I Walk the Martial World You Dreamed Of (1)
The night sky shattered like glass.
The familiar streets of Mureung County, the red sky at sunset, even the master’s face, smiling so warmly.
Everything broke apart and drifted down like scraps of sleet.
"―!"
I opened my eyes.
What I felt as I came to was the chill of a cold stone chamber.
The coppery stink of blood and the dust smell that stung the tip of my nose.
And the master, lying there with her eyes closed, smiling.
"Ah, ah…"
A groan slipped from my mouth.
Something hot surged up my throat, and it felt as if tears might burst from my eyes at any moment.
It was like being swallowed by a storm and shipwrecked in the middle of the vast sea.
A hollow, miserable feeling, as though I had lost everything I possessed and all that remained was this wretched body.
My hand moved naturally toward my master’s pulse.
Her body was growing colder by the second, and even the warmth that had been lingering inside her was fading like a wisp of haze.
Because she had poured into me the last of her own warmth, her skin was pale and cold as porcelain.
With trembling fingers, I cupped her cheek.
It was cold.
So cold that the tips of my fingers went numb.
Transferring one’s inner power across the body.
A forbidden art that burned away the user’s own life to pass their cultivation to another.
My master had saved me.
By moving the faint spark still burning in her own body into mine.
No.
This couldn’t be the end.
Hastily, I dropped into a seated posture and placed both hands on my master’s back.
Inner energy rose from my dantian and flowed through my arms and hands into her back.
I could feel familiar true qi circling through me.
Dark as ink. Still as the night sky.
And strangely remote, as if we had been separated for an age.
The thought made nausea surge in my throat.
No.
I didn’t need this kind of power.
What was the point of the greatest martial art under heaven,
what was the point of immortality-grade inner energy,
if my master wasn’t here?
Her true qi writhed and tried to return to where it had once belonged, flowing backward every time I forced it into her.
And every time it did, the fact that her life was going out made itself felt in my bones.
No.
Idiot.
Worthless fool.
Countless self-loathing thoughts swept through my head like inner demons.
I knew the game’s world setting. I knew the lore. I knew the facts.
So what the hell had I been doing?
Because I was mute,
because I hadn’t learned martial arts yet,
because I didn’t know when my master would fall to the demonic sect,
because the enemy was someone second only to the cult leader himself—
so many excuses came to mind, but they all boiled down to one conclusion.
They were all excuses.
I knew the game. I knew the world. I knew the story.
And yet I couldn’t even save the life of one person—my master?
It was incompetence in its purest form.
A parasite who fed on the backbone of his master,
who lived under her care,
and in the end would even drain her life away.
Nothing more, nothing less.
No, no, no, no, no.
It felt like pouring water into a bottomless jar.
My master’s dantian had already been shattered.
The inner energy I desperately forced in simply leaked away through those broken gaps and scattered into the air.
Veins burst and blood sprayed.
I could feel my organs twisting under the recoil of my own internal force.
But it all slipped through my fingers like grains of sand.
[To have tried and still failed to obtain a result is no different from never having tried at all.]
The words I had once written to persuade my master flashed through my mind.
The instant I remembered them, disgust surged up inside me.
Damned bastard.
Who was I to lecture anyone?
The very words I had used to convince my master had come back like a boomerang and driven themselves straight into my chest.
“So this is the wondrous fate that has been given to me.”
No, Master.
I am your ill-fated bond.
This pathetic disciple is not worthy to bask in such glory.
Come back! Please, come back!
I violently twisted my blood and qi.
Agony tore through my meridians, but I didn’t care.
Cold sweat poured down like rain, and my whole body screamed.
I didn’t care.
Pain like this meant nothing.
I wanted to smash my head against the floor.
No—
I wanted to bite through my tongue and die, and then escort my master myself down the road to the underworld.
"Foolish."
I jerked and looked up.
In the silent stone chamber, an unfamiliar voice rang out.
Cool, restrained, as if emotion had been carefully cut away from it.
Beyond my tear-blurred vision, I saw a figure standing in the darkness.
A man in a black mask.
I hadn’t sensed a thing, not even the faintest trace of his presence.
