After leaving the Heavenly Demon Hall, I headed for the Northern Heaven Sword Clan.
When there was someone I could discuss swordsmanship with, why would I need to struggle over it alone?
Yes, this is my way. If I don’t know, I ask. If I’m talking about something else, I come to a realization. If I truly can’t figure it out, then to hell with it—I go have fun.
Because of the other Demon Venerables, and because I’d been busy with various incidents, I intended to make up this time for having neglected the Ilhwa Sword Venerable.
It was the return of the sparring friend who had run away from home.
Just as there had been changes in me during that time, there had been changes in the Ilhwa Sword Venerable as well.
When I arrived at the Ilhwa Sword Venerable’s cottage in the Northern Heaven Sword Clan, I was startled.
Her cottage had changed. The modest little cottage from before had now become a large estate.
The yard had grown wider, and so had the flower garden she tended.
The only thing that had not changed was the Ilhwa Sword Venerable’s beautiful appearance, which still seemed to run backward against the flow of age. She welcomed me warmly.
“Young Cult Leader, welcome.”
“Have you been well?”
“I’m the same as ever.”
“Your house has changed.”
The Ilhwa Sword Venerable looked around with me and smiled calmly.
“I tried changing the atmosphere.”
The old cottage had been a house meant to show others. To say: I am a lofty person who has cast off worldly desires and walks only the path of martial arts.
And now, she had cast aside pretense and was revealing her honest desires. Why had her heart changed?
“You must be busy these days. What brings you here?”
“I came because I wanted to see you, Sword Venerable.”
“You did well to come. Come in.”
I followed the Ilhwa Sword Venerable into the house. The interior was decorated splendidly.
“May I look around a little? These days, I’ve also become quite interested in decorating my room.”
“Look as much as you like.”
I slowly looked around the room. The furniture and ornaments were ornate and luxurious. She made no attempt to hide the fact that she had spent money on decorating the interior.
“It’s truly wonderful.”
Then something caught my eye.
‘This is?’
What lay on the table was a book. It was the collection of poems and paintings that had been on the Blood Heaven Blade Demon’s bookshelf.
Of course, it was possible for there to be another copy of the same book.
But the reason a single book drew my attention so strongly was likely because it involved the Blade Demon and the Sword Venerable.
“I’ll have to get that display cabinet for my room as well. I like it very much.”
“I didn’t know you had such tastes, Young Cult Leader.”
After looking around the room like that, we sat facing each other at the tea table.
As I drank the tea, I recognized the taste. It was the same tea I had drunk when I went to the Blood Heaven Blade Demon’s house.
“Elder Blade Demon seems to drink this tea as well.”
“Is that so?”
I did not miss the moment the Ilhwa Sword Venerable flinched. The book, and the tea too.
‘These people!’
I laughed inwardly. If the book and tea were not coincidences, then something must have changed in the relationship between the two of them.
“You’re curious why I changed the house, aren’t you?”
“Did you have a change of heart?”
“I thought I wanted to live a little differently.”
I looked around once more and said,
“To be honest, this room suits you better than the old one did, Senior. It’s splendid and beautiful.”
“Is that so?”
The Ilhwa Sword Venerable laughed in good spirits.
Though we were laughing and conversing like this, she and I maintained a certain distance. Not very close, but not very far either. Definitely farther than a single step. But not so far that it felt uncomfortable.
About five steps. That was the distance between the Ilhwa Sword Venerable and me, as I saw it.
“I came to visit you today as a sparring friend.”
I asked her for a spar. Fortunately, she readily accepted.
“I would be glad to. Though I don’t know whether a spar with me will be of any help to you.”
“I learn a great deal just from watching you draw your sword, Senior. If I thought it wouldn’t help, would I have asked you to spar?”
“Could you leave that mouth of yours behind?”
“There are many places where my mouth is needed, so that would be difficult.”
We went out to the training ground.
We stood facing each other about ten paces apart. As if we had never been exchanging jokes moments before, her aura changed.
It was not only her house that had changed. I could feel that her aura was different from before.
‘She’s devoted herself to training all this time!’
She had been honed sharp, like a treasured sword. I had once compared the efforts of the Demon Venerables to the feet of a swan, and the one who fit that comparison best was the Ilhwa Sword Venerable.
Behind her swanlike elegance was unseen effort.
What had changed her like this?
I did not hide my true aura either and revealed it. Tension appeared on the Ilhwa Sword Venerable’s face as she looked at me, and her gaze sank coldly.
The Ilhwa Sword Venerable moved first.
Shiiiiik!
A sword flew in. I could not see her figure. Completely hidden behind the sword, she and her sword had become one.
