The Crimson Sunset of a Fallen Battlefield
I had dreamed.
Or perhaps not quite a dream.
It didn’t take long to realize the truth: this was no ordinary vision but someone else’s memory.
I had seen scenes like this before.
It was right after I had absorbed the Mountain Blade Sect’s Guardian Jewel and the Heavenly Demon Jade had become whole. While testing it, I had copied Eun Seollyeong’s basic martial arts on a whim.
Through that experience I learned how my power had grown stronger in copying others’ martial arts. I also discovered that my ability was not limited to merely copying techniques—it pulled in the complete memories and experiences tied to that martial art.
This had to be her memory.
Before my eyes lay a world reduced to ruin, its skyline a desolate sunset burning with crimson fire.
A sea of corpses.
A forest of corpses.
I still didn’t know what to call it.
On that barren earth where everything had died and fallen, a blood-red sunset drifted downward slowly, accompanied by the faint cries of cicadas.
Beyond the fierce light of the sunset, a cool dusk began to creep across the land.
I had begun this journey after facing the nightmare of the Demonic Sect and walked this endless world.
To some it was a place one could never meet unless fate willed it, an existence with no future connection.
To others it was a place one could never escape no matter how hard one tried.
Standing in the middle of such a journey, if someone asked what landscape came to mind whenever they thought of it, I would have answered without hesitation: the crimson sunset.
Every place that had left a deep impression on me had been drenched in that same sunset.
Even the same sunset looked different at times—sometimes a tearful, mourning red; sometimes a heartbreaking, howling crimson.
And right now, spread before my eyes was the most intense and terrifying of those sunsets: the one blazing fiercely on the desolate battlefield where I had first stepped into this jianghu, having witnessed countless others.
One person knelt there.
She knelt on the ground, her long shadow stretching cold and cooling behind her as she wept bitterly.
On her body, after countless battles, countless swords had been driven in.
Arrows had pierced her.
Halberds had speared her.
Her clothes were torn to shreds, and her silver hair—already stained red by the sunset—hung matted with dried blood, clinging to the back of her neck.
Anger.
Emptiness.
Regret.
Doubt.
All these emotions mixed together, she pounded the ground with her bare hands and roared, tears streaming down her face.
‘Aah!’
Everyone was dead.
Though a plague had swept through, the only one still breathing on that pitiful earth was her.
‘Aaaaah—!!’
Her usual cold and proud face was nowhere to be seen; instead she repeatedly slammed her palms against the earth on the desolate land covered in corpses, sobbing as if her heart would break.
‘If I hadn’t… If I hadn’t turned back that day!’
No one else was present to hear her cries.
‘If I hadn’t been so stubborn then!!’
No one was there to listen to her screams.
‘If I could just fix… If I could just fix this mistake! If I could just go back to that time!’
Within the burning sunset, she wailed alone, forever and ever.
‘I could have done anything!’
***
I woke up.
“…”
A faded ochre ceiling greeted my eyes.
Next to it hung a thick, oil-stained dark-brown beam.
Cicada cicada cicada…
The faint buzz of cicadas drifted into one ear.
Bashrak.
The white blanket covering my body below the neck swayed against my skin.
I was awake and looking at the reality before me, yet I saw none of it.
My mind was completely filled with the battlefield at dusk that I had been staring at until moments ago.
“…What the hell happened?”
My voice—hoarse and barely a whisper—escaped with a shaky breath.
[You’re awake.]
Deep in a cave, the words echoed inside my head as I returned to reality.
I lifted my head.
At my feet lay a black dog, its eyes glowing red like smoke.
[What is your name, Host?]
Just as always, the black dog began with that question.
I answered.
“Moyong Bi.”
The black dog nodded.
[Welcome back, Host.]
“The first thing I see when I wake up is a black dog. Must be a scene that makes Murim people super happy.”
[Seeing you joking means you’re doing well.]
Mumyeong crossed its front paws, rested its chin on them, and looked down at me.
I wiggled my fingers.
I wiggled my toes.
[Before I ask, I’ll tell you first: every single toe on both feet is moving fine.]
Mumyeong glanced at my toes still wiggling beneath the white blanket and said quietly.
“If my last memories are correct…”
I clenched and unclenched my fists.
I confirmed all my limbs were attached.
I checked that sensation had returned.
Only after completing this series of checks could I finally look at my own body.
Except for a few places wrapped in white bandages, my body was intact.
I realized how absurd this situation was.
Even now, when I closed my eyes, the sharp fangs of the Evil Spirits still stabbed coldly into my abdomen.
“I shouldn’t be able to be this fine right now.”
[The Guardian took several measures. She even used some of her own inner energy to promote recovery.]
“…”
[And.]
The black dog’s two ears twitched slightly left and right.
[No, that’s not important. All you need to know, Host, is this.]
Mumyeong fell silent after that.
Yet something felt off.
“What’s wrong?”
[Nothing.]
After a deep breath, Mumyeong continued.
[Your treatment is complete. There are no issues with bodily function. The Guardian used her own inner energy to heal your body, so from a survival perspective, this is as good as it gets. I’m satisfied with that. The remaining worldly problems are secondary.]
“…”
Cicada cicada cicada…
Beyond the heat that felt like burning flesh, I sensed a cool breeze blowing.
Summer was nearing its end.
The round window was open.
Clear water dripped from the bamboo water wheel there.
I turned my head again.
