Chapter 71
Chapter 71
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 71
Chapter Title: Becoming the Disciple of the Mad Demon
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I chose the Corpse Method.
That path was long and arduous.
The corpses had to be no more than three days dead, women's preferable to men's, and the young better than the old.
From then on, I roamed in search of freshly deceased bodies. But the martial artists of the world who discovered me absorbing death qi from the corpses pointed fingers, branding me an evil mad demon.
I paid them no mind.
In that process, I clashed with countless martial artists and even sought out masters myself to exchange blows.
They all sought to kill me without exception, and I hesitated not at all to kill them in turn. I grew ever stronger, but at the same time, I became a mad demon.
Then one year, in the Great Completion realm, I hit an unexpected wall—one unrecorded in the manual.
I needed more corpses.
But finding bodies less than three days dead was no easy task. Around that time, I fought the Heavenly Demon and, due to the evil sorcery he unleashed, ended up cast into this distant, far-flung land.
And there, I discovered a new possibility.
At that time, a mysterious plague swept through the nomadic tribes wandering the steppes. They had a custom of sky burial, leaving corpses on wind-swept hills for eagles to devour.
The plague dragged on for years, and I roamed the moonlit steppes by night, stealing the bodies and storing them in this frigid cave within Mount Snow.
I no longer needed to be bound by the three-day limit.
The corpses numbered in the thousands, and at last I found the way to break through the wall of Great Completion.
But due to the qi deviation I suffered in that battle with the Heavenly Demon, I could cultivate no further.
The seventy-seven diagrams and eighty-four thousand characters carved on this stone wall are exact copies of the two martial scriptures I obtained long ago on the Great Snowy Mountains.
I swear on my life that I left no other copies anywhere—this is the sole original. Whether you cultivate the main art or the Corpse Method is entirely up to you, the one reading these words.
I only reached Great Completion in the Scripture of the Hundred Thousand Great Heavens, and even that, after my battle with the Heavenly Demon, I could not surpass the Seventh Star barrier.
But I am certain a vast world of martial arts lies beyond. I declare without reservation: the Scripture of the Hundred Thousand Great Heavens is invincible.
Whichever path you choose, stake your life on it.
Then you shall obtain the greatest power under heaven.
On a certain cold winter night...
The hairs on my body stood on end.
If what was written here was true, then from Snow Mountain Old Man's perspective, it was a profoundly unjust tale.
That didn't mean the Scripture of the Hundred Thousand Great Heavens wasn't a demonic art, nor did it change the fact that Snow Mountain Old Man was a mad demon.
But wouldn't it be unfair to brand a snake a worm and hack it to pieces?
Now I finally understood why that cavern held so many corpses. And why the first cave had those dead nomadic warriors inside.
They had pursued the mysterious fiend stealing their tribesmen's corpses all the way here, only to meet a gruesome end.
Heuk Do-san held up the lantern and shone it over the stone wall once more.
"Eighty-four thousand characters... Incredible."
Then a strange thought struck him.
If the incantations and diagrams carved here were the sole original of the Scripture of the Hundred Thousand Great Heavens, then what was engraved on the lantern Seop Dae-gang had taken?
Comparing the volume, if this stone wall's scripture was the tree, the text on Seop Dae-gang's lantern was but a single leaf.
"This bastard... what the hell did he take?"
On one hand, it was absurd; on the other, pity welled up thinking of that fool endlessly practicing something he didn't even know the nature of.
Either way, it changed nothing.
The harm one could wreak on the world didn't depend on a martial art's superiority. That lay with the person, not the art.
Seop Dae-gang was the sort who would shrink from nothing to become the lord of the martial world. Even without mastering the Scripture of the Hundred Thousand Great Heavens, he was certain to grow strong and commit grave sins.
Hadn't he seen it firsthand while traveling with him? To obtain the Scripture of the Hundred Thousand Great Heavens, he'd even tried to kill his fiancée Mo Yong-ak and his loyal follower Hong Gong-taek, whom he cherished like life itself.
Suddenly, an incident from over a decade ago came to mind.
Back then, to seize Hong Gong-taek and his backing, that bastard had slain an innocent married woman on the spot.
As long as he lived and roamed free, countless first, second, and third innocent married women would meet the same fate.
"And yet the world will hail you a hero?"
Along with an intense urge to kill him, Heuk Do-san felt some inexorable force of fate.
"Seop Dae-gang, you will die by my hand."
To do that, he first had to escape this cave. But how? Then a bolt of insight flashed through his mind.
The day before, Snow Mountain Old Man had said he'd collapsed the cliff with a single palm strike, burying hundreds of masters alive, then burst out from the rubble shortly after.
"If that's true, then if I master the Scripture of the Hundred Thousand Great Heavens to Great Completion, couldn't I do the same from here?"
The thought led Heuk Do-san to strongly suspect this was all Snow Mountain Old Man's plan.
At the same time, he recalled what the old man had said in the stone chamber moments ago.
'That was a choice I had no power over. I had to thoroughly hide the fact that I had a disciple who'd mastered the Scripture of the Hundred Thousand Great Heavens. If those Central Plains martial artists caught wind before my disciple achieved full mastery, wouldn't the tower I'd built over fifty years crumble?'
'I don't know if following heaven's will is man's proper duty, but sometimes there's an irresistible force at work. The world calls it fate. If fate comes knocking for you too, don't desperately deny it even if you don't want it. I tried, and it was just exhausting and useless. Kahahaha.'
Snow Mountain Old Man had marked him as his disciple from the start and never wavered.
Giving the lantern engraved with mysterious text to Seop Dae-gang, collapsing the cave to drive everyone out—it had all been to trap him here and force him to cultivate the Scripture of the Hundred Thousand Great Heavens.
