Fortuitous Encounter
The Blood Flower Library stood alone in the middle of a barren wasteland.
To think they had built a library in a place this desolate. The location was as if accessibility had never even entered their minds.
I looked around in bewilderment, but there was no way anyone could live in a place like this.
"Remember this well. You will enter only once."
The demonic man who had led me to the Blood Flower Library emphasized it again.
Right—what did that matter?
This would likely be my first and last chance to explore this enormous library.
"I can't take anything out with me, right?"
"That's right. Finish everything in there."
I would have to memorize as many formulas as I could. At least there was no time limit, which was fortunate.
I resolved not to leave this place until my body gave out.
Creak.
The library door opened with a harsh, grating sound.
It felt as though it had been left untouched for ages. The exterior had been grand, but even that grandeur could not hide how old it was.
For a building of this caliber to have been left without even basic maintenance felt strangely wrong.
The suspicion only deepened once I stepped inside.
Spiderwebs hung everywhere, and the bookshelves were thick with dust.
Damn it. Something was seriously wrong. I turned around only then, too late to realize what was happening, but the door had already shut behind me.
It wouldn’t budge no matter how hard I shoved it, as if it were mocking me for being made a fool of in front of them.
The Sungmu Cult didn’t simply need strong people. There had to be something else I didn’t know.
Haa...
A sigh slipped out of me, but there had to be a way. At the very least, moving was better than wasting time by giving up and sitting there.
First, I’d finish my original objective: the sword techniques. I could think about the rest after that.
Deep inside a cave.
An old man sat slouched in a plain black chair with no ornamentation at all.
After a long silence with his eyes closed, he finally spoke.
"You’re certain he entered the Blood Flower Library?"
"Yes, Left Emissary. I confirmed it with my own eyes."
"A pity. He truly was brimming with talent."
The old man liked everything about the boy.
His constitution, his brazen personality, even his exceptional talent.
"But a brat that unstable can’t be made into the Young Leader..."
The Left Emissary of the Sungmu Cult was, as the title suggested, the one who assisted the small heaven known as the Young Leader.
From selection and training to protecting that person from outside threats until the day they ascended as the next cult leader—he accompanied the entire process.
In most cases, the Young Leader was chosen from among the cult leader’s own children, but the cult leader of this generation had not wanted that.
Because of that, the idea had even been considered of bringing in children from prominent families within the Sungmu Cult and raising one of them, but that would have upset the balance.
After much deliberation, the old man reached a conclusion.
He would bring in an outsider from the Central Plains and forge a third power.
The Young Leader was, in effect, the future of the cult. That was why the old man had to tame the children of the Central Plains in their raw, unpolished state.
Train them to fit the doctrines of the Sungmu Cult.
Make sure they did not stray from the path.
Prevent them from leading the cult to ruin.
It was almost fair to say he was raising a Young Leader in name only. Simply obeying orders would be enough.
Which was precisely why that boy was even more dangerous. The old man had become certain of that after seeing what he had done in the forest the other day.
He was absolutely not the type to submit. With his overflowing talent as his weapon, he would twist the cult to suit his own tastes.
And if it served his own interests, he would not hesitate to throw the cult into a sea of fire.
That kind of sapling ought to be crushed. If it could not be bent to fit the cult, then it had to be broken.
The sky could not bear two suns. Even for the sake of the Young Leader’s authority in the future, this was the right choice.
That was why the old man had trapped the boy in the Blood Flower Library—also known as Mahwa Library—an accursed place.
The library had not been created by the Sungmu Cult’s hand.
It had existed on this land for hundreds of years, perhaps longer, even before the cult ever set foot here.
When the Sungmu Cult discovered it, they coveted the demonic manuals hidden within and sent countless cult members into it.
The result was tragic. More than half vanished, and even those who were found had lost their minds.
There was only one conclusion to draw from such circumstances.
It had to be a remnant of the Blood Sect, that ancient organization from long ago.
In the end, to prevent further losses, the cult forbade all entry to the library, letting it slowly fade from memory and disappear into history.
For such a Blood Flower Library, there could be no better place to dispose of him. He would lose his reason and become another ghost haunting the stacks.
If he somehow emerged from there with his sanity intact...
It was a thing that should not be allowed to happen.
Still, that would be fate.
As I wandered through the library to figure out its structure, I realized something astonishing.
The library was made up of five floors, and the entire first floor was packed with books related to swords.
All around me were materials that could complete my sword technique.
I suppressed the thrill in my chest and pulled out one book, only to drop it almost immediately.
The instant I opened it, a sinister energy washed over my entire body. Demonic qi bored into my blood and vessels as if it meant to shatter my mind.
Demonic Sea Heart Scripture...! It was the same kind of demonic art.
Since I had already experienced that sort of demonic qi before, I was able to suppress it with the formulas of the Clear Lotus Art.
"What in the world is this..."
On a hunch, I yanked out the other martial manuals and flipped them open at random, and the same thing happened every time.