The moment I saw him, every circuit in my head lit up like fire.
One of Bang Chunghyun’s underlings?
Were there still more of them?
Had they come back to humiliate my master, now little more than a corpse?
My reason evaporated.
In its place flooded a searing murderous intent.
Good.
Good.
I needed something to pour all this boiling self-loathing and rage into.
I would kill that bastard.
I would tear him apart and kill him,
and then I would die too.
I snatched up the sword that had fallen to the floor.
The inner energy my master had passed to me surged wildly, wrapping around the blade.
I didn’t need the shape of any sword form.
Whoosh—!
The air screamed as it was cut apart.
My sword lunged for the masked man’s skull with the speed of a falling bolt.
But—
Tick.
A light sound.
The masked man neither dodged nor drew his sword.
He simply raised the scabbard hanging at his waist and deflected my strike.
What?
Before I could even react—
Bang!
"!"
A violent impact exploded across my chest.
The palm strike he threw landed squarely on my breastbone.
I nearly flew backward into the wall, but somehow managed to land with my footing and brace myself with the sword.
"Wrong."
Through my trembling eyes, the masked man spoke in a low voice.
"You let murderous intent cloud your vision and your sword path has already fallen apart. A sword driven only by momentum is worth less than a club."
I drew back and stabbed again.
I tried to find his opening with Mind's Eye.
But—
What is this?
I couldn’t see one.
It was like staring at a massive boulder, or some incomprehensible sea.
Not a single gap could be found.
My sword rushing toward him was no different from a fragile feather.
The moment my blade shot for his throat—
Thunk!
"…!"
The tip of the masked man’s scabbard lightly tapped my solar plexus.
It was a simple motion, but the shock it carried was no different from the palm strike before.
My breath caught and my knees buckled.
"Calm yourself."
The masked man looked down at me, unmoving.
"If I had meant to kill you, I would have taken your head long ago, when you were lying stupidly in your master’s lap and drowning in inner demons."
Start.
At his words, my hand, which had been reaching again for my sword, froze.
Only then did my mind cool a little.
It was an undeniable fact.
Before I woke up, I had been completely helpless.
If he had been an enemy, I would already be a corpse.
Breathing hard, I glared at him with bloodshot eyes.
Then I moved my sword in silence. Not a strike this time, but a simple question.
Who are you?
The masked man read my gaze and my writing, then snorted.
Clack!
"!"
Another clear sound rang out.
He had hit me on the head with the scabbard.
"Wrong again."
He pointed at his mask.
"If I intended to reveal my identity, would I have come here with my face hidden like this?"
I had nothing to say.
He had a point.
But that didn’t make me let my guard down.
The masked man began to walk slowly.
He wasn’t heading toward me, but toward the collapsed master.
No!
I tried to grab the leg of the masked man as he approached her.
But my flailing hand only brushed the edge of his robes.
The masked man easily slipped past me and dropped into a crouch behind my master.
Then he placed both hands on her back.
Pure inner energy flowed from his hands and began to seep into her body.
It was not destructive or tainted in the least.
A profoundly gentle and pure force, one that temporarily patched a shattered jar and held together life that was slipping away.
Far from demonic qi, it was a flow closer to the inner energy of the righteous sects.
What in the world is that?
Mind's Eye trembled, telling me just how vast the gap in our realms truly was.
An enormous, blinding power swirled around the masked man, bright enough to sting my eyes.
Heavy, yet gentle, with the balance of yin and yang threaded through it.
Compared to him, the inner energy I had been pouring in was no more than a brook before the Yangtze.
"This is my purpose."
Still channeling his qi into my master, the masked man spoke in an even voice.
"I came to tell you how to save your master."
A way to save her?
At those words, my mind went blank.
Could she really be saved?
My master, whose dantian had already been torn apart and whose inner energy was scattering into nothing—could she be saved?
But that hope was immediately swallowed by a fiercer rage.
If she could be saved,
if he had the power to help,
where were you when the demonic cult came crashing in, and why are you only showing up now?
The masked man quietly looked down at the words I wrote on the floor with my sword tip.
I knew it.
