Three Lives, Three Loves (Part 3)
Kim Min-su!
The voice I had longed to hear and the face I missed so desperately appeared before me.
I rubbed my eyes in disbelief, but nothing changed.
“So… you’re really Hwa-ryeon? You really are?”
The woman standing in front of me was Jeok Hwa-ryeon in her signature Blood Demon attire.
I had spent over ten years in this world, yet she looked exactly the same as the days I remembered.
“I finally found you, Kim Min-su!! Do you have any idea how much I suffered looking for you?! Why did you abandon us and run away?!”
Hwa-ryeon grabbed my collar and shook me violently. I instantly sensed how furious she was from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. She had always called me “yeobo” when she was fine, but whenever she was angry she would use my name.
“W-wait! Hold on!”
Unlike back when I was a great master, I was now just an ordinary person. Every time she shook me, it felt like my broken ribs were snapping and my stomach was turning.
“Ugh!”
“Why… why are you doing this? No martial arts…?”
Hwa-ryeon immediately placed her hand on my stomach and looked troubled.
Even while fighting the urge to vomit, I pointed behind her.
“Behind you!”
BOOM—!
A heavy stomp sounded on the ground. The earth was being crushed and the sky was being stomped on.
That was the sky and that was the Namgung.
The swords of the horned knights who had been aiming at Hwa-ryeon froze. Their bodies shook like an earthquake. Soon they crashed to the floor.
KWAAAAA—!
The bodies of the horned knights who had not even been able to counterattack were crushed together with their armor and exploded.
“This… is the Imperial Sword Form?”
I recognized it at once. It was the martial art I had once used. The power was overwhelmingly irrational and far beyond what my peak days had been.
“Nice to meet you, Father.”
A young girl around junior-high-school age bowed with a heavy sword in her hands and greeted me.
“W-wait… so then…”
“That’s right. This child is our daughter, Jeok So-ye.”
“Wha…?”
My mind couldn’t keep up.
When I opened my eyes, exactly five years had passed since I had fallen into this state.
It had been roughly three years since the gates and hunters appeared in the world and I became the Hunter Management Division.
Time flowed so differently…?
In the midst of the confusion, Hwa-ryeon grabbed my hand.
“I don’t know why you lost your martial arts or why your legs are like this, but let’s go home, my husband. Back to our house.”
I hesitated as I looked at her outstretched hand. There were the family I had protected and my close friends here.
“I can’t go back.”
“What…?”
“I’ll explain later, but I didn’t disappear on my own. There are parents and precious people here for me, so I can’t return.”
I immediately pulled Hwa-ryeon into my arms.
“Then let’s live together here. Not in the Murim.”
“Does that mean… you’re telling me to stop being the Blood Demon?”
“Yes.”
Surprisingly, Jeok Hwa-ryeon smiled brightly instead of looking surprised.
“Great. I only need you and So-ye.”
“Haa… as expected, Mom…”
Behind me, So-ye simply rested her hand on her forehead with a face that didn’t match her age.
“You unified the world yet you’re so emotional… The martial arts master actually left everything to the great master anyway.”
“Huh? What do you mean by unified?”
Hwa-ryeon answered my question.
“When you disappeared and the righteous factions and the Heavenly Demon Cult attacked, I killed them all and unified everything.”
“…?”
I couldn’t understand.
According to what I knew, Hwa-ryeon didn’t have that kind of strength. If I was super transcendence, she was barely at the beginning of supreme transcendence.
She must have wanted to wash the world clean with blood.
I suddenly realized that by telling Hwa-ryeon the purpose and origin of the Blood Demon, just as I had understood the origin of the Namgung and become a great master, my small advice had become a butterfly effect and turned her into the greatest person in the world.
“Then…”
Just as I was about to continue, my eyes slowly closed.
The moment I realized I had escaped death, overwhelming pain and fatigue rushed in.
Feeling the hand that caught me as I fell, I closed my eyes.
***
“What exactly do you want, Kim Min-su? Marriage with the Blood Demon?!”
Suddenly the Alliance Leader, Baek Mu-heun, spoke in a furious tone. He sat down after realizing the eyes of those around him were focused on him.
“This isn’t a Blood Cult hall or a Heavenly Demon Cult hall. It’s just a Korean noodle shop. Lower your voice.”
“Here… it’s the Kyungsang National University cafeteria.”
Jeong So-i lifted her chopsticks and picked up her bowl of naengmyeon.
