# Chapter 47
──────
Returner IV
Shin Noah
"Something to do? What do you mean?"
"Hehe. This humble one has a plan. Brother, just watch."
The Sword Fox suddenly walked out of the rest area.
Me, a funeral director—if I was going to stay put just because someone told me to, I would have quit being a regressor ages ago. Naturally, I followed after the Sword Fox. The old man too merely glanced at me once and didn't particularly try to stop me.
The Sword Fox, who had been terrible with directions until we came to Huashan, suddenly navigated the mountain paths this way and that as if he'd had a navigation system installed and recently updated in his brain.
Just as I was thinking I should ask where on earth he was going, the Sword Fox squatted down.
"……?"
At first, I thought he was tired from climbing and taking a rest. But I was mistaken.
The Sword Fox was taking something out of his pocket. When I craned my neck to take a closer look, what he pulled from his pocket was a seed. Presumably the seed pouch he had cherished dearly since leaving Ulleungdo.
The Sword Fox was putting that seed into the soil between the rocks.
"……?"
Another question mark formed in my head. What on earth is he really doing?
"Brother. What are you doing right now? Please explain to this younger brother."
"Hehe. Reconstruction."
"Reconstruction?"
"Or restoration. If we add a poetic flair, we could also call it return."
Reconstruction. Restoration. Return.
Truly a string of incomprehensible words.
But to my questioning, the Sword Fox merely laughed hollowly and stroked his beard, giving me no proper answer. Rather, his reaction irritated me, so I followed the Sword Fox around to the end.
But there was no reward for following him around—the Sword Fox only repeated the same actions. He climbed the mountain path, planted seeds, covered them with the scarce soil on the rocky mountain, and gently patted the mound of earth with his wrinkled palm.
The next day. And the day after that. Continuously.
No, seriously, what is he doing?
'And he walks so well, too!'
This was the part I found absurd. When crossing the Central Plains, he used my back constantly, but now that we've come to Huashan, suddenly energy is bubbling up and he climbs the mountain remarkably well. Did this old man really cosplay as a weakling all this time?
'Surely he didn't deceive me……?'
Climbing up and down a rocky mountain with an aged body couldn't be easy. Yet the Sword Fox walked without rest from dawn until evening.
He didn't even complain of muscle pain. As if the Sword Fox were a car and Huashan's air were gasoline, the Sword Fox busily scurried about.
Just in case, I tried sitting in the lotus position and doing something like qi circulation, but I only obtained the scientific research result that neither Seoul's Gangnam air nor Huashan air contained any mysterious ether properties.
-Gwooooooh!
"Oh my, brother! Help me! An evil demonic cult monster is seizing the Huashan Sect leader!"
Moreover, no matter how I looked, the 'weakling cosplay' didn't seem to be an act. The Sword Fox was genuinely 100% frail. He couldn't even catch monsters the size of wild boars and was always running away to me.
As if someone had invested 99 points in stamina but only 10 in martial power, the Sword Fox's stats ran to extremes.
"This is truly strange……."
In the end, I had no choice but to follow the Sword Fox around and perform bodyguard duties.
Before long, even this grew tiresome, so I just wiped out all the monster seeds in the vicinity of Huashan.
While I was at it, I went around Chang'an and the Guanzhong region… in modern terms, the Shaanxi Province area, hunting strange creatures. Thanks to this, people were grateful and gifted us plenty of food and clothing.
One week. Two weeks. Three weeks.
Just as I was starting to be called by the near-black-comedy alias [Huashan Sect Daoist] by the people of Guanzhong.
Sprouts came up from every spot where the Sword Fox had planted seeds. The growth rate was distinctly unusual. It was clear that the ability that had made the Sword Fox an S-class Awakened, commonly known as [Plant Growing], was at work.
"What kind of sprout is this?"
I muttered to myself. The Sword Fox wouldn't give me a proper answer anyway, after all.
For now—— it was definitely 'trees,' not grass or flowers. But my encyclopedic knowledge stopped there.
I had my experience as a regressor and could recognize most plants, but I wasn't so deeply versed in botany that I could identify the exact species just by looking at such tiny saplings.
