Chapter 1293
KRA-BOOM!
Surprisingly, the envoys of the Infinite Realm were unleashing a power eerily similar to Thunder Essence Divine Qi, and their internal energy had also ascended to a level surpassing that of ordinary humans.
'Human Flowers... Artificial Inner Elixirs.'
At a glance, Bu Eun-seol understood.
The Infinite Realm had once cultivated Human Flowers.
And now, after relentless research, they had finally perfected the Artificial Inner Elixir and implanted it into their envoys.
'The Four Divine Energies... The Seven Emperors and Three Saints.'
The Infinite Realm had always—
Yearned to mimic or obtain the power of the Four Divine Energies.
Excluding the Martial Emperor's martial arts—
They had strived to restore the martial techniques of the Seven Emperors and Three Saints, and were now actually employing them in battle.
And at last, it seemed their efforts had borne fruit.
They were fighting on equal footing against the White Annihilation Warriors—who wielded Soul-Demon Magic Energy, a force that should have been impossible to counter with conventional martial arts.
ZZZREONG! KWAANG!
Every time the Infinite Realm's envoys extended their hands, bursts of light like fireworks erupted.
When they swung their weapons, razor-sharp sword energy poured forth like a storm.
Methodically, they carved through the Demon God Statues one by one, even dealing with the White Annihilation Warriors.
"Those stragglers cower like rats, yet they desperately guard any place with traces of ancient energy."
The masked man clicked his tongue, watching the Infinite Realm's envoys remain composed even as their subordinates fell one after another.
"Not that it matters. The White Annihilation Warriors can just be patched up by those Clay Dolls anyway."
The White Annihilation Warriors were treated no better than the Baekri Side Family's expendable laborers.
They were regarded as mere consumables—
When injured, they were dragged to the Clay Dolls, who injected them with Soul-Demon Magic Energy for treatment, only to be thrown back into battle again and again.
"But it's strange. I expected at least a Master on the level of the Supreme Emperor or the Blood Lord to show up. Why is it only these straggler envoys?"
The masked man muttered something cryptic.
"The Ancient Sword Forest enforces an absolute equilibrium of power. That means someone of comparable strength must have already entered its depths."
The Ancient Sword Forest operated under an absolute law of balance.
No matter how many forces one wished to pour in to destroy it—
Once a certain number of powerful individuals had filled it, no more could enter.
This was why the Baekri Side Family—
Had been mass-producing the Forbidden Evil Gods, bio-weapons unaffected by this equilibrium.
In other words—
Because Bu Eun-seol, a superlative martial expert disguised as a Forbidden Evil God, had infiltrated the area—
The Infinite Realm could only send in their envoys.
CRUNCH! CRACK.
The battle between the White Annihilation Warriors and the Infinite Realm's envoys escalated to a fever pitch.
The envoys closed in on the warriors one by one, employing the Seizing and Grasping Technique—snapping, twisting, and shattering whatever they caught.
Even though the White Annihilation Warriors were clad in Soul-Demon Magic Energy, rendering conventional martial arts ineffective—
The Infinite Realm's envoys fought them evenly, relying on the perfected power of the Artificial Inner Elixir, the martial arts of the Seven Emperors and Three Saints, and an artificially replicated Thunder Essence Divine Qi.
KWA-RRUUNG!
Before long, white lightning streaked endlessly across the blazing landscape of the Ancient Sword Forest.
White Annihilation Warriors and Infinite Realm envoys perished in each other's grips or were swallowed by roaring flames.
It was a brutal battle, yet no screams were heard.
The warriors and envoys here—
They were all beings crafted solely for battle, destined to die on the battlefield.
Like the cruel laws of the martial world—
They could neither coexist nor stand side by side, simply because they walked different paths.
KOOOOU...
By now, the structures of the Ancient Sword Forest—
Had all collapsed, leaving only a single central tower standing amidst a hellscape spewing black smoke and flames.
Torn and cleaved Forbidden Evil Gods, White Annihilation Warriors, and the blood of dozens of envoys pooled into lakes across the ravaged land.
Amidst the carnage where most corpses were mangled beyond recognition—
Only three remained: the masked man, the old woman, and Bu Eun-seol.
"Leaving them unchecked for too long was our mistake."
Once the battle ended—
The masked man broke the silence, gazing at the desolate aftermath.
"The Azure River Realm turned traitor, the Return-to-One Realm went mad... I thought the Infinite Realm would slink in like rats too. But no—they've sprouted like weeds again."
It was a startling revelation.
Just as Bu Eun-seol had suspected, the Infinite Realm alone had upheld the will of the Baekri Clan.
It was the Azure River Realm and the Return-to-One Realm that had betrayed their cause.
