Chapter 45
Chapter 45
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 45
Chapter Title: Returner II
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Shin Noah
4
The Sword Marquis was mad, but his abilities were extraordinary.
It required some elaboration to make anyone intuitively grasp just how extraordinary they were.
This world hated humanity.
Even kids in the throes of middle school chuunibyou would mutter things like, "The world seems to hate me." As they grew older, they learned that the world, surprisingly (or not so surprisingly), didn't care about their existence at all.
Frankly, from the world's perspective, there were plenty of other things demanding attention—like turtles choking on plastic or quantum entanglement.
But that was no longer the case. Starting from the moment the Gate incident erupted, something had fundamentally changed. It had been irrevocably altered.
From that day on, the world had decided it slightly disliked humanity.
The Void.
A phenomenon also known as the Abyss, the Depths, or Hell. It had once been called a "Gate," but the term "Void" had gradually spread among the people.
-What... what is that?
-What do you mean?
-That flower. Why does it have teeth?
In the Void, Rafflesia petals sprouted shark teeth. Spiders grew thirteen legs. Dragonfly compound eyes expanded to six. Headless elephants wandered about.
If you left monsters and anomalies unchecked, the land itself would undergo massive genetic mutations. The number of malformed creatures would skyrocket.
Enter the Void Poison.
The primary culprit behind the rapid dehumanization of the civilization and knowledge humanity had painstakingly built.
Have you ever seen rice paddies dyed blood-red? Rice grains that perfectly mimicked aphids and flies? Ears of rice blooming into lilies instead. There were even eyewitness accounts of a farmer digging up his field to find the rice plants all interconnected underground like a bamboo grove.
Even when grown in the same field with the same seeds, the same water, and the same sunlight, the rice on the left side grew differently from the right.
Human civilization had been built on reproducibility. No matter how the world changed, humanity had realized that spring returned after a year, winter repeated—and on that truth, they had erected towering pyramids. At the sharp pinnacle of those pyramids, time had finally become history.
Now, those pyramids had crumbled.
Time flowed on. Unpredictably. Like a desert storm burying the once-glorious surface of the towers in sand.
What was humanity? What were "we"? Were those beings with flowers sprouting from their heads and fish gills from their tongues still one of us?
A newborn's cry echoed from those gills. Soon, they communicated solely through the wails of children, their meanings incomprehensible to us.
Sometimes time flowed faster near Incheon, slower near Seoul. Nothing repeated. Nothing could be replicated. It simply flowed.
"We connect the cities..."
That was why I, the Saintess, No Do-ha, and the Three Blood Alliance had declared war on the Void devouring our world.
"Humanity needs to revert to the era when it was overwhelmed by nature."
When asked if that wasn't regression, No Do-ha shook her head.
"Just as evolution and regression are mere human distinctions, this is not a decline of civilization but mere adaptation to the environment... Abandoning dominion over surfaces for dominion over lines."
From surfaces to lines.
From lines to surfaces.
That was the National Highway Management Corps' motto.
"Then, we can escape our isolation imposed by the Void and maintain our community..."
Like prosthetic knights fitting aids onto the disabled, the National Highway Management Corps cleared paths for humanity.
They connected the world with "rails."
At last, isolated points—cities, people—became stations where one could briefly rest.
-In this broken world, I'll repair the ruined railroads one by one and keep moving forward.
I had fulfilled Dang Seo-rin's dying wish.
It had taken many years.
It would take even more in the future.
-From history to history, forever.
The National Highway Management Corps didn't represent Busan. It couldn't symbolize Seoul. It was simply humanity's final cradle, its last unit, its front line.
"We can do it. No—we must..."
Every time the patrols set out, their survival was never guaranteed.
The patrol heading to Gangneung never returned. The one scouting North Korea came back after two years—all thirteen members transformed into walking sunflowers, their heads turned not toward the sun but the flag they'd carried at departure.
Yet we never hesitated to stand on the front lines.
"Huu. Another bountiful harvest this season!"
The Sword Marquis served as the support unit for this front line.
"With this much grain, we could feed all Three Hans and still have plenty left! Truly the grace of heaven!"
No matter how many roads we cleared, people still needed to eat. Three meals a day, two, or even one—hunger was an urgent fate of the body.
