Crunch, crunch.
The Ice Heaven Demon Emperor was inhaling food like a starving woman possessed.
She was already on her third bowl of noodles alone. Where on earth was all that food going?
‘More importantly... this child really is the Ice Heaven Demon Emperor.’
There were countless faces in the world that resembled one another, but my instincts told me.
This child was destined to become the Ice Heaven Demon Emperor.
But I recalled the words of the woman who had sent me back in time.
Try twisting fate.
And if that fate did not refer only to my own fate, but included the fates of others as well?
“Eat slowly. You’ll get indigestion.”
“Th-thank you.”
“There’s plenty, so don’t worry about the money.”
“Yes!”
When the Ice Heaven Demon Emperor smiled brightly, my stomach churned for no reason.
So someone who had always worn only a cold expression could smile that radiantly too.
‘After watching her for a few hours, I can tell. Right now, this girl... has no internal energy.’
I had not ambushed her because there was a chance the Ice Heaven Demon Emperor might be hiding her strength.
But the way she defenselessly wolfed down her food, she was someone who did not know the first thing about martial arts.
To the point that I could kill her right now without issue.
And yet there was one reason I had kept her alive until now.
What if her power could be used for the right purpose?
‘I must really be insane.’
An opportunity had come to kill the worst witch, the one who had led not only me but the entire murim to its end.
Even now, if I drove my chopsticks into her throat, I could kill her easily.
And yet the reason I remained still was because, aside from the Ice Heaven Demon Emperor, there was a mountain of evil that needed to be dealt with.
If she was the one who appeared on the front lines of the conquest of murim, then there was someone else in overall command.
The Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.
An organization that had subjugated all the forces beyond the borders and sparked the Great War between Righteous and Demonic.
The Ice Heaven Demon Emperor had fought on the front lines as the foremost master of that Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.
In other words, even without her, the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult’s invasion of murim would inevitably occur.
That was why I had no choice but to think:
What if I could use the Ice Heaven Demon Emperor as an ally?
As I continued thinking until my head throbbed—
“Thank you for the meal. I really won’t forget this kindness!”
“Sure. Get home safely.”
“Um... but...”
“Hm?”
The girl who had been told to go home lowered her head and murmured softly.
It seemed she wanted to bring something up, but was hesitating because she thought it would be a nuisance.
When I told her she could speak without worrying, she carefully opened her mouth.
“I was wondering if you might know a physician nearby.”
“No. Why?”
“My mother... is sick.”
I flinched.
A premonition came to me.
My keen instincts, honed over years of rolling across battlefields, were telling me.
The Ice Heaven Demon Emperor’s mother.
She was someone I had to meet, no matter what it took.
I spoke to her in as calm a tone as I could manage.
“Is your mother very ill?”
“Yes... That’s why I need to bring a physician, but I need money...”
“First, could you take me to your mother?”
Nod.
The girl nodded.
It seemed she had judged that she could trust me because I had bought her a meal.
I stroked her head and tried to reassure her as much as possible.
Before long, the place she led me to was...
“This is it?”
“Yes... It’s very shabby, isn’t it?”
It was a ramshackle shack, worse than an animal pen, and far too poor a place for a person to live.
The stench drifting from the surroundings made me want to leave immediately.
Perhaps the girl knew that as well, for she lowered her head as she guided me.
Then, the moment she opened the door, I felt a familiar chill and stopped in my tracks.
“This is...”
“Mother said she has the Nine Yin Severed Meridians... and that she’s going to die soon...”
The Nine Yin Severed Meridians.
An incurable disease in which one was born with excessive yin energy that blocked the circulation of the blood vessels and meridians, leading to a short life.
To resolve the Nine Yin Severed Meridians, one needed the Solar Fire Carp or a spiritual medicine of equivalent level.
But what chance would a mother and daughter living in a place like this have of obtaining such a spiritual medicine?
Even the spiritual medicines in the cave where the Moon-Seizing Divine Art slept were not at that level.
Then did that mean there was no method at all to resolve the Nine Yin Severed Meridians?
That was not the case either.
‘It’s now.’
The moment that would decide how my fate, and everyone else’s fate, would flow.
I could assert that it was this moment.
I did not know how the girl would become the Ice Heaven Demon Emperor, but there was no way her mother’s death had not contributed to that change.
