A God Made Manifest [2]

Ugh. So cringey.

I was the one who said it, and still—it was eighth-grader ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠syndrome, through and through.

Don't misunderstand me. Every line of that speech was written by Seol-a.

"Anyway, I think if you say it like this, it'll work."

"No... this feels off. It's way too cringey."

"Come on, this kind of thing is supposed to be a little cringey. That's how you get a reaction, you know? You can't exactly go, 'Hello, I'm an immortal. Please look after me.'"

"...Fine."

And that was how it ended up.

But Seol-a.

"Pfft—hk—mmph...!"

Why are you undergoing the trial of holding in a laugh?

You wrote the lines....

And it wasn't only the lines she decided. The costume, even the staging—Seol-a had done all of it.

Promising myself I'd tickle her senseless later, I pulled my gaze off her. Then I swept the sword, raised to the upper left, down toward the lower right, and turned my body through a full circle. As slow as I could manage. As flashy as I could manage.

Crimson kalpa-flame roared up and drew a ring through the empty air, and in the same instant death burst from every direction at once. The lives of the black-path martial artists seeded through the crowd were snuffed out by a single stroke of the sword. Only a hair-thin line of blood had been drawn across each throat, so no one but they themselves noticed they were dying.

Thud.

Not until the bodies, severed from the brain, collapsed and left their heads hanging in the air.

"Eek—eek—kyaaaah!!"

A woman's scream—

"Haaah..."

—a hollow laugh startled loose by sheer bewilderment—

"Ha—haha! Serves you right! That's karma, you bastards!"

—and cheers, panic smothered under glee.

In that tangle of every voice from every kind of person, the only ones who had lost their voices were a handful of black-path martial artists. I looked down on the pandemonium with arrogant eyes and let out a voice that left not a shred of feeling in it.

Ah... my face is genuinely burning.

Of course I'm still holding it together, so I don't mean that literally. It's a figure of speech.

"Pfft—phht—hk—puhuh..."

...When I hug her later, I'm squeezing for real. Almost hard enough to cut off her air... is that too much?

Yeah. I'll just settle for tickling her without mercy. I can't actually hurt Seol-a.

Anyway, I let a thin thread of spiritual sense spread wide and went on.

With that skin-crawling line for an exit, I hooked an arm around Seol-a's waist and kicked off the empty air.

Fwoom—!

The flames I had shaped by tuning my qi-force burst outward, and wrapped in a formless, colorless protective aura, the two of us vanished from their sight in a breath. I had spent a little internal energy to quadruple our speed, so to the eyes of common folk who had never learned martial arts, it must have been truly instantaneous. And since the speed itself was that great, arriving took no time either. The distance hadn't been far to begin with.

The destination, of course, was directly in front of a black-path sect. More precisely, a height just above the main gate.

"B-Boss! Outside, there's—!"

One of the sect's lackeys saw us, gasped, and rushed the news inside.

"What is it? A raid?"

"Th-that's..."

Rather than wait on the stammering lackey, I answered.

Moving the natural qi of the world to carry my meaning, I raised the sword of crimson kalpa-flame high.

If a man climbs a mountain and sets his sword against the rock at its summit, can he say he has pressed down the mountain? No. Only the rock would be cut. In that sense, I can truly execute the form called Mount Tai Presses Down. If I bring the sword down, that peak will sink—if only a little.

The moment those words caught in their awareness, gravity born from a human hand plunged down together with the flames and crushed the sect.

"Kkh—hack, hack..."

All that remained inside was a single man, a sword driven into the ground, barely holding on. He was probably a master of the Transcendent First-Rate, but he was nowhere near intact.

So he only endured because I spread the force thin.

Even so, the mere fact that he had withstood a blow of this degree meant something. Even I don't truly feel how hard it is to climb to the Peak Realm—but I am still in a position to admire strength like that.

"Fuck, f—hack! —uck...!!"

Boom!

Right on cue, the roof—brought down by a wooden pillar burned through in the flames—stamped him flat. In that moment, a sect vanished down the back alley of history.

"...Hold on. Didn't you say the flames were just a property of your qi-force, and not real fire?"

"Yeah. All of that is qi-force."

Seol-a looked utterly incredulous. I ended the brief exchange with a short laugh and began erasing black-path sect after black-path sect from the map.

Yeah. Already the last. My demon-subduing power was running thin besides, so the timing was good.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck...! Why the hell are you doing this to u-us...?!!"

Why was I doing this? To draw the cultivators out, of course... though it was a little funny, them carrying on like that when they had sins of their own.

I drew the sword of flame back.

KWA-GWANG—!!

Crimson light strobed, and the sect and all the ground around it were blown away. The people inside couldn't even leave a brief death-cry before the flames erased them, and where the blow had landed, every trace of human hands had burned away into wasteland.

I stepped across the air, flew to where the people were thickest, and came to a stop above them. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Then one man spoke, his voice shaking.

"M-might I... ask your honored name...?"

Uh. Hmm. How was I supposed to answer that? I couldn't give my real name.... I'd have to make something up, even if it was rough.

Even I thought that was pretty bad. I should have left it to Seol-a.