I didn't see this hunger as mere suffering or sorrow.
Infection with the virus of the New Buddha, Udumbara, offered escape from hunger's fate anytime. But that meant shedding humanity to become a creature of the Void. Hunger was tragic, but it was humanity's tragedy—the tragedy of beings born and raised on this land.
Yet I didn't live to romanticize humanity's horrors as beauty. We needed to eat.
The Sword Marquis was the head chef responsible for the rice power of the Korean Peninsula.
"Honey, with this, even I could roam freely this summer, no?"
And as emphasized multiple times, our head chef was a lunatic.
"Yeah. Sword Marquis. Roam what?"
"Jianghu wandering, of course. Young martial artist. Don't ever breathe a word of this anywhere. I've kept it secret all this time, but the truth is..."
The Sword Marquis cautiously scanned his surroundings. Not even the National Highway Management Corps' monster-hunting gaze could match its sharpness.
Confirming no one else was around but me, he whispered in my ear.
"I am the direct disciple of the 260th Sect Leader of Mount Hua Sect."
"..."
"In my hands lies a martial arts manual containing the quintessence of Mount Hua Sect's three-thousand-year history."
So this guy was claiming to be a marquis of Yuldo Nation, the Sword Marquis of the martial world, and—going further—the next Sect Leader of Mount Hua Sect.
He even wore an aluminum training sword at his waist.
My head was spinning.
"Um... If I may ask, why is the future of Mount Hua Sect here on the Korean Peninsula?"
"Naturally, to hide from the vile eyes of the Demonic Cult. I am the rightful inheritor of the Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Sword Technique, so it's no wonder the wicked glare. Look—even now, the Heavenly Demon's yokai shake the world, don't they?"
"God help us."
"Indeed. I'm desperate enough to seek a god! I was once a supreme master, but while fleeing the Demonic Cult, I suffered severe internal injuries to my dantian. Yet in this land east of the sea, I've restored body and mind—now I must return to the main sect and fulfill my duties as a disciple."
"...You're saying you're going to Mount Hua in China right now?"
"Exactly."
I looked up at the sky and let out a long sigh.
"Sword Marquis. Are you insane?"
I'd hinted at it while talking about Kim Ju-cheol and his son Kim Si-eun, but in this era, "overseas travel" was just a fancier term for "suicide."
To my blunt words, the Sword Marquis merely tilted his head.
"I am perfectly sane."
Well, asking a madman if he's mad wouldn't yield anything useful. Why bother asking a dolphin if it's a dolphin? Unless your eyes were crossed, it was obvious.
I changed tactics.
"The Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Sword Technique—is that the one where, once mastered to the pinnacle, plum blossoms bloom from the sword, their fragrance reaching a thousand li?"
"Oh, so even you, young martial artist, have heard of our sect's fame. Precisely."
"And at the Mount Hua you know, are plum blossoms blooming everywhere?"
"Of course."
"...That's a setting made up in Korea."
My wuxia knowledge back then came from a few novels I'd read as a kid. But even I knew that.
Mount Hua wasn't particularly famous for plum blossoms.
You could tell just from photos. It was a rocky mountain where stone was as prominent as leaves—hardly ideal for plum blossoms to blanket the slopes.
The fragrance too. Without evolving a nose that mistook rock smell for plum scent, plum fragrance wafting from Mount Hua swords was evolutionarily impossible.
What am I saying?
The so-called Sword Marquis, prospective 261st Sect Leader of Mount Hua, aluminum-sword wielder, native Korean from Ulleungdo, and utterly incapable of conversational Chinese in front of me was spouting utter nonsense. This old man was fake from head to toe.
"Gaaaaah!"
The Sword Marquis roared like a lion.
"How dare a junior mock his senior! The plum fragrance I suddenly smelled as a child under my master's tutelage still lingers in my nostrils! If you intend to insult my master and sect, I won't stand idly by!"
"Then show this ignorant fool the technique yourself, oh inheritor of the Plum Blossom Sword."
"Had the Demonic Cult's fiends not damaged my dantian, I'd demonstrate right now."
"I'm going insane."
Hey. He's a 60-year-old man, but younger than me. Back when civilization was intact, 60 wasn't even considered old.
