Enlightenment Shuttle
The first time she went for me, Jo Harang had been crystal clear about it.
This was not a life-or-death duel.
She’d said she just wanted a proper match — a fine sparring bout and a real contest of skill, since the stage was already set and she’d been feeling that competitive itch for a while.
So what the hell was this?
KWA-DOOK!
The tip of her greatsword punched up through the shattered floor and skimmed past the bridge of my nose. This was no friendly spar. Every ounce of that blow said she meant to put me on the ground for good.
Saber light thick with fighting spirit flashed murderously from every direction.
FLEE! FLEE!
Salsung rippled those words into the empty air, telling me to get the hell out of there. Even this thing thought the Purple Micro Star swinging that greatsword without a shred of mercy looked anything but ordinary.
"Dan Mujin! That’s not like you! Stop running!"
Her Hohyeop-do howled as it tore the wind apart.
"You crazy woman, you think I can stop running?!"
The wind pressure shoved ahead of that massive blade was enough to launch my whole body. Her trademark domineering saber arts gave me no room to breathe. However hard she’d been grinding on Mount Song, there wasn’t a single opening left to dig into anymore.
So this was the growth speed of the Purple Micro Star — the one said to rival the Heavenly Killing Star itself.
TOONG—!
The heavy greatsword and my long staff collided midair. Shockwaves of force blasted outward in every direction. A head-on collision with nowhere to dodge. The power riding her blade jangled from my fingertips all the way down to my heels.
That full-body ringing, like every bone had been shaken loose.
"Kh."
Through the locked weapons, saber qi and staff qi tangled together in sharp, vivid streams. The moment it touched the Purple Micro Star’s energy, a blazing red force started thrashing like it was resonating with her. A thick killing intent scratched at my chest. I ran the Seongun Simbeop as hard as I could and crushed it down.
WHOOSH—!
A savage tear of air. A red trajectory shot out. I snapped my waist back and barely slipped the follow-up chain of strikes.
Robbed of its target, the greatsword’s tip still packed enough force to smash into a stone wall.
KWAANG!
It looked like a siege-ram demolition site. The wall exploded, spraying rock shards everywhere.
"Aigoo! Aigoooo!"
Wailing rose from not far off — the exact same sound a innkeeper makes when his whole establishment gets wrecked.
"I-in this sacred academy! What in the world is this chaos?!"
Someone who looked like a Golden Dragon Academy official took one look at the academy wall that a few saber strokes had blown open and let out a full-throated scream. He jabbed a finger at the absolute slaughterhouse that used to be the front courtyard and demanded to know what the hell we thought we were doing.
"Lord of the Jang Clan! Lord of the Ha Clan! What grudge do you hold against our Golden Dragon Academy to… to do something like this?!"
Apparently he couldn’t quite bring himself to yell at a Peak Realm master pouring out saber qi like a storm, so he turned the full force of his outrage on the two clan heads who looked like the employers.
"N-no, we…"
"W-we never imagined it would go this far…"
The two lords flailed hands, heads, their entire bodies in a frantic display of pure injustice. The snarling enemies from earlier had vanished; now they were a perfectly synchronized pair, lining up their stories like lifelong partners.
"Hey, what kind of troubleshooter did you even hire?"
"You’re one to talk… Who the hell is that monster of a wandering fighter?"
And the two kids who’d started the whole mess? Their jaws hung open and they were shaking like leaves now that things had blown past every possible expectation. They’d probably figured a couple of First-class fighters would show up and trade a few showy punches in front of everyone. Instead, by some cruel twist of fate, they’d walked straight into the Purple Micro Star and the Heavenly Killing Star going all-out against each other.
Thanks to that, the little brats who’d been fighting and cursing each other were now stuck together in pure terror. Unintentionally, overwhelming fear had forced a reconciliation.
Well. Nice to see, I guess.
"So Harang, how about we call it a dra— are you insane?!"
WHOOSH—
A broad blade sliced the air toward me. I threw my staff up in a desperate block, but the monstrous power in that saber strike shoved my heels three full inches backward through the dirt.
"Hey, calm down! What are you, a furious tiger—!"
Was this just what happened when the Heavenly Killing Star and the Purple Micro Star clashed? The second we faced each other as opponents, our fighting spirits ignited like destiny itself was flipping a switch. It felt like a rock starting to roll down a slope — gravity taking over, acceleration piling on past any hope of control.
