“How regrettable.”
The woman, her hair as white as frost, murmured with a look of sorrow.
The Ice Heaven Demon Emperor.
A woman who had appeared without warning and plunged the entire murim into a sea of blood.
She had always spoken nothing but lies, but this time, it seemed like the truth.
“What... is so regrettable? Cough!”
I spat out a handful of black blood and glared at the Ice Heaven Demon Emperor.
Today, the Murim Alliance had officially lost to her.
I had formed a final death squad to stop her, but before overwhelming power, we were helpless.
Our attacks could not reach the Ice Heaven Demon Emperor, while hers led us to annihilation.
A perfect defeat.
There was no path left to survival.
And in the midst of it all, the Ice Heaven Demon Emperor showed sincerity for the first time, leaving me dumbfounded.
After killing everyone, she said it was regrettable? Just what was she regretting?
Vile bitch.
“Baek Yeonghyeon. If I had met you just a little earlier, perhaps things might have been different.”
For some reason, her eyes looked sorrowful as she said those words.
After committing such a massacre, she had the gall to look at me like the tragic heroine of some love story.
What a humiliating end this was.
“What... kind of bullshit is that?”
When I clenched my teeth, blood surged up from my organs.
My body was already in a state where life functions were impossible.
The only reason I was still alive was thanks to the vast amount of internal energy I had accumulated.
I was in such a terrible condition that I would die on my own even if I stayed still.
“You don’t need to know. It is merely a lingering attachment from the past.”
Vmmm.
As the Ice Heaven Demon Emperor opened her palm with eyes full of regret, cold energy condensed into crystals.
It was her will to deliver the final blow.
“Any last words?”
“...Piss off.”
“How simple.”
The Ice Heaven Demon Emperor spread her palm.
Along with it, a frigid chill began to envelop my entire body, and I quietly closed my eyes.
‘If I had just one more chance...’
There had been more than one moment I regretted.
If I had gathered up even the smallest bits of time I had wasted in my life, then at least—
‘I wouldn’t have died such a pointless death.’
Grit.
My teeth trembled at my own powerlessness.
Drunk on the name Fist Heaven, I had never looked back at myself.
Was regret flooding in at the very end simply the nature of the fleeting species called humans?
‘Still, well...’
I suppose it was some small comfort that I had saved those I could save.
Crack!
*****
[Wake up.]
“Huk! I-Ice Heaven Demon Emperor?!”
Startled by the voice ringing in my ear, I shot upright.
At the same time, I was shocked by the fact that the one who had woken me was the Ice Heaven Demon Emperor.
But soon, I sensed something strange about her.
“You... are you really the Ice Heaven Demon Emperor?”
[Of course not. This appearance merely imitates the person who left the strongest impression in your memories.]
Now that I was calm enough to listen, her voice was clearly different from the Ice Heaven Demon Emperor’s.
Of course, voices could be imitated as much as one wanted, so I did not rule out the possibility that it was her.
But recalling the Ice Heaven Demon Emperor’s final attack, I accepted the situation without much difficulty.
“Then I really am dead, aren’t I?”
[Yes.]
When the woman wearing the Ice Heaven Demon Emperor’s face answered, a hollow chuckle slipped out of me.
Well, there was no way I could be alive after an icicle pierced my heart.
Still, since I had built up some virtue in my own way, it seemed I had not fallen all the way to hell.
No, since the first face I saw after dying was that one, perhaps I should call this hell.
As I thought that, the woman wearing the Ice Heaven Demon Emperor’s face approached.
[Do you think fate can be twisted?]
“What is that supposed to—”
The moment I raised my head at her vague words, my eyes met the mysterious woman’s.
They were blue eyes like the Ice Heaven Demon Emperor’s, but the sagely aura contained within them was on an entirely different level.
Contrary to my will, no further words came out.
[Try twisting it. That is the only gift I can give you.]
“I’m asking what the hell you’re talking about!”
[I shall return you to the past.]
“What? The past?”
There was no time to ask again.
Flaaash!
[Carve out your own fate.]
Along with the woman’s words, a cluster of pure white light wrapped around my entire body, and when I came to my senses, I had been moved to a bustling inn.
Blink.
At the sudden, unreal phenomenon, I pinched my cheek.
Had I been dreaming, or had I really died and gone insane?
I could only look around with still-dazed eyes.
‘What in the world... is this?’
I could not understand at all what had happened to me.
I had definitely been defeated by the Ice Heaven Demon Emperor and died, and then met what I suppose was a ghost wearing her face.
