Chapter 1050

When people faced a truth far beyond anything they’d expected, their reactions tended to fall into two camps.

They either fell into confusion, unable to understand it, or froze as they began to grasp its staggering weight.

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord belonged to the first.

“What does that…?”

He muttered blankly, having forgotten even his pain.

Confronted with the crushing reality that the master he’d worshiped like a god had abandoned him, the fiend heard the Grand Sorceress’s words ringing in his ears again and again.

You can’t fall here. You have to get stronger than you are now.

No matter how many times the Blood-Sword Demon Lord turned over the Grand Sorceress’s words about Jin Taekyung in his mind, he couldn’t understand them.

Used up and thrown away?

Of course he felt betrayed.

But if the strong wanted blood, the weak had to bleed.

He had walked the Demonic Path all his life. He knew that law of the world as well as anyone.

He still didn’t know why he was being discarded after devoting himself to the Lord of Heaven and Dark Heaven. But now that things had come this far, he had no choice but to accept it.

That was one thing. This was another.

Why? How? For what reason?

Why would the master he served pay such a high price to put the execution of his loyal hunting dog in an enemy’s hands?

And not just any enemy. A brat who wasn’t even thirty—the person who had thwarted Dark Heaven more often than anyone else in the world.

And…

Kill me, and get stronger?

What did his death, this one-sided execution, have to do with Jin Taekyung growing stronger?

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord couldn’t begin to guess what the Grand Sorceress’s final words meant. That was only natural.

There were limits to what he could imagine.

But at least one other person here knew the truth he couldn’t.

“…You.”

The young man’s lips had gone white, and the muscles of his face had stiffened.

He stared at the woman before him with vacant eyes, forgetting even to breathe. At last, he managed to force out the words.

“What are you even… saying?”

It wasn’t a question. It was a denial.

He didn’t want to believe this impossible reality, so he struggled to deny it.

The Grand Sorceress looked at the young man—Jin Taekyung—and her eyes curved into crescents.

“You already know, don’t you?”

“…!”

“Do I have to tell you what I mean, right here?”

The words turned his dreadful suspicion into certainty. Jin Taekyung felt his mind go blank.

Only one phrase remained.

Level Up.

Was this what it felt like when all the blood in your body turned cold?

For a moment, it seemed as though the whole world had stopped.

No—maybe I really had mistaken it for that.

Maybe I really would have believed it had, if not for my head burning like someone was pressing a hot iron to it while the rest of me stood frozen.

This… can’t be real.

I floundered in confusion.

Questions kept surfacing and vanishing. Reason and emotion lost their bearings and crashed into each other.

The shock was as great as—maybe greater than—what I’d felt when I realized this strange world called Murim wasn’t a game, but another reality.

Yet this was real.

I fought to suppress my shock and forced out a question.

“How? How is this possible?”

My voice came out hoarse and cracked, so unfamiliar it might have belonged to someone else.

The woman’s reply, by contrast, was calm.

“Who knows? Someone as insignificant as I am can’t know everything. But…”

The Grand Sorceress—or the Grand Mage.

She had gained power that didn’t belong to this world. Now she stared straight at me, her eyes and voice so full of unwavering faith it could only be called fanaticism. The sight and sound made my senses reel.

“The Lord of Heaven is great. I am merely a servant who conveys His will and His words.”

“The Lord of Heaven. The Lord of Heaven…”

I repeated that damned name like a man under a spell.

Ever since the day I’d taken my first steps in Murim, I’d heard it from countless people. And yet I’d never once encountered its true form.

The leader of Dark Heaven—or rather, their king and god. The absolute being who sought to defy heaven.

Him.

Only him.

He knew one of my most closely guarded secrets as plainly as if he were looking at the palm of his hand.

But that didn’t answer my question.

Because I—Jin Taekyung of the Jin Family of Taiyuan—had become someone else overnight.

“Were you watching me? From the beginning?”

“Watching you?”

Beneath her white veil, her red lips curved gently.

“Let’s be honest. Just a few years ago, you weren’t someone we needed to concern ourselves with. Everyone knows that.”

“Then…”

“It’s simple. We were looking down upon the world, and you shone on your own within it. Bright enough to see clearly, even from far away.”

“…!”

“It was fascinating to watch the wastrel of a declining frontier martial family become a Hidden Dragon, then gain the Fire King as his dragon pearl and grow into a Divine Dragon. And to see how fast you grew.”

An imugi that had cultivated itself for hundreds of years could become a dragon if it obtained a dragon pearl. But Jin Taekyung of the Jin Family of Taiyuan had been, at best, an earthworm in muddy water.

