Chapter 70
When I opened my eyes, a scene utterly divorced from reality spread out before me.
The training grounds of the Dancheon Clan, once so imposing, had been reduced to a wasteland of weeds — as if a dragon had raked its claws across the estate and moved on. Truthfully, since the very existence of a Heavenly Demon descending upon the Dancheon Clan was itself unreal, this devastation somehow felt like it could only be fitting.
What felt even less real, though, were the two figures bickering right in front of me.
"You insufferable old codger. If you're the Murim Alliance Leader, shouldn't you be saving the common folk first?"
"And what would you have me do then, you witless old man? Let my disciple die in my stead?"
"That's not what I'm saying. I saved Dancheon Myeong and you saved the common folk — wouldn't that have been the right way of it?"
"Does that matter? We saved them all either way, didn't we?"
"...Good grief. Fine, let's leave it at that."
"Then we're settled."
It was the Sovereign of Destruction and the Tyrant Sword Emperor. Their squabbling felt so much like everyday life that it let the heat flooding my head cool down and settle.
To summarize the situation: Pahwang had saved me, and Paeryeok Muje had saved Dancheon Hak and the rest of my clansmen.
True to their stature as the two men who had once dueled for the title of Number One Under Heaven, they seemed to have taken no real damage despite blocking the Heavenly Demon's descent.
My father, Uncle Baek Yeo-hae, Ma Sok, and Yi Chun-baek had all, fortunately, escaped with their lives as well. Unlike Pahwang and Muje, who had neutralized the Heavenly Demon's descent through direct clash, they had only barely deflected it — but surviving was what mattered.
"...You lived."
"So I did."
Thud.
Uncle Baek Yeo-hae and Ma Sok, their inner energies drained, collapsed beside Yi Chun-baek with long, ragged sighs. They had poured out everything they had in a fight for their very lives, so their exhaustion was only their due.
"Are you all right?"
My father, Dancheon Gang, hurried to his clansmen's sides. He was positioning himself against the Heavenly Demon's follow-up strike.
"...?"
Amid it all, the most striking sight was Dancheon Hak, staring dumbfounded back and forth between his own two hands and his unblemished sword.
Anyway.
The two absolute sovereigns who divided the entire murim had descended upon the Dancheon Clan to save me and my family. With power of that caliber joining our side, we ought to have been certain of victory.
But I couldn't be.
Because I had felt, firsthand, the impossibly distant realm through which the Heavenly Demon walked.
The Heavenly Demon, head of the Demonic Path, had arrived long ago — which meant the masters of all Three Ages of Jianghu had gathered in this one place. A marvel that had never once occurred, even in Myeong-gae's previous life.
Pahwang's gaze came to rest on the culprit of it all — the Heavenly Demon.
"That's the Heavenly Demon?"
"So it seems."
For this moment alone, one could rightly say the Dancheon Sword Clan stood at the center of the world. Whether that was a good thing, I couldn't say.
"Our fates are entwined, are they? How amusing."
So spoke the Heavenly Demon, taking Pahwang and Muje into his gaze. Yet for all the words he'd uttered, there was no rise or fall in his voice — it carried not a trace of feeling.
Then.
Trickle.
Fresh blood seeped from the nape of the Heavenly Demon's neck.
Flinch.
It was the first time I had ever seen it — the faintest tremor born in that utterly unshakable figure.
On the Heavenly Demon's nape remained the scar where the Dancheon Sword had raked across him.
"How amusing."
The Heavenly Demon's gaze settled on me as he spoke again. I could tell that something new had entered his voice — excitement.
"Can that fellow be beaten?"
"No."
Pahwang answered Paeryeok Muje's question, and his voice was as resolute as if reciting an established law. It was strange to see Pahwang speak of defeat — but it was an unassailable truth. None in this place grasped the Heavenly Demon's majesty more vividly than Pahwang and Muje themselves. They could not have been mistaken.
"Damn it all. What a fine mess."
Paeryeok Muje's brow knotted, but he offered no counterargument. Truthfully, it had been a question to which he already knew the answer.
"Hmm..."
After racking his brain for a moment, Muje, finding no answer of his own, sought one from Pahwang again.
"Then what are we to do?"
Paeryeok Muje made no show of force or bravado. Paradoxically, that very lack of pretense told me he was a true strongman. To Muje's question, Pahwang gave his answer.
"There are two answers."
