She (1)
Thump… thump… thump…
The heartbeat echoed through my ears. Blink. I blinked my eyes. There was a strangely soft sensation behind my head.
“Ah, you’re awake.”
“…!”
I couldn’t help but jolt. Startled, I sat up. It was Buk Hyang-hwa. She was kneeling beside me, doing something. Looking closer, it seemed she was sketching diagrams for various laws. “…Where am I? What’s the situation?”
I tried to unfold my consciousness, but realizing it would strain my soul, I asked her instead. ‘I poured too much energy into the Muddy Soul Filling the Heaven.’
When you look into the abyss, the abyss looks back at you. Or, those who slay monsters eventually become monsters themselves. It was true. The spiritual root of the Eternal Moon Mirror had been influenced by Muddy Soul Filling the Heaven, yet the technique had still drained me mentally. Because I was too similar to Seo Hyoel’s murky, hollow heart. That was why I had to expend considerable energy to avoid sinking into my own mind when using it. Throb… I pressed my head and rose. Buk Hyang-hwa steadied me and explained the situation. “This place is one of the guest rooms in the Three Wood Grove within the Sim Clan territory.”
“Three Wood Grove… You’ve come quite far. What’s the current situation?”
“The Sim Clan’s highest council rushed in the moment the human faction transmitted a message, and a war almost broke out… but mediation is underway by those with Sim Clan qualities, including Seon-ja Young-hoon-nim and your sister. Especially the sect leader, who was praised as a superb Sim Clan member. The council has decided to meet the sect leader first to determine the human faction’s fate.”
“…My shoulders are heavy…”
I smiled bitterly and told Buk Hyang-hwa, “Speaking of which, stop calling me ‘sect leader.’ Losing the sect isn’t something called a sect leader…”
“Then…”
“Just call me casually…”
I was about to say “call me comfortably” when I suddenly remembered something I had long ignored. That I had been in a relationship with Buk Hyang-hwa as “sect leader” and “conqueror beneath the mountain” throughout this life. And once I realized that, I remembered another fact I had been trying to ignore ever since we met. ‘It was never a comfortable relationship in the first place.’
I looked at Buk Hyang-hwa with embarrassment. She was a complicated person to me. The same entity as her from the tenth loop, yet not the same. So being with her meant I always had to look at the shadow of the tenth-loop version behind her. Previous and later versions were others, but as a person I couldn’t see her as a perfect stranger. That was why I couldn’t treat her as the pure “Buk Hyang-hwa of this loop.” ‘That’s why I kept avoiding facing her all this time…’
Somehow we had ended up facing each other. I clicked my tongue and chose an appropriate title. “Dao friend. Call me Seo Dao friend. Or… since I’m no longer a sect leader… just call me that.”
I considered my position and spoke to her with respect as before. But she said awkwardly, “You can drop the formality. After all, you’re older and senior to me…”
“…”
The word “senior” made me feel strangely melancholy, but I shook my head. “Until now the relationship was hierarchical in the organization, so I deliberately avoided formality. But now we walk the same path as comrades, so formality is only right.”
“Um… if that’s what you want…”
“I understand. Seo Dao friend…”
She tilted her head slightly, as if awkward, and called me “Dao friend.” There was a moment of silence between us. “Um… do you have something to say, senior?”
I read her subtle emotions and asked. She hesitated before speaking. “I… have one thing I want to ask. Seo… Dao friend.”
She showed me the diagram she had been sketching and said, ‘This is…’
It wasn’t a simple law diagram but a kind of “system” similar to Goe-gun’s circuits. Yet it seemed entirely original, even though it had been influenced by Goe-gun. “A superb law system. What exactly is it used for?”
“This is a system to analyze qi and project scenes.”
“Oh, like video…”
“Hundreds of years ago, Seo Dao friend gave this to me.”
She stroked a crystalline bead at her waist. “……”
“I’ve studied this nonstop since the day Seo Dao friend gave it to me, and I realized it’s always connected to somewhere. When I concentrate, I can move my consciousness through the bead to a place filled with hazy mist. Recently, when I met Seo Dao friend, I learned the hazy mist is inside his Mansang Inyeondo.”
Buk Hyang-hwa stared straight into my eyes and said, “Until now, Seo Dao friend never properly explained why. That’s why I’ve been researching. And when I met the senior Goe-gun, I caught a significant clue. A technique to analyze qi and track a target’s past.”
“……!”
“I plan to trace the causality between Seo Dao friend’s Mansang Inyeondo and my bead through this.”
I saw what she intended. Just like Oh Hye-seo. Or like the pioneer Black Dragon. She wanted to unravel the bead’s truth by tracking my past. But as seen with the pioneer and Oh Hye-seo, the secret of Mansang Inyeondo wasn’t something easily unraveled. Both had the power to track the past yet failed. So unless Buk Hyang-hwa’s ability surpassed the pioneer’s, there was no danger my secret would be revealed. But I knew why she spoke in front of me, so I couldn’t simply declare her actions “useless.” “If it’s Seo Dao friend’s eyes, you know why I’m saying this to you now. Because you have eyes like Young-hoon-nim…”
“……”
Behind her subtle mind lay immense despair and sorrow, and resolve. “Don’t ask me the reason directly. But I’ll say this: the truth about the bead is one of my deepest wishes, so I won’t give up easily.”
