The Pure Blood Realm

"Well then... so be it."

Along with that low murmur — and a thin, faint smile — I stepped forward.

From this moment on, Bonjwa — the Blood Demon, Cheon Yujin — took this frail body of mine and made of it a conduit, a bridge pier, and the flow of the Forged Blood Art transformed into a channel linking the qi of all creation with corrupted demonic energy. Heaven, Earth, and Man: the fundamental elements by which the cosmos turns. The head reached toward the heavens above; the feet pressed into the great earth below — and what joined sky to soil was Man. Humanity, in other words, was born from the very start carrying the potential to become a living conduit between all things under heaven and the wheeling of the universe. All Bonjwa had done, through the Forged Blood Art's advancement, was throw that door of potential wide open.

"Prruiigh! Prrui-ruiigh…!"

The air around us changed, and the currents along with it. It was a shift in the flow of qi that no ordinary Awakened hunter or monster could ever perceive — not unless they were a Murim master with an exceptionally keen sense for energy — but the unicorns and the bicorns, exquisitely attuned to the movement of qi, both began to snort and whinny.

Only — the unicorns' cries rang with joy, while the bicorns' rang with terror. Just as the unicorns had sensed the demonic qi and instinctively understood that they faced their natural predator, so too did the bicorns sense my Forged Blood Art and realize that before them stood not merely a predator, but a being that had claimed the seat above them at the very top of the food chain.

"M-mana...? No — it doesn't even have the same nature as mana. What on earth is this...?"

"Step back."

Se-ah, who had been holding the bicorns' magic at bay with her barriers, flinched and hesitated — and I eased her to one side, advancing on the bicorn herd and Bukgung Seol alike.

"——!!!"

Bukgung Seol stood with her blade locked against the pervert's. Even brainwashed, her instincts were alive — the moment she sensed the Forged Blood Art's energy, she panicked and stumbled back several steps, and the lake-blue eyes that had been burning, shrouded in teal demonic qi, flickered violently.

And then — Tssssssss— the bicorn horn in Bukgung Seol's grip began to hiss, the teal sword-force growing from it wavering before starting, ever so slightly, to shrink.

"Th... the Absorption Art?"

Bukgung Seol's voice trembled with alarm.

The Absorption Art was not the name of any one specific technique. The root of all internal-energy training was absorption itself — drawing in the qi that suffused all of creation and refining it within the dantian or the body was the very foundation of qigong. But the Absorption Art was a skill that only masters whose qigong had climbed beyond its peak — and whose talent for absorption was exceptional even among such masters — could ever wield. Centered on the heart of the palm, it drained an opponent's internal energy on contact, or shattered their balance outright; and once one's attainment crossed a certain threshold, absorption became possible without touching the opponent at all. The art that pushed this principle to its absolute extreme, specializing in plundering the inner power of others, was that most infamous of techniques — the Star-Absorbing Great Method.

And precisely because she knew the concept, Bukgung Seol could not help but be shaken all the more.

"Impossible! Forget touching — you never even got close! How?!"

The twin-horned girl let out a shriek of disbelief and poured still more demonic qi into the broken horn, blue veins standing out on her forehead as she ran her demonic cultivation at full throttle, desperate to hold her scattering energy together.

And then — Tssss... snap! The tip of the teal sword-force, which had swollen again under the crushing pressure of her concentration, shuddered and burst apart into grains of sand.

"I can't... control it?!"

"That's right. With any other kind of energy, managing this would have been a struggle indeed..."

Unfortunately for her — Bonjwa was, in all truth, the First Among Demons: the Blood Demon. When it came to demonic qi, no one in the entire Murim understood it better than I did...!

"What rotten luck, that it had to be demonic qi of all things."

Ordinarily, absorbing demonic qi on any real scale demanded pressing the heart of one's palm flush against the target's flesh. Even in the crude contests vulgarly known as internal-energy duels — clashes of refined power — no one ever struck at empty air; the exchange was made with the centers of their palms locked together.

The human body, human flesh — at birth, every dantian and every blood-channel stands wide open to the world. But as the years pile up, turbid impurities accumulate, the senses dull, and beginning with the upper dantian, the meridians and channels throughout the body slowly close one by one.

And yet — this frail little body. Frail it was, as I had remarked a hundred times over whenever I compared it to a newborn... and at the same time, it truly, genuinely retained the fully opened channels and meridians of an infant!

