Chapter 13
Chapter 13
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 13
Chapter Title: The Currents Are Flowing in the Opposite Direction
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“The currents are flowing in the opposite direction.”
“What do we do?”
Dang Yak-ran asked.
Everyone’s gazes poured toward Heuk Do-san. As if he were some god, how was he supposed to stop a sinking ship?
Heuk Do-san was at a complete loss. It was enough to drive him mad and make him jump up and down.
In truth, the sinking had been inevitable from the start.
In this vast ocean, it was impossible to keep holding out with a half-wrecked ship forever.
He had only hoped land would appear before then.
No matter how much he racked his brain, no solution came to mind. He had survived ten years on the battlefield, yet to meet such a pathetic end here...
No. It was too unfair to die like this.
Every event has a cause and effect. Find the cause, and a solution would follow.
Heuk Do-san saw Bing-seol as the starting point.
“Do something about it.”
“What can I do?”
“This all started because of you.”
“What are you talking about...?”
“I know you’re a witch.”
As the word “Demonic” suggested, the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult studied and delved into all the eerie, ghostly things the world called devilish arts.
The Divine Maidens stood at the pinnacle of that.
Spirit mediums who communed with ghosts and foresaw the future. There were even rumors they slipped into the dreams of sleeping people, manipulated their thoughts, cast curses, and drove Demonic Cult warriors into madness on the battlefield.
But the righteous factions, out of fear of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult’s Divine Maidens, called them witches and kept their distance.
No wonder the Righteous Alliance had formed an assassination squad specialized in hunting down witches.
“That woman’s a witch?”
“What kind of bullshit is this?”
Hyeon-gak and Dang Yak-ran glared at Bing-seol with axe-like eyes. Gong Cheon-ak hurried over in alarm. To protect her.
In that instant, an axe and a dagger flashed out. The axe pointed at Gong Cheon-ak, while the dagger pressed against Bing-seol’s nape.
It had happened so fast no one even saw how they were drawn.
“One more step, and she dies.”
Heuk Do-san said. His voice was icy cold.
“I’ll kill you!”
Gong Cheon-ak unleashed his killing intent. His clothes billowed, and his hair whipped in the wind.
Even with the dagger at Bing-seol’s nape, he meant to attack. He had some ace up his sleeve.
Bing-seol raised one hand to stop Gong Cheon-ak. His killing intent, blazing like firewood, vanished as if it were a lie. This was different from before, when Gong Cheon-ak had unilaterally commanded and she had obeyed.
“Your guess is correct.”
Bing-seol said.
‘Damn it!’
‘My god!’
Hyeon-gak and Dang Yak-ran’s shock was beyond words.
They had spent four nights with a terrifying Heavenly Demon Divine Cult witch right in front of them without knowing. If she had used some curse to kill them, what then?
Now they understood why the Demonic Cultists, Gong Cheon-ak included, had guarded her so closely.
To the Righteous Alliance, witches were top-priority targets for elimination. To the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult, they were beings to protect above all else.
“You admit it easily.”
“I never hid it.”
“You didn’t say it yourself, so it’s not a lie?”
“What do you want to know?”
“You’re probably peering into my mind right now. What’s with the pretense?”
“Won’t the others be curious too?”
Her ragged appearance was gone; she seemed like a seasoned veteran of the martial world.
Just yesterday, she had been shivering from the cold. Surely that wasn’t an act too?
“The situation we’re in now—is it related to the Nine Heavens Illusion Grand Ancestral Formation you deployed?”
“Yes.”
“The meteor shower caused something to go wrong. This is a situation none of you foresaw. Right?”
“Half right, half wrong.”
“Explain.”
“It was over a hundred years ago.”
A certain monk who had gone to Tibet for Buddhist scriptures was returning to the Central Plains. While crossing the Great Snow Mountains, he spent a night in an unnamed valley cave.
There, the monk found crumbling old parchment. At first, he didn’t realize the value of the drawings on it.
He merely thought the ancient Sanskrit script and the image of countless people wailing depicted a map of hell.
Decades later, someone recognized its true worth.
“He was from our cult and brought the parchment to the formation masters. It was the Heavenly Purgatory Chart, known only in legends.”
