My Struggle
Baek Sang-ah’s way of doing things was rooted in curiosity.
When she first entered the Qi Refinement stage, she had needed a human body so she could ask Hyeongeuk her questions, and that was why she had taken one.
She had discovered the Spirit Stone Cave because she had grown curious about the gap between the rocks.
And the reason she had reached the Foundation Establishment Realm was also thanks to her questions about why she lived at all, and her curiosity about this cultivation chamber.
“How dare you bare your fangs at this sovereign, beast?”
The words came slicing through the air like a blade.
Baek Sang-ah instinctively curled back her lips.
Her upper lip drew high, revealing rows of sharp, pointed shark teeth.
It was a reaction to threat.
For a beast, the moment its momentum was overpowered, it was as good as dead. It was nothing more than the instinct of a predator, refusing to yield in force.
At the same time, Baek Sang-ah’s consciousness, stretched out in all directions, slowly probed the cultivation chamber.
The other side was threatening her, that much was certain, so she needed to prepare for the fight that would follow.
Child. Since even now I cannot tell what that thing is, do not act rashly.
The inside of the chamber was far more vast than it had looked from outside.
Though it was called a cave, the ceiling soared high overhead, evoking an underwater palace, and the stone columns stretching up like great pillars resembled the backbone of some colossal whale.
As Baek Sang-ah bared her teeth and crept deeper with a scowl, the space seemed to take on a definite shape.
As if it had not been formed naturally at all, but carved out by someone who had shaved down the walls and ceiling to make this refined chamber.
The walls were still raw stone, but their surfaces were riddled with countless gaps and cracks.
Most telling of all were the marks that looked deliberate, as if made by fists or by something sharp and cutting. Those traces revealed, in fragments, the kind of cultivation the shadowy figure here had been practicing.
“I thought you were some clueless beast who blundered in here, but you’re not so stupid as to charge at this sovereign blindly.”
At last, Baek Sang-ah fixed her gaze on the black silhouette.
It had taken human form. The gray haze rising from its body looked like a shadow.
Though its face was blurred, it still seemed to have expression, and though its body was not fully defined, it moved with ease.
What stood out most of all was the tail.
Not sleek like Baek Sang-ah’s, but just as plump. The shadows rippling across its surface made it look scaled.
That was not all.
Its head, and the top of that head, bore two strange horns.
Horns curved like waves.
Baek Sang-ah blinked at the sight and said, “You’re a beast. You too.”
“Oh?”
“You have one too. Tail. I have one too. Tail. You have horns too. You’re more beastly.”
The silhouette reached out into the air and clenched its hand, as if closing its fingers around the very atmosphere itself.
“You are the only one who would dare call this sovereign a mere beast. That alone proves your ignorance.”
“But we’re the same.”
“This sovereign began as a spiritual creature called a Sea Dragon, and from there ascended the path of cultivation. I am nothing like a rootless thing such as you.”
Baek Sang-ah tilted her head.
“If that’s how you’re going to put it, I was human at first, so only you’re a beast.”
“Are you provoking me?”
“No. It’s true.”
The tips of the silhouette’s horns twitched faintly.
Without another word, it looked at Baek Sang-ah.
Even though it was only a shadowy shape, something like emotion flickered in its eyes.
It was the same battle intent she had felt the moment she first touched this chamber.
I told you not to act rashly—why would you go and provoke an unknown opponent? Still, a Sea Dragon clan member...? Such a being should not exist in the lower realm in the first place.
As the silhouette had said, the Sea Dragon clan was a spiritual beast lineage.
In the lower realm, where spiritual energy was practically nonexistent compared with the higher realms, they could never have been born here. Merely surviving would have been a struggle.
So why was there a will of the Sea Dragon clan hidden in a crack of a cave deep beneath the sea of the lower realm?
Even Muyeonja had no explanation for that.
The Sea Dragon clan normally takes dragon form. If this one has a human form, then it must be at least above the Golden Core Realm. Wait— a Sea Dragon clan member in the lower realm...?
Muyeonja searched deep in the Great Immortal’s memories.
Meanwhile, blue mist spilled out between the black silhouette’s clenched fingers.
