Chapter 164

I stopped walking.
There was only one reason I didn’t move any closer with the Ink Scholar right in front of me.
That inexplicable composure of his.
It set off my survival instincts.
There were no Heaven Rebelling Society members in sight. All the dolls had been neutralized.
So where was that composure coming from?

‘Is it a bluff?’

No.
His breathing was steady, and not even the slightest tremor ran through the hand holding his brush.
The fact that he had waited for me with only this much fighting strength was strange to begin with.
Surely he couldn’t have predicted that I would come after him using a shortcut.
Which meant he had something he was relying on. What was it?
Right now, I had no idea.

‘Should I wait after all?’

The distant booming I had kept hearing even after leaving the cave had stopped a little while ago.
That meant Du Jung-baek had finally destroyed all the formations that had been layered one atop another.
If he followed the markings Im Yeon had left, he should reach us soon.
Once he arrived, there would be no need to hesitate.

‘No.’

What if that was exactly what the Ink Scholar wanted?
What I had built up until now.
I should trust in them.

I started forward again.
Or I would have.
If the Ink Scholar hadn’t opened his mouth.

“At first, I didn’t think much of you. I thought you were an observer.”

He muttered as his brush moved.
Apparently dissatisfied with something, he tore the page apart and began writing again.

“But you weren’t an observer. That was why I decided to eliminate you.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I revised my judgment and decided you were an intervener. That was why I trapped you in the formation and sent the doll after you, but that too was my mistake. You were neither an observer nor an intervener.”

The Ink Scholar raised his head.
Still holding his brush, he stared at me.

“You were the true seed.”
“……?!”

‘Wasn’t the seed supposed to be the Heavenly Demon’s Demonization?’
‘And wasn’t the Ink Scholar trying to bring that about himself?’

‘So why am I suddenly the seed?’

“What does that mean?”

The Ink Scholar did not answer.
A self-proclaimed ‘reader’ who drew conclusions from evidence.
He usually spouted cryptic nonsense, but that didn’t mean he simply said whatever came to mind.

That was why my thoughts were in turmoil.
I had lured out the Ink Scholar to answer my questions.
Yet only a few had been resolved.
The Ink Scholar was not a seer, his goal was to turn the Heavenly Demon into a demonic fiend, and he was willing to disregard both the Heaven Rebelling Society and his own life to accomplish it.

Far more questions remained unanswered.
The true meaning of the seed, how they intended to bring about the Heavenly Demon’s Demonization, the true nature of the Heaven Rebelling Society, and why they wanted to turn the Heavenly Demon into a demonic fiend.

“Why were you waiting for me?”

The Ink Scholar had not fled to the base.
Why?
I had a feeling it had something to do with him classifying me as the seed.

I tensed my muscles.
Ready to react to anything.

“Sang-eon, this one has many questions. Then I suppose I should answer them. Because I need to make it bloom. But-”

The Ink Scholar casually pushed aside the paper on which he had been recording everything. As it fluttered to the ground, his gaze shifted behind me.
At the same time, a voice rang out.

“Hoho, it seems I’m rather late. I had some troublesome things to break.”

It was Du Jung-baek.
Kuuuung. A force that seemed to press down upon the entire forest rolled over us.
Leaves trembled, and the remains of the dolls slid across the ground.
Even the air itself seemed to grow heavy.
He seemed displeased by the tricks the Ink Scholar had laid out for him.

“Sang-eon, the Guardian Court Master has appeared. It seems our time is up.”

The Ink Scholar knew Du Jung-baek.
Apparently, he had noticed when Du Jung-baek was caught in the formations.
Then there was no way he didn’t know what an extraordinary master Du Jung-baek was.
And yet his voice remained remarkably calm.
It sounded neither resigned nor anxious, but as though he were simply following a predetermined sequence.

“Seventh Young Lord, do you know of Falling Thunder Powder?”

The question came out of nowhere.
How could I not know the substance Heaven Rebelling Society members had detonated again and again without regard for their own lives?

“Of course.”
“Then do you also know what happens when Falling Thunder Powder is condensed again and again?”
“……?”

If it were condensed, naturally it could produce tremendous explosive power from a much smaller volume.
Why was he suddenly asking me this?