Because this flesh was like a door flung wide open, the Forged Blood Art lent it its aid, and the body became a conduit that drank in the demonic qi all around without so much as a touch. The scattered particles of demonic qi rode the current, wavering hazy as water mist, and came flying straight to me.

"Huuuuuuuuh...!"

With one long, deep breath, the qi was absorbed into the Forged Blood Art within my body — and what spread out from me was an energy purer than the natural qi saturating heaven and earth, dyeing the empty air in its color.

"...Hee!"

"Kkh...!"

I let out a small laugh, while Bukgung Seol groaned through trembling eyes, glancing back and forth between her rattling demonic qi and me.

Unlike the bicorns' responsiveness, so easily swept along by any current, the demonic qi engraved in Bukgung Seol's dantian was a solid mass, tempered and refined to the core. And since the first principle of every martial art is to look inward and hold oneself under iron control, indiscriminately absorbing even the demonic qi of someone who had refined a superior-grade demonic art to such depths lay beyond my present realm. But qi that had already left the body — the demonic energy composing her sword-force — had lost its cohesion, and was therefore utterly vulnerable to absorption.

"Uraaaaaagh...!!!"

With a cry like pure desperation, Bukgung Seol thrust the broken horn high into the sky, and from its tip a pillar of teal demonic qi surged upward.

This was the very pinnacle of the Heavy Sword — the extreme of the Strong Sword. And the bicorns answered the call, spewing demonic qi from every inch of their bodies to lend their strength to the pillar's formation.

Kuuuuuuuuh—

Absorption could not swallow everything at once; its role was to work slowly, gnawing away at the enemy's balance. So the plan, then, was to overwhelm that slow gnawing with a single instant of overwhelming force and crush everything flat! A sound choice.

That is — if it hadn't been exactly what I had intended and steered them into from the very beginning.

"...Here it comes!"

The fallout from the demonic qi that Bukgung Seol and the bicorns had unleashed with everything they had spread across the entire Gate — "Prruiigh, prruiigh…!" "Kreoooooh!" — sweeping even the bicorns that Se-ah and the pervert had joined forces to fell earlier into its reach. There was no telling how many more bicorns lay scattered across the whole Gate — and if even a single one remained, then turning the rest back into unicorns would mean nothing; they would only be reinfected. And so the fallout of Bukgung Seol's demonic qi became a signal flare—

Thoom, thoom, thoom, thoom—!!!

—summoning every last bicorn scattered across the field, broken and wounded though they were, to converge on a single point!

And then — PAH!

The way a bent bow, released, snaps back to its true shape in an instant with even greater force — I unfolded the Liangshang Junzibo, the Step of the Gentleman on the Beam, and threw this body of mine dead ahead like a single streak of wind. The greatest thief of Hangzhou, Amyoung Sintou — the movement art he had created was one that, judged on instantaneous acceleration alone, had every right to be called the finest under heaven.

"———!"

The scenery tore backward, and in a single flash my eyes locked onto a pair of lake-blue ones, flung wide in shock.

"Now, then — let me get that head of yours squeaky clean, shall I?"

Purifying the demonic cultivation inscribed in Bukgung Seol's dantian was impossible. But the bicorn's demonic qi planted inside her mind — the brainwashing spell — that, I could cleanse without any trouble at all. So I smiled.

"W-wait just a—"

BONK!

"Kkeok!"

A knuckle-rap laden with the Forged Blood Art's power cracked against the crown of her head, and pure energy bored straight into her skull, wiping the bicorn's demonic power away in a single stroke. The broken horn tumbled from her fingers to the ground, and Bukgung Seol reeled, both hands clutched to her head.

"Wh-what did I just... huk!"

Riding the momentum of the movement art, I carried my acceleration through intact — planting a foot square on Bukgung Seol's face and kicking off skyward. With a magnificently undignified shriek, she slammed the back of her head into the ground, a shoe print stamped crisp and clear across her face.

And then — airborne, hanging in the open sky—

Thud... thud... THUD...!

I accelerated the pulsing flow of the Forged Blood Art — faster, faster, faster, and faster still — spinning the great wheel of my circulating blood-channels as fast as it would possibly turn! The Forged Blood Art's current sent enormous ripples shuddering through the empty air, and in that instant, blood-qi of such extreme purity that it surpassed the very limit of what a human could refine whirled round and drank in every last trace of demonic qi.

It had advanced — and broken through the wall.