Baek Sang-ah felt a familiar presence there.
The qi of the sea.
“Very well. If that is your claim, then I shall personally test whether you are worthy to stand against this sovereign.”
At the same time, Muyeonja shouted,
Child, as far as the Great Immortal knows, there was only one Sea Dragon clan member who ever descended to the lower realm in the old days. That is not an existence you can handle. Would it not be better to appease it as much as possible and avoid battle?
The blue mist spilling from between the Sea Dragon clan silhouette’s fingers spread outward like crashing waves and swallowed everything around them.
Then Baek Sang-ah felt her body grow heavy.
It was as if the cultivation chamber had filled with water, as if they had sunk to the bottom of the sea.
Everything around her was covered in water.
She could still breathe, but her lungs sank heavily in her chest.
Her fingertips were pressed down, and her toes lost the floor and floated.
Baek Sang-ah realized it then.
It was a spell.
What she had thought was the sea was all the silhouette’s spiritual energy.
The silhouette was now filling this vast chamber entirely with its own qi, turning it into an environment like the ocean.
No way...
Muyeonja’s low, worried voice flowed into Baek Sang-ah’s head.
Through the Great Immortal’s memories, Muyeonja had identified the black silhouette.
A beast cultivator of the Sea Dragon clan, a fighter whose competitive spirit burned too fiercely to ignore.
A simple-minded monster who had lived through countless battles and accumulated cultivation through enlightenment gained in combat.
An immortal who had risen to the same level as the Great Immortal after endless struggle.
There were many who spoke of the will of heaven, but he alone had been the one to beat the heavens down and win.
That is a memory. The memory left behind by that monster-like being!
Fighting Zen.
In other words, the identity of that silhouette was simple.
It was a memory left behind by Fighting Zen from long ago, when he had cultivated in the lower realm before ascending to immortality.
That memory had taken shape and become his avatar.
The only saving grace for Baek Sang-ah was that this memory of Fighting Zen possessed only the strength he had had in his youth.
The blue qi covering the chamber surged violently.
Baek Sang-ah’s eyes suddenly went wide.
I know your nature, so I won’t tell you to run. But you must survive!
Muyeonja’s shout rang uselessly in her mind, because the black silhouette had vanished from her sight.
And in an instant, it appeared again right in front of her.
“Krrng...?”
“Keep your eyes open and look properly, you ignorant beast.”
Even though she had left her consciousness open, the qi flooding every direction had thrown her senses into disarray, and she could feel nothing clearly.
Because of that, she failed to react to the opponent’s movement, and Baek Sang-ah’s senses were shaken violently.
The black silhouette’s fist had slammed up beneath her chin.
That heavy blow shoved her body backward. She crashed into the chamber wall, and stone dust billowed up through the water.
Baek Sang-ah forced herself to recover as fast as possible.
This time, instead of using her consciousness, she tried to sense the vibrations around her through the tip of her nose.
But even then, she felt nothing.
“Ugh?”
“Compared to the momentum you showed when you refused to yield even before this sovereign, you are pitiful indeed. Were you only good at puffing yourself up?”
Another impact struck her stomach.
Air burst out of her lungs, and she coughed out a violent stream of bubbles.
By the time Baek Sang-ah regained her senses, the silhouette had already disappeared again.
She could neither sense it through consciousness nor find it through the organ called a nose.
It was not that the opponent was too fast to follow.
It was simply invisible. As though it had vanished from the world and then reappeared.
“T-teleport?”
Worse still, the qi surged in like waves, tightening around Baek Sang-ah’s limbs without leaving her room to move or even to breathe.
It felt as if this very space possessed battle intent and was trying to crush her body to pieces.
Then something caught Baek Sang-ah’s eye.
It was Rangi, who had come into the chamber with her.
Rangi was shaking her head wildly as she looked around, yet though she was a land beast, her body did not float up in the water.
She simply seemed not to realize this was water at all, and was padding forward with her forepaws planted on the ground, moving toward Baek Sang-ah.
For Rangi, this isn’t the sea?
Then what, exactly, was the difference between Baek Sang-ah and Rangi?
