Everything Floating in the Sky
It felt as if a white-hot iron spit were being driven into the flesh just below my navel.
Just as Jeok-il had said, this was no mere internal energy. It was a living, roaring ball of fire.
“Ghk—kkh…!”
The sound of a man choking on his own breath rang through the cave. Extreme Yang energy went berserk inside my dantian, thrashing like a mad animal.
I poured every scrap of strength I had into pinning that Yang energy down, but the internal power I possessed simply wasn’t enough to seal it all away.
The result: a thin stream of flame leaked free and began to spread through my body as if it meant to burn me from the inside out.
“Aaaagh!”
A sensation like sizzling lava racing along my meridians. Wherever the fire passed, searing pain exploded—flesh scorched, flesh roasted.
A fireball that had slipped its leash and now charged through me like an occupying army.
Bubble, bubble.
My skin flushed a furious red; blisters rose in clusters as if I’d been dunked in boiling oil. White steam rose from my body the way it rises from meat on a spit.
Just as Baekmo Sawang had done before me, I screamed under the onslaught of pain and rolled across the floor.
“Shiiit—my arm! It’s burniiing!”
Was this what that monkey bastard had felt when Extreme Yin energy had stabbed through every organ in his body?
Far off, a single monkey watched me, lips twisted in a smirk.
“You—you… you son of a—ghhk!”
I should have cracked that bastard’s skull open when I had the chance.
Choking on bitter regret, I writhed on the ground and groaned.
“Boss! Water—I’ll get water!”
Ilhong couldn’t stand it any longer. She scooped water from nearby and dumped it over me without ceremony.
A cascade from head to toe. Unfortunately it was scalding hot spring water, so instead of cooling me it only aggravated the blistered skin and made everything worse.
“Gyaaah—that hurts more, you idiot!”
Seeing that, Seol Sakwha and Seol Cheonsang unleashed Ice Palace arts and flash-froze the water solid.
Ilhong flung the ice-slurry over me again.
Splash!
More steam billowed up, and nothing else. The heavenly fire raging inside me refused to die.
And this was supposedly the result of only the tiniest fraction of Jeok-il’s Extreme Yang energy leaking free.
When the Human-Faced Spider’s venom had torn me apart and regenerated me, at least I’d had the mercy of blacking out. This was torture I had volunteered for while fully conscious.
“The fireball is inside you. What good do you think cooling the outside will do?”
Jeok-il shook her head as if the frantic efforts around me were meaningless.
“What the hell… hah! Did you… put in me?!”
My throat felt scorched raw; I could barely form words.
Had that transcendent being been carrying something like this inside her all along? How could any living person house an endless flame burning from within and still walk the earth?
“Oh? This little wretch is casually speaking informally to me now?”
Jeok-il watched with interest, one corner of her mouth twitching upward.
Her eyes said she was measuring exactly how long a creature like me could last.
“Grrhhk!”
In the past, no matter what hellfire came for me, the body of the Heavenly Killing Star had somehow handled it. This time even Salsung seemed out of her depth; she just scribbled frantic messages telling me to give up already.
Sunlight… is… beyond me too…!
Yang energy is solar energy—the blazing light of the sun itself. The Extreme Yang that Jeok-il carried was so vicious it felt as if she had bottled the sky’s own burning sun.
Without meaning to, I now held the power of stars, moon, and sun all in one body.
I felt the vast reserves of Starfall Heart Method I had stolen and banked over time being shoved aside as if they weighed nothing.
No matter how brightly the stars of the night sky glitter one by one, the moment sunlight falls they lose their brilliance and hide their faces.
“Kraaaagh!”
The people of the North Sea Ice Palace stared at my screaming form in blank horror.
Then Jeok-il stepped close and whispered.
“If you wish it even now, I will take the flame back. That way you, at least, will keep your life.”
The whisper was an invitation to surrender—an admission that suppressing her fire was already impossible.
So I writhed like a caterpillar and pointed at the little blonde child who was watching me with worried eyes.
“Then… what about her?”
“Is that not the fate Heaven has allotted? Mortals must submit to it.”
In short: leave her to die. A pity, of course, but what can one do when the heavenly mechanism is thus? She gave up with almost casual ease.
The scene felt far too much like certain people of the Moyong Clan. I bit down hard on my lip.
“F-fate…”
“Hmm?”
When I tried to speak through a mouth that would not stop shaking, she tilted her ear closer.
“Fuck… off… ma’am…”
“……”
My half-delirious curse made Jeok-il’s eyes twitch.