"You bastard…"
"What did I even do?!"
I jumped in place out of pure injustice. I’d believed the friendship and affection we’d built were stronger than any so-called destiny. But the Purple Micro Star Jo Harang was caught in some emotion I couldn’t name, and she would not stop.
"At least give me a reason! Why am I the bastard here?!"
There was no way to put it into words, but her face was stained with betrayal and hurt — like some tragic heroine straight out of a melodrama.
"I just… whenever I look at you, my feelings go wild. My chest starts pounding!"
What did this girl eat up on Mount Song and come back down with? We hadn’t seen each other in ages and instead of saying she was glad, she was talking about her heart racing at the sight of my face.
"That’s a myocardial infarction."
"What the hell is that—!"
WHOOSH—!
With an irritated shout, the greatsword came flying in again.
"Whoa—!"
I wrenched my whole body sideways and barely slipped it. But then came Jo Harang’s specialty — a gale-force chain of linked techniques. That brutish saber style filled my vision with its sheer size as it tore through everything in range, and all I could do was answer with my staff while getting driven back again and again.
KWANG!
A hit so fierce my body left the ground for a second. Then a red trajectory hammered down toward my lower half while my stance was still broken.
KWANG!
I snapped my legs wide open and just managed to dodge. The saber tip, packed with qi, punched the ground four inches off my family jewels and sprayed rock fragments everywhere.
"Son of a—!"
That one almost ended my bloodline right there.
I bounced my body back, spinning in full circles as I fled. My personal Dan Mujin-style emergency exit method — basically indistinguishable from a panicked roll.
A solid catch.
Ilhong, who’d been watching from behind, took my off-balance back with her whole body.
"…Boss."
"Nearly gave me a heart attack. What?"
"The way that woman’s acting… maybe it’s because of…"
She had a guess. Ilhong leaned in and whispered.
"Because of what?"
"That marriage case from last year. Isn’t that why?"
I tilted my head. I’d taken that kind of request last year, sure — but what did that have to do with her?
I had to dig through my memories. So many intense things had happened since then that the minor ones got buried.
"The fake marriage job."
"Oh, that. What about it?"
In the end it had fizzled inside the Dang Clan and never gone anywhere, and then I’d left to hunt down the Extreme Poison of the Human-Faced Spider. Thinking about it, I had seen her face right before heading for Sichuan. She’d looked like she was misunderstanding something, so I’d said a quick "it’s not what you think" and left. After that it had completely fallen out of my head.
"Come on, no way it’s because of that. I told her it wasn’t, and it was ages ago…"
"Boss. For a woman, those kinds of memories and feelings stick around a long, long time."
Ilhong narrowed her eyes like she knew exactly what she was talking about and offered her advice on the female mind.
"Yeah, the way you bring up Ju Wolay makes me think you might be right."
SMACK!
A tiny palm cracked across my back. The hot sting snapped me fully awake.
And right after Ilhong, Salsung decided she also understood what the other side was going through and sent me advice in floating red letters.
Heart Demon.
Heart Demon. The innate evil that nests deep in a human heart. The mental affliction martial artists who try to break past their limits tend to run into sooner or later.
Once-in-a-thousand-years chance.
A martial artist under a Heart Demon was full of openings, so this was the perfect chance to finish her off, she said.
Come to think of it, Harang had mentioned she was right on the verge of Transcendental Peak. Looks like something had gone wrong with the Purple Micro Star, the one burdened with that heavy, world-saving destiny.
"Hah… hah…"
Her shoulders shook. Her vision swayed. The massive greatsword rose and fell with every breath.
Even through the metallic tang of exhaustion, Jo Harang tried to soothe her own heart with deep breaths. But like a skiff caught in a gale, emotions and strange thoughts still heaved and whirled inside her without mercy.
"That’s why I was trying to avoid him for a while…"
She bit down hard on her red lips.
Of all people. Of all people!
She’d run straight into the one person she’d least wanted to face — and now they were crossing blades.
The longer the exchange went on, the more her weapon and her feelings tangled together, and something kept surging up from inside.
I can’t do this. I have a destiny to protect the world.
The instant she’d seen his face, a certain scene had risen up, along with a baffling jealousy and sense of betrayal. The young man standing in front of her was someone she could trust with her back anywhere. She’d thought of them as close as fish and water — partners who pushed each other’s realms higher.