Only now did the Sungmu Cult’s scheme begin to take shape. If I hadn’t already gone through the process of adapting the Demonic Sea Heart Scripture, I would surely have been swallowed by madness.
For a moment, anger surged through me, but I steadied my breathing and forced it down coldly.
First came the completion of the sword art. Revenge could wait. That was what I told myself as I moved between the shelves.
It wasn’t difficult to find a technique suited to me. Most of the sword arts here were frighteningly domineering.
Before long my arms were full, to the point that I could hardly carry any more. In the end, I sat right there and memorized the formulas while practicing each movement of the sword one by one.
When I broke the forms down and applied them individually, they harmonized perfectly with the demonic qi I had accumulated through the Demonic Sea Heart Scripture.
Harmony and balance with demonic qi. Unless they had originally been meant as a pair, it was nonsense.
I had felt it before, but there was something about the Demonic Sea Heart Scripture I didn’t understand. It was no ordinary third-rate demonic art.
As I skimmed through the manuals and walked between the shelves, one book in particular caught my eye. It was absurdly more worn than the others.
Asura Remnant Blood Sword. That was its name.
Curious, I opened it—and something strange happened in my dantian.
The demonic qi from the Demonic Sea Heart Scripture roiled violently and began to run amok. The energy that had spread wildly through my body surged out along my inverted blood flow and burst forth beyond me.
The demonic qi slipped out of control and shook my insides to the core. A briny fluid pushed up my throat and flooded my mouth.
“Cough—!”
I ended up vomiting up a handful of blood, staining the manual. I had expected the book to turn red with blood, but the crimson liquid merely flowed across the paper.
The result was so far beyond common sense that my mind went blank for an instant, but I had no choice but to recover quickly.
The red blood shot toward the ceiling.
No—this wasn’t blood. It was pure scarlet demonic qi.
That energy resonated with the demonic qi from the Demonic Sea Heart Scripture within me.
Whummm.
The energies that had been circling through the air and mixing together suddenly plunged into my body all at once.
“Hah—!”
Every blood vessel in my body burst open to receive it. That ominous yet strangely familiar demonic qi drilled into my dantian.
As soon as the spasms that wracked me as though I’d been struck by lightning finally subsided, my whole body felt heavy.
When I sat cross-legged and examined myself from within, I couldn’t suppress my shock.
More than half a jiazi of inner strength had gathered in my dantian. What had just happened had the effect of consuming a precious elixir like Shaolin’s Summoning Pill or Huashan’s Red Grape Pill.
To think such power was sleeping inside a mere book. Someone must have intentionally infused it with demonic qi.
Why? Countless possibilities circled through my head, only to breed even more questions.
The answer lay in the Asura Remnant Blood Sword. It had to be in there.
I opened the book and read it slowly, but that old manual was filled only with formulas for the sword.
Had I been wrong? Maybe there was no answer at all. Maybe the book had simply absorbed a large amount of demonic qi by chance.
Just as I was ready to give up on a result different from what I’d expected, I found something in the final line that was impossible to ignore.
Lin-ja, break the root.
At first glance it seemed like part of the formula, but on closer inspection it was unmistakably out of place.
At this point I had nothing to lose. Break the root—did that mean tear the book apart?
I had already memorized the formulas, so I split it cleanly in half without hesitation, but nothing changed.
The root. While I was thinking it over, something flashed through my mind.
It was an absurd thought, but the bookshelf itself could count as a root.
I prayed this was right. If it wasn’t the shelf, then I’d have to destroy the entire library.
I focused the increased demonic qi into my arm. Thanks to the newly absorbed energy, the crimson in my already dark red demonic qi had deepened even further.
Kwaaang!
When my fist struck, the bookshelf shattered to pieces and flew in every direction. Dust exploded outward, clouding my vision.
Please.
When I looked beneath where the bookshelf had stood, there was a gaping hole. The bookshelf had been the right answer.
Once I’d come this far, I had to see it through to the end.
Throwing myself into the empty space, I found a passage leading onward. I walked along the pitch-dark path for a long time before I came to a solid stone wall.
I reached out and felt along its surface, and something was carved there. My senses, heightened by inner energy, told me at once that it was a flower.
When I pressed that flower gently, it sank inward.
Rumble, rumble, rumble.
As though some mechanism had been linked to the flower, the door opened on its own, revealing a hidden underground cave.
Night pearls were embedded everywhere, bathing the interior in brilliant light. It was a small stone cavern, but water trickled through a hole bored into one wall. In one corner, wooden boxes filled with dried rations were stacked high.
Who had built a place like this beneath a Sungmu Cult library? Whatever else it was, anyone who liked caves this much had to be a demonic man for sure.
In the center of the cave, a stack of manuals drew my attention.
Forcing down the pounding in my chest, I reached out with my hand.
Demonic Sea Heart Scripture.
Those were the characters written on the cover of that manual.