On the wall hung faded papers that looked like they had been passed down from ancient times, covered in ink paintings of the Four Gentlemen and various other scenes.
I knew this place.
“This must be the place where Eun Seollyeong lives.”
I didn’t know how she had lived, but traces of memories she had preserved while surviving until now were here.
I confirmed a strand of silver hair had stuck to the pillow I had been leaning on.
Unexpectedly, I smelled a scent on the blanket covering my bare body that wasn’t mine.
“…”
Feeling a little embarrassed, I pushed myself up.
The massive estate was silent, as if no living creature remained except me.
“Ugh.”
The moment I took a step, my vision flashed white with sudden pain.
Recovery was one of the Heavenly Demon Jade’s powers, but it only restored about eighty percent—nothing like the complete healing of the Ten Thousand Blood Emperor.
Even so, the shock I felt was enough to tell me I had truly stood on the threshold of the afterlife.
“It might sound like a stupid question, but everything I went through… Starting with Jeokmaryeong… This isn’t a dream, right?”
[Of course not. As always, it was the life you endured.]
When I closed my eyes, a hallucination filled with the sound of rain, screams, and clashing steel pressed against my ears.
When I opened them again, the only thing in the silent white estate was the sound of my own breathing and the water wheel turning.
The gap between sky and earth made reality feel distant.
[You worked hard.]
Mumyeong said.
Gritting my teeth, I walked across the floorboards.
My body still ached, but once I forced myself to take another step, blood began circulating and I felt something alive stirring inside me.
The pain even seemed to help; just like the blocked meridians opening, my body shook off the dust it had accumulated for so long, breathing deeply as if alive.
I barely reached the courtyard.
I sat down on the floor.
I looked at the clear sky while listening to the flowing water.
I spoke to Mumyeong.
“Well, aside from that, I can feel the Jade has grown. There’s no way all those things were fake, right.”
Previously it had felt like a single annoying Jade wandering near my lower abdomen.
But now it felt like a tightly packed sandbag firmly rooted just below my navel, as if I had two of them.
[Any other changes you notice besides increased inner energy?]
Mumyeong asked.
“Aside from the inner energy boost, it feels almost nothing. Is this normal?”
Mumyeong dissolved into black smoke and seeped into my shadow, saying:
[There’s no way.]
“Why?”
[It’s not an ordinary Jade. It’s the Guardian’s Jade from the Sichuan Tang Clan. Jades also hold the history of that sect. There’s even a chance that various martial arts, secrets, or even the person’s unique body functions that they used in their lifetime can be manifested, so I checked.]
At those words I once again waved my limbs.
“…” I checked again, but apart from the inner energy increase, nothing else is noticeable yet. No martial arts I can immediately copy or use like when I copied them before.”
Mumyeong said calmly.
[Maybe it’s because it’s only half a Jade. It’s fine. Now that it’s like this, when the other half is absorbed someday, all the delayed awakenings will happen in chain. For now, the increase in inner energy—especially around the Demonic Qi—is an enormous achievement.]
At Mumyeong’s words I remembered the forgotten reality.
My participation in the Guardian’s War had become almost a given.
I closed my eyes once more and felt the Jade resting below my navel.
The Heavenly Demon Jade lay quietly inside my body as if nothing had happened.
My first encounter with this Jade had been by breaking the Heavenly Demon Jade and absorbing it.
It had become whole by absorbing the damaged Jade of the fallen former Mountain Blade Sect Guardian, Gang Chisang.
And this half Guardian Jade, though it felt ordinary on the surface, was clearly organically connected to the Heavenly Demon Jade, breathing as if one massive lower abdomen.
What I had gained from that process was the Demonic Qi of the Three Purities from the original Heavenly Demon Jade, plus a little less than one more Purity from the expanded Jade.
I closed my eyes.
Exactly at the center of my lower abdomen, the Qi of the Four Purities and Demonic Qi a little less than four Purities felt like they were facing each other across two different worlds.
Right now they coexisted without mixing like oil and water, but they were also a catalyst that could turn my body into a massive gunpowder magazine whenever they mixed.
That unease was currently divided by a thin paper-like membrane—the current state of my body.
I opened my eyes and sighed.
“So I really ate the Guardian’s Jade from the Sichuan Tang Clan. In front of everyone.”
The fact I had hidden until now had been revealed.
In old times it was said that a secret was always known to either no one or everyone.
But now every Guardian who learned this would become my target.
Since Guardians weren’t fools, they would naturally strategize to pick off the weakest first and accumulate Jades.
Whoever was stronger, regardless of truth, a mysterious person who wasn’t a Guardian, with no clear background and thus less burden, holding not one but one and a half Jades would be tempting enough.
I crossed my arms and looked at the late summer world ending before me and muttered:
“Hah, no matter what, once Eun Seollyeong comes back—”
“Huh? Eun Seollyeong?”
At the end of the floorboards stood the woman in white clothes.
She stood without a sound, so quietly I didn’t know how long she had been there.
Thanks to her help, I had survived the Demonic Sect’s infiltration at the end of death.
She had even used up her inner energy to recover me.
Whether anyone said anything or not, she was my savior of life.
I sat up with a start, smiling in gratitude.
“Eun Seollyeong, it’s been a while.”
She walked toward me.
I smiled brightly.
“…Thank you so much. If it weren’t for you, I really would have died—”
Slap!
Her fierce palm struck my cheek.