“Gasp…!”
I came to my senses and exhaled ragged breaths.
Then I coughed several times and rolled my eyes around.
Where am I…?
An unfamiliar ceiling… except there was no ceiling in sight.
What I could see first was the sky.
Was it night, or perhaps dawn?
A strange sky, impossible to place in time, entered my vision.
I bolted upright.
Seeing that, I immediately raised my upper body.
I looked around at once.
‘…Where the hell is this?’
All I could see around me was blackened, scorched earth.
I scooped up a handful with my hand and lifted it to examine it closely.
‘This…’
The soil was rotten.
And not just a little—it was horribly rotten.
Judging from the circumstances, it seemed to have decayed under the influence of poison.
Fortunately, perhaps because some time had passed, the poisonous air seemed to have dissipated….
I brushed the dirt off roughly and rose to my feet.
First, I had to figure out where I was.
‘Where the hell did they send me?’
I circulated my internal energy through my body.
Energy flowed through my meridians, making a circuit around my body.
My internal energy had recovered by a tiny amount, and I felt nothing wrong with my body.
Then I recalled what Dang Jemoon had said.
He had said I would undergo a trial, so was this place itself the site of that trial?
‘But this feels far too strange for that.’
An inexplicable atmosphere entered my eyes. I wasn’t talking about the pit.
Something cold outside was poking insistently at my instincts.
I gathered my strength and leaped.
Bang—! I broke through the earthen floor and escaped from the pit.
“Hm…?”
The moment I landed on the ground, I widened my eyes at the sight beyond the pit.
I repeatedly scanned my surroundings.
After several seconds of that, I had no choice but to start in surprise.
Because—
“…What?”
Amazingly, the place where I had been lying until just now was the Poison Lake.
The water that should have filled it to the brim had all drained away, leaving behind nothing but a pit. It seemed I had been lying atop it.
“…Huh?”
All I could do was let out a hollow breath as I looked at it.
How had all that water drained away in an instant? What the hell had happened? It wasn’t just the water disappearing—
“We’re fucked….”
The Poison Lake was, in its own way, treated as one of the Tang Clan’s representative supernatural entities.
And the water had vanished right after an outsider had gone in to take a look?
This wasn’t a situation where excuses would help.
I was seriously screwed.
How was I supposed to explain this?
‘…Fuck.’
Just when I thought I had finally encountered a true fortuitous opportunity, it seemed this one was a dud too.
I forced the throbbing between my brows to relax and turned my head.
I was looking for Nahi, who should have been waiting outside.
“…!”
As I slowly examined my surroundings, I felt another sense of incongruity.
For one thing, the fields spread in every direction had all withered dry.
The forest I had passed through was the same.
The trees had been stained black, just like the earth.
It was proof that they had rotted from the inside out, not just on the surface.
The once-vibrant forest the Tang Clan had painstakingly cultivated—
It was all dead.
Thump.
My heart began to pound violently at the sight.
My body was already moving.
I moved while expending the meager amount of internal energy that had returned to me.
Something was wrong.
An attack?
Had there been an attack while I was gone?
My thoughts would not come together.
I simply ran.
‘What about the kids? The kids…!’
I had no room to assess the situation.
For now, I had to run.
Perhaps because I had exerted too much force too suddenly, the blood vessels in my eyes burst.
Boom—! Crack!
I arrived at the residence in a burst of dust.
I hadn’t seen a single person on the way.
The faint stench of blood and an air of murderous intent mingled in the surroundings.
I tore open the door to the residence.
“Whoo….”
I tried desperately to calm my chest, but it was not easy.
What if something had happened?
That thought filled my head.
I headed toward the place where Namgung Bi-ah and Wi Seol-ah had been staying.
Even as I walked through the passage, I bit down hard on my lips at the blood staining the walls and floor.
Blood trickled from my lips and ran down my chin.
When I finally arrived—
“Haa….”
As expected, there was no sign of any person.
Only the faintest traces that someone had once been there remained.
I didn’t know whether I should feel relieved or what.
My legs gave out, and I sank to the ground.
‘What is this…? What the hell happened?’
I could feel my fingertips trembling slightly.
What in the world had happened here?
This was a situation in which I needed to think rationally, yet I could not remain calm.
My heart was beating faster than usual, and my breathing had already fallen into disarray.
