Ryeong
“Hey, have you heard the rumor?”
Inside an inn in Chengdu, Sichuan, the tavern was bustling with its usual raucous clamor—the very cradle from which nearly all rumors in the martial world were born and scattered to the winds.
“Word is that the Galaxy Escort Agency’s convoy, the one that set out a few days back, ended in total slaughter.”
“What? Who on earth had the guts to target them? Wasn't the recipient the Qingcheng Sect?”
“Come on, you know who! That bloodthirsty madman who slaughters anyone in his path for coin! One of the Four Great Evils!”
“Don’t tell me... you mean Cheonsal, the Heavenly Slaughter?”
“Aye, Cheonsal! They say he wiped out the entire convoy—not a single soul left breathing!”
Strangely enough, every whisper floating through the tavern converged on a single figure.
Cheonsal. A remorseless butcher who hunted human lives purely for gold. His bloody infamy had ignited only a few years prior, rocketing skyward at terrifying speed until he was counted among the terrifying Four Great Evils of the realm.
“The Qingcheng Sect won’t take this lying down. I heard the cargo was of paramount importance.”
“Tell me about it. We’d best steer clear of Mount Qingcheng for the foreseeable future.”
“The world has truly gone to ruin... Endless strife, both grand and petty, wherever you turn.”
“Worrying about the world is the most useless thing under heaven! What, is a meteorite going to fall on our heads? Drink up, drink up!”
While the tavern drank away the night in boisterous spirits, a solitary man stood looking up at the sky amid the suffocating, pitch-black silence of the deep mountains.
“Killer view. Makes me want to slaughter someone.”
The man was none other than Cheonsal himself—one of the Four Great Evils, an assassin who made a trade of taking human lives. While the world branded him a coin-crazed homicidal maniac, the truth was far simpler: he was merely a twisted soul who felt not an ounce of guilt when extinguishing a fellow human being.
“All that goddamn fuss over a piece of scrap iron like this? Ha!”
In Cheonsal’s hand rested a battered, rusted dagger. This unimpressive trinket was the sole reason the escorts bound for Qingcheng had been wiped out to the last man. The moment he had laid eyes on it, sheer disbelief had washed over him; he had never imagined the venerable Qingcheng Sect would scour the earth so desperately over something this pathetic.
“What in the world is this thing even used for?”
His scowl deepened. What could this dagger possibly be for them to cast an Inescapable Net across the province? It was sheer luck that he had slipped through the perimeter before the web tightened shut; otherwise, he would still be trading blows with those sanctimonious Daoist hacks right now.
“If they’re turning heaven and earth upside down to recover it, it must be important, but...”
Without knowing its purpose, he was entirely at a loss. What was he supposed to do—stroll up to Mount Qingcheng and hand it over? That would be pure madness.
“It won’t absorb internal energy... and chanting a Daoist mantra yields no reaction whatsoever... What the hell am I supposed to—”
[What an utterly ill-mannered brat.]
“Who’s there?!”
Cheonsal instantly flared his Protective Astral Qi at the sudden voice. Not a single trace of presence had registered in his senses until that very heartbeat.
‘Does Qingcheng harbor a master of this caliber?’
Cheonsal was a master who had attained the Transformation Realm. As far as he knew, not even the Sect Leader of Qingcheng had crossed that threshold. There should not have been a single martial artist in their ranks capable of evading his sensory perception. Whose voice could this possibly be?
[Look down, boy.]
“Down? ...Don’t tell me it’s the dagger?”
[Indeed.]
“The dagger talks?”
[Still lacking any semblance of courtesy, I see... It seems a lesson in discipline is in order.]
A blinding flash of pure white radiance erupted from the blade. Cheonsal cast the dagger aside and leaped backward with explosive speed. In that same breath, his right hand slipped into his robes, fingers ready to thread through his throwing daggers—
“Halt.”
“?!”
An elder with snow-white hair and pristine white robes materialized right before his nose, parting his lips to utter a single word.
Halt.
The instant the command struck his ears, Cheonsal’s entire body froze stiff. His internal energy refused to budge an inch, locking him down as though both his mute acupoint and paralysis acupoint had been sealed simultaneously.
‘This old bastard... what the hell is he?’
“I cautioned you, yet you still harbor treacherous thoughts.”
‘What? Can he read my mind?!’
“And if I can?”
The elder curled one corner of his lips into a wry smile. An inexplicable, bone-chilling dread seized Cheonsal. Transformation Realm? Profound Realm? It was impossible to measure this old man by mere mortal tiers of martial arts. The elder was, without a shadow of a doubt, an existence hailing from a completely different plane.
As if confirming Cheonsal’s deduction, the elder chuckled softly and spoke.
“Moniker, Cheonsal. One of the Four Great Evils. True name, Ryeong. Your title and your name could not be more at odds with each other.”
Cold sweat cascaded down Cheonsal’s flesh before he could even register it. To be utterly paralyzed by such overwhelming presence was a brand of terror he had never tasted. Yet the elder paid no heed to his panic, reciting his laundry list of sins as if laying out a formal indictment.
“Your transgressions run deep indeed. However... with a slight change in direction, there may yet be potential.”
