Chapter 496
Chapter 496
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 127
>Chapter Title: Epilogue (2)
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“It was all me.”
The tears streaming down her face wouldn’t stop.
-Sob... You... You...
-Swish! Whoooong!
Countless thoughts surged into Cheongryeong through Mok Kyung-un’s palm touching her cheek.
Her red eyes, shedding tears, trembled.
Memories were unfolding before her eyes.
“Why do you seek to entrust it to me, a mere artificial vessel of human will?”
“...”
“It’s no mere thing. It shines even brighter, doesn’t it?”
“You...”
[Someone told me that. It shines brighter because it’s short. We can live that way too, right?]
Her face beaming with a bright smile.
That was everything to me.
Born as the king of demons, nearly immortal, I longed for a human life—fleeting yet brighter than any other.
-Ssssh!
The black flames were gradually shrinking.
They were dying out.
“Truly... it has been long. So very long.”
“Stop. There’s no need to fully melt your will into me like this. No, why are you trying to vanish?”
“It’s not vanishing.”
“You!”
“You don’t need to... think of it that way. I... am you. You... are me. In the end... we are one.”
As the black flames dwindled to the size of a finger, even his voice grew fainter.
“Stop! Stop it. Didn’t you want to meet her? Every time you awoke, didn’t you want to speak to her?”
Because all his memories had merged, she knew.
In those moments he awoke, countless times—tens, hundreds, thousands—he repeated the same words in his mind.
[I missed you so much. My one and only bride.]
Yet he never let them escape his lips.
She knew exactly why he had done this.
To leave no lingering attachments.
Even the slightest regret might make him abandon merging with her, the vessel of human will.
“Sowol... and... my... beautiful... shining story... ended... back then. Now... it’s Cheongryeong and... your... story.”
The dying embers.
In an instant, within those embers, he envisioned his meeting with her.
And finally, he recalled his breathtakingly beautiful bride.
“She was beautiful... So beautiful, like a single red peony.”
-Whoooosh!
The embers flickered out, scattering like heat haze.
The memories contained within those thoughts etched themselves before her eyes like a unfolding tapestry, and Cheongryeong wept even more sorrowfully.
“I knew. You knew all along.”
Over a hundred years ago, after drawing her last breath, she had become a vengeful spirit, consumed solely by retribution.
Her existence, ravaged and filled only with darkness, had begun with him on equal footing in shared misery, but he soon became a ray of light in her heart, which she gradually came to cherish.
She had thought she would never hold anyone close again.
Yet she couldn’t hide those feelings.
That was why he had become not the man from before, but a human reborn.
“...Yes. I will stay with you. Even if it’s but a fleeting moment.”
Now she finally understood why he had said those words.
He had truly pitied her.
In every one of those moments.
[Sowol and my shining story has come to an end.]
Yet you left, cherishing that brief, achingly beautiful sparkle we shared, without leaving even a trace of regret.
No, you became one with me.
His voice from that time faintly lingered in her ears.
[I missed you so much. My one and only bride.]
“Aaahhhh!”
Cheongryeong wailed in grief, clutching Mok Kyung-un tightly.
I missed you so much.
Just once... even for a fleeting instant, if I could see you just once, I thought I could vanish forever.
-Tight!
She hugged him fiercely, as if he might disappear somewhere.
But at that moment,
-Ssssh!
Her spirit body began to pass through Mok Kyung-un’s form.
“!?”
Mok Kyung-un’s eyes shook.
Though her spirit had weakened and grown faint from exhausting her spiritual energy, he thought she still had some reserves left—yet her energy was draining away rapidly.
“Cheongryeong?”
“Ah... I... Why...”
-Squirm!
He sensed curse power.
That was when Mok Kyung-un spotted Mok Gan—no, Bi Yongheon—forming a hand seal with one hand.
The surrounding area, dozens of yards wide, was filled with his curse power.
-Groan... M-Master.
Ho-ang, who had been trying to transfer Wi Soyeon’s body using her soul, writhed in agony as her spirit body faded.
The barrier of curse power was rapidly depleting the vengeful spirits’ energies.
-Fwosh!
A fierce glint flashed in Mok Kyung-un’s eyes.
In that instant, Bi Yongheon’s face, who had been chanting the incantation with his hand seal, twisted in pain, blood spurting from his mouth.
-Pfbt!
It was the strike of the mind sword, Heart Sword, piercing his heart.
Having regained his original memories, Mok Kyung-un’s Heart Sword, empowered by his will beyond anyone’s, was incomparably stronger than before.
Yet,
“Cough, cough! With hope in yielding (與望在選), the unyielding millstone (無然砑羅)...”
Enduring the agony of his heart being torn apart, he continued chanting the incantation.
Bi Yongheon’s face contorted in pain, but his eyes burned with rage and madness.
-Slither!
“Cheongryeong!”
Even trying to hold her with curse power was futile.
Her body, faded to the brink of vanishing, slipped through Mok Kyung-un’s arms and fell downward.
-Cha-chak-cha-chak!
Soldier! Fight! Rend! Array!
As Mok Kyung-un formed the Nine-Character Activation hand seals and chanted, four pillars instantly rose around the falling Cheongryeong, forming faces that enclosed her.
This was the Four Peaks Linked Lock Technique.
-Crush!
-Fwosh!