At any rate, after meeting such a being, this was the situation I found myself in.
It felt like a dream one had when utterly exhausted.
But a martial artist’s instincts were telling me.
Right now, I was undoubtedly alive.
‘Is this even possible? I’ve truly never heard of anything like it.’
Search all under heaven, and would you find anyone who claimed they had returned to the past?
A madman, perhaps, but no one in their right mind would ever say such a thing.
And yet my senses were forcibly proving the fact that I had returned to the past.
Then did that mean the woman’s final words were true?
‘I went back to the past—so I regressed?’
Once I grasped the structure of the inn, there was no mistaking it. This was Seongyeong Inn, a place I had often visited.
And Seongyeong Inn... had been utterly destroyed during the war the Ice Heaven Demon Emperor started, leaving not even a trace behind.
Yet that inn was perfectly intact?
In other words, the woman’s claim that she would send me back to the past had been true.
‘For now... I need to figure things out.’
Leaving my throbbing head behind, I walked out of Seongyeong Inn.
As I looked around the marketplace, the fact that I had returned to the past began to feel even more real.
‘Just what was that woman thinking?’
Why would someone with enough power to turn back time take an interest in me?
All kinds of questions filled my mind, but I knew full well that they would not be answered.
That was why what I had to do now was already decided.
“First, I need to find the Fist Moon Divine Art.”
The Fist Moon Divine Art.
The source that had allowed my past self to be called Fist Heaven, and a superior martial art difficult to find even if one searched through all ages.
By chance, I had tumbled down a cliff and discovered a secluded cave rarely visited by people.
Inside it, I had obtained a large amount of spiritual medicine and the secret manual of the Fist Moon Divine Art.
The problem was that in order to enter that cave, one had to fall in precisely the right spot.
But I had already gone there again and again, so that was not much of a problem.
The greatest problem was my meager internal qi.
Forget a third-rate martial artist—I had only the internal energy of a child who had just entered a martial academy.
That was why I absolutely had to head to that cliff.
Every single spiritual medicine inside that cave was important at this moment.
‘It’s a little early, though.’
According to the rumors I was hearing, this was roughly ten years in the past.
Was the issue on everyone’s lips back then rising prices?
At any rate, there had been a period when the common folk suffered because of sudden inflation.
From the talk drifting through the marketplace, I guessed it was around that time.
That was when it happened.
“Excuse me.”
A girl dressed in rags tugged at the hem of my clothes.
Even if my ability to sense presence had become garbage, I had still kept track of who was around me.
Yet this tiny child had pierced through my senses and touched my sleeve.
She was no ordinary child.
Thinking that, the moment I met the child’s eyes—
“Please... spare even a single coin... Please...”
I could only freeze on the spot.
Because the girl’s face was the spitting image of the future Ice Heaven Demon Emperor.
‘Fuck! Why is the Ice Heaven Demon Emperor here?’
I should have sensed something was wrong from the moment she slipped past my qi sense.
Was my perception dulled because of the absurdity of regression?
Not even a few minutes after returning to the past, I faced the greatest crisis of my life.
The Ice Heaven Demon Emperor had appeared looking like a beggar and was asking me for money.
Just what scheme could she be plotting to go this far?
“Is it really not possible? I haven’t eaten in so long... Please...”
But the resonance within the girl’s voice was sincerity itself, something that could never be fabricated.
Having lived through an age of war, I had gained the ability to tell whether a speaker was lying.
To be precise, it was a deduction based on countless minute changes I had observed over a long period of time.
Who would imagine that this frail girl would one day become the calamity that would destroy the murim?
Only a few seconds passed, but tens of thousands of thoughts flashed through my mind.
A surprise attack?
Assuming she was an ordinary person, it would succeed ten times out of ten, but if she was not, I would die.
Poisoning?
The Ice Heaven Demon Emperor I knew possessed a body immune to all poisons.
I could not rule out the possibility that she had been that way since childhood.
For a moment, all sorts of other thoughts crossed my mind.
After deliberating, the conclusion I reached was—
“...Follow me. I’ll buy you a meal.”
“Th-thank you! Thank you!”
For now, I would not openly show hostility toward her.
Whatever intention she had in approaching me, I had to keep my overflowing hatred buried in my heart for a while.
Even if I launched a surprise attack, there was no way I would succeed with a body like this.
Now that I was already in her grasp, what I could do was limited.
But I did not know.
The enormous butterfly effect that this meeting today would bring.