Thud.
Screeeech—!
A sound of nails raking hard against the wall.
Where my hand grazed, marks remained on the wall that had looked so solid.
I felt a slight snag, but cut through it with force.
Thud, thud—! Thud!
Being careful not to let the flow of mixed internal qi break.
I thrust my fists against the wall again and again.
Where my fist met the wall, it didn't stop; it punched straight through.
Crack—!
Cracks began to spiderweb from the many holes. Without a care, I kept throwing punches.
The internal qi surging from my dantian settled into my upper dantian.
Throughout my entire body, heat rampaged as if desperate to burst outward.
Enduring this was crucial.
That was, without a doubt, the most important method to maximize the physical body's capabilities.
“Huuuuuh.”
As I exhaled shallowly, heat laced my breath and hot air poured from my mouth.
What faintly permeated the air was unmistakably internal qi.
I rotated my upper body.
At the same time, I channeled the internal qi from my upper dantian into my fist and unleashed my final punch.
Crackle—! Boom!
At that instant, a deafening sound erupted in all directions, and the massive wall came crashing down.
Rumble—!
As fragments showered the floor, I regulated my breath, retrieving the heat and internal qi that had dispersed into the surroundings.
“Huu….”
After returning the energy that had spread throughout my body along the meridians back to my dantian.
I cooled my body, heated to its limit, and examined my condition.
While focusing intently and surveying myself here and there with my eyes closed, I had to furrow my brows.
‘It’s not seeping in properly.’
A few days had passed since I reached the Fire Realm, but the enlightenment I had attained there was not seeping into my flesh properly.
I had trained for a long time in the Demonic Realm and felt my realm rise accordingly.
After ascending to the realm and sorting myself out to some extent, I returned to the present world.
With the enlightenment gained then, I had managed to touch the Fire Realm immediately even in the present world, but…
‘The sense of disconnect won’t go away.’
It was considerably different from the realm I had felt in the Demonic Realm.
‘What’s different?’
At that time, I had trained focusing on mental imagery rather than physical training.
I knew I would lose everything when I returned to the present world, and I had thought mental imagery was the biggest obstacle preventing me from reaching the Fire Realm.
In the end, my prediction was correct.
Thanks to that, I succeeded in touching the Fire Realm immediately upon arriving in the present world, but…
‘At this rate, I’m nothing but a cheap imitation.’
If you asked whether I had truly reached the Fire Realm, the answer was no.
It was unstable.
As if my body’s balance had collapsed, there was no part of me that wasn’t uncomfortable.
If I had to find the reason…
‘First, I’ve never reached the Fire Realm using only the Gu family’s mental art.’
Because it was the first time I had reached the realm relying solely on the power of the Guyeomhwaryungong.
Unlike when I had been pulled up by demonic qi, perhaps the orthodox direction felt unfamiliar.
I wasn’t even certain of this. It was merely a guess.
If I thought of a second reason…
‘There’s too much energy contained inside.’
With the fire qi of the Guyeomhwaryungong as the base. From Mount Hua’s spiritual qi to demonic qi, and even blood qi on top of that.
If it were any other martial artist, having two such energies would be more than enough for them to collide and explode to death.
Yet I alone handled four.
Moreover, their natures were all different, and except for spiritual qi, they were all nothing but violent energies.
As I reached the Fire Realm and my vessel widened accordingly.
My ability to control and use energy was far more maximized than at the peak level, but…
‘By the same token, the other energies have grown stronger too.’
I could feel it.
Whenever I used my internal qi, the other energies I had pinned in the corners would writhe and poke their heads out.
Should I say their self-assertion had grown stronger?
Should I say they were protesting, demanding to be used too?
Whatever the case, it was not a welcome state.
Spiritual qi was not a dangerous energy to begin with.
As long as Sin Noya resided in my body, it wouldn’t collide with my internal qi and run rampant.
Having been mixed and used for a long time, it was already familiar to my body.
But the remaining two were different.
They were like demonic beasts.
Demonic qi, which couldn’t tolerate the existence of any energy besides itself.
And blood qi, whose intentions I couldn’t fathom, wriggling to expand its territory.
Since I knew both were not exactly sound energies, I wanted to avoid drawing them out as much as possible.
But the more I used my internal qi, the more they poked their heads out, so it was quite unnerving.
‘Yet I can’t put them away either.’
I had planted the demonic qi in my heart as if carving a brand into it, so I couldn’t remove it.
And blood qi wasn’t something that would come out simply because I tried to extract it.
The best I could do was try not to use them.
