Chapter 1130

Light doesn’t exist only to illuminate.

Sometimes it erases everything and lets you forget.

Just like the beam flying toward Jin Taekyung now, filling his vision with white.

Whoooooosh!

As the flash swelled, Jin Taekyung’s gaze sank low.

He cleared every stray thought and question from his mind.

No—he had no choice.

The beam had split into dozens, and each one writhed as if alive, aiming for a vital point on his body.

It’s no feint.

Every one of those solid beams held terrifying destructive power unlike anything he’d ever experienced.

But Jin Taekyung chose to advance, not retreat.

Fwoosh—BOOM!

Flames streamed from the foot he drove forward. Keeping low, he shot through the rain of light, narrowly slipping past each beam. The old man watched him and nodded.

“The Flamefire Path. You certainly know how to fight.”

Jin Taekyung answered the praise in his own way.

Ssshh.

As the distance between them vanished, his spear surged toward the old man. Afterimages engulfed it, rippling like a wave.

Like the tail of a colossal dragon.

Whoooosh!

Indigo flames rose along the spearhead. As with the old man’s move moments earlier, they split into dozens in an instant and surged forward, blanketing the space.

KWA-BOOM!

If a hell of boiling sulfurous fire existed, would it look like this?

Yet even before that lava-like heat, the old man’s calm eyes did not waver.

Nor did his hands as he brought them together to meet the spearhead amid that life-or-death crisis.

Crack!

For an instant, Jin Taekyung’s eyes flew wide.

The trembling spearhead was reflected in Jin Taekyung’s eyes between the old man’s palms, pressed together as if in prayer.

“…How?”

The question escaped before he knew it.

The old man, who had blown away every flame coming at him simply by bringing his palms together, looked puzzled.

“Hm? I just grabbed it.”

“…!”

“Anyway, try something hotter this time. This is making me pleasantly drowsy. Not bad.”

Jin Taekyung felt his vision swim.

The old man was already a madman for stopping his full-power strike with Empty-Hand Seizes the Blade. And now he was treating several jiazi¹ of Scorching Yang Qi—hot enough to melt steel—as if it were hot spring water.

What kind of old man is this?

Even the Blood Lord, the strongest opponent he’d faced until now, hadn’t been this powerful.

Not even close.

The Blood Lord had used blood to gain healing that bordered on Regeneration and a seemingly endless supply of internal energy. But even that terrifying power had its limits.

The old man was different. His very nature, his level, was different from the Blood Lord’s.

Jin Taekyung sensed no particular killing intent in eyes as still as a secluded lake. Yet merely facing the old man made his whole body freeze.

It was like standing before an enormous wall he could never climb, no matter how hard he struggled.

And the old man saw straight into that passing thought.

“Your head’s full of stray thoughts. You must still have some life left in you. In that case…”

At that moment—

CRASH!

The spearhead in the old man’s grasp shattered. His palm glided forward and touched Jin Taekyung’s chest.

BOOM!

An explosion rang out from deep within his body.

Jin Taekyung dropped to one knee as pain bleached his vision white. Even through the ringing in his ears, the old man’s whisper came through with startling clarity.

“I’ll clear those stray thoughts away for you again.”

“…!”

Jin Taekyung had no time to answer, let alone recover from the pain.

More precisely, the old man didn’t give him any.

Whoosh!

A massive force descended toward the crown of his head with a heavy rush of air.

The energy wave was so terrifying it made him forget even the pain. Jin Taekyung rolled to the side without time to think.

KWA-BOOM!

A roar like the sky splitting apart shook the space, followed by a shock wave that swept in every direction.

Jin Taekyung felt himself thrown far away, as if weightless. Behind him, the old man appeared, having crossed more than ten jang² in an instant.

“Good judgment. If you hadn’t used Narye tagon,³ it would’ve ended there.”

Normally, Jin Taekyung would have told an enemy to shut the hell up, no matter who it was.

Not this time.

Every part of him knew that against this old man, even a single deep breath—or the smallest stray thought—was a luxury he couldn’t afford.

“You only just figured out something that simple?”

…and that as long as this mysterious old man could read his mind, he would never escape this damned situation.

“Oh, that’s quite an insight. So what will you do now?”

Meeting the old man’s interested gaze, Jin Taekyung used what remained of his spear as a cane and pushed himself upright.

Slowly. Carefully.