How old was I this year...? No, abandon this strategy.
I might win battles but lose the war.
Anyway, the Sword Marquis was a type of person I couldn't handle.
Fortunately, we had the "anti-elder ultimate weapon."
"No Do-ha. Help."
"60-year-old grandpa? Heh. Piece of cake..."
The woman most beloved by elders across the peninsula, history's greatest prosthetic knight and National Highway Management Corps leader, No Do-ha grinned slyly.
"Elder... feeling good...?"
"Aigoo, aigoo. All my aches are melting away."
No Do-ha gave the Sword Marquis a shoulder massage. Her skilled hands—good enough to pass for a professional masseuse—melted his expression.
"Plum blossoms are plum blossoms whether on a mountaintop, roadside, or in the heart. If Mount Hua's lineage has passed to you, what does it matter if here is the east sea or Chang'an...?"
"Mmm, but my senior brothers."
"No, no... Your master has long passed, hasn't he? That makes you the eldest in Mount Hua. Juniors visit seniors, not the other way around. Why should you go to them...?"
"Oho? That's most reasonable!"
"If you send a letter through me, I'll dispatch a courier to China. Any who know propriety will come here to see you..."
"Oh ho! Your escort agency wisdom is spot on, a hundred—no, a thousand times!"
"Then I'll look forward to the autumn harvest..."
"Leave it to me!"
The National Highway Management Corps was an escort agency, and its leader was the agency head.
Finishing her divine handiwork and silver tongue, No Do-ha turned to me with a smirk.
"That's why I prefer elders over young folks... They actually listen...?"
I wouldn't argue that point.
But even No Do-ha's full effort had limits. The Sword Marquis was a lunatic, and lunacy was incurable.
"Before I die, I must visit Mount Hua at least once."
With every changing season and harvest, he mumbled incessantly, like a man with homesickness.
"Before I die, I must go..."
From the National Highway Management Corps' founding in the 54th cycle, through 55th, 56th, 57th—he muttered it every season.
Time passed.
Finally, the 108th cycle.
On vacation season, I visited the Sword Marquis. Early days, not even a year in. He was still living in his hometown of Ulleungdo (yes, he had no reason for homesickness).
"Sword Marquis."
"Hm?"
The old man watering flowers in the front yard of his shabby house turned to me. Water dripped from the watering can.
"Young man, who might you be?"
"I am one who has received a knighthood from Yuldo Nation."
"What?"
Any normal person would call the cops—or at least swing a broom—if a stranger barged into their yard claiming a micronation title.
"You're my compatriot! Come in!"
But as expected, the Sword Marquis was exceptional. I'd suspected he started his noble cosplay upon arriving in Ulleungdo, but apparently, he'd been deranged even at home.
"Still, your title is odd. I'm not Sword Marquis but Sword South. Why have you sought me?"
I made the saddest face possible. Method acting was easy—just recall Dang Seo-rin's death.
"It's heartbreaking to say, but Yuldo Nation has fallen."
"What?"
"The Demonic Cult's vile hands reached even distant Ulleungdo across the sea. Not just Yuldo, but the eastern region is razed, and His Highness the Archduke couldn't escape."
"No...! How could...!"
"Sword Marquis."
Thud. I knelt in the yard. With unmatched resolve, I shouted.
"Yuldo's court is gone, but can we accept the people's grudge against a fallen nation as fate? Rebuilding with the surviving people—that is loyalty, is it not?"
"!"
"You're the only noble left in Yuldo, so you must reopen the court here. Yet out of duty, we can't forget the Archduke's grace—please ascend to marquis and restore Yuldo After-State!"
For reference, his house was shabby.
Shabby houses sat in shabby neighborhoods.
And in shabby neighborhoods, you could easily peek over fences at weird happenings next door. The neighbors all stared.
Their gaze? Roughly, "What the fuck?"
"Heaven hasn't abandoned me yet!"
The Sword Marquis ignored the neighbors completely.
"Rise! How well you grasp my intent!"
"My apologies."
"You are my Zhuge Liang!"
Roughly, "best friend."
108th cycle.
That day, I became besties with the prospective Mount Hua Sect Leader.