‘I succeeded in changing the demonic qi completely into my own energy, but the blood qi…’
Compared to demonic qi, which I had wielded so extensively in my previous life that I instinctively knew what to do with it.
Blood qi was an energy I simply couldn’t understand.
Perhaps because my body was a jumble of various energies and I couldn’t properly establish a framework, the enlightenment was slow to seep in too…
Of course, this too was just a guess.
‘…If there was one thing I was somewhat confident about.’
It was that I had overcome the problem of mental imagery to touch the Fire Realm, only to end up blocked by the same problem once again.
“…Tch….”
After finishing calming my body, I slowly opened my eyes.
Before I knew it, evening had fallen.
I looked at the risen moon and recalled what had happened during the day.
‘Wi Seol-a.’
Recalling Wi Seol-a’s face, I placed a hand over my heart.
I had contained the energy that scattered when she disappeared within my body, but.
I couldn’t feel anything at all.
It could be because I had captured only a very faint, truly minuscule amount of energy.
But feeling absolutely nothing to this extent was inevitably troubling.
I had tried talking to it, wondering if I could converse with it like Sin Noya, but.
Only the poor beast responded.
[Grrr…?]
‘I didn’t call you. Go back to sleep.’
[…Grrr….]
Had Wi Seol-a disappeared?
Such anxiety swept over me.
It wouldn’t be strange if she had disappeared. She herself had said her power was exhausted.
The things I hadn’t yet asked and the words I hadn’t been able to speak.
Were purely my own lingering attachments, so there was nothing to be done even if she had vanished.
Wi Seol-a, who had closed her eyes while embraced in my arms, had opened them again not long after.
The words she uttered as she met my gaze with her usual large eyes were still vivid.
—Young master…?
It hurt.
Though one corner of my heart felt relief that she had returned to normal.
What came before that was regret and an inexplicable fatigue.
Wi Seol-a seemed to notice something while looking at my expression and got up.
—Unni…? Unni is…
She had said that.
Hearing that, I realized. That Wi Seol-a had known of her existence too.
Then how much did she know?
Did she know her identity too? Then did she know about my circumstances too?
Should I have asked such things?
Perhaps I should have.
But the words that leapt from my mouth were not like that.
—Sorry.
—Young master…?
—Sorry. Right now… Let’s talk later, not now.
After stroking Wi Seol-a’s hair a few times and taking her back to the building, I came here.
I was worried.
Because I knew I shouldn’t have left Wi Seol-a like that.
Even so, it had been hard to stand still in that place.
Had she truly disappeared?
It was possible.
But I was hoping she hadn’t.
Every circumstance indicated that she had vanished.
But I thought otherwise.
Because of that voice I had heard near the end.
—Take it into yourself.
A tender, warm voice.
Even the sensation of the hand that had wrapped around my arm.
‘…Mother.’
That voice was unmistakably.
The voice of my mother, hidden in memories so distant that I couldn’t recall when I had last heard it.
What on earth had happened?
I thought about it the entire time I moved my body.
The World Tree had spoken to me in the Demonic Realm.
—Your mother is alive.
My mother is alive.
This was something I already knew.
‘…Rather than knowing she was alive.’
I had only seen my mother heading toward the Demonic Realm gate opened in the air when I was young.
I simply couldn’t know whether she had met her death or not.
But if that voice had truly been my mother’s.
‘Where could she be…?’
How did she know to speak to me?
After that, I tried to hear my mother’s voice again, but no answer came.
‘Do you know something?’
I stroked my stomach.
The World Tree had said this beast was connected to my mother, so I wondered if it had done something, but.
[Grrr?]
The creature merely expressed confusion, as if asking what I meant.
Confirming that, I bit my lip.
‘She told me to take it in.’
To take in the Divine Sword’s energy, which had been gradually disappearing.
That voice had clearly said so.
That energy which had rendered me completely unable to move was momentarily neutralized.
If it was connected to my mother’s voice.
There must have been some meaning.
All the more so, having heard from the World Tree what kind of being my mother was.
‘Didn’t it say she was the Master of the Myriad Realms?’
A being that even the World Tree could not easily approach.
The second calamity that had descended upon this world.
Just hearing these two lines was enough to know that my mother was no ordinary person.
That such a mother had tried to help me.
‘If the owner of that voice was indeed Mother, then that would be the case.’
Or it could be the intervention of another being. That was still unknown.
In the end, I had taken in the energy as told, but I had no idea what to do after that.
There was likely only one way to find out.
‘I must find Mother.’
A nonsensical conclusion.
I knew the Demonic Realm was not a single place and that reaching it was no easy matter.
But I had to find her.
