Fishing for the Ages
Have you ever heard the expression "fishing for the years"?
The old man of ancient China known as Jiang Taigong—or Taigong Wang, as some called him—lived as an unemployed vagrant until he was nearly seventy. Then, by a stroke of fortune, he was hired on as State Preceptor by the venture startup known as the Zhou dynasty, pulled off the legendary feat of acquiring and merging the corporate giant Yin, and went down in history as a legend of the jobless. Having bummed around until the age of seventy with nothing but his modest hobby of fishing, didn't Jiang Taigong carve into the annals of history the legendary excuse he offered when asked why he didn't get a job: "Hahaha! As of this moment, I am fishing for the years"!
Fishing is an act that demands tremendous patience—so much so that "fishing for the years" actually sounds plausible. That is why it's called a hobby for grown-ups. A child with no patience loses interest in no time at all.
This Supreme One, the Blood Demon Cheon Yujin, was no different.
I, too, was fishing for the years.
"...Wh-why is there no response?"
Let me issue a correction.
The years, as it turned out, slipped the hook early.
"Wh-whyyy...! Waaah...!!!"
Both hands scrabbling uselessly through my absurdly long, flowing hair, I shrieked like someone wailing over a corpse.
A warrior's patience far transcends anything an ordinary person could imagine. Wall-facing training, closed-door cultivation, and the like. Murim folk can chew on Bigu Pills that offer not one shred of the pleasure of food and train before a bare wall for a hundred days at minimum, sometimes for years on end.
This Supreme One, too, possesses patience beyond the human—enough to hold the full lotus and circulate qi even amid molten lava. But losing it all in a single day? That, at any rate, was entirely the fault of this child's body—no, this body of something even less than a child...!
And so, in a fury I could no longer contain, I rolled back and forth across the floor.
Bonk!
"Hik?! M-my head! My heeead...!"
Stars burst before my eyes. I had been rolling far too violently and cracked my skull on the corner of the bed, so I clutched my head and rolled the other way instead.
Tap, tap-tap.
Wiggling my fingers over the spot, I felt a small lump already rising.
Throb...
This goddamn body, hypersensitive to every sensation and experience, turned out to be every bit as delicate about pain—each touch turned it into a baby-tear dispenser.
"...Sniff."
As a dashing hero who once swept across the Murim, This Supreme One, the Blood Demon Cheon Yujin, never forgets a favor or a grudge. Having entered bed into my kill ledger in crooked handwriting, I sat back down in front of the computer and checked my email account one more time.
"Just as I thought... nothing."
Operation Secret-Manual Fishing, begun so that I could coach up loyal underlings by the dozen and win recognition as the Blood Demon...! Starting with Backdoor, a bottom-tier streamer, I had scattered secret manuals to more than ten internet broadcasters. They were Martial Arts Awakeners, and I couldn't tell whether they were proper warriors at all—so for fear one of them might suffer qi deviation, I even sent flawless originals without the slightest error in them!
And yet far from getting so much as a nibble, I got blocked by every last one of them. That wretch Backdoor even committed the atrocity of hitting This Supreme One, the Blood Demon Cheon Yujin, with a permanent ban.
And above all—
The stated reason was trolling. That much, I could never accept!
All I did was tell the truth, calling it pathetic every time I watched that third-rate warrior's third-rate martial arts—how in the world did that make me a troll...!
"—Gal!!! As long as the green mountains stand, you at least shall know no forgiveness, Backdoor...!"
Of all the manuals I had scattered, there was not a single one that wasn't a growth-type martial art. Murim folk are the kind of people who go mad for a growth-type martial manual more than for mighty treasures, famed elixirs, or legendary rare wonders. Had I scattered these manuals across the Murim proper, they would have been swept up in a storm of blood, leaving at the very least several thousand casualties in the scramble to claim them.
The crown jewel of them all was the Iron Blood Sword Art. It was the secret sword art of my own guardian, the Left Protector Cheolmyeon Mujeong, a supreme master of the highest order whose match could scarcely be found in all the Murim under heaven. Born a wanderer of the heterodox sects, Cheolmyeon Mujeong had created the brutally practical Iron Blood Sword Art from nothing across a lifetime spent washing blood with blood—a genius among geniuses. Though its history was short, in life-or-death blood battles it was a growth-type art lacking nothing even beside the martial arts of venerable great sects.
And yet Backdoor, you wretch! I was moved by your third-rate, wretched little stream more than by anyone's, and sent you the Iron Blood Sword Art—and you dare refuse This Supreme One's choice...!
I could not stay quiet and let this stand.
"Se-ah! Cheon Se-ah! ...Not home, right? Definitely not home? Se-ah?"
Just in case, I pressed myself to the door and called Se-ah's name for all I was worth.
Creeeak, sliiide, swish.
Even opening the door the tiniest crack and pressing my eye to the gap to scan the living room, I found no sign of Se-ah's presence. Hm. As expected, she had gone out to work again today. It pricked my conscience a little that I, the elder, stayed home tapping away at a keyboard while my little sister went out to earn the keep. In any case, with Se-ah—whose overprotectiveness had been relentless ever since I came back—out of the house, there was no one left to get in my way.
It stung, but I had no choice but to admit that Operation Secret-Manual Fishing, my bid to fish for the years, had ended in failure. And if the fishing had failed, what was to be done from here? There was nothing for it but to go skewer the fish myself...!
Just you wait, Sungmuryeon Guild. The Blood Demon is coming...!
"Ho—hahahahaha, kehok, khek! Khff...!"
