Chapter 1188

It was as if time had stopped.

The foul odors and reek of blood that had filled the air faded, and the monsters’ roars became faint echoes. But Jeok Cheongang noticed none of the changes around him.

No—he couldn’t.

All his senses were fixed on a single person.

Squish.

Unhurried footsteps approached through a pool of blood.

The countless monsters had stopped moving and parted to either side. Between them, someone came into view, filling Jeok Cheongang’s vision.

The sight chilled his heart so deeply it hurt.

“……You.”

The voice that slipped between his bloodless lips was more than a sound. It was a groan he couldn’t hold back, a scream he had barely managed to suppress.

“Have you been well?”

A voice he had never forgotten. A face that had grown a little unfamiliar.

The name of the man he was seeing again after well over ten years spilled from Jeok Cheongang’s lips with a cold breath.

“Cheon-ah,¹ how are you—?”

The man, Jangcheon, smiled faintly at his former Master.

“It’s been a long time since anyone called me that.”

Each quiet word burrowed into Jeok Cheongang’s ears, raked through his lungs, and pierced his heart.

“I was worried you might not recognize me.”

As if that were possible.

Even if a hundred years had passed instead of ten, Jeok Cheongang would have recognized him. Then or now, however much had changed, Jangcheon was someone he could never forget for as long as he lived.

“But I needn’t have worried. You, of all people, would never forget me, Master. I nearly failed to recognize you, though, unworthy Disciple that I am.”

Since the day they had parted in a dark back alley, the Disciple had aged a little, while his Master had grown much younger.

But it wasn’t only Jeok Cheongang’s appearance that had changed when he Returned to Youth, leaving him looking like a middle-aged man.

Everything had changed.

Every last thing.

And among those changes was a truth no one could undo.

“You…… weren’t you already dead?”

It had been a day of heavy snowfall, or so Jeok Cheongang had heard.

Somewhere on an unnamed mountainside near Jeongyang in Shanxi Province, Jangcheon had died before several witnesses. Miserably, wretchedly, as though he were being judged for the many atrocities he had committed.

But then—

How could—

“Dead? Me?”

His eyes widened for a moment, then curved with a laugh.

“Ha. Did you think I was the kind of bastard who’d die that easily?”

“No. I heard, quite clearly—”

“Yes, you heard. You didn’t see it for yourself.”

Jeok Cheongang’s gaze wavered at the calm reply.

It was true.

By the time he had asked around and found the place, only a few traces of the fierce battle remained. Jangcheon’s body was nowhere to be found. No one knew exactly why, and Jeok Cheongang hadn’t wanted to know.

Jeok Cheongang had only thought that the heavy snow said to have continued for nearly seven days and nights, along with the mountain beasts, might have erased Jangcheon’s last traces from the earth.

That was all.

He had left a bottle of liquor and a few drops of tears there, then returned to his own life.

That was what had happened.

“……You were alive all this time?”

“I nearly died. At the hands of that brat you’re looking after like a sacred ancestral tablet.”

Jangcheon’s pale, misty gaze settled on Jin Taekyung’s face over Jeok Cheongang’s shoulder.

“I can feel a familiar power in him. The qi of our sect, the Fire Gate Clan. Once, only you and I carried it.”

Jeok Cheongang said nothing. Jangcheon took another slow step.

Squish.

“I’ve heard no end of it. Apparently, I have a Junior Brother I never knew about.”

“You’re wrong. About all of it.”

Jeok Cheongang forced the words through clenched teeth.

“This boy is not your Junior Brother, and you are no Disciple of mine.”

“Why not?”

“Because you were cast out. You died committing unforgivable atrocities. That is the only truth.”

Crack.

His lips split, and blood filled his mouth.

But the sight before him—which had to be an illusion—didn’t change. Neither the shadowed face of his former Disciple nor the voice that kept reaching his ears.

“But Master, look. I’m still alive, aren’t I?”

“Don’t call me that!”

Even at Jeok Cheongang’s thunderous shout, Jangcheon kept coming. He looked at him with eyes full of regret.

“I knew what you must think of me, Master.”

“Shut your mouth!”

“After I came back from the brink of death, I spent a great deal of time thinking about everything that had happened. Every day felt like ten years.”

Squish.

The pool of blood rippled beneath his advancing steps.

Behind him, the monsters stood still as though they had agreed not to move. As Jangcheon drew closer, Jeok Cheongang could sense no danger or killing intent from him.

But—

That can’t be. It’s all an illusion. I’m hearing things.

Jeok Cheongang clenched his fists. The qi within him surged as though it had sensed its master’s turmoil, threatening to slip beyond his control. He subdued it and began to draw it up again.

