“Hah, hah.”
Seo Daeryong’s ragged breaths spread toward the night sky as he lay flat on his back on the ground.
The moon that had been shining so brightly was nowhere to be seen. He had begun training after his day’s work, before evening, and now midnight had long since passed.
‘I finally did it!’
When he had been in a state where it seemed impossible to swing even once more, he had swung another thousand times. To think he had swung this heavy saber two thousand times in a single day.
Seo Daeryong could hardly believe what he had accomplished. Of course, toward the end his form must have completely fallen apart, but he had gritted his teeth and kept swinging.
He thought he should get up and go home now, but Seo Daeryong could not move a finger. Sleep came pouring over him.
Seo Daeryong dreamed.
Geom Mugeuk was surrounded by enemies and in danger. Just as the enemies rushed at him while he was wounded—
A blast of saber qi shot out like lightning and swept through them. The enemies caught in the saber qi were reduced to bloody pulp and vanished.
Then, as though a single plum blossom were falling with lofty grace, he descended between the enemies and Geom Mugeuk. Now that he had become the greatest master of saber arts, he was holding a huge greatsaber like the Blood Heaven Saber Demon.
He looked back at Geom Mugeuk and asked with a faint smile.
“Are you all right, Lord Pavilion Master?”
A satisfied smile formed on the lips of Seo Daeryong, who was asleep.
“My right-hand man! You came!”
At Geom Mugeuk’s words, laden with surging emotion, Seo Daeryong turned toward the enemies and said handsomely,
“I am here now, so rest! Sleep deeply!”
Then a familiar voice came from somewhere.
“Shouldn’t you be getting up now?”
Seo Daeryong instinctively let those words pass him by and rolled over. He did not want to wake from such a pleasant dream. The dream of becoming a master and roaming the world was, after all, his true dream as well.
Seo Daeryong kept sleeping.
In his dream, after rescuing beauties in peril, he boarded a boat and left with them. He woke from sleep with a pleased smile as he watched the women engage in a subtle battle of wits to monopolize his love. Among them was his junior, Jo Hyang.
It was the first time in his life he had woken up smiling like this.
He felt so good. So good that he did not even want to get up… But where was this?
An unfamiliar ceiling.
No, not entirely unfamiliar.
‘No way?’
Seo Daeryong sprang up and screamed.
“Ugh!”
Quite apart from the wonderful dream, his entire body hurt as though it were about to fall apart. It felt as if someone had beaten him all night with a club.
Seo Daeryong looked around.
‘This place is?’
It was the very sleeping chamber of the Blood Heaven Saber Demon where he had drunk and fallen asleep.
‘Good heavens! Why am I sleeping here?’
He remembered swinging the second thousand times and lying down on the ground.
Fortunately, the Blood Heaven Saber Demon was not in the room.
Groaning, he got up and carefully moved his feet.
When Seo Daeryong walked to the window, he flinched in surprise.
In the courtyard where he had swung the saber yesterday, the Blood Heaven Saber Demon was swinging his saber. Seo Daeryong, who had been about to run out at once and greet him, stopped.
His gaze had been seized by the sight of him swinging the saber.
The Blood Heaven Saber Demon swung the saber in the exact stance he had taught him yesterday. The way he held the saber was the same, and the way he swung it was the same.
At that moment, Seo Daeryong understood. The training he had been taught was the training the Blood Heaven Saber Demon himself had done when he first learned martial arts.
‘He didn’t just make me do it at random to make me suffer.’
Then, as if he had eyes on the back of his head, the Blood Heaven Saber Demon, still swinging his saber, suddenly said,
“You think you can slack off because the Pavilion Master isn’t there?”
“Huh! Now that you mention it?”
The sun was already high in the sky.
“Aaagh! I’m late.”
Seo Daeryong hurriedly dressed and came outside.
“I’ll be going now.”
Seo Daeryong bowed deeply and was about to turn away, then turned back again.
“Thank you very much for letting me sleep here again.”
Even if the Blood Heaven Saber Demon had given him money or handed him a treasured saber, he would not have been this moved. Ah, of course he would have been happy, but the nature of the feeling would have been different from what he felt now.
For the Blood Heaven Saber Demon, was letting someone sleep in his own bed perhaps more difficult than giving them money? This feeling of being cherished by him could not be compared to anything else.
“Next time, if something like this happens again, please just throw me into any guest room. Just don’t kill me. Then I’ll see you this afternoon.”
At that, the Blood Heaven Saber Demon asked with an unexpectedly surprised expression,
“You’re coming?”