"You crazy old bastard!"
Heuk Do-san rushed from the side chamber back to the stone room. Snow Mountain Old Man still had his eyes closed.
"What the hell have you done!"
Snow Mountain Old Man gave no reply.
"What right do you have—what makes you think you can toy with someone else's life like this? Are you even human?"
Heuk Do-san berated him, even infusing his words with killing intent. Yet Snow Mountain Old Man remained utterly silent.
Given the temper he'd briefly witnessed, shouldn't he have snapped his eyes open and shot back with a fierce glare by now?
An ominous premonition swept over him.
He reached out and held his hand to the old man's nostrils.
"...!"
No breath.
He hastily pressed his fingers to the carotid artery on the neck. No pulse. There was no doubt. Snow Mountain Old Man had passed.
The mad demon who had shaken the world fifty years ago had thus drawn the curtain on his life, full of glory and disgrace.
"Damn it all!"
Heuk Do-san collapsed to the floor. And for a long while, he sat there doing nothing.
His heart felt unbearably uneasy.
Because of Snow Mountain Old Man, he'd nearly died, and in the end, he'd succeeded in killing him with his own hands.
But now he was trapped in the vast underground cave the old man had created. And now, the only way out was to master the martial art he'd left behind.
What kind of twisted fate was this?
How much time passed?
Heuk Do-san carried Snow Mountain Old Man's body to the cavern with the nomadic women's corpses and laid it atop the flat boulder.
In the outside world, he might have given him a sky burial or buried him. But with no birds here and already underground, he settled for placing him in a suitable spot.
After laying the body on the flat boulder, Heuk Do-san performed nine full prostrations—the martial world's rite for a disciple honoring his master, the Nine Bows Ritual.
"I know that taking as master the man I killed with my own hands goes against heavenly ethics. But you wished it, and my situation is desperate, so I have no choice."
Heuk Do-san paused, then let out a long sigh.
"Today, this Heuk declares that I take Snow Mountain Old Man Yang Dae-gwang as my master and swear to carry on his mantle. Heaven, earth, and gods, look kindly on this fateful master-disciple bond and light my path ahead. And with the power I gain in this cave today, I swear I shall commit no act against heaven's will."
After conducting this modest funeral, Heuk Do-san sat before the lantern and calmly reviewed his situation.
This was the deep underground world at the heart of Mount Snow, utterly cut off from the outside. By now, Hyeon-gak, Gong Cheon-ak, and the others probably thought him dead.
Who would hold out hope for survival after seeing the entire cave collapse? Even if there was a one-in-ten-thousand chance he'd lived, they'd never think to enter here.
It was impossible.
Thinking of Dang Yak-ran wailing outside tore at his heart. But if only one of them could survive, it had to be her.
'I hope she returns safely.'
With Gong Cheon-ak and Hyeon-gak there, he wasn't overly worried. He was certain those two would escort Dang Yak-ran safely back to the Central Plains.
'From now on, I think only of myself.'
The three things a person needs most to live: clothes, food, and shelter.
But in an extreme environment like this, it was different—not what was needed to live, but to survive.
That meant water, fire, and food.
And one more: air.
Water could be licked from the stalactites dripping down. Fire for light was problematic due to scarce fuel, so he'd use it only when essential.
Like when reading the martial scripture on the side chamber's stone wall, for instance.
For the cold, peeling off the corpses' leather garments and layering them would suffice.
"All that's left is food... and air."
In this vast underground cave, the only edible thing was human flesh. But that was no act for a human, and he'd heard long-term cannibalism led to plague and death.
"Cannibalism is absolutely out!"
How long to master the Scripture of the Hundred Thousand Great Heavens enough to burst out of the mountain?
Snow Mountain Old Man had obtained its manual at twenty. By the time he dominated the jianghu, he was already called an old man.
The stone wall in the side chamber said he'd reached Great Completion then, around the time he faced a united assault from the martial artists.
In other words, he needed Great Completion to punch through the mountain, which meant pouring in decades until old age.
But wasn't he different from Snow Mountain Old Man, who had been a complete novice in martial arts at twenty? He'd already reached a considerable realm.
How long would it take?
"Ten years? Twenty? Or thirty?"
Damn. If only he hadn't died, he could have asked straight out.
Great Completion was, after all, the orthodox pinnacle. Generally, it took decades to fully master even a single martial art.
No need to look far—Seop Dae-gang himself had trained for over twenty years and still hadn't perfected his Plum Blossom Swordsmanship.
'Am I going to grow old and die here?'
A sudden terror surged. He was more confident than anyone in survival, but this situation was utterly hopeless.
Either way, he couldn't just die. Even if he never perfected the Scripture of the Hundred Thousand Great Heavens and remained trapped forever in this hellish underworld, he had to survive for now.
But food was the sticking point.
The future looked pitch black.
That was when it happened.
A chirping sound came from somewhere: chirp chirp, chirp chirp. Reaching toward the noise, he caught a cricket the size of his pinky finger.
"Jackpot!"
Focusing, he realized the chirping echoed from all directions. It was so faint and constant that he'd overlooked it without realizing.
"Perfect. I won't starve to death."
Like most insects, crickets bred prolifically—they could easily serve as a food substitute.
At the end of despair, a ray of hope appeared. Now, only air remained.
But on air, he knew nothing and could do nothing.
Racking his memory.
Had he ever heard that air rose from underground? Read that water turned to air?
No matter how he searched his mind, he had zero knowledge on it. Naturally—who would survive such extremes to record it?
Fortunately, the cave was so vast he wouldn't suffocate anytime soon.
"Guess I'll leave this to fate."