In short, it meant if she didn’t want to dig up my past and the bead’s secret, I should just tell the truth properly. But I couldn’t. I knew too well that bringing something out into the open in this world carried enormous repercussions. I answered vaguely. “…It relates to the True Immortal, so it’s hard to say. If I slip, your life might be in danger…”
“It’s fine.”
Yet she looked at me as if she didn’t care about life and said, “It doesn’t matter. If there’s something you can tell me, please do.”
“…It’s a matter I can’t speak of. Please understand.”
“…I understand.”
She nodded with a bitter smile. “It seems I’ll have to do my best within reach of my hands.”
“Buk-senja…”
“Then excuse me. I’ll leave first. Please settle yourself, Seo Dao friend.”
After speaking, Buk Hyang-hwa turned and left the room at once. I felt complicated watching her mind. Wooong… I gradually felt my consciousness and powers returning, and I leaped out of the room into the outside space. I arrived at the place where qi and thoughts clashed. Around Kim Young-hoon, twenty-two shadows were colliding with countless thoughts. Whoosh… Whoosh…! The martial arts picture they drew made my vision tremble for an instant. ‘All of them are experts who have reached the ultimate of martial arts…’ They faced Kim Young-hoon’s specialization in speed with their own styles, pouring ultimate techniques at him that never fell behind his speed. At first glance it looked like the highest council’s projections were standing quietly around Kim Young-hoon, but to my eyes that could see into the soul’s rank, a massive torrent of thoughts surged. Normally qi alone should have caused monstrous storms in reality, yet no one here was restraining qi enough to hide it; they were freely competing with skills. The mental duel at the soul’s rank never flowed into reality. “Yeona.” “Yes.”
I was surprised to see Kim Yeon suddenly appear beside me as soon as I spoke. Her eyebrows twitched. Around her new core, her thoughts were perfectly balanced in nine branches. ‘If it was before, I would have missed the movement.’
It wasn’t a problem of martial arts or realm level. Martial artists accelerated their mind through Deungbongjogeuk, but those above Yuan-yeonggi could accelerate their mind simply through vast consciousness without needing to split or merge thoughts into Ganghwans. And they compressed their consciousness to accelerate the mind itself. The principle behind Yuan-yeonggi masters fighting at high speed with Eunsiksul was exactly that. Goe-gun’s “Eunsiksul” also accelerated the sense of feeling qi through the spiritual root by compressing my consciousness, so compressing consciousness itself accelerated the mind. And now Kim Yeon was compressing her consciousness to fit her body like a Yeok-jok around her new core, adding tenfold acceleration. Even before realm issues, she had achieved the speed of the Fusion Integration level, albeit with somewhat deformed growth. ‘Even with Deungbongjogeuk being the realm where consciousness size equals speed, if she can do this much…’ When she reaches Wol-doipcheon, where consciousness can be directly converted into “power,” what kind of power will Kim Yeon wield? It suddenly occurred to me. ‘Of course reaching Wol-doipcheon isn’t solved by just pouring time, so I don’t know how long it will take…’ I finished my musing about the unknowable future and spoke to her. “Hey, how long have I been unconscious?”
“It’s the third day exactly. We came to the Sim Clan territory to escape Min-hee-unni’s influence, and the human faction has been competing with the highest council to secure land here while waiting for you to wake up.”
“……?”
‘Something has changed.’
I glanced at Kim Yeon with a strange feeling. Her title for me had changed strangely. It wasn’t the easy “Oppa Yeon-hyun” I was used to. It felt distant yet strangely closer. Kim Yeon continued explaining. “Because of Min-hee-unni, the original human territory has become a land where no living beings can exist, like the Ghost Realm. Other territories near where humans once lived have become the same… so now the Ghost Realm side is trying to invade Gwanghan Realm. It’s said it will take about a thousand years to restore the territory. But according to the decision of the Taesuhoe, the runaway Min-hee-unni… I mean ‘Ghost Dao Mother’ will return to Gwanghan Realm within a few hundred years due to attraction.”
Ultimately, we had completely lost our original homeland. And animals that lose their territory will eventually find a new one. “The human faction wants the Sim Clan territory as the new home, I suppose.”
“Yes. Even if Min-hee-unni returns, the Sim Clan territory is hard to find in the Abyss, and it’s a stable land among the Abyssal regions, so that’s why. The Taesuhoe decided to drive out all the Sim Clans in the territory and let the human faction settle.”
“…Silly.”
I clicked my tongue. The land had been stabilized by Jang Ik from the beginning; what did he plan to do when Jang Ik returned? Jang Ik would return in a few hundred years anyway. I clicked my tongue again as Kim Yeon continued. “However… thanks to the Sim Clan highest council, the entire Taesuhoe has been brutally defeated and the human faction was almost exterminated by them, but Young-hoon-senja is handling the aftermath single-handedly.”