Yet some strange sensation and emotion were driving a wedge between them. As if this was exactly how heaven had ordained it.
"Hey. Is this maybe about that marriage thing you overheard last year?"
"…"
Dan Mujin asked with a face that said there’s no way, right? Jo Harang’s mouth clamped shut on its own. He’d tossed the question just in case — and when her reaction turned weird, his expression went blank with disbelief.
"What, do you have feelings for me or something?"
Jo Harang lifted her greatsword without a word, looking ready to kill him. Dan Mujin waved both hands in a panic.
"Hey, that was a misunderstanding! It was a fake marriage for a job, that’s all."
"…What kind of lunatic hires someone for a life’s greatest ceremony like it’s some random request?"
"Surprisingly, people like that exist."
Apparently a one-line "it’s a misunderstanding" back then hadn’t been enough. Only now, nearly half a year later, could Dan Mujin carefully walk her through what had actually happened.
Hearing that the problem she’d been nursing for over a year had been nothing major after all, she made a truly bizarre face.
"A fake marriage to stop a political match inside the Dang Clan? That was really it…?"
"Yes! Why else would I marry a violent woman overnight?"
And not just any woman — the kind who swung fists at the drop of a hat and mixed poison into meals. Though lately, unbelievably, she’d gotten almost soft. Like taming a feral alley cat that used to flash its claws. The feeling was… complicated.
"Internal Dang Clan politics…"
As she listened piece by piece, the wall she’d built so high started melting away. She’d misunderstood all by herself and spent her entire training period stacking up these wretched feelings.
"But… I think I suffered under it too long. The emotions won’t fade easily. What do I do?"
Her voice shook, and so did the tip of her greatsword. It had been the same when she came down from Mount Song. Her master had asked where she was going and whether she’d meet that Dan Mujin fellow, then sent her down believing something would resolve itself.
"I have to drive out these wicked feelings somehow…"
She clenched her teeth, trying to force the bad emotions away.
"Don’t drive them out. Just accept them."
Dan Mujin thumped his own chest and told her to take them in.
"Why…?"
"Harang, listen carefully. The stupidest thing in the world is fighting your own feelings."
That fight couldn’t even start properly. You could cut down an enemy and be done with them. Feelings, unless you scooped out your frontal lobe, were something you carried forever. So he told her to simply accept the rotten emotions that destiny had inflated beyond all reason.
"But… accept feelings this close to pure evil…?"
Envy, jealousy, betrayal, the thirst for revenge — the same emotions the wicked men she hunted always carried. Things the Purple Micro Star, who built merit by cutting down evil, had to stay far away from.
"That’s normal for people. And you’re not a cursed star — you’re a person."
She had always cut down the wicked purely for good deeds, without a shred of killing intent. Dan Mujin had once told her that wall was why she couldn’t break through, and that she needed to accept killing intent for the unity of mind and body. Now he was telling her to accept natural feelings the same way.
"Ah."
Meeting Dan Mujin’s worried eyes, Jo Harang forgot how to speak for a moment. When her mind cleared, the wreckage of the courtyard and the stunned onlookers flooded back in.
Only then did she understand. She had been suffering under a Heart Demon.
"I see."
And she understood something else. These feelings she had believed so evil were the very pieces that made her whole as a person.
The moment she truly accepted the emotions she had been carving away and driving out — the moment mind and body became one — the world began to accept her in return. As if every blood vessel in her body had opened, the Purple Micro Star’s frame resonated with all things.
Through her violet eyes, a new world packed with every color of nature started to pour in.
Shaaaaa—
"…Huh."
So that was the so-called energy of nature. A Peak Realm martial artist, wrapped in some incomprehensible force, stepping into a new realm. The scene looked a lot like Dang Yeohye’s awakening.
This made the second time already that someone around me had stepped into Transcendental Peak.
"I awakened her too, huh."
All I’d done was toss out a few lines telling her to calm down.
Somehow I’d dragged the realm of my supposed fated rival, the Purple Micro Star, up another level — just like before.
And by now that thing should have been spitting curses about what an idiot I was.
…
Apparently even Salsung was so speechless that this time she had nothing to say at all.
Impressive, me. Rendering the Heavenly Killing Star of the whole damn world mute.
"…Ha. Damn it."
I let out a long sigh and covered my face with my hand.