Chapter 485

Thump. Thump.

My heartbeat thundered inside me.

One step, then another. The closer I drew to it, the harder my heart pounded.

My mouth felt gritty, as though I had chewed a handful of sand. My eyes had gone wide without me realizing it, and they felt dry and stiff.

Then, the moment my hand finally touched the fissure in the cliff, I learned the true source of that ominous feeling.

Beep.

System

• This Gate has already lost most of its functions!

• Entry into the Gate is impossible!

• The Gate Conquest Quest cannot be generated!

The notification drilling into my ears, the holographic window filling my vision, the gazes of everyone watching me…

Faced with all of it, I slowly uttered a single word.

“…Fuck.”

Crunch.

Without realizing it, I had clenched my hand hard enough for my fingers to dig into the cliff.

The faintest trace of demonic qi seeped from the fissure—or rather, the Gate—and made my vision swim.

I’d hoped until the very end that it wasn’t this.

That damn Gate. It really was a Gate.

How? Why?

Those unanswerable questions stayed with me for a long time afterward.

My thoughts were a mess. I had suspected as much ever since seeing it through the Memory Fragment, but now that I was face-to-face with a reality so difficult to believe, I found myself at a loss for words.

A Gate in the Murim.

This was an enormous rift—a sign that the laws governing this world were collapsing, and the first step toward disaster.

Dark Heaven.

Their true nature was far deeper and darker than I had ever imagined.

Standing apart from the others, I gazed out over the blackened waters of Dongting Lake. Then I picked up a loose stone and tossed it into the water.

Splash.

The bloodshed at Shaolin led to Sichuan, and eventually reached this place.

The past several months had been one continuous sea of corpses and blood.

While the Star-Array Grand Banquet was taking place in Henan, Shaolin—the Mount Tai and Northern Dipper¹ of the orthodox Murim—had been attacked, and the flames of Dark Heaven had spread to Sichuan.

More importantly, inexplicable phenomena had occurred along the way.

The Blood Lord, the Western Heaven Demon Lord, and the Moving Formation.

I could still vividly recall the sight of the Blood Lord recovering even after being struck by Jeok Cheongang’s Dance of the Fire God and Demon—a technique that staked his life itself.

No. It wasn’t even accurate to call that recovery.

That was right. What the Blood Lord had shown was closer to regeneration than recovery.

New flesh had sprouted as if time itself were reversing. Bones had slid back into place. Everything charred pitch-black like ash had regenerated in an instant.

As I watched that unbelievable sight, one very familiar creature had come to mind.

A Troll. Yeah, he was just like a Troll.

Or maybe a potion…

Damn it. A Troll and a potion? It was my own idea, but it sounded insane.

What was even crazier was that it might actually have been true.

I picked up another stone and sent it flying even farther.

Splash.

And that wasn’t the only strange phenomenon the Blood Lord had displayed. When the Sword Saint’s arrival put him on the defensive, hadn’t he cried out for the Lord of Heaven before vanishing without a trace?

At the time, everyone had concluded that it was one of the monstrous martial arts and supreme techniques born of demonic, heterodox arts. But now that I had confirmed the existence of the Gate, things looked different.

Teleport.

It might have differed slightly from the Teleport I had experienced through Magic Johnson, but if that wasn’t Teleport, I’d use Hyuk Mujin’s palm as a griddle.

Come to think of it, more than one thing hadn’t added up about the Western Heaven Demon Lord.

During the Sichuan Blood Tragedy, the Western Heaven Demon Lord had sacrificed one arm to defeat the Poison King.

But when I confronted him in the underground prison beneath the Sichuan Tang Clan, he already had a new one.

No matter how many angles I considered or how many possibilities I went through, only two explanations could account for that.

Either the Western Heaven Demon Lord was a living model kit, or some unknown power had been at work.

Naturally, the former was impossible.

Though personally, I would have preferred it.

The Moving Formation was the same.

