My Struggle (2)
There were, in principle, no yokai and no cultivators born in the sea.
The sea ran counter to the heavens; it scattered the circulation of spiritual energy and clouded the mind, making it structurally impossible for such beings to arise there.
That was precisely why the Sea Dragon Clan, who made the ocean their home, were exceptional.
They possessed a unique spiritual power that did not waver even in the depths, and they could turn the flow of the waves themselves into a form of consciousness.
So the Sea Dragon Clan were the only cultivators who could live in the sea.
The only beasts who could be born in the sea and become cultivators.
That was how it should have been.
“I can’t believe there was a sea-dwelling yokai who wasn’t Sea Dragon Clan. The world really is vast.”
The black silhouette twitched a brow as it looked at the half-empty space where one hand and part of both arms should have been.
Only now did the eyes hidden within that figure truly take in Baek Sang-ah’s appearance.
In the beast posture she had taken, Baek Sang-ah’s movements, so far as he knew, were those of a marine creature.
With that plump tail and those sleek fins, she was unmistakably some kind of shark.
He didn’t know the exact species, but given how lean her body was compared to that thick tail, she might be something like a porbeagle shark.
“So you’re special too.”
In an instant, the situation reversed.
Originally, the hunter had been the black silhouette and Baek Sang-ah the prey, but now it was the complete opposite.
The moment she erased her consciousness entirely, she was pushed back by the aura of the predator.
“Kuh….”
For some reason, within the spiritual energy that moved in the same currents as the sea, Baek Sang-ah was faster than the silhouette.
Her tail tore through the spiritual energy, and her body bent with impossible freedom as she chased after him.
“Indeed. You’re worthy of standing beside this one!”
This time, the silhouette concealed himself with his own secret art once more.
Moving close enough that Baek Sang-ah could not detect him, he drove a knee strike in from her blind spot.
But the result was different from before.
Baek Sang-ah was in a state where she no longer sensed things so much as reacted to them.
Before he had even fully appeared, before she could even perceive that the blow was coming, her body moved first.
Her teeth lunged again to swallow him.
A chunk of his knee was ripped away on the spot.
“How long has it been since I last felt fear? I never knew that disappearing could be such a frightening thing.”
Each clash cost the black silhouette more than it did Baek Sang-ah.
Her hide was tough and dense, while every time his flesh was torn away by those teeth, he lost a little more of his shape.
A complete mismatch. This battle was overwhelmingly unfavorable to the silhouette.
“Then rejoice! To be able to feel death is proof that one is alive. Challenger, you are the one making me feel alive!”
Again and again they collided.
The black silhouette hammered at Baek Sang-ah’s whole body, and Baek Sang-ah merely retreated, then surged forward at terrifying speed and bit down to shatter his form.
Even though she dealt more damage this time as well, it was the black silhouette who was being driven back.
At this rate, she would swallow him whole and erase him completely.
And yet, no matter how young the battle immortal was—no matter if he were only a memory left behind long ago—he was still a battle immortal.
He had no intention of being devoured by that predator.
“You fought at first by the human way, and now you struggle by the beast way, but yokai have their own manner of battle.”
As soon as he spoke, the black silhouette stopped moving.
“So now let me show you, in person, the fighting art of the Sea Dragon Clan. The essence I have accumulated in this body!”
There was no waste in him.
Every joint stood in its proper place, the shoulders settled quietly, and both feet planted with perfect balance.
Baek Sang-ah seemed to sense something and hurriedly lashed her tail, charging at the black silhouette, at the figure.
But then her body began to fall.
The moment the silhouette altered his stance, all the spiritual energy that had been flooding the training cave flowed back to him.
As though the spiritual energy had held its breath, every current came to a halt.
“Hoo… I never thought I’d have to show this technique to a yokai cultivator from the lower realms.”
The silhouette exhaled.
With that, the quiet weight of a young warrior’s accumulated memory settled into place.
“The Eight Extremes are the whole world stretched in eight directions.”
From within that shadowlike form, a pair of Sea Dragon Clan eyes, slit long and straight, followed Baek Sang-ah as she dropped downward.
“This body does not lean toward any one direction.”
His toes stilled.
His shoulders did not rise, and even his breath remained untroubled.
That body did not seek to cleave the void.
It simply descended and settled before Baek Sang-ah as she bent through the air.
The center.
The place where nothing leaned, where all directions vanished and only a single point remained.
Eight Extremes Limitless.
Eight Extremes Martial Order.
His stance bent once, and not even the slightest trace of disorder remained.
One elbow folded slowly, and the fingertip pointed at Baek Sang-ah.
That was alignment,
“Thus, all things return to a single point.”
At that moment, Baek Sang-ah’s world twisted.
From the summit where every direction had been erased, a single straight line was drawn.
The strike held no killing intent, no battle aura, and yet it pierced toward her from the very center.
In that instant, the training cave was wrapped in light.
But it was not light born from the silhouette’s Eight Extremes Limitless and its explosive point of impact.
What entered the silhouette’s eyes was the black core positioned at Baek Sang-ah’s center.
From there surged a single bolt of thunder.
The point that had been cleaving through the void came to a sudden stop.
As it collided with thunder faster than sound itself, the entire mountain shuddered.
The silhouette’s pupils trembled faintly.
“…Heavenly tribulation?”
The fist that had reached the peak of its momentum tore apart on the spot.
It was not only the elbow that was shredded.
The very resolve that had condensed into a single strike, the extreme point of that path, scattered like ripples.
