Prologue
The Heavenly Demon was dead.
With his death, the long, drawn-out Righteous-Demonic War also came to an end.
The hellish years that had dragged on could finally close their curtains with the death of the Heavenly Demon.
Many rejoiced and celebrated the Demonic Cult's defeat, believing they had finally reclaimed peace.
But what remained at the war's end was not just the relief of conclusion and peace.
Two of the Nine Sects One Faction that upheld the Righteous Martial World had burned to ash, and one of the Four Great Families had fallen.
Even the masters of Cheonoecheon, known as the Three Venerables among the countless martial artists of the Central Plains, all met their deaths at the hands of the Heavenly Demon.
Though they had succeeded in killing the Heavenly Demon and erasing the Demonic Cult from this land, it didn't change the fact that it was a war filled only with losses.
Too much had been lost.
No one knew how much time it would take to reclaim what was scattered and rebuild what was destroyed.
Nevertheless.
Even though so much had burned to ash, what remained was not solely despair.
Somewhere, hope would bloom, and heroes who overcame crisis and carried on the path of righteousness would gradually emerge.
Except.
It had nothing to do with me.
"Where are they?"
A woman murmured in a small voice.
The place she stood was the torture chamber beneath the Martial Alliance.
She had a frail-looking figure with fair, beautiful skin.
Even though her hair, ruined from repeated grueling struggles, was hastily tied back, making her appear somewhat disheveled.
Her features were so refined they made even that seem noble.
Even if the world rotted and cracked apart, she alone seemed as though she would shine on her own.
Who could have known?
That this fragile and beautiful woman would behead the calamitous Heavenly Demon.
That a girl barely called a promising junior would one day become the strongest under the heavens—no one could have predicted it.
Divine Sword Wi Seol-ah.
The direct disciple of the Sword Venerable who was killed by the Heavenly Demon's hand, and the woman called the strongest under the heavens after the Righteous-Demonic War.
That this woman, who had just reached her twenties, ascended to such a position was not simply because the Three Venerables no longer existed in this era.
With a single casual swing of her sword, she could cause natural disasters, and with one stroke, she slaughtered hundreds of demonic practitioners.
And in the final battle against the Heavenly Demon, after three days and nights of fierce combat, she not only killed the Heavenly Demon but wiped the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult off the map.
Everyone in the current martial world knew that she had rightfully claimed the arrogant title of the strongest under the heavens through her own power alone.
That woman was speaking to me.
"...I asked where they are."
Through my blurred vision, stained with blood from the grueling torture, her clothes came into view.
Her uniform, which should have been white, was covered in soot from who knows where, dyed black.
She seemed to expect an answer from me, but with my vocal cords destroyed, I could not speak.
Wi Seol-ah surely knew that too.
Yet she acted like this probably because she was that frustrated.
"You definitely know, don't you? Where the remaining demonic practitioners went."
I knew.
Of course I knew, and I even had the desire to tell her.
"If you have even a shred of conscience left..."
Since I couldn't speak, Wi Seol-ah hoped I would convey it by writing or drawing at least.
As evidence, the shackles that had bound me had long been removed.
Even though she should have known it was dangerous to carelessly release a prisoner's bonds.
Not that it mattered—against a woman who had killed even the god-like Heavenly Demon, I couldn't possibly inflict so much as a scratch on her.
But even if she wanted it and my heart agreed, there was nothing I could do.
The shackles placed on me were of a different kind.
That was why, even to Wi Seol-ah's words, I only stared emptily at the floor.
-Crack
A rough sound came from Wi Seol-ah's hand from how tightly she was clenching it.
"This is your last chance. Everyone wants you dead, but if you help me just this once, I'll stake everything I have to at least spare your life."
This was the woman praised as the strongest under the heavens after the war ended.
"...So please."
And she was begging me this desperately.
Hatred toward the escaped demonic practitioners? Vengefulness?
Naturally she had some, but there was something more important.
'It's because of the Shooting Star Sword.'
The relationship between the Shooting Star Sword Jang Seon-yeon and Wi Seol-ah was well-known throughout the Central Plains.
