The Shadow's Deceit (6)
CRACK―CRACK―
Dark claws tore through the air with a sharp, eerie screech.
I twisted my body at the last instant, dodging the spectral form of Kang Min-hee and rolling backward at breakneck speed.
Whoosh―
In the blink of an eye, her ghost slashed across the empty space I had just occupied, slicing through the terrain of the Han-eum Swamp.
Where her spectral claw had passed, a visible surge of scorching cold qi bloomed in the air.
“Damn it.”
If I had been hit, I would have died.
The feeling was unmistakable.
Even with my Void Shattering and the circuit of Goe-gun, my current level was barely at the Heavenly Person stage.
I had no chance of stopping a Four Pillars expert like her.
“Did she realize I was Seo Eun-hyun?”
It didn’t feel quite right.
I examined her intent and clicked my tongue.
“The intent of crimson hatred… has already settled.”
If she had known I was a clone, the fury would have burned far hotter.
That meant one thing.
“She mistook me for someone else.”
That was the only possibility.
I hurriedly backed away and shouted at Kang Min-hee.
“Elder, why are you doing this? It must be a misunderstanding, right?”
Kang Min-hee let out a cold laugh.
“How could it be a misunderstanding? That darkness… the familiar feeling… and those familiar movements… You’re that person.”
“What person?”
“I don’t know. You never had a name, did you? You just kept calling me ‘shadow.’ Sometimes you acted like a mother, sometimes a father, sometimes a friend, sometimes a complete stranger. That’s your true nature, right? This time you’re pretending to be a complete stranger again.”
‘This damn woman.’
It was clear.
She wasn’t mistaking me for Seo Eun-hyun.
She was seeing me as someone else.
That someone carried the thick darkness of the death form I wore.
‘Once again, Kang Min-hee’s genius often led her to overtrust her own talent and leap to strange conclusions.’
That was why, a year and a half ago when we first arrived in Deungsunhyang.
We had fought, and her push for a certain project had caused significant losses to the company.
‘Well, that also taught me to memorize the World Human Rights Declaration, so in the end it wasn’t really a loss…’
No matter what.
She often made mistakes because she trusted her own genius too much.
This situation looked like the same thing.
‘Just looking at her state, even if I explain, she won’t listen.’
Boom—boom—boom!
The slash from her ghost exploded in a blue light beyond the horizon of the Han-eum Swamp, staining the sky.
The cold qi and ghost energy froze every inch of my body.
My movements gradually slowed.
Kang Min-hee pressed in for close combat, swinging her ghost wildly.
In an instant, her spectral form extended and stabbed straight into my right arm.
At the same moment, she shortened the ghost’s length and rushed forward, grabbing my collar with her right hand.
She yanked me violently toward herself.
‘This is the thigh-whipping move!’
Her intent locked onto the flow of power.
I was thrown straight down by Kang Min-hee.
Kang Min-hee was talented at everything.
Office work, sports, foreign languages—except for relationships and morality, she was the perfect woman.
One of her famous stories involved Jeon Myeong-hoon.
In his acting days, he had gone to the apartment of Oh Hye-seo, who was throwing a small party with female coworkers.
He had tried to sneakily grope her with a lame excuse, but Kang Min-hee had grabbed him by the collar and tossed him out.
After that, Jeon Myeong-hoon’s ankle was broken and he had to use crutches for six weeks.
In reality, when he hobbled around on crutches, he hadn’t even been able to look at Kang Min-hee for a while.
‘O Hye-seo told me about it back then, didn’t she?’
According to O Hye-seo’s account at the time, she had broken his ankle, smoked a cigarette, and calmly called a taxi to take him to the hospital.
Jeon Myeong-hoon had been humiliated, which was why he used crutches after a car accident, but thanks to O Hye-seo, everyone in the company now knew the whole story.
Kim Young-hoon and Oh Hyun-seok had wanted to report it, but since both sides stayed silent, the matter had quietly died down.
‘She’s truly formidable.’
Kang Min-hee was strong.
Even before arriving in Deungsunhyang, in her criminal days she already possessed the skills of a master martial artist.
I twisted my body in mid-air, planted my foot on the ground, and pushed off with the same leg, slamming my fists together.
The Blood Sea Martial Array activated, summoning a vast crimson sea between my fists and hers.
I used that sea to pull myself away from her.
And in that moment, I suddenly understood.
‘Kang Min-hee…’
Zzt!
