Namjung [2]
"Whoa, Oppa! Look, fireworks! Pretty, aren't they?"
Seol-ah's blue eyes glittered as she pointed toward the bursts going off far in the distance.
Orange sunset light washed over her, and before I knew it I was staring, utterly lost, at the sight of her.
"…Yeah. Pretty."
Even after I said it, my gaze never climbed to the sky where the fireworks were breaking.
"Right… wait. You were looking at me just now, weren't you?"
Caught.
But the more a moment like this called for it, the more a man had to stand his ground.
"Yeah. I said you're pretty."
I smiled as if I were only stating something obvious.
"…Ugh…"
At that, her face went red all at once, the way cotton drinks up water.
She must have heard she was pretty plenty of times.
A face clear and untroubled, skin so white it was nearly pale. Silver-white hair carrying a faint sheen, blue eyes that seemed to hold the sea. A straight nose, a slender line of jaw, features set exactly where they belonged. Anyone would have called her pretty. It wouldn't even have been strange to fall for her at a glance.
And yet, asked like that, Seol-ah denied it.
"No, that's not the same…. The person saying it is different— what am I even saying."
"Sure, sure."
I laughed under my breath and stroked her hair.
"O-Oppa, you're handsome!"
"?"
Seol-ah… had suddenly complimented me?
What was wrong with her? Had her candied hawthorn gone bad?
"Uh… yeah. Thanks…?"
"Ugh… now I'm the only one embarrassed…"
At last she covered her face with both hands.
Ah. Some kind of counterattack?
Embarrassed at being praised, so she meant to embarrass me too?
…If that's really it, that's unbearably cute.
"Take your hands away. Don't hide a pretty face."
"Y-you're doing this on purpose…!"
"That part's true. You're also actually pretty, though."
"…"
Her cheeks trembled faintly, and the corners of her mouth quivered. She looked pleased, plain as day. So she was secretly weak to praise. Even while she flushed, Seol-ah quietly took her hands off her face. Too cute.
…Have I got some kind of blinders on?
Why did everything about her look cute? Or was that wrong? Seol-ah had always been cute, strictly speaking—ever since she'd comforted me while I was crying my eyes out alone. Before that, well… she'd had a full-blown fear of people, so that hardly counted. Not that any of it mattered. If that was how I felt, then that was how it was.
"Oh, Seol-ah."
"What. Ahem. What is it?"
She turned toward me, her face still a little flushed.
"Want to live with me?"
"…What?"
She asked it back with a blank look, and then—
"Y-yes, yes, yes…?!"
Her pupils shook hard.
Did she hate the idea that much? That stung a little.
"Th-that just now… w-was that a c-confession…"
"Ah. It wasn't, so don't worry."
"…Oh…"
When I cut it off that flatly, the disappointment on her face… couldn't have been real.
"If you don't want to, then I guess there's nothing I can—"
"No! I want to!"
She answered with all her strength, then reddened, as if the force of it had embarrassed her. Cute. I really couldn't let her hands get dirty. I didn't have the heart to watch our Seol-ah struggle.
"B-but… w-why all of a sudden?"
"If we live apart, I'll worry. What am I supposed to do if something happens to you?"
"…That was the reason? Honestly. I'm not a child."
Whatever she was so unhappy about, Seol-ah puffed out her cheeks. I laughed and poked one, and it gave with a soft pssh of escaping air. Then I added,
"I also just want to stay stuck to you for the rest of my life. There's that, too."
"…Wh-what?!"
She froze for a moment at my words, then startled so hard her face went crimson.
Was it really that shocking? Honestly, I had a feeling everyone in the world would want to keep Seol-ah and live with her.
…Maybe not quite that far.
Anyway, the point was that I didn't have any impure motives. Really.
"If I had my way, I'd build a single hut up in the mountains and live there…. Is that all right? We'd still go down to the villages and the city often, of course."
"I'd l-love that! I mean—yes. It's… r-romantic, that's all! Not anything else…"
"Thank you."
I smiled and stroked her hair.
"For what?"
"Just… thank you for staying with me."
"Ugh… that's so cheesy."
She said it even as the corners of her mouth lifted, her face flushed red.
That night. Or perhaps it would be truer to call it the next day's dawn.
Shhk. Shk.
I had held Seol-ah until she fell asleep, then slipped out without a sound, and now I was cutting my way through the dark-path martial artists of the back alleys with a sword wreathed in crimson sword qi.
A light sigh left me.
To a First-Rate martial artist—one whose strength already sat at the level of Transcendent First-Rate—there was no one here who posed a real threat. There had been only a single martial artist even in the Transcendent First-Rate realm, and he had barely set a foot past its threshold. In this world, Transcendent First-Rate was treated as something close to an A-rank Hunter from my own, but he was still weaker than me.
