The Child, a Child?!
Prolog: The Child, a Child?!
Northeast of the Hundred Thousand Mountains, perched where the permafrost never thawed and eternal snows held sovereign sway, lay the desolate summit of Mount Seolhon.
Namgoong Woon-hyeon gazed down at the mountain range blanketed in immaculate white. A boundless sea of pure, unblemished frost filled his vision. As though bearing witness to the righteous path he had walked for a lifetime among the Orthodox sects, the snowscape stood stainless and pure.
The Imperial Sword, Namgoong Woon-hyeon.
Across the vast Central Plains Murim, there lived not a single martial artist who did not know his name. He was the reigning Patriarch of the Namgoong Clan—heralded far and wide as the greatest sword family under heaven—and the man destined to ascend as Leader of the Murim Alliance before long.
Amidst the profound silence, he tilted his head back and exhaled a long, measured breath. Faint, residual warmth mingled with the subzero air, rising from his lips as a wisp of pale mist.
Tap, ta-tap, tap!
Half a dozen figures closed in, fanning out to encircle him just as that white mist scattered into nothingness. Though they fought to steady their ragged breathing, an undeniable dread shadowed their pale faces.
Blood-Severing Intestine-Melting Poison.
It was a diabolical Tang Clan toxin that sealed every acupoint in the body, systematically dissolving the internal organs until they ruptured into slurry. To think anyone could endure such a lethal concoction—one capable of dropping a strapping warrior dead in a heartbeat—for this long. It was living proof that the rumors of him attaining the fabled Profound Realm were anything but an exaggeration.
“Even with the keen insight said to pierce the very truth of the realm, it seems my esteemed brother could not foresee the calamity right under his nose.”
From behind the ring of pursuers stepped a lone man. Upon recognizing him, Woon-hyeon’s eyes flickered with a faint tremor.
“…?”
“Give it up, elder brother. There is nowhere left for you to run.”
The Great Elder of the Namgoong Clan, and the kinsman he had trusted above all others: Namgoong Mo-hyeon. Mo-hyeon spread his arms wide with theatrical grandeur, his demeanor brimming with arrogance, as if backed by an army ten thousand strong.
“Look with your own eyes! Behold who stands here today! This is the true will of the martial world!”
‘Brother, let us slay the Heavenly Demon and purge the demonic sects once and for all. With your mastery of the Profound Realm and the united strength of the Murim, our dream of unifying the realm is well within reach.’
When Mo-hyeon had come whispering that the Heavenly Demon was marching out from the Hundred Thousand Mountains to strike the Qingcheng Sect, urging that this was their golden opportunity, Woon-hyeon had not doubted his brother’s words in the slightest. The peerless masters of prominent clans and sects gathered before him now truly resembled a united coalition assembled to vanquish the demonic sovereign.
Who could have ever imagined?
That this coalition had conspired not to hunt the demon, but to poison and butcher him?
“Just how many in this world do you think desire a spineless, indecisive Alliance Leader?” Mo-hyeon clicked his tongue twice in theatrical derision. “You clawed your way to the seat of Patriarch, took a wife, and sired a precious heir. You should have been content to live a quiet, comfortable life. You reached for far too much, brother.”
Beneath the faux sorrow in his voice curled an unmistakable, venomous smirk.
In that instant, heaven and earth convulsed. The frozen ground beneath their feet began to shudder violently. A sudden, howling gale surged from nowhere, sweeping the mountain’s snow into a blinding vortex around Woon-hyeon. Instinct screaming in alarm, Mo-hyeon stepped back and snapped his blade into a defensive posture. Every man present stiffened, their expressions freezing in sheer terror.
‘The Imperial Sword Form…!’
An overwhelming tempest of sword force crushed down upon the atmosphere. It was a terrifying might that defied all reason, impossible for a dying, poisoned man to possess.
“The qi of the world flows toward wicked depths.”
A solitary tear slipped down his cheek. It fell as a thick, crimson streak of blood. His lips, too, were dyed an agonizing scarlet; his ruptured internal organs were spewing vitriol and blood through every orifice. The vicious poison clouded his vision like thick fog, but Woon-hyeon simply closed his eyes.
Before his mind’s eye, the world remained pure, pristine white.
“Those who ought to champion chivalry tread the path of tyrants. Where, then, is this realm headed?”
Woon-hyeon channeled his remaining inner energy into the blade. When the boundless qi of the Profound Realm gathered into a singular point, the resulting resonance warped the very air. Snowflakes whipped into a ferocious blizzard, encasing him in a vortex so violent that none around him could even keep their eyes open.
Yet at the center of the storm where he stood, an even deeper, absolute tranquility settled. Within that profound stillness, Woon-hyeon unleashed the supreme heritage he had devoted his entire existence to perfecting.
‘Vast and distant is the azure firmament, boundless beyond measure.’
He would wield his sword as the sky itself, infinite in depth and expanse. The sky was the Namgoong Clan, and the Namgoong Clan was the sky. Because it was the sky, it must be all the more righteous. Because it was the sky, it must shine all the more brilliant an azure.
With his deliberate movement, a radiant trail of azure sword-gang bloomed. It was a pure, honest resonance that embodied the unyielding spirit of the Namgoong Clan in its entirety.
‘…!’