He was a promising swordsman expected to lead the martial world, called a hero, and was betrothed to Wi Seol-ah.
And rumors circulated that Jang Seon-yeon was currently missing, having been kidnapped by demonic practitioners.
Was that why she was like this?
The strongest woman was this anxious over a single man.
"So tell me. Where are they hiding?"
Wi Seol-ah glared at me with burning eyes.
Suddenly, it felt absurd.
In the past, she and I didn't have such a broken relationship.
Where it went wrong would be endless to trace, and since everything came full circle as my own karmic debt, it wasn't a memory worth dredging up.
I just found myself disgusting, a worthless creature.
I was a traitor who had plunged daggers into the backs of countless people and turned to the demonic path.
She was the hero who supported and lifted everyone up.
When I showed no reaction, Wi Seol-ah threw me aside as if giving up.
I hit the rough stone wall, but felt no pain.
My body was already destroyed beyond repair.
"If I had known you were such a vile person. I would have killed you the moment I first saw you."
I deeply regret that.
Her quietly whispered afterwords rang especially loud in my ears.
The moment we first met.
When would Wi Seol-ah remember it as?
Probably very differently from how I remembered it.
Or perhaps she didn't attach much meaning to it, as it was just a passing moment in the past.
To her, it was probably a meaningless memory.
To me, unlike her, it was among the larger regrets that had piled up big and small.
A memory of the past lying deep beneath the floor among finely ground fragments.
What was it exactly that brought me here?
-Creak
Wi Seol-ah, who had been about to close the iron bars and leave, stopped at a sound.
When she turned her head, she saw me, with my ruined body, creaking as I moved.
Wi Seol-ah's cold eyes wavered.
I was using my swaying hand to write something on the floor with my blood as ink.
With every line I wrote, blood gushed up from within.
The curse placed on me was clear.
A Heavenly Demon's dark art that would burst my heart and kill me if I violated its conditions.
My life was bound to the simple phrase: "Do not betray the Demonic Cult."
I had seen countless people die from this.
From mere third-rate martial artists to those who reached the peak, all was futile before the Heavenly Demon's dark art.
One might think that she, who had even killed the Heavenly Demon, could undo the curse on me, but undoing it now would change nothing.
I was simply a bit curious.
Whether my heart, which should have burst long ago when I struck the first line, held on due to my mental fortitude or mere miracle.
Though either way, everything was futile.
"What... are you..."
Wi Seol-ah hurriedly approached, seemingly saying something, but her voice didn't reach me properly.
Ignoring her, I continued my action.
Judging by how she didn't stop me, she must have wanted this too.
If I said it was a false charge, that it wasn't my will, would she believe me?
No way.
There were too many excuses—reasons for this, circumstances for that—but I had no emotions left to carry with me at this point.
Ignoring my heart that felt ready to burst at any moment, I painstakingly wrote line by line.
Each time, blood streamed down from my mouth along my chin.
Wi Seol-ah seemed to notice something was wrong and reached out to me.
But I was faster.
As I finished the last line.
As if it had been waiting, my heart burst with a thud!
On the floor was written the location where the demonic practitioners were hiding and the scant information she had so desperately wanted.
Wi Seol-ah caught me as I swayed and collapsed.
She probably didn't want the barely written words on the floor to be ruined.
Wi Seol-ah looked at me with shocked eyes. My body grew cold, and it wasn't long before my consciousness faded.
What a complete mess.
Why did I live such a life?
Whatever the reason, it didn't matter from the start. It was always going to be this way.
Gu Yang-cheon of the Shanxi Gu Family.
Born into a prestigious righteous family, lived as a righteous martial artist, then turned traitor to become a demonic practitioner.
After the Demonic Cult's defeat in the Righteous-Demonic War, captured and tortured to death.
Those few lines seemed fitting to describe my life.
A truly unremarkable life.
Even that unremarkable life was now over.
"Wanna eat a potato?"
"Hm?"
That was how it should have been.
EP.1 The Gu Family's Young Master (1)
The Gu Family's Young Master. 1
What was going on? How should I even describe this situation...?
I was standing in the middle of a bustling marketplace.
I slowly raised my head and looked at the sky.