The Ilhwa Sword and the Black Demon Sword collided in midair, scattering sparks. Dozens of sword lines created by the two blades instantly embroidered the air, then vanished.
Though she had lost to me in our previous spar, a Sword Venerable was still a Sword Venerable. On top of that, her recent training shone brilliantly, raising this spar to an even higher level.
Flashes of sword light burst forth as we flew into the sky together. The Demon Swords of the Northern Heaven Sword Clan stopped in their tracks and watched the sword light shining in the air. The sword radiance glittering in the sunlight was truly a magnificent sight.
Chaaang!
With one final, long metallic ring, we descended to the ground.
Even though I had not sent her sword flying from her hand, and even though I had not placed my sword at her throat, the Sword Venerable must have known. That she had lost.
“You grow without end.”
She could not hide her bitter expression. Her training had failed to catch up to my growth.
I took care of her pride for her.
“It was thanks to your consideration, Senior. I revealed the bottom of my reserves, but you still have one final move left, don’t you?”
All Demon Venerables hid one move to use at the very end. The Ilhwa Sword Venerable was no exception.
“A move I hope never to use in my lifetime.”
In other words, it meant a trump card that required her to stake her own life as well.
“Let’s go inside.”
After we returned inside, we moistened our throats with cold tea and spoke about swordsmanship.
We discussed the spar we had just had. I went one step further from there. I told the Ilhwa Sword Venerable about what I had felt when I previously achieved Great Completion of the twelfth stage of the Flying Heaven Sword Art.
The Ilhwa Sword Venerable listened closely to my words and asked whenever she had something she was curious about.
With her level of skill as a Sword Venerable, she would naturally know. How sincerely I was speaking to her. That this was the essence of martial learning—something I would never tell anyone unless I cherished them.
The Ilhwa Sword Venerable’s face grew more and more flushed.
When I finished speaking, she rushed out to the training ground.
“Wait! Wait just a moment.”
She swung her sword alone in the middle of the training ground.
Then, suddenly, she stopped her sword and sank into thought. She swung again, then stopped again.
She had gained some sort of realization. Through our conversation, she had found a way to cross a wall she had been unable to overcome through solitary training.
After becoming a Demon Venerable, she must have trained alone for a very long time. And at the end of that road, which she had walked alone and lonely until it was blocked, she had met me.
After swinging her sword like that for a long while in the training ground, she returned, still flushed.
“Did you not come to me because you wished to gain some realization about swordsmanship?”
“That’s right. To be honest, my swordsmanship has been at a standstill lately.”
“Then why are you passing martial learning on to me?”
I calmly settled my aura and spoke with dignity.
“Because you are someone who will become my Demon Venerable.”
To her, who stared at me without a word, I continued calmly.
“There are two more reasons besides that.”
“Two more?”
“First, because I believe that if you break through your limits, that realization will return to me again. Aren’t we sparring friends?”
She nodded and asked,
“And the second reason?”
“Senior, you’re the only one among the Demon Venerables who uses a sword. You are the only person I can discuss swordsmanship with. You know my father’s personality well enough. From whom would I learn swordsmanship? On whom would I have an influence? I have no one but you, Sword Venerable.”
Of the three reasons, this seemed to touch her the most. A surge of emotion passed through her.
“That is why I should have come to see you first, and I should have come to see you most often……”
I spoke honestly.
“It felt as though you would always remain exactly as you were. It was a selfish and ugly thought. I should have cared for the good people first.”
At that, the Ilhwa Sword Venerable spoke in a somewhat self-mocking voice.
“I am not that good a person. Perhaps you were taking care of people in the proper order after all……”
A certain regret passed through her eyes.
For a moment, neither of us spoke, each lost in our own thoughts.
I did not force out obvious comfort in this situation, saying, No, Sword Venerable, you are a good person.
What was needed now was this.
“May I come again tomorrow?”
The Ilhwa Sword Venerable nodded with an expression that said I could come not only tomorrow, but for the rest of my life.
* * *
“Since when did you like flowers?”
Even at the Blood Heaven Blade Demon’s words, I continued staring at the flowerpot by the window.
“It looks like a somehow sly flower.”
On my way back to my quarters, I stopped by the Blood Heaven Blade Demon’s place, and there was something by the window that I had never seen before. It was a flowerpot with flowers planted in it. If I had come here first, I would have simply thought the Blood Heaven Blade Demon had bought the flowers.
“What exactly is inside the head of someone who looks at a flower and calls it sly?”
“Where did you get the flower?”
“Someone gave it to me.”
When he gave the Ilhwa Sword Venerable the book and the tea as gifts, the Ilhwa Sword Venerable must have given him the flowerpot as a gift. Or perhaps it had been the other way around.
‘Brother Chwima, you’re amazing!’
