan are tools, then.’
I accepted the vengeful spirits and looked at the disciples who had been forcibly pushed into the Peak realm, wearing a bitter smile.
‘I thought they were better than the Makri clan, but it’s only a difference in degree and scale. The Jin clan are no different…’
Once the disciples woke up, I looked around the group and spoke.
“I know your abilities well. Many of you must be dissatisfied with the current situation. But at your level, you absolutely cannot contend with the hidden guards.”
I rose from my seat.
“Still, you’ll have complaints. Just like you said—if we grow stronger, won’t the emperor’s guards grow stronger too? You’re right. But—”
Whoosh!
I vanished like an afterimage before their eyes and reappeared, continuing.
“As you just saw, my martial arts exist on a completely different plane from ordinary Peak experts. If you can master this art, I’ll permit your assassination mission.”
Of course, since Wansuigungmurok required at least Three Flowers Gathering at the Crown as the minimum entry condition, it would never be easy.
Especially for those whose realms had been forcibly elevated by vengeful spirits, entering Three Flowers would be even harder than for ordinary people.
Nevertheless, I planted hope in my disciples.
An unattainable hope, so they wouldn’t die.
I lied.
“And the condition to enter this art is to defeat me. All five hundred of you may attack together. Ambush is fine. Poisoning my food at night is fine. Attacking while I sleep is fine. Taking hostages is fine. Use any method you want. If even one of you manages to subdue me, I’ll teach this art to everyone.”
Whether they defeated me or not, without reaching Three Flowers Gathering at the Crown, no one could ever enter Wansuigungmurok.
Yet I made the promise with an absurd, impossible fantasy.
“If you show me the possibility of surpassing me, I’ll pass down martial arts from another dimension!”
At those words, the intents of countless disciples stirred violently.
Anger, excitement, shock, joy, anticipation…
‘I can see them.’
Amid the flood of changing emotions, I could perceive several new shades I had never seen before.
‘So that’s why there are almost no reclusive eccentrics among Three Flowers experts.’
There were almost no Three Flowers experts living in seclusion in the mountains.
Most served as elders in major sects, involved in every major and minor affair.
I had wondered why there were no eccentrics who secluded themselves in deep mountains for closed-door training,
but in reality, observing the constantly shifting intents and emotions was the most beneficial thing for a Three Flowers expert.
So they remained in important positions within major sects, endlessly observing intents.
After making that promise to my disciples, a day passed.
Whoosh!
While I was in the outhouse, a sword suddenly shot out from the pile of excrement and stabbed toward me.
“Bold from the very first day.”
In an instant, I threw a hidden weapon beneath the excrement to deflect the sword, then poured paralyzing poison down below.
After finishing my business, I stood up and reached my hand beneath the outhouse.
Squelch!
An unpleasant sensation touched my fingers, but I ignored it and pulled out the disciple who had been paralyzed.
“Idiot. What were you going to do if you drowned in shit?”
I dragged the paralyzed disciple to a stream, threw him in, and pressed his blood points to slowly release the paralysis.
“A real expert won’t fall for an ambush from inside excrement. Focus more on your sword instead.”
After giving advice to the disciple who had attacked me from the excrement—U-ryuk—and additional guidance on controlling the flow of intent, I headed to the training ground.
Ting!
When I arrived, two disciples who had learned hidden weapons—Cheong-ya and Hwan-hyeong—each threw projectiles at me.
Whoosh!
At the same time, thin threads hidden in the sand of the training ground were revealed, trying to bind me.
Tap!
I leapt into the air to avoid the projectiles and threads, then drew my sword.
Danak Sword Art.
Valley of Bends!
Kwaaaang!
Sword Qi tore through the ground.
The disciples who had been hiding underground to ambush me were revealed, along with several of the traps they had set.
“Is that all for this morning?”
“Attack!”
However, the disciples led by Man-ho, wielding swords, surrounded me and formed a joint sword formation.
Inside the formation, densely packed intents from all around pressed down on me.
Intents so thick there was nowhere to dodge.
