Chapter 118: A Possessor's Thoughts
“Hah! Chap!”
Kwak Jeong thrust his fists forward one after another with a spirited shout.
A faint purple aura clung to his punches. The signature color of the Nine Yin Kwak Family's martial arts.
It was a clumsy manifestation of fist qi, but still—at sixteen years old and already first-rate. The guy was a bona fide genius.
“Hup!”
For his finale, Kwak Jeong kicked off the ground, leaped into the air, spun once in a full somersault, and landed cleanly.
Clap clap clap!
Sam Ho, Kwak Jeong's bodyguard who had been watching the demonstration alongside me, burst into applause.
I gave him a steady look, and Sam Ho hastily hid his clapping hands behind his back.
“Well done.”
“Hee hee, thank you.”
“However. There's something wrong.”
I knew nothing about martial arts myself, but I had the ultimate wuxia AI, Pa Cheon, on my side. The sword had suffered through blocked meridians, making it a theoretical master of martial principles at least.
Thanks to that, I could play the role of martial arts instructor. Even if all I did was yap.
[That's because you're such a klutz.]
‘Don’t go for the cheap shots.’
I continued Pa Cheon's words.
“The core of the Nine Yin Kwak Family's martial arts isn't brute force.”
“Pardon? But without that ferocity, how can fist techniques overcome swords?”
“Recall the Cloud Dragon Divine Step.”
“Cloud Dragon Divine Step…… Yes, what about it?”
Pa Cheon muttered.
[This demon kid—is he really a genius? No matter how I look at it, he seems a bit dim…… Is it because of us? No way.]
‘He's still young. Explain it more kindly, at his level.’
Grumbling all the while, Pa Cheon obliged with an age-appropriate breakdown.
“The Cloud Dragon Divine Step is an exquisite footwork where advancing and retreating blend seamlessly, light as a feather. That's why it's the foundation of the Kwak Family's arts, isn't it?”
“How did you know that?”
“You see it all once you reach a certain realm. Anyway.”
I relayed Pa Cheon's words again.
“The reason the Kwak Family's core isn't ferocity ties directly to the Cloud Dragon Divine Step. It's offense and defense as one. That's why you need a steadfast stance that can switch to defense mid-attack at any moment.”
“Ah!”
“In other words, it's not about crushing the foe with overwhelming power. It's about maintaining balance with a solid core.”
“Aah—!”
Kwak Jeong, who had let out an exclamation, suddenly dropped into a cross-legged meditation pose.
“……”
[……Is the world this unfair? He gets enlightenment from a few obvious words? Didn't Kwak Ri Yeon teach him even that much?]
Pa Cheon muttered in disbelief. I nodded vigorously in agreement.
“What are you doing?”
“Y-Yes?”
“If you're a bodyguard, stand guard properly.”
“R-Right! Yes, sir!”
Shock filled Sam Ho's eyes as he looked at me.
He was clearly thinking something like, How does one sentence grant enlightenment?!
That was exactly what I wanted to know.
How the hell did one sentence grant enlightenment?
It had been a while since I'd seen this scene, but sure enough, in this Return to the Murim world, anyone labeled a “genius” would plop into meditation after just a casual remark.
Did sitting like that actually produce some profound insight?
[Genius types, am I right.]
Of course, Pa Cheon calling them out like that was pure hypocrisy since it was a genius itself. What martial world denizen grasps concepts like mass or gravity?
Ah, the mediocrity of the ordinary is a lonely thing.
[He's young and his cultivation isn't deep yet, so he won't suddenly hit Peak realm or anything.]
I nodded.
Even so, hitting Peak at sixteen would be a bit much.
Sa Wol hadn't been that extreme. Or had she?
Speak of the tiger, and she appears—Sa Wol slipped into view right then.
Her expression was grave.
She cradled a small box in her arms.
“What is it?”
“A moment.”
I left Kwak Jeong and Sam Ho behind and stepped into the makeshift break room at the edge of the training ground.
“There's something you need to see.”
“What's that?”
“This is……”
Sa Wol opened the box, revealing a familiar scrap of clothing. It belonged to Sado Gwang.
“Didn't you say you burned it?”
“I tried tearing it up and burning it.”
“And?”
“This came out.”
Sa Wol flipped the lining inside out. Something like a map was stitched into the fabric.
“This.”
“It dissolved a bit in the water, making it hard to identify at first, but it's a map pointing to somewhere along a Baekhoe River tributary.”
A chill ran up my neck.
Of course. Sado Gwang.
That Sado Gwang.
No matter how grand Chu Tae Su's schemes, they couldn't hold a candle to Sado Gwang.
A man like that wouldn't die so easily.
He wasn't the type to know clichés like “falling off a cliff grants fortune,” so would he really hurl himself off without a plan?
Falling into Forgotten Soul Valley carries you along the Baekhoe River tributary.
Even if he couldn't move his body, he might have used formations, treasure artifacts, or mechanisms.
“The ferry won't be rebuilt for a while. Call Hwang So Gun and have him search. Bribe him enough, and he won't blab.”
“Understood.”
“Look for recent reports of sudden terrain shifts or collapses.”
