Chapter 1116
The masked women, dressed in garments so dazzling they hurt the eyes, carried silver batons at their waists—weapons they had not worn before.
Swish.
In an instant, they gathered around Bu Eun-seol and produced ornate pendants embedded with shimmering beads.
Rumble.
The storm-like energy that had filled the Nameless Valley began to churn violently, and then—
Zzziiing.
A transparent hole appeared in the cliff face behind Bu Eun-seol.
The entrance to the Land of the Ultimate Void had opened.
[Young Master.]
The woman at the forefront of the masked group sent a covert Voice Transmission.
[Enter. The gate will reopen in three days.]
[Why are you helping me?]
At Bu Eun-seol's question,
[There is no time, Young Master.]
The masked woman swiftly transmitted again.
[We will now forcibly close the entrance to the Land of the Ultimate Void.]
Bu Eun-seol's eyes widened.
Forcibly closing the gateway to the Land of the Ultimate Void? How was such a thing even possible?
[For the next year, the Land of the Ultimate Void will not manifest.]
[So it was you.]
Hearing this, Bu Eun-seol realized that the ones who had spread the information about the Land of the Ultimate Void's manifestation through the Death Shadow War Unit's intelligence network—
—were none other than these masked women.
"Stop him!"
Just then, the masters of the Same Heart Society began charging forward.
[Young Master, hurry!]
At their urging, Bu Eun-seol had no choice but to unleash his Movement Technique.
[This debt will be repaid.]
BOOM!
Drawing upon the Heavenly Light Endless Art, he shot forward like a streak of light and instantly passed through the transparent entrance.
"Seize him!"
The masters of the Three Realms and the Same Heart Society also rushed toward the gateway.
But at that moment, the women in silver robes clasped hands in unison—
Huuuum.
A ripple spread outward in concentric circles, like a droplet striking water.
Shimmer.
Simultaneously, a mysterious radiance flickered in and out of existence, and within its fleeting glow, glimpses of a distant Abyss appeared like illusions before vanishing.
Groooowwl.
Then, the ripples transformed into a massive, dome-like barrier—
Whoosh.
—and in an instant, the entrance to the Land of the Ultimate Void was gone.
"Damn it, open the path!"
With furious shouts, the Same Heart Society's masters swung their weapons wildly at the women.
Clang!
In response, the women simultaneously drove their silver batons into the ground.
The moment the batons made contact—
KABOOM!
A deafening roar shook heaven and earth, followed by a blinding silver explosion.
The light expanded as if to devour everything, warping the surrounding space.
"Guh—!"
The martial artists gathered in the Nameless Valley groaned in unison, staggering back.
Just looking at the light sent searing pain through their eyes and bodies, as if they were being burned alive.
RUMBLE.
Then, a massive dragon-like silhouette unfurled, swallowing its prey—
Fwoosh.
—and the masked women vanished without a trace.
But in that brief moment, every martial artist in the valley had been blinded, unable to witness their disappearance.
"Ugh..."
When the pain finally subsided, they struggled to open their eyes—only to freeze in place.
These were masters belonging to secret factions that ruled the martial world, men who feared nothing under heaven.
And yet.
Not only had they failed to discern the identity of the silver-clad women, but their chance to enter the Land of the Ultimate Void had been snatched away entirely.
"......."
Like dogs chasing a chicken only to stare blankly at the roof, they stood slack-jawed, their expressions hollow with defeat.
Three days passed in the blink of an eye.
Zzziiing.
With a faint glow, a dark void appeared in a clearing deep within a forest hundreds of li away from the Nameless Valley.
At the same time, a tall, slender shadow emerged from the darkness, walking out slowly.
It was Bu Eun-seol.
"......."
Though he had exited in an entirely different location, he showed no surprise.
If those women could forcibly close the entrance to the Land of the Ultimate Void—
—then moving it elsewhere would hardly be difficult.
Step. Step.
As he walked out, his gaze carried a trace of exhaustion.
'It was brutal.'
The three days he had spent in the Land of the Ultimate Void—
—had been an unrelenting cycle of training that bordered on death.
'Even though it was my own body, I had no control over it.'
Because of his battle with Jeong Myeong, who wielded Tathagata True Qi,
he had realized that he no longer held dominion over the power within his own body.
