Cheon Yuha (1)
—How do you want to live?
Once upon a time, someone had asked me that, and I'd spat out the most clichéd answer imaginable: I want to live well.
I'd wanted to grow stronger than anyone, flatten the noses of every bastard who'd ever looked down on me, and swagger through life with my chin held high.
Sure, I'd gotten expelled and spent ten years living like a dog, but I'd never once forgotten that wish.
Some people might call it vulgar, but the feeling of buying a car, acquiring my own building, and watching the things I'd always lacked fill in one by one — that was as satisfying as anything could be.
If my credentials had been better, or my skills overwhelming, I wouldn't have needed to suffer like that. But making a living with your body was simply how it was.
By the end, at least, I had money in hand and strength to spare, wanting for nothing. That was probably why I'd felt no need to push myself any further and had decided to rest.
Well, everything got swept away thanks to the Great Demon War anyway.
Still, living through that war had raised my realm considerably. The journey had ended in death, yes — but I'd become a master beyond anything my former self could have dreamed of.
And yet human greed truly seemed to have no end.
Even after dying and coming back to life, I wasn't satisfied.
Since I'd survived anyway, I wanted to grow far stronger, to succeed on a far greater scale.
I'd come back to Seondo, the so-called treasury of martial arts, and I wanted to squeeze every drop of honey out of it.
……In my past life I got expelled before I could enjoy any of the benefits, after all.
This school was a place overflowing with masters and prodigies more than anywhere else in the world.
A treasure island where a mad immortal scattered blessings in every direction, hell-bent on rapidly raising the world's survival rate.
The perfect neighborhood for plotting out what to do in the decade leading up to the Great Demon War.
With my past life's realm of understanding intact, I was confident that given enough time, I could surpass every single one of the top-tier students.
……The problem is I don't have much time, isn't it?
This cursed school — Seondo — was an insane institution that expelled every student below the First-rate realm the moment the first semester ended.
No, seriously — if that's the policy, why admit First-rate students at all?
Anyway, my current internal energy amounted to fifteen years, a meager amount even by First-rate standards, and reaching the Peak Realm would take an eternity at this pace.
Ordinarily, there'd be no way to raise my realm within the deadline, so I'd need to find another method.
Between keeping up with classes and scrambling to become a Peak martial artist, I was going to be busy.
But that was no excuse to do a sloppy job of the things that demanded consistency.
Click.
The lights came on, revealing the training room — my cultivation room — where I'd once spent more time than my own dormitory.
The relief lasted only a moment before I folded my legs cross-legged onto the qi gathering formation drawn in the center of the room.
I'd roughly guessed it from the moment I regressed, but this was my proper chance to contemplate just how much of a wreck my body was.
I invoked the breathing method I'd practiced for decades without realizing it — the Taeguk Art.
The Taeguk, a martial art in harmony with yin and yang.
It was a time to draw my own universe, and at the same time, a moment to understand everything that I now was.
……What is this?
Before long, as I turned my Small Heavenly Circuit, I noticed something strange.
Was it because this cultivation room, built with the insane amounts of money this school had poured out, was absurdly efficient?
Or was it because, even in a First-rate body, my old know-how had carried over?
Despite the breathing method not being remotely specialized for accumulating qi, energy came flooding in like a tidal wave.
Gush-gush-gush—! An amount of qi that dwarfed my current internal energy many times over came searching for me.
I'd been worried my tendons, bones, and vessels were in such a sorry state, but the start was better than I'd expected.
That's right — starting from a mere First-rate realm, this was more than commendable.
With a delighted heart, I circulated the qi through my entire body.
— The Grand Heavenly Circuit.
I drew the Taeguk.
"Ah, that's the good stuff!"
I'd accumulated far more energy than I'd expected.
Drops of water make an ocean, as they say — and I had a feeling I'd reach my target in no time.
Even as I nodded along in satisfaction, I quickened my pace.
It was already eleven at night.
Thinking of classes tomorrow, it was a time best spent hurrying back to bed.
The only problem was that the school was so enormous, the distance from the Training Building — where the cultivation rooms were — to the dormitory was considerable.
A good twenty or thirty minutes on foot.
I'd come sprinting in high spirits, but now that it was time to head back, a small regret crept in — maybe I should have just used the facilities inside the dormitory instead.
Well, the Training Building's cultivation rooms are far better anyway.
Oh well. Nothing to be done about it.
Having chosen efficiency, I resigned myself to another fifteen-odd minutes of walking.
If I spent the time sketching out plans in my head, I'd arrive before I knew it.
Right — it wasn't that far.
Just as I was nodding along to that thought, a strange scene flashed into my field of view.
"What the hell."
Someone was collapsed on the ground up ahead.
Not a person, as it turned out.
To be precise — the guardian stationed in front of the building.
The workplace of the faculty of the Sorcery Bureau, one of Seondo's academic departments.
The Invincible Research Building, guarded around the clock by an autonomous security system, and jokingly nicknamed the Golem Dungeon.
The golem that should have been standing watch at its entrance lay toppled over, a hole punched clean through its chest.
……How much did that thing cost again?
A security golem — built with the goal of facing Peak-realm martial artists, and I'd heard it cost at least as much as an entire apartment building.
In other words, I was currently standing before the site of a school budget — a fortune — going up in smoke. What possible reason could a golem have for destroying itself?
