Chapter 368

The boy—or rather, the “he” bearing the name Mungyeong—looked down at the ground below his feet.

Countless eyes gazed up at him in disbelief. Among them was a familiar face.

They had only met once, a long time ago, but recognizing him was not difficult.

“It has been a long time, Fire King.”

At his greeting, Fire King Jeok Cheongang’s eyes trembled violently.

“So it really was you…”

The greatest assassin under heaven. A man who had inspired awe in countless martial artists beyond condemnation and contempt had vanished without a trace one day and never shown himself again.

At least, not until a moment ago.

“Why are you here…?”

“A lot has happened. So very much. Isn’t that right?”

The question was directed at an old man. He gazed at the Divine Physician—or rather, Dong Feng—with indescribable eyes before opening his lips.

“What a relief. I wasn’t too late.”

His voice rang out from every direction.

Six-Harmonies Voice Transmission.

Everyone shuddered at the unfathomable heights of martial arts displayed before their eyes. The old physician quietly shook his head.

“You were too late.”

A note of regret followed.

“To turn back the years that have passed.”

“What can be done? Once water has spilled, gathering it back is no easy task.”

“Do you not regret it?”

“Regret…”

At his Disciple’s words, he raised his head and looked toward the sky.

The rain that had seemed as if it would pour forever and the black clouds that had hidden the sunlight were gone. An azure heaven stretched across the sky.

Is this what you intended?

He posed the question to someone who might be looking down at the lower realm from above.

But no answer came. Just as it never had.

What a damnable thing this is.

He slowly closed his eyes. In the pitch-black darkness, memories steeped in blood and struggle flashed past.

The life he had lived as an assassin after being raised as one. His inborn karma had made him an assassin, so he killed people—but he had been born a human being, and he hated killing.

That was why, at the end of the great war that had stained the continent with blood, the old assassin buried his weapons and began living as a physician.

But…

Had it truly come to this in the end?

With a faint murmur, he opened his eyes.

A boy’s hands, white and soft.

The Returned to Youth he had undergone several years ago had changed his flesh, but it could not erase the scent of blood ingrained in his hands.

“I lived for more than forty years as a physician. I wanted to die as one.”

His voice, carrying immense internal energy, thundered into everyone’s ears. The black-clad men staggered as if their very spirits had been shaken.

“And yet, why have you come here?”

Killing intent that made every hair on the body stand on end radiated from him. The deputy captain, who had frozen while staring at the being in the sky, spoke in a trembling voice.

“E-Even if you truly are the Slaughter Saint, this is not your concern.”

“Not my concern?”

He muttered the words in a low voice before throwing down the travel bag he had been holding.

Thud!

Something bounced out of the bag when it struck the ground and landed at the deputy captain’s feet.

“T-This is…”

They were the severed heads of two men. Though they belonged to different people, their wide eyes and twisted expressions looked almost exactly alike.

As if they were twins born on the same day.

The deputy captain’s gaze fixed on one of them.

“Captain!”

The deputy captain stared in horror at the First Fiend’s severed head. Slowly, the man opened his mouth.

“I’ll ask you one thing. Was the one in Qingcheng the second or the third of the Qilian Three Fiends?”

“……!”

Only then did the deputy captain understand.

Why there had been no word from the Qingcheng Sect. And where his brothers, who had failed to return after seeing the emergency signal, were.

In the end, only one path remained.

With a flash of insight, he shouted with internal energy behind his voice.

“Everyone, attack! Kill hi—”

Slash!

The deputy captain could not finish his shout.

Along with the wind brushing his neck, a figure stood behind him.

Is this really… a human movement?

That was the last question to pass through his mind.

He had failed to recognize the Ghost Illusory Slaughter Step performed by the greatest assassin under heaven—or rather, in all history.

Only death awaited him.

Fwoosh!

A fountain of blood erupted from the severed neck. As a figure brushed past his collapsing body and took another step, wind carrying the scent of blood swept through the air.

Slash. Slash. Slash!

The black-clad men who had watched their superior die with vacant expressions saw their heads rise into the air.

Before the streams of blood could even touch the ground, something pale and ghostlike passed through them.

“It was the life I wanted so badly.”

Muttering in a low voice, he stretched out both hands. Thin, elongated threads flowed from his ten fingers.