Heat rose through my body in response to my violently wavering emotions.
What had gone wrong?
How long had I been in the secret vault for the situation to become like this?
What had happened to the kids? Were they all right?
What on earth had happened for—
I clutched my pounding chest and tried somehow to make my thoughts turn when—
Screeech.
I sensed something.
A person.
My head turned backward.
“Damn it… What the hell is going on…? Have we heard nothing from the other units?”
A voice reached me.
“…Senior, we need to regroup first…! Otherwise, the other infiltration teams will…”
“You bastard, what are you going to do by going there? You want us all to die like dogs together? Do you even know who’s there?”
“But…!”
That was all the conversation I needed to hear.
Crack—!
I rushed at the intruders the moment I sensed their presence inside the residence.
I shattered one man’s leg, destroying his balance. As he collapsed, I seized the remaining man by the throat.
“Ghk!?”
The intruder stared at me in shock at the sudden turn of events.
He saw the person who had appeared while gripping his throat.
His face was ordinary.
At least, he was not someone I knew.
And on top of that—
“The Martial Alliance?”
The clothes he wore were unmistakably the Martial Alliance’s Sword Division uniform.
“Grr… ugh….”
The moment I confirmed his clothes, I slightly loosened my grip around his throat.
“Who are you? Why is the Martial Alliance here?”
“Cough… gasp…. A-a survivor…?”
The man widened his eyes as though he, too, was startled to see me appear so suddenly.
A survivor?
“How could there be a survivor…? I heard there were no survivors….”
My expression twisted at those chilling words.
In other words, the Tang Clan had been attacked.
“What happened here? Tell me.”
“A-are you of the Tang Clan? I am with the Martial Alliance—”
“Answer me first. Unless you want to die.”
I spoke with killing intent filling my voice, and the man’s expression went pale.
Hic… hic…
Beside the man I held by the throat, the one whose leg I had broken groaned.
Looking at me, he shouted,
“Y-you… What are you!? How dare a martial artist do this to someone from the Martial Alliance!”
“Shut your mouth and answer me. Why is this place like this?”
I was growing impatient. I had no idea how the situation had unfolded.
The Tang Clan reduced to this mess, and not a trace of vitality anywhere—
I didn’t even know how much time had passed.
With no idea whether the others were alive or dead, there was no way I could calm down.
I was barely suppressing the urge to smash everything around me. Perhaps realizing that something was seriously wrong with me, the man spoke.
“P-please calm down first…! If the other demonic cultivators notice us—”
“What?”
That was the wrong thing to say.
“Did you say demonic cultivators?”
“Y-yes…. Do you know who is here right now…?”
Crackling—
As his words reached me, something inside me seemed to twist.
“…How do you know about demonic cultivators?”
“What the hell are you talking about…!? This isn’t the time for—Ghk!?”
I drew demonic energy up to my heart.
The sinister energy devoured my entire body, and soon even my eyes brimmed with it.
The man trembled violently, overwhelmed by fear at the sight of my face.
“A-a demonic cultivator…!?”
That was what the man shouted.
A word the people of this era could not possibly know.
‘…What the hell?’
Then what was that reaction?
How did these men know about demonic cultivators?
The moment I reached that thought, gooseflesh rose all over my body.
I moved my head and scanned my surroundings once more.
At the same time, I pieced together everything I had seen on the way here.
The Poison Lake, drained until only a pit remained.
The forest, rotted through and devoid of life.
The Tang Clan, flooded with blood.
The Martial Alliance and people who knew about demonic cultivators.
Slowly, I put it all together, and a thread of understanding began to emerge.
“Ugh….”
In the midst of my thoughts, I could not hold back and vomited.
“Cough….”
It felt as though everything inside me had come up.
The further my thoughts progressed, the thing closing around my throat was unmistakably ‘fear.’
“…Bullshit… Don’t fuck with me.”
I had to pray that it wasn’t so.
The trial Dang Jemoon had spoken of—
The regret she had talked about so insistently—
It could not be this.
As I vomited the fear that cut into my very soul—
Killing intent brushed past me from behind.
The moment I sensed it, I swung my hand.
Flames erupted.
“Aaargh!”
Black flames infused with demonic energy clung to the person who had tried to attack me.
