Death Approaches
Death was approaching.
A palm the size of my entire upper body came crashing down.
The searing heat unique to Heaven and Earth Great Shift that had wrapped my whole body was fading, and the euphoria drained away like a receding tide. I felt the crimson glow vanish from my eyes.
"All or nothing!"
I clenched the broken blade. My palm tore open and blood sprayed. The pain snapped my dazed mind into razor-sharp focus.
Third-grade — Moyong Family Twin Dragon Whirlwind Sword
Without even a proper starting stance, I poured my inner force into the blade clenched in my fist and drove it straight at the pulsing heart right in front of me.
The broken sword exploded.
The azure dragons that should have shot forward instead detonated in every direction along with my palm, shredding everything around them.
—KWA-KWA-KWANG!
Blue light flooded the space. A monstrous scream rose as chunks of flesh filled the air. The Golden-Haired Divine Ape’s palm that had been descending on my upper body was reduced to a tattered rag.
Even so, the force behind it had not completely died.
—Kwang!
It felt like being smashed by a giant slab of meat. I was sent flying. I curled up, protecting my head as I hit the ground. The impact rattled my guts, but I scrambled up at once, covered in dirt and dust.
My entire body was a wreck. The hand that had gripped the sword and detonated it was especially bad; I had yanked it free at the last second to protect it as much as possible, yet it was far from intact. I tore a strip of cloth and bound my left upper arm to stop the bleeding.
The impact wasn’t as bad as I expected.
The palm that had struck me at the end had been strong, but its power had clearly been spent.
“Kroooooh!”
The Golden-Haired Divine Ape howled. Yet that once-mighty roar rapidly weakened. A waterfall of blood poured from the yaksha’s chest. Its heart had burst under the full-powered Ssangryong-seonpung-geom I had scraped together with every last ounce of strength.
“Krr… rrrr…”
The golden eyes that had rolled with hatred slowly lost their light. With a tremendous crash, the beast toppled sideways.
Thus met its end the spirit beast that had guarded the fifth secret cave of the White Lotus Demon Sect—the Golden-Haired Divine Ape.
“Hah… hah.”
I collapsed, gasping. My whole body felt ready to shatter. It had been a head-on clash with the Golden-Haired Divine Ape while pushing Heaven and Earth Great Shift to its absolute limit. There was no way I could walk away unscathed.
I opened my mouth in a silent scream of pain I could not even voice, drool running down my chin. Before my eyes the massive corpse of the Golden-Haired Divine Ape twitched as it fully died.
I… really killed that monster?
The cavern, large enough to serve as the main hall of any minor sect, had been thoroughly destroyed and was collapsing. Far off, a giant cleaver big enough to serve as a city-gate pillar was half-buried in the wall. Aryun’s body, crushed under rock with only an ankle showing, Eunpyeong reduced to a bloody pulp, and Daesajun’s corpse lay in a corner. The shattered Belt of Protector Ryu lay scattered among the debris.
And right in front of me, a golden-furred ape corpse five times my size sprawled like a blanket in the middle of a crimson lake of blood.
“Ha… haha. I survived.”
In this vast cavern, I was the only living thing still breathing.
My left arm had gone completely numb, as if wrapped in cold cloth. The unpleasant sensation was severe enough to make me worry about bone, tendon, and nerve damage. Yet I was not worried. I had already been through something like this once before.
“Mumyeong, it’ll be the same this time, right?”
“Of course. It’s the legacy of the White Lotus Demon Sect. I’m certain. On the surface it looks like blood, but it’s no ordinary blood.”
Before me stretched the vast lake of blood the Golden-Haired Divine Ape had spilled.
In the sixth secret cave I had fought the White Serpent with far lesser skill than I possessed now. We had fought for two full days. The White Serpent had been only slightly larger than this Golden-Haired Divine Ape and vastly weaker. Yet I had still been weak then, especially after the brutal training inside the caves and my poor nutrition; I had been nowhere near fully prepared. Above all, I had possessed no weapon and had been forced to fight bare-handed. Crucially, I had not yet had Heaven and Earth Great Shift.