Threads of Force—beautiful and destructive.

“And yet, why did you…”

Whoosh!

When his ten curved fingers slashed downward through the air, Force tore through space.

Everything that stood in its way was cut apart and split open. Shattered armor and weapons, limbs and heads, flew in every direction.

In a world brought to a standstill by blood and death, only one person was free to move.

“Did you wake me?”

Consumed by sorrow and fury, he was no longer the cheerful boy or the physician who had passed the two-character name Divine Physician down to his Disciple.

He had returned to the person he had been before earning the name Divine Physician, before meeting the young carpenter who had fallen into grief after losing his wife and children to an epidemic, and before burying his weapons and leaving the Murim.

“The Slaughter Saint…!”

Someone shouted the words like a scream.

With eyes sunk deeper than an abyss, he flung out both arms. The wind, which had already become a storm, swallowed more than a hundred black-clad men.

Kwaaang!

There was a high hill east of the Sichuan Tang Clan.

From that hill, the entire Tang Clan grounds could be seen at a glance. A small watchtower had once stood there, along with martial artists who took turns standing guard.

Once.

Drip. Drip.

Drops of blood fell from the watchtower and dampened the grass. Some slid down the hill and touched someone’s hand.

The hand was covered in deep wrinkles, and the nails had taken on a green hue from years of practicing poison arts.

The owner of that hand was Tang Sadok, the current Family Head of the Sichuan Tang Clan—the Myriad-Poison Asura.

“Cough.”

Blood spattered between his parched lips. His eyes, usually cold and forceful, looked ready to go out at any moment.

“Is this how it ends?”

Tang Sadok murmured in a faint voice.

Everything was rushing toward its end. His life. The glorious history of the Sichuan Tang Clan.

“The family we built over hundreds of years… is collapsing in a single day.”

Tang Sadok’s lament was hollow. He no longer had the strength even to feel anger or sorrow.

With his limbs crushed and his internal injuries severe, the only thing permitted to the old Family Head was to lean against an unnamed tree and watch his clan perish.

This is my final gift to you.

The smiling face of a middle-aged man flashed before Tang Sadok’s eyes.

The middle-aged man, the Western Heaven Demon Lord, had not kept his promise. As far as he was concerned, the destruction of the Sichuan Tang Clan had been decided from the very beginning.

“Urgh. Blergh!”

The resentment blazing up like a wildfire worsened his internal injuries. Tang Sadok vomited nearly half a gallon of blood and gasped for breath.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”

He was apologizing to the ancestors of the Sichuan Tang Clan, to the blameless members of his household who had lost their lives under an unworthy Family Head, and to Jin Taekyung and the others, who had likely already met gruesome deaths at the hands of the Western Heaven Demon Lord.

Of course, not one of them could hear Tang Sadok’s voice.

If we meet in the afterlife, I’ll apologize to you myself.

It was then, as Tang Sadok murmured inwardly—

Sssshhk.

The bushes stirred, and he felt something approaching.

No. It was not human.

Only when it reached the very tip of his nose did Tang Sadok realize who possessed that strange presence.

Hiss. Hiss.

A triangular head with horns and a flicking tongue. A snake with a pure-white body burrowed into Tang Sadok’s embrace.

“Ha… hahaha.”

Tang Sadok laughed weakly, both happy and hollow.

“So it was you.”

Hisss.

The Thousand-Year Poison Horned Snake, Mimi, hissed as if answering its master. Its cold tongue licked the beard matted with blood.

“Clever creature. How did you find your way all the way here?”

Tang Sadok looked at his pet snake with blurred eyes.

He had let Mimi loose because he was worried the snake might be injured in the melee. He had never thought they would meet again like this.

And he had never imagined that their final farewell would be like this, either.

Rumble!

A tremendous roar shook the hill. The earth rose, and the branches of the trees trembled.

Tang Sadok raised his head and tried to find the source of the roar, but with his vision already clouded, he could not tell what was happening.

He could only infer one thing.

Has the time come?

The roar was on an entirely different level from Heaven-Shaking Thunder.

At last, the destruction of the great Sichuan Tang Clan had reached his doorstep.

Tang Sadok slowly closed and opened his eyes before speaking.

“Leave.”

Hiss?

The snake’s triangular snout tilted to one side.

