Chapter 148

After leaving the Hidden Cloud Pavilion, the Heavenly Demon and I headed to Dragon-Severing Falls.
The waterfall took its name from a story about a past Cult Leader who had slain a demonic dragon, though I had no idea how many generations ago that had been.
The torrent crashed down from a height that looked easily over sixty meters, roaring so violently that it made my ears hurt.

“Why are we here?”
“To correct your weak mental fortitude.”
“My mental fortitude is weak?”
“What were you like these past few days?”
“Well……”

I had struggled desperately to shake off the addictive effects of the Pain-Cutting Pills.
I had managed to keep up with training well enough, but I hadn’t been in proper condition.
I spoke as though making an excuse.

“I couldn’t help that. You shoved me into the No-Return Cave, so I had to stuff myself with Pain-Cutting Pills just to survive.”
“Even if you swallowed a thousand Pain-Cutting Pills, you should not succumb to something like that. Much less skip your training.”

So this was about me skipping training today.
I had expected this reaction to some extent, so I calmly defended myself.

“You think I wanted to skip training? The face of my deeply respected master kept floating before my eyes, but that was exactly why I had no choice but to make the painful decision. Why? Because I had to defend your honor, Master!”

I casually slipped in a reference to the proclamations.
I didn’t want the mood turning serious, so I mentioned them in passing.
But the Heavenly Demon paid me no attention whatsoever.
Without answering, he turned his gaze toward the waterfall.
Without thinking, I followed his gaze.
The Heavenly Demon said expressionlessly,

“Climb.”
“What?”
“I told you to climb up the waterfall.”
“……Why?”
“I told you. To correct your weak mental fortitude.”
“You mean you want me to climb against Dragon-Severing Falls? All the way up there?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Unless you can fly, you will have to climb the cliff beneath the waterfall.”

I blinked.
Even if an ordinary cliff were nearly sixty meters high, I could somehow climb it.
But Dragon-Severing Falls was another story.
The torrent was far too violent, and every handhold and foothold would probably be covered in slippery moss.
Unless I had suction cups growing from my body, this would be anything but easy.

‘……Maybe I should’ve learned the Gecko Wall-Climbing Art.’

It was a technique for scaling vertical walls.
Since it was generally only useful to thieves, I had never bothered learning it.
Not that regretting it now would help.

“What happens if I say I’m not climbing?”
“Dragon-Severing Falls will become your home.”

In other words, he wouldn’t let me leave until I made it up.

“Haa.”

A sigh escaped me.
Being the Heavenly Demon’s disciple was hard work.

‘Might as well try.’

Hesitating would only make me spend longer at Dragon-Severing Falls.
It might be better to finish quickly and prove there was nothing wrong with my mental fortitude.

Splash! I stepped into the water.
With the torrent pounding down on me, I placed a hand against the wet cliff. As expected, it was slippery.

Completely drenched, I began climbing.
I climbed a few inches, slipped, then slipped again.
After failing over and over, I somehow managed to make it about fifteen meters up.
But after that came one failure after another.

Why the hell did I have to do this?
If it were some more reasonable form of training, fine, but how was this supposed to help me?
Complaint after complaint piled up inside my head.

The Heaven Rebelling Society, the Heavenly Demon, Gal So-ye, No-Return Blood.
Distracting thoughts kept surfacing as well.
But for some reason,
by the time I had fallen too many times to count, I stopped thinking about anything.
My mind felt completely empty.
All I focused on was climbing against the waterfall.

Where was the next handhold?
Where should I place my foot?
Where was the moss thickest, and where was the torrent strongest?

The pounding water left my ears numb and my head ringing.
My fingertips split and blood seeped from beneath my nails, but I didn’t stop.

‘Just a little more.’

One handspan, then another.
I simply climbed and kept climbing.
Before I knew it, the sunset was staining the sky red.
My hand reached the top of the cliff.
I hauled myself up with every bit of strength I had.
Careful not to be swept away, I gripped a rocky outcrop tightly, launched myself upward, and collapsed facedown on a broad rock.
At last, I had made it above the waterfall.

“Haa, haa, haa.”

A shadow fell over me as I gasped for breath.
It was the Heavenly Demon.

“You did well, considering how much you complained.”
“……You’re going to have trouble sleeping one of these days, Master.”
“Why?”
“Because you keep earning your disciple’s resentment. Someday you might start worrying that your disciple will do something terrible to you.”
“Then I should strike first before that happens. Prepare yourself.”

Killing intent appeared in the Heavenly Demon’s eyes.
The formless force he raised seized the surrounding space with terrifying pressure.
I flinched instinctively, then clicked my tongue and sat down.
I noticed one corner of the Heavenly Demon’s mouth had risen ever so slightly.

“Can’t you make your jokes a little lighter? You always sound like you mean them.”
“What did you think about while climbing?”
“At first, I was cursing you. But after a while, strangely enough, I stopped thinking about anything.”

