Farewell, Then
“Follow me.”
The opening of the great war belonged to Seo Eun-hyun.
Whoosh!
Light.
A torrent of seven-colored starlight seemed to blaze from his palm, then it coalesced into a single, vertical slash that slammed straight into the sphere.
Kwaaaddd!
Starlight carved deep grooves across the sphere’s surface.
I activated my Ghost King Transformation.
Because the surrounding ghosts flooded the area, the eighteen heads that had shattered earlier snapped back into place in an instant.
Great Desert Dead Sea Formation—Food Demon Dissolution.
Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!
The eighteen heads opened their mouths at once.
From those maws poured an absurdly powerful suction force that began devouring every strand of ghost qi and yin energy within reach.
Absurd power surged!
Ooooooh—
Greenish ghost flames erupted violently from the eye sockets of the eighteen heads.
At the same time, the surrounding yin energy weakened temporarily, forcing the ghostly hordes to recoil.
But that was only the beginning.
The next stage of the Yin Soul Ghost Curse I had inherited from the cursed meridian in the past loop—the method that allowed me to reach Nascent Soul and then Four Pillars.
Black Blood Tears Flower.
Tsuuaaaraa—
Black tears of mourning dripped from the eighteen skulls.
The tears scattered across the ground and immediately began blooming into sinister curse-flower buds.
‘I had already been on the verge of independently evolving the Yin Soul Ghost Curse into something that would evolve into Black Blood Tears Flower back in the tenth loop.’
The curse-flower buds looked disturbingly like the hideous cluster I had created with the Black Ghost Curse Banner in that loop.
And the malice emanating from them was almost identical.
If I hadn’t discovered the White Orchid Blessing Gate at that time, I would have obtained this Black Blood Tears Flower.
Of course, I had come close, but this version was still a masterpiece crafted by the cursed meridian of Black Ghost Valley over countless generations.
The curse-flower buds I had made with the Black Ghost Curse Banner back then had been the “end,” but here, Black Blood Tears Flower was only the “beginning.”
Kiiyaaaaaaa—
Kkwaaaaaaaa—
Hwaaaaaaaa!!!
The buds bloomed.
At the same time, screams louder than any ghostly cry filled the entire field.
The black flowers were not flowers at all; they resembled the split mouths of a hundred venomous snakes, their insides writhing with eyeballs that rolled and rolled.
Normally, one Black Blood Tears Flower was ranked as one-star. Three were two-star. Five were three-star—Nascent Soul early, middle, late. Eight were four-star—Nascent Soul Integration. Ten were five-star. Twenty were six-star. Thirty were seven-star. Fifty created a flower garden and reached eight-star, the peak of Heavenly Person Integration.
After that, one hundred were nine-star, two hundred ten-star, three hundred sixty-star reached Four Pillars late, and one thousand created a flower park and completed as twelve-star.
Around me, flowers so dense I couldn’t count them filled the area to a diameter of ten li in an instant.
The sheer terror made the ghosts guarding the sphere twitch and retreat.
Chrrrraaaarak!
I stirred my will and dark winds howled around me.
The winds scattered the petals of the凶花.
Petals forged from black curses gathered before me and formed a sword.
Whoosh!
I focused my mind and swung the Flower Sword.
Kwaaaaaang!
The sword image of the Flower Sword overlaid the starlight sword mark left by Seo Eun-hyun.
But the sphere still only bore traces; it had not been pierced.
[Curse Fusion.]
Yet my Flower Sword’s image slipped straight into the sphere.
I could feel it.
That sphere was an aggregation of every kind of pain, resentment, and sorrow.
A massive condensed force saturated with the grudges of the ghosts.
Inside it, I naturally fused my own curses of suffering onto it, as if infiltrating like a spy.
My Black Blood Tears Flower petals slipped into the sphere.
Seo Eun-hyun and I exchanged a glance.
Uuuuuung!
The sword scar left by Seo Eun-hyun began to glow with seven colors.
* * *
What exactly is a One Sword?
Seo Eun-hyun’s eyes blazed.
He had endured for five hundred years, reading the essence of the Invisible Sword.
And he had forged that gigantic Invisible Sword that had become Heavenly Tribulation itself.
He had realized that enlightenment already lay inside himself.