The thread of intent had targeted my neck.
I hurriedly dodged the next slash from her ghost, sweat beading on my forehead.
She had reached the pinnacle through her own experience using the martial arts she learned in the Earth days—judo and ghost cultivation.
Without the help of someone who had reached Path-Crossing Tribulation-Heaven like Kim Yeon, without enduring hardships under Changhoza’s tutelage like Oh Hyun-seok, and without a talent focused purely on martial arts like Kim Young-hoon, she had climbed to the pinnacle through nothing but her own talent and effort.
‘Indeed, she is a genius.’
* * *
‘This is insane.’
I clicked my tongue inwardly and focused my consciousness on Seo Lip.
On Seo Lip’s side, something enormous was happening.
In front of me, shocking revelations poured out one after another.
“You were… engaged to Heon-won?”
“That’s right. I was engaged for political reasons rather than love. Of course, Heon-won has suffered greatly since then, but back when he was younger, he was quite handsome. I wasn’t opposed to it. He seemed to have a strong impression of me as well.”
Yeon Wi continued.
“At first, it was more friendship than romance. No, when we fought against the Black Dragon King, I realized we felt like sworn brothers. Our personalities matched perfectly… If things had continued like that, friendship could very well have turned into love. As long as Heon-won hadn’t fallen for another woman.”
A bitter expression settled on her face.
“Heon-won said he had fallen in love with another woman of Geumsin Cheonroemun and apologized to me. I was a little disappointed but accepted it. In the end, it would benefit the Geumsin Cheonroemun sect either way. If it had been a love marriage instead of a political one, I would have happily canceled the engagement to benefit the sect even more. And then… I wanted to see who that bold disciple had stolen his heart.”
Before me lay the shocking past of Heon-won and Yeon Wi.
On the other side, the relentless pursuit between Kang Min-hee and Seo Lip continued.
I quickly turned my brain, trying to figure out who Kang Min-hee was mistaking Seo Lip for.
The thinking process accelerated strangely.
It felt as if the relationship map between humans was unfolding right in front of my eyes.
How to twist that map to gain the maximum benefit.
Endless ideas and plans flooded my mind.
‘What an odd feeling.’
Did I even have this kind of talent?
I tore apart the relationship map and traced the “shadow” that Kang Min-hee was explaining while attacking Seo Lip.
Through the map, I sensed something strange.
‘The person she calls “shadow” is someone I was with starting from Earth.’
That meant one of the Terminus Ones.
But the characteristics she described were “Seo Eun-hyun.”
But Seo Eun-hyun was different from the shadow.
‘What the hell? Who exactly is the shadow?’
I issued a command to Seo Lip.
“Ask her several questions about who the shadow is.”
Seo Lip followed my order and hurled the dialogue I had prepared on the spot at Kang Min-hee.
* * *
“Heh heh, Ms. Kang. Why are you like this? Wasn’t it all just a joke? You must have been displeased that I played a prank once I joined the company, right?”
[You… you really are that person. Not just at work! Not in my entire life! If you hadn’t been there, I would have been living quite normally by now!]
Kang Min-hee had already transformed into a spectral ghost and unleashed her claws even more viciously.
* * *
‘From her reaction, the one who influenced Kang Min-hee from before the company days is the shadow.’
Kang Min-hee lost her father, so is it her mother? No, the mother I once met didn’t have the personality to say such things.
Then…
I quickly processed the information.
‘Kang Min-hee has a mental illness I never knew about.’
She had been hallucinating because of it, and she was explaining her misfortune through those hallucinations.
Right now, she was mistaking Seo Lip’s characteristics for her own hallucination.
I had always thought I needed to be treated.
Thinking about it now, that reaction had been over the top.
But whatever the reason, I had judged it that way.
Now it seemed the one who needed treatment was Kang Min-hee, not me.
And then, the words that followed made me jolt.
“The name of the disciple Heon-won loved is Cheonra.”
“There is no female disciple named Cheonra in our Geumsin Cheonroemun sect.”
“We searched even among those who had mastered gender transformation.”
“I even contacted the Water Realm back then and asked the Water Realm’s main sect.”
“But even the Water Realm had no record.”
“Heon-won… at some point became mentally ill from falling in love with a woman who didn’t exist.”
[!!!]
I felt bewildered by the truth.
‘Because of her mental illness, she loved the Geumsin Cheonroemun sect, and because of that illness, Heon-won and I couldn’t protect it, so I tried to kill them?’