The Heavenly Demon nodded.

“When distracting thoughts diminish, mental fortitude naturally grows stronger.”
“Huh. This really was mental training?”
“What did you think it was?”
“Abuse disguised as mental training.”
“If that had been my intention, I would have made you climb up and down ten times instead of once. Do you want to?”
I flinched.

“……I think once is enough.”

For a while, the Heavenly Demon and I quietly admired the sunset.
No, ‘admired’ didn’t suit the Heavenly Demon.
“Stared at it” was probably closer.

“Master.”
“What?”
“What do you think about what those proclamations said?”

After hesitating briefly, I simply asked him outright.
More than anything, I wanted to know what he thought of that prophecy that wasn’t quite a prophecy, the claim that he would become a demonic being.
But the Heavenly Demon’s voice was as emotionless as ever.

“I do not care.”
“I think everyone else cares quite a lot.”

I pushed a step further.

“Aren’t you afraid, Master? Of becoming a demonic fiend?”

Even the Heavenly Demon probably hadn’t expected me to ask that.
Yet his expression didn’t change.

“Demonic qi is something to dominate, not something to be dominated by.”

Dominate.
He had used the same word at the Heart-Demon Abyss.

-I will dominate the Heart-Demon Qi.

A strange feeling came over me.
Fine. Dominate it or whatever.
But then why had someone like him ended up that way in my previous life?

“The Heart-Demon Qi you absorbed is still all right, isn’t it?”
“Of course.”

The Heavenly Demon released his demonic qi.
My breath caught.
Dense demonic qi spread across the sky as though it would swallow heaven and earth.
It was Heart-Demon Qi, an energy no human should dare wield.

‘There isn’t just one.’

My eyes widened.
The Heart-Demon Qi split into three currents and swirled.
The Heart-Demon Qi he had absorbed from three of the Five Sacred Peaks writhed as though each current existed separately and possessed a will of its own.

‘How is this possible?’

Once absorbed, they should have merged into one.
So how could all three still exist separately?

‘Could it be that he hasn’t fully absorbed them?’

Was he simply holding them inside himself without assimilating them?
Was that why he still wasn’t free from the threat of the Heart-Demon Qi?

No.
The moment the Heavenly Demon twitched a finger, all three currents of Heart-Demon Qi responded.
They tangled together and transformed into a single enormous shape.

“……!”

Blood-red bundles of muscle. Flesh like melting candle wax. Hundreds of black tentacles, each covered in thousands of tooth-filled mouths, and incomprehensible sounds muttered from those mouths.
It was neither human nor beast.
The demon I had seen at the Heart-Demon Abyss.
Except this was something far more horrific.
Something that should never exist, utterly at odds with the laws of the world.

‘This is what three Heart-Demon Qi currents become……?’

What would happen once he gathered all five?
I was curious, yet paradoxically, I didn’t want to know.
I was afraid.
What in the world was the Heavenly Demon trying to accomplish by absorbing things like these?

‘Ugh.’

The Heaven Rebelling Society had already given me a headache since early morning.
Because their objective was completely unclear.
Now my head felt as though it were being squeezed hard enough to crack.

“Keuuut.”

As I clutched my head, the Heavenly Demon lowered his hand.
The demon’s shape distorted as the Heart-Demon Qi was sucked back into the Heavenly Demon.
————.
The surroundings fell silent.
As though nothing had happened at all.

But I wasn’t fine.
My fingertips were trembling faintly. Even clenching my fists tightly didn’t stop it.
I couldn’t even raise my head.
Was it because of the color?
The sunset that had looked beautiful moments ago now resembled the demon’s flesh.
I took a deep breath and asked,

“Those things…… You’re confident you can dominate them?”
“Of course. They are nothing more than materials.”
“Ma……terials?”

Materials for what?
Calling the Heart-Demon Qi ‘materials’ meant there was something else he intended to create.
What was he trying to reach that he could treat power capable of destroying the world as mere raw material?

“Just in case, let me ask.”

I swallowed dryly and continued.

“What would you do if those materials swallowed their master instead?”
“That will not happen.”
“I said if. What would you do if it did happen?”

I didn’t back down.
This wasn’t hypothetical.
It had actually happened in my previous life.

“Did you not say a moment ago that I might someday suffer at my disciple’s hands?”

The Heavenly Demon looked down at me.
His expression gave no clue whether he was joking or serious.
I asked seriously,

“You won’t regret it?”
“Not at all.”
“Fine. If that happens, I’ll stop you. Whatever the cost.”
“I look forward to it.”

At last, an expression appeared on the Heavenly Demon’s face.
Faint though it was, it was unmistakably a smile.

The next afternoon, I visited the True Demon Market.
I traded the No-Return Blood for a cold-natured elixir.
It cost me a fair amount extra, but I didn’t mind.
No-Return Blood was a yang-natured elixir, so it wasn’t suitable for someone like me whose qi and blood were always overheated.

