Chapter 1
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 1
Chapter Title: Prologue
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Official-Military Non-Aggression Principle.
This convention, firmly established as a custom, symbolized the current imperial court's utter incompetence.
The great emperor and his ministers below him lacked the capacity to embrace all the common people.
"......"
I understood that much.
People were dying left and right every day.
With endless wars against the northern and southern barbarians, it was an era of constant turmoil where plagues ravaged the land and bandits roamed the mountains, just as in ancient times.
They even had to borrow hands from the Beggar Clan just to get by.
In such times, the contributions of martial artists who had left the secular world and cried out for justice and chivalry were recognized. It stemmed from respect and deference to those who harbored a knightly spirit that shunned official positions. The Official-Military Non-Aggression Principle arose from that very esteem.
'Deference is nice. Respect is good too.'
But in the end, they had only dealt with internal threats.
Those who charged at the forefront of death, repelling external enemies as always, were the ones in the military.
And I was no different.
Dong! Dong!
The drumbeats rousing the soldiers' morale.
Prrr.
The warhorses at the front lines snorted, signaling the start of yet another grueling war.
"Must be nice being a martial artist."
"Pardon?"
"Nothing."
A vast plain stretched out. Shadows began popping up one by one along the endless horizon, and those countless figures were the barbarians' pride: their spear cavalry.
A force numbering over ten thousand, twenty thousand—fully a hundred thousand strong.
Unyielding even in prolonged wars of attrition, they kept swelling their ranks without end.
It wasn't just the numbers; what terrified everyone was their martial prowess and imposing might. One of them could handle ten of ours, so with such lopsided odds, the battle's outcome was plain as day from the start.
Waaaa—!
The hoofbeats were soon drowned out by roars.
Then came the thunderous clash as they met head-on.
The cheers turned to screams, and the battlefield, thick with the stench of blood, was nothing short of hell itself.
Screams tore through the air amid sprays of crimson blood.
In that literal sea of corpses and blood, friend and foe became meaningless, and an eon seemed to pass before silence finally enveloped the field.
Thud.
I shed my heavy armor and gazed down from the ridge.
"Cough!"
They were all dead.
My subordinate who wrote letters home to his aged mother every night.
The one who bragged endlessly about his beautiful wife and got teased for it.
The one who dreamed of his son becoming a general.
Even the one who was more timid than he looked and never lived up to his size—all lay cold as corpses.
The rest... were unrecognizable even as human forms.
"Haaa."
The barbarian invaders who coveted our fertile lands were all dead too. If nothing else, it was a worthy sacrifice. We'd turned what was as good as a decided defeat into a nullity.
'Sorry.'
It was regrettable that no one would live to enjoy the rewards of this hellish war.
I wanted to at least bury them so they wouldn't become beast fodder, but even that was beyond me as my physical limits closed in fast.
Drip, drip.
And that was just the start.
'Still, I gave it my all.'
Blood poured from the gaping hole in my chest, clotting with scraps of cloth against the crusted stains.
'Damn...'
As my eyelids grew heavy, my mind felt endlessly light.
The result of living my life giving my all every moment, right up to the very end.
No regrets at all, yet in that lightness lingered an indelible stain—a faint lingering regret.
Was this attachment too?
'If there's such a thing as an afterlife.'
Maybe deep down, I wanted to be a true martial artist, not a soldier.
In a relatively peaceful world.
Caring for my mother, bragging about my wife, raising a family with my children.
Wandering the jianghu, honing myself, and in the end living happily ever after—like those tales of ordinary folk achieving unbound freedom.
I felt like I could even reach the Mountain Shattering Realm that had eluded me all this time.
Useless thoughts now, of course.
My consciousness faded into the distance.
The last sunset I saw was brutally beautiful.
Swish.
An unfamiliar ceiling.
'...Where is this?'
A ceiling that seemed like it might smell musty.
So that's what it looks like.
The underworld I'd only imagined held less impact than expected.
My senses returning was novel, but honestly, the backdrop felt a bit half-hearted.
I'd reached the Seven Realms before even passing forty.
Those at the First Realm, Opening the Channels, were hailed as peak masters, so surpassing even the Fourth Realm's super peak to reach the Seventh—the Soul Transcendence Realm—was no small feat.
Moreover, selected for the Embroidered Uniform Guard's Northern Pacification Division before thirty, granted a mid-to-low rank, and put in command of a newly formed cavalry unit.
Even if it was just for show, a commander position like mine shouldn't have been so undervalued.
'Or maybe that's exactly why.'
Looking back, I'd killed countless people.
Killing hundreds, thousands to save dozens of times that many—but it seemed the underworld's standards were stricter than they appeared.
The Central Plains' name rang hollow; the Great Ming wasn't the center here. As I adjusted to the drab underworld vibe...
Creeak.
"...You're awa... Young Master?!"
A boy in servant garb shouted at the top of his lungs.
"...You're awake?!"
He didn't look dignified enough for a grim reaper.
"Thank goodness! I really...!"
Maybe because it was so different from my imaginings, his shocked face streaming with tears and snot was downright comical.
"Wait just a moment! I'll fetch the Old Physician right away!"
Setting aside the unknown boy's fussing, the sensations of death were reviving bit by bit.
Sensations that should have been dead.
Sight, hearing, smell, touch... and a bitter taste flooding my mouth.
'What is this?'
Had I gone mad upon death?
Or was the underworld, known only by rumor, always like this?
As baffling events piled up, a twitch of my body brought instant agony.
"Ugh..."
Having frequented battlefields, I knew at once.
Not from a sword or spear wound. This was trauma from a beating.
An old memory from before I learned martial arts—the exact feel of getting thrashed by street thugs in some marketplace.
'What the hell?'
A familiar yet alien sensation.
As confusion lingered, a stray thought bubbled up.
"I swear! The Young Master is awake!"
"Don't make such a fuss, you brat. It wasn't a fatal wound to begin with."
"B-but! You said it'd take at least half a month!"
Voices of an old man and a youth drifted in.
"That's because his body is inherently frail... Not like the Third Young Master—someone with a robust mind and body would faint for half a day at most."
It was clear who they meant.
Inherently frail body and mind.
Third Young Master.
Words that had nothing to do with me.
'Afterlife? Reincarnation?'
I still didn't know what was happening. From callus-free palms to an empty dantian, everything screamed it wasn't me, no matter how I denied it.
Yi Mok-yeom, commander of the Iron Cavalry Unit facing the northern horsemen.
"I'll enter, Seo Mun Young Master."
That weary name pushed aside, a new one etched into my dizzy mind.
"Seo Mun-ha Young Master?"
By the servant boy called A-so.