There was disturbance in his eyes.
“What in the world are you?”
Only after the light finally faded did the sound of thunder spread in all directions.
Once the training cave fell silent again, the silhouette looked down at his own body.
A form that had not recovered, gaping open in places.
It was not a living being but something closer to a consciousness, so he still retained awareness; otherwise, he would already have been dead.
Black mist stirred.
The shattered will drifted through the air, barely holding its shape together.
“In all my life, I thought I had never seen anyone stronger than myself. How small my world was.”
Of course, that was the end of it too.
Baek Sang-ah’s unfocused eyes regained their point of focus.
Her emptied consciousness stretched back out and groped its way through the training cave and the silhouette.
“I didn’t do it. The thunder.”
“And yet it was yours, challenger.”
The silhouette, whose legs had been erased, sank to one knee as though collapsing onto the floor.
“Die. You?”
“What a joke. This one is nothing more than the memory left behind by the Sea Dragon Clan’s battle immortal when he once cultivated here.”
“Then what happens?”
“How should I know? Even I never reached that place.”
Baek Sang-ah, at a loss, approached the silhouette.
She watched the figure as it remained silent, unable to close or part her slightly open lips, simply standing there in confusion.
A moment later, the silhouette’s voice spread through the air like an echo.
“Your name. Tell me your name.”
“Huh?”
“Challenger, I ask for the name of the one who defeated this one.”
Baek Sang-ah stared blankly, thought about it for a moment, and then carefully opened her mouth.
“Baek Sang-ah. Because I’m a white shark. Baek Sang-ah.”
His body was on the verge of collapse. The form stitched together from will alone had reached the limit of what it could endure.
Baek Sang-ah murmured softly.
“Death is nothing. You don’t feel it. Nothing. Not sadness, not fear. It just disappears.”
“Are you speaking of emptiness? You talk as though you’ve died before. That could never be.”
No more strength could be felt from the black silhouette’s body.
Baek Sang-ah went on slowly.
“Yeah. I have died. So you can’t die.”
Baek Sang-ah thought for a moment.
The silhouette had said he was a memory left behind by a battle immortal, and that he was little different from an avatar.
Come to think of it, there was someone like that already.
Muyeonja.
Wasn’t he also said to be the avatar of a Great Immortal? Since he had received the Great Immortal’s memories, maybe he was a similar sort of being.
So Baek Sang-ah said,
“You can keep from disappearing.”
“What? I have no physical form. I am a being that must disappear. Don’t be childish.”
“No. It’s true.”
The black silhouette’s haze dimmed little by little.
It was like a fire that had blazed fiercely for an instant, now slowly burning itself out.
The silhouette gave a quiet laugh and shrugged.
“Very well. Explain it, then. This method of yours.”
Baek Sang-ah drew in a small breath, then spoke slowly, with great care.
“You can live with me.”
“What?”
“I can eat things. That’s why Muyeonja is inside me right now too.”
“Such a thing can’t be possible.”
“It is. I’m supposed to have that.”
“That?”
“Malrangjiche.”
The silhouette closed his eyes for a moment.
He, too, had heard of Malrangjiche before.
He had even seen Sea Dragon Clan elders argue for days and nights over whether Malrangjiche truly existed.
And so the phenomenon before him became clear.
“You mean it really exists? This constitution at the end of emptiness… At last, it all makes sense. Your strangeness.”
Then the silhouette nodded.
“To think that I, who was nothing more than a memory, would come to live inside someone who stands outside all reason.”
There was no mockery, no anger, no sorrow in his voice.
Only relief at the end of a road he had never reached.
“Good. That is not bad at all. I would very much like to see your end. Swallow me.”
Baek Sang-ah quietly nodded and opened her mouth.
The silhouette’s final trace flowed into her inner core.
Like a silent abyss swallowing the dust of falling light.
At that moment, Baek Sang-ah felt a faint warmth near her chest.
The echo of memory.
The memory left behind by some battle immortal, by a Sea Dragon Clan anomaly who had spent his whole life fighting because no one else could understand him.
Baek Sang-ah stood for a long while in the quiet training cave.
The settled energy and cracked earth made it seem as though something’s traces still remained.
She slowly drew breath in, then let it out.
“I’ll call you Bear Shadow. Muyeonja is Muyeonja, and the silhouette is a black silhouette, so if I say it fast, Bear Shadow.”
“Yeah. That’s what happened.”
Suddenly finding himself with a housemate, Muyeonja let out a small lament before speaking to Bear Shadow.
And so Muyeonja explained everything: how he and Baek Sang-ah had met, how she had swallowed him, and everything that had happened up to now.
Bear Shadow then said,
Bringing Bear Shadow into her inner self was an incredibly stupid thing to do.
Two voices rang inside her head.
The more they multiplied, the louder it became, until it was unbearable.
“Uuugh….”
Baek Sang-ah squeezed her eyes shut. She felt like spitting Bear Shadow back out right then and there.
It seemed that having two immortal avatars living in her head was not a very good thing at all.
Just as she was sinking into regret, Bear Shadow said,
“K-Kraaah!”
In the end, unable to bear the noise any longer, Baek Sang-ah howled.
The training cave had been silent, and yet the inside of Baek Sang-ah’s head was so loud it felt like it might split open.
“Ra, Rangi.”
Desperate for even a little comfort, she rushed toward Rangi, who was standing there blankly.
Tears prickled at the corners of Baek Sang-ah’s eyes.