It seemed Chwima’s efforts to reconcile the two of them had finally borne fruit.
“Who?”
“Someone I know gave it to me.”
“So who was it?”
“You’re noisy when I’m trying to read.”
The Blood Heaven Blade Demon did not say to the very end that the Ilhwa Sword Venerable had given it to him. I did not press him further. I also held back from joking around.
How happy must he be right now? And not with anyone else, but with the Ilhwa Sword Venerable. Resolving past misunderstandings and conflicts, even exchanging gifts.
Hold back. If I’m going to tease him, I can tease him later.
“Stop staring at it! If you release your qi wrong, the flower will die.”
If that happened, he might unleash a killing move at me.
Daeryong, the flowerpot here is more precious than the one in the office. If you drop it while training, you’ll have to undergo hell training for at least a year.
“I’ll be going.”
“Why are you leaving already?”
“I’m in the middle of hell training these days. I’m probably working the hardest in the whole cult.”
“You’ve even become Young Cult Leader. What more wealth and glory are you trying to enjoy, working so hard?”
Because my relationship with them had changed completely from before my regression, if I died now, the Demon Venerables would all die too. If I were dying, would the Blood Heaven Blade Demon simply stand by and watch?
That is why. To save everyone.
‘I’m doing this so that even if someone has to leap into hell, it’ll be me.’
As for that wealth and glory, please enjoy it yourself, Elder. Spend your later years happily with the Sword Venerable, all cozy together, traveling around the Central Plains.
* * *
The next day, I sparred with the Ilhwa Sword Venerable again.
Perhaps she had not slept all night, for her eyes were a little bloodshot.
“I lost some sleep training yesterday.”
It seemed she had spent the entire night trying to turn yesterday’s realization into skill.
I sparred with her again. Because we knew each other’s moves, we gradually began using more powerful techniques, and toward the end, the exchanges were almost indistinguishable from actual combat.
After the spar ended, we discussed the contents of today’s fight. Because the flow of the fight had been similar, much of it overlapped with what we had talked about yesterday, but we spoke as though it were the first time.
As we talked, the conversation sometimes branched into new topics. Stories of swordsmanship training in childhood, and even methods for raising flowers.
I went the next day, and the day after that too. I went with the thought that I should make up now for all the times I had not visited often enough. I went with the determination to keep coming until she grew sick of me and told me to stop.
The pattern of the spars was similar, but we were feeling changes.
Even with the same technique, the speed differed, and the internal energy infused into it differed. Some days it was fast, and other days it was slow. An opportunity to test one’s sword art to one’s heart’s content like this truly did not come easily.
And this morning.
I used the first form of the Nine Flames Demonic Art, the Annihilation Form.
Saaaaaak!
The sound was different.
Slice! Slice! Slice! Slice!
Startled, I ran over and saw that the wooden dummy had been cut into exactly four pieces.
“It worked!”
At last, I had succeeded in making sword qi fly in from four directions simultaneously.
It seemed my spars and conversations with the Sword Venerable had helped in some way.
From that day on, I devoted myself even more to training.
I had a desire. I wanted to see the lesser evil spirit in the Annihilation Form. That desire drove me to the utmost effort.
Once a day without fail, I stopped by the Sword Venerable’s place, sparred with her, and discussed martial learning.
If someone were watching us, they might think we were repeating the same thing over and over, but it was not the same.
Within the power granted by repetition, we grew.
The more the Sword Venerable grew, the more I grew as well. Influenced by me, the Sword Venerable grew, and I received back the influence of the Sword Venerable who had grown. We were burning with the fervor shared only by those who wielded swords.
And there was a change in our relationship as well.
“I changed the house because of Senior Blade Demon.”
She revealed her honest feelings.
“These days, I have been trying to forget the old grudges with Senior Blade Demon and get along well with him. In the process, I found myself thinking a great deal about the past. Back then, I liked splendid and pretty things. That was who I was. While thinking that, I suddenly changed it on impulse. It is embarrassing, but I did not change it after some grand deliberation.”
It must have been longing for her younger days. Those days she wanted so desperately to return to.
“You did well. Later, if you miss the cottage, you can change it again.”
“Would that not make me look too frivolous?”
“To me, you would look like someone with a free spirit.”
Yes, I am no longer at an age to live while worrying about others’ opinions, the Ilhwa Sword Venerable said, laughing pleasantly. It was the moment I realized that the distance between us had, before I knew it, gone from five steps to three.
Meanwhile, my training continued.
I trained day and night. Then, one day, after repeating the Annihilation Form countless times.
Saaak!
The sound of the Annihilation Form changed again.
At that very moment!
I saw it. A pitch-black being cutting off the wooden dummy’s neck.
‘Finally!’
One of the four evil spirits had appeared.