I shoved the stray thoughts aside and flew on, at a speed that had only climbed higher over the course of annihilating the sects.

Ugh. Mortifying.

"Pwahahahaha!"

Sweat beaded on Seol-a's brow from wearing the mask, and she clutched her stomach as she laughed.

"Th-this im—puhuh—mortal... ahahaha! Has de—hk—scended upon this place... hahaha!"

She was the one who had made me say it, and now she had tears in her eyes from laughing. To keep the promise I'd made myself, I wrapped my arms around her waist from behind.

"Nh...?!"

Too late.

Grinning, I went to town on the nape of her neck.

"Kyahk...?! Hik—kyahahaha! Euheehik...!"

Seol-a thrashed, shrieking. She tried desperately to twist out of my arms and failed. The Peak Realm isn't that easy, you know.

"Heehik, sto—huhahak...! I'm so—ahahak...! rry—hok...! I was—kyahahaha! wrong... euhahahak!"

Having extracted the surrender, I stopped tickling her—and instead of letting go, pulled her in tighter.

"Haa... haa..."

Seol-a had gone completely limp in my arms. Let go, and she looked ready to melt into a liquid and puddle across the floor. Teased or otherwise, her sensitivity really was something. A little tickling, and she looked as if she'd been sprinting flat-out for hours. I let out a helpless laugh at the sight and caught both her cheeks, stretching them out.

"Bweeeh..."

Cheeks that pulled long and slack, every bit as strengthless as their owner.

"You planning to pull another weird stunt? Or not?"

"Ah won'..."

I laughed and let her cheeks go.

"Then shall we rest for today? The reaction was better than I expected. I don't think we need to do any more."

"Hehe. You're stopping because you're embarrassed, right?"

"...That too, yeah."

"Then... let's just go have fun?"

Seol-a, limp only a moment ago, said it with sea-blue eyes suddenly bright. There was unmistakable excitement in her voice.

"Awfully energetic..."

Young. So young.

Meanwhile I was worn out just from draining my internal energy a few times.

"Oh—if you're tired, Oppa, we can just rest?"

"No. We can rest by going out."

I said it with my chin set on Seol-a's shoulder. It might have been heavy, so it was closer to merely letting it touch.

"Well. You do have the years, you know."

Urk.

"...The body's still young, though."

The body was six years younger than Seol-a's. Twenty-one, to be exact. Hearing that, she sounded genuinely surprised.

"You never missed a chance to put yourself down for being old, and now you want to be young?"

"Yeah. A thirty-year gap isn't exactly easy..."

"...That's kind of heartbreaking."

...

What's this feeling—like being officially certified as pitiful only makes it worse. I don't think I'm imagining it.

"It's fine. I don't mind, and to other people you'll look young anyway... Mm, yes! Cheer up!"

...

The clumsy comfort hurt in its own way.

Tsk. There was a time I heard things like, This skilled, at such a young age? Ah—I still look like I'm in my twenties, so maybe I'd hear it even now. Of course, I'm not saying I want to go back to then. Seol-a isn't in that world.

Smack.

Seol-a pressed her lips to mine.

"Ahem, a-hem. That's enough now, right? I told you I don't care about things like that..."

Seol-a with her cheeks flushed was cute. I held her even tighter and stroked her hair.

"All right. Then that's that."

If Seol-a says it's fine, who's going to argue? The eyes of society? They can shut up.

"Then where do you want to go? If we can, let's skip the crowded places and rest somewhere quiet."

"Mm, that sounds good. Then..."

The sentence never made it to the end.

"...Seol-a. Put the mask on."

"...Eh? Already?"

I felt the same.

Don't these cultivators have anything better to do? Why are they already in the area—and giving off an aura like that, no less.

Well. That's how I noticed them.

If they had truly meant ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to hide their presence, I probably wouldn't have caught it. Their aura was quite alien, but it was absurd to think experts of their level couldn't conceal it perfectly if they tried. And so, just as we finished preparing and stood with our feet upon the sky—

"...So the rumors were true. Flying through the sky without even a flight artifact! And laying waste to a gathering of mortals all by yourself! You must be a cultivator of at least the Foundation Establishment realm!"

One of the cultivators—presumed—who had come riding in on a cloud began to speak.

...And what is that supposed to be.

It was, of course, a baffling speech I had no way of understanding. Whatever I was thinking, the man went on.

"I don't know which sect you belong to, but surrender at once! The rule that well water must not offend river water—that one must not meddle directly in the affairs of mortals—surely you, Senior, are not ignorant of it!"

No, I am.

Meaning to surrender for the moment, I gripped the scabbard, ready to throw the sword away.

"...You truly mean to invite a clash...!"

Rage flared in both his eyes.

No, that's not it.

When, out of pure frustration, I let the sigh out through voice transmission, their bodies flinched.

...I should have just spoken aloud. The con—whatever it was called. I tried to keep the bit going and wrecked the whole thing.

While I was sunk in regret, a woman standing at their center pointed a finger at me and shouted.

"...D-don't falter! Foundation Establishment or not, he cannot withstand a dozen and more cultivators of the Qi Refinement realm!"

The words had no choice but to break off midway.

...Ah. How did it end up like this.