Having let loose a booming, spirit-soaring guffaw worthy of a true hero, This Supreme One readied himself to go out. This goddamn body had a habit of crouching down or bursting into tears the moment its eyes met a stranger's, so to keep from meeting anyone's gaze as far as possible, I yanked the hood down deep and swaddled myself head to toe in clothes. That way I would never have to bare skin too fragile for the slightest stimulus, nor lock eyes with another soul. Wrapped in a sense of security like wearing the Heavenly Silkworm Robe that existed only in legend, I began to feel positively giddy.
"Yeah. Let's go...!!!"
And so I set out on my second outing since my return with a proud, commanding stride—
"Hah... hah, haaaah..."
—and less than five minutes in, I was walking with my tongue lolling out, dripping sweat and groans.
"Hot... hah... gonna die... haaah..."
The asphalt burned like a blast furnace, and the midday sun beat down without a whisper of wind. Thanks to the luxurious indulgence of unlimited air conditioning at home, I had completely forgotten that it was summer...! With the hood up, the hair mashed down inside it was damp and disgusting. Every time I lifted a foot, my legs felt as heavy as if they'd been stuffed with sandbags, and there wasn't a spot the streaming sweat hadn't soaked. No—in fact, there was no difference from sandbags at all. Bundled up in all those clothes, the sweat-drenched fabric was crushing down on a body that couldn't even lift a one-kilogram pink dumbbell. Just how was this damn body even built? It sweated far, far too much.
"Hik, hiik..."
Truly, it sent a chill down my spine to watch the trail of sweat this body left on the road, soaking the ground and trailing after me like a shadow.
But I had not the slightest thought of giving up here. Who was This Supreme One? The Blood Demon Cheon Yujin, foremost under heaven. Trapped in this wretched girl's body, yes—but at heart a hero who had once commanded all under heaven! As the saying goes, a man's single word weighs a thousand gold; to go back on a word of such weight and worth would be a shame beyond all shames...! This Supreme One never loses...!
"Huaaaaah... so cooool..."
Ding.
When the elevator arrived and stopped, I peeled my limp, melting body away from the air-conditioned breeze. Then, glancing back longingly again and again, I shuffled out.
Standing before the front door, This Supreme One, the Blood Demon Cheon Yujin, thought:
"A strategic retreat... is not a defeat...!!"
First, I would go inside, blast the air conditioning, sip cola, and marvel at This Supreme One's strategic brilliance.
And then—
Beep, bee-beep.
Beee—bee—beeeep!
"...Huh."
Beep, bee-beep.
Beee—bee—beeeep!
"...Eh."
Come to think of it—had I ever actually tried punching in the passcode...?
"Ah... aah... aahh..."
Hm.
Hmmm.
............From the very beginning, I had never intended to go home at all! A strategic retreat? Wasn't that just plain, simple running away! This Supreme One, the Blood Demon Cheon Yujin, could hardly be some third-rate petty wretch who reverses a decision once made!
Just you wait, Sungmuryeon Guild! The Blood Demon is coming...!
"...Sniff."
"...This can't be right."
Rachel Lee, the blonde researcher with her long braid draped over one shoulder, murmured as she clicked her mouse to the next screen. With every page that turned, her brow crept a little tighter.
Cheon Yujin. The older brother of the hunter Cheon Se-ah. A pitiable Returnee transformed into the outward shape of a frail young girl. The more she analyzed his examination records, the less sense they made.
Returnees whose bodies, in whole or in part, had undergone deformation, mutation, infection, and the like made up a surprisingly large share of cases. Turning into a cute little girl like this was rare, but filed under the category of "bodily transformation," his was one of the more common kinds. Rachel's own husband was one such case, after all.
But...
"This is... far too contradictory."
Cheon Yujin's body had clearly grown to that of someone in their mid-teens. Yet his skin, his organs, down to the very hair on his head, had a physical age of zero. A grown body in the state of a newborn—a walking contradiction. If it were truly a newborn wearing a grown body, that body could never hold itself together. And yet Cheon Yujin's body was functioning perfectly fine. Aside from its physical frailty, it was astonishingly, endlessly healthy.
As if.
As if—
"—as if it had been artificially made."
Without realizing it, Rachel bit her lip hard enough to draw blood.
An artificially made life form. An artificial life.
"...Homunculus."
It couldn't be. It must not be.
Rachel Lee had not retired from hunting because of pressure from her old comrades. The truth was that she had retired for a certain line of research she could never pursue officially. There had been a time when she threw herself into that research like a madwoman, desperate to give her husband a proper human form. She had studied homunculi, come within a hair's breadth of completing one—and in the end, Rachel had been forced to destroy everything she had achieved. It had been a forbidden experiment, after all. She had learned that a soul could not be transferred into a homunculus—that, at best, "overlaying memories" was the limit.
"I destroyed it completely, I'm certain of it. There's no way it leaked out somewhere. And yet..."
Looking at the examination records, Rachel's hands trembled.
Every Returnee came back through a Gate, each by a slightly different method, but a rift vast enough to cross dimensions always left the residue of its mana behind on the body. Those traces faded slowly, over anywhere from six months to a year. But there was nothing. Cheon Yujin's body, returned barely a month ago, bore no trace whatsoever—as if he had never been a Returnee at all. Unless the body had been reconstructed in the act of crossing the rift, the total absence of traces made no sense.
And yet.
The problem was that it made perfect sense if he wasn't a Returnee.
"...It's not—it's not certain yet. I need to look back into the research I destroyed. Once I've dug a little deeper, once I'm sure—then I'll tell them. Once I'm sure..."
And so, the magnificent misunderstanding poised to swallow the Cheon siblings whole took its very first step.