Three Flowers Gathering at the Crown

At high noon, the sun dead overhead, I stood quite literally ringed in by flame hurled straight at me.

...And I'd been trying to settle this peacefully.

Maybe I'd gone too heavy-handed when I turned that unorthodox sect inside out. Then again, I had been in the sky when I blew the whole place off the map and gouged the earth open under it. Well. That was that.

More manageable than I expected?

Judging by everything I'd met with my own eyes — and I'd only fought my way up through the Transcendent First-Rate — these people certainly had more strength than martial artists of that realm.

And yet every last one of them...

They're weaker than me?

I couldn't say whether I ranked among the strong of the Peak Realm or the weak. What I could say was that no one here was stronger than I was.

"A f-fireball..."

"He cut a spell...! What in the world..."

A fireball? The fire pellet had looked better to me. I'd remember it, anyway. A spell... I wasn't sure what that was. Something like a martial art, probably, for cultivators.

"Everyone! This is a misunderstanding! I'm a man of the murim!"

I tried to plead my case.

"...D-don't fall for that pathetic little joke! Fire!!"

Why fire?

Had they never heard of innocent until proven guilty? Unbelievable. So rigid. Ah — right. The law of this world ran closer to guilty until proven otherwise. More precisely, the supremacy of the strong lay underneath all of it.

Well. Anyway.

"Haa... I'll have to put them all down first."

"...Can you?"

"Of course. Who do you think I am?"

"Makes sense. Be careful anyway."

The cultivators didn't seem to care for our little conspiracy either. Every one of them, face set hard, drew taut a bow made entirely of flame — limb, string, and arrow alike.

Fwit, fwit, fwish. Arrows of fire ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠loosed at me all at once.

Fascinating. Can I do that too?

Worth a try. If it failed, I could always stop it with spatial manipulation. Nothing grows without an attempt.

I set my sword afloat that way, then drew from my palm a surge of blade energy bearing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the nature of kalpa-fire. A moment later I was holding a greatsword made of flame — one that looked a good ten times my height, and I stand six feet two.

"Hhk...!"

"Wh-what...?!"

The cultivators gaped. They'd done the same thing themselves; I couldn't see what was so shocking. They even had me mistaken for one of their own. I swept that vast blaze through the arrows and swallowed every one of them at a stroke.

...Not a move worth using.

How much internal energy had that single gesture burned? Nearly a third of it, gone. I'd recover that much in under a minute, true enough — but in a fight between masters, a minute is longer than it sounds.

I sheathed the floating sword in flame — in blade energy — and drove it into the thigh of the cultivator nearest me.

"Gyaaaah...! Agh— ugh— gyaaaaaah!!"

An uglier scream than the bandit chief's, and that man had been a First-Rate master.

Thud. Thud. Thud. I planted the sword in each of his remaining limbs, and the cultivators' composure cracked.

"Krgh...! All of you, tear the talismans Elder Jin Gi-hwan gave you! This is an enemy we cannot resist on our own!"

"Yes!"

As one, they drew the talismans from their robes and tore them.

Enemy? They'd struck first without hearing a word I said, and this was the treatment I got? A bitter smile on my lips, I settled into a ready stance.

More than a dozen cultivators formed hand seals in unison and cried the mantra, and a vast fireball took shape at their center. It shifted by degrees until, at last, it was a bow and arrow of fire the size of a house.

Watching it, I swallowed dryly.

...That was another order of attack entirely. Not something I could bat aside for sport. I couldn't block all of it. We'd drawn too far apart for me to grab Seol-ah and dodge, and formless flame can't be slipped aside.

Do I take it with my body?

Neither of us could cancel the other's force outright. My sword could cut qi, but not a mass of qi that vast — no more than a swordsman who can cleave cloth can mow down a thousand tents in a single stroke. Seol-ah stood inside the blast. Dodging alone was not an option. So I would cancel what I could, and take the rest myself.

I fused the Sword Astral wrapped about my blade into the sword itself, and laid the blade energy guarding my body flush against me until it sank into muscle fiber, bone, organ, and vein. Essence and Energy united completely, and a sense of omnipotence spilled through me. Above my head, two black roses bloomed, not yet fully open.

And in that same instant, the string sang — a clear, bright twang — and an arrow of fire, faster than sound, came roaring in on a scatter of sparks.

Eyes wide, I planted a foot on empty air and stood in front of Seol-ah. The flow of qi. Every twitch of muscle fiber. The speed of my blood. My heartbeat. I dragged all of it under conscious control. My overloaded brain gave out, and blood burst from all seven orifices, but I tempered my mind and hauled it into a new realm. Spirit gathered into itself the Essence and Energy already joined as one.