Then Jangcheon said something he had never expected to hear.

“I was wrong. This unworthy Disciple was wrong about everything.”

“……!”

Jeok Cheongang’s eyes trembled. Unlike his body, which had regained its youth, they still held the weight of all his years.

“Please forgive me. No—Master, punish this wretched man yourself.”

No. That couldn’t be.

He must not fall for lies conjured by dark arts.

And yet—

The Extreme Yang energy gathering in his clenched fists wavered like a candle in the wind, then went out.

Just as it had on the day when, despite possessing martial arts powerful enough to look down on the world, he could do nothing but watch his Disciple walk away.

“I won’t make excuses. Whatever punishment you give me, I’ll bear it all.”

The words he had wanted so badly to hear.

“I betrayed your trust, disgraced our sect, and killed innocent people. I committed sins I can never wash away.”

The scene he had imagined countless times.

“So please, kill me.”

“……Enough.”

“Kill me. With the very hands that took me in more than twenty years ago.”

“Enough. Stop.”

Jeok Cheongang couldn’t breathe. His heart ached as though an unseen hand were squeezing it.

Everything he was seeing and hearing had to be nothing but an illusion.

It had to be.

Yet the wound deep inside him, the one he had thought long since closed, was tearing open again.

“Master.”

Jeok Cheongang did not answer.

He only stared blankly at his old Disciple as his vision grew hazy. Old, worn memories overlaid the sight.

“If I can’t take you as my Master…… I’ll kill myself.”

Even after more than twenty years, he remembered clearly.

“No, kill me now. With the very hands that saved me.”

The desperate look in the boy’s eyes.

“Might Makes Right. Didn’t you teach me that, Master? That’s what Murim is—no, what the world is. The weak should die at the hands of the strong.”

The murderer’s smile he could never forget.

“Kill me. It’s the only way to stop me.”

And the feeble old man who, in the end, had failed to stop him.

Even after he had gone out into the world to correct that mistake, he had lingered for a long time at the very spot where wild beasts and snow-laden winds had passed.

“Old man, has something happened?”

It was the place where the man who had lived as Jangcheon had fallen under the name Jopil.

A traveler, finding it strange that Jeok Cheongang still stood there late into the night, motionless as a stone monument, had asked him what was wrong. Jeok Cheongang had answered that his only blood relative had died there.

The man had been foolish and useless beyond words, but he had come hoping to at least recover the body.

And in that moment, he had realized that even after nearly ten years, he still wasn’t ready.

“Master.”

The clear voice scattered the layers of memory.

Tears streamed down Jeok Cheongang’s face like water through a broken dam. Through them, he saw the Disciple he had wanted so badly to meet again.

“Cheon-ah.¹”

“Yes. Your Disciple is listening, Master. I’m here with you.”

Squish.

One step.

Squish.

Another step.

Squish.

They were close enough to feel each other’s breath.

Jeok Cheongang beckoned to the Disciple he had finally met again. Jangcheon took the last step toward his Master’s small embrace.

With him came a streak of light prepared, from the very beginning, for this moment alone.

Thnk.

Pain hotter than any Scorching Yang Qi.

Blood burst forth at the same instant, as though to prove this was real.

Shhk! Patter, patter!

Fresh blood spattered the ground. Across a handspan of empty space, their gazes met.

One deeply sunken. The other wide with disbelief.

In the brief silence, Jangcheon’s lips parted.

“……How?”

At Jangcheon’s question, his agitation impossible to hide, Jeok Cheongang smiled sadly.

“I wanted to be fooled for a moment. I wasn’t fooled.”

He tightened his grip on the blade he had caught at the last instant.

Crreeeak.

It hurt.

Every time the dagger embedded in his palm twisted, a dizzying pain spread through his body.

But it didn’t matter. This was nothing compared to the mind demon that had tormented him moments before.

“What’s your name?”

It had been more than twenty years ago.

He had met a boy who endured kicks raining down on his whole body and still managed to shove a dirt-covered bun into his mouth.

“……I don’t know.”

Jeok Cheongang had seen his younger self in the boy: a fierce little child who had once wandered the world begging for food, without even knowing his own name.

Perhaps that was why the old man’s heart had acted on a whim.

“Jangcheon. From now on, your name is Jangcheon.”

The Master had given him a name and a new life. The Disciple had thrown them both away and left.

The wound that departure had carved deep in Jeok Cheongang’s heart had become a scar that would never fade.

But……

“I think I can let you go now.”

Yes. At last.

With those words Jangcheon would never hear, Jeok Cheongang threw a single punch.

Kwaaaaaah!

Fierce flames consumed Jangcheon—or rather, whatever had taken on his likeness—and swept across the mountainside.