Prying his eyes open against the biting blizzard, Namgoong Mo-hyeon’s eyes widened in sheer disbelief. The Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique—the supreme ancestral art reserved exclusively for the Clan Patriarch. Though he had witnessed it a handful of times before, never had he beheld a sword-gang so breathtakingly pure, so majestically blue.
Mo-hyeon stood utterly spellbound, forgetting for a heartbeat that he was locked in mortal combat. In that suspended breath, Woon-hyeon’s resonant voice echoed directly into his mind via telepathic transmission.
—The sword of Namgoong must be born from an upright, blameless heart that knows no shame.
‘….’
—You are unworthy of bearing the Namgoong name.
At that very moment, a shrill shriek sheared through the howling gale.
‘…!’
Mo-hyeon twisted his body and threw up his sword in frantic defense, but he was far too late to halt Woon-hyeon’s descending strike.
Slash—!
“Aaargh…!”
The azure edge slashed cleanly across Mo-hyeon’s right eye, tore through his shoulder, and carved deep into his chest. Though Mo-hyeon had narrowly pulled back to avoid an instant fatality, it was a devastating, crippling wound.
“B-Block him! Stop the Imperial Sword!!”
Seeing their leader struck down, the surrounding martial artists unleashed their arts all at once. In that fleeting instant, the flawless arc of azure sword-gang froze in midair, as though time itself had ground to a halt. A fraction of a heartbeat passed in breathless, suffocating silence.
And then.
BOOM—!
The sword wind he unleashed pulverized the blizzard, exploding outward to engulf the attackers in a cataclysmic wave.
“Gaaah!”
“Ugh…!”
A roaring tempest swept the peak. It was as though the heavens themselves had collapsed upon them. The frozen precipice where they stood shook violently. Peerless masters were hurled through the air like autumn leaves, while those who prided themselves on immense resilience barely managed to stay on their feet against the crushing deluge. Namgoong Woon-hyeon’s final, dying gambit left not a single soul uninjured.
Rumble, crash—!
The snow-capped ridge gave way, unleashing an avalanche of thunderous snow and shattering stone. Unlike the frantic martial artists scrambling for their lives in sheer panic, Woon-hyeon remained standing upright, gazing quietly up at the heavens.
A final trace of breath drifted from his lips. And simultaneously.
CRASH—!
His world crumbled into darkness.
Rustle. Rustle.
Stray snowflakes drifted down, settling gently upon Namgoong Woon-hyeon’s brow. Amidst the faint, numbing cold that quelled his burning fever, his unfocused eyes blinked sluggishly open.
Beyond his blurred vision lay a sky of immaculate white. It looked so much like the ideal world he had spent his life striving to forge—a realm governed by pure righteousness and chivalry.
‘…I am so weary.’
It was time to bring this exhausting, wretched life to a close, and—
Crunch.
‘Crunch?’
A tiny shadow abruptly popped into view, eclipsing half the pale sky above him. Yet his fading consciousness was already slipping past the brink of lucidity. The last thing he registered was the diminutive shadow tilting its head curiously down at him, before darkness claimed his senses completely.
Blink. Blink—
Woon-hyeon opened his eyes. The very first sight that greeted his gaze was a decrepit, run-down wooden ceiling.
It took him an agonizingly long time to realize that he had actually opened his eyes at all. And why wouldn't it? By all rights, he was supposed to be dead!
“……!”
Snapping fully awake, Woon-hyeon jolted upright. But the sudden movement sent a searing flare of agony lancing through his chest, forcing him to clutch his ribs as tremors racked his frame.
‘How… can this be…?’
Was he… alive? He had actually survived?
Just how? Why was he still drawing breath?
It defied belief. He had swallowed the Blood-Severing Intestine-Melting Poison and was on the absolute threshold of death. Even if his final strike had wiped out his pursuers and bought him time, he should have perished in the snow….
‘Wait.’
Now that he thought about it, he recalled glimpsing something while buried in the freezing drifts. Something small and round, tilting its head inquisitively.
‘A child…?’
Had that been a child? A little girl? One who looked barely six or seven years old at most?
The moment that memory resurfaced, shattered fragments of recollection rushed through his mind like a broken dam.
The memory of a tiny hand ruthlessly shoving bitter, foul-tasting wild roots down his throat while he choked in agony.
The memory of that same hand stuffing an unchewed, dense clump of cold rice into his mouth, nearly suffocating him on the spot.
The memory of that hand dumping an entire earthenware jug of freezing water straight onto his face, making him convulse from sheer shock.
The memory of that tiny hand violently tugging fistfuls of hair from his scalp—
‘Wh-What in heaven's name…?!’
What kind of absurd memories were these?!
Woon-hyeon pressed a trembling palm to his forehead in profound bewilderment. From these bizarre, disjointed recollections, he could not tell whether the child had been trying to nurse him back to health or systematically murder him.
Just as his eyes were quivering like an aspen leaf in sheer confusion—
Creak—bang!
Without the slightest warning, the room’s wooden door swung wide open.
Standing boldly on the threshold was the very girl from his fevered memories, a hand-woven straw basket slung casually across her back. Startled by her sudden intrusion, Woon-hyeon did not even register the fact that a peerless master such as himself had completely failed to detect her presence approaching.
His eyes locked onto hers.
A suffocating stillness gripped the room.
Chew. Chew.
The little girl was placidly gnawing on a strip of dried beef jerky.