Sound and scent.
A beam of light stretched out, burrowing beyond the fog.
The vermilion light was truly alien.
It was not exactly bright.
Yet within its hazy glow was an abundance of clarity.
It was a truly paradoxical light.
“Why… are you doing that?”
As I began moving my feet little by little, Namgung Bia asked me from behind.
“Why? Because up ahead….”
The mouth that had been about to ask stopped short.
There was no way she could fail to see such a vivid light.
Only then did I narrow my eyes and ask Namgung Bia,
“You can’t see that?”
“…?”
Namgung Bia tilted her head as if she had no idea what I meant.
Apparently, she truly could not see it.
‘Can I see it alone?’
That meant I was the only one looking at a light so blatantly visible.
[What is this “something you can see” you keep talking about?]
‘It seems even Old Man Sin can’t see it.’
If even Old Man Sin, who was with me as though sharing my field of vision, could not see this, then perhaps this was another ability of the orb.
Whether that was true or not—
‘For now, I should follow it.’
I had no other choice at the moment.
If I wanted to find a path through this insane fog, I had to try anything.
‘Since expanding my sense of perception has become useless.’
My internal energy was functioning normally, but using it to survey my surroundings was not working properly.
There was probably something in the fog that filled the area around us.
‘Right. There was no way fog that had persisted for hundreds of years could be normal in the first place.’
Given the state of this place, it was understandable that the Black Night Palace had established its main palace here.
Even if its main palace was somewhere in the Mudong Mountain Range,
it would not only be difficult to find—
if they had also set up a formation here, there was no way anyone could easily discover it.
I tightly seized Namgung Bia’s wrist behind me.
“Follow me carefully.”
“…Yes.”
I heightened my sense of perception as much as I could.
I could not feel things properly, but I could see to some extent.
That extent was only the space directly before my eyes, but in a mountain range whose terrain I did not know, even that was a considerable help.
Thus, I carefully moved forward while holding Namgung Bia’s arm.
Although I had abruptly grabbed her and led her along without any explanation,
Namgung Bia voiced no complaint.
Perhaps she was watching herself after I had teased her so much for being directionally challenged.
After that, we walked for a long while, piercing through the fog.
Even distances that would ordinarily have taken only a few leaps
could barely be covered because we had to proceed so cautiously.
[Truly, what a vicious fog.]
‘Yes. It’s disgusting beyond words.’
[This is the remnant of a monster?]
‘Yes.’
This special fog had formed in the past, around the time a white-grade Demon Realm Gate opened.
It was the trace left behind after the monster that had emerged from it died.
Historically, the number of white-grade monsters could be counted on one hand, and humanity had succeeded in sealing or exterminating every one of them.
Yet, as proof of how terrifyingly powerful those monsters had been, they left traces of themselves upon the world even after death.
The fog in the Mudong Mountain Range was one such trace.
The cold that was said to sleep beneath the North Sea was another.
The scorching heat in the west was the same.
To think they could influence nature even after death. It was truly absurd.
Old Man Sin clicked his tongue at this.
He seemed displeased by something.
[If you are going to deal with creatures like these, you ought to clean up properly afterward. The way these people have handled things is simply disgraceful.]
A fog covering an entire mountain range.
Old Man Sin was saying that this was the result of exterminating a monster without properly cleaning up afterward.
Of course, exterminating a calamity such as a white-grade monster was undoubtedly an achievement of staggering proportions.
But if Old Man Sin spoke that way, I had to understand.
[In my day… after we eliminated creatures like that, we even cleaned up properly. But these juniors… Tsk, tsk.]
The era in which Old Man Sin had fought against the Blood Demon.
It had also been an era when the monsters that emerged were especially high-grade.
Given that Old Man Sin had operated as the Mount Hua Immortal Sword,
he must have had a record of encountering white-grade monsters as well.
Moreover, there was far too much evidence scattered throughout the world proving that this had truly been the case.
The current state of the Mudong Mountain Range alone made that clear.
‘You’re right.’
[Hm? What has happened to you? You, brat, agreeing with me…?]
‘Indeed. You should have cleaned up properly.’
[…Hm?]
Old Man Sin expressed his confusion, as though he did not understand what I meant.
The monster that had turned the mountain range into this mess was a creature known as the Fog Dragon.
It had covered the mountain range in fog after its death, as though cursing it—
and it was the white-grade monster exterminated by the Mount Hua Immortal Sword, Sin Cheol.
[…]
When I told Old Man Sin this fact, he did not say a word for some time.
It seemed he knew he was embarrassed.
