Chapter 1141

The Bow Saint’s lips, long pressed shut, finally parted as even the music drifting from beyond the distant city walls began to fade.

“It sounds lovely.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant—the river flowing past us, or the laughter carried on the breeze.

I could only answer with a quiet nod.

“After a hard-fought battle ended in victory, there was always a feast like that. People would laugh and chatter until dawn, passing cups of wine back and forth without pause.”

The Bow Saint’s soft voice carried memories she’d held onto for a long time.

And in the scene slowly taking shape before my eyes, she must have been just as alone, just as apart from everyone, as she was today.

“They must have wanted to laugh, even if only for a little while. They needed days like that to take even one more step forward.”

Enough time had passed for the mountains and rivers to change hands several times over, but the human heart remained the same.

Then and now, those who survived gathered together and raised their cups.

One for the joy of victory. One to honor their fallen comrades.

And one more for the time they had left, which might be their last.

That was why this was both a feast and a memorial rite.

“But I could never join them.”

I’d been staring silently at the river. Only then did I part my lips.

“Why not?”

“The weight pressing down on my body and mind was too much to bear. I was so worried about what lay ahead that I couldn’t even let myself feel those fleeting emotions.”

For the first time, she took her gaze off the river and looked at me, her eyes as composed as ever.

“And whenever that happened, someone would come to me without a word and stay by my side.”

“……!”

My fingertips trembled before I could stop them.

I knew.

I knew who the Bow Saint was talking about.

What I hadn’t guessed was that she’d also figured out why I’d come to see her.

“So, what do you want to hear?”

Under the Bow Saint’s gaze, which seemed to see straight through me, I took a moment to steady my breathing.

Then I answered.

“The Martial God. I want to know everything about him.”

No.

I needed to know now. I had to.

Several decades ago, there was a man.

His sect, his face, even his name—none of them were properly known.

But the first time he appeared in history, everyone under Heaven learned of his existence.

“He was like… a divine man who had descended from the heavens.”

In the early days of the Great Faction War, the Demonic Cult drenched Kunlun Mountain in blood and fired the first shot of the war. As the Hundred Thousand Demonic Disciples bore down like a giant wave, the Central Plains Murim fell into utter chaos.

Until he appeared.

“Three Supreme Peak fiends, and five thousand Demonic Cultists. After suffering a crushing defeat in its first battle, the Kongtong Sect tried to retreat to Shaanxi at once, but the enemy soon caught up. The reinforcements summoned in haste couldn’t arrive as quickly as the Demonic Cult.”

And on that day—

An unknown man stood in the pursuers’ path, and a new sky opened.

“Before even half a day had passed, every enemy had been killed or captured. It was hard to believe one person had done it all.”

But the Huashan reinforcements, arriving late, saw everything with their own eyes.

Amid a battlefield that looked as though a storm had swept through it, a man stood alone among countless corpses.

They were all stunned. They shuddered with awe.

One of them must have felt something beyond awe: the man leading the reinforcements, the head of that generation’s Plum Blossom Swordsmen, who at barely thirty was revered as the Number One Sword Under Heaven.

“Mae Jonghak immediately spread the news throughout the realm. Before long, everyone knew: there was another supreme being who would stand against the Heavenly Demon and protect the Central Plains.”

And so the Martial God was born.

The years of war that followed, lasting more than a decade, became the legend he wrote.

Victory, and more victory.

There were countless defeats and moments of despair, too. But there was also glory and praise, as hot and dazzling as the sun.

He brought the Nine Sects and One Gang and the Five Great Families, long divided and reunited by turns, together beneath the banner of the Murim Alliance. He sought no personal gain, pursuing only benevolence and righteousness.

A great hero of his age, held in awe by all.

“I watched it all from close by. Again and again, I marveled at his achievements, too great to put into words. There were those who dared to envy, resent, and doubt him, but before long, even they came to admire the Martial God deeply.”

Who under Heaven could look straight at the sun?

And without the sun, how could anyone live in this world?

The Martial God was the heavens—and the sun itself.

No matter how many jiazi¹ of internal energy one had accumulated, no matter how high one’s martial prowess, no one dared look straight at him.