Was the Black Tiger Sect the odd case?
I had wiped out fourteen sects and still never met an expert of that caliber, so it was probably true. Either way, that wasn't what mattered. What mattered was how much my skill had accomplished.
At this rate, shouldn't I have been born here from the start?
The thought was that strong. Perhaps because my dantian was nearly half-materialized now, somehow taking on a shape like the yao cores I had read about in books, my regeneration and stamina had long since left anything human behind. How far? Crushed bone knit completely within a single hour, and I had carried out the annihilation of fourteen sects without a rest, yet my stamina still refused to bottom out. That alone said enough.
Nor was that all. Having risen to First-Rate, I no longer had to cling to the forms of techniques, and my swordsmanship had grown at a geometric rate. There had been a limit, imposed by the human body, past which I simply could not handle flesh with any greater precision—and the existence of qi had helped me past it.
Did that mean my internal energy was lagging? No. My realm was now a mature First-Rate. I had only stepped onto the threshold of First-Rate that afternoon. No—by now it was closer to the extreme of First-Rate.
External arts? Not even worth mentioning. As qi settled into my body and strengthened it of its own accord, the toughness of my flesh, my raw strength, even my grip were all drawing a steady upward curve.
If anything was lacking, it was martial techniques. But I had seen enough of them by now that I felt I could make my own. I already had. They simply had no names. And if I counted the unique art I already possessed—the one that cut qi itself—I could probably trade a few blows even with a master of the Peak Realm I had never once laid eyes on.
The growth was plain to see, and it felt as if there were no wall in front of me at all. Because of that, swinging a sword had been a little fun lately.
…Or was this Seol-ah's influence?
Anyway. Coming back to it—I found it genuinely lamentable that I had not been born in this world long ago. Why I'd had to be born into that damned world where nothing but an innate ability decided everything, I would never know.
And.
There was a thought I'd had while learning this world's martial way.
The Peak Realm is by no means the Martial Extreme.
Even if such a thing as a Martial Extreme existed, the Peak Realm was not its end. It was only treated as the end because no one had ever reached it. Then I would have to open that realm myself. I had no grounds for the belief, and yet a certainty I couldn't explain settled in me: if it was me, I could.
The name of the realm…
I'd ask Seol-ah to give it one later. The only thing I could think of on the spot was Transcendent Peak. The realm past the Peak, therefore Transcendent Peak? My naming sense was, frankly, beyond saving.
Seol-ah, on the other hand? Whatever name she gave it, I felt I would swell with pride every time I spoke it. Thinking of her drew a smile across my mouth on its own.
…Why was that memory surfacing now?
Well, what I felt for Seol-ah wasn't romantic love. The age gap alone…
…Should I be cutting off my neck instead of my arm?
Useless, strange memories kept bubbling up. Get a grip, Yu Hajin.
Smack. Smack. I struck my own cheeks as hard as I could, then began sorting through what I had to do.
First, the thing that has to come before everything else…
What else? Treating Seol-ah's severed meridians. The odds were relatively high, and more than anything, Seol-ah couldn't be in pain.
Second… what to do about my own ability, more or less. In truth, I wasn't even sure that was possible. Still, I had to try. Live an eternal life alone, without Seol-ah? Absolutely not. Unless she stayed with me for a whole lifetime—and the limit of a human lifespan made that impossible—I had to be rid of the ability as soon as I could.
So the conclusion was this. I had to make contact with the Dao cultivators.
Especially the herb of the immortals, passed down as legend—the True Sun Fruit, said to cure the Nine Yin Severed Meridians. Tied as it was to the existence of those cultivators, the chance of it being real was high, which made meeting them and gathering information half-essential. An herb of the immortals. The immortals would know where it grew.
But that doesn't mean I can go to them right away.
Dao cultivators were those who trained to shed the human body and become gods. They would not be weak. In the short term, then, the first priority was martial power.
So. Shall I climb as far as the Peak Realm?
How long would it take? A year? Two? The Peak Realm, which even a genius might fail to reach after devoting an entire life. How much time would I have to spend before I touched it?
…Somehow, I don't think it will take that long.
No. Baseless confidence was no good.
I cleared the stray thoughts and looked up at the scarlet sky about to break into dawn. I had to get back before Seol-ah woke. If I was with her, then even if reaching the Peak Realm took a long time, that time itself would probably be fun.
"Heh."
A laugh slipped out of me before I knew it, and I ran for the inn where Seol-ah was sleeping.
…And got thoroughly scolded by Seol-ah, who for once was already awake. She usually slept past eleven. Why was she up before five?