‘Wait. Don’t tell me?’

Every hair on my body stood on end.
Ttalkkak.
A small sound, yet one that pierced sharply into my ears.
The Ink Scholar seemed to have pressed something.

The top panel of his wheelchair opened.
Inside was a dark-colored solid.
There wasn’t much of it, but the intense scent pouring from it stabbed deep into my nose.
The Ink Scholar’s defining trait, according to Flying Swallow.
That strange fragrance that had always surrounded him.

“It produces a very strong and distinctive scent.”

The source of that scent was now right before my eyes.
It was Falling Thunder Powder compressed into a solid.
Something this concentrated could easily affect a radius of several dozen meters.

‘This crazy bastard.’

The same thought I had repeated countless times since meeting the Ink Scholar surfaced yet again.
This bastard had been sitting on solidified Falling Thunder Powder the entire time.
Ready to detonate it at any moment!

In the instant I froze in shock,
the Ink Scholar was already gripping the end of his inverted brush between his thumb and forefinger.
I understood immediately.
That wasn’t an ordinary brush. Something was hidden inside it.
Probably something capable of triggering the explosion. A small ember of some kind.

‘I have to stop him!’

How?
The Ink Scholar was only about a meter and a half away.
The moment he opened the brush cap, the ember would fall and react with the solid Falling Thunder Powder.
Even with Lightning Step, there simply wasn’t enough time.
Then I had to evade it.

‘Reverse Step?’

The blast radius was several dozen meters.
If I used Reverse Step at full power, could I retreat far enough to escape safely?

‘No.’

Reverse Step wasn’t fast enough.
I wouldn’t escape the direct blast zone. Even if I created some distance, I wouldn’t be able to withstand the shock wave that followed.

‘What do I do?’

My thoughts were in chaos.
It was too late to go back.
There was a bomb in front of me.
I had no way to move quickly to either side.
I was completely trapped within the blast radius.

-If the path is blocked, make a path.

I didn’t know why.
That piece of advice that hadn’t even seemed like advice, the one I had dismissed because I didn’t understand it and figured I would someday.
It suddenly came back to me.

Whenever I faced a desperate situation, I always thought of the Heavenly Demon.
What would the Heavenly Demon have done?
If he were in this situation?

‘He wouldn’t have retreated.’

He would have moved forward without hesitation.
Because that was the direction in which he could reach his greatest speed.
And because that was the path the Heavenly Demon walked.
That mindset was probably what had made him the Heavenly Demon he was today.

‘I’ll break straight through!’

If I got past the wheelchair, the blast would hit my back.
That gave me a much better chance of surviving than taking it from the front.
The chance was as thin as a sheet of paper, but if I retreated, I wouldn’t even have that.

“Everyone, get back!”

The instant I shouted, I kicked off the ground.
I scraped up every last bit of internal energy from the depths of my dantian and drove the body forged through hellish training to the absolute limit.
Lightning Step.
It felt as though time had been split into countless tiny fragments.
At the instant my concentration reached its peak,
I shot diagonally forward like a literal flash of lightning.
My trajectory skimmed past the wheelchair and carried me to the other side.

Paaaaang!

At that moment, flames flared up around the wheelchair.
The explosion began.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion.
The wooden panel splitting with tiny cracks, the wheel jutting out as though about to fly free, and the bundle of papers the Ink Scholar had pushed aside beginning to rise in the shock wave.

As I shot past, I reached out.
It wasn’t a conscious decision.
I grabbed as many of the papers as I could and pulled them against my chest.

Without stopping, I swept past the wheelchair.
Peoeong-!
Along with the blast, a powerful shock wave came tearing after me from behind and to the side.
Heat engulfed my back.
I drew Perfect Demonic Qi toward my back.

‘Just one more time!’

In truth, I had one more thing I was counting on.
The Protective Armor I had borrowed from Du Jung-baek.
It had protected me when the formation exploded earlier too.
I didn’t know how many times it could save my life.
I could only pray it would hold out one more time.

The problem was my arms and legs.

‘What if they get blown off?’

It was an ominous thought, but what could I do?
If they got blown off, then they got blown off.
As long as I didn’t die, I would find some way to get back on my feet.
It was nothing more than instinct, but I knew the Heavenly Demon wouldn’t abandon me.