I grinned and looked around.
“A sword formation you created? A fine one that completely grinds down anyone trapped inside.”
If the opponent wasn’t me, it would have been excellent.
Valley of Bends!
Kwaaaang!
I once again sent Sword Qi into the ground and tore up the surroundings.
The formation’s structure was disrupted.
Yet under Man-ho’s command, the disciples instantly reformed the formation around me.
But it wasn’t enough.
“In the gap while you were reforming the formation, all of you died three times over.”
Shhhk!
Danak Sword Art.
Mountain Cry, Valley Echo!
The Sword Qi I launched in wave form sliced across the disciples’ chests.
“Stay focused. Would you do the same in real combat?”
Danak Sword Art.
Deep Mountain.
Flowing Ridge.
After penetrating the gaps in the formation with the Deep Mountain form, I created a path by thrusting with the Flowing Ridge form.
Danak Sword Art.
Layered Mountains.
At the same time, I scattered small bursts of Sword Qi in every direction to induce chaos.
Amid that chaos, I observed the trajectory of the formation.
‘If I break three points, it will collapse.’
I could read the flow.
I mixed in forms from the Single Vein Path as well, unleashing both Sword Qi and Sword Gang.
Roughly a quarter of an hour later.
The formation Man-ho had led ultimately collapsed, and the disciples were panting heavily.
“Many of you had distracting thoughts while forming the formation. Did being in a group make you complacent? The more you form groups and collectives, the more you must concentrate on your own position. When setting up a formation, think of it as a life-and-death duel one-on-one.”
After giving some advice about formations and a few disciples’ intents and distracting thoughts, I stepped out of the formation.
Step, step, step!
This time, disciples wielding long-range weapons—long swords, spears, and crescent blades—surrounded me and took their stances.
“So after the sword formation comes the long-spear formation.”
Their intention was to drain my stamina.
But I let out a hearty laugh and raised my sword.
“Go ahead and try.”
I wasn’t even using Wansuigungmurok, let alone poison.
Yet they were struggling against even this level of me.
Could they possibly drain my stamina?
I raised my sword and smiled at the disciples.
“If any of you so much as graze my clothes today, you’ll be training naked from now on.”
Countless spear strikes rushed toward me as I joked.
I assumed the rider’s stance and charged at the disciples.
* * *
A month passed.
“Spreading poison along the path I walk? Not bad at all.”
I chewed on an antidote and looked at Gye-hwa, who was pointing a dagger at me.
“Thanks to inhaling some poison, your fingertips are trembling and your breathing is quickening. You have a slight chance now. Come at me.”
Whoosh!
Gye-hwa’s dagger stabbed sharply toward me.
At the same time, her intent extended, trying to exchange distance with me.
Against an ordinary Peak expert, it might have been worth trying.
But—
“At your level, exchanging distance with me will be difficult.”
Even if the opponent had just reached Three Flowers and could only see purple, I now perceived dozens of shades.
The flow of intent I read was incomparable to other Peak experts.
To even attempt exchanging distance with me, one would need to at least reach Three Flowers Gathering at the Crown.
Ting, ting, ting!
After deflecting all of Gye-hwa’s dagger strikes, I extended dozens of branches of intent.
Each one represented the optimal movement I could make.
And from those movements, intent extended endlessly once more.
Gye-hwa tried to shake off the momentum of my intent with her own.
However, I was reading her intent in real time as it connected with mine.
Whoosh!
My sword pierced through her intent and stopped at her chin.
“Your focus and training are clean. But you lack experience. Spar with the others in a more realistic manner.”
“…Thank you.”
She pretended to offer a fist salute, then tried to shoot a thin thread at me with her fingertips.
Shhhk!
I extended a hidden weapon from my fingertips and cut the thread.
“Good. Keep training like that.”
I praised Gye-hwa.
* * *
Several months passed.
Half a year had passed since I promised to teach them Wansuigungmurok.
Though only half a year had gone by, the disciples had made remarkable progress.
