Chapter 81

Heuk Jin-pung was waiting for me in front of the Ten Thousand Demon Hall.

His face was as bloodless and pale as a corpse, and the sword wounds carved all over his body seeped blood that soaked his tattered clothes through.

His body was trembling uncontrollably. No matter how I looked at it, this wasn’t the Heuk Jin-pung of normal times.

Just as Gal So-ye had said, this had to be the result of Son Wi-tak staking his own life and fighting to the end.

“Baek Su-gyeong…!”

But the instant our eyes met, every hair on my body stood on end.

His single-minded desire to kill me had turned into madness that wavered around him like ghostly fire.

Even though he had suffered wounds and internal injuries severe enough to threaten his life, an Extreme Demon realm master was still an Extreme Demon realm master.

The pressure that only someone who had stepped onto a path beyond human limits could possess poured out from his entire being.

Maybe that was why.

A sense of danger stronger than anything since my regression crashed over me.

It felt like I was walking along an extremely narrow cliffside path.

It was as if a single misstep would send me plunging down a sheer drop, my body smashed so completely no trace would remain.

‘…But he’s a man who will soon be gone.’

I had gone through far worse than this more times than I could count.

Hadn’t the demonic Heavenly Demon brought my previous life to an end?

A calamity that the heavens themselves couldn’t stop, something the Extreme Demon realm could never hope to describe.

That was the demonic Heavenly Demon.

Recalling those vivid memories, I walked toward Heuk Jin-pung step by step.

“Did you think hiding in the Ten Thousand Demon Hall would keep me from tearing you to pieces?”

“Who said anyone was hiding? I’m the one who called you here.”

“You must have made the shallow calculation that the Cult Leader would save you.”

“The Cult Leader? Don’t you know blasphemy against the Heavenly Demon is a capital crime?”

“I don’t scheme for the future. I will tear you limb from limb and gladly meet my own death.”

“You can pull off at least one of those. Your own death.”

“I’ll sear that tongue of yours first!”

No sooner had the words left his mouth than Heuk Jin-pung lashed out with his whip.

Even though we were a full fifteen meters apart, the whip ignored the distance and came crashing in.

I threw myself aside before I could even grasp its trajectory.

I knew all too well that if I hesitated, I would be too late.

Shugak!

A deafening sound rang out, as if space itself had been sliced apart.

Pang! Paang!

Using Whirling Wind Leaf Steps, I dodged the dancing Soul-Cutting Whip in rapid succession.

Ignoring the terror of the air-rending booms pounding my eardrums, I recalled the Heavenly Demon’s advice.

–You are facing the wrong direction. What you should seek is not an explosion.

I had a vague idea what he meant.

I just hadn’t reached a clear answer.

My plan was simple.

Break the balance between the Perfect Demonic Qi and the Chaotic Demonic Qi to create an attractive force, then emit it outside my body and bring it into contact with Heuk Jin-pung.

That attractive force held a massive explosive power generated by the mutual cancellation of the two energies.

If it hit, Heuk Jin-pung would be blown to pieces.

‘But he said I’m aiming in the wrong direction?’

Maybe it was because it was too difficult to control.

With the slightest mistake, the explosion would probably happen inside my own body instead of in Heuk Jin-pung’s.

‘In that case, could it be…?’

A sudden thought flashed through my mind.

The Heavenly Demon had surely pointed me toward an idea that minimized the side effects.

That was surely—

‘Yikes.’

I cut off my thoughts and rolled across the ground.

The whip had just raked through the spot where I’d been.

Kwaang! Kwaang!

The whip chased after me like a shadowy specter.

It hadn’t landed a direct hit, but it was threatening enough.

Everywhere the whip brushed past exploded ruthlessly.

Then the whip’s tip came flying straight at my head.

I was a breath away from taking a hole through my brain.

Jjeo-eong!

I barely managed to block it by drawing my cold-iron dagger, but my grip tore open.

The dagger spun up into the air.

I reflexively reached out with my left hand and snatched it.

Gulping, I swallowed.

‘So this is Heuk Jin-pung.’

To wield martial skill like this even in his half-dead state.

The Heavenly Demon hadn’t mentioned ten exchanges for nothing.

I had no way of lasting any longer than that.

‘I have to finish him before that, no matter what.’

I hadn’t worked out a perfect answer yet, but this was the time for action, not thought.

I deliberately broke the balance between Perfect Demonic Qi and Chaotic Demonic Qi.

Inside my dantian, the attractive force began to run wild.