And so, the first thing he did upon entering the Land of the Ultimate Void—
—was to release the Reverse Polarity Heart Method, which had been circulating True Qi through him day and night.
The Reverse Polarity Heart Method contained a secret technique—
—one that forced the practitioner into perpetual Qi Circulation, accumulating Internal Energy regardless of their will.
Such a technique granted martial artists—
—a level of power that unattainable even after a lifetime of grueling training.
But at the same time, it had become the very catalyst that allowed that overwhelming strength to slip beyond his control.
—Release all techniques.
The moment he relinquished complete control over his body for the first time, the suppressed forces within him erupted like wild beasts.
His skin alternated between burning scarlet and freezing blue. Golden tears streamed from one eye, while black blood dripped from the other.
The agony was unbearable—enough to make his flesh burst into dust—but miraculously, he did not die.
The oppressive pressure of the Land of the Ultimate Void and the forces that shattered Spirit and Mind paradoxically suppressed the rampant energy.
—Find order within chaos.
Until now, Bu Eun-seol had believed that the conflicting energies within him had to be forcibly unified—
—and that his body must become a crucible to melt them all together.
But as the unruly forces instinctively resisted the pressure of the Land of the Ultimate Void—
Suddenly, a realization flashed through his mind.
—Must they truly be merged into one?
These were forces never meant to intertwine from the beginning.
As his eyes opened to this new truth, he found the key to resisting the Tathagata True Qi.
And after three days of grueling torment, Bu Eun-seol finally devised a single secret art.
Counterflow Fusion Art.
Rather than forcibly melting down or perfectly unifying all the energies within his body to control them...
It was a method that amplified their opposition, finding balance within their very collisions.
—Had Grandfather foreseen this outcome all along?
In truth, the Counterflow Fusion Art was not born from pure nothingness.
It was built upon the Tendon Transformation and Marrow Cleansing Sutra and the Heavenly Robe Mind Art, only to be reversed in application...
Grandfather must have anticipated this day and left him the answer in advance.
"Haa."
Just as Bu Eun-seol finished his recollection and took a deep breath—
Thud.
A massive shadow landed heavily on the ground beside him.
It was Jeong Myeong, the Buddhist Venerable's secular disciple—the very one who had used Shaolin's Tathagata True Qi to force the clashing of the mixed energies within Bu Eun-seol's body, driving him to the brink of death.
"As expected, you were here."
Jeong Myeong's eyes burned with fury and disdain.
"So you sold your body to cling to life after all."
Bu Eun-seol frowned.
"What are you talking about?"
"Hmph. Don't play dumb."
Jeong Myeong snorted and raised his great blade.
"This time, you won't escape."
Rumble—
At that moment, over a dozen martial artists emerged, surrounding Bu Eun-seol.
Having realized that pouring forth Tathagata True Qi with just two companions like before would be futile, they had gathered more allies.
"Since you entered the Land of the Ultimate Void, you must have devised some way to resist the Tathagata True Qi, no?"
Jeong Myeong's voice was icy.
"But if this many people unleash it all at once, no matter what grand secret art you've created, you won't be able to withstand it."
He had guessed that Bu Eun-seol, having entered the Land of the Ultimate Void, would find a way to counter the Tathagata True Qi.
So he had gathered more disciples.
By amplifying the Tathagata True Qi through sheer numbers, he had devised a method to render all defenses useless.
"Indeed."
Bu Eun-seol nodded.
No matter how ingenious a technique, it was meaningless before overwhelming force.
This was an extremely effective countermeasure for the current situation.
"The Buddhist Venerable."
Jeong Myeong lacked the intellect for such a strategy.
Which meant the one who had anticipated the countermeasure devised in the Land of the Ultimate Void and prepared a counterattack accordingly—
The one who had predicted the location of the Land's shifting entrance—
Undoubtedly, it was all under the Buddhist Venerable's direction.
"To send insignificant underlings instead of coming himself..."
Bu Eun-seol sighed.
"He must have some reason. Or perhaps he's testing me."
The Three Demons and Three Venerables had reached transcendent heights of martial prowess in this era.
Moreover, the true extent of their power remained unknown.
The Buddhist Venerable, having lived for two hundred years... must have reached an unimaginable realm.
Yet he did not come personally.
Instead, he sent his secular disciples—meaning he surely had ulterior motives.