The Moving Formation. A wondrous formation capable of transporting hundreds of Dark Heaven’s black-robed men at once.

Dark Heaven was called the successor to the Demonic Cult. If the Demonic Cult had possessed anything like that, they would have put it to use more than fifty years ago.

Then the Great Faction War would have ended in victory for the Demonic Cult, and instead of becoming the Third Young Master of the Jin Family of Taiyuan, I would have become the Third Young Master of the Black Dragon Gang—or some other dark-path sect.

Why hadn’t I realized it?

Even I, the sole outsider in this world of Murim, had failed to predict the truth.

The faint suspicion that had occasionally crossed my mind had been buried beneath talk of monstrous martial arts and supreme techniques from the Thousand-Year Demonic Path, then erased by the power the Western Heaven Demon Lord had called supernatural powers.

But things were different now.

I had confirmed the existence of the Gate. I had realized that the common sense and laws of the Murim, which had gradually become familiar to me, were collapsing.

And I had realized that the strange abilities of Dark Heaven—which martial artists called monstrous martial arts and supernatural powers—could be explained with a single word.

Magic.

At the single word filling my mind, my vision brightened, and my forehead, which had been burning hot, slowly cooled.

At the same time, the title of another being who had yet to reveal himself slipped from between my lips.

“…Lord of Heaven.”

The one who reigned at the summit of Dark Heaven.

A being so overwhelming that people like the Blood Lord, the Western Heaven Demon Lord, and the Southern Heaven Demon Empress called themselves his lowly servants.

What the hell are you?

Just thinking about the Lord of Heaven made all the blood in my body run cold.

If—just if—that bastard called the Lord of Heaven was the very being that had surfaced in my mind…

Splash!

“…!”

Water sprayed high into the air, sending ripples across the surface.

I snapped out of my thoughts as if I’d been doused in cold water. When I turned, a familiar face came into view. I hadn’t even noticed him approach.

“What are you spacing out for?”

His voice was gruff, but the eyes peering out from between the deep wrinkles on his face were filled with concern.

I let out a quiet laugh at Jeok Cheongang’s expression and opened my mouth.

“You startled me. What brings you here?”

He dropped heavily into the seat beside me.

“You’d been gone for so long that I came to see what you were doing.”

“If you were coming, you could’ve come quietly. Why throw a rock out of nowhere?”

“Watching you fiddle with pebbles like a seven-year-old was getting on this old man’s nerves. Do you have a problem with that?”

“What if I do?”

Whoosh!

Before the words had even left my mouth, I ducked. A vicious rush of air brushed my hair and tore through the space where my head had been.

Jeok Cheongang smacked his lips after his attack on the back of my head failed.

“You’ve got remarkably sharp instincts.”

“Do you think this is the first time? I can dodge you with my eyes closed now.”

“Close them.”

“…I’d rather not.”

“You insolent brat. Then why were you so distracted earlier? Spacing out like that in the Murim is a good way to get yourself killed.”

“So you were planning to kill me?”

“Of course. If that’s what you want, this old man can certainly oblige.”

“Then you’ll have to find another Disciple. Oh, wait. Since I’m not actually your Disciple, I guess it doesn’t matter.”

“Ahem. Ahem-ahem!”

Jeok Cheongang forced out several fake coughs before abruptly asking,

“So what has an idiot with nothing but shit in his head so troubled?”

“I was wondering where to take a shit.”

Smack!

Damn it. I couldn’t dodge that one.

Jeok Cheongang had even used a grappling technique to make sure he landed the blow on the back of my head. He glared at me.

“Do you want to shit blood?”

“Why? You said my head was full of shit, and I said I was thinking about shit. What’s the problem?”

“Answer me properly before I switch your mouth and ass around.”

“Ah. Yes, sir.”

Rubbing the back of my throbbing head, I thought for a moment before speaking.