“Of course I have to come.”
“I won’t go easy on you because you’re sore. Today will be two thousand times too.”
At the words “two thousand times,” his entire body recoiled in horror and screamed that it was impossible, but his mouth said, “Yes!” After all, his mouth was not the part that would suffer.
After answering vigorously, Seo Daeryong ran off.
“I’m late! Late!”
He was so exhausted he felt as if he might die. He hated even imagining training again today, but strangely, he felt good.
He wanted to keep learning from the Blood Heaven Saber Demon. To be honest, he wanted to look good in his eyes.
* * *
The medicine I had been decocting over several days was complete.
I placed the prepared medicine into a vial the size of my palm. There were still five days left until the Blood God Rite.
Now that the medicine was made, I intended to check whether the secret passage was working properly today and scout all the way to the Pungcheon Cult Leader’s throne.
After descending the mountain, the place I arrived at was a wasteland not far from the Pungcheon Cult.
It was a place where a few withered trees and rocks stood, where poisonous insects and venomous snakes swarmed, and where trash blown in by the wind rolled about. Even if one stayed there all day, no one would come.
There was a large boulder there, and I operated the hidden mechanisms below both sides of the boulder in succession.
Srrrk.
Then the boulder opened, revealing a passage. I had admired it back then as well, but even seeing it now, it truly was a well-made mechanism. How could they create a passage that left no trace like this?
Once I entered the boulder, the door closed automatically.
When I operated the hidden mechanism from inside, a door opened in the floor.
I took out a night-shining pearl and descended into the underground passage. The passage was wide. It seemed to have been made so that the Yin Thunder Bell could be transported in an emergency. Thanks to that, I had been able to steal the Yin Thunder Bell through this place.
I took out the vial and applied the medicine to my face and hands.
If I applied this medicine, even a master with an exceptional sense of smell would not be able to catch my scent.
I slowly walked down the passage.
I stopped a considerable distance away from the secret passage leading into the room where the throne was. In the past, I had gone closer to investigate, but there was no need for that now. I had gained a way to examine things safely.
I closed my eyes and emitted my qi. A single strand of qi advanced along the passage. After turning a corner and traveling for quite a while longer, the qi reached the secret passage.
When I first learned this secret technique from Father, I had not known I would be able to emit qi so thinly and over such a long distance to use it for reconnaissance in actual combat.
The qi slipped out through a small gap in the passage.
The instant my qi entered the new space—
I felt an overwhelming presence on one side.
‘It’s the Pungcheon Cult Leader!’
As expected of a cult leader, the aura I sensed from him was far from ordinary. I quickly moved my qi in the opposite direction.
The person I sought next was the master sensitive to scent.
Sure enough, he was near the Yin Thunder Bell.
Once I had confirmed both of them, my qi disappeared. Since this was something I had already experienced once, there was no need to risk being discovered.
Having safely finished my reconnaissance, I returned to the mountain.
After finishing a meal of dried meat, I sat cross-legged and cultivated the Heavenly Demon Body-Protecting Art.
For the remaining five days, I would not budge from the mountain and would stay shut in. If I wandered around for no reason and got swept by fate into some strange incident, problems could arise.
Not creating variables—that was the bare minimum courtesy owed to all my past efforts.
* * *
The day of the Blood God Rite dawned.
Before setting out, I looked up at the sky once and prayed that today’s affair would succeed.
When Father had told me of the two methods that could block the Soul-Capturing Art, I had thought in my heart that there was a method a hundred times easier than those.
Hoping that my thoughts would prove correct and that I could safely bring this matter to an end, I descended the mountain.
The road to the Pungcheon Cult was packed with people who had come to participate in the ceremony.
They were of many kinds. From the heads of great sects that had dealings with the Pungcheon Cult, to martial artists from small sects who wanted to at least show their faces, to merchants trying to sell goods to the attendees.
On the day the Blood God Rite was held, everyone had to go to the Pungcheon Cult on foot like this, regardless of status. This was the authority of the Blood God Rite.
I watched them walking from a distance, then headed for the wasteland where the secret passage was located.
As I went there, all sorts of thoughts crossed my mind.
What if the door suddenly doesn’t open? What if the event is suddenly canceled? What if they change it so the Pungcheon Cult Leader personally rings the bell? What if I was mistaken about how to obtain it?
Thus does anxiety lunge at us, trying to erode our souls.
At times like this, there is nothing to do but trust yourself. The belief that such misfortune will not come, and even if it does, that you will overcome it well. The best weapon against anxiety is faith in oneself.
