The Heavenly Demon Copies Martial Arts
Snow melted everywhere.
The cold wind blew as fiercely as ever, yet between its parched winter gusts I felt a warmth I had never known before.
The path had thawed and turned slick underfoot.
Shaanxi lay far to the south, and the third of the oho-samhwa’s rising stars called to me from that distant land.
I walked the trail, sometimes cresting mountains and fording icy streams.
Only rarely, when the weather turned foul, did light snow fall like snow flurries.
Since training with Asura the Pot-Bellied, the greatest change I had come to feel was the way such bitter cold now shaped my daily life.
*Huuu.*
My breath rose white in the air.
The only thing covering my body was a tattered leather cloak that had seen better days.
I no longer trembled from the cold.
Even when I had to cross a stream swollen to my knees, the moment I stepped out my body heat simply evaporated rather than draining away.
For someone who had feared the cold since childhood, this was as real a gain from martial cultivation as anything else.
[You have managed to tune your inner energy circulation with such precision in such a short time. I am impressed.]
Mumyeong spoke.
Everything had come down to the ability to control qi so finely that it could be felt from the tip of the little toe to the big toe.
[My Host has absorbed martial arts from many different paths and gained rich experience and insight, yet you applied them only when you were actually wielding them and always rushed to react.]
After Asura’s guidance, another change had come over me.
I could now sense the smallest movement of the air around me.
It felt like an extremely delicate willow leaf trembling in the lightest breeze—hyper-sensitive, almost fragile.
When the Shaanxi trackers ambushed me and I caught the arrow that would have pierced my back, that was part of it.
It was as if all the blocked senses I had suppressed for so long had burst open at once.
[Asura’s training must have been what untangled every knot.]
Mumyeong said calmly.
[All of this is because of what you have accomplished, Host. You have been groping through invisible caves and piling up effort after effort until, in a single instant, everything blossoms at once.]
The wind rose again.
Three dry brown leaves drifted past in irregular patterns.
*Shlup.*
My vision blurred with the ghost of a red after-image as my hand moved with unnatural speed.
It was not a quick action.
Yet, as though walking a bizarre shortcut, my hand moved slowly but now held four leaves that had just rushed past moments earlier.
“….”
The last leaf grazed the back of my neck.
My five senses had developed to an extreme degree.
It reminded me of when I was a child and had to find the latrine in pitch-black midnight because I could not hold it.
While groping through darkness I had tensed up and felt every nerve of my body blaze to life.
Now, without any effort at all, I felt the same razor edge in every inch of skin.
Focusing on any specific part made it even clearer.
“The terrain looks like Inhyeon Gorge, but I don’t see the massive dam that should mark the halfway village by now. It should be visible by now.”
“….”
Next to me, the scent of the Mount Hua woman who had spread out her map.
*Huu.*
Today was the first day traveling south with Eun Seollyeong since her final words the night before.
[My task in this world is to wipe out every demonic cultist. That has been my unchanging belief since I swore to become the sword of Mount Hua.]
After every tracker had been slaughtered and the snowfield was awash in blood, Eun Seollyeong had spoken.
[I will use you. So use me in return, lad.]
The silver fox had flicked the blood from her hand and said coolly, “I do not trust you. Whether you are lying to me right now or betray me later, I will neither resent nor grieve nor rage.”
Her eyes had looked utterly hollow.
Mumyeong once remarked that anyone who reached the absolute pinnacle of any field could never truly be mentally healthy.
Of course there were exceptions, but generally only those with twisted, self-consuming minds could climb to the top.
[Better if she were dead.]
She had muttered something meaningless while staring at the countless stars in the night sky the night I saved her.
Her only reason for traveling with me now was one.
To execute the traitor who had betrayed the Heavenly Demon Cult and become the Guardian of Cheonbaekryeon Temple.
[That man moves for nothing but rage against the Blood Cult. And right now he is chasing you alone, mad with fury.]
I would be the bait. While I waited by his side, the Guardian would appear. She would strike and be done.
That was her plan and her only motive for following me.
“….”
I had agreed on the spot, yet I felt no sense of safety.
It is said that a true expert recognizes another true expert.
I still did not think of myself as one.
Yet the more my own strength grew, the more I was surprised by the old me.
How had I been so foolish?
How had I been able to rampage like a thunderstruck idiot with no knowledge of anything?
And now that my heightened senses had grown even sharper thanks to Asura, this place felt even more unbearable.
I would have been fine if I had stayed as dull as before.
A legend of the Jianghu walked beside me.
Every single one of her actions felt unnatural.
Her presence was far too strong.
When I walked next to her there was nothing else.
Even the single blade of grass that brushed past the roadside was vivid and alive.
Not a single unnecessary gesture. Not even the act of drawing out a map.
“Why is that, lad?”
A breeze carried the scent of spring.
Her silver hair stirred.
“….”
It was not because she was an unparalleled beauty, but because my senses made everything unbearable.
“…Am I still on the right path? I checked once more.”
I answered a beat late.
“So be it.”
*Clang.*
Each time she moved, faint iron rang out.
*Clang.*
Dry steel clanked again. The source was the white bracelet on her wrist.