Mok Kyung-un’s form blinked forward to Bi Yongheon in the space of an eyeblink.
Yet Bi Yongheon made no attempt to block or evade, continuing his chant.
His madness-filled eyes spoke volumes.
‘If I can’t have her, I won’t let anyone else.’
Even if it meant Sowol’s eternal annihilation.
-Shwaaaa! Chill!
In response to his unrelenting madness, Mok Kyung-un cleaved Bi Yongheon’s body in half with a single sword strike laden with overwhelming killing intent.
-Slash! Crackle!
Only then did the incantation cease from Bi Yongheon’s lips as his body split.
-Shatter-shatter-shatter!
Not satisfied, Mok Kyung-un unleashed hundreds of trajectories in an instant, obliterating Bi Yongheon’s flesh without leaving a single fragment.
His rage still unquenched, Mok Kyung-un moved to dash toward the falling Cheongryeong.
But then,
-Ssssh!
Amid the scattering blood mist like dust, something faint appeared.
It was a vengeful spirit.
Bi Yongheon, his face still covered in scars, manifested as a vengeful spirit, and Mok Kyung-un seized his throat as if it were perfect timing.
-Thud!
He resolved to annihilate even his soul, barring him from the wheel of reincarnation.
At this, the vengeful spirit Bi Yongheon reached toward Mok Kyung-un’s face as if to resist.
In response,
“Vanish.”
-Fsssh!
Bi Yongheon’s spirit body began to scatter under the assault of demonic qi and curse power.
Yet the expression on Bi Yongheon’s face—moments ago filled with fury as he reached out—was different now.
It was as if he had let everything go.
At that moment, his unconscious thoughts flowed into Mok Kyung-un through his fading spirit body.
-Slash! Slash!
[Stop. Please... stop.]
Bi Yongheon, carving gashes into his own face with a dagger, was in torment.
Wondering why, Mok Kyung-un realized he had been trying to stab the eye on his forehead but, having lost control of his body, had only slashed his face instead.
[Please... please...]
The thoughts pouring in.
They were miserable memories from the past hundred years—whenever he briefly escaped Mok Gan’s control, he tried to end his own life or remove it.
He had endlessly struggled between the implanted madness and his reason.
But every outcome was merely further erosion by madness.
-Ssssh!
Reading these thoughts, Mok Kyung-un’s eyes took on a strange glint.
So even you couldn’t escape the madness imposed by Mok Gan’s domination.
Yet even as a vengeful spirit, freed from that control, he had feigned an attack without explanation because...
[I must be annihilated. I must vanish as evil to the end.]
His thoughts desired his own destruction.
It was the only way to fully cleanse her grudge, by disappearing as the root of all evil.
-Ssssh!
As the vengeful spirit Bi Yongheon scattered away, he shook his head with a subtle gaze, as if aware Mok Kyung-un had read his thoughts—as if pleading not to tell her anything.
And so, the vengeful spirit Bi Yongheon fully dispersed, his spirit body utterly annihilated.
Even if, in the end, he had tried to do something for her, Mok Kyung-un felt no pity.
After all, that madness had originated entirely from him.
-Fwosh!
Mok Kyung-un relocated the Four Peaks Linked Lock Technique to the ground, released it, and checked on Cheongryeong.
She, faded to near annihilation, spoke with difficulty.
“B-Bi... Bi Yongheon?”
“He...”
At her question, Mok Kyung-un nearly said he had annihilated him but hesitated.
Her spirit body was already on the verge of vanishing.
If he told her now that Bi Yongheon—the source of her grudge—had been destroyed, what would happen?
She might achieve nirvana right then, leading to the worst outcome.
Wi Soyeon, the soul that was her essence, had already escaped the wheel of reincarnation; she could simply cease to exist.
‘What should I do?’
He who had been decisive in all things found himself unable to decide in this moment.
Her spiritual energy was nearly depleted, on the brink of disappearance.
He couldn’t risk it in this state.
-Haa... haa... Master.
At that moment, Ho-ang—who had nearly had her spirit annihilated yet protected Wi Soyeon’s body to the end—approached, carrying her.
Seeing Wi Soyeon on Go Chan’s back made Mok Kyung-un’s eyes tremble even more.
‘...’
It reminded him of the conversation he’d had with Cheol Su-ryeon of the Evil Heart Sect when he obtained the alchemy to merge soul and魄.
[Could alchemy make the魄 the core and unite it with the魂?]
[With魄 as the core? You think that’s possible? The魄 is like the intense lingering thoughts from life. It scatters and purifies in the earth as the魂 undergoes reincarnation. Thus, the魂 is the core of reincarnation.]
[...Then what happens if魂 and魄 unite? Does everything of the魄 get purified?]
[Yes. That’s the natural order.]
-Tight!
Strength entered Mok Kyung-un’s clenched fist.
-Drip!
His nails dug into his flesh, blood trickling down.
At the journey’s end, having come to know each other’s existence—why must the conclusion be like this?
Merging her soul and魄 could revive her, but the wheel of reincarnation would wash away everything of her魄, Cheongryeong.
She would no longer be the Cheongryeong he knew, but the her from her previous life.
-Swish!
At that moment, despite her faint spirit body preventing contact, Cheongryeong reached out toward Mok Kyung-un’s clenched fist.
With eyes as if she knew everything, she mouthed that it was okay, tears welling as she smiled faintly.