Right now… the only one who might know what happened to the Divine Sword was ultimately Mother.
To do that.
‘I must meet Father.’
The certain being who seemed likely to know what had become of Mother.
That was none other than the current patriarch of the Gu Family and my father.
Having set aside my worries for now.
I thought I should go find my companions to cool my complicated head.
Because of what was about to happen, I hadn’t been able to go properly, and I had to go to Wi Seol-a now too.
Just as I tried to move my steps.
“…!”
At the eerie sensation, I involuntarily stopped in my tracks.
Because beyond the darkness, someone was there.
‘How long have they been there?’
I hadn’t noticed.
An unknown figure leaned against the wall, looking this way.
I had felt this indescribable sensation before.
Which meant that figure was definitely…
“…I greet you, Senior.”
The moment I identified him, I cupped my fists in salute.
The figure, having heard my words, finally pushed off the wall and approached.
Emerging from the darkness into the moonlight, the other’s face came into view.
As expected.
The man’s identity was Amwang.
I hid my trembling as I surveyed him.
Amwang wore the same expressionless face as when I first saw him. A cold face where one couldn’t tell what he was thinking or what emotions he held.
Such an Amwang spoke to me.
“It seemed you were concentrating, so I waited.”
There was an implicit rule that one mustn’t recklessly spy on another’s training.
Amwang didn’t seem to care about such things at all.
I was much the same, but.
“Do you have business with me?”
“Didn’t I say I would come to see you last time?”
“…You… did.”
He had indeed said that.
Who would have thought he would really come to see me?
‘Is that man not normal either?’
When a personage like Amwang says he’ll come to meet me, doesn’t he consider how frightening that is from my position?
Well, when one reaches the level of a supreme master, they probably don’t fuss over such trivialities.
It was a world where power was authority, after all.
‘If he wished it, he could kill even the Samjon.’
That was the rumor spreading through the world.
That if Amwang truly wished it, he could kill even the Samjon.
That he could kill even the Samjon, said to stand at the furthest edge among the countless martial artists spread throughout the Central Plains.
Most who heard this dismissed it as an exaggerated rumor meant to boast of Amwang’s greatness.
But facing him directly, I thought that if the situation allowed, it might not be impossible.
‘His presence is almost impossible to feel.’
Even though he stood right before my eyes, his presence remained faint. What was fortunate was that, unlike last time, it wasn’t completely undetectable.
I didn’t know what effect the mask Amwang wore had, but I could feel a very slight sense of existence.
At least when he had taken it off, I hadn’t felt anything at all.
“Little one.”
“Yes… Senior.”
The form of address grated on me, but I said nothing about it.
From his standpoint, I was indeed a little one.
Though he appeared to be somewhere between thirty and forty in age.
Amwang was an old expert who had existed even in the era when Iljangno was active.
He was at a level where age couldn’t be determined by appearance.
Looking at me, Amwang suddenly spoke.
“The more I look, the more you resemble him.”
It was a familiar phrase. I had heard it so often that it was.
“I hear it often.”
He must mean my father.
Most people who said I resembled someone were referring to him.
“Hm?”
I had naturally assumed so, but hearing my words, Amwang tilted his head slightly.
…It’s not?
“Are you not saying I resemble my father?”
“No.”
“Ah…. Then who are you saying I resemble?”
I wondered if he meant Iljangno.
It would be strange to say I resembled that old man.
It would be rather unpleasant too.
While I was thinking that.
Whether he knew my thoughts or not, Amwang spoke of another person to me.
“I speak of your grandfather.”
“My grandfather?”
I had heard this before too.
I had found it strange then as well; just what was the relationship between Amwang and my grandfather that he kept bringing this up?
Just as I was about to ask back with that question.
“If you resemble him that much… it cannot be that you are not of the bloodline.”
“Pardon?”
Amwang began to speak incomprehensible words.
“Truly a mystery.”
“What are you talking about right now…”
Tap.
“…!”
I wanted to ask Amwang what on earth he meant.
But I couldn’t.
Because Amwang, who had been standing in front, instantly concealed his form—
—then appeared right before my eyes and grabbed my right arm.
A surprise attack?
Startled for but a moment, just as I tried to raise my internal qi to its peak.
“Little one.”
Amwang abruptly rolled up my sleeve.
‘Damn…!’
I was horrified.
Because the traces left by demonization remained there.
Skin about the size of a thumb that looked like the scales of a reptile.
Just as I was wondering what to do—
He looked at my skin and spoke.
“What is your relationship with the Yeon family?”
“…What?”
Hearing that, I had to ask back without thinking.
Because that had come entirely out of nowhere.