Chapter 502

“Here you are.”

At the sudden voice behind him, the old man sitting cross-legged with his eyes closed twitched his brow.

“I don’t recall inviting anyone.”

“Not my problem. Still, it’s narrower than I expected. Absurdly so.”

“It has to be narrow. I didn’t set aside any room for uninvited guests.”

“Was it around seven days and nights ago? I’m sure I said something similar to someone…”

For some reason, the old man’s small back shuddered at those words.

Before his uninvited guest could wonder why, a sharp voice cut through the cave.

“Leave. You’re disturbing my meditation.”

“Continue your meditation. I’ll personally stand guard for you.”

The old man—Jeok Cheongang, the Fire King—opened his eyes.

The darkness gave way to damp cave walls mottled with moss. A testy voice escaped between his tightly pressed lips.

“You expect this old man to let the Slaughter Saint stand guard over him? What a ridiculous joke.”

“I thought you could trust me with an old man’s life, if not your precious Disciple’s. Was I mistaken?”

“…!”

Jeok Cheongang’s eyelids trembled. Then—

Shuuk.

Still sitting cross-legged, his small figure rose into the air, turned slowly, and landed facing the cave entrance.

Jeok Cheongang silently stared at the man blocking the narrow cave entrance before asking, “How did you know I was here?”

Mungyeong answered dryly. “When I came up, a great tiger walked over and rubbed its head against me. It had clearly done that before.”

“I left no tracks.”

“Finding people used to be my work.”

“So you can pretend to be a medical apprentice all you like, but you’re still an assassin?”

“There are things you can’t forget, however hard you try. That’s all. There are eyes everywhere, and nothing but river around us. You didn’t have many places to go.”

A fine sword kept its edge no matter how many years passed.

More than forty years had passed, and the blade called the Slaughter Saint was as sharp as ever. No—his instincts as an assassin might have dulled, but his realm as a martial artist had risen higher.

“…Perhaps I should have found somewhere harder to reach.”

“It would have taken me a little longer.”

Assassins were masters of both killing and pursuit.

Reading the confidence in Mungyeong’s calm expression, Jeok Cheongang muttered, “Damn it. What an irritating assassin.”

“I can hear you.”

“I meant you to.”

“Cursing me out of nowhere. What a foul-tempered host.”

“Are you any better, barging in on someone’s secluded meditation without warning?”

“The Fire King, in secluded meditation.”

Mungyeong’s flat voice echoed through the cave.

He looked around. The place was so cramped and damp that calling it a cave seemed generous. Apart from the old man sitting cross-legged, it held nothing at all.

Which made the signs on that one man impossible to miss.

Jeok Cheongang. He’s…

Cracked lips. Knobby bones standing out beneath his skin. Mungyeong’s gaze darkened as he took in Jeok Cheongang’s condition.

From his gaunt appearance, he clearly hadn’t eaten a thing in seven days and nights—not even taken a drop of water. Even for a Supreme Peak master, that would take a toll.

“You’re doing something foolish.”

Jeok Cheongang understood what Mungyeong meant. A fierce light shone from his sunken eyes.

“I’ll give you your own words back. Not your problem.”

“What about the fasting pills?”

“I’m not eating them. They taste like shit.”

“…Did you take after him in that, too?”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

He’d said something pointless. Almost as pointless as Jeok Cheongang’s flimsy claim that he refused the fasting pills because they tasted bad.

Mungyeong shook his head. “As a medical apprentice, I’m telling you this is a poor choice.”

“And as this old man, I’m telling you to mind your own business.”

“You’re even more stubborn than I expected.”

“And you’re more meddlesome than I expected. Since when did you care so much about other people’s business?”

“That…”

Mungyeong fell silent. He wanted to argue, but nothing came to mind. That was as good as admitting Jeok Cheongang had a point.

Maybe he isn’t entirely wrong.

He hadn’t been like this when he left Sichuan. Somewhere along the way, though, he had begun to change, little by little.

To fool the people watching him, he had played an innocent young medical apprentice who smiled and talked freely. But when he was alone with Jeok Cheongang or Jin Taekyung, he had no reason to keep up an act that didn’t suit him.

So why did he feel so talkative today?

No. Perhaps it wasn’t only today.

Why?

He remembered accepting Jeok Cheongang’s absurd proposal seven days and nights ago. He remembered, too, the indescribable bitterness on the old man’s face as he spoke.

Mungyeong opened his mouth.

“Why don’t you ask?”

“Ask what?”

“About Jin Taekyung.”

“…!”

Now it was Jeok Cheongang’s turn to fall silent.

He had tried so hard to avoid that name. He had hoped Mungyeong would let it pass unspoken. Hearing it was enough to stir the feelings he had forced down.

“That boy… Is he doing well?”

“He’s keeping up, more or less. Not bad.”

Jeok Cheongang couldn’t hold back a hollow laugh.

“Why are you laughing?”

“Because I know that’s nonsense. ‘More or less’? That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in a while.”

“…”

“Never mind me. Tell me what you really think.”

Mungyeong studied him. “His progress is astonishingly fast. Enough to surprise even me.”

“I said to tell me what you really think.”

“That is what I think.”

“Half of it. You left out the part where you want him for yourself.”

“…”

“Yes. It was always like that.”