******************
After walking for a long while, following the light,
I eventually reached the edge of the fog while walking alongside the now-silent Old Man Sin and the ordinarily quiet Namgung Bia.
‘How much time has passed…?’
I could not be certain because of the sheer amount of fog, but judging by how my vision was gradually darkening,
night would arrive soon.
‘As for camping….’
We could do it if necessary, but the situation was unfavorable.
For one thing, the Orb of the Heavenly Road had become useless.
The light still guided us properly,
but even though the orb had regained its color, I could no longer determine what was happening to Gu Huibi as I had before.
My field of vision was not changing.
That meant—
‘Is there some kind of problem?’
I did not know whether the orb had a limited number of uses,
but judging by the current situation, I did not think that was the case.
If so, then there might be some problem with Gu Huibi herself.
That was ultimately nothing more than a possibility.
Regardless, I had lost what was practically my only source of information.
As such, I needed to somehow find a way to break through the situation,
but it was not easy to proceed under the circumstances.
The fog was an obvious problem, and now night had arrived as well.
I truly could not see even an inch ahead.
‘There’s a problem with the orb’s light too.’
A single beam of light shone ahead, as though indicating our destination.
Yet, at some point, I began to feel as if it were circling around us.
It was not that the light itself was wrong.
Rather, it appeared to be indicating the correct path.
But—
“Tsk.”
When I frowned and looked around, Namgung Bia asked,
“Why… are you doing that?”
“I think there’s a formation here.”
I could sense a subtle change in the atmosphere.
It was so faint that I would not have noticed it without concentrating.
Since I had already been certain that a formation was present, however, I was able to seize upon that minute discrepancy.
The problem was—
‘How do I unravel this and get inside?’
If this was indeed the main palace,
then it would not be strange for there to be Black Night Palace warriors nearby in addition to the formation.
I would have to advance while keeping watch over my surroundings.
The dense fog that rendered my sense of perception useless.
The darkness that blocked even the limited vision I had retained.
The tension of being stranded in the middle of nowhere.
‘This is the worst.’
Ha.
The situation was bad enough to make me laugh hollowly.
But this was not the time to let my emotions drag me along the ground.
‘I have to find a way.’
I had always been better than anyone at struggling against impossible circumstances.
Something like this no longer bothered me.
‘What should I do?’
If there was a formation ahead, could I destroy it by force?
‘No, that won’t work.’
If I failed, I might draw unnecessary attention from them.
And even if—just hypothetically—I managed to destroy the formation,
they would notice because of the backlash caused by its collapse.
‘Then what should I do?’
I had no specialized knowledge of formations.
Thinking back to my previous life—
‘…I just broke through and went inside.’
Most of my solutions had been crude and forceful, so they would be of no help in the current situation.
In my previous life, I would simply tear through a formation, go inside, and burn everything to the ground.
Even before I became a demon, whenever things like this happened, Jamnyong had handled everything.
Thinking of it made my head throb as I was reminded anew of how recklessly I had lived in my previous life.
‘For now… should I wait?’
No matter how urgent the situation was, night had fallen, and in the end, there was nothing I could do immediately.
I was not in a position to simply break through and deal with whatever happened afterward.
‘…And I’m not alone.’
I had to judge the situation more rationally.
Having finished thinking, I spoke to Namgung Bia behind me.
“For now, let’s find a safe place and wait for daylight—what are you doing?”
Namgung Bia was looking around while sniffing the air.
Faced with her bewildering behavior, I asked again,
“What are you doing right now…?”
“I’m… looking for a smell….”
“Looking for a smell? What smell?”
Why did she keep acting like this?
Thinking that, I unconsciously followed Namgung Bia and sniffed the air as well,
but I could not detect any particularly unusual scent.
All I sensed was the distinctive smell of grass from the forest.
“What smell could you possibly be—?”
Just as I was about to ask what in the world was going on—
Shrring.
Namgung Bia suddenly drew her sword.
Then, the hair of Namgung Bia, who gripped her sword tightly, swayed faintly as though brushed by the wind.
In an instant, lightning energy coiled around the sword, and a tingling sensation spread through the surroundings.
I panicked and shouted at Namgung Bia.
“Hey, what are you doing!”
Lightning energy was not only conspicuous by nature,
its aura was especially vivid, making it easy for those nearby to notice even the slightest lapse in control.
Despite my shout, Namgung Bia continued staring calmly at a single point.
After gazing silently into the empty air, Namgung Bia spoke.
“Here.”
“Here, my ass—get rid of your energy first! If we get discovered like this—!”