Baek Sang-ah drew in a breath.
Her thoughts flowed quickly, like water riding a current.
When she had first felt this place was beneath the surface, it was because it looked that way.
The blue qi had risen to completely engulf the chamber, so she had felt as though it were the same as the sea.
That was sight.
And next was touch.
She had interpreted the sensation of pressure on her lungs and body as water pressure. She had thought it was the pressure of the sea.
No. It’s qi. That shadow is moving qi to control my movements.
Baek Sang-ah closed her eyes and began to doubt the pressure wrapping around her whole body.
The feeling of being crushed by water pressure, the blurring of her senses because she was beneath the surface, the poor visibility because she was underwater, the sensation of floating—
All of it was an illusion she had made herself.
Because I thought of this place as the sea, it became that way.
It was all because she had depended on her senses.
Because, as always, she had clung only to what she could see and what she could feel.
The deception of the senses.
To fight here, she had to step away from that.
What I need now is instinct, like Rangi’s. I can’t move after I feel something. I have to move before I feel it.
Once understood, it was easy to act.
Baek Sang-ah’s consciousness, spread everywhere just moments ago, vanished in an instant.
Her arms and shoulders went limp.
The focus in her eyes grew hazy.
The reason was simple.
Baek Sang-ah had now silenced her own brain.
“You were lost in some idle thought in front of this sovereign—what is it now?”
Again, the silhouette’s fist shot toward her in sudden violence.
But this time, his fist failed to strike Baek Sang-ah at all.
Her teeth.
Baek Sang-ah’s teeth had bitten down on the fist.
“What have you done?”
She did not use her arms or legs. What moved were her tail and torso, and her jaw.
What controlled her was not the brain or reason, but instinct.
Baek Sang-ah moved her body and tail to lift herself into the air. With her jaw locked tight, she drove her teeth between the silhouette’s knuckles.
It was a beast’s posture, not a human’s.
“So you are nothing but a beast after all! But despair. I have no physical form. Therefore, no matter how much you bite...!”
As the black silhouette pulled its fist out of Baek Sang-ah’s mouth, its words cut off in the middle.
Its body was a fragment of memory, a thing of shadow.
It should not have been hurt, because it had no solid form. Since it was made of memory, its shape should have been able to recover endlessly.
And yet, part of the fist torn away by Baek Sang-ah’s teeth did not return.
It lost its shape as though it had never existed at all.
“You... swallowed part of this sovereign?”
The black silhouette touched the torn area and looked at Baek Sang-ah.
Her eyes were unfocused, yet for some reason he had the eerie sense that she was staring directly at him.
Though it undeniably wore a human form, it somehow seemed like a massive great white shark.
“You dare not settle for this sovereign’s hand, but mean to devour everything that makes up this body?”
The silhouette drew back quickly, the corners of its mouth lifting.
Though it was a memory, and though its existence should vanish rather than suffer injury, that was exactly what made it interesting.
And that beast had actually hurt it.
Pain, felt directly for the first time rather than through memory alone.
That fanned the flames of his competitive spirit.
“In this shabby land, to think I would find something like you. In this lower realm, you may well be the only being who can wound this sovereign’s body!”
This time, it was Baek Sang-ah who charged first rather than the silhouette.
She rushed through the qi with her maw stretched wide, as though she meant to swallow him whole.
Her speed was terrifying.
She had turned the qi carrying the sea’s energy against itself and made it into her sea.
And in the sea, Baek Sang-ah was the fastest of all.
“Then I acknowledge it.”
As Baek Sang-ah lunged, the silhouette crossed its arms. In an instant, her sharp, saw-like teeth slammed into those arms.
Shadows were torn away along the shape of his forearms. Again, they did not recover.
Pain was there.
Impossible.
A body without substance should have vanished, and yet it was wounded.
Impossible.
And because of that, it was fun.
“A worthy adversary! From this moment on, this sovereign will also fight you with the genuine resolve to kill you.”
The battle intent rising from the black silhouette instantly turned into killing intent.
A fight to kill, and to survive by killing.
That could no longer be called a mere battle.
It was struggle.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