The spark rapidly grew, covering the man’s body in flames.
It did not take long for his breath to stop.
The other man, seeing that, covered his mouth with his hand.
“Bl—black flames… The Black Flame Demon…?”
Crack.
Before he could spew any more nonsense, I snapped his neck.
Patter, patter—
The flames burned, using the human body as firewood.
Watching them, I wiped the traces of vomit from the corner of my mouth.
Then I clenched my fist and swung it into the wall.
“…Fuuuuuck!”
Boom—! My fist punched into the wall.
Crack-crack-crack! Cracks spread across the entire wall like a spiderweb.
As I watched the dust fall and the fragments crumble, I realized—
Everything felt real.
The nausea I had felt moments ago.
The sensation of killing a person.
Even the texture I felt in my arm as it remained embedded in the wall—
All of it felt real.
Could this truly be an illusion?
If… it wasn’t an illusion, then what would happen?
“…This isn’t real. It can’t be real…. This is too cruel.”
With trembling hands, I repeatedly wiped at my face.
Once the situation had become like this, there was no way I could fail to understand.
I had to think about the situation I was in and the place where I was.
Putting everything together led to only one conclusion.
Nothing had happened while I was in the secret vault.
It wasn’t that time had somehow passed impossibly fast, either.
‘Rather than time having passed….’
This was instead—
Crackle—
“…!”
I turned my head at the energy that brushed past my body.
It was an energy I sensed far away, in the distance.
I sent my gaze toward it.
I spread my senses as far as I could in the direction from which the energy came.
Only then could I see it.
Far away, black clouds hung over a sky dyed red.
At the same time—
‘No way….’
A thunderous energy I knew all too well could be felt from that place.
I leaped toward it without hesitation.
I was moving faster than before.
Along with it, an emotion different from the impatience and anxiety I had felt earlier began to rise.
What could I possibly call this emotion?
I did not know.
For now, I simply had to run.
I ran for a long while, passing ruined buildings and rotten trees.
My internal energy was depleted, and my dantian was gradually beginning to scream, but—
I paid no attention to that either.
I ran endlessly.
The distance slowly narrowed.
The closer I got, the more an unidentifiable stench of blood began to stab at my nose.
The smell of blood was so strong that I could not help wrinkling my face.
I forced myself to ignore it and finally reached my destination.
I had to stare in shock at the scene spread before me.
How could I not?
Rumble… r-rumble!
Above a sky without a single cloud—
Incongruous with the situation, black clouds filled with thunderous energy.
And covering the ground were corpses, along with pools formed from the blood flowing out of them.
They were all martial artists of the Martial Alliance, wearing the Alliance’s uniforms.
Splash.
I took a step.
It was a cruel and terrifying sight, but none of it entered my eyes.
Because from the very beginning, I had been looking at only one person, not the scene around me.
The dreadful stench of blood.
The corpses strewn across the ground.
None of that mattered.
There was only one thing that mattered to me.
In the pool of blood formed by the corpses,
I saw a lone figure standing atop it.
Splash.
She must have clearly sensed my presence at the sound of my steps, yet she continued to act as though she had no interest in me.
I took another step closer.
One step.
Then another.
Ignoring the trembling tips of my feet, I slowly approached.
When I reached a certain point, her gaze finally turned toward me.
Cold, frozen blue eyes met mine.
The woman’s appearance was exactly as I remembered it.
Her faded white hair and snow-white skin gave her an otherworldly beauty.
Her entire body was drenched in blood, but I knew it was not hers.
It was all the blood of those she had killed.
“Ah….”
Once I finished confirming that, a weary breath escaped me.
She tilted her head at my reaction.
Even that response was exactly as I remembered.
‘…’
Looking at her, I remembered.
…In the hellish life of my previous existence,
there had been a woman whose thoughts I had never been able to understand for all the years I knew her.
Why had she chased the moon so relentlessly?
And what did she want to cut so badly that she swung only her sword, day after day?
I knew nothing about her.
My own life had been too fierce for me to pay attention to those around me.
That remained true even when she had gone to her death without hesitation for my sake.
With the same expressionless face she had worn back then,
she pointed the tip of her sword at me and asked,
“Who… are you…?”
Her voice was faint, yet carried a thread of killing intent.
She was without a doubt—
the Demon Sword Empress I remembered.