Naengmyeon.
Ever since I was young, I had loved cooking.
From ramyeon to noodles, meat dishes—anything I liked. But one day my father passed away and the house fell apart.
Yet I became the head of the house. I had to choose between military service and university, and I chose the special forces because it paid well even though the risk was high.
I didn’t want to make my family unhappy by going to university to study cooking.
So I simply chased happiness instead of misfortune.
“I just want to be happy. To make a family and create my own home.”
“And that just happens to be the Blood Cult…? Hah… You know the previous Blood Demon nearly destroyed the Murim, right?”
I knew. But from my perspective, the Blood Cult was now just a community of people who had become family.
There was no ambition to dominate the world anymore, nor any anger toward the righteous factions.
“I heard about it. But that’s separate.”
“If that person hadn’t been so ill and we hadn’t stolen the treasure, you would have stood at the forefront of the second Blood Demon War.”
How strong must the previous Blood Demon have been for Baek Mu-heun, who had no rival except me, to speak like that?
“I came to completely exterminate the Blood Cult, but I never dreamed I would meet you.”
“Since that’s the case, go eat some meat and leave.”
“That’s right. At least I won’t feel wronged. Here, take this Dokyeopcheong.”
The Alliance Leader, Baek Mu-heun, was the only person I could trust in the Murim world. He was so rigid and only fought for the righteous faction that people called him too stiff, but I actually liked that part.
He at least kept his beliefs.
He would occasionally come back to the Blood Cult to vent and we would clink glasses.
“To recover the martial arts of a family whose original techniques were lost after understanding the origin… Haa…”
“Isn’t that strange?”
“It is strange. Normally, one would obtain enlightenment after the body and inner energy support it and move to the next stage. That is the way to reach supreme transcendence. But you understood the ultimate and took it as your own.”
Simply put, the person who should have started walking now flies.
Manryu Gwijong.
All streams and countless waves eventually converge into one.
The Namgung is the sky and the sky is also the Namgung.
At first glance this sentence may seem ordinary, but it had been divided into dozens of lines over the course of hundreds of years yet still led to the essence of the Namgung.
Most people hear it and don’t understand it?
People say all the martial arts knowledge obtained from novels is a warehouse of Manryu Gwijong, and that isn’t entirely wrong. Because of the many novels I had read since junior high, my head remembered every martial art name and even what enlightenment one should feel when reaching the ultimate.
That enlightenment scene was so cool that I never forgot it.
Baek Mu-heun gave me a serious warning.
“A mediocre talented person who hears it may break their body or become mentally unstable and go crazy. Or they may just chase the hollow value for their entire life.”
“That much?”
“So, Kim Min-su… even if you know, do not tell others the origin… not even a speck of it.”
I would have to understand the true meaning of that remark.
***
“Hah…”
When I opened my eyes, I saw the familiar ceiling.
This is the break room?
It was a small room where I could rest briefly between shifts. In truth, there were only two beds, but even that was precious.
I felt no pain when I pushed my body up.
Did Hwa-ryeon heal me?
She must have. I would have been in serious condition to be hospitalized otherwise.
I walked out of the break room on one leg and headed to the situation room wearing the provided prosthetic leg.
When I checked the clock, five hours had passed.
The Management Division’s Second Team had arrived in the situation room.
“Huh, you finally woke up.”
Yoon Jun-ho, the team leader of the Second Team with a distinctive hooked nose, looked at me and said.
“Hey, what the hell did your team even do? One hunter died and countless people got injured. And not a single person knows who actually killed the monsters? That’s crazy!”
“I’m sorry.”
To be honest, this incident was like a disaster. Even if I had to escape the horned knights and survive, I deserved praise for that alone.
That guy always says that weird thing to me only.
Whenever new female employees couldn’t stand Yoon Jun-ho’s advances and quit, I would call them over and scold them a little, after which he would act like that again.
Yoon Jun-ho was nicknamed the Black-Haired Goblin of the Management Division because of his hooked nose and obsession with women.
Yoon Jun-ho grabbed his nose and waved his hand dismissively.
“I don’t even want to look at your face. Get lost.”
“Yes.”
“You disabled bastard.”
I turned around to head home when I saw a familiar face.
Jeok So-ye, my daughter, was already standing behind Yoon Jun-ho, pulling out her sword.
Oh no… I can’t believe this?
I immediately suppressed the smile that was about to form.