“The truth is, I’m not from this world. And I think an evil power from the world I originally came from is deeply connected to Dark Heaven. You know that imugi² that went berserk this time? That was all their doing. The rift in the cliff is a Gate. If it ever fully breaks open, monsters will come pouring out.”

“…”

“When that happens, it’s all over. Completely over. And it’s probably not true, but there’s a bastard called Demon King Asmodeus. If he’s still alive and has his sights set on the Murim, then we’re all completely fucked—”

“I understand.”

I swallowed the rest of my words at Jeok Cheongang’s response.

It was a ridiculous story that no one would believe anyway. I had been spilling everything without restraint, but his reaction left me speechless.

“Excuse me?”

“I said I understand.”

“…”

“I understood every word. There’s no need to say any more.”

What was with that reaction?

I was beyond bewildered. At the same time, an indescribable emotion surged up from deep within my chest.

He believes me? He believes this ridiculous story? No… he believes me?

As Jeok Cheongang silently gazed at me, my chest swelled and my throat tightened.

A little over a year. Short by some measures, long by others.

We had shared more hardships and joys than anyone else, and the emotion in the old man’s eyes was something that could only be called absolute trust.

…He trusted me that much.

Sometimes an inexplicable emotion would seize me and leave me unable to speak—unable even to figure out what I should say.

But at that moment, I realized it was time to say the word I had been turning over in my heart for so long.

“Old Master. No…”

After a long hesitation, I finally forced the words out.

As I opened my mouth, my heart trembling, Jeok Cheongang smiled kindly and nodded.

“I understood you perfectly. You sure take a long time to say that you want to die.”

“M—yes?”

“What do you mean, ‘yes,’ you damn bastard.”

Whap-whap-whap!

What the fuck?

My brain ground to a halt. I stared blankly, mouth hanging open and both hands clutching the back of my head, as his furious voice rang out.

“Do you take this old man for an idiot? What? You’re not from this world? ‘I Was a Mere Civilian in Another World, but Now I’m a Supreme Peak Master in the Murim.’ Is that it?”

“That title’s surprisingly trendy and pretty good—no, that’s not the point. Just hear me out.”

“I already did. Those were your last words.”

“Whoa, whoa. Hold on!”

“‘Hold on’? After all the times I’ve beaten you, you still haven’t come to your senses, and now you’re talking to me like an equal again, you insolent little…!”

Whap-whap-whap!

Dozens of palm shadows filled my vision and battered every inch of my body.

As searing heat burrowed into me, I thought,

Master, my ass. Fuck.

I was an idiot for getting moved, even for a moment.

“If you ever spout that kind of bullshit again, I’ll tear you in half and kill you. Understood?”

At Jeok Cheongang’s murderous warning, Jin Taekyung—who had been beaten mercilessly for fifteen minutes—groaned.

“Ugh, hold on. I think I’m actually going to die.”

“Quiet. You’re slower than this old man’s grandmother!”

“…Old Master, since we’re on the subject, you don’t sneak out a smartphone and use it whenever you go take a leak, do you?”

Smack!

After delivering one final blow to Jin Taekyung, who had once again spouted something incomprehensible, Jeok Cheongang clicked his tongue and walked away.

The murderous aura radiating from his entire body made everyone swallow hard and clear a path.

Step. Step.

He walked toward somewhere.

Now alone, Jeok Cheongang wore a complicated expression that was impossible to decipher.

…That brat. Spouting such incomprehensible nonsense.

Still, who knew?

Jeok Cheongang had never believed in rumors or superstitions—not even a little—in his entire life. But if Jin Taekyung was the one saying it, things were different.

That brat was more special to him than anyone else.

Come to think of it, he seemed about to say something beginning with “Ma…”

Could it be?

No. Of course not.

Jeok Cheongang sighed and looked up at the moon hanging over the cliff.

Beneath the brilliant moonlight, he saw someone in much the same position as himself standing nearby, gazing out over the water.

“Can we talk for a moment?”

At Jeok Cheongang’s words, Mungyeong answered,

“No. Get lost.”