It was nothing but forced logic, useless venting, and an ugly complaint.
He had no obligation to help us in the first place.
If anyone had such an obligation, it was me.
But—
But right now, I couldn’t endure this unless I blamed someone.
Myself or someone else, it made no difference.
Still pouring in inner energy, the masked man spoke calmly.
"First, I came as fast as I could. I rode night and day for a thousand li, but I was already too late. If you wish to blame my inadequate lightness skill, I will accept it."
His voice was as flat as if he were reading from a report.
"Second, by the time I arrived, you were already grievously wounded and dying, and Mukjeok was using Transferring one’s inner power across the body on you."
The masked man’s gaze brushed over me.
"If that art is interrupted by outside interference while it is being performed, both the giver and the receiver suffer a deviation of cultivation and die a violent death. If I had barged in blindly, you both would have coughed up blood and died on the spot. So I had no choice but to watch."
I clenched my teeth at his words.
It was airtight logic. An unassailable fact.
"And third—"
The masked man paused, then looked at my master’s smiling face.
Something flickered in his eyes, but I could not tell what it was.
"Because Mukjeok herself wished to die in accordance with heaven’s decree."
What?
"Long ago—ever since the days when you were still a green boy who couldn’t even hold a sword—she chose to burn away her own life so that she might bring forth a seed like you. I, as a third party, have no right to interfere with that resolution."
I bit down hard on my lip.
Blood welled up with the taste.
While I had been stupidly wavering beneath the hem of my master’s skirt, she had already made her decision.
This foolish disciple was not even half as resolved as his master.
"However."
The masked man went on.
"Though I respect her will, I am still a human being. I owe her something from the past, and if there is still a chance to save her, I have no reason to refuse it."
He tilted his chin toward the left side of his own waist.
"There is a bottle of pills in the pouch tied to my belt. Take it out."
My hand hesitated for a moment.
But this was no time to be picky. I had to grab at whatever straw remained.
With trembling fingers, I searched through his pouch.
A cold jade vial came into my hand.
"Open it. You will see the pill inside."
I pulled out the stopper.
Inside was a single murky, dark-red pill.
But then—
"…."
The instant I saw the energy flowing from it with Mind's Eye, unease and hostility rose sharply in my chest.
Something on the pill’s surface was writhing ever so slightly.
Something vile, sticky, and saturated with a poisonous miasma.
Though it was wrapped in a pure, cooling energy and so faint that it looked almost like a mirage, the nature of the qi was unmistakable to Mind's Eye.
Demonic qi.
Exactly the same true energy Bang Chunghyun had emitted.
There was only one thing the pill could be.
The Three Corpses Brain-Devouring Pill.
A vile poison used by the demonic cult to control its followers.
The worst kind of gu poison, one that would only be neutralized if an antidote was taken once a year; otherwise the worms inside the brain would awaken, gnaw through the marrow, and kill their victim in hideous agony.
A chill ran down my spine.
Was he telling me to make my master swallow something like this?
My trembling hand instinctively moved toward my sword.
Was this man a demonic cultist?
Was he in league with Bang Chunghyun?
No, he had said he was not one of Bang Chunghyun’s underlings.
Then was he another faction of the demonic cult?
What, then, was all that talk about the bond he had once built with her?
My head reeled with a storm of thoughts and guesses.
But the masked man, as if paying no attention to my reaction at all, said coolly, "The identity is not important. What matters is the effect."
He continued feeding inner energy into my master’s back as he looked at me.
"This Three Corpses Brain-Devouring Pill was modified by physicians from the Sichuan Tang Clan and the Qingnang Sect in an attempt to reverse the pill’s properties through pharmacology."
He turned his eyes back to my master’s back as he went on.
"The corpse worms inside the pill burrow into the brain, assimilate, and then, unless an antidote is taken periodically, they gnaw at the brain and spread poison, causing excruciating pain. But that also means the worms fully melt into the body and become one with it. The physicians of the Tang Clan and Qingnang Sect studied this and developed a technique in which the corpse worms naturally dissolve into the blood and spread through the limbs and bones, healing internal injuries and restoring the dantian."