For a moment, irritation toward Heon-won rose.
But then something felt off.
A cultivator at the Integration stage was not simply a monster of raw power.
The larger the consciousness domain, the more profound the understanding.
Integration was not something madness could easily overcome.
Her spirit had become too strong.
How, then, had Heon-won fallen into madness?
“Why did he fall into mental illness?”
Yeon Wi gazed at the sky for a long time.
A trace of bitterness, a trace of sorrow, and a trace of fear flowed from her intent.
“I investigated it thoroughly. The process was so vast it’s almost impossible to recount… but to cut to the chase, I went to the Myeonggwi Realm and learned the cause of Heon-won’s mental illness.”
‘Heon-won who created a nonexistent woman and loved her.’
I felt a strange overlap with the Kang Min-hee currently fighting Seo Lip.
She, too, created nonexistence and hated it.
‘Perhaps there is a clue to solving Kang Min-hee’s problem.’
I focused on Yeon Wi’s words.
“What was the cause?”
“…God.”
“God…?”
“Heon-won had his consciousness shattered by facing a being grand enough to be called a god.”
“Beings of too vast a gap will develop mental problems even if they appear in dreams.”
A great being.
A True Immortal.
Perhaps Kang Min-hee’s illness was related to a True Immortal.
“And… I don’t know if it was the aftereffect, but the Gwanghan Realm suddenly wanted to erase the traces of the Geumsin and certain individuals.”
“By Baek-woon’s order, I destroyed the Geumsin Cheonroemun myself.”
“Using the divine artifacts of the Eumhon Gwisimun and the secret arts I learned in the Myeonggwi Realm, I forcibly sealed and treated Heon-won’s consciousness.”
From Yeon Wi’s mouth, a secret from forty thousand years ago poured out.
“After the treatment, Heon-won firmly believed that I had killed his true love.”
Memories had been distorted during the treatment.
After that, everything followed.
I sacrificed the divine artifacts of the Eumhon Gwisimun to cut Heon-won’s realm and inflict fatal wounds, forcing him to recover in Geongon City.”
This was the truth from forty thousand years ago.
Yeon Wi, under Baek-woon’s decree as the Saintess of Gwanghan, had destroyed the Geumsin Cheonroemun herself.
Even during that, she had tried to treat Heon-won.
The treatment succeeded, but at the cost of memory distortion, causing Heon-won to try to kill Yeon Wi.
I looked at Yeon Jin inside and thought.
‘How tragic.’
Then, a strange feeling suddenly arose.
‘Was Heon-won tragic? Or was Yeon Wi?’
For some reason, I felt Heon-won, who had his spirit toyed with by a great being, was more tragic.
* * *
‘Goddamn original body.’
Kang Min-hee was going completely insane!
After I called her “Ms. Kang,” she had completely lost her mind and charged at me.
‘Then is Heon-won tragic? I feel more tragedy in Yeon Wi, who was betrayed by her lover… but the original body and I have wildly different opinions.’
Bang!
My gut flesh was torn open by her ghost.
‘This won’t do.’
If this continued, I would die.
Death was one thing.
But losing the identity I had prepared in Black Ghost Valley would be painful.
‘I had even agreed with Seo Lip to enter Jeungryong Jinin’s pocket dimension together using his identity… how could I lose this chance…’
Absolutely unacceptable.
I quickly turned my thoughts.
The blood of Won Rip was cultivating the Heavenly Race body cultivation method.
I could use the Invisible Sword and Goe-gun’s circuit.
But I had not yet mastered the Earth Race body cultivation method.
‘Without Heaven-Earth Unity Qi, I cannot overcome the two-realm gap.’
So, how could I defeat this Kang Min-hee who wouldn’t listen no matter what?
How…?
As I was pondering.
I suddenly observed the Void Kingized Won-yeong inside my body.
‘Wait, is that possible?’
It seemed like a crazy idea, but I felt that with Seo Lip’s body, it might work.
Since I couldn’t overcome the two-realm gap, I would just need to create a one-realm gap.
So.
‘While running away from Kang Min-hee, I will immediately raise my body to the Heavenly Person realm!’
Whoosh—
Absorbing the yin energy from the surroundings and the ghost energy emanating from Kang Min-hee, I began refining my consciousness toward the Heavenly Person qi formation.
‘Raising to the Heavenly Person realm!’
Now!
Now!
Now!