“What trick are you trying to pull, you bastard?”

Heuk Jin-pung shouted.

As befitted a master at the Extreme Demon realm, he must have sensed the change within me.

“I’ll grind you to dust!”

A brutally savage black aura surged forth.

I ignored it and charged straight ahead.

I guided the attractive force into my left hand, intending to load it into the cold-iron dagger and pierce him through.

“Ngh.”

A sudden jolt of agony twisted my face on its own.

The flow of the attractive force had hit a wall.

Forcing what those two energies had created into a single narrow channel, my arm’s meridians and blood simply couldn’t bear it.

‘So it really won’t work?’

Everyone makes the mistake of overestimating themselves at some point.

Just like I was now.

–You cannot withstand the attractive force you intend to create. When water is about to overflow, you must open a sluice.

Even while I was trying to gauge the meaning of that advice, I ignored it.

I thought that even if I couldn’t compare to the Heavenly Demon—

Even if my meridians and blood had only been tempered to a degree by the Ice-Spirit Cold-Soul Grass, this much would hold.

But it was all a miscalculation.

I clenched my teeth hard.

‘I have to open a sluice!’

The solution was simple.

Disperse the pressure that attractive force was exerting on my meridians and blood.

Clang!

I hurled away the cold-iron dagger I’d struggled to catch without a second thought.

Just then, Black Smoke Blood-Wind Hardened Qi was streaming out from Heuk Jin-pung one strand after another.

Dodging for my life, splitting the attractive force into two currents.

It was a reckless attempt, but I managed it by a hair, thanks to the extreme stability of Perfect Demonic Qi.

I sent them into my left arm and right arm.

“You bastaaard!”

Perhaps because his attack had missed.

Heuk Jin-pung extended the Black Smoke Blood-Wind Hardened Qi into more than a dozen strands.

Maybe because of that.

His figure began to twist into something grotesque.

The capillaries all over his body burst one after another, turning everything from his once-pale face to the tips of his fingers and toes bright red.

He looked like a corpse whose skin had just been flayed off.

One word naturally came to mind.

‘Demonization?’

Maybe it was because he was forcing himself to wield Black Smoke Blood-Wind Hardened Qi with a body that had already grown so feeble.

Heuk Jin-pung was being devoured by Demonic Qi.

This was one of the classic signs of turning into a demon.

“I-I’ll kill… I’ll kill yooou!”

Slurring speech was another.

The black Qi heaved ominously.

‘There won’t be a second chance.’

If Heuk Jin-pung finished turning into a demon, there would be no way I could face him.

That was why I had to end it with this one attempt.

Shwooong!

I tore through the streams of space-rending Qi and charged without hesitation.

The only thing in my field of vision was Heuk Jin-pung.

Skeok!

One strand of Qi grazed my side.

A chunk of flesh tore away.

I swallowed the scream that tried to burst out.

Pat!

Another strand of Qi pierced through my left thigh.

My body lurched wildly.

Twisting my upper body, I stamped down with my right leg.

My body spun like a top.

Several strands of Qi brushed past me, carving lines of blood.

Wooong!

Perfect Demonic Qi in my right hand, Chaotic Demonic Qi in my left.

I wrapped the opposing energies around my hands in opposite manners.

Heuk Jin-pung loomed larger and larger in my sight.

“Graaah!”

Heuk Jin-pung let out a roar that sounded more demonic than human.

The strands of Black Smoke Blood-Wind Hardened Qi, which had multiplied, resulting in each one being weaker for it, surged toward me like a tidal wave.

I no longer had the leeway to dodge.

I took the crashing Qi head-on with my bare body and drove into his reach.

At last, both my hands touched the right side of his chest.

“…!”

Heuk Jin-pung’s unfocused eyes flew wide.

The energies I sent in resonated within his body, not as an attractive force, but as ripples of repulsion.

Those ripples became a power that disintegrated everything they touched, beginning to collapse Heuk Jin-pung’s body from the inside.

Saaaah—

The right side of Heuk Jin-pung’s upper body crumbled away like fine sand.

Because of the limits of my internal energy, the ‘disassembly’ stopped quickly, but even that much had already driven him past the point of no return.

With his right chest, shoulder, and abdomen blown open, Heuk Jin-pung collapsed like a fallen leaf.

“Th-this… This can’t be. I… I, the Clan Head… of the Hundred-Succession Heuk Clan…!”

Whether his Demonization had halted or not, his ability to speak and the focus in his eyes had returned.