“What’s that?”
Heuk Do-san asked.
The answer came unexpectedly from Hyeon-gak.
“Amitabha. All living beings cycle through the Three Realms and Six Paths, living and dying repeatedly. But ancient Indian Buddhism believed there was a land where those who escaped this wheel of reincarnation resided.”
“You mean the enlightened?”
“It’s different. Enlightenment through one’s own diligent cultivation frees one from the cycle—that’s liberation. Heavenly Purgatory is the land of those forcibly freed by some unknown power. They can neither be reborn nor die. They exist yet do not. Paradoxically, freed from time, yet trapped in eternal time.”
‘What the hell is he mumbling?’
Heuk Do-san turned back to Bing-seol.
“So what?”
“The Heavenly Purgatory Chart wasn’t just a picture of the land of the ‘freed ones.’ It was a type of formation map—a chart—created to depict Heavenly Purgatory. We named that formation the Nine Heavens Illusion Grand Ancestral Formation.”
“...!”
“Our cult’s finest formation masters and Divine Maidens experimented with it. Because it pierced time and space, once activated, even after breaking, mutations would appear for years at the site. The harm was severe. After much deliberation, the formation masters deemed it a forbidden formation and halted research.”
“Mutations?”
“Gourds growing on pine trees, one-eyed frogs with two-headed snakes or five-legged rabbits appearing. But it wasn’t just mutations that made it forbidden.”
“Then what?”
“It incurred heaven’s wrath. For some reason, deploying it brought hail or, in severe cases, lightning strikes. It seemed the unknown power within the formation artificially manipulated the atmosphere to generate and draw lightning.”
“Not illusions—actual lightning?”
“And there was always one more thing that accompanied it.”
“What else?”
“Disappearances. After deploying the Nine Heavens Illusion Grand Ancestral Formation, one or two of the people involved always vanished. During the Great War, when deployed on the largest scale from the main camp, three hundred vanished at once.”
“They fled?”
“You know that’s not it.”
What nonsense was this? Three hundred people vanishing at once—how was that even possible?
“Where did they go?”
“Those who vanished never returned. No bodies were ever found. So we don’t know where they went.”
“No way...”
“Yes. The Heavenly Purgatory Chart wasn’t a picture—it was a map to the land of the ‘freed ones.’ The Nine Heavens Illusion Grand Ancestral Formation manifested that map in the mortal world.”
“And you deployed it off Shandong.”
“The Nine Heavens Illusion Grand Ancestral Formation off Shandong was unprecedented in scale—even veteran formation masters doubted success. That’s why lightning didn’t strike; a meteor shower did instead. No one saw it coming.”
“So we vanished the same way?”
“Probably.”
“Then this isn’t the Bohai Gulf where the Righteous-Demonic Great War raged. Hell, it might not even be the Central Plains. You’re not saying it’s the afterlife, are you?”
“As I said, I don’t know beyond that.”
To sum it up:
Deploy the Nine Heavens Illusion Grand Ancestral Formation, and for some reason, hail falls from the sky or lightning strikes. Inevitably, people vanish in the process.
The one deployed in the Bohai Gulf during the Righteous-Demonic Great War was on an unprecedented scale and summoned a meteor shower.
Now, an entire ship has vanished. And they were on that ship.
If not the Central Plains, then where?
The afterlife for real?
But it felt too vivid for that.
One thing was clear: None of the Demonic Cultists who vanished when the formation activated ever made it home.
Everyone fell into panic.
Only then did Heuk Do-san withdraw the dagger from Bing-seol’s neck. He also retrieved the axe aimed at Gong Cheon-ak and tucked it into his belt.
In truth, Heuk Do-san had suspected from the start that the Nine Heavens Illusion Grand Ancestral Formation was linked to their disappearance.
He wanted to know if there was a way to reverse it using the formation.
The result was failure. He thought knowing the cause would bring a solution, but it only muddled his mind further.
The last thread of hope had vanished completely.
‘Is this the end?’
Then it happened.
Boom!
A massive explosion rocked the ship violently, like something bursting. Yeom Jin-sang, who had thrust his head between the planks and pulled it back out, shouted in terror.
“Big trouble! This time the side porthole burst. The ship’s sinking. At this rate, it won’t last half a gak.”