He had awakened the heart that the martial arts he had trained possessed, and once more fused that heart and himself.
Thus he had obtained the One Sword.
The essence of the One Sword was as follows.
With the resolution that one’s own soul would shatter and die, one compresses one’s inner world into the inside of one’s own martial arts.
The same insight that resonated with my Byunheusan.
If one’s true heart truly lies within martial arts, one will not die even after entering the inside of martial arts.
Seo Eun-hyun had unconsciously practiced that One Sword insight through Byunheusan.
If one stakes one’s entire being, compresses one’s own heart and inner world inside one’s martial arts, and merges the martial heart with one’s own heart, then the martial arts one has cultivated will fully enter the realm of the Heart Sword.
Tae Yeol-jeon, for example, continued her battles from within the Heart Sword realm, unleashing power from the source of the inner world.
Jang Ik, meanwhile, gathered the power of the Qi Sword realm around the flaming heart he had ascended to the Heart Sword realm and unleashed it.
All who reached the One Sword obtained a single strike of the Heart Sword.
With that strike one could embed one’s own inner world into the opponent’s inner world, or materialize one’s own inner world from outside and create a clone.
Jang Ik had embedded the Sword Dao into countless Heart Tribe disciples’ inner worlds in the Star Realm to support the strike, and when necessary he could create clones through the Sword Dao.
Kim Young-hoon had created clones that were completely identical except for the main body and total force as well; both were the same principle.
And the One Sword corresponded to the cultivations from Four Pillars to Integration of the Heavenly Tribe.
Why?
Because the One Sword strike of the Heart Tribe, forged from their “everything,” was so destructive that it could even tear apart the fabric of space, comparable to a full-power strike from an Integration Grand Completion.
However, the strike of the One Sword required literally “everything.”
After launching a single strike of “the compressed inner world,” the Heart Tribe cultivators were usually left on the brink of death.
After merging the martial heart with one’s own heart, the overall skill level rose, but the main force of the Heart Tribe’s One Sword was the “strike that contained the inner world.”
A strike of mutual destruction that would discharge one’s combat power after a single use—like a gamble with one’s life.
That was why early One Sword cultivators were treated as Four Pillars.
But as they grew familiar with the One Sword’s attack, became proficient at it, and deepened their understanding of the inner world, the number of times they could unleash the “strike of the inner world” increased.
Their own skill rose gradually, allowing them to draw out the power of the inner world to its limit. And the more they did so, the single mutual-destruction strike that had once been became two, three, and more.
And as their understanding of the inner world deepened, at some point the Heart Tribe could unleash the “strike of the inner world” in a storm.
Therefore, those Heart Tribe cultivators who mastered the power of the inner world in the latter half of the One Sword and could rain down the inner-world strikes were recognized as genuine Integration-stage powerhouses.
The reason ordinary Heart Tribe cultivators were left on the brink of death after unleashing the inner-world strike was simply because they were trying to control a force they could not handle with their fragile flesh.
That meant…
Tsuuaaaraa—
“This strike.”
Seo Eun-hyun, who possessed the flesh of a Four Pillar earth race cultivator, meant that even a strike of the inner world only once or twice would not leave him on the brink of death.
For an instant it seemed as though Seo Eun-hyun’s body was wrapped in a sword qi, then he thrust out his sword.
Kwaaadddd!
Once more a streak of light carved across the sphere.
“Three strikes.”
Flash!
Once more.
“Four strikes.”
Once more.
Seo Eun-hyun’s strike pierced, pierced, pierced. Seven sword scars were driven into the sphere.
“Huu…”
Seo Eun-hyun wiped sweat from his brow.
The light embedded in the sphere grew brighter still.
Only Seo Eun-hyun, a Heart Tribe cultivator, and Seo Lip, who shared his vision, could see that light.
And the light was both the sword scar and the clones of Seo Eun-hyun.
“Now!”
Seo Eun-hyun shouted.
Seo Lip clasped his hands.
[Curse Inversion.]
And.
Flash!
The black flower petals that had flowed into the sphere instantly turned into pure white petals.
Bwoong!
An immense light exploded above the sphere and a vast hole was torn open.
At the same moment the seven sword scars merged into one and plunged into the sphere.
“Let’s go!”
[I humbly request it, Venerable! ]
[Very well!]