"Hey. What exactly are you?"
When I asked, the sprout gave no answer.
Late summer passed.
The Sword Fox's strange journey continued through early autumn and into winter.
White snow settled on Huashan's ink-colored rocks. In this ruined world, winter seemed to perform the funeral rites for all living things. As an elderly funeral director would surely do, winter's ritual of conducting the world's funeral with snow was quiet and peaceful.
Winter's touch was cold but gentle. Life and civilization quietly bowed their heads to that snowy touch. In Guanzhong, rumors mixed with snowflakes and scattered that a million civilians had been buried in snow in just half a month.
The range of my monster hunting gradually expanded as well. Not just Shaanxi Province, but into Henan Province as well.
'Tutorial dungeons' were a phenomenon occurring not just on the Korean Peninsula but worldwide, and of all places, an unprecedented dungeon had appeared in a place called Yingyang Town in Henan Province.
With Taoist-type heretical cultist terrorists involved on top of that, it was practically the end times.
What could I do? I had to help.
…When I started the 108th cycle, this round was supposed to be a vacation, but somehow I ended up working even at a resort. Is this what they call a workaholic?
Well, making excuses, I had business in Henan Province anyway. The main family of an Awakened who runs a guild called 'Baekhwa' on the Korean Peninsula was near here.
Thanks to that, I was able to get good information about them. I'll talk about that in a later episode.
Anyway.
Spring.
While all living things bowed their heads to winter's snowy touch, only the sprouts the Sword Fox tended raised their heads proudly. The living things touched by the Sword Fox's hands knew no seasons and disregarded the climate, simply growing even in the harsh wind and frost.
By the time the snow stopped, the saplings that had been tiny seeds had grown to my waist height. The trees saw off winter a little earlier than the world and welcomed spring a little earlier.
Their etiquette toward the seasons was red, dyeing the world crimson.
"Ah."
Only upon seeing that redness did I learn the name of these things.
Plum blossoms.
"……."
The old man was planting plum blossoms on Huashan.
7
Lingering snow still dusted the air, making Huashan's rocks white.
On the surface of the rocks like pure white plates, plum blossoms quietly plated themselves with half red and half pink, presenting themselves delicately.
The chef who, using this massive mountain as a serving dish, planted red dishes with colorful branches was a single shabby old man.
"Now cuttings will do."
The old man's shadow dug into the mountain's shadow. Each time he dug one step deeper, the snow-capped mountain shed red blood into the valley.
The old man broke off a twig from the plum tree with familiar hand motions. Then he transplanted it again between the rocks, in the deep folds of the valley's heart, in the scarce soil. Among the rugged rocks, plum blossoms spread more and more like moss—but red moss.
"……."
After that, I refrained from going out and spent more time with the Sword Fox.
Huashan's terrain was rugged. No matter how my stamina had suddenly become infinite after coming here, there were many voids and emptiness difficult to cross with the old man's frail legs. I willingly lent my back to the Sword Fox.
Crossing cliffs and cliffs, the Sword Fox planted trees.
First spring, plum blossoms bloomed near the rest area.
The next year, clusters of red flowers stained Huashan's West Peak.
The giant was massive. The time of his dying, and thus the time of his blood fully blooming, was infinitely slow compared to human life.
The Sword Fox regulated the giant's time. His dying, and the method of his dying, the Sword Fox decided arbitrarily. He didn't even allow the natural principle of living in spring and dying in winter.
The blood the giant shed flowed over three years past Jinso Pass to the North Peak. His wounds flowed astray to the Central Peak over four years. And then the next year, it pushed into the East Peak. All the directions in which death and life flowed were designated by the Sword Fox's footprints and decided by his handprints.
Six years after entering the mountain.
"……."
I stood on the roof of a pavilion somewhere on Huashan's South Peak and looked down.
Heaven and earth were filled with plum blossoms.
Huashan (華山) was Flower Mountain (花山).
On every ridge where rocks slid, red flowers and white flowers shyly interlaced. The plum trees' pitch-black trunks languidly propped their chins on the stones. The giant finally held his breath, and before the death of his majestic blood, people could only swallow their own.
