Chapter 843

Jeok Cheongang was a giant who had left his footprints in the vast sandpit of Murim.

He might not admit it himself, but everyone who had ever set foot in Murim thought so.

He was the Fire King, a great martial artist who had survived countless wars and crises over more than a hundred years.

The strong inspired awe. Old veterans earned respect. Jeok Cheongang was one of the few who commanded both.

His martial prowess placed him among the ten strongest people in the world, and no one could guess the depths of his experience and knowledge.

But even Jeok Cheongang didn’t know everything about the world he’d lived in for more than a hundred years.

Much less a world that wasn’t this one.

“We’re fucked.”

After a long silence, Jeok Cheongang spat out those words, certain that if everything he’d heard was true, there was no better way to put it.

The young man sitting across from him nodded.

“Yes. You’ve got it exactly right, Old Master.”

Jin Taekyung clicked his tongue bitterly.

We’re fucked. Nothing else quite captured how bad things were in the modern world.

One disaster after another had erupted without pause.

Looking back, Lee Jungryong seemed like a fairy. Michael Silbert and the Doppelganger had spent more than thirty years working together to bring the whole world to the brink of chaos.

No—the chaos had already begun in earnest.

“So, what was it called?”

“Monsters.”

“Right. Mosu-tuh. Those Demonic Cult-like bastards are coming in force to the realm of immortals where you live, is that it?”

“Yes. Just like they did thirty years ago.”

This wasn’t the first time Jeok Cheongang had heard about it.

Taekyung had told him once, right after they left the Nanman Beast Palace, and again over the past two days.

But even with a far more detailed explanation this time, Jeok Cheongang struggled to understand what he’d heard. Another twenty explanations wouldn’t have helped.

How could such a place exist?

A distant world no one could reach, no matter how many decades or centuries they walked. An unknown land they would never see, even after crossing mountains and seas.

And that wasn’t all.

People there could talk face-to-face from tens of thousands of li¹ apart, while enormous birds made of steel flew above the clouds.

Jeok Cheongang had spent his life walking through a mountain of sabers and a forest of swords. No wonder every new detail filled him with amazement and disbelief.

If anyone else had told him all this, he’d have slapped them across the face and burned them to a crisp with Flame Divine Palm.

Even if it had been the Martial God or the Son of Heaven.

But…

That brat’s the one telling me. I have to believe him.

Believe him. Jin Taekyung.

At some point, that had become the most natural thing in the world. The old man trusted the young man, and the young man trusted the old man.

Jeok Cheongang didn’t know when it had happened, but they had become the kind of people who would take even the most unbelievable nonsense from each other as fact.

“If the Dharma King, that damned monk, were alive and here with us, he’d have fainted dead away. He spent every day staring up at the stars, but do you think he ever imagined anything like this?”

Thinking of his departed friend, Jeok Cheongang looked at Taekyung.

“The more I hear, the less I understand that world. And yet, in a way, it’s much like this one. Don’t you think?”

Taekyung nodded.

At first, everything around him had felt unfamiliar and different. But not anymore.

The modern world and Murim. Murim and the modern world.

The two worlds were astonishingly alike—not in their civilizations, but in the currents of change running through them.

“If Murim has Dark Heaven, then the world I lived in has monsters. And both are headed in a bad direction.”

“Not so long ago, each world went through its own Great Faction War, too.”

“That’s right.”

“Then you…”

Jeok Cheongang trailed off. When he continued, his voice was grave.

Do you think all of this is just a coincidence?

A short silence fell.

As Jin Taekyung gazed at the oil lamp flickering in the darkness, his eyes began to glow red.

It was late enough that even the stars had fallen asleep.

I left Jeok Cheongang behind, stepped out of the pavilion, and wandered alone through the Inner Court. I had no destination in mind. All I carried was the question he’d just asked.

Do you think all of this is just a coincidence?

If Jeok Cheongang had asked me anything more specific, I would’ve hesitated to answer.

There was so much even I still didn’t know. So many secrets remained hidden in both worlds.

But I was certain of my answer to that question.

Not at all.

It wasn’t a coincidence.

That was what I’d told him after a short silence. It had taken me a long time to become sure of it.

I’d been thinking about it ever since I first opened my eyes in Murim. And after all that time, I’d reached one conclusion.

There’s a connection. A definite connection.

At first, everything that happened to me had felt like a terrible run of bad luck.

All I’d done was fall asleep in a damn old capsule. Then I’d had to fight one danger after another in a world where I couldn’t even tell whether it was a game or reality.

But as my circumstances changed, so did my thinking.