"After failing in their research of all those bastardized arts, they must've struck a deal with the Underworld, hm? Somehow, they seem to have completed their work."
The masked man shrugged.
"But isn't this situation absurd? They've committed every atrocity imaginable in the martial world, yet they cooperate in creating human Black Divine Artifacts?"
As those words reached Bu Eun-seol's ears, fragments of past conversations with figures like the Heavenly Venerable and the Supreme Emperor surfaced in his mind.
—You don't know the truth.
—We are the ones protecting the martial world.
—You will surely regret this.
They had repeated these words to him endlessly.
At the time, he had dismissed them as the usual excuses of villains.
No matter what resentment they faced.
Had they truly been striving to develop martial arts and power to protect the martial world and the Ancient Sword Forest from the True Demon Palace's grasp?
"You talk too much."
The masked man gazed at the old woman with a strangely nostalgic look in his eyes.
"Seeing these tormented spirits, unable to enter the Primordial Gate, I can't help but feel a certain kinship with them."
"......"
"What's with that expression? Surely you don't think your memories have faded just because you've lived so long?"
The masked man chuckled darkly.
"The Ancient Sword Forest, established in the Five Great Mountains, hasn't even existed for a hundred years. It's just that the Baekri Clan meticulously erased every trace of their remaining memories, leaving you with nothing to recall."
When the old woman remained silent, the masked man clicked his tongue and continued.
"Judging by your state, I doubt you ever truly reached the Heavenly Will Realm."
"The Heavenly Will Realm?"
The old woman's expression twisted strangely.
The mention of a martial realm that had only ever existed in legend since the dawn of the martial world suddenly triggered something in her mind.
"Ah, so a bit of memory is returning now, is it?"
He looked at her with pity in his eyes.
"If one reaches the pinnacle of a single field, breaks through its limits, and attains a new realm, they are acknowledged as something akin to the Heavenly Will Realm."
Thud.
Bu Eun-seol's skull throbbed as if struck.
Wasn't that exactly what the Gatekeeper Elder of the Primordial Gate had once said?
"A new realm... the Primordial Gate."
Meanwhile, the old woman listening to the conversation suddenly looked down at her own hands, as if realizing something.
"That's right. I did enter that place."
The memory was faint, but it came back to her.
To enter the Primordial Gate, one had to either reach the Heavenly Will Realm or possess both the Creation Sun and Moon and the Nine Heavens Radiant Cloud.
But there was an exception.
If one attained a new realm—one that had never existed before—and if that realm rivaled the True Demon's Knowledge...
They would be acknowledged as having reached the Heavenly Will Realm.
"But I couldn't enter."
The old woman, staring blankly at the masked man's pupils, trembled as she spoke in a low voice.
"Because my metallurgy... could never match the True Demon's Knowledge."
At last, she remembered.
Fifty years ago, she had been known as the Master of Ten Thousand Forged Forms—the blacksmith Yeo Gong.
Yeo Gong, the Master of Ten Thousand Forged Forms
Her metallurgy had reached a divine level, capable of forging anything imaginable.
"So you are Yeo Gong, the one who recreated the legendary Eight Chariots under the Emperor's decree."
One day, a man of extraordinary presence—a great saber slung across his back—came seeking her.
His aura was so murderous that an ordinary person would have cowered.
But Yeo Gong, who had spent her entire life hammering steel in the forge, was not the type to flinch even if a three-headed, six-armed monster appeared before her.
"Who are you?"
The man carrying the great blade grinned and uttered a bizarre request.
"Can you create a living metal—one that transforms into an identical shape the moment it touches any other metal?"
"No such metal exists."
"I asked you to make it."
The man retrieved a piece of metal from his robes and placed it on the table.
Its colorless, cold surface shimmered faintly, like disturbed mercury.
Click.
Next, he took out a Command Plaque engraved with intricate, esoteric patterns and pressed it against the metal.
Squelch, slither—
As if waiting for another metal to approach, the surface rippled rapidly before—
Clank.
In an instant, an exact replica of the Command Plaque—down to every angle, thickness, and minute engraving—was formed.
"So it instantly mimics appearances?"
"It doesn't merely copy the form."
Clink.
The man flipped the plaque over.
The original's back was rusted—yet the newly created plaque had replicated even the corrosion of time.
"Impossible."
Yeo Gong ran her fingers over both plaques in disbelief.
They were indistinguishable—identical in weight, density, and even material properties.
Schlick.
When the surfaces were separated, the metal gradually lost its shape, reverting to its original state.
A living metal that borrowed only the essence of what it touched—if only for a moment.
"Then give it to me, and I'll try to make it myself."
At Yeo Gong's words, the man replied coldly:
"Simply copying it won't allow you to create it."