Looking at the sun in a cloudless sky, my eyes naturally squinted.
The sun I hadn't seen in so long was incredibly bright. The passing crowds and many street stalls caught my eye.
Somewhere, steam rose along with a delicious smell of steaming dumplings.
The voices of merchants selling their wares were loud, and the small murmurs of the watching crowd mixed together, sounding even louder.
The marketplace in the area where I lived as a child was exactly like this. How long had it been since I'd seen such a lively marketplace? Probably close to ten years.
'Is this a dream?'
I had definitely died when my heart burst.
So what was this situation? A brief illusion shown after death? Did I unknowingly yearn for such a peaceful past?
With such a wretched life, perhaps I yearned for something ordinary.
"How ridiculous."
I was startled by the words that slipped out. Words were coming out. Since I couldn't speak after my throat was injured, that was only natural.
But that wasn't the only reason I was surprised.
The voice was thin and high. Like a young boy's voice. Only then did I examine my hands, fair and without a single scar.
They were thin and slender, far from looking like an adult man's hands.
My field of vision also felt at least a handspan lower than usual. I was definitely in a child's body right now.
'Is this a childhood memory?'
If so, from when? I had almost never come to the marketplace this freely.
Looking around, I noticed a young man scanning his surroundings with an anxious expression.
If my memory was correct, that man should be my guard.
And the first time I met that child was also when I had sneaked out like this.
I had been wandering recklessly through the marketplace when we happened to bump into each other.
There was a child who greeted me enthusiastically, someone he was meeting for the first time, claiming he had just met a peer while walking down the street.
From who knows where, he had stuffed steaming hot potatoes into a gourd larger than his own head and shoved it toward me.
"Wanna eat a potato?"
Just like now.
"Hm?"
Before I noticed, someone was talking to me. How bewildering—that even this was being reproduced.
What did I say back then, I wonder?
'Do you know who I am, daring to shove such trifles at me!'
That was probably what I said. Or maybe I said something even worse. Whether it was the child's shabby clothes that were the problem, or the potatoes he held that I didn't like, I don't know.
Truthfully, I was just thoughtless and ill-mannered. What more excuse was needed?
If I had known who that child was, if I had known the future, would I have acted differently?
Honestly, I'm not entirely sure. I was that reckless and immature.
"...Um... you... don't like potatoes?"
When I showed no reaction, the child hesitated and watched my face.
His clothes were covered in dust from rolling around who knows where.
Not only that, but his hair, grown long without proper care, completely covered his face.
If you saw him wrong, you'd think he was a child from a beggar's den. Seeing that, I let out a small laugh.
"...To think even this is being shown, I must have had a lot of lingering attachments."
"Hm?"
The child tilted his head at my murmur.
Could such a fantasy really erase even one of my regrets?
'That's impossible.'
Even so, I took a potato from the gourd the child held. Seeing me take it, the child smiled brightly.
One front tooth was missing—there was a hole where a tooth should have been.
Looking at the child's smile, I spoke.
"Thank you, I'll eat it well."
Those were definitely different words from what I said back then in my memory.
"Yeah...! My grandpa dug those up!"
After answering enthusiastically, he took out another potato from the gourd and bit into it with a full mouth.
I also followed the child and took a bite of the potato.
The problem was that the steaming potato was extremely hot.
It was a strange sense of dissonance.
'It's a dream, but it's hot?'
Could that happen? Or was it just an exceptionally realistic dream? Meanwhile, the potato was so hot I couldn't do anything about it.
"Ahaha! Your face turned red!"
The child laughed again, finding my squirming amusing. Even though the potato he ate must have been hot too, he somehow ate it without issue.
After floundering for a while, I endured the pain and finally swallowed the potato whole.
"Is it delicious?"
"Yeah... it's delicious."
It wasn't a lie. The potato was definitely delicious.
I didn't know why something in a dream had taste, but surprisingly, the potato was delicious.
As I was diligently eating the remaining potato in my hand, I saw the young man who appeared to be my guard approaching.
"Young Master...?"
The approaching guard frowned upon seeing the child in front of me. Soon after, he naturally placed his left hand on his sword hilt.