A faint smile touched Jeok Cheongang’s lips.

From the day he first met Jin Taekyung, every day had brought a new surprise. With a Heaven-given physique and extraordinary martial talent, Taekyung was someone any Supreme Peak master who had established martial arts of his own would want as a Disciple.

Jeok Cheongang was no exception.

“When I first got to know Taekyung, a thought struck me. If I passed the Fire Gate Clan’s martial arts on to this boy, perhaps he might see the very limits of martial arts.”

The Fire Gate Clan needed someone to carry on a lineage hundreds of years old, and Jin Taekyung fit that need better than anyone else.

That was how it had started.

“At first, I was simply amazed. Then I felt regret. I didn’t have much time left.”

Alone, he had defeated a thousand Demonic Cult martial artists and brought countless fiends to their knees. By the strength of his own martial arts, he had turned the tide of battle and led the charge toward victory in the Great Faction War.

Yet the Supreme Peak master revered throughout Murim as the Fire King had another, truer enemy.

“It was long ago that the Heart Demon¹ came for me.”

The wound left by his first Disciple ran deep. It ate away at the body and mind of the Master left alone. Little by little, slowly, without ever stopping.

“It was strange. Everything else kept moving forward, while I alone was walking backward.”

The years flew like an arrow. By the time it struck its target, more than thirty had passed.

Jeok Cheongang had let them flow downriver without gaining the slightest enlightenment. Then, one day, he came face-to-face with something he could scarcely believe.

“It was a clear blue day. I was enjoying the cool breeze, and then I came to my senses among a crowd of people. Half a day had passed, and I knew nothing of it. Heh.”

He had laughed like that on the day the infirmities of old age first came upon him.

He had laughed neither from happiness nor from resignation. He simply had not known what else to do.

It was only when that first lost half-day became two full days that Jeok Cheongang knew what he had to do.

“I left Mount Jiuhua to kill one person.”

And returned with one person.

“He was my first Disciple. I had to deal with him myself before it was too late.”

After meeting Jin Taekyung, though, Jeok Cheongang had realized that wasn’t the only thing he had left too late.

“Slaughter Saint. May I ask you for another favor?”

His gaze and tone had changed. Both were gentler than Mungyeong had ever known them.

“If I am not here, become that boy’s dependable shelter. Become his new Master.”

A deep furrow formed on Mungyeong’s smooth forehead. He stared at Jeok Cheongang through narrowed eyes.

“Do you mean that?”

“More than anything I have ever said.”

“Why?”

“Just as I said. I have no time left.”

“What is this…”

A new Master, out of nowhere? No time left?

Mungyeong knew Jeok Cheongang’s condition, but he couldn’t make sense of this. His innate qi, the source of everything, had been disrupted. He would gradually lose his strength, but that should have taken years.

This was too soon.

“I ask this of you.”

“…!”

Jeok Cheongang bowed his head. The Fire King himself.

Mungyeong was bewildered by a sight no one else in Murim had ever witnessed.

“Why? Seven days and nights ago, you were clearly…”

Mungyeong’s voice cut off abruptly. He swallowed the rest of his words and silently stared at the ripples stirring in Jeok Cheongang’s eyes.

A thought struck him in the suffocating silence.

So that’s it. That’s what happened.

If he was right, it explained everything: Jeok Cheongang’s excessive worry, his disappearance from Jin Taekyung and the others, and his strange reactions throughout their conversation.

“It wasn’t seven days and nights ago, was it?”

“No. It was definitely seven days and nights ago.”

Jeok Cheongang smiled bitterly.

“But to me, those seven days and nights were only five days.”

Time flowed equally for everyone. Not everyone experienced it equally.

The first uninvited guest, arriving a step ahead of Mungyeong, had been the infirmities of old age. They had stolen two days from Jeok Cheongang and fled.

“…When did it start?”

“Sichuan.”

“Sichuan? But when I took your pulse, you were clearly…”

“The symptoms appeared immediately after I left Sichuan. After that, I did my best to avoid you.”

Why had he hidden it? Why?

The question died on Mungyeong’s tongue. He already knew.

How small a person felt when they first realized they had grown old. How frightening it was to realize their mind had begun to come and go with the infirmities of old age.

Seeing Mungyeong fall silent, Jeok Cheongang gave a rueful smile.

“Even if I’d come to tell you, nothing would have changed. I know my own body. You may be the Divine Physician, with medical skill that reaches Heaven, but even you can’t stop innate qi once it starts leaking away.”

“…”

“At first, my memory grew hazy. Then one day, moments were missing from my day. I knew what it meant because I’d been through it before.”

Those moments became the time it took to drink a cup of tea. That became fifteen minutes. Now it was two days.

Jeok Cheongang had searched desperately for a way to stop it, to no avail.

“Acquired qi from elixirs can’t restore a balance that’s already been broken. That left me one choice.”

“…Enlightenment.”

“Yes. Enlightenment.”

“So that’s why you began this secluded meditation.”

“I wanted to live as the Fire King Jeok Cheongang. Not as an old man with infirmities who cannot even remember his own name, but as the current Sect Leader of the Fire Gate Clan and someone’s Master.”

His desolate voice echoed through the cave. Drops gathered on the damp ceiling and fell, like an old man’s tears.