Chapter 1186

Everything has a beginning.

Even a white-haired old man was once a baby. Even a pebble by the roadside didn’t always look the way it does now.

Everything in the world comes together according to a fixed order and changes with the passage of time.

Nothing is perfect from the start. Nothing lasts forever.

That is the law of nature, the order of the world as everyone knows it.

And yet, the group pushing through the pale mist was thinking the same thing.

Or rather, they were wondering whether everything they had always taken for granted might be little more than an illusion.

The Fire King, Jeok Cheongang, was one of them.

Damn it.

He swallowed the curse rising in his throat and looked around.

Mist coiled in every direction. Beyond it, black branches appeared and vanished in fleeting glimpses. Rugged mountains climbed without end.

Order? Laws?

Those ideas had long since been wiped from his mind.

The landscape looked as if it had been perfect in this form from the beginning and would remain unchanged ten thousand years from now. Jeok Cheongang licked his parched lips.

The sight was more chilling than a mountain of sabers and a forest of swords. Looking at it made his hundred-plus years of life, and everything he had learned in them, feel almost meaningless.

If there was any comfort, it was that he wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

“Damn Tianshan.”

The voice suddenly reached his ear. Jeok Cheongang silently agreed, then parted his lips.

“Don’t say that. The youngsters will lose heart if they hear you.”

There was only one person who would send him a Sound Transmission in a situation like this.

The Slaughter Saint’s reply came at once.

“That’s why I’m using Sound Transmission.”

“Don’t use that, either.”

“Why not?”

“It wastes internal energy.”

A dozen paces ahead, the Slaughter Saint turned to Jeok Cheongang with an incredulous look.

“Do I look like some Third Rate swordsman off the street? And if you’re so worried about wasting internal energy, why answer me instead of practicing what you preach?”

“This old man can afford it.”

“Why can you afford it?”

“My internal energy runs deep. Unlike some people’s.”

“……You can still crack jokes at a time like this.”

“I have to. At a time like this.”

This time, it was the Slaughter Saint’s turn to agree.

Jeok Cheongang’s subdued tone came through even in Sound Transmission, and the Slaughter Saint’s gaze grew troubled.

“Like I said earlier, this is no easy place. I thought I’d seen a fair bit of the world after traveling all across it, but…… I’ve never heard of or seen anything like this.”

Unlike Jeok Cheongang, who had spent most of his life on Mount Jiuhua, the Slaughter Saint had lived as a wanderer—first as an assassin, then as a physician.

In his youth, he had traveled a thousand li¹ to take someone’s life. In his old age, he had searched for herbs ten thousand li¹ away to save one.

Even a young woodcutter who lived day to day cutting trees would have his own experiences and his own life. For someone who had made his mark at opposite ends of life and death, calling his experience “a fair bit” was an understatement born of extraordinary modesty.

Of course, to Jeok Cheongang, who shared the same reality, it sounded entirely sincere.

“I expected as much, but it seems even you don’t have an answer.”

“There’s no way forward, nothing we can do. We can’t even tell day from night. What can we possibly do?”

The Slaughter Saint was right.

The mist blocking their way wasn’t confined to the ground.

Dark clouds hung overhead.

At first, they had thought the enormous black mass was passing through. Instead, it had covered the sky.

It had swallowed the moon and stars that had faintly lit the way above them at first. It wouldn’t allow even a single ray of sunlight through.

As though it meant to frighten the rude intruders who had come without its permission.

“Do you think any of this is a coincidence?”

“A coincidence?”

Jeok Cheongang let out a hollow laugh before he knew it.

“The old me would certainly have thought so. Before I met a certain impudent brat who’s riding on his master’s back while the old man works himself to the bone at his age.”

Jeok Cheongang gazed at the face of the “impudent brat” resting on one of his shoulders.

His Disciple had appeared out of nowhere one day and turned the life of an old, sick man upside down.

Now he was changing not just one man’s life, but everyone’s world.

“There are no more coincidences for us. Everything that happens from here on is intended, inevitable. And maybe……”

Maybe it was fate, decided from the very beginning.

Jeok Cheongang quietly swallowed the words he had been about to add.

It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in fate.

If all of this was fate, it was far too cruel to Jin Taekyung. Worse, Jeok Cheongang was afraid of how this story might end.

“Maybe what?”

“No, nothing. Let’s leave it. What matters more is the situation we’re in.”

Jeok Cheongang’s words and behavior were plainly unnatural, but the Slaughter Saint didn’t press him.

He was a little disappointed, but everyone had worries of their own. And the Jeok Cheongang he had come to know was far more thoughtful and sensitive than people gave him credit for.

Especially where Jin Taekyung was concerned.

Then again, I’m hardly in a position to judge him for that.

The Slaughter Saint’s gaze shifted past Jeok Cheongang’s shoulder.

The younger members of the group were racing over the rugged terrain, breathing hard. Behind them, Great Sir and the Bow Saint brought up the rear, their faces calm.

