Life-or-Death Crisis
[Open… your e…]
A faint voice hammered against Ye Hajun’s dulled consciousness.
A thunderous roar rolled through his ears, muffled and distant. Between the booms, someone’s voice kept leaking through in fragments.
[Open your eyes… hurr…]
Even as his head spun, the memories slowly sharpened into shape.
The Rift in the Void that had suddenly torn open overhead. The alien things that had come pouring out of another world. Then blackout.
[Open your damn eyes, Juddak, you bastard! Our kid is going to die!!]
The voice finally snapped into focus. Ye Hajun’s mind cleared at once and he bolted upright.
This place… the inside of a Rift in the Void?
It was a bizarre space.
An ash-gray sky from which colorless cinders fell without end. The ground where he had been lying was a shallow sheet of water that never stopped lapping. Aside from a few sparse dead trees, nothing else stretched all the way to the horizon of this pocket dimension. Facing a realm of pure death that held not even a flicker of living vitality, Ye Hajun felt his breath catch in his throat.
He was still staring around in a daze at the impossible scenery when another deafening crash slammed into his ears. The moment he turned toward the sound, his vision filled with a storm of pink plum-blossom petals.
“Han Yumae!”
Seeing her hemmed in by a pack of Jeonggoe, Ye Hajun surged to his feet and sprinted toward her. As he drove his foot forward he recalled the exact sensation of discharging explosive force.
CRACK-BOOM!
Internal force flooded out through his arm, leaving it prickling and numb.
Did I pack too much force into it? A lot more drained out in one go than I expected.
Once the Jeonggoe were all dealt with, Han Yumae crumpled where she stood.
“Han Yumae! You okay?”
“Yeah… is what I’d like to say, but no.”
Up close her condition looked far worse than he had feared. Ragged breathing. Heaving shoulders. Dark, hollow eyes. She forced the words out with difficulty.
“In here… my internal force keeps scattering. It’s getting a little hard.”
“Then just don’t use—”
He cut himself off. The moment he realized how she had ended up in this place and what state he himself had been in until seconds ago, the whole picture became clear.
What now?
In moments like this the only thing he could rely on was the gallery.
Following the gallery’s advice, Ye Hajun hurriedly gathered the Yeongseok that Han Yumae had dropped after defeating the monsters and dumped the whole pile onto her.
“Can’t you circulate qi right now?”
“I want to, but as you can see…”
His gaze followed hers. Dead trees were sprouting and growing at an unnatural speed. The moment they reached a certain size, they tore their own roots free of the ground and began lumbering toward him.
“Those are Jeonggoe too, huh.”
“Withered Tree Ghosts, probably. Things like that have been spawning nonstop. That’s why I never get a chance to circulate.”
In the end Ye Hajun simply crushed a handful of Yeongseok into powder and scattered it over her head. Her expression eased a fraction.
“…If I could circulate with the stones intact it’d be better than this.”
“We don’t have time. Emergency measures.”
He held out his hand. She gave a short, dry laugh and took it.
“Opposite of when we first met, huh?”
“Yeah. But you still saved me this time too. So…”
Han Yumae gripped his hand, yet she could not rise.
“Just a second… let me rest.”
Her hand slid down his palm and thudded limply onto the water.
He spun around in panic, but the slow rise and fall of her shoulders let him breathe again.
The jianghu was said to turn on gratitude and grudges, yet in three years at Heuksabang the only thing Ye Hajun had ever seen was grudges. There had been no foolish chivalrous fools who repaid kindness in that hell.
But the whole world was not a garbage dump—Cheon Ryeonghwa had shown him that, and the girl lying in front of him proved it now. Here was an idiot willing to throw her life away for a total stranger who shared not a single drop of her blood.
Then it was his turn to prove the same.
The instant he turned his back on a debt of gratitude, he would be no different from the bastards of Heuksabang he had so despised.
Ye Hajun tightly clasped Han Yumae’s bloodless, limp hand.
“This time I’ll be the one who helps you.”
The Withered Tree Ghosts closed in. Facing the massive tree-shaped monsters that lived up to their name, Ye Hajun set his stance and steadied his breathing.
To close a Rift in the Void you have to destroy either the Jeonggoe brood nest or the Heogong Jin-an.
When one of the ghosts swung an arm, he answered with a fist.
BOOM!
The shockwave that left his knuckles ripped the ghost’s arm clean off. Beyond the falling trunk he saw another whole pack of the same creatures.
Even if I have to cut every last one of them down, I’ll be the one who destroys it.
With that vow he hurled himself at the Withered Tree Ghosts.
“Haa… haa… huff!”
Forcing his breathing under control, Ye Hajun scanned the surroundings.
Yeongseok lay scattered across the ground like gravel. How many Jeonggoe had he already put down? Still there was no sign of anything that looked like a brood nest or an Eye of the Rift.
Not yet… not yet.
If it wasn’t here, it had to be somewhere else. He returned once more to the fallen Han Yumae.
Whenever a new pack of Jeonggoe appeared he cleared them, then hoisted the unconscious girl onto his back and moved on—over and over. He still could not find any thread that led to escape.
“Hup… ah.”
The moment he tried to lift her again his arm gave out completely and he dumped her onto the ground.
“Sorry. Just a little tired… ugh.”
He tried to pick her up a second time, only to collapse under her weight. Wondering what was wrong, he looked at his own arm and realized it was trembling from the fingertips all the way up without his noticing. The entire limb had turned a livid, purplish black with bruises.
Seeing that, Cheonma spoke.
Bullshit.
Ye Hajun tried to shout a rebuttal, but the sound never formed—only a raw, hoarse rasp escaped.
The moment he sank to the ground, a pale blue light appeared far off in his vision.
Ah…
The pale light gathered into a sphere, then became a gigantic eye that fixed its gaze on him. Beneath it, the rotting dead trees that had seemed to stretch forever tangled and stacked themselves into a colossal tower that held the eye aloft.
He knew the instant he saw it.
That’s… the Heogong Jin-an.
From its nest of rotten timber the Eye of the Rift looked down on Ye Hajun as if mocking him. He whipped his head around, searching.
Where’s the strike team…? If I just take that thing out we can leave…
No matter which way he turned, all that met his eyes were countless Jeonggoe, an endless horizon, and the colorless sky.
Realizing that the only one who could save him was himself, Ye Hajun picked up a Yeongseok with his still-functional left hand. Lacking even the grip strength to crush it in his fist, he raised his arm high and smashed it down, then scooped up a handful of the powder and sprinkled it over his own head.
A faint trickle of internal force returned—barely anything, but something. The moment he forced himself upright again, clenched his fist, and took his stance, the gallery notifications exploded.
Unlike the Blood Cult Leader’s desperate wish to keep Ye Hajun alive, the rest of the gallery reacted differently.
Are these people seriously going to spend their last moments just flaming each other in the gallery?
The absurd thought made Ye Hajun snort a laugh—and in that instant:
Suddenly the Spirit of Seeking Justice appeared before Ye Hajun in ghostly form and spoke.
“Agree to it, Juddak.”
“Agree to what, old man?”
“I’ll get you out of this place alive. And I’ll throw in that Anonymous bastard’s disciple for free.”
“How?”
“With my secret art—the Hegemon’s Heaven-Cleaving Axe. So agree.”
The Spirit of Seeking Justice continued.
“If you just give the word, I will descend right here and tear this entire space to shreds. I swear it.”
“Des… cend?”
“Yes or no?”
Was there any reason to refuse?
Ye Hajun smiled faintly and answered the Spirit of Seeking Justice.
“You keep saying you’re the greatest under heaven. Let’s see it.”