At the unexpected reply, both my attention and Muje's turned to Pahwang. Pahwang wore an expression worthy of Yeom Gi-ha, and said:
"Fight prepared to die — or run."
"..."
A wise answer to a foolish question.
"Is running even possible?" Muje asked with something like a sneer.
"An old man like you and I might manage to make the attempt."
"Hmm."
In other words, for anyone below Pahwang and Muje's caliber, even attempting to flee was impossible.
"And if we regroup and return with our full strength, we can win."
The words that followed were entirely rational. The Central Plains murim was vast, and the Murim Alliance was enormous. If Pahwang stood at the vanguard and brought the Alliance's assembled forces, defeating the Heavenly Demon was certainly possible.
But...
It would be the Dancheon Clan who bought that time. And the price would likely be extermination.
"Any thought of running?"
Paeryeok Muje, who knew Pahwang's temperament all too well, asked with a hollow laugh. And Pahwang answered, firm and unyielding:
"I could not do that."
Pahwang's eyes were on me.
"Then I suppose I can't run either."
So answered Muje, and his gaze too settled on me. How could I fail to understand what that meant?
I felt that my three years since regression had not been lived in vain.
Having reached his answer, Pahwang strode forward.
"Heavenly Demon! Come, have a bout with me!"
He had spoken of defeat, yet there was not a shred of falsehood in his fighting spirit. It was the very image of a true Grand Master.
"I'll join you, you insufferable codger."
Paeryeok Muje fell into step beside him. Faced with an adversary worthy of his life's full strength, Muje did not consider a joint assault a disgrace. Perhaps that was simply the nature of the Unorthodox Paths.
"..."
Pahwang gave Muje a silent look. Call it a mournful glance, and you would be right. I understood its meaning at once. A combined assault only works between equals — it has meaning only with a partner truly in sync. Pahwang, who had once opened his realm with the Ten-Thousand-Year Supreme Blood Treasure, and Muje were no longer of the same level — and the Heavenly Demon was no partner with whom a joint assault could work at all. Pahwang's glance distilled all of that into a single, vivid message.
"...Hmph! After you fall, he's mine."
Perhaps Muje had understood as well — I guessed that was why he gave that answer.
"Then why not pray to the heavens to lose and die to the Heavenly Demon, you witless old man?"
Pahwang chuckled as if to console him.
"If you hate that so much, then just win, won't you?"
"There it is. The old man speaks wisdom at last."
With that answer, Pahwang's Fire Spirit Sky-Breaking Divine Art took its full form, and he became a colossal inferno that seemed to burn the very heavens.
"Come."
"Gladly."
As Pahwang answered the Heavenly Demon's word—
Fwoooosh—!
KRA-KOOM!
The great inferno collided head-on with the abyss.
BOOOM—!
The collision of forces unlike anything before it was like a natural disaster.
Let me correct myself. The duel between Cheolsanmagun and me, wielding the Celestial Emperor's Art, fell somewhat short of deserving the name "battle of immortals." It had been nothing more than a swordsman's swordplay. Now I understood.
KUUUUNG—!
This — a battle like this — was what should truly be called a clash of immortals.
I did not want to miss a single fragment of this magnificent struggle. But I could not. Because I, too, had something I must do.
"Father."
"What is it?"
I called to my father, Dancheon Gang, who stood at my side.
"I ask you to guard me."
Muje would need to watch the two of them clash — his own turn was yet to come. So my father was the right man for it.
Thud.
With that, I folded myself into a cross-legged seat.
Snap.
My father asked no questions. He simply planted himself squarely in front of me, his face still tight with tension. Before sinking into my inner world, I took in the sight of his back as he prepared to guard me.
Truly broad, that back.
So it would be all right.
In the very heart of the battlefield, I began my breathing cultivation.
Truthfully, nothing restores a martial artist's body like breathing cultivation. That is why it is also called the "guiding of breath and imagery."
I was a man who, having reached the Fifth Stage of the Yakseon Heart Decision, had consumed peerless elixirs whose very names felt too humble for them. It shames me to admit it, but I knew I had never fully melted down the energies of those elixirs and made them entirely my own.
Which meant the energies of the Empty Blue Stone Milk, the Vermilion Fruit, the Ten-Thousand-Year Fleeceflower Root, the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng, and the Ten-Thousand-Year Supreme Blood Treasure still lingered in my meridians.
What else would they be, if not peerless elixirs?