Sa Wol's face twisted slightly at my words.
“Why? Something ring a bell?”
“That day, while searching the riverbank, we found what looked like a collapsed cliff. We assumed it was natural.”
“Take Hwang So Gun, pinpoint the location, then come find me.”
“As you command!”
Sa Wol vanished as smoothly as she'd appeared.
[We thought too simply.]
Pa Cheon, silent until now, spoke up.
[The base village kid, Mu Gwang, said the clothes' owner was dead. But what if that's a false witness Sado Gwang fabricated to fake his death?]
“Hey, Pa Cheon.”
[What?]
“In a tiny base village—not even a city—would a kid really follow some stranger just because his grandpa lost a hand?”
[……What are you getting at?]
“There's a saying: ‘Even the wildest guess can bite.’ The first wild guess in my head was……”
The possibility I least wanted to consider.
“What if Sado Gwang body-swapped with the Soul Swap Great Law too?”
[That's a leap. You think there's another freakish art like that out there?]
No.
I couldn't dismiss it as a leap.
“Isn't it weirder that only one place can perform the Soul Swap Great Law?”
Instead, I had to push further, one step beyond.
Because I was ordinary.
To keep up with genius thinking, I couldn't rely on simple cause-and-effect.
Instead, I was a Return to the Murim veteran and a possessor. I had to think like a possessor.
The story had twisted this far because of Meng Wi Hak.
In the original, Meng Wi Hak never took disciples.
But now he was.
In story terms, the divergence started right from the early game.
Why?
‘The success of the Soul Swap Great Law.’
In the original, it succeeded.
Meng Wi Hak pushed the Soul Swap Great Law ostensibly to turn Sado Hwan into a spy.
But deep down, there was another reason. One the original never fully revealed.
But I was an original veteran.
Even if things had shifted a bit, I knew this world's future and its people.
I could speculate.
Why did Meng Wi Hak act that way?
“Meng Wi Hak is greed incarnate.”
Two words to sum up Meng Wi Hak: greed, or avarice.
He never shared what he had and always schemed to take others'—
That line of thought leaped again.
The Heavenly Demon Blood Massacre a century ago.
Due to some incident, the Heavenly Demon Divine Art split into front and back halves.
Lost during the massacre weren't just the Divine Art, but also the Star Absorption Great Law mastered by the Four Heavenly Demons.
‘Test if the Soul Swap Great Law allows body-swapping.’
That way, he could rule the murim without aging further.
The safest, cleanest method.
If not, the backup.
‘Star Absorption Great Law.’
Raise a disciple with pure, refined inner energy and absorb it. Gain greater power.
That had to be Meng Wi Hak's true intent.
The wuxia world turned on coincidences, not inevitabilities.
Sado Gwang stumbled on the Soul Swap Great Law by chance and swapped bodies.
Meng Wi Hak, passing by, took that kid as a disciple by chance.
[Still sounds like an overreach.]
‘Name one time my “overreaches” were actually wrong.’
Of course, it might not be.
Like Pa Cheon said, I could be overreacting with wild speculation.
[So what will you do?]
Pa Cheon asked.
[Assumptions alone won't solve anything.]
“Here's what I think. If Mu Gwang—funny name in hindsight, by the way. Anyway, if Sado Gwang really body-swapped and got away……”
[Then?]
“Meng Wi Hak loses. Guaranteed.”
Meng Wi Hak was strong, cunning enough to weave schemes.
But he lacked Sado Gwang's madness.
The madness to declare himself right and the world wrong.
The madness to create humans just to heal his body.
[So, your point?]
“War's coming. For sure.”
In the original, war broke out because of Sado Gwang.
Why?
—If I can't become a warrior, I'll erase warriors from this world.
If he couldn't have it, he'd destroy it. That was Sado Gwang's logic. Just like when he failed to get the sacred flame from the Gwangmyeongseongga.
So Sado Gwang ignited war, aiming to wipe out not just the cult, but all murim warriors—hell, the entire world's martial race.
I didn't call Chu Tae Su “0.7 Sado Gwang” for nothing. Sado Gwang was the real lunatic.
[War…… between the cult and murim.]
“Cult, orthodox sects, unorthodox, and eventually even the East. At that scale, the imperial palace won't sit idle.”
No matter the cliché of court-martial detachment, they'd intervene at that level.
That was Sado Gwang's goal in the original.
Force the palace to ban martial arts cultivation worldwide.
‘If my guesses are right, I can't stop the war.’
Sado Gwang would scheme even in the Murim Alliance. Sure, the Je Gal family was there, but the cliché “alliance strategists are useless puppets” held true.
If strategists did their job, Meng Wi Hak couldn't roam free.
In a colossal event like war, my options boiled down to two.
One: Build power.
[Five of the Six Demonic Families are already ours.]
“No, the cult alone won't cut it.”
[Then?]
“We go out into the murim. Not for the Heavenly Demon, but to survive. Build reliable forces on both sides.”
[Not a mundane idea. So, the other one?]
That's when I spotted it.
Kwak Jeong rising from his spot, face beaming with oblivious excitement.
“The second……”
I told Pa Cheon.
“I need to learn martial arts properly.”