The Heavenly Demon Copies Martial Arts - 155
Clink.
It was unfamiliar, yet I applied the five rings one by one exactly as Eun Seollyeong instructed, fitting them onto my body.
“Is overlapping them like this correct?”
“Yes.”
We were climbing toward a certain shabby hill.
Eun Seollyeong led the way, scaling the steep mountain path.
On my left hand, the Chiljong-heukjusa-gap never left.
It was a gauntlet woven from black iron wire so delicately that it resembled thread, covering my wrist and extending halfway up my forearm for protection.
Over it I wore the five rings I had received from Master Yunjin, sliding them onto my wrist.
As I followed behind her, I continuously fiddled with the five rings in my hand.
Clank.
Clear ringing sounds echoed as the five rings vibrated with a regular metallic tone.
I still had no idea what their purpose was.
“So you thought they were five separate rings meant to be applied one at a time?”
“Exactly.”
I followed Eun Seollyeong’s waist, glancing at the silver shackles around her ankles and wrists.
“Even seeing the shackles she wears, I assumed they were of the same series. Master Yunjin said he created shackles whose purpose he didn’t even know.”
“This is different.”
Her voice, like a silver bead rolling across a tray, drifted on the wind ahead.
“Concentrate inner energy into your hand.”
“Into my hand…?”
I tilted my head.
[When expanding your sensing field, focus inner energy on the five rings and the Chiljong-heukjusa-gap the same way you would feel it. I can guess what’s happening.]
Mumyeong said.
[A faint but continuous suction of inner energy is felt from the object constantly worn on my left hand.]
“…Good.”
I poured in half a cup of inner energy exactly as I would when expanding my sensing field, for Mumyeong.
Clunk.
The five rings seemed to come alive, surging up my forearm.
Combined with the Chiljong-heukjusa-gap that only covered the wrist, they formed one seamless, complete steel gauntlet, wrapping from fingertip to elbow.
It became the shape of a single iron armor gauntlet.
“From the outside it looks like the protected area simply expanded, with no other changes. This is my….”
Whoosh.
Before I could finish, a translucent barrier spread out around the Chiljong-heukjusa-gap, following my body.
It enveloped me gently.
Eun Seollyeong said.
“This is a Protection Qi.”
“…”
I heard the word and it was one I knew.
Yet I stared at her, stunned, for a long time even though I was fully aware.
“What?”
“My Protection Qi is probably too much for me right now. It’s even lower than that. Still, it’s a martial art that’s almost battle-ready in the current jianghu, so it will be far better than nothing—especially for someone like you and for me.”
Eun Seollyeong let her words trail off.
“For someone walking the endless cycle of life and death.”
“…”
I looked at my hand.
Concentrating inner energy, I tapped the tree beside me.
Thump.
I felt a faint but clear rebound, as if something intangible had pushed my skin before it touched.
Striking the tree harder sent me flying back with greater force.
“So this really is an existing martial art?”
“Normally one would learn and naturally comprehend higher-level martial arts through one’s own sect’s inherited formulas. But for someone like you who has no root from any specific sect, this indirect method is the only way.”
Eun Seollyeong stepped closer and tapped my shoulder with the back of her hand.
My shoulder recoiled before her hand made contact.
“With your current martial level, you should react instinctively to most ambushes and activate the Protection Qi. But.”
The instant her fingertips focused inner energy, she swung her hand like lightning.
Slash.
My sleeve was sliced away along with the Protection Qi.
“Even the higher tier, full Protection Qi, is useless against truly strong opponents. Of course, if you poured all your inner energy into it, you could maintain a certain strength, but it would be temporary and far less efficient. There’s no point in being that sloppy.”
“I’ve been wondering something about you. Can I ask?”
“…”
“You want to ask me something.”
Eun Seollyeong murmured softly, as if surprised.
“You seem unfamiliar with it.”
“…”
“…?”
I hadn’t been able to finish my question.
If I had asked many questions, I would have known much about her.
But I could safely say I knew less about her than most ordinary people who had lived in the jianghu.
Her internal murmur had been correct.
Clearing my throat, I continued.
“That shackle you wear. I’ve been worried about it since I first met you. I know it’s made of cold-scent stone. Doesn’t wearing it itself hurt? Why do you wear four of them? And that one.”
I recalled an individual I had no desire to think about.
“If I’m not mistaken, the Guardian of the Jeomchang Sect, Gang Chisang, also wore similar shackles to you.”
He wore them to suppress inner energy, so in the beginning we could just deal with him briefly and drive him out of the village.
A madman wearing human skin and swinging a rusty blade was not of this world.
The madness and aura of death it exuded was more than enough to make one imagine the horrors it would unleash if left to roam freely among ordinary people.
“…”
“Yeah. It’s not that grand. I don’t need to hide it.”
Eun Seollyeong urged me to keep walking with a small motion of her foot.
“Where are we?”
“Before leaving Shaanxi, I always stopped here. Since the time I became Guardian.”
Eun Seollyeong said.
“…”
“Before leaving?”
Without answering my question, Eun Seollyeong forged ahead.
Today she felt different from usual.
Her expression was ambiguous, but it was clearly not the same as before.
[She must have gone through something back then.]
The subtle change in her atmosphere had happened right after the battle with So Cheonpa.
She had picked up a red ring that had spilled from his pocket while he was forced to kneel seven times, her expression freezing in place.