At his words, my eyes narrowed.
I had never heard of this before.
Even though I knew quite a bit about the Sichuan Tang Clan and the Qingnang Sect, I had never heard of a medicine like this.
"But this pill is incomplete. At best, it only forcibly fixes the user’s qi and body in place, binding them like a tree trunk. Even if one understands the pill’s principles, no righteous sect in the martial world knows how to manufacture and raise corpse worms, so the development stopped there. It prevents the condition from worsening, but it cannot actually cure it. In the end, it remained a failed product."
But at the same time, it was a plausible story.
Even within the game, there were pharmaceutical methods that refined and altered pills with an extreme yin nature into extreme yang or balanced natures to improve cultivation.
More than that, if both the Tang Clan and Qingnang Sect—their names among the most respected in the martial world when it came to medicine—were involved, then if the masked man wasn’t lying, the pill’s effectiveness itself would be guaranteed.
Besides, it wasn’t as though I knew every last setting in this game.
But—
Can I trust this?
I still didn’t know who this man even was.
Who was the masked man? A man from the Tang Clan? Qingnang Sect? Or the demonic cult?
If so, what connection could he possibly have with my master that would make him hand over something like this?
Where did you even get this pill in the first place? Are you from the Tang Clan or the Qingnang Sect?
The masked man looked at the words I wrote and snorted.
"The Tang Clan? The Qingnang Sect? Please. I stole it from them."
Then he let out a low, dry chuckle.
"I can understand why you don’t trust me. It must be hard to believe the words of someone who won’t reveal his face, or to believe that a pill from the demonic cult could be presented as medicine. But listen."
The masked man’s voice remained low and calm.
"Do you think the White Lotus Cult is demonic?"
Without hesitation, I nodded.
Wasn’t it the root of all evil, the one that shook the Ming Dynasty, drenched the martial world in blood, and reduced my master to this state?
"Then was the White Lotus Cult evil from the beginning?"
My body went rigid.
I didn’t understand the intent behind the question.
The masked man answered it himself.
"The White Lotus Cult was originally a religion that rose to save the common people from suffering. They resisted the tyranny of the Yuan dynasty, and they were the ones who made the greatest contribution to the founding of the current Ming. But was it not said that once the hare is dead, the hounds are cooked? The imperial house turned on them and purged them as traitors the moment the nation stabilized. To survive, they fled into the mountains and the shadows, and in the end they grew by feeding on hatred until they became the demonic cult of today."
The masked man stared into my eyes as if trying to pierce straight through them.
"Then is it the imperial house that became demonic by making them into evil?"
I could not answer.
Likewise, the masked man answered himself.
"The distinction between orthodox and unorthodox is this tedious and fleeting. Slapping labels on power is something for future historians to do. In the end, what matters is only the mind of the one who wields it. Even if the corpse worms in this pill are the product of the demonic cult, if they are used as medicine to save someone who is dying, how could that be called wicked?"
He paused and looked at Mukjeok’s pale back.
"The choice is yours. Whether you seek a way to save your master with this pill, or whether you let her go in lofty dignity without staining the honor she has guarded all her life. Which path is truly for your master—decide that for yourself, as her disciple."
How much time do we have?
With a trembling hand, I moved the tip of my sword and wrote the question on the floor.
"Generously, I will remain here through tonight and feed her enough inner energy to keep her remaining thread from snapping. So give me your answer by tomorrow."
The true energy flowing from the masked man’s hands grew even denser.
I could see beads of sweat gathering on his forehead.
For all his skill, forcibly clinging to the life of someone whose dantian had already been destroyed was no different from wearing away at his own life force.
"The reason I say one night is simple. No matter how much energy I pour into her, Mukjeok’s dantian has already been completely ruined. Pour water into a cracked vessel and it will all leak out in the end. If you cannot make a decision before this night passes and the sun rises high, your master will not live to see the second day."
The masked man closed his eyes.
It was a refusal of further conversation.
The stone tomb fell silent again.
Only the sound of cold night wind slipping through the chamber and the masked man’s steady breathing remained.
Within that silence, the jade vial in my hand glimmered coldly.