Huuuuung!

That was when it happened.
A heavy force struck my back.
It wasn’t the explosion.
It was pushing me forward.
My body shot forward.

‘This?’

Du Jung-baek.
The palm force unleashed by an Extreme Demon Realm master was pushing me beyond the shock wave!

But the force of the explosion was no joke.
Even as I flew through the air, the heat and shock wave clung viciously to me.
I couldn’t tell whether my bones were being crushed or my skin was burning.
Indescribable pain swept through my entire body.

“Keugh!”

Perhaps frustrated that it had failed to swallow me whole,
the shock wave hurled me violently forward.
Lightning Step, palm force, shock wave.
The three combined to send me tumbling across the ground.

Before the earlier pain could even fade, another impact slammed into me as though it would shatter every bone in my body.
Kwadang! Kwang! Kwang!
I finally stopped just as I thought, ‘I’m going to die like this.’

“Keeeeugh…… Ugh.”

Groans spilled uncontrollably from my mouth.

Kwagwagwagwagwang!
The lingering roar of the explosion shook the entire forest.
A storm of heat swept over me and then vanished.
My ears rang.

‘Am I alive?’

The fact that I could still think meant I probably wasn’t dead.
Wiggle, wiggle.
My fingers and toes still moved, however slightly. Thankfully, all four limbs were still attached.
I had coughed up a lot of blood, but not enough to kill me. I had Du Jung-baek and the Protective Armor to thank for that.

“Ugh.”

I forced myself upright.
My head spun as my vision blurred, then slowly returned.

The clearing before me had been devastated.
Scorched earth. A few charred fragments of wood.
The Ink Scholar was nowhere to be seen.
He had probably been reduced to dust without a trace.

“Young Lord, are you all right?”

Ak Mu-jin’s voice.
He hurried through the falling ash and supported me by the shoulder.

“What about the others?”
“The Guardian Court Master immediately began circulating his qi. Guard Im is standing watch over him.”
“Ah.”

I could picture what had happened.
He must have moved close to push me from behind, which meant he had been caught badly in the explosion.
He had probably endured it with protective Aura Qi, but there was no way he could have avoided severe internal injuries.

‘Thank goodness.’

“I should circulate my qi too.”
“Understood.”

I sat back down and crossed my legs.
By the time I finished circulating my qi, Du Jung-baek and Im Yeon were standing in front of me.
Their faces were pale and worried.
I smiled and looked at Du Jung-baek.

“Court Master.”
“Speak.”
“Weren’t you a little too late? I almost died.”

Du Jung-baek smiled as well.

“If I’d known you would start complaining the moment you saw me, perhaps I should have arrived a little later.”
“Oh, come on. If you had, I really would be dead. Thank you for saving me.”
“I merely gave you a small push. Surviving that explosion was Seventh Young Lord’s own accomplishment. But what is that?”

Du Jung-baek’s gaze shifted toward my body.
Tucked roughly against me was the bundle of papers I had grabbed.

“The Ink Scholar’s records. They got a little burned, though.”

More than half had burned away in the brief moment between grabbing them and pulling them into my clothes.
There wasn’t much left that could still be read.

I opened the bundle.
Even with more than half burned away, the surviving sections were packed with tiny writing.
He had been scribbling with that brush all day. Just what had he been writing?

‘He really wasn’t normal in any sense.’

I scanned the characters that were still legible.
Most had been eaten away by the flames and cut off midway, but one line suddenly caught my eye.

“The more one struggles, the sooner the time of blooming will come.”

I had no idea what it meant, yet something about it tickled at the back of my mind.
I felt as though I was on the verge of grasping something.

‘……I’ll have to think about it carefully later.’

Now wasn’t the time.
The pain was growing increasingly alarming. I needed treatment as soon as possible.

“We’re all hurt, so let’s head to Ink-Needle Hall together.”

The base still remained, but that was Gal So-ye’s problem to deal with.

I tucked the bundle of papers back into my clothes.
Before leaving, I looked once more at the spot where the Ink Scholar had been.
I thought I had heard him say something as I swept past the wheelchair.

-Sang-eon, the record ends here.