After that she had remained lost in thought.
The sunset was setting in the distance.
It was a blood-red sunset.
As the warm afternoon gave way to night, the temperature began to drop.
The cold mountain air met the heat still radiating from my body as I climbed the path.
From the base of the trees surrounding us, sluggish black tarantulas crawled up.
The mountain’s darkness rose swiftly from my feet, spreading like ink.
The sky gradually glowed a radiant red as time passed.
“You know I have lived for a long time. But not all Guardians are like me. Among the Guardians, only a few ‘cursed’ ones have wandered the jianghu for countless ages like me. The origin…”
Yes. It was during the Heavenly Demon Extermination War.
“…”
Eun Seollyeong harbored an inexplicable hatred toward the Heavenly Demon Cult.
The Guardian of the Jeomchang Sect had seemed to know something about her.
“On the surface it was a massive bloodbath between the Heavenly Demon Cult and the righteous sects, but beneath it lay a hellish mess involving even the Blood Cult. Most Guardians died at that time, and those who survived were left near death.”
“Guardians…?”
Her words were hard for me to imagine.
Her short reply to my near-instant thought was:
“The most terrifying existence in this world is not a god. Not a demon. Not even a Guardian. The most terrifying thing is simply a person. No one can survive facing that.”
“…”
The words carried an emotion so deep and heavy it felt like an endless well of sorrow.
Clunk.
Eun Seollyeong held up her white-silver shackle on her wrist, illuminated by the setting sun.
“These cold-scent stone shackles have side effects like reduced physical strength and inner energy suppression, but they are excellent for healing internal injuries and congenital qi.”
“You mentioned you were being treated, but what if you remove the shackles in the middle? The Guardian of the Jeomchang Sect removed his too, didn’t he?”
Eun Seollyeong paused briefly.
“I don’t know the exact situation of the Jeomchang Guardian. But at the very least I am… the instant I remove all the shackles, all my efforts to recover over a hundred years will vanish in an instant. If I apply strength to the wounds, they will burst open simultaneously.”
We reached the mountain summit.
The forest shrouded by trees had disappeared.
Before us stretched an endless sky.
No obstruction remained.
Shaanxi Province, filled with countless people, spread out in the distance.
“We’re here.”
Eun Seollyeong said finally.
Under the burning sunset, atop the mountain peak stood a collapsing shrine.
The courtyard before the shrine was overgrown with weeds that reached knee height.
Squish.
Between the weeds lay broken stone monuments and collapsed stone statues scattered everywhere.
Eun Seollyeong’s silver hair swayed in the red sunset light, gleaming.
Her fragrance brushed past my nose through the swaying strands.
No footprints marked this mountain summit for countless years.
Our footsteps felt like the first new traces in decades.
“This place… really.”
She touched the moss-covered stone monument with the tip of her finger, voice filled with sorrow.
The broken floorboards of the shrine were piled high with dust.
“No one comes here except me.”
Eun Seollyeong was never particularly talkative.
“Once there were so many people here.”
She always spoke of the reality before her eyes while breathing, yet her gaze seemed to drift toward something distant and hazy.
“Now the only one who remembers and comes here is me.”
Today it was especially true.
It was more than just the absence of worldly attachments—it was the ghost of a person who no longer lingered in the mortal realm.
Before her lay a collapsed stone statue that once guarded the shrine, fan in hand.
It was covered in moss and dirt, stained dark by rain and wind.
Eun Seollyeong’s long eyelashes fluttered soundlessly in the twilight.
“I.”
I thought it was the setting sun, its light fading, so I imagined it wrongly.
When the sun fully set and darkness fell, I thought it was merely the end of the twilight light, wrongly imagining it.
“I….”
A silent tear slid down beneath her silver eyes.
But when I blinked again, the tear was gone.
Only the same stoic, dignified, proud Guardian and Specter of the Battlefield remained, her face as expressionless as always.
It reminded me of the first time we had met.
She had gripped the crumpled silver bell I had taken from her, gazing at the stars in the night sky and murmuring:
[I should have died then.]
Her eyes had been filled with endless remorse.
Flash.
A fragment of Eun Seollyeong’s memory surfaced unbidden during the process of bringing her martial arts.
The background of that memory was the same red blood-soaked sunset as now.
Aaaaaah!!
In the memory she had screamed, fists pounding the ground until they bled, silver hair matted with blood and filth.
Blood tears streamed from Eun Seollyeong’s eyes.
[I…! If I had just a little more…! If I had just a little more courage!]
On a hill covered in corpses of warriors, she had knelt in surrender, arrows and blades turning her clothes to rags, shouting:
“Moyong Bi.”
I snapped back to the present.
Behind the sunset of the past, the silver-haired woman stared at me.
“Eun Seollyeong?”
“I broke our promise… I’m sorry.”
“What?”
I didn’t understand why her saying my name felt so foreign.
I didn’t understand why her usual proud apology felt so strange.
Against the endless blood-red sunset dyed in crimson light, the silver-haired Eun Seollyeong moved her lips.
There was no certainty.
I thought she hesitated for a moment.
But in the sunset, the silver eyes of Eun Seollyeong, gleaming with silver light, held the resolve of someone who had made a decision.
It was the same proud, dignified, unwavering gaze of a martial artist determined to walk his own path.
She opened her mouth.
“Let us part here.”