In other words, if I saved the girl’s mother, perhaps her fall would disappear.
‘I could just kill her. But.’
I wanted to try.
If I helped save her mother...
I wondered if the world line in which she was reborn as the demonic Ice Heaven Demon Emperor might be twisted.
“You said you needed a physician, right?”
“Yes. Do you perhaps know one?”
“I’m a little busy. So you’ll have to go yourself. Will that be all right?”
To be precise, I must not meet that person.
“Yes! As long as I can meet the physician, I’ll do anything!”
“North of the Seongyeong Inn. If you walk along the marketplace, you’ll find a house with a green flag hanging upside down.”
If one were to ask who the greatest physician in the Central Plains was, everyone would utter that name.
The Divine Physician of All Things.
I knew of a method to ask the Divine Physician of All Things for help, only once.
It was a method I had learned much later than now, so meeting him in person would put me in a troublesome position.
‘If he interrogates me about how a stranger knows those words, I’ll have nothing to say.’
But if a child goes and begs him for help with desperate eyes?
With someone like the Divine Physician of All Things, he would undoubtedly follow the child for the time being.
“Go there and say that you need the White-Robed Book Forest. Then the physician will help you.”
If, by some chance, he questions me about this later, then well...
I can just spout some nonsense and gloss over it.
He’s someone who claims life comes first, so if I vaguely invoke morality, won’t he let it slide?
I decided to think of it comfortably.
“R-really? It’s really true, right!?”
“Yes. I hope your mother recovers.”
“Thank you! I’ll definitely repay this kindness! Thank you!”
The girl bowed again and again as if she had gained the whole world.
The gratitude I felt from her entire body seemed to contain not the slightest trace of pretense.
And so, I left her behind and headed toward the vicinity of Mount Hua.
The girl stared fixedly at my retreating back.
Until even my hair could no longer be seen beyond the horizon.
“...Thank you.”
The girl offered one final, heartfelt word of thanks.
I did not know how great a ripple that gratitude would create.
*****
“In the end, I came back.”
I stood before the cliff where fierce winds crossed and looked down at the ground below.
It was a height filled with fog, where I could not see where it ended.
In my past life, when I fell, I had thought I was dead.
But now that I knew which direction I had to fall in, I was not afraid.
The only problem was that once I descended down there, it would take several years before I could climb back up.
“Back then, I wasted several spiritual medicines while learning the Moon-Seizing Divine Art.”
Though my accomplishments had been low, the secret manual remained intact in my memories.
And what I needed was purely a large amount of internal energy.
The reason I was going down there now was to absorb the internal energy contained in those many spiritual medicines.
At the same time, in order to transform this body, which was no different from trash, into a suitable one—
I needed a long period of patience and anguish.
No matter how well you knew the answer sheet, if you began solving the problem from the start, it was only natural that it would take a long time.
I was curious about what had happened to the Ice Heaven Demon Emperor’s mother, but...
“I need to get stronger first!”
Tap!
Without hesitation, I threw myself toward the cliff.
Gravity swallowed my body and gradually accelerated me.
If there was even the slightest error, I would collide with the rocks and die instantly.
With a smile wide enough to split my mouth, I folded my body into an extremely small hole.
Sometimes, one had to experience this kind of chilling sensation too, did they not?
“Haha!”
Needless to say, I did not absurdly crash into the rocks and die.
Once I passed through the hole, water as dark as pitch greeted me.
To reduce the impact as much as possible, I straightened my body into a line.
Splash!
Then I dropped inside, perfectly diminishing the impact, and swam to shore.
“Pah.”
The first things to greet me were night pearls that shone even within the darkness.
They were valuable enough that I could become filthy rich just by picking up a few and selling them.
In fact, when I had been short on money, I had come here and taken a few.
But the most important things were the dozens of spiritual medicines stored deeper inside the cave.
“It’ll take at least a year.”
Since I had prepared about three years’ worth of fasting pills before coming in, food was not a problem.
No matter how effective a spiritual medicine was, if the body could not accept it, it was useless.
In order to completely absorb the spiritual medicines in this cave, I chose closed-door cultivation.
No matter how long it took, these alone would be enough to reach the realm of the Transcendent Peak.
“I should begin.”
The secret struggle of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult that would begin unfolding beneath the surface.
I had a responsibility to stop it.
Because that was why I had returned.