“This old man and the Tang Clan have little time left. If you stay here, you will be caught up in it as well.”

Tang Sadok was the Family Head of the Sichuan Tang Clan. Even if the Western Heaven Demon Lord did not come, someone would certainly come to confirm whether he was alive or dead.

Tang Sadok could easily imagine what those vicious men would do if they saw the Thousand-Year Poison Horned Snake guarding its master’s side.

“So go. Hurry!”

He wanted to shout, but the voice he forced out was so thin it seemed ready to break apart.

Yet the spirit creature that had spent so many years beside Tang Sadok understood the final wish of the man who had been both its master and its friend.

Drip. Drip.

Damp drops fell onto Tang Sadok’s wrinkled hand.

Leaving behind a few tears, Mimi slithered away and disappeared, the snake’s white body gliding across the ground.

As Mimi’s presence faded into the distance, a bitter smile briefly formed at the corner of Tang Sadok’s mouth.

“Yes. Go carefully.”

In his youth, he had roamed the battlefields. After the war ended, he had devoted his entire life to helping his father, the Poison King, rebuild the Sichuan Tang Clan.

He had always been required to remain cold-headed and thorough. He had no friend with whom he could share his heart, no lover, and no child born of his blood.

If not for the spirit creature that had remained at his side for so long, he would never have been able to endure his loneliness.

“From today onward, your name is Mimi. Tang Mimi.”

On the day he first encountered the tiny Thousand-Year Poison Horned Snake, Tang Sadok had given her the Tang family name.

The blood flowing through Mimi was different. Even the snake’s species was different. But Tang Mimi was a member of the Sichuan Tang Clan, recognized as such by its Family Head.

I’ve lost everyone, and I’m sending only you away alive. Hahaha.

Tang Sadok let out a hollow laugh and blinked.

Through his fading senses, the roar and someone’s screams echoed faintly from below the hill.

It must have been the final struggle of those resisting the destruction of the clan.

This old man is here, too. I, Tang Sadok, Family Head of the great Sichuan Tang Clan, am here! Come to me!

The cry, as if he were coughing up blood, only hovered at the tip of his tongue.

Tang Sadok slowly felt the strength drain from his entire body. His heavy eyelids tilted downward, little by little, ever so slowly.

I’m tired.

What would happen if he simply closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep?

If he took a short nap and awoke in the grand armchair in the Family Head’s Hall, perhaps he would be able to see the familiar faces of his family.

How wonderful would it be if everything that had happened up to now—including his father’s death—were nothing more than a Butterfly Dream?¹

Yes. If only that were true.

Slowly. His trembling eyelids finally closed tight.

No, it was the moment before they closed.

“Mimi! Quick Attack!”

Hisssssss!

“……?”

What the hell is this bullshit?

Tang Sadok involuntarily opened his eyes wide.

In his suddenly brightened field of vision, he saw a young man running toward him and Mimi’s white body shooting forward like an arrow.

“Y-You?”

“Wow! Wild Grandpa Tang spotted!”

At the sight of Cheongpung grinning brightly with blood all over his face, Tang Sadok blinked.

“What… what is going on? How did you…?”

Cheongpung answered energetically.

“Mimi! Whirlwind!”

Whirrrrr!

If Tang Sadok had possessed even a shred of strength, he would have cursed him out.

Cheongpung and Mimi realized their mistake too late and bowed their heads.

“Ah, I’m sorry.”

Hiss.

“……”

Forgetting that he had been half dead a moment ago, Tang Sadok stared blankly at the one man and one snake before him. With difficulty, he opened his mouth.

“Our family—what happened to our family?”

“They all died.”

“……!”

“Oh. I meant Dark Heaven’s black-clad men, not the Tang Clan.”

You should have said that first!

Just as Tang Sadok was unable to continue speaking from shock and fury, Cheongpung pressed Tang Sadok’s Mingmen acupoint. Warmth like a spring day caressed his body.

“Cheongpung! True Qi Guidance!”

This bastard is going to keep doing this to the end…

Tang Sadok wanted to ask what had happened, but this time he could not resist the sleep washing over him.

Just before his eyelids closed, a soft voice like a spring breeze brushed against his ears.

“It’s all over now. Rest easy.”

It was the voice announcing the end of a day that had been longer and darker than any other.