"How dare you touch someone of his—"
"Do you have any yakgwa?"
"Pardon?"
"I asked if you have yakgwa."
When I cut him off, he made a bewildered expression.
Asking the guard out of nowhere if he had yakgwa? Surprisingly, he did.
With a reluctant expression, the guard took out a wrapped yakgwa from his robes and handed it to me.
"Do you want to eat this?"
I handed the yakgwa I received from the guard to the child.
Because his hair covered his face, I couldn't see his expression, but I could tell the child was sufficiently surprised.
"R-really? You're giving this to me!?"
"You gave me delicious potatoes, and this is the only thing I have to give in return."
It was a childhood where I lived with sweets in my mouth. Because of that, even the guard would stuff yakgwa in my mouth like this when trying to stop me from throwing tantrums.
To think he had to carry yakgwa around while guarding me... He must have felt frustrated and miserable, wondering if he learned martial arts for this.
'Thinking about it now, it's something I feel quite sorry about.'
Unaware of my thoughts, the child took the yakgwa and jumped around happily.
Every time he jumped energetically, I felt anxious that the potatoes in the gourd he held might fall out.
"Thank you! I've never had this before!"
"Really? Do you happen to have more yakgwa?"
"...That was the last one."
I asked hoping to give him more, but unfortunately, it was the last one.
Meanwhile, perhaps finding my behavior strange, the guard was looking at me with surprised eyes.
"What are you looking at like that?"
"It's nothing."
The child had long set down the gourd he was holding and held the yakgwa carefully in his hands, taking a bite, worried it might drop.
As he bit into the yakgwa, his small shoulders bobbed.
"It's... so delicious..."
"I'm sorry, I wish I could give you more, but that was the last one."
At my words, he shook his head vigorously.
Whether he was saying it was okay or regretful, I couldn't tell.
Given that the child had devoured the adult-fist-sized potatoes in the blink of an eye, the yakgwa disappeared in a few bites.
Perhaps disappointed by that, tears seemed to form slightly in his eyes.
"I've never had anything like this before..."
"I'm glad it was delicious."
As if still wanting more, he picked up the gourd again and ate a potato, but his face wasn't as satisfied as before.
Had he already developed a taste for sweets after just one bite?
The child fidgeted and asked.
"Thank you, what's your name?"
Unlike when he offered the large potato, he seemed quite shy.
Was asking a name more embarrassing?
"Gu Yang-cheon, my name is Gu Yang-cheon."
I clearly enunciated my name. It was something I hadn't said in a very long time.
"Gu Yang-cheon..."
Upon hearing the name, the child smiled shyly. Soon after, he tried to say something with mumbling lips, but
an old man suddenly appeared, pushing through the crowd, and wrapped the child in his arms.
"Wei-ah!"
"Ah, Grandpa!"
"I told you not to let go of my hand and wander around!"
The child, who should have been startled, instead burrowed deeper into the old man's embrace.
Then he smiled brightly at the old man who was about to scold him.
"Wei-ah is fine! I took good care of the potatoes too!"
The child proudly showed the old man the gourd he had been carrying.
Setting aside the still-steaming potatoes, the old man held the child and looked at me with shaking eyes.
It was a face filled with fear.
Was it because of his neat clothes that didn't match the street? He seemed worried that a child from a noble house had been offended.
The old man continued speaking with a trembling voice.
"Our granddaughter doesn't know much about the world yet... I hope she didn't do anything to offend you..."
I knew that the old man's shabby appearance and his pitiful face of watching for the reaction of a small child who hadn't even reached his chest were all an act.
That old man was unmistakably a recluse whom even the current Martial Alliance Leader dared not treat carelessly, one of Heaven Beyond Heaven standing above countless martial artists.
"It's quite alright, sir. I happened to be hungry, and thankfully, she offered me a potato which I ate deliciously."
Perhaps because of my manner of speaking, which was unlike a child, the old man looked at me with slightly surprised eyes.
I wondered if I had overdone it, but what did it matter—it was a dream anyway.
"All I could offer in return was a small piece of yakgwa... I'm sorry it's so insignificant compared to what I received."