In the hundreds of years she had lived, no one had ever spoken to her face like that. Disbelief, absurdity, and a flicker of curiosity crossed her features one after another.
“Tsk. More than thirty percent of your meridians have already melted. At this rate you will become a cripple who can never again use martial arts. And if you hold on any longer, you will lose your life as well!”
One dies or two die—same difference. Choosing a foolish dog’s death, she said.
She claimed my empty bravado and reckless courage had amused her enough to grant the chance, but since I had clearly failed, she would reclaim her Extreme Yang energy now.
“B-bullshit… It came into my body, so now it’s… mine!”
It was pure nonsense, yet the sight of me refusing to surrender even while my body melted left Jeok-il looking utterly speechless.
“Very well. It seems the Lunar Qi has not tainted you after all. I will doubt you no longer. You have not been corrupted by moonlight. So stop this and give up.”
So she had been watching me with quiet suspicion all along—wondering whether I was slowly going mad the way the Emei Sect’s leader had.
But when I held firm, she wiped the last stain of doubt from her heart.
And having understood that, she announced she would now take her energy back.
“N-not… doing it…”
“Heavens, even if it means death?”
This wasn’t only for Seol Soyeong. It was a declaration aimed at the Primordial Heavenly Lord, the Supreme Elder Lord, and whoever else might be looking down from above.
I still didn’t know why they had dragged me into this world—but I would not walk the road they had laid out for me.
Hey, you…! Accept it already… you idiot…!
Red letters scribbled urgently across my mind.
Apparently the state of my slowly roasting body was worse than I’d thought.
“If you don’t… like it… then save… me.”
If I died, the Ominous Star was finished—and Salsung with it.
In short, we were a community of fate. If she didn’t want to vanish, she could haul me back the way she had before.
“Grrrk…”
But this time even Salsung seemed to have no answer.
Pure white internal energy billowed from my whole body, yet the wildfire that had already spread like a mountain blaze refused to go out.
My head grew hotter and hotter; I felt consciousness sliding away into the dark.
Was this how I would fail a commission for the first time?
“Foolish…! You must not lose consciousness! If you do, it truly ends here!”
This was nothing like the Human-Faced Spider. That had been mere venom crafted by a spirit beast. This was something that held the power of sun and moon and stars—an incomprehensible force drawn from something high in the sky itself.
I felt black darkness wrap around me and slowly began to close my eyes.
Splashhh!
A massive torrent of cold Yin energy crashed over my body.
I felt my closing eyes snap open again, if only for a moment.
Looking around, I saw Seol Soyeong crushing a priceless thousand-year ice crystal into fine shards, imbuing them with her own Yin energy, and scattering them over me.
“Young Hero Dan Mujin! Stay with me! You told me yourself—as long as you don’t give up, there’s always a way!”
A golden-haired little brat whose blood hadn’t even dried yet, shouting at an adult with that much raw desperation. The words spilling from that small mouth seized hold of my mind and refused to let go.
The Yin energy blanketing me melted almost at once under the heat, but her willpower sank deep into my brain and stayed there.
In that instant, something that had been sleeping quietly in a corner of my dantian woke up.
It answered the Yin cold covering my body and the crisis I was in.
Shaaa—
A faint lavender aura layered itself over the pure white energy rising from my entire body.
Something cold and bewitching—the absolute opposite of the blazing Yang—had woken at the brink of mutual destruction and begun to join forces with its night-time companion, the starlight.
L-Lunar Qi…?
The moon’s energy I had accidentally taken into myself while saving the Emei Sect’s leader.
Holy Star Qi alone had not been enough to cage all that Extreme Yang, but the moment Lunar Qi added its strength, the situation began to change.
The creatures of night joined hands and started to overpower the creature of day.
Frigid energy leaked through the cordon and began forcibly snatching up every spark of Extreme Yang that had been setting fires all through my body.
Tssss—
Like a noose, the Lunar Qi seized the fiery energy and dragged it back toward the dantian.
The writhing, glowing mass was shoved this way and that until it was finally slammed back inside the dantian once more.
Boom!
The imprisoned fireball thrashed in rage; my whole body jerked as if struck.
But under the joint siege of an enormous volume of Holy Star Qi and Lunar Qi that sealed even the tiniest gap, there was no longer any escape.
“Star Spirit Returning as One Body, Water-Heaven Qi Breaking Force—this is the sturdy foundation that drives out evil…”
My throat was so parched the words barely came out.