Bwuuuung—
Seo Eun-hyun and Seo Lip entered the inside of the sphere, followed by an enormous horde of puppets.
How far had they chased Seo Eun-hyun’s vertical slash?
Before their eyes.
Far away, the Seopmyeong Ship appeared.
“The space is distorted.”
Seo Eun-hyun muttered, walking the larger inner space he saw from the outside.
Bwuuuung!
The puppet horde clung to the Seopmyeong Ship and tried to pry it free.
But the Seopmyeong Ship did not even twitch, as if nailed to the spot.
Below the Seopmyeong Ship.
Black ghosts gathered like water and held the ship fast.
[You brats won’t be able to let go!]
Seo Lip roared, flames blazing in his eyes.
The ghosts trembled with fear but did not retreat.
Seo Eun-hyun watched the ghosts calmly.
The ghosts feared him even more than Seo Lip, yet they still refused to move.
Seo Eun-hyun clicked his tongue and said,
“I’ll have to remove them. I’ll pull out the Seopmyeong Ship. You go after the light.”
Seo Eun-hyun pointed somewhere while looking at Seo Lip.
There, the seven vertical slashes he had fired merged into one vertical slash that continued to advance beyond the Seopmyeong Ship, carving through the dark space.
[There…]
“When I look with my own eyes, there was her inner world at the very center. The main body of Kang Min-hee is probably there. Go, Seo Lip.”
[…]
Seo Lip stared at Seo Eun-hyun.
[Seo Eun-hyun.]
“What?”
[Why didn’t you tell me why you came to save Kang Min-hee…]
Seo Eun-hyun gave a faint smile at those words.
“Just until recently you were calling me ‘main body.’ Now you suddenly want to know the reason?”
The tone carried mild reproach.
Yet his expression was the opposite—overflowing with joy.
“You came from me, after all. You already know that.”
Seo Eun-hyun turned his back to Seo Lip.
Kugugugugu—
The starlight of the Changryeong Seonggwang Ochae Daebop that Seo Hyul had transformed began to shine from Seo Eun-hyun’s entire body.
His body began to grow gradually larger, like Changhoza.
Seo Eun-hyun had become a giant who carried the night of shining stars.
[Humans receive countless blessings that words can never describe from birth until they grow up.]
Seo Lip, looking at that form, saw his own memory— no, the memory of Seo Eun-hyun—overlaid with the image of a giant.
[To repay that blessing, to give back to this world, we must struggle. That is our duty, our obligation, our privilege.]
Kudududdd!
The giant of the stars began to tear the Seopmyeong Ship, which had been nailed to the ground by the ghosts, free from the earth.
“T-the Venerable Changhoza!”
“We came to rescue you from Changcheon Gaebyeokmun!”
A few Black Ghost Valley disciples who had been left on the Seopmyeong Ship cheered as they saw the star giant.
[We advance toward an impossible dream, overcoming endless suffering, enduring unbearable pain. That is how we live… us.]
Seo Lip stared at the giant’s back with a dazed expression.
[Because you struggled with your own will, because you wanted to cross over with your own will, because you reached for the stars with your own will and belief… I decided to help you. Go, Seo Lip. They say heaven helps those with virtue, but I will help you.]
[…]
Seo Lip remained silent.
And he turned his back, chasing after Seo Eun-hyun’s vertical slash.
‘Just chasing.’
From behind him, the Black Ghost Valley disciples cheered, then screamed as they faced the Wondrous Castle ahead.
Seo Eun-hyun would probably chase him next.
A new path opened.
Or rather, the vertical slashes of Seo Eun-hyun that had already cut through the darkness were practically ahead of him, since they were his clones.
‘I’m only watching your back.’
Seo Lip clenched his teeth as he ran after Seo Eun-hyun.
He already knew they had parted ways.
The regression path was unknown, but they were already strangers.
And Seo Eun-hyun respected him and always gave him space to leave his side whenever he wanted.
Yet a part of Seo Lip’s heart felt suffocated.
He did not know why.
How far had he run along the path of darkness?
Fwaaaaa!
The vertical slash of Seo Eun-hyun had exhausted its power and vanished.
Seo Lip finally reached the end of the path.
There, a gigantic Ghost Dao Holy Mother in the form of a palm-sized water ghost crouched and slept.