The man's eyes burned with a bizarre heat, like a demon risen from hell.
"Only metallurgy that has reached a divine realm—a level no one has ever achieved—could create such a metal."
In that instant,
the passion that had long been reduced to ashes within Yeo Gong's heart
flared back to life.
She had once been capable of forging anything—and whatever she forged became a divine artifact, an unparalleled masterpiece.
After completing the legendary Eight-Chariot—the very carriage said to have been ridden by the First Emperor, capable of gliding smoothly even over rocky terrain while freely adjusting its size—she had lost even the will to create anything further.
But upon witnessing the mysterious metal the man had shown her,
hope ignited within her:
that there were still things in this world she could not yet craft,
that the metallurgy she had believed had reached its peak could still advance further.
"Fine. I'll leave it with you."
As if seeing through Yeo Gong's blazing resolve, the man placed the metal on the table.
"Not to copy it—but to create something new of your own."
Yeo Gong smiled.
For her, who had once believed she had perfectly mastered all metallurgy across time and space,
the existence of this living metal was an incomparably joyous and hopeful challenge.
"I've done it."
It had taken far too long.
For the first ten years, she wandered the world in search of how to create living metal.
Luzon, Chenla, Spain, Persia...
There was no land she did not tread, no tome she did not scour.
Yet nowhere did she find records or clues of anyone having forged living metal.
—I had to forge it myself.
At last, she realized:
She could not rely on ancient knowledge, nor the insights or secret methods of other Philosophers.
She had to carve a new path solely through her own ability.
And finally, Yeo Gong succeeded in creating living metal.
A metal that, upon touching another, instantly mimicked its form.
Though its size was no larger than two thumbs pressed together—unlike the man's original—
its functionality had advanced even further:
it could now mimic not just metals, but natural forms like stone and wood.
As soon as she completed it, the man returned, as if he had known.
"Now that you've forged living metal, you may enter the place where it was made."
"Why should I go there?"
"Because within it lies all the truths of this world."
And then he told her an unbelievable tale.
The Primordial Gate.
A place housing the transcendent wisdom of the divine, unreachable no matter how one strove.
The living metal, too, had been forged there—and knowledge beyond her imagination lay scattered within.
"But not just anyone may enter. One must either become one with the heavens in the Heavenly Will Realm, or reach the Divine Realm."
She understood his meaning immediately.
Having forged something rivaling living metal, attaining an unprecedented level of metallurgy,
she naturally qualified to enter the Primordial Gate.
"The spirit vein beneath Mount Hua has opened. You should go there."
Yeo Gong had no objections.
No matter where the trial took place, she would surely gain entry to where divine knowledge awaited.
Guided by the man,
she ventured into the hidden depths of Mount Hua.
And that was her last memory.
"In the end... I never entered."
At the old woman—no, Yeo Gong's—muttering, the masked man shook his head.
"You didn't fail to enter. You were merely used."
Then came the shocking revelation:
"The Baekri Clan selected exceptional individuals and sent them to the gates of the Five Great Mountains. If those nearing the Heavenly Will Realm entered and failed, the gate would remain unusable for a time."
The masked man snorted, staring at Yeo Gong.
"Moreover, that place is connected to the Primordial Gate by a massive spirit vein. To seal it, the Baekri erased the memories of those meant to guard the Primordial Gate and established a new Ancient Sword Forest."
He laughed darkly.
"Doing so not only made it easy to implant the Key needed to seal the vein—it also turned the site into a node where they could exploit the remnants of the Creation Sun and Moon leaking from the vein to forge Black Divine Artifacts."
Yeo Gong's eyes widened as she listened.
The reason she had lost her memories and become a specter obsessed with Black Divine Artifacts—
was all of it just the Baekri Clan's scheme to monopolize the spirit vein and forge living abominations from it?
Then did that mean the man who had shown her the metal... was also one of the Baekri?
"Ugh..."
With all her memories restored, she clutched her hair in agony.
Her entire life—spent striving to forge just one Black Divine Artifact—
had it all been...?
In the end, it had all been a meticulously planned destruction, orchestrated by someone's hand.
Kukukukuku.
As her Spirit and Mind collapsed,
the sole intact tower in the ruins of the Ancient Sword Forest began to tremble faintly, and a low vibration resonated from beneath the cracked ground.
Originally, that tower had been a medium directly linked to the Ancient Sword Forest Master's Spirit and Mind—the central pillar sealing the Primordial Gate.
In essence, it was the massive stake itself that upheld the seal.
"Good. Just like this."
The reason the masked man had persistently provoked her, shaking her Spirit and Mind—
was precisely because, if the Ancient Sword Forest Master's Spirit and Mind crumbled,
the sealing pillar would also be destabilized, allowing him to exploit that moment to wrench out the stake embedded in the Spirit Vein.