His gaze rested on them for only a moment. Then he spoke as if nothing had happened.

This time, in his own voice rather than through Sound Transmission.

“We should take a short break.”

His voice carried through the mist, which had grown denser still.

The Slaughter Saint had made the right call.

The moment they stopped, Hyuk Mujin began retching. Instead of patting him on the back, Gung Gibang pulled out some jerky.

“……You traitor. Is that jerky really so good?”

Ju Hwaran eventually helped Hyuk Mujin stop retching. Gung Gibang answered his accusation without hesitation.

“Of course.”

“……”

“Seriously, this stuff is incredible. Is it because it came from sweat-blood horses? The flavor’s remarkably consistent.”

“……”

“Don’t glare at me. Just eat. You’ll need your strength. Or you could sit down and circulate your qi like that fellow.”

Hyuk Mujin glanced between Song Ilseom, who was already sitting cross-legged, and Gung Gibang, who was still tearing into his jerky. Then his expression hardened as he made up his mind.

“Give me a piece. I want to see what’s so good about it that you’re eating like a beggar who hasn’t had a meal in three days.”

When they had first met, there had been a considerable gap between them in both standing and martial prowess. But they had traveled together long enough to become all but friends.

Gung Gibang grinned, showing his yellow teeth.

“Excellent decision. Oh, Young Lady Ju, would you like some, too?”

“No, thank you. I think I’d better circulate my qi for a while.”

Replenishing one’s strength and refining one’s internal energy were both good choices.

Climbing mountains—especially rugged ones at this altitude—was exhausting in a way that running across flat ground wasn’t.

Besides, even they, whose martial arts were far less advanced than those of the masters traveling with them, could feel the heavy air hanging over all of Tianshan and the strange phenomena that defied explanation.

“Damn it. I can’t even remember the last time I felt warm sunlight.”

Hyuk Mujin answered Gung Gibang with his mouth stuffed full of jerky.

“We got some in the desert.”

“How was that warm sunlight? I was scared to go out during the day in case I burned to death. Though by the time we were halfway across, I did start to miss it.”

“Fair enough. That weather was a real pain in the ass.”

In truth, “a real pain in the ass” didn’t begin to cover it.

What kind of desert had no cacti or bugs, yet got alternating hailstorms and downpours for more than half a month?

But that was the world now.

And to survive in a changed world, they had to change, too.

“I’m dying here. How many peaks have we climbed already?”

“Five.”

“Already? That’s more than I thought.”

“Not when you consider how hard we’ve been running. And we don’t know how much farther we have to go.”

The Tianshan Mountains were wide.

No, “wide” didn’t do them justice. They were vast.

The range stretched for more than a thousand li¹ and covered a full third of Xinjiang.

And that wasn’t all. It was a Sacred Land where only a select few of the old Demonic Cult’s members had been allowed to enter—and a Land of Ruin where outsiders were certain to die.

They still had no idea which of its hundreds of peaks held the Cult’s headquarters.

“Terrible.”

“Terrible.”

“At least nothing’s happened yet. That should mean we haven’t been spotted.”

“If the Captain heard you say that, he’d smack you one.”

“Why?”

“He hates that sort of talk. Says it’s bad luck. Then he starts on about ‘cli’ or ‘guli’ or something that sounds like copper. I never know what he means.”

“Honestly, I can never figure him out.”

“Tell me about it.”

The two muttered almost to themselves, then lay on their backs and stared blankly at the sky.

Or rather, at the dark clouds covering every inch of it.

“How long exactly have we been here?”

“More than a day, less than two.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Impressive, when we can’t even tell night from day.”

Hyuk Mujin answered firmly.

“Because the Captain still hasn’t woken up.”

“Oh, right. He’s supposed to wake up within two days at the latest.”

“Exactly. So it definitely hasn’t been two days yet.”

Gung Gibang studied him for a moment, then gave a quiet laugh.

“What?”

“It’s just…… How do I put this? You really are something.”

“What do you mean?”

“Almost everything seems to revolve around Jin Taekyung.”

“I don’t know. It’s just so natural to me.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying it’s strange, or that I don’t understand. I’m saying it because I know exactly how it feels.”

The smile on Gung Gibang’s lips faded.

“That’s what a martial family is. You may not share blood, but sometimes the bond runs deeper than blood.”

Gung Gibang fell into memories for a moment, and Hyuk Mujin went quiet.

It felt as though a wound long held closed had finally split open.

The Jin Family of Taiyuan. The Beggars’ Sect.

Their martial families, their other homes—and the names of two enormous stones weighing down their hearts.

What had happened to the people who had marched west with their banners held high?

If they were still alive, would they ever meet again?

They could trade silly remarks and force smiles, but reality was cold enough to make them shudder.

And it moved so quickly that they had no time to fight off the chill before it seeped into their bones.

Shhhhhhhh.

A sudden sense of wrongness.

Hyuk Mujin’s eyes widened. In them, the mist writhed as though it were alive.