I’d gone from an F-rank Hunter who lost his job overnight to a celebrity, gripping power and wealth in both hands that I never could’ve imagined before.

And I’d gained them in both worlds—the modern world and Murim.

My bad luck turned into good luck.

The days when I’d lamented, How can I be this unlucky? quickly faded into the past.

What I’d thought was bad luck turned out to be good fortune sent down from the heavens. Maybe it was even more than that—a stroke of heavenly fortune.

Until, one day, I began to feel a strange sense of déjà vu.

From Shanxi Province to Henan. Across Sichuan and all the way to Hubei.

Beneath the dark clouds of Dark Heaven, blood-soaked flames had risen.

The Head Elder of the Jin Family of Taiyuan, who had long harbored a desire for revenge, drew the sword he’d kept hidden for years. A revered monk, respected for his extraordinary martial prowess and wisdom, met his death. And the flames that swept through Shaolin Temple spread to Sichuan and Hubei.

And finally, they reached distant Nanman.

The one saving grace was that those flames hadn’t reduced everything in their path to ash.

Though countless people had died, even more had escaped the fire. And I’d found many traces left behind where that terrible disaster had swept through.

The Water God Dragon, driven mad and stripped of reason.

Fishermen and fish transformed into grotesque creatures that looked like monsters.

Dark Heaven’s Moving Formation, so much like modern Teleport Magic that I couldn’t dismiss it as mere dark arts or a formation.

And finally…

The rift that opened in Nanman.

I remembered it clearly. No—I couldn’t forget it.

That darkness writhing like a living creature. The familiarity I’d sensed time and again in what Murim’s martial artists called demonic qi.

It was magical power. I’m sure of it.

At first, I couldn’t accept that.

It shouldn’t exist. It couldn’t exist.

But as time passed, the picture grew clearer, forcing me to face reality.

It isn’t just a difference in names.

Mana and internal energy were identical at their core. Both were qi.

Something everywhere and nowhere at once. An intangible force present in blue seas and forests, and in smog-filled canyons of skyscrapers, though most people couldn’t sense it.

Magical power was different.

That evil energy, steeped in death, had flowed in from another world.

If mana and internal energy were natives, present from the beginning, then magical power was a stranger—an invader that had crossed over from beyond along with the monsters.

And now that very magical power had appeared.

Not in the modern world, but here in Murim.

How am I supposed to make sense of that?

Ha.

A hollow laugh escaped me.

How was I supposed to make sense of it? I could try to deny it all I wanted, but I couldn’t ignore what was right in front of me. I already knew the answer.

Dark Heaven.

There was no doubt.

Dark Heaven was the true link between the modern world and Murim.

Everything I’d personally witnessed since becoming entangled with them was evidence—and served as both prosecutor and judge.

But how?

How had they set foot in this world—in Murim?

The Great Faction War had been a major event, but in the end, it was a war over supremacy in Murim.

If anything like the Great Cataclysm had happened, I would’ve known. Or at least Jeok Cheongang and the others who’d lived through that time would have.

Rumors of hideous monsters sweeping across the land would’ve reached even the most remote villages.

But all anyone knows is that Dark Heaven succeeded the Demonic Cult and uses strange dark arts.

The implication was clear.

Something that shouldn’t exist appeared in Murim during the chaos of the Great Faction War—or shortly afterward.

If so, the timing lined up exactly. That was when Dark Heaven first approached the Head Elder.

But I still didn’t know the underlying cause. The biggest question remained unanswered.

The Lord of Heaven.

Dark Heaven’s master.

No, an absolute being they might as well worship as a god.

How he could exist in Murim wasn’t what puzzled me. The Great Cataclysm thirty-odd years ago had begun much the same way.

The problem was…

Who the Lord of Heaven really is.

Step.

I stopped walking.

Darkness lay heavy over the world, and torches burned red throughout the Inner Court.

As I stared blankly into their flames, lost in thought, I suddenly felt a shock as if something had pierced through the top of my head.

“Could it be…?”

The words escaped me like a groan and faded into the darkness.

Just then—

Swish.

The shadow cast by a wavering torch touched the tips of my feet.

Like that cursed being who no longer existed. Like the one who had smiled even as he met his eternal Erasure.

And at the same time, a conversation buried in the depths of my memories rang in my ears like an illusion.

The great king has overcome a god’s curse. He may waver, but he will not break. Even if he falls, he will rise again. And at last, he will make all the earth and water in this world his own.

What?

That alone is the truth. A truth you cannot stop even knowing it—a truth that will become reality before long.

“…!”

I froze like a statue, as though I were back in that moment when I’d faced the Doppelganger.