Kukukukuku.
The more she writhed in agony, the deeper the cracks in the tower grew, and as if drawn by an unseen force, it slowly began to rise upward.
It was the moment the stake connected to the Primordial Gate was gradually being pulled free.
"Once we remove the sealing pillars one by one, that Lord will return in his complete form."
The masked man's true purpose in leading the White Annihilation Warriors to raid the Ancient Sword Forest—
was to remove the sealing pillars that blocked the leyline connecting the Ancient Sword Forest's foundation to the Primordial Gate,
thereby allowing the True Demon to reclaim the lost ancient knowledge.
Kururung.
Before anyone realized it, the tower, which had only been three stories tall, now soared to seven stories.
The sealing stake, which had been buried deep underground to suppress the Primordial Gate, was now twisting the very earth as it was slowly pulled upward.
The more it emerged from the ground, the more the tower's true form was revealed—and with it, the seal's power weakened.
The Ancient Sword Forest had been an outpost meant to guard the Spirit Vein and reinforce the seal.
Moreover, it had sought to forge a human Black Divine Artifact from the remnants of the Creation Sun and Moon, using it to oppose the True Demon.
'Surely not...'
Having heard everything, Bu Eun-seol felt a flicker of dread.
'The man who wielded the great saber—he couldn't be Grandfather, could he?'
The old woman and Grandfather were of similar age, and their active periods overlapped.
What if Grandfather had not only been connected to the Baekri Clan...
but had personally selected the person to be embedded in the newly forged Ancient Sword Forest?
What if one of the reasons he had regretted his past was because he had been involved in something like this...?
The more he learned, the more uneasy he became.
'The deeper I dig, the more I realize nothing can be neatly divided into simple good and evil.'
One thing was certain—neither the Three Realms nor the Baekri Clan
could be simplistically labeled as good or evil.
Just as there were righteous people among them, there were also wicked ones.
Within their ranks, some were obsessed with knowledge, while others sought to use it correctly.
The Baekri Clan had created the Ancient Sword Forest by exploiting those sacrificed at the Primordial Gate, all to prevent the True Demon's complete restoration.
The Three Realms, in their battle against the White Annihilation Warriors wielding Soul-Demon Magic Energy,
had sacrificed countless people to cultivate Human Flowers and forge Artificial Inner Elixirs.
Thus, the current state of the martial world
could be seen as either good or evil, depending on one's perspective.
'I've learned all I can for now.'
He had been fortunate.
The old woman had not ordered Bu Eun-seol to join the fight or protect her—she had simply kept him by her side.
Thanks to that, he had been able to hear every word and action of the masked man toward Yeo Gong, as well as his objectives.
Though not everything was clear,
he had managed to grasp some of the secrets surrounding the Ancient Sword Forest, the Baekri Clan, the True Demon Palace, and the Primordial Gate.
'Now, I have to stop this.'
The Ancient Sword Forest could not be destroyed yet.
If the Primordial Gate were forcibly opened, the True Demon would regain his full power.
But there was something even more terrifying—
there was no way to confirm whether the beings beyond the Primordial Gate were purely benevolent or if they were evils that needed to be sealed away forever.
Under no circumstances should it be forcibly opened by anyone.
Kiiiiing—
A strange ripple spread through the Ancient Sword Forest, and soon, the colors of the entire landscape began to fade.
Bu Eun-seol had unleashed the Domain of World and Realm Annihilation.
Oooong—
At once, the pained haze in Yeo Gong's eyes gradually sharpened.
The masked man hadn't simply awakened her memories with words alone—
he had used a verbal command infused with Soul-Demon Magic Energy to violently shake her spiritual core.
"What is this?"
The masked man frowned, not only because the surroundings had grown somewhat distorted,
but because the Soul-Demon Magic Energy that had filled his body had vanished in an instant.
Flash!
At that moment, a sharp gleam shot toward the masked man's throat.
Bu Eun-seol had instantly executed the Meteor Chasing Moon technique.
But the masked man was formidable not only in his Soul-Demon Magic Energy, but also in martial arts.
Swish!
Despite seizing the perfect instant,
he effortlessly evaded Meteor Chasing Moon and tilted his head back.
"And what is this now?"
The masked man's eyes flashed as he stared at Bu Eun-seol, who was disguised in the form of a Forbidden Evil God.
"You—you're no Forbidden Evil God."
Clack.
Bu Eun-seol did not answer. Instead, he raised the Ink Soul Sword to mid-stance.
The masters of the True Demon Palace all possessed mysterious abilities, including secret techniques to transmit information in an instant.
Thus, while still clad in the shell of a Forbidden Evil God, he prepared to face his opponent directly.