Chapter 64
“So there really was a cave this wide inside the waterfall. And it’s this beautiful, too!”
The man looked around in amazement. And he had reason to be amazed. This cave was no ordinary cave.
The crystals and quartz embedded throughout it, catching and reflecting the light of the Sammae Divine Fire, were beautiful even by my standards.
“It hasn’t been touched by human hands for a long time. Come on, then.”
“Come on where?”
He was already lost in the fantasy of the place. Watching him, I curled the corner of my mouth.
“We came here to catch the Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari.”
“...There really is a Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari here?”
“That’s why I came.”
I walked toward the center of the cave. There was a broad pond there.
The water was boiling,吐ing steam. Heat rose from it like a hot spring, rippling the air around us.
“I’m surprised there’s even a pond in a place like this.”
“This is the Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari’s pool.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
The man’s eyes lit up. Then he took off the gear he’d been carrying and quickly cast his fishing rod.
Plop.
The float drifted on the surface of the pond. But before long, the heat from the water melted the fishing line.
“Huh?”
Flustered, the man reeled it in and adjusted the tackle. Then he cast again.
Plop.
But this time too, the fishing line melted away.
“What the hell! Why is the float...”
The man started to reach his hand toward the water. I quickly snatched his wrist.
“Sir. If you put your hand in there, it’ll be cooked in an instant.”
“What?”
Only then, as if he’d realized something, did the man turn his head.
A clear, pristine pond, yet not a single weed or insect in sight.
He stared at the boiling water and shuddered.
“Then how are you supposed to catch the Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari?”
The man looked at me in despair. But what could he do? There was no way to catch a Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari with an ordinary fishing rod.
I set the man’s rod on fire. He gasped and shouted at me in excitement.
“What the hell are you doing!”
“Your tackle is wrong. No matter how big a fishing rod you bring, you can’t catch a Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari with it.”
I handed him the burning rod, then sat down cross-legged and spread my sense of presence deep into the earth.
“What exactly are you trying to do?”
“Be quiet for a moment.”
If you wanted to fish, you needed bait. Then what bait would catch a Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari?
Its food. To know that, I first had to understand the Hwari itself.
In the Central Plains, the Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari’s medicinal pellet was called a yin pellet. For martial artists who mainly used yin energy, it could be considered a miraculous pill even greater than Shaolin’s prized Great Rejuvenation Pill.
That was where the contradiction lay. The Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari was born with yin energy. But if something was alive, yin and yang had to remain in some degree of balance.
So the Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari fed on yang energy in places rich with it, maintaining its harmony that way.
The Fire Dragon Waterfall in Mount Ryang was exactly such a place. Because the geothermal heat here was so intense, the groundwater was always boiling.
The method for drawing out a Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari that was already feeding on enough yang energy was simple. Cut off the yang energy the mountain was releasing, the geothermal heat that was boiling the pool.
As humans had their meridians, so too did mountains, and through those earth veins, energy flowed. The moment I severed the earth vein that was pouring heat into the pool, the Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari would show itself.
“Found it.”
I opened my eyes and stood up. Then I moved to the edge of the pool.
“What are you doing? Honestly.”
“Cutting off the food.”
“I’m telling you to explain it in a way I can understand.”
“You’ll see.”
I raised one leg high, gathered my inner force through my whole body, and stamped down hard.
BOOM!
The entire cave trembled and the ground shook. The water in the pool surged violently, splitting the air around it.
The tremors slowly subsided. And with them, the steam that had been boiling up vanished, and the pool no longer churned.
“It’s coming.”
“What’s coming?”
“A big one!”
Whoosh!
A massive spray of water burst from the pool, and mist began to fill the cave. Startled, the man instinctively pulled back.
“Sir, the fire!”
At my shout, the man awkwardly shoved the flame forward.
“What in the world...!”
“Why are you so shocked? It’s like you’re seeing a Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari for the first time.”
What appeared before us was a Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari so enormous it filled the whole pond.
“Sir, shine the fire properly. We’re catching it together!”
I immediately drew Shimmering Blade and launched myself at the Hwari. Right up until the blade was about to touch its scales, the creature showed no movement at all.
As if nothing in this world could pierce its body.
What a colossal mistake.
Thwack.
“Kieeeeee!”
The Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari screamed as if it were shrieking in pain. At the same time, it tried to slam its body into the outer wall of the cave.
“Whoa!”
I quickly recalled my sword, leapt toward the opposite side, and swung again. The sensation of cutting through thick flesh was unmistakable.
“Kyaaaaaaaagh!”
As the wounds on its body multiplied, its howls grew even louder. At the same time, it started moving faster and faster.
And I could feel qi gathering in its body.
Fwoooooosh!
It opened its jaws. Then flames began blasting out of its mouth like madness.
“S-s-save me!”
“Damn it.”
With a desperate cry, the man’s signal fire shot forward in front of him. A thin thread of sword qi gathered along my blade and cut through the flames. But the fire the Hwari spat out did not stop.
It kept spewing flames at us in quick succession.
Heat so intense it felt as though our bodies might melt poured down on us. I spread my qi barrier to keep the flames from reaching the man.
“Ugh.”
Then, all at once, the flames stopped. My gaze locked onto the Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari. It was gathering qi. If I wanted to, I could send sword qi now and split its body clean in two.