“……”
We hadn’t even been able to lie down properly before reaching for the ground blindly. ‘We ignored the Sim Clans too much.’ Twenty-two members of the highest council. ‘Probably Jang Ik’s twenty-two disciples.’
I felt it. Every single one of them was an absolute top expert of Zuo-tuo-ru-wang level. ‘In other words… there are twenty-two people who can unleash a Fusion Integration-grade one-hit attack in emergencies.’
Moreover, among them some who were higher-ranked could fire multiple Fusion Integration-grade hits. The Sim Clan was classified as one of the three major powers in Gwanghan Realm. Considering that the Six Great Clans among the Heavenly Clans made up sixty percent of the Heavenly Clan power and the rest four percent, the current human faction’s strength was at one-tenth of the Heavenly Clans’. Even if the Sim Clan was the weakest among the three major powers, it had the strength to suppress something like the human faction, which was “a part of the Heavenly Clans.” Clop, clop… While I was inwardly evaluating the human faction, someone approached from afar. A girl wearing purple and white armor, with white hair and red eyes. “You have awakened.”
I briefly remembered who she was during that moment and identified her identity in my memory. “…Goseosa?”
Her identity was Tae-su Galmak. She had hidden her body in her tough bone armor, so in her current state it was hard to tell she was older, which was why I hadn’t recognized her right away. Kim Yeon explained to me as she looked at her. “The entire Taesuhoe is currently imprisoned in the Sim Clan jail… but only Galmak-tae-su hasn’t been captured. That’s because she strongly opposed the battle with the Sim Clans.”
Galmak let out a sigh and said, “…It was a rational judgment. None of the other taesu apart from Heon-won and Wi-ryeong-seon have fought the Sim Clans directly. And among those who have fought, only those at Fusion Integration stage two or below. Heon-won has some experience fighting the Sim Clans but currently his yin-yang qi is going berserk and he’s unconscious. That’s why he rushed in without realizing the Sim Clans’ terror and got captured.”
“…Strange. Tae-su are supposed to have lived for at least thousands of years, yet none of them have battle experience with the Sim Clans and don’t know their terror?”
I was puzzled, but I immediately understood her next words. “Those who have fought the Sim Clans even once at Fusion Integration stage three or higher have died before reaching the tae-su rank.”
“……”
After all, even ordinary people received two thousand four hundred strikes of punishment upon reaching Fusion Integration. But those who fought the Sim Clans at Fusion Integration stage three even once had their punishment automatically tripled to three thousand six hundred strikes. Even if they fought after becoming Fusion Integration, they could never attempt promotion again after one battle. So perhaps becoming a tae-su meant avoiding the Sim Clans altogether. “…In any case, the entire Taesuhoe was on the verge of execution thanks to Young-hoon-nim communicating with the Sim Clan highest council and stopping it.”
“Communicating…”
I looked at those who were exchanging thoughts madly, mixing enlightenment. ‘It’s a kind of communication.’
“And…”
“Hm?”
When I looked away from Kim Young-hoon and the highest council for a moment, Galmak bowed to me. “I failed to understand your intentions, please forgive me. In the end you are correct. You are the savior of the entire human race.”
“I was only doing what I had to.”
It seemed the Taesuhoe had learned about my deeds. “How can saving humanity be ‘what I had to do’… Your contributions will be remembered for generations.”
“Thank you.”
“And… one favor. Please protect Young-hoon-nim’s safety.”
She looked at me and said, “The highest council seems to be communicating with him now, but if things go wrong, you must save us, human race.”
“Hmmm…”
Indeed, no matter how skilled Kim Young-hoon was, if the head of the Sim Clan who had been abused by the human faction faced him in a duel, he might try to kill him. ‘Given the current situation, that probably won’t happen…’ The Sim Clan highest council facing Kim Young-hoon now was all feeling exhilaration, emotion, and respect, so there was no need for such a request. “I understand for now. If Kim Young-hoon falls into danger, I’ll step in.”
“…Thank you!”
I accepted the proposal as if I was owing the Taesuhoe a debt. Galmak thanked me repeatedly, then told me she would pass on the good news to the Taesuhoe and left in a hurry. I stood with Kim Yeon for a while, watching Kim Young-hoon’s duel. Thanks to the Strange Star-Mind Scroll, Kim Yeon had some level of consciousness vision. And me. Thanks to that, the mental duel between Kim Young-hoon and the highest council was clearly visible to us, like watching fireworks. I spoke to Kim Yeon while looking at the fireworks. “…Yeona.” “Yes.”
“You have something to say, don’t you?”
“……”
I asked while sensing her emotions. She was pretending to be fine now, but her mind was already worn out as if she would collapse at any moment. Her sudden change of title was probably related to that. Kim Yeon took a deep breath beside me. It seemed she was trying to control her surging emotions. After controlling her emotions a little, she slowly revealed a shocking truth. I understood why Buk Hyang-hwa had taken that attitude and asked for a favor. “…Hyang-hwa, she’s going to die soon.”