They researched how to form joint sword formations and subdue me, and they racked their brains over methods of sudden ambushes and stealth attacks.
At the same time, to face me they needed to improve their own skills, so they trained their martial arts endlessly without rest.
Thanks to that, the sense of dissonance from having forcibly reached the Peak realm was gradually diminishing.
‘Honestly, until now they were only sharing the same world as Peak experts in name, but in reality they all had flaws that prevented them from being true Peak experts.’
But now those flaws were visibly disappearing.
When the disciples who had maximized their talent using vengeful spirits first reached the Peak realm, I felt no particular emotion.
Yet as I watched them train their martial arts and gradually eliminate the flaws in their movements, I began to feel moved.
And it wasn’t only the disciples who had grown.
‘I too have made even greater progress in understanding intent.’
After comprehending the six intents,
I began to perceive hundreds and thousands of shades derived from those six.
The speed of this rapid growth was something I had never experienced before.
‘Fast… No, is this still slow?’
I observed the dizzying array of human shades and pondered.
Some shades I could immediately understand what they represented, but others I couldn’t even begin to name.
Yet even as I comprehended these countless shades, there was one thing I still couldn’t grasp.
The final emotion among the Seven Emotions.
Desire.
‘Desire.’
No matter how much I observed, I couldn’t even catch a glimpse of the shade of desire.
‘What is desire…’
I dodged the disciples’ attacks while lost in thought.
* * *
“Desire, you say…”
Kim Young-hoon, whom I hadn’t seen in a long time, spoke while sipping his tea.
He had recently traveled throughout the Yeon Kingdom and gathered nearly all the martial artists who shared his will.
“Desire is the yearning hidden deep within. There is no human without desire. That’s why everyone expresses their desire in their own way while living. In a sense, desire is the driving force of human life.
What is your greatest yearning? If you keep pondering that, you’ll come to understand the color of desire as well.”
“Hmm, could you at least tell me what color the intent of desire is?”
Then I could at least try to see that color.
However, Kim Young-hoon shook his head.
“You already know this, don’t you? The colors Three Flowers experts see are all similar, yet each one is different. Both you and I see the intent of joy as golden, but the shade we each perceive has slight differences. Mine is pure gold, while yours is…”
“Golden.”
“Right. In that way, there are minute differences in the shades of intent each person can see… Especially with the intent of desire, the difference is severe. Because everyone’s yearning is different. That means only you can know the color of your own desire.
So all you can do is carefully observe your own yearning.”
“I see…”
Receiving Kim Young-hoon’s advice, I thought.
What I desired most.
What could that be?
Even after receiving the topic from Kim Young-hoon, I pondered and observed for several days.
That day as well, I was struggling against the disciples’ joint sword formation.
Clang, clang, clang!
While reading countless intents, finding the disciples’ openings and thrusting into them, dodging and deflecting the poison needles and hidden weapons flying without pause,
I was lost in thought.
‘My yearning.’
What this life’s me desired.
First, reaching Five Qi Consorting with the Origin.
But to reach Five Qi Consorting with the Origin, I first needed to understand what desire was.
And yet, my desire was precisely ‘knowing desire.’
‘This is troublesome.’
Then let’s broaden the criteria a little.
Why did I want to become a Five Qi expert?
‘To become a cultivator.’
Why become a cultivator?
To become a cultivator, enter the Ascension Gate, return to my original world, and see if I could make my regression ability disappear.
‘Then, why do I want to eliminate the regression ability?’
Because every life I’ve built will ultimately be denied because of the regression ability.
Therefore, I must discover the source of my regression ability and ultimately escape from regression.
‘Ah, I see.’
I felt like I roughly understood what my yearning was.
I hated having my life denied.
In other words, I wanted to live.
Yes.
‘I yearn for life.’
I didn’t need appetite, sexual desire, or the desire to sleep.
I didn’t need any other desire or craving in this world.
I simply…
‘…want to live.’
I didn’t want all the lives I had built to vanish meaninglessly in the reversal of time.