Yet the System had given me boundless opportunities to grow. People had supplied explanation after explanation without my having to make a single excuse.

Heaven-given martial talent.

The Heavenly Martial Physique, a body as perfect as could be.

And the teachings of the Fire King, Jeok Cheongang, a great martial artist.

That, they said, was how I’d reached my current strength.

So no one suspected a thing.

No—they couldn’t have.

Even in this world, for all its primitive savagery, there were limits to what people considered possible.

But the Grand Mage was telling me now that someone outside their reach—at least, the Lord of Heaven—had been the exception.

And she had revealed something else I hadn’t expected.

“We kept watching at His command. At last, we learned who the Chosen One was.”

My eyes twitched before I could stop them.

“What… did you just say?”

“Why? Don’t you like the name? I thought it was rather good.”

I didn’t answer.

I pressed my lips together and repeated what I’d heard in my head.

The Chosen One?

There was only one reason I’d asked her to repeat herself.

This wasn’t the first time someone had called me that.

The first to call me the Chosen One was, even now, far off in the distance with her bowstring taut, aimed in this direction.

The Bow Saint.

A hero of the Great Faction War, who had protected the Nine Provinces from a hundred thousand members of the Demonic Cult.

A great martial artist who had always shone brilliantly, wherever she went, and was therefore called one of the Three Saints.

And the reason the Bow Saint had spent decades wandering the land, concealing her identity, was a letter left behind by one person.

…The Martial God.

Ten Kings. Three Saints.

Above them all stood the heaven that looked down upon everything—the universe, or perhaps Murim itself.

The greatest hero and martial artist of all time, with no equal before or since.

The Martial God had left the Bow Saint a letter.

He’d told her to find someone who might appear at any time, in any place.

The Chosen One—that is…

Me.

That made it even harder to understand.

I could accept that the Martial God had foreseen my arrival and left the Bow Saint a letter.

But why? How?

“Why are you—why is the Lord of Heaven—keeping me alive?”

I had stood in Dark Heaven’s way more than anyone else.

I’d been directly involved in the deaths of four Demon Lords and the Demon Empress, his closest subordinates and limbs. I’d caused him countless other losses, too.

From the Lord of Heaven’s perspective, I was someone he could kill a hundred times and still not be satisfied.

Yet the Grand Mage had said it plainly.

Her master didn’t want me to die here.

He wanted me to survive and grow stronger. Stronger than I was now.

I had to hear the answer.

If the Lord of Heaven wanted me alive, then my very existence would someday become a threat to everyone.

“Answer me. Now.”

The shock and trembling had passed.

All that remained was the reality before me and the cold resolve to face it.

I stared at the Grand Mage with icy eyes. Through her tightly woven white veil, I could make out the gleam of eyes burning with loyalty to their master.

At last, her red lips parted.

“No one in the world would dare presume to know His deeper purpose. But one thing is certain.”

She breathed out slowly.

The corner of her mouth lifted in unmistakable scorn.

“Even if you heard the whole truth, could someone like you resist?”

“…!”

“Let’s be honest with each other.”

As casually as she might throw off a cumbersome robe, the Grand Mage dropped her manners. Smiling, she went on.

“Do you think rain falls because people pray for it? No. The clouds gather, and it rains when the heavens will it. That’s the way of this world. Its natural order.”

Crack.

Her eyes flashed behind the veil. A thick vine crept up my body and tightened around my neck.

Slowly. And powerfully.

“If you want to die, I can kill you. But you have to survive, according to His will. You want to live, too. Don’t you?”

I couldn’t breathe.

My whole body was already bound. As the vine gradually squeezed my throat, I forced out the words.

“Then… kill me.”

“What?”

“Go on. Kill me.”

“…!”

The Grand Mage’s gaze wavered.

She’d heard the sincerity in my breathless voice and seen it in my eyes, which were steady despite my labored breathing.

“You…”

Her words trailed off, and the pressure on my neck eased. I looked at her and gave a short laugh.

“What? Can’t do it, you crazy bitch?”

Crack!

The vine tightened again, as hard as before.

Even so, I laughed aloud between gasps.

Yeah, right now I was unquestionably the weaker one.

But in this tug-of-war with our lives on the line, I was going to win.

If the Grand Mage was a crazy bitch, then I was a different kind of crazy bastard.

Now that it’s come to this, I can do it.

I smiled brightly at the Grand Mage, whose eyes had gone wide.

Then, with all the strength I had, I severed the heart meridians throughout my body.

Using the faint healing power she herself had given me.

Crunch!