Thin shackles of cold-fragrance stone weighed down her exposed arms and wrists, just like the manacles of a condemned prisoner.
[Forty pounds each. In the Demonic Sect, only the worst criminals were bound with such items. The artificial dissipation of energy is so severe that merely wearing them brings endless torment.]
She wore four of them and yet moved as though nothing pressed upon her.
She handed me the map.
“You have come this far without issue.”
I accepted the map.
She wore a snow-white robe that looked as though not a speck of dust could cling to it.
Every motion was graceful.
On her left ear was a straight earring I had never seen before.
It looked as though ink had run along the metal, staining part of it black.
“What is that?”
She tilted her head.
Beneath her silver hair, near the pale nape of her neck, a straight platinum earring swung.
“This is a vessel that displays my emotions. When I could not suppress my own feelings in the past, I received it from a certain connection.”
She let the sentence trail.
[To always objectify one’s emotions and remain calm…]
The connection she spoke of—had it been recent?
They said she had existed ever since a grand ginkgo tree had been planted at Cheonbaekryeon Temple.
Even when I had fought the cold at Moyong Manor in the dead of winter, she had already been walking the Jianghu in this very form.
And even if I died here like a stray dog and left no trace, she would still walk this path exactly as she was now.
Among the stories I had heard most often in the capital was the tale of a rogue martial artist who made a covenant with a Guardian of one of the Five Great Families and toured the Jianghu.
[Now that I think of it, it does feel somewhat similar.]
A mythical being walked beside me.
Honestly, I had tried to act as though nothing had changed, yet I still understood the reactions of the inn guests perfectly.
She was from a different world than I was—someone whose skin was the dull bronze of an old coin, covered in scars and wounds, and who wore a leather cloak.
“If that earring shows emotions, then the black ink… is it also connected to feeling?”
She touched her earring and said, “When the feelings of caution, anger, or distrust are present, the earring gradually turns black. When the emotions of trust and belief are expressed, it returns to its original silver color.”
I had asked for nothing.
She must have sensed my mood and added, “You need not worry. This earring has never once been pure silver since I put it on.”
Not once.
I turned the implication over in my mind.
“Ah, yes. Understood, Elder.”
“You are not hateful or anything of the sort.”
“Yes, Elder.”
“….”
She opened her red lips.
“You said you would try your hardest to change your speech, did you not?”
It was a polite remark, yet I knew what lay beneath it.
[If I utter that line again, she will fold her waist in half.]
It looked like the behavior of a pampered child who could not be bothered by anyone’s shouting, yet she paid attention to even the smallest details—especially anything related to a martial artist’s honor.
For example.
“We were supposed to stop business today, but I simply cannot let us leave like this?”
“That brat is my catch. Just imagining the cheeky expression on her arrogant face makes me want to laugh.”
A bandit band approached, drooling and laughing.
This was the fourth time.
How had meeting bandits on the road increased so dramatically since I started traveling alone?
“….”
I pressed a hand to my forehead with a short sigh.
Eun Seollyeong watched me with an expressionless gaze.
“I will not let you act.”
“…Wait, that’s fine.”
She cut me off sharply.
“Lad, do not act. Until we reach the next destination, you are under my protection.”
“…Protection?”
The Guardian of Mount Hua—Eun Seollyeong—shone her silver eyes.
“While I protect you, no one in this Jianghu will touch you.”
I was momentarily speechless.
I gathered myself and said, “That I know. I know it is funny to hear me say this, but it is taking it far too far—”
In that instant the bandit leader burst in.
“Kid, come play with us! I’ll treat you to something nice!”
“Ehehe, you look like a rich man’s daughter. No sword!”
I sighed and closed my eyes.
[What an old life. The day I get to see bandits harassing a Guardian has finally arrived.]
Mumyeong’s words mirrored my mood.
Eun Seollyeong spoke without expression. “Anyone who defiles the pride of a martial artist can never be left unchecked.”
She turned on her heel and walked toward the bandits, spitting, “Even if that were the Heavenly Demon himself.”
“….”
The red sunset sank.
As Eun Seollyeong’s silver robe fluttered closer, the bandits’ eyes grew wider and they hurled every lewd taunt imaginable.
*Shoo.*
She vanished.
“Eh?”
That was the bandit leader’s final words.
The earth trembled.
Screams filled the air.
[Heavenly Demon…]
I forced down the complex feelings welling inside me and stared at the sunset.
Beneath the blood-red sky, the massive dam that had been hidden by clouds began to take shape.
*Wheeeeng.*
A fly that should not exist in winter circled around me.
It wandered weakly, then dropped at my feet.
*…! …!*
With a silent scream, the fly raised its legs toward the sky, trembled, and died.
Spring was coming, yet the sky remained as cold and winter-dark as before.
[Something…]
The red sunset dyed the heavens like spilled blood.
[Such a chilling sky is something I have never seen.]
Mumyeong whispered last.
*Shwaaa.*
The dry winter wind made the grass sway left and right.
The ragged hem of my old black cloak fluttered slowly in the breeze.
*Wuuuung…*
From a distant place, an ominous horn sounded.