Even so I had torn open the White Serpent’s maw as it tried to bite me and finally killed it. In return my upper body had been nearly shredded, and the White Serpent had died with its heart crushed in my grip while still coiled around me. Completely entangled, I had lost consciousness. The two of us had been locked together, destined for the same fate.
“Common sense alone says that the White Lotus Demon Sect—the predecessor of the Blood Sect that creates jiangshi and all manner of monsters—would of course create spirit beasts as well.”
A full day later I had opened my eyes to the pain of crows pecking at me. The torn places on my upper body that had been wrapped by the White Serpent and submerged in blood had almost completely healed.
“Huuuk! Huk! Huk…!”
My left hand had gone completely numb. My legs shook like aspen leaves. My breath was growing rapidly short.
No time.
Fortunately the floor was solid bedrock. If it had been dirt, every drop of blood from the Golden-Haired Divine Ape’s body would have been absorbed without a trace.
I scanned the ground. A short distance from the corpse was a slight depression.
There.
I snatched the sword from the hand of Aryun, who had died crushed under rock, and used it as a cane as I hobbled and crawled forward. Each step felt as if a thousand years were passing.
—Karak.
I set the blade to the floor. From beneath the Golden-Haired Divine Ape’s corpse to the shallow pit beside it, I carved a straight groove with the sword, concentrating my inner force. I cut the line several times. My breath grew so ragged that I lost control of my force more than once and the floor exploded along with the blade. Each time I flinched and lifted the sword carefully so the blood channel would not be ruined.
—Jjorrr…
At last blood began to pool in the pit along the path I had made. The red liquid glittered under the light of the luminous pearls embedded in the cavern ceiling, and somehow a golden sheen seemed to shimmer within it as well.
“Haa… haa.”
I splashed and crawled laboriously into the lake of blood. The metallic stench filled my nose as the blood wrapped around my entire body.
“Even for a fortuitous encounter, this is a bit much. Blood bathing, of all things.”
I sank into the blood lake up to my neck. Panting, I left only my face above the surface and stared blankly at the ceiling.
“Get some rest. The entrance is blocked, which means at least you won’t be attacked again while your body recovers.”
Mumyeong’s words had never felt so comforting.
“I can relax?”
“Of course. I’ll wake you if anything happens.”
I gazed at the ceiling and muttered, “In this hellish journey, I don’t even know anymore whether having you around is a good thing or a bad thing.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“You definitely said something.”
I kept staring upward. I hadn’t noticed when things were noisy, but the luminous pearls packed into the ceiling gave off a faint “woong” of resonance as they shone.
“Just that you’re a real bastard.”
“As expected of my Host.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
I closed my eyes.
The spirit beast’s blood, cool at first, rapidly grew hot and was absorbed into my entire body as if being sucked in. It went beyond mere restoration—it was reconstructing me stronger than before.
“Recovery is proceeding smoothly. It should take about one gak. When you wake, go straight to Patcheon Hyeolma Gunrimbo. Ready?”
I cracked my eyes open and looked sideways.
—Wooong.
Just like last time. Exactly as in the sixth secret cave, a jade stele stood silently beneath a shaft of sunlight as if nothing had happened, looking down at me.
“Of course.”
It was time to leave behind the Kongtong Sect’s footwork, Hwan-yeong-dae-sin-bo, and take another step forward.
Suddenly I thought of the one who had blocked the entrance—the pale-skinned man with a snake’s face. He was the sole survivor of the annihilated Chu-mu-gwan party, and the one who had sealed off our retreat as well.
Ryu Hwasa, was it?
There was definitely something about him. He did not feel like an ordinary disciple of Cheonsubaekryeonsa. The sensation was familiar. I dug through my memories for where I had felt it before.
Wait.
My head throbbed. The greatest terror I had ever felt in my life rose up—the masked man who had stared at me through the pouring rain. It was a similar aura, no, an equal one, to Jeokmaryeong of the Heavenly Demon Cult. That damp, metallic feeling.
No. Why am I thinking of that bastard? Impossible.
I shook my head.
Jeokmaryeong is on a completely different level.