It was all futile. The ship was sinking anyway—what difference did a little faster make?
No one spoke amid the chilling silence.
Dang Yak-ran stared blankly, Hyeon-gak quietly chanted sutras. Gong Cheon-ak closed his eyes, lips pressed tight.
Only Yeom Jin-sang, unwilling to give up easily, darted around like a frenzied pup, searching for anything to cling to.
Then, a sound transmission echoed in Heuk Do-san’s mind.
[Look north.]
Heuk Do-san turned to Bing-seol.
Why tell him to look north in this dire moment? And via sound transmission only he could hear.
Bing-seol nodded calmly, as if urging him to trust her once.
Nothing to lose. Heuk Do-san looked north again. Nothing but churning waves and drifting sea mist.
But having witnessed Bing-seol’s supernatural powers, he went to the edge, drew his spyglass, and scanned the sea anew.
Beyond the faintly scattering mist, a hazy shadow flickered into view and vanished.
“No way...!”
“What is it?”
Dang Yak-ran asked in an excited voice.
“Land.”
Low exclamations rose here and there. A single ray of light at the cliff’s edge.
People brightened, forgetting their tense standoff. But Heuk Do-san’s next words drained the color from their faces again.
“The currents are flowing in the opposite direction.”
“What does that mean?”
Dang Yak-ran asked.
“The ship’s drifting away from land.”
“Then it couldn’t have drifted toward land from the start. Why is it suddenly moving away now?”
“Because the ebb tide began. When the ebb starts, the current reverses sharply. The flow strengthens too. In about half a shichen, even the spyglass won’t spot the island.”
“That means...”
“Now’s our last chance to reach land.”
If only visible through a spyglass, it was fifteen li away. They had to swim against the current for fifteen li.
But the ship wasn’t just battling the current—it was on the verge of sinking. In moments, people swung between heaven and hell.
“Amitabha. What do you plan?”
Hyeon-gak asked.
“Swim to land.”
Everyone was stunned.
Swim fifteen li against the current?
Even for martial artists beyond ordinary limits, ascending bare-handed against the current without aid was impossible.
As everyone floundered, Gong Cheon-ak spoke.
“How long?”
“If we’re lucky, half a day.”
“We won’t last that long...”
Hyeon-gak said.
“No choice.”
“We won’t make half; night will fall. Then land vanishes, and we’ll drift lost. We’ll freeze before that anyway.”
Dang Yak-ran said. She hit the key point. Even idle, they shivered; how many could endure the frigid sea till night?
“Life or death is before you. Accept it or fight to the end—your choice.”
Heuk Do-san snatched the gourd ladle from Yeom Jin-sang. He snapped off a half-zhang bamboo handle, split it lengthwise with his dagger, and hollowed out the nodes.
Next, he cut the sailcloth into one-chi-wide strips and rolled them tightly, compressing until rock-hard.
He jammed the rolled sailcloth into the bamboo groove, capped it with the other half, then wrapped it seal-tight with more sailcloth strips, binding from bottom to top with rigging cord.
‘What’s he doing?’
‘The ship’s about to sink.’
‘Not trying to save himself alone, is he?’
Soon, a club thick as a man’s arm was complete. Heuk Do-san lit the end where the sailcloth was densest packed.
A sailing ship’s sails were oil-treated thick cotton—tough beyond words, unsoaked by rain. The outer sailcloth would repel water; the inner would keep the flame alive awhile.
Heuk Do-san curved his nails like claws, unleashing claw technique to rip a thick deck plank free.
He slammed the club into its front like a mast and tossed it unhesitatingly into the sea.
Naturally, the plank sank heavier end first. Thin smoke rose from the club’s tip.
Preparations done, Heuk Do-san swept his gaze over them.
“At first, your breath will burn. Then toes and fingers will ache like they’re falling off. Suddenly, all sensation fades, limbs stiffen. One way out: Keep moving hands and feet without rest.”
Heuk Do-san had chosen to fight his fate.
He added,
“I’ll light a bonfire on shore. If you’re still breathing, follow the light.”
With that, he plunged into the icy sea.
He clambered onto the plank belly-down and paddled forward relentlessly with both arms.