And thus, without any metaphor or simile, without any other interpretation or explanation.
Plum blossoms bloomed on Huashan.
"It is done."
One human could bring forth one proposition as truth.
For one proposition to bloom, a certain old man's six years and a certain regressor's hundreds of years were needed.
And that proposition was beautiful.
"Now it is accomplished."
It was a foggy day.
When fog settled on Huashan, the rocks vanished. The fog lived and moved. Only the bright red flowers barely poked their heads above that opaque surface.
I too woke from sleep and raised my head.
The rest area where I had solved most of my lodging and meals for the past six years.
The Sword Fox was not there.
"Brother?"
When the word 'Brother' failed to catch anyone, I think I already sensed something. Without even washing my face, I rose immediately and traced the Sword Fox's tracks.
The old man was far away, beyond the sea of fog, atop the South Peak.
And I saw something unbelievable. At first, I thought the Sword Fox was rowing a boat on the rock. That was how thick the fog spread at his feet.
But a person cannot row a boat on a mountain. When I looked up carefully again, what the Sword Fox was stirring was not an oar but a sword. A wooden sword.
The old man was dancing a sword dance.
"……."
Because it was a dance embroidered with a sword, it was a sword dance (劍舞). Also, because the mountain's mist-clouds tangled and swirled whenever the blade moved, it was sword fog (劍霧). The wooden sword's dull blade seemed to control all the mountain's fog, just as the old man's wrinkled hands had once killed the giant red.
The old man wielded the world's fog as if it were his own sleeve.
In that moment, I knew I would never forget this sight for eternity.
"……."
Rustle.
Somewhere, the small sound of snow sliding echoed.
Was it the sound of the Sword Fox stepping on snow? Perhaps. All the world was wrapped in fog, making it hard to distinguish what lay ahead. Only sound and scent touched the skin clearly.
In the fog, the flowers chattered, and that chattering breathlessly spat plum blossom fragrance into the sky. Or, perhaps, really perhaps, plum blossom fragrance might be spreading from the tip of the old man's sword.
The wind blew. Waves of boundless fog engulfed the entire peak.
"Brother?"
With a current slower than waves, the fog pushed in and then pushed out.
White rocks and red plum blossoms revealed their forms again.
But the Sword Fox's figure was not there.
"Brother!"
There was no answer returning either.
Only the echo of Brother- Brother- Brother- rang out.
Even that echo before long was buried in the chattering of plum blossom fragrance.
"……."
Suddenly, the world fell silent.
In Huashan, swept away by white fog, only plum blossom fragrance flowed and flowed, thickening for ten thousand li.
8
Should I call this an afterword?
One rather strange story remains.
After the Sword Fox disappeared, I naturally set out to find him. But in the end, I failed to discover him.
If he had slipped and fallen to his death, there should have been a corpse somewhere. Even if wild beasts had devoured him, traces would have remained. Yet no matter how much I searched Huashan, the Sword Fox's traces were not found.
A disappearance too absurd.
'…Could he really have ascended and become an immortal?'
For a moment, such suspicion even arose.
But it was impossible. The Sword Fox was merely an old man who had never learned martial arts. If he was truly 'a master who reached the Realm of Manifestation' as he himself claimed, there was no way I wouldn't have noticed. We were together for six years, and hadn't I carried him on my back for over sixty days?
Later, after returning to the Korean Peninsula, I even secured documents. The Sword Fox was definitely, without a doubt, a Korean born on Ulleungdo.
It's just that people who lived in the same neighborhood as the Sword Fox didn't remember him in much detail.
"Ah, that grandfather?"
"I've seen him sometimes. Huh? Was he in our neighborhood decades ago? I'm not sure about that……."
"I think he was there and then not, appearing and disappearing?"
Anyway, the Sword Fox was from Ulleungdo. Various certificates and materials proved this.
If the Sword Fox was truly the next sect leader of the Huashan Sect and finally became an immortal and ascended—there were too many parts to explain.