"……"
I stared quietly at the sudden scene, and the moment I came back to my senses, I raised my phone.
Why bother getting tangled up in this? Reporting it was the clean move.
Yes, that was the sensible choice.
Beep-beep-beep-beep— beep-beep-beep—…
Tapping away swiftly, I paused with my finger hovering over the report button, and it struck me once more just how impregnable a fortress this school was.
A school whose headmaster was a bona fide immortal, and whose vice principal was a dragon. Stronger than the neighborhood superpower state, apparently?
Injuries here came from sparring matches, if anything — the notion of crime happening on these grounds was laughable.
Still, I ran the numbers: was there any chance the golem's destroyer was a Demon King–class monster powerful enough to slip past their eyes?
No — realistically, there's no way.
If the ultimate final boss of a decade from now showed up on day one, that would just be bad conscience on the author's part, and if something like that had happened, there was no way my past self wouldn't have known about it.
"……Actually, this feels kind of familiar."
On a sudden whim, I bent down and examined the huge hole in the golem's chest from different angles.
An oddly familiar aftertaste of qi.
The peculiar roughness and heaviness characteristic of demonic or hegemonic martial arts.
"It's her, isn't it."
The suspect came to me at once.
— The Heavenly Demon Cult.
This was the qi of the cult's young lady, newly enrolled this very year, the third-ranked student in the combat division — Cheon Yuha.
Once my classmate in the same homeroom, and someone I'd run into far more often during the great war to come.
Thanks to that, I knew her well.
I knew her temperament: if something looked interesting, or if someone seemed stronger than her, she'd charge in first and ask questions later.
What's more, I'd just remembered what happened the next day, too.
On her very first day of school, there had been a student in a wheelchair — and the person in it had been Cheon Yuha.
The future Heavenly Demon, utterly smashed to pieces — plenty of students were shocked, and plenty more laughed at her.
Who could have beaten her that badly? Maybe it was all hot air, and she's weaker than everyone thought.
The rumor-mongers who spread that nonsense would be flat on their backs the very next day, and the endless cycle of fresh ghost stories would begin anew.
It was the most memorable incident of the early semester — which made it all the more curious why it had surfaced in my head just now.
"……Hmm."
I raised my phone and checked the time.
How much time had I wasted, exactly? It was creeping toward midnight.
If I wanted to show up at school tomorrow with peace of mind, I needed to get back to the dormitory quickly.
And yet, gauging the faint qi signature I could sense in the distance, I slipped inside the research building instead.
"Well, I'll just hurry. That's all."
As long as I stayed within what I could handle, I'd be back in no time.
As payment for meeting an old comrade-in-arms after so long, it was a trade that would leave me with a good half hour to spare.
Creak— squeeeak—…
The moment I stepped inside the research building, a chill swept over me.
The lights grew sparser and the corridor darker.
For some reason, even the air felt colder, and I zipped up my jacket.
"……What is this atmosphere."
Even so, I passed through the building's main doors and pressed onward, and onward.
As I went, golems came into view — collapsed without fail at regular intervals.
Each one with a hole punched through its chest.
One or two would have been coincidence, but this pattern repeated endlessly — surely Cheon Yuha was here — and then, staring at those punctured golems lined up at perfect intervals, I suddenly realized it.
Every single one of these had been taken down in a single strike.
"……Is this the Heavenly Demon Fist?"
For the current me, each golem demanded genuine care. She was, without question, strong.
Just how wide was the gap between us?
And just how much school property had been destroyed by now?
Right in the middle of these ponderings, a violent bam-bam! — the sound of a golem bursting apart — rang out from somewhere ahead.
I immediately pumped qi into my legs — that's the one — and sped forward.
Da-da-da-dak. At the end of my sprint, the instant I rounded the building's corner, a colossal golem — easily five meters tall — came into view.
— KWAAANG!
Along with the sight of someone extending a fist.
……That one looks really expensive.
A combat golem, engineered specifically to face Super-Peak martial artists.
A supermassive golem slathered in magical enchantments and premium materials — its capabilities and its price tag both existed on a different plane from the standard models.
And that gargantuan, exorbitant machine's head was sailing off through the air like a golf ball.
Also with a single punch.
KWAAJIIK—!
The golem, so pointlessly deprived of its head, crumbled to the ground.
On its heels, the golem massacre artist came floating down with a light, effortless tap.
"Hm?"
She'd noticed my presence immediately — her head turned, and her gaze locked onto me.
I didn't flinch from that razor-sharp stare. I simply met it, and looked back at her.
The young lady of the Heavenly Demon Cult, Cheon Yuha.
Fifteen years old and already a Super-Peak martial artist — a monster who would reach the Transformation Realm in just five more years.
That monster's eyes had met mine.
I tried my best to observe this long-lost classmate as objectively as I could.
An extremely confrontational nature that feared no humiliating defeat.
Hegemonic martial arts.
Hair red like spilled blood.
Even a combat philosophy that prioritized crushing the enemy first over protecting herself.
For that figure, someone had coined the name Mad Heavenly Demon.
But that was, of course, a story from the future.
Which was probably why — right at that moment — an utterly insolent thought was rising in my head.
I saw.
The current third-ranked student of the combat division, Cheon Yuha — and—
"Who are you?"
— a red-haired girl, beautiful beyond words.