To say an elixir held supreme efficacy for advancing one's martial arts and transforming the body was, in other words, to say it held immense power to restore the body as well. To put it with a little exaggeration — even a dead man could be jolted upright by a mere wisp of the energy those elixirs carried. Was the Great Restorative Medicine not, after all, merely an imitation of an elixir's fundamental workings?
Cr-reak—
As I cultivated, my twisted bones settled back into place, and my shaken meridians began to steady. The wounds the Heavenly Demon had dealt me were mending in real time as my body returned to its original state.
Not every session of breathing cultivation yields such dramatic effect. It was thanks to the elixir energies left in my meridians, and to the Golden Body and the Undying Flame exerting their powers to the utmost.
Truthfully, I knew that breathing cultivation in the open is an exceedingly dangerous act. Practicing it on a battlefield, one could rightly be called mad.
I had set my father Dancheon Gang as my guard — but I could hardly deny that this was lunacy. During breathing cultivation one is severed from the outside world; the slightest shock twists one's qi and blood, and one can tumble straight into qi deviation. And with the Heavenly Demon raging loose besides, openly cultivating like this was no different from suicide.
But it was precisely because my opponent was that Heavenly Demon that I dared it. The Heavenly Demon I had observed was a proud and lofty being — I was certain he would not deign to touch me mid-cultivation.
My gamble held true, and I finished my breathing cultivation unharmed, able to open my eyes once more.
KWAANG—
"Kghk!"
The instant my eyes opened, I saw Pahwang's body go flying into the distance.
His left arm flailed, beyond his control. Broken, then.
"My turn."
As Pahwang's body slammed into a wall far away, Muje stepped forward.
"...Not yet, old man."
Pahwang, gathering himself, came near and said so. He looked nothing like a man still in fighting condition. That Pahwang — in the short span of my breathing cultivation — had been reduced to a wreck.
"Shut your mouth, you insufferable codger."
"..."
Pahwang, who had beaten Muje at everything all his life, could not this time find a word of rebuttal to the rebuke.
"Young whelps should be off sleeping and snoring."
Brilliant invisible swords rose around Muje as he spoke in an otherworldly voice. As if to prove — as he had in the decisive battle at the Ice Palace — that he had never once given his all, more than ten formless swords wove and swam around him. He might yield somewhat to Pahwang, but this was the bearing of a man proving himself, once more, an absolute sovereign of the murim.
But—
"I suppose you may stop now."
With the Heavenly Demon's voice—
KRAK—
"Kghak!"
WHOOOSH— KWAANG!
Muje's body was hurled a good ten-odd lengths and smashed into the wall of the great training grounds. The invisible swords that had displayed their splendor evaporated without a trace.
The Tyrant Sword Emperor, sovereign of the Unorthodox Paths, had been subdued in a single exchange.
Clatter.
Brushing the debris of the wall from himself, Muje barely raised his body. Far from whole — but he, too, had clung to his life.
"Consider yourself blessed that the hour is not yet come."
That offhand remark of the Heavenly Demon's was the final piece. It meant the strange disquiet I had felt had at last crystallized into truth and reached me.
"It's my turn."
"I will go."
"..."
"I said, I will go."
"...Very well."
A father cannot hold back a grown son. And so, sending my father aside, I was able to stand face to face with the Heavenly Demon.
There was a conclusion to be drawn from the Heavenly Demon's conduct. It was—
"Would one life — mine — be enough?"
For all his overwhelming majesty, the Heavenly Demon had, to this very moment, not taken a single life. That was the fact of it.
— Is it you? The star that was meant to vanish?
The Heavenly Demon had descended upon this place looking at me, and me alone. Truthfully, I suspected even his indiscriminate descent strike had been made only after catching sight of Pahwang and Muje — mere conjecture, perhaps, but still.
"..."
The Heavenly Demon gave no answer to my question. But it was enough to make me certain my reasoning was the truth of it.
"I see."
My shoulders lightened. Because I now knew that my precious people standing here would live.
I had restored my body through breathing cultivation and recovered my composure through our exchange. Calling myself in peak condition would not be excessive.
Only one thing was wanting — the absence of the Dancheon Sword, which had always been at my side.
No matter.
I reached out my hand — and where the Dancheon Sword's absence should have left a hollow, a brilliant sword had taken its place. Will is, after all, intent — and intent is the reflection of one's inner image.
Guuugung—
For this moment alone, an invisible sword that fell short of nothing — not Pahwang's, not Muje's — rested in my hand.