Through the secret passage, I arrived near the room where the Pungcheon Cult Leader’s throne was and waited there for the right time to come. Of course, I had applied the odor-blocking medicine not only to my face and hands, but to my body as well.
When to move had already been decided. The moment the Yin Thunder Bell began ringing and had been struck thirty-six times would be the time for me to begin the operation.
How long did I wait like that in the darkness?
A faint bell sound began to reach me. I waited while counting the sounds.
When the bell had rung thirty-three times, I slowly moved and went below the secret passage.
When the thirty-fifth bell rang, I quietly opened the secret passage in the floor beside the throne and went outside.
The master bound in shackles was in the middle of striking the final bell. Because the Pungcheon Cult Leader allowed no one else to enter this place where the sacred object was kept, there was only the shackled man here.
The moment he struck the final, thirty-sixth bell—
I unleashed the Wind God’s Four Steps. I approached the shackled martial artist with Dark Shadow Step. Moving toward him soundlessly like a ghost, I struck his paralysis acupoint and sleep acupoint at the same time. Without even realizing he had been struck, he fell asleep standing.
It had happened in an instant, but it was a technique in which the highest level of skill had been displayed in succession.
After subduing him like that, I went to the Blood Buddha standing behind the Yin Thunder Bell.
The time given to me now was the time it would take the Pungcheon Cult Leader to return here—one cup of tea’s worth.
When I firmly pressed the closed eyes of the Blood Buddha, its eyes snapped open.
The Blood Buddha with its eyes open was terrifying.
When I pressed once more, the eyeballs protruded forward.
Inside the protruding eyeballs, they were about one-third filled with a white liquid.
This was the very reason I had run such a long road.
The root of the Soul-Capturing Art cultivated by the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable was the demonic arts of the Blood Cult.
The successor to that Blood Cult was none other than this Pungcheon Cult.
Father knew this much as well, but there was one thing he did not know.
Blood-Eye Pure Water.
It was holy water secretly passed down only to the cult leaders of the Pungcheon Cult.
If this Blood-Eye Pure Water was placed in the eyes, one could see the method to break the Blood Cult’s sorcery. One could discern the essence of sorcery with one’s eyes.
I had heard it had been created and handed down from ancient times to prevent rebellions within the cult, but because the method of its creation and preservation was passed down only to the cult leader and his successor, outsiders absolutely did not know of its existence. The person who had told me this fact was the Pungcheon Cult Leader’s son, Ling Baijun.
When I came here before, I had no time to put this in because I was busy fleeing with the Yin Thunder Bell.
Now, at last, it was the moment I obtained the Blood-Eye Pure Water.
I took out the eyes of the Blood Buddha. There was a small hole above each eyeball.
Drop!
One drop of the Blood-Eye Pure Water contained in the right eyeball went into my right eye.
Drop!
One drop of the Blood-Eye Pure Water contained in the left eyeball went into my left eye.
When the Blood-Eye Pure Water entered my eyes, they stung and burned as though they had caught fire. There was pain, but fortunately, it did not blind me or anything of the sort.
When I placed the eyeballs back where they had been, they sank inside, and the Blood Buddha closed its eyes again.
There was enough pure water remaining inside the eyeballs, so it could be given to the next successor without issue, and they would not even know that two drops of this Blood-Eye Pure Water had disappeared.
I entered the underground passage and, before completely closing the door, sent out two streams of finger wind.
Swish.
The shackled master woke from his sleep.
For a moment, he looked bewildered, but soon confirmed that nothing had happened around him and began doing his work. It was a move no one but a master of my level could possibly have pulled off.
I wondered what story that man had that left him bound like that, but even so, I was not in a situation where I could save someone whose identity I did not even know. He was not someone who belonged to the fate changed by my regression.
I quietly slipped out of the secret passage.
When the time came, I had intended to gather, one by one, the fortuitous opportunities related to the materials for the Great Art, but because of the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable, I had obtained the Blood-Eye Pure Water sooner than expected.
Whatever the reason, there is always joy when one accomplishes something great. Especially when, as now, I had gained an ability I had never possessed before, that joy was difficult to put into words.
It was not merely because I had become able to kill the Soul-Capturing Demon Venerable. It was because I believed this new power would somehow be of help on my journey toward Hwa Mugi.
After leaving the secret passage, I could have enjoyed the Blood God Rite with the composure of a victor, but I did not look back and ran toward the main cult.
I wanted no variables, not until the very end.