Even if I hadn’t achieved everything, I didn’t want my precious life—where I had accomplished so much—to be denied before the reversal of time.
Therefore, my desire could only be life itself.
“Haha, hahaha…”
While breaking through the disciples’ formation, even though I couldn’t find the intent of desire,
I realized how selfish I was.
“…Kids.”
Man-ho’s greatsword grazed past my eyes by a hair’s breadth.
Gye-hwa’s dagger stabbed toward me from behind.
When I leapt into the air to dodge, Cheong-ya attacked me from above while holding a hidden weapon.
I was clearly…
“I want you all to live.”
A selfish person who imposed his own desire on others like this.
Because I desired life, I was forcing life upon those who sought death.
A selfish bastard.
But even so—
“Because you are alive.”
These children, even while desiring death, were clearly alive.
Shhhk, shhhk, shhhk!
After knocking Cheong-ya down from the air, Man-ho and Gye-hwa attacked from both sides while Yeol-o thrust upward from below.
Nok-hyeon swung his iron whip to pressure my upper body, and the other children scattered poison powder.
Excellent.
Even though I could see the flow of intent, there was no way to escape.
‘I won’t be able to get out without using the pinnacle of Wansuigungmurok.’
Whoosh!
Immediately after, the children’s weapons stopped right in front of me.
Because the condition I had set was my ‘subdual,’ not my ‘slaughter.’
‘Subduing is much harder in the first place.’
And if I died, who would teach them?
“Well done. You’ve all grown a lot in such a short time.”
“…We know you have one more move hidden. If you use that, you’ll be able to escape leisurely.”
Man-ho spoke with a slightly dark expression, as if he knew I was hiding my claws.
“Correct. With just this one move, I can subdue all of you. And you couldn’t even draw out the twenty-second form, the ultimate technique of the Danak Sword Art. Let alone the twenty-third or twenty-fourth forms.”
“…”
“But now, there are no more flaws for me to point out. Training or sparring with me any further won’t improve anything. From now on, it’s the realm of your own enlightenment… You didn’t completely subdue me. Even if I bring out my hidden move, it’s too advanced for you to understand. However, you succeeded in pushing me this far by doing everything you could.”
Dong—
Suddenly, a loud bell rang from the direction of the cultivators’ residence.
“All mortals within the territory, hear this. All martial artists at the Peak realm and above are to gather at Unreung. There is an important matter to announce.”
Along with the bell, the voice of the elderly Grand Coordinator echoed throughout the Jin clan’s territory.
I roughly guessed what was happening.
“…You succeeded in pushing me this far, but since you didn’t subdue me, instead of the martial art I originally promised to teach, I’ll teach you a formation derived from that art.”
The name of the formation was Wolsoo Formation.
A joint sword formation Kim Young-hoon had derived from Wansuigungmurok during the cycle when we had formed the Divine Demon Front.
A formation used by experts at late-stage first-rate and above, its power was enough to capture mid-to-late Qi Condensation cultivators.
“So from now on, master this formation… and I hope you all survive.”
At my tone, confusion appeared in the disciples’ eyes.
In the end, I had succeeded in not sending even one of them on an assassination mission.
However, I could no longer resist the pressure from the cultivator clans.
The only gain was that I had used Kim Young-hoon to buy time and succeeded in changing the direction of the pressure.
From now on, my disciples would be assigned the mission of attacking the Makri clan’s territory instead of assassinating the emperor.
A mission that was harder than assassinating the emperor if difficult, easier if easy.
I would mobilize everything I could to increase my disciples’ chances of survival.
“…I will make sure you survive.”
Even though I had realized that my desire was life, I still couldn’t see the intent of desire.
Perhaps it was because I didn’t truly understand what life was.
But even if I didn’t understand life, I wanted my disciples to live.
‘Because you are alive.’
That alone was enough.
* * *
Some time later, I gathered with my disciples at Unreung and listened to the operation plan from Kim Young-hoon and the other Foundation Establishment cultivators.
Two months from now.
We would begin the attack on the Makri clan’s territory.