Screeeech—
As the dozen figures began unleashing the Tathagata True Qi, Bu Eun-seol's body gradually turned golden.
The True Qi accumulated through the Tendon Transformation Sutra and the Prajna Great Power amplified violently, clashing once more with the various energies within his body.
Whoosh—
White flames of True Qi erupted from Bu Eun-seol's body once again.
"So you found nothing remarkable in the Land of the Ultimate Void after all."
Jeong Myeong burst into mocking laughter.
But that laughter soon froze.
Crack.
Unnoticed until now, spiderweb-like fissures had begun spreading across the blade of the great sword in his hand.
"How?"
His pupils lost focus.
He couldn't even perceive what martial form Bu Eun-seol had executed—how he had moved.
"Tathagata True Qi cannot be harmonized!"
"I didn't harmonize it."
The white flames that had been consuming Bu Eun-seol's body had vanished without a trace.
"I merely commanded the chaos itself—made the energies within my body weaken each other."
The Heavenly Robe Mind Art not only allowed him to see through others' True Qi circulation but also granted perfect control over his own body.
And the essence of the Tendon Transformation and Marrow Cleansing Sutra lay not in accumulation but in emptiness.
Bu Eun-seol had reversed the principles of these two supreme secret arts—instead of fusing the energies within him, he manipulated the conflicting forces to counteract and neutralize one another, taming the perilous chaos.
"Nonsense!"
Jeong Myeong shouted in disbelief.
"How could you shatter my blade if your energies were clashing?!"
The idea of "using the collision of forces to command chaos" was absurd—something that defied martial logic and should have been impossible.
"You were the ones pouring forth Tathagata True Qi, weren't you?"
"...!"
"I used that to impose order upon the chaos—to unleash the force that cracked your blade."
Jeong Myeong's eyes widened.
The power that had damaged his great blade... was the very Tathagata True Qi they had unleashed?
In other words, Bu Eun-seol had manipulated the collision of energies—
Using the Willful True Binding, which should have been beneficial to the body, as a weapon against them?
"But once the energies within your body clash, they won't settle easily."
Jeong Myeong, too, was a prodigy trained under the Buddhist Venerable.
He immediately grasped the flaw in Bu Eun-seol's method.
"You must be powerless for about a quarter of an hour, no?"
"Correct."
Bu Eun-seol smiled.
"Just like all of you."
"What—?"
Crack. Rumble—
In that instant, spiderweb fissures spread across the great blades held by the remaining disciples.
Just moments ago, the weapons had been damaged by the Tathagata True Qi released by Bu Eun-seol.
Not only that, but the True Qi they had painstakingly cultivated over a lifetime had vanished in an instant.
It was as if they had reverted to a state before they had ever learned martial arts.
"Are you afraid?"
Bu Eun-seol let out a derisive snort as he observed their faces, slick with cold sweat.
"Have you never lost your strength before?"
Bu Eun-seol had once lost all the power within his body, and even in that state, he had fought life-and-death battles against formidable enemies.
Those powers had always been nothing more than supplementary—never once had his fighting spirit been broken because of them.
But they were incapable of the same.
Swish—slash-slash-slash-slash-slash!
Ink Soul Sword split through the air, creating dozens of sword blossoms.
Jeong Myeong and the martial artists floundered in panic.
Now that they had all been reduced to ordinary flesh and blood,
there was no way they could contend with Bu Eun-seol's superior swordsmanship.
Schlick.
Even without the emission of sword qi, a crimson blood line bloomed across one martial artist's neck.
The third form of the Formless Heavenly Flow—
Caged Bird Longing for Clouds—had cleanly severed his throat with its exquisite technique.
"If you could forcibly inject power into an enemy's body, you should have also anticipated the possibility of that power draining away."
Bu Eun-seol shook his head as he watched Jeong Myeong and his companions standing frozen like statues.
They had relied solely on the martial arts taught to them by the Buddhist Venerable, never cultivating or realizing anything for themselves.
When faced with an unexpected situation, they could do nothing but succumb to fear and confusion.
"Don't underestimate us!"
With a Great Roar, Jeong Myeong raised his great blade and charged, his comrades rallying behind him with renewed courage.
But in Bu Eun-seol's eyes, their desperate charge—
looked no different from moths flying into a raging flame.