By the time he stood on both feet, he had found his answer.

Ssshh.

His eyes closed.

The thought that he was doing something insane, and the fear of what might happen, lasted only a moment. His trembling eyelids grew still, shutting out everything his eyes had shown him.

By giving up that one thing, Jin Taekyung gained something new.

The thread of enlightenment he hadn’t managed to follow to its end during the fierce battle against Dark Heaven.

And the only way through the situation he faced now.

At the sight of him, the old man smiled faintly once more.

“Yes. That’s how it should be.”

At that moment—

Pop.

As if on cue, the young man and the old man shot toward each other.

Fwoosh—BOOM!

Jin Taekyung thrust out the Flame-Extinguishing Divine Fist as if entranced.

Heat that seemed capable of melting even a thousand-year-old boulder swept through the gray-white space. But he already knew.

He could feel it.

The old man was no longer there.

He was moving faster than sound, slipping into Jin Taekyung’s blind spot.

BOOM!

Jin Taekyung twisted like lightning. A powerful palm strike slammed through the air where his head had been a moment earlier.

“Much better.”

In the darkness behind his closed eyes, Jin Taekyung swallowed a breath as he barely evaded the attacks closing in from every direction.

Was it his imagination?

The old man’s voice, once clearer than anything else, now sounded fainter and farther away than an echo.

“The fact that you can still hear me means you’re not there yet.”

He was right. Maybe.

It was nothing new. It had always been this way.

He hadn’t been strong enough to protect everyone. The guilt and anxiety had brought nightmares night after night.

He had wavered like a candle in the wind, then guttered out.

“But that is greed. Humans cannot become perfect.”

Jin Taekyung knew that, too.

But even if what he wanted went beyond desire into greed, he didn’t care.

He only wanted to save someone, and to live himself.

To live alongside the people he cherished in a more peaceful world.

“Everyone dreams of that. Reality is cruel, though.”

Despite his calm voice, the old man pressed him without pause.

A foot that snapped like a whip, a hand slicing diagonally downward, a palm extending smoothly—each was a sword or spear.

There was no fierce killing intent in any of those moves, yet each brimmed with enough qi to seemingly obliterate not just his body, but his soul.

“Who knows? Perhaps entering perfect rest just like this would be a good thing for you.”

At those words, Jin Taekyung’s retreating steps stopped as though nailed to the ground.

KWA-BOOM!

Two fists collided in midair.

The old man was so wrinkled that Jin Taekyung couldn’t begin to guess his age, and his fist held a force almost impossible to withstand. Jin Taekyung braced himself, though his feet slowly slid back.

“What do you mean by that?”

The question came through clenched teeth. The old man answered calmly.

“What do you think I mean?”

“…You can’t mean—”

“Good. You seem to know already. There’s no time left, so let’s settle this now.”

Just as Jin Taekyung was about to ask what he meant, the old man’s fist gathered more force and shoved him away.

KWA-BOOM!

Jin Taekyung shot backward like a cannonball.

He barely regained his balance in midair. The moment he landed, he felt the space around him hum.

Hmmm.

He couldn’t see it. But he could picture it.

Far away, a formless sword pointed straight at him. The old man held it in his hands—a sword made not of metal, but entirely of qi.

“Try to dodge it. If you can’t… then this is as far as you go.”

Jin Taekyung could no longer ask what that meant.

He couldn’t even bring himself to open his eyes. If he lost his tenuous hold on this new sensation for even an instant, or let the slightest stray thought intrude, he felt certain his body would be cut to pieces.

And that judgment was right.

Gooooong.

The gray-white space trembled as the old man slowly raised both hands.

At the same time, a faint beam of light flowed into some corner of Jin Taekyung’s pitch-black vision.

What is this?

A sensation he had never felt before.

Or rather, it had come to him only very rarely after he combined three forms of internal energy, lingering briefly before fading.

Reason had no place in it. It belonged to instinct.

It was a realm where the body moved before the mind gave an order—no, somewhere beyond even that.

It was taking hold of Jin Taekyung’s mind, touching on the sixth sense.

At last, he stared straight at the invisible sword slashing down from the old man’s fingertips.

Sssshing!

At the instant a sound like the whole world splitting apart rang out—

Whoooosh.

Jin Taekyung saw it.

A single beam of light, brightening his vision as dark as the deep night.

And, as if entranced, he stepped forward.

Shhk!