Perhaps she did not hear me, because Namgung Bia swung her sword, filled with lightning energy, through the air without hesitation.
Then—
Slice.
“…!”
Though she had only cut through empty air, I heard the sound of something being severed.
At the same time, a pure-white barrier slowly descended into view.
“…What is this?”
It was an utterly absurd sight.
As the transparent barrier vanished from the tip of Namgung Bia’s sword, a tiny gap formed in space.
It looked like a door.
“What the hell is this…? How did you even know?”
I asked Namgung Bia as I stared at it.
“…I smelled it.”
I frowned at Namgung Bia’s answer.
Her words made no sense to me.
What Namgung Bia had just done was locate an unstable gap in the formation and sever it with her sword energy.
A wrong swing could easily have caused a backlash.
Besides, gaps in formations were not something visible to the human eye in the first place.
She had not only found it—she had even succeeded in cutting it?
Watching her, I could not help but think of someone.
‘Jamnyong.’
The madman of the century born from Mount Wudang.
That man in my previous life had dealt with formations in exactly this manner as well.
He would look around, roughly slash through the air, and then announce that the problem had been solved.
It had stayed in my memory because he had been so irritatingly good at it.
I had been so unable to understand it that I had even asked Jamnyong how he did it.
His answer had been absurd.
—Listen carefully to the sounds. Then you’ll hear it.
—Hear what? The sound of my blood pressure bursting?
—I’ve been hearing that just fine for a while now.
—You little shit…!
I suddenly felt irritated as I recalled Jamnyong cackling as he looked at my face.
‘Putting that aside….’
In any case, when compared with what Namgung Bia had just said—
—I smell it.
—I hear it.
I felt that her method was strangely similar to Jamnyong’s.
Namgung Bia looked at me and spoke.
“Aren’t… you going in?”
The empty space Namgung Bia had created was slowly closing.
She had not dismantled the formation, but merely created a gap for a moment, so it would naturally fill in again.
Going by what Jamnyong had done in my previous life, it probably would not be possible to create another gap in the same place once it closed.
He had said that the people on the other side would notice by then.
Judging by that, there was no time to hesitate.
“…We have to go.”
I followed Namgung Bia into the gap.
And the place we entered was—
entirely different from the world outside the formation.
******************
The Palace Lord’s footsteps, which had been moving in time with the passing moments, suddenly stopped.
“My lord?”
The old man following behind him, Taejeol-gwi, called out to the Palace Lord, but—
“Hmm.”
The Palace Lord did not answer. He merely looked around with a strange expression.
Taejeol-gwi understood.
The Palace Lord was not looking at the palace walls, but beyond them.
After staring in that direction for a moment, the Palace Lord soon withdrew his gaze and looked ahead once more.
“…Taejeol-gwi.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Check the formation later.”
“…Understood.”
Although Taejeol-gwi accepted the order, he was puzzled inwardly.
‘The formation?’
He had personally inspected it quite recently, so there should have been nothing unusual.
Why, then, had the Palace Lord given such an order?
He was curious about the Palace Lord’s intentions, but the thought was soon forgotten.
The old man only had to obey the Palace Lord and do as he was told.
The Palace Lord began walking again.
His destination was, of course, ‘that’ room.
Sure enough, the Palace Lord once again arrived at the room he had visited yesterday.
As he approached the door, the Palace Lord thought,
‘By now, it should be finished.’
A day—that much time should have been enough for His Heaven to consume the flames.
The closer the Palace Lord drew to his destination, the more he felt his heart pounding.
Imagining the perfect form his Heaven would soon possess,
the Palace Lord felt a surge of longing.
Kuuung!
Once again, the enormous door began to move.
The Palace Lord opened it and slowly entered the room.
Bang!
The door closed as soon as the Palace Lord stepped inside.
The Palace Lord immediately dropped to his knees and faced Heaven.
“O Heaven… I…”
The Palace Lord began to speak, then stopped at the sight before him.
At the same time, astonishment spread across his face.
In a space that should have been filled with nothing but darkness, light had entered.
A deep violet flame illuminated the room.
This flame was undoubtedly the sacred fire that Heaven had kindled.
From the center of the flames, a voice rang out.
“…Why is this book so difficult? Is there nothing else?”
“A book.”
“No, I mean, is there no book other than this one?”
“No.”
“…You sure know how to keep your answers short. Didn’t I tell you to say at least two words?”
“There isn’t.”
“Good. Well done.”
Gu Huibi, who should have long since vanished from this world after becoming one with Heaven, was sitting comfortably inside the room.
And seated atop Gu Huibi’s legs was his Heaven.