Even when he had shoved my chest I hadn’t felt overwhelming power. He might have been hiding his strength, but I hadn’t sensed anything truly crushing. All that remained sticky in the back of my memory was that face full of a smile steeped in madness.
I tried to forget him, yet he kept surfacing for one reason only.
You killed all our kids down below, didn’t you?
Damn it. Those words that didn’t even sound like a proper joke still shook me far too much.
Our kids? Who the hell were “our kids”? The villagers hanging from the trees? The Green Forest Band? Or the Blood Sect…?
—Chulreong.
I clenched my fist in the blood. At the edge of my vision I could see the passage blocked by a massive boulder.
I’ll run into him the moment I leave anyway. Just like always, I’ll assume the worst and keep building my strength. Even if the one waiting outside the door is from the Blood Sect, what I have to do doesn’t change.
“One gak complete. You may come out.”
—Paaaat!
I surged up out of the water. I raked my hair back with one hand. The pool I had been soaking in had originally been filled with red blood. Now every toxin and impurity had been drawn out of me, leaving a blackish, sticky mire.
I clenched my fist. New flesh had grown. My entire body had recovered. A golden light like the Golden-Haired Divine Ape’s fur briefly shimmered over me before fading.
“Your body has been reinforced. Reflexes, skeletal structure, muscle quality—everything has improved overall. The Host’s current body has been partially reconstructed on the foundation of the First Heavenly Demon’s physique. The Golden-Haired Divine Ape is a spirit beast originating from the White Lotus Demon Sect, predecessor of the Heavenly Demon Cult. Its compatibility with the First Heavenly Demon’s body—tempered and grown from childhood on every kind of secret elixir of the Heavenly Demon Cult—must have been exceptionally high.”
—Kkuuk. Kkuuuk.
At this level I felt I could maintain Heaven and Earth Great Shift for longer. The stronger the flesh became, the more powerfully and the longer I could sustain the technique. The demonic art that originated from Jeokmaryeong was formidable. There was a reason it was classified as a first-grade martial art of the Heavenly Demon Cult.
Through multiple battles I had come to understand that while individual achievement in a martial art mattered, the foundation of the art itself was even more important. Even within the same grade there seemed to be clear differences, but from my experience so far I estimated that a fifth-grade art, no matter how thoroughly polished, would be lucky to approach a fourth-grade one. I still didn’t know the exact standards of these grades, but for someone as ignorant of martial theory as I was, they were more than enough to go by. Using that as a measure, a higher grade meant it was worth pouring everything into training to raise my mastery.
Every fight begins with movement. And the ultimate martial art that would draw the grandest picture of that movement stood right before me.
I approached the jade stele. With the memory of the past still fresh, I carefully scanned the surroundings for wooden dummies, holes, or any possible mechanisms before daring to touch it. After examining everything for a full gak and confirming nothing was amiss, I stepped closer.
Heaven-Rending Blood Demon Sovereign Steps
On the jade stele, without any other mark, only those massive characters had been scrawled roughly.
“These were carved with fingers.”
I had thought them ordinary writing. Only when I drew near did I realize they were anything but. The clear fingerprints remaining at the ends of the strokes made it obvious that the characters had been carved by finger.
I traced the letters with my fingertips, feeling the texture. There was no other inscription. Those seven characters were everything written on the stele. Nothing on the reverse either. At the end of the seven characters, a palm print had been pressed into the stone—the palm of a White Lotus Demon Sect martial artist from centuries past who had carved these words.
I hesitated, then stepped up to the jade stele.
Kiiing.
Even without deliberately invoking the Heavenly Demon’s authority of Nam-sang or Sam-mae, my crimson eyes activated on their own.
“There are characters beneath the palm print.”
Mumyeong muttered.
Beware of him. Do not ask his name. He only ever holds conversations for which collateral has been taken…?
I’ve never heard such words in my life…. Host. Wait!
“….”
As if entranced, I pressed my own palm directly over the handprint on the jade stele.
—Chwaap.
My palm stuck fast. It would not come free.
At the same instant—
—Peoeok.
From the knees down, both of my legs exploded into pieces.