First, after being born on Ulleungdo, he would have had to go to China no later than age fifteen. And in his childhood, he would have become the personal disciple of the Huashan Sect leader.
The Sword Fox's age was a bit past his mid-sixties before his disappearance. And he testified that before crossing to China with me, the Huashan Sect was attacked by the Heavenly Demon forty-five years ago.
When the Huashan Sect was attacked by the Demonic Cult, the Sword Fox would have already had to maintain the status of 'personal disciple of the Huashan Sect leader.' So he would have had to receive the expectations of the Huashan Sect disciples as the next sect leader by at least age fifteen……. Was that possible?
What percentage of probability would have to be pierced for such a miracle to occur?
In the first place, why would a Korean child born on Ulleungdo somehow, through what route, transfer to China's Huashan Sect?
In the first place—— I had never even heard that the Huashan Sect, which only appears in martial arts novels, existed in reality even while living as a regressor. Let alone the Heavenly Demon? The Demonic Cult?
It was an utterly bizarre hypothesis. This was something that didn't even need to be considered, merely a preposterous story. Under extremely rational judgment, I discarded the 'Sword Fox = Huashan Sect Leader Theory.'
But later, after passing the 200th cycle, a very strange event occurred.
"Sir."
"Hm?"
"I'm sorry, but could you give us something to eat if you have any?"
At this time, I was going around Incheon's Chinatown with the Sword Fox.
The person who asked us if we had anything to eat, calling us 'Sir,' was Chinese. The reason he approached us without hesitation was probably because he saw the Sword Fox with his long white beard and mistook him for a fellow Chinese person.
"Ah-"
As was revealed through travel during the 108th cycle, I was the only one among us who could speak Chinese. I was thinking about how to respond without embarrassing the other party, and was about to quickly answer in Chinese before the old man next to me made the atmosphere strange.
And that's when it happened.
"Of course."
Before I could even open my mouth, fluent Chinese came from beside me.
I was so surprised my head whipped around. And there was the Sword Fox, responding in Chinese to the young man who had approached us, as if it were the most natural thing!
"This humble one does not have much at the moment, but how could I not grant even a small request from a traveler who has addressed me?"
"Pardon? 'This humble one'?"
"As it happens, I was on my way after buying dumplings over there. It won't be plentiful, but please take this and wet your throat."
"Ah……. Thank you, sir! I will never forget this kindness!"
"……."
My jaw hung open and wouldn't close.
My astonishment continued until the Chinese young man who had received vegetable dumplings from the Sword Fox disappeared from sight. I barely, barely regained my senses and grabbed the Sword Fox's bony shoulder.
"Wait, Sword Fox. Just a moment. Just a moment."
"Hmmm?"
"Sword Fox, did you know how to speak Chinese?"
The Sword Fox blinked.
"Chinese? What are you talking about?"
"Excuse me? You just spoke Chinese! Earlier, with that young man!"
"I don't understand what you mean."
The Sword Fox blinked with a face that genuinely didn't seem to know what I was talking about.
"Why are you suddenly acting like this, Funeral Director? I didn't say anything and just handed over the dumplings."
"No. Wow. No."
Like I would fall for such cheap tricks.
I immediately dragged the Sword Fox around and searched every corner of Chinatown.
But the young man's figure I had seen was nowhere to be found, and trying to talk to other Chinese people was of no use either.
The Sword Fox shouted frustratingly, seemingly not understanding Chinese at all.
"Heavens! Just because this humble one cannot speak Chinese, for a young fellow to persecute me so! There is no nationality in chivalry (俠). Even if my language skills are somewhat lacking, my realm is higher than anyone's!"
"……."
In the end, not a single word of Chinese came from the Sword Fox's mouth. He didn't have the face of someone lying either.
Isn't it truly a situation for ghosts to cry over?
To this day, I still cannot be certain whether the Sword Fox really became an immortal and left this world beyond the fog of Huashan, whether he conversed fluently with a Chinese person in Incheon's Chinatown, or whether all of it was my hallucination and phantom hearing.
I learned just one fact.
Truly, there are many extraordinary people and strange talents in the martial world.
- Returner. End.
An infinite regressor telling stories.