Afraid of being blinded, they could only bow their heads in the end.

And the Martial God proved himself.

He defeated a supreme being unlike any other in the thousand-year history of the Demonic Path, then disappeared without a trace not long afterward.

Glory. Honor. History.

Even this vast realm of Murim.

The Martial God cast aside everything he had built without a trace of attachment and left.

“And that was when the legend finally became a myth.”

The Bow Saint raised her head and looked up at the sky.

In the pitch-black night, stars glittered, echoing her title. But beside the vast heavens above, they were no more than tiny lights.

“Those who lived in the same era as me know. The Martial God was truly a miraculous being. No one under Heaven could ever accomplish what he did.”

When her long story ended, silence settled. I’d been looking at her without a word when I suddenly parted my lips.

“Is that all?”

The Bow Saint’s gaze slid slowly down from the sky to me.

“What do you mean?”

“I already told you. I want to know everything about him.”

“……Why would you think that isn’t everything?”

Her answer came a fraction too late.

For an instant, I thought her eyes had wavered ever so slightly. Was that just my imagination, or had I mistaken the river reflected in them for a flicker in her gaze?

I kept the question to myself and spoke again.

“I expected a somewhat different story. Of the people I know, you spent the longest time with the Martial God. And you were the one who received his letter.”

“How could I tell you everything about more than a decade in so short a time? Besides, plenty of people remember what he did. Staying a little closer to him would hardly make my account different.”

Despite that fleeting hint of agitation, her voice was as calm as ever.

“The same goes for the letter. In keeping with his final wish, I spent many years searching for the ‘chosen one.’ That is why we stand here together now.”

That was true. I knew it, too.

The Bow Saint had spent decades wandering the realm. Her own life bore out her words.

And I knew that the woman before me had walked a difficult path as a chivalrous warrior—one I wasn’t qualified to judge.

But to my mind, her answer was both entirely true and incomplete.

She’s definitely hiding something.

This wasn’t a passing guess. Instinct and cold reason had brought me to the same conclusion.

We hadn’t known each other long, but we’d faced life and death together many times. Even so, the Bow Saint had repeatedly kept herself apart from the rest of us.

And most importantly—

That battle ten days ago.

I remembered what the Slaughter Saint had cautiously told me the night before, when he came to see me alone.

The Bow Saint’s inexplicable words and actions that day.

Putting it all together, she’d been closer to a bystander than anything else.

At least when it came to whether I lived or died.

What if our positions had been reversed?

I’d already turned the question over in my mind several times. It didn’t even need thinking through.

I would have done everything I could to save the Bow Saint.

Whether I’d moved on instinct or reason.

But she hadn’t.

On the day of the great battle surrounding Xining, she’d told the Slaughter Saint, who wanted to save me, that if Jin Taekyung died that day, then it was fate.

Of course, she wasn’t wrong.

With countless people dying on every side, how could one life matter more than another?

But why had the Bow Saint, who’d spent decades searching for the “chosen one” on the strength of an old letter supposedly left by the Martial God, been so indifferent to my death?

Could it be…

Could she have…

No. The Martial God…

As I swallowed a breath—

Splash!

A surge of river water rushed up and touched my toes.

Cold seeped into my leather shoes. Snapped out of my thoughts, I instinctively stepped back.

Then I met a pair of eyes watching me intently.

“There’s one last thing I’d like to ask.”

She gave a small nod, and I continued, my voice trembling now.

“Why… did the Martial God want to find me?”

The Bow Saint answered at once.

“For the sake of the realm. That’s all.”

Her eyes shone clearly, and her voice was firm.

I could feel it instinctively.

This was the truth.

Not a trace of a lie or ill will.

And for now, that was enough.

For the sake of the realm.

I swallowed those few words as they kept ringing in my ears, then bowed my head to the Bow Saint.

“Thank you.”

“Was that enough of an answer?”

“To some extent, yes.”

“I’m surprised. I thought you’d want to know more about him.”

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed, but what you’ve told me has already helped a great deal.”

I wasn’t just saying what she wanted to hear. I wasn’t lying.

Hearing about the beginning and end of the being called the Martial God had finally made me certain of the identity of another person like him—one who had existed beneath a different sky.