But there was one problem: sword qi strong enough to sever it in half would almost certainly carve through the creature and collapse this cave with it.
“What a pain.”
I sheathed my sword and launched myself toward the Hwari’s head. At that very moment, its jaws opened again.
“Shut your mouth, you bastard.”
I poured half my inner force into its head and stamped down with all my strength.
Bang!
The instant its head and my foot met, a sound like iron striking iron rang out, and its jaws snapped shut. The creature thrashed, trying to pry its mouth open again. The struggle was so fierce it seemed like its jaws might burst open at any moment.
“Sir! The fishing rod!”
“The fishing rod?”
“Throw it!”
Fear had frozen the man stiff, and he couldn’t move easily.
“You said you wanted to catch the Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari!”
“I... I...”
“Throw it.”
“I’m the greatest fisherman. I’m the greatest fisherman.”
The man seemed to be muttering to himself. Before I knew it, the Hwari’s mouth had begun to open again little by little.
“I said throw it!”
“I’m the greatest fisherman!”
At the man’s cry, the fishing rod came flying toward me. But it didn’t reach my hand and started to fall.
It couldn’t be helped. How could a man who wasn’t even a martial artist throw a fishing rod the size of a human body this far?
Despair flooded the man’s face.
“Good.”
And yet I smiled at him. The rod I’d thought had dropped to the floor had arrived in front of me, pulled through the air by my invisible force.
I took hold of it and lifted it high.
Crack!
The fishing rod punched through the Hwari’s head and drove all the way through to its lower jaw. At the same time, I heard the sound of flames bursting from its mouth. It wasn’t just sound. The smell of fish beginning to cook started to fill the air.
The Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari lost all strength and plunged back into the pond.
Crash!
The thunderous splash exploded outward, and a column of water shot up into the sky.
I drew my sword. Then I cut open the creature and took its medicinal pellet.
“The immediate objective has been achieved.”
The man stared at me, dumbfounded. Then he asked,
“Did you really catch that Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari?”
“Me? No. We caught it.”
“We...”
Even so, he still seemed unconvinced and asked again.
“You could have caught it alone, and killed it alone, couldn’t you? So why...?”
“Well... because the rice balls you gave me were delicious.”
“Just for that reason?”
“And if I said I wanted to give those rice balls to other people too, would that be enough?”
I smiled faintly and clapped a hand on his shoulder.
“Let’s go.”
We came out of the cave. The man still had a bewildered look on his face. I handed him one of the Hwari’s scales.
“Proof that we caught the Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari. That should do it. Then I’ll be going.”
I started walking down the mountain.
“You’ve made the dream you couldn’t fulfill in your past life come true in this one, old man.”
* * *
No matter where I went, there were masked men.
A burning thirst and a maddening hunger washed over me.
The strongest man under heaven? What good was strength if you couldn’t eat or drink? You died all the same.
I was probably the first strongest man in history to die of starvation.
I was too tired. I needed to sleep for a bit and wake up later. My eyes were growing heavier and heavier.
“Are you all right, sir? Open your eyes.”
Before my eyes could fully close, a blurred figure slipped past.
I opened them. Quickly getting to my feet, I stayed on guard. What I saw was one old man.
“You’re awake? Are you being chased by someone? Are those masked men after you?”
“Who are you?”
“Just an old fisherman.”
“A fisherman?”
“Don’t just stand there. At least eat this.”
What the old man handed me was a rice ball. I stared at it for a long moment.
The masked men had seized the Central Plains and changed life forever, and it wasn’t just martial artists whose lives had been turned upside down. Wherever they passed, homes were ruined and commerce was shattered.
That was why ordinary people had come to distrust others and hesitate even to share a single grain of rice.
“You aren’t going to eat it?”
“No! I’ll eat it.”
I took the rice ball and began stuffing it into my mouth.
“Eat slowly.”
The old man let a thin smile form on his lips. He drank tea and studied me.
“If you have nowhere to hide, you can rest here for a while.”
“I can’t do that. If I stayed, you’d be in danger.”
“I don’t have much life left anyway.”
“Then at least sleep a bit longer.”
The old man took a fishing rod with him and left the house.
He came back that evening and started grilling the fish he’d caught.
“Have you ever heard of the Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari?”
“Isn’t it a divine beast?”
“When I was young, I saw one here. So I settled in this place. I wanted to catch the thing no matter what.”
“And did you catch it?”
“If I had, I wouldn’t still be living here.”
The old man’s expression turned bitter.
“Seems catching the Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari wasn’t in Heaven’s will after all.”
I left the old man’s house at dawn the next day. If I stayed here any longer, even he would be in danger.
Once I left the village, the battle with the masked men began again.
As I climbed the mountain, I cut them down without pause. Eventually, I found the cave inside the waterfall.
“Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari!”
The old man had been right. There was a Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari here. I cut it down with a single stroke and took one of its scales before heading to the old man’s village.
And what I found there was a ruined village.
“...”
I walked slowly toward the place where the old man’s house had stood.
Blood was splattered everywhere, and the house had been completely destroyed.
I placed the Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari’s scale atop the wreckage of the house.
“Old man. The Ten-Thousand-Year Hwari you were looking for.”
Was I really supposed to keep doing this endless farce?