Transcendent Peak. Should I call it that?

Too plain. I'd just ask Seol-ah later. Yes — after I came back. I'd ask her then.

The omnipotence of using my whole body as kindling sent a shudder climbing from the tips of my limbs.

BOOOOM—!!

By the time the blast caught up, even late, the outcome had already been decided.

And then—

"...Khack!"

My right arm tore away with the sword. A hole opened through the dead center of my chest, and I spat the blood forcing its way back up my throat. Ah. It had been so long since my body was smashed apart that I couldn't get used to the pain. It hurt like hell.

Still. I stopped the fire arrow.

The price was a great hole through my chest, heart included. But the arrow had died midway, and it never reached Seol-ah.

"...Oppa...?!"

Seol-ah stepped on empty air and ran to me.

Thank goodness I'd wrung out the last of my strength to hold spatial manipulation. Otherwise she would have fallen, wouldn't she? The thought alone was sickening. I dropped, and she caught me. I scraped together the natural qi around us, drank it in, and brought us both down to the ground.

"Ah... no... No, no..."

Through my blurring sight I saw Seol-ah with her mask flung aside, her pupils shaking violently. No — not only her pupils. Her whole body was trembling.

"Aaah, aaaah...!"

The scream broke, and tears ran down her cheeks.

Someone is grieving my death. That's a happy thing.

A faint smile on my lips, I thought it again. I really did have to live, somehow.

Attraction — the power of the earth.

And my flesh, my Essence, had come from the earth. Glug, glug. The scraps of meat and fresh blood that had sprayed in every direction surged back into the hole in my chest.

"Wh-what is this...!"

"How — the Heavenly Fire Talisman can lay even a Core Formation cultivator low, if only for a moment...!"

Shock burst from every side, but none of them could do anything else. That last strike must have spent nearly everything they had. An attack of that scale is never made cheaply.

I shut all of it out and carved a single thought into my mind.

Live.

I would survive. No matter what.

Gush, gush. I forced the welling blood back into my vessels and drew on natural qi to drive my cells to regenerate. Crack, crack, crrrack — flesh and blood clotted together, and my heart grew back. Whether a heart is even ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠meant to regenerate, I couldn't say. I remembered its structure and its nature well enough that the work wasn't hard.

Thump. Thump. A faint heartbeat sent blood to my brain. Consciousness, sunk deep, was hauled back to the surface and grew sharp. As my central nerves knit themselves together, control of my body returned. By then, whether any of it was possible had stopped mattering.

Lungs, esophagus, windpipe — I regenerated them and drew a long breath. In, and out. Oxygen reached my brain, and my mind cleared another degree.

Next, the bones. Crrick, crrrick-crack. Snap, snap-crack. With a ghastly noise, ribs and spine sprouted anew.

"R-retreat! Retreat! H-he's a mid-stage Core Formation cultivator!"

"Y-yes!"

The cultivators who had been staring fled in a scramble.

Ah, those bastards. They leave a man looking like this and run. I even had the leisure for stray thoughts now.

And then, the last of it. Crrrick... crack. Flesh regenerated and closed over the chest where organ and bone had lain bare to the air.

"Haa... I really thought I was dead."

I moved my eyes to Seol-ah. Tears kept pouring, and her gaze shook hard. She had thought me dead, and then the hole in my chest had filled itself in all at once. Of course she was lost.

"Heh heh."

Laughing, I kissed her on the lips.

"I told you. I don't die."

A formless cry — ah, aaah — spilled from her mouth.

"Thank goodness... hhk... thank goodness... sniff..."

She folded into me and buried her face against my chest.

Ugh. It hadn't been closed long; it hurt. I didn't let it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠show. I smiled instead of wincing. A trifling pain, no worse than a squeezed heart — the happiness of having Seol-ah there covered it.

"Seol-ah."

"Sniff... Why...? Hhk."

She asked it through a face soaked in tears. Cute.

Ugh. Wait. There went my heart again.

I laughed under my breath and went on.

"I reached past the Peak Realm. Give it a name."

"Hhk... ha... Really... that's what you come out with? Hhk. That?"

Wiping her tears, she smiled.

"You die and come back... hhk."

"Isn't it enough that I'm alive?"

I meant it. What did the path matter? I was alive now.

"Heh... all right... hhk... then... Three Flowers Gathering at the Crown... nngh... how is it?"

"Yeah. I like it."

I laughed, the sniffling Seol-ah gathered in my arms.