With those words, I performed a respectful fist-and-palm salute as politely as possible.
The old man still said nothing.
Unlike before, he only continued looking at me with slightly more solemn eyes. Had I not pleased him somehow?
A small silence stretched between me and the old man amid the bustling crowd.
Before long, it was none other than the guard who broke the brief silence.
"...Young Master, it's time for you to return now."
Oddly enough, the guard's voice was calm, but his eyes were wavering, perhaps not fully understanding the situation.
Hearing his words, I slowly relaxed my posture.
"Already?"
"Yes, if more time passes, we'll only arrive after sunset."
"Right, then we should go."
When I turned my head and looked at the old man again, his eyes had returned to the same shabby look as before.
"Sir, it seems I should be going now."
At my greeting, the old man tried to say something, but the child's words were faster.
"You're leaving already...?"
The child in the old man's arms looked at me with disappointment, but this was the right place to stop.
Both the memories of the past I was trying to rewrite, however ugly, and the story I occasionally recalled with regret—this was where they ended.
'I should wake up from the dream now.'
This was enough.
If asked what had changed, nothing. If asked if I felt relieved, nothing had changed at all.
But that too should end here.
Hiding my inner thoughts, I smiled at the child and spoke.
"Let's meet again if we get the chance, and the potato was really delicious, I mean it."
When I lightly waved my hand, the child smiled broadly and responded by waving both arms wide.
The old man repeatedly bowed his head and kept apologizing, but knowing his true identity, that sight was more terrifying to me.
After continuing his apologies, the old man eventually picked up the child and disappeared into the bustling crowd.
"...That was startling."
The old man's name was Wi Hyo-gun.
The symbol of the Righteous Path who had plunged his sword into the heart of the Black Dragon Sword—the first in the long history of the martial world to unify the Unorthodox Path and attempt to swallow the Sichuan region.
A figure who, until ten years ago, sat in the Martial Alliance Leader's seat and was an object of fear and terror to the Unorthodox practitioners.
Additionally, the old man had another title: Sword Venerable.
The old man had passed on the position of Martial Alliance Leader and simultaneously vanished without a trace.
How such a man was raising a young child in such an unassuming appearance in this place, I couldn't understand.
In the first place, no one would expect that such a shabby old man was one of the Three Venerables under heaven.
After watching where the old man disappeared for a long time, I also turned my back at the guard's urging.
The problem was that whether he was the Sword Venerable or not wasn't really that important.
The girl who had waved her hand vigorously at me from the Sword Venerable's arms kept lingering in my mind.
The sight of her smiling broadly as she offered me potatoes, and her expression of happiness as if she had gained the world from a single yakgwa.
It was completely different from the sight of her cutting down demonic practitioners with cold, sunken eyes, and ultimately beheading the Heavenly Demon.
Divine Sword Wi Seol-ah.
The child was none other than her.
That had just been my first meeting with Wi Seol-ah.
Of course, in my memory, we hadn't parted on such good terms.
In the past, I had hurled insults and thrown the gourd of potatoes to the ground.
I had left young Wi Seol-ah in tears, mocking her for a long time before walking away.
It was too twisted a nature to excuse as mere childishness.
"...I should go too."
What was haunting me so much that I was seeing this even at the moment of death?
Since I'd even rewritten it for self-satisfaction, there should be no lingering attachments.
I couldn't be sure myself, but that was how it should have been.
"Yes, we should return."
At the guard's response, I unknowingly smiled bitterly. It seemed he took my words as wanting to go home.
In truth, I could barely remember where my home even was.
'But why won't I wake up?'
I thought I'd done everything I needed to, so shouldn't this illusion or dream end? It felt strangely long.
"Young Master? You shouldn't go that way."
Following my hazy memories, I kept taking wrong turns.
Each time, I used the guard's directions as a guide to head home.
'I don't know. It'll end soon anyway.'
I had already prepared myself mentally, but I resented this dream that wouldn't actually end. There was nothing I could do about it.
In resignation, I simply let myself go with the flow. I figured it would end soon anyway.
It was only after several days had passed that I finally realized.
"...Fuck, why isn't this ending?"
That what I was experiencing was not a dream.