While keeping the flames suppressed, I recited the formulas of the Starfall Heart Method with everything I had. Just as the moon’s energy had once done when it first entered me, the Extreme Yang gradually began to assimilate and turn into something that was mine.
Jeok-il, who had been watching in silence, murmured with a strange look on her face.
“What an exceedingly curious little creature you are. You did not filter this lady’s Extreme Yang… you made it your own?”
I had no idea what she was talking about. I had only thrashed around because I wanted to live.
Jeok-il’s lips stretched into a long smile.
“Kyahaha. Everything that floats in the sky—you’ve stuffed it all into that body of yours. What an insolent brat.”
Maybe hundreds of years of boredom had finally gotten to her. I was dying here, and she found it interesting?
In the meantime my dantian quieted as if the earlier storm had never happened. The fireball settled into a corner and stabilized the way the Lunar Qi had.
Looking at the calm sea inside me after the tempest, I finally let the fatigue I had been holding back crash over me and blacked out with a clear conscience.
“Ghhk.”
Seol Soyeong stared at the troubleshooter before her with sparkling blue eyes, her face full of wonder.
The young man who, after a violent fit of that fireball Extreme Yang energy, had finally succeeded in making it his own.
He snapped awake, bolted upright, strode straight to her, pressed his fingers to her meridians, and began pouring Extreme Yang energy into her body.
“Hhk…”
Hands and eyes full of absolute certainty. Extreme Yang that burned like the sun itself began shattering the walls of Yin energy that had tormented her for a lifetime.
Boom! Boom!
Each time a blocked meridian burst open, Seol Soyeong’s body gave a light jolt.
The cold that had risen from her on its own subsided; the deathly pallor of her complexion returned to its proper color. The Ice Palace disciples around them let out soft gasps of awe.
“Ahh… at last…”
“Is the young mistress finally free of the North Sea Ice Palace’s heavenly punishment?”
Boom!
When the final layer of the blocked meridians shattered, the handsome troubleshooter flashed a grin and said:
“I told you, didn’t I? Fate is what?”
“Uh… what did you say it was again?”
So many chaotic things had happened since he arrived that Seol Soyeong was having trouble keeping up.
As if it were no problem at all, the troubleshooter patiently repeated his personal motto for her.
“Okay, say it with me. Fate can go fuck itself.”
Two women immediately stepped in to stop him.
“……Don’t teach a kid weird things, Boss.”
“Exactly. Heaven itself might get angry.”
Jo Harang urged restraint, warning that one wrong move could bring down heavenly punishment.
Dan Mujin snorted and answered:
“What if I’m already taking that heavenly punishment? Then do I still need to worry about its feelings?”
The young man said something incomprehensible, as if he were carrying some private story of his own.
Meanwhile, once it became clear the Nine Yin Blocked Meridians had been completely cured, Seol Soyeong’s family rushed in and threw their arms around her.
“Soyeong!”
“It’s true—you’re really cured?”
“Thank the heavens, thank the heavens!”
What followed was a raw, heartfelt family reunion.
Like people who had finally stepped out of a long, dark tunnel into sunlight, the family bathed in pure joy right in the middle of the ice cave.
“Snff. Nice to see.”
A little moved by the scene, Dan Mujin muttered under his breath while sniffling.
He was also a tiny bit envious—of people who had family that would stand by them to the very end.
“Wait… do I have that too?”
Exactly one face rose in his mind: his elder sister’s.
If she hadn’t cared so much about him, she wouldn’t have suffered so badly. Dan Mujin comforted himself with the thought of Moyong Cheonghye.
“Anyway—one job done.”
He muttered to his subordinates that it was time to collect what they were owed and head home.
He turned to leave the ice cave—
“Kyahaha. Who said anyone was letting you go? Amusing little creature.”
—only to find a crimson-haired woman blocking his path.
Jeok-il swept her blazing hair back with one hand and fixed Dan Mujin with a searing gaze.
“You and this lady still have things left to discuss, do we not? Plenty of explaining to do as well.”
She told him not to even think about running off; unfinished business remained.
“What… exactly am I supposed to explain…?”
“You stole this lady’s energy, displayed a bizarre phenomenon, and still seem to be hiding secrets you have not spoken of.”
The moment he came near, she said, the heavenly mechanism had clouded and even her divine eyesight had been obscured.
On top of that, even though his internal organs should have melted under the Extreme Yang, some kind of regenerative power had let him spring right back up.
“……Can’t I just leave?”
“Leave if you can.”
She smiled faintly and raised a single finger.
It looked like he would be spending a little more time in this ice cave after all.