Questions swirled through Cheonsal's mind in rapid succession. Who was this old man? How monstrously strong was he? What direction, and what potential could he possibly speak of? The suffocating sensation of having his entire body bound by an invisible vise was beyond words. Though reading Cheonsal’s thoughts like an open book, the elder simply regarded him with calm indifference.
“Ryeong. You have two choices before you.”
A frigid gaze swept over Cheonsal, and in that fleeting moment, the assassin felt the bizarre sensation of his entire life being projected nakedly before him. That sealed his conviction: this elder was no human.
It was the ultimate transcendence spoken of in Daoist and Buddhist lore—shedding the mortal shell at the pinnacle of cultivation to take flight into the heavens. Feathered Ascension. The elder before him was an authentic Immortal who had attained true transcendence.
“The first choice is to plunge into the depths of hell to pay the price for all your wickedness. In other words, to perish by my hand this very instant.”
The elder opened his palm, and a pristine white sword materialized from thin air. One did not need to be a genius to foresee what would happen if that blade struck while one was frozen helpless. Cheonsal resolved with every shred of his being that he would never pick that option.
Because the immortal could read his mind, Cheonsal’s desperate, burning urge to survive was laid bare. At last, the translucent sword vanished from the elder’s grasp.
“The second choice is to accumulate chivalry and expiate your wicked karma. However, with your current vessel, no amount of chivalric deeds will cleanse the sins staining your soul.”
The elder laid a gentle palm atop Cheonsal’s crown. Raw dread gripped the assassin’s heart. The killer who had only ever taken the lives of others now found the tables entirely turned. The power over life and death had passed into another’s hands; a single flex of the elder’s fingers would crush his skull like an eggshell.
“Die, and be reborn. Then, faithfully accumulate chivalry to purify the wickedness entrenched in your soul.”
“?!”
At the command to die and be reborn, Cheonsal began thrashing with manic desperation. An incomprehensible power suppressed his flesh, but that no longer mattered. He was about to die—what did anything else matter?
Perhaps from violently resisting the supernatural bind, an ominous crunch reverberated through his frame as his bones fractured. Excruciating pain tore through his nerves, clouding rational thought. Yet his ferocious will to live somehow wrought a miracle.
A sharp crack echoed as the spiritual binding shattered.
“*Pant*... *Gasp*... *Haaah*...”
“Oh? You shattered that bind and can still move?”
“You bastard... are you King Yeomra or something?!”
“Something like that, yes.”
The elder’s half-hearted admission made Cheonsal’s brow furrow in defeat. His ninety-percent suspicion had just become undeniable fact. He had prayed against hope, but this truly was a transcendent being. Escaping with his life was an utter impossibility.
‘He reads my thoughts anyway. I might as well stop thinking and just buy time.’
Letting his tongue run on raw instinct, he barked out aloud.
“You’re not even King Yeomra—do you really think you have the right to snuff out people's lives as you please?!”
“And pray tell, how many lives have you stolen to dare utter such words without shame?”
“...”
The retort struck Cheonsal like a physical blow, choking the breath right out of him. A complete reversal of roles. He who had always reigned as the apex predator was now, for the first time in his life, reduced to helpless prey. His flawed logic was dismantled to its core.
In that stunned silence, the elder raised his hand, freezing Cheonsal’s entire frame once more.
“Ryeong. Every action carries cause and consequence. When you come to your senses, you will understand why you have been placed into such a vessel.”
‘Let me go! Let me go, you rotten old geezer!!’
“Hahaha. You truly have no idea how much karmic debt you are racking up right at this very moment.”
The elder made up his mind. Since things had come to this, he figured he might as well play a little prank on the brat.
“Living life as a woman shouldn’t be half bad.”
‘What? Hey... what did you just say?!’
“We shall cross paths again one day. Therefore, etch this into your soul.”
The moment those words settled, Cheonsal’s consciousness snapped like a severed thread. Without even a breath to resist, his dantian shattered—beginning at the upper dantian and tearing through the rest of his vessels. Thus Cheonsal, Ryeong, met his demise.
A few hours later, the disciples of the Qingcheng Sect pursuing Cheonsal stumbled upon his corpse.
“Elder! We’ve found the body of the one presumed to be Cheonsal!”
“What?! The scoundrel is dead?”
“Yes! But... it appears he took his own life.”
The peculiar detail was the rusted dagger plunged clean through his heart. His fingers still gripped the hilt in a deathly lock. In other words, he had driven the blade into his own chest and committed suicide.
The elders of Qingcheng were thoroughly bewildered. If he intended to take his own life, why couldn't he do so quietly? Why slaughter an entire escort convoy just to end up like this?
“...For now, retrieve the corpse and withdraw. Handle the sacred relic with the utmost care.”
“Understood!”
Though countless questions remained shrouded in mist, the elder prioritized returning to the sect. Securing their sacred relic was far more urgent than unraveling the truth behind the madman's death.
Meanwhile, right around the time Qingcheng discovered Cheonsal’s corpse...
“Aaaaaargh!! You damned rotten old bastard of a geeeezer!!”
Inside a cave halfway up a mountain in Sichuan, a young girl awoke, draped in nothing but coarse, ragged hemp. Ryeong, who had opened his—no, her—eyes to the world once more, was screeching at the top of her lungs straight toward the heavens.