My body clinging to the empty air, the rotating Forged Blood Art repeated its cycle of circulation and purification—

"Ngh!"

But there was simply too much of it. The bulk was purified, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠yes — yet residue began, slowly, to accumulate inside my body. Dangerous. If demonic dregs were left behind, they would not merely contaminate the Forged Blood Art's energy; carelessness could see a brand-new demonic cultivation take root in its place, and I might end up living my whole life on borrowed time, dreading the onset of demonic madness. And what of challenging transcendence a second time — would that not become impossible too...!

I genuinely felt like an air purifier, and had resolved never to do this sort of thing unless absolutely necessary — but just like an air purifier, the moment had come when I needed a part to serve as the filter. I had planned to take the most useless portion of this body, make it the filter, and slice it off like a lizard's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠tail...

"...Ah!"

There it was. The useless part. This horn — the one that had been pointlessly blasting out brilliant white light like a halo all this while. I immediately bent the Forged Blood Art's flow to my will and shoved the demonic residue, all of it at once, into the horn sprouting from my forehead! The instant the horn, stained through with demonic dregs, burned black — snap. Without a heartbeat's hesitation, I broke it off.

"Prrui-ruiigh...?!"

The unicorns' aghast wails reached my ears, but I only tossed the severed horn carelessly aside, and—

FWOOOOOOOM—

—radiated the qi the Forged Blood Art had purified — that pure, gentle energy — out to all four corners of heaven and earth at once!

"Prruiigh…!"

"Hiihihihiiing!"

And so it was done. The bicorns' blackened coats and manes gradually returned to shining white; their twin horns snapped away, and pure single horns came sprouting from their foreheads.

"It worked."

A quiet smile — and my body drifting slowly down through the empty sky. Then, as I fell, it dawned on me that the bicorns were not the only ones who had changed.

The Forged Blood Art, Pure Blood Realm — a realm born of refining, one more time, an art that had already been tempered to purity. The Forged Blood Art, having reached its Second Tier, was now filtered and condensed with even greater purity—

Thud... thud... THOOM...!

Ever since I had come to possess this body, infinitesimal waste had been building up inside it — the residue of modern food, of modern living. Impurities and turbid qi, and blood-qi the Forged Blood Art had tempered with less than perfect purity. All of it had long since turned to dead blood, but because its turbidity was so low, it looked little different from ordinary blood — and now, naturally, it began to be discharged from my body...!

Drip. Drip-drip-drip.

It fell short of a full rebirth of flesh and bone, but as the Forged Blood Art advanced, I could feel my very sinews and skeleton being renewed — and because this frail body could never fully withstand so profound a shock, like growing pains it sank, I realized, into a deep slumber to protect both flesh and mind. And — without remotely imagining how any of this might look from the outside—

"Heheheh…!"

— my lips merely twitched with euphoria as I let go of the thread of consciousness, drifting far, far away.

Cheon Se-ah never did understand what, exactly, her ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Oppa had done — the process was beyond her entirely. He had shot up into the empty air, radiating a colorless brilliance that crested at its very peak, and an energy far too pure to be mana had flooded the whole area — and the bicorns had been purified back into unicorns.

Cheon Yujin, a Returnee. Perhaps what Oppa had brought back from the other world was not only wounds of the mind. This bizarre power — just what on earth was it...?

Cheon Se-ah brooded — until, watching Cheon Yujin fall, she found every stray thought blasted clean out of her head.

"Oppa...!"

Gathering her fallen Oppa into her arms, Cheon Se-ah saw it.

"O-Oppa...?"

A complexion that, on ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠skin so translucent, read instead as deathly pallor. It looked as though he had sunk into a deep sleep... no. As though he had slipped into an eternal one.

And then — her own hands, soaked and dripping. The small body in her arms, dyed a red deeper than even the flush of a maiden's face. And suddenly, it surfaced in her memory: how, every single time something like this happened, he had always ended up bleeding from the nose.

And at the same time—

"Ha... hah, hah..."

Roughly. Just roughly, she breathed. Her hands were shaking. Her breath would not come. Nausea surged up her throat, and up and down — heaven and earth — lost all distinction.

"A-ah... aah, aahhh..."

She had promised to protect him. She had sworn — confident, so confident — that from now on she would not slip, would not make a single mistake, that she would stand in Oppa's place, that she, too, would now share his burdens.

Nose and mouth. And every last pore of his body. Holding the girl whose entire body was soaked through with blood—

— all she could do was scream.