But his body, dyed entirely red in that hideous state, remained like a trace proving he had been on the verge of becoming a demon.

As I looked down at Heuk Jin-pung like that, all the moments I’d been entangled with him floated in my mind.

Heuk Un-hwi, the wanderers, the assassins, the Heaven Rebelling Society, and even the Blood Water Goong Clan Head.

All those assassination attempts had ended at last in his own death.

‘Though he is still technically breathing.’

“I said you’d be able to pull off one of the two, remember? Your death.”

I spoke in a voice full of satisfaction.

Since my regression, I had survived more brushes with death than I could count.

Maybe it was an addiction of its own, but the thrill I felt each time I survived wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

Unfortunately, that thrill didn’t last long.

“Hrrk.”

I grimaced and sank down on the spot.

My meridians and blood began to flow backward.

The Heavenly Demon’s advice had minimized the side effects, but this had never been an attack my body could fully handle to begin with.

My meridians boiled and my skin swelled as if it were about to burst, which was a state I was on the brink of.

A massive Qi I knew all too well appeared and gently calmed my rampaging blood and meridians.

It was the Heavenly Demon.

I turned my head in the direction he was standing.

“Master…”

“You found the right answer.”

“Of course I did… Whose disciple do you think I am?”

I forced a smile that didn’t want to come.

The Heavenly Demon’s advice that I was facing the wrong direction had been a double-edged expression.

It meant choosing disassembly over explosion, control over destruction, sustainable growth over self-destruction.

“Sleep for a while.”

“Okay…”

My eyes had already been on the verge of closing.

I drifted into unconsciousness.

“…”

Seol Yu-won gazed down quietly at the unconscious Baek Su-gyeong.

To think he would actually pull it off.

He had prepared himself to step in if things went wrong, but there had been no need for him to act.

A boy who constantly turned the impossible into the possible.

One of the very few children who carried color in his world of nothing but black and white.

That was his disciple.

The Heavenly Demon thought to himself.

That he would not break under the despair that awaited him.

And that someday, far in the future, he would tear apart that vicious shackle.

“…Send him to Ju Ok-hwa.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

One of the hidden personal guards appeared, lifted Baek Su-gyeong up, and vanished.

“My… Lord…”

A voice tinged with a rasp like scraping metal.

Seol Yu-won turned his head toward Heuk Jin-pung.

“You must keep Baek Su-gyeong away from you…”

“…”

“He ruined the Heuk Clan’s future, that brat… kugh!”

“The one who ruined the Heuk Clan’s future was your own greed.”

“But…”

Heuk Jin-pung couldn’t go on.

In truth, he knew it himself.

If he had not seen Baek Su-gyeong as a threat and simply ignored him.

If he had not permitted Heuk Un-hwi’s surprise attack. If he had accepted defeat and not dreamed of revenge.

If he had been a little less obsessed with his clan’s honor.

-If only, if only.

He would not have ended up like this.

But it was a useless what-if.

Even if he could go back to the past, he would have done the same things all over again.

“My Lord… Please… kill Un-hwi f-for me— kugh.”

The clan would fall and the father would die.

The one-armed son would live his whole life under ridicule and humiliation.

It was better to kill him than force him to live such a horrific future—that, to a father, was his duty.

“…”

Seol Yu-won did not answer, but Heuk Jin-pung didn’t let go of his hope.

The Heavenly Demon was a ruthless being without blood or tears.

That ruthlessness would become the last mercy for Un-hwi.

Had he not been shoved in as a disciple under the name of the Seven Demon Houses?

Dealing with one such disciple would be nothing to the Heavenly Demon.

But.

“I will not grant your request.”

“How…!”

“Un-hwi is my disciple.”

Heuk Jin-pung’s pupils dilated.

“Even without an arm, there is no hindrance to pursuing the pinnacle of martial arts.”

At the Heavenly Demon’s indifferent words, Heuk Jin-pung felt the strength drain from his whole body.

It was a declaration that he would not cast Heuk Un-hwi aside, but teach him to the very end.

It was relief.

Tears flowed down the face of a man who had splattered the blood of countless people throughout his life.

“My… thanks…”

Heuk Jin-pung’s eyes slowly closed.

The last thing that floated up in his mind was, laughably, Baek Su-gyeong’s face.

‘Maybe I… touched someone I never should have laid a hand on…’

And so ended the life of Heuk Jin-pung, Clan Head of the Hundred-Succession Heuk Clan.