Flash!
As a scarlet glow erupted from Ink Soul Sword, their movements froze mid-action, as if time itself had stopped.
He had executed the Transcendent Meteor Chasing Moon Form—a technique that seized the instant of death—without internal energy, relying solely on the essence of swift swordsmanship.
Drip... drip...
Jeong Myeong, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, locked eyes with Bu Eun-seol.
"Without internal energy... you can't use movement techniques quickly, can you?"
Then, he pulled out a single black orb from his robes.
"See you in hell."
It was a Heaven-Crushing Explosive Pellet—capable of annihilating everything within dozens of zhang.
But at that moment—
Fssht!
A fountain of blood erupted from Jeong Myeong's throat.
Thud.
In the end, he never got to throw the pellet, collapsing to the ground like a felled log alongside his comrades.
"A Heaven-Crushing Explosive Pellet..."
Bu Eun-seol's expression darkened with regret.
"Buddhist Venerable."
Had the Buddhist Venerable truly fallen so far as to arm his secular disciples with such a monstrosity?
"You'll come for me soon enough."
The Buddhist Venerable had remained hidden like a divine dragon, untraceable by any intelligence network.
But now that he had sent his subordinates to track and ambush him, it was only a matter of time before he came in person.
And Bu Eun-seol had to be ready for that moment.
"One hurdle cleared, I suppose."
He took a deep breath.
Through his training in the Land of the Ultimate Void,
he had not only learned how to defend against attacks that disrupted the balance of internal energy—
but also, faintly,
glimpsed a way to return both his enemies and himself to an ordinary state without relying on the Death God's Art.
"If, instead of attacking with destructive force, I inject beneficial energy to disrupt their equilibrium... then perhaps, even without the Death God's Art, I can revert both myself and my enemies to ordinary flesh."
Until now, he had believed the Death God's Art was the only way to unify all things.
But there was another path.
"Just who were they?"
Suddenly, the image of masked women clad in silver flashed through his mind, and his gaze deepened.
"I owe them a debt."
Though he hadn't asked for it,
their assistance had allowed him to overcome a critical obstacle with ease.
"I don't even know which sect they belong to."
The masked women had not used martial arts but rather the Art of Spells, and their exotic eyes suggested they were not from the Central Plains.
"I'll have to mobilize the Death Soul Squad to track them down."
There was no such thing as kindness without reason.
They must have had some purpose—something they wanted from him.
Even after overcoming a major trial, Bu Eun-seol's heart grew slightly heavier.
Inside the Grand Hall, blindingly white.
Like a forest stretching endlessly, towering crystal pillars stood in perfect rows, supporting the elegantly arched ceiling.
Within those translucent pillars, radiant light flowed downward like slow-moving liquid.
At the very end of all that light and space—
at the deepest point of the Grand Hall, atop a high dais, sat a throne carved from diamond, solitary and imposing.
Upon it, a woman clad in white sat as still as a shadow.
Her flawless jade-like skin, untouched by even a speck of dust, contrasted starkly with the jet-black hair cascading over it.
Her transparent eyes, devoid of any emotion, stared fixedly at a single point in the void.
The hands resting on her knees were so pale they seemed to glow.
"So he has obtained the Witch's heart..."
Her quiet murmur shattered the silence.
Though her voice was cold as ice, a strange undercurrent of interest laced its edges.
Leaning back against the throne, she tilted her head slightly, and a smile as cold as frost bloomed at the corner of her lips.
"Shall I take a look at the face of the man said to have the greatest fortune in all the world?"
The moment she slowly rose to her feet, an anomaly twisted the very laws of the world.
"I will make him a sacrifice."
Like ink staining pristine white paper, a deep violet energy unfurled from her, spreading outward.
It expanded like the brushstrokes of an immense ink painting, filling the Grand Hall with an eerie power.
"And devour all the memories of those under heaven."
A power capable of warping the memories of martial artists.
The root of the Seal-Destroying Palm.
The Great Demon Ancestor, wielder of the supreme demonic art—the Blood Shadow Pale Hands.
She was now targeting Bu Eun-seol.
And because of this...
Bu Eun-seol would soon—
Reclaim the long-sealed memories of his time with Dal-ri, buried deep within the forgotten past of Baekri Geom-ha.