I returned to the Hidden Cloud Pavilion and took the elixir.
I sat cross-legged and began circulating and regulating my qi.
Nearly twenty years’ worth of cold energy welled up within my dantian.
The energy began escaping the dantian in every direction.
In the past, I would have lost at least dozens of those strands, reducing my absorption efficiency to less than half.
But I used Perfect Demonic Qi and Chaotic Demonic Qi to create a pulling force.
The escaping energy traveled through my meridians and returned to the dantian.
Only a few strands escaped me.

I calmly circulated the gathered energy through my meridians. With each cycle, another ten or twenty percent became mine.
In total, I extracted roughly twenty years’ worth of energy from the elixir.
Not a bad result.
About three-quarters of it was taken by the Chaotic Demonic Qi Bead.
Before, it had taken ninety percent.
When I took the Ice-Spirit Cold-Soul Grass with the help of the Heavenly Demon and the Demon Valley Lord, the Chaotic Demonic Qi Bead had cracked before repairing itself. Ever since then, it had been taking less of the energy I absorbed.
I divided the remaining energy evenly between Perfect Demonic Qi and Chaotic Demonic Qi.
That brought the internal energy I could freely use to a total of fifteen years.
It was modest compared to other martial artists, but I was extremely satisfied.
After all, my total internal energy had increased by fifty percent.
If I could increase my internal energy by this much just once more, I should be able to attempt the fifth stage of the Nine Heavens Demon-Ascension Art.

‘There’ll be plenty of chances to get more elixirs.’

My mood improved.
If everything went smoothly from here, I might even reach the seventh stage of the Nine Heavens Demon-Ascension Art, the level I had attained in my previous life, before the end of the year.

‘What comes after that is the problem.’

Until my True Blood Severed Meridians were completely cured, it would be no different from having chains wrapped around my entire body.
So I needed to visit the Central Plains soon.
I had to investigate the whereabouts of the two elixirs I needed for a complete cure.
I knew where they would be in the future, but whether they were in the same places now was another question.

‘The real beginning comes after I’m cured.’

Only then would I finally be able to take the first step on the long road toward catching up to the Heavenly Demon.

“Young Lord, someone from the Strategist Office is here to see you.”

Around the time I was preparing for bed, one of the strategists working under Gal So-ye came to see me.
After a brief greeting, the strategist immediately held out a letter.

“The Grand Strategist ordered me to deliver this urgently.”

I unfolded the letter.

<What would you like to do?>

That single line was all it contained.
The real message was being delivered directly into my ears through voice transmission.

[The Sun Wheel Unit Commander did something foolish. We detected signs that he dispatched experts under his command to silence the person who posted the proclamations.]

Yes. This was exactly what Gal So-ye and I had been aiming for.
We had put him under psychological pressure through the meeting.
The weapon called an ‘inspection’ had been drawn, and at the end, I had even said this.

-Just in case, if any of you know someone exceptionally fast and skilled in stealth, please let me know. There’s someone I absolutely need to meet.

There had always been a chance my guess was wrong.
But my memories from my previous life made me think the odds favored me being right, and I had hit the mark.

[The Grand Strategist told me to ask Seventh Young Lord. The Strategist Office is preparing to send people, but she wants to know how you would prefer to proceed.]

The question carried only one meaning.
Would I leave it to them and wait for the result, or would I go myself?

‘Obviously, the latter.’

“Tell her I’ll go.”
“Just as the Grand Strategist predicted. They are currently heading toward the Black Spirit Division. You should go here.”

He handed me a sheet of paper folded twice.
When I unfolded it, I found the name of a place.
It was presumably where they believed the operative was hiding.

“Here? Really?”
“That is our prediction. We are tracking them in real time, and they are drawing steadily closer to this location.”
“Hmm.”

Iron-Soul Workshop.
The culprit was hiding in the finest forge in the Demon Cult, operated by the Iron-Gold Wi Family?

“Forgive my impertinence, Seventh Young Lord, but I believe you should hurry. It has already been around thirty minutes since they departed.”

I nodded and said,

“Guard Im, let’s go.”
“Yes, Young Lord.”

Im Yeon moved to prepare the guards.
I stopped her.

“Let’s keep the group small. Me, Guard Im, and Unit Leader Ak. That should be enough.”

We had to arrive before the forces sent by the Sun Wheel Unit Commander.
Besides, we had no idea what might happen. I couldn’t drag along a whole string of first- and second-rate martial artists.

‘Just you wait.’

The bastard who posted the proclamations.
If I catch him, I might obtain crucial information about whoever had written them.
At the very least, he should know more than the Sun Wheel Unit Commander, who had merely been co-opted while remaining inside the main base.

I left the Hidden Cloud Pavilion.
The night breeze was cool.