Chapter 927

An inexplicable shiver ran down my spine.

A supernatural power that could even evade death.

I knew better than anyone what it was. There was no other way to describe it than as something uncanny, like the work of ghosts.

The System.

A stroke of luck that had come into my life when it was sinking like a boat with a hole in its hull.

A power that had brought me both my greatest crisis and my greatest opportunity.

Yet in this world called Murim, only one person besides me knew the System existed.

The Fire King, Jeok Cheongang.

No one else could know the true nature of the power I possessed.

Not the Bow Saint, and not even the handful of people who had stayed closest to me.

They might have some vague sense that there’s something there, but that’s as far as it goes.

I’d crossed the line between life and death more times than I could count.

I’d survived situations that would have killed an ordinary person several times over, and I’d grown at a pace without precedent in Murim’s history.

Even so, no one knew exactly what my power was.

No—not unless I told them the truth myself.

That was the kind of power the System was.

An ability beyond anything a human could imagine, one that even the four characters meaning supernatural powers couldn’t fully capture.

Even the Bow Saint is no exception.

The shock I’d felt a moment ago had already settled. But one question remained, and I couldn’t answer it on my own: how had they learned there was something special about me when only a handful of people knew?

The Bow Saint. And…

The Martial God.

The shadows of two giants who had vanished from the world long ago fell over me now.

Not like shade that offered relief from the heat, but like darkness.

It made my skin crawl.

I licked my dry lips. My mouth felt as rough as if I’d chewed and swallowed a fistful of sand.

What on earth do they know? How much?

Just as I sent the unspoken question drifting through my mind, the Bow Saint—who had been watching me in silence with deeply shadowed eyes—suddenly spoke.

“You’re calmer than I expected. I thought you’d ramble on with excuses. Or pretend you didn’t know.”

I forced myself to answer evenly. “Would that change anything?”

“No. Nothing at all. You know that, too, don’t you?”

That answer made one thing certain.

The woman before me—the Bow Saint—had been watching me all along.

And she knew more than I’d imagined.

Then could it be…? No. That can’t be.

I pushed away the question that had flashed through my mind and asked sharply, “Since when?”

“That short question seems to hold several meanings. Let’s see… I’m not sure how to answer it. Why don’t I start with what happened today?”

The Bow Saint gently brushed the flowers lining either side of the path as she continued.

“Blazing Flame Divine Dragon Jin Taekyung. When I saw you rise even though you should have died, I finally knew who the chosen one the Martial God spoke of was.”

“How could that man—no, how could he…”

“How does he know about you?”

I nodded, keeping my agitation in check.

Every nerve in my body felt drawn taut.

Depending on her answer, everything could change. What happened next could take a turn even I couldn’t predict.

Then the Bow Saint gave a short reply that stopped my thoughts cold.

“How would I know?”

“What does that—”

“Neither I nor he could have known. Of course not. I found the letter before you were even born.”

“…A letter? Before I was born?”

“Yes. I first found it after many years had passed since the Great Faction War ended—long enough for the mountains and rivers to change more than once.”

Her calm voice mingled with the dawn air and drifted to my ears.

“At first, I thought it was simply a trace left by some unknown person from long ago. But I was wrong. The Martial God had left that letter for me.”

“Then what exactly did it say?”

“An arrangement he had made. No—perhaps a kind of prophecy.”

“……!”

“And there was one term that appeared throughout it.”

My chest felt tight, as though a great stone had settled inside it. I forced the words out.

“The chosen one.”

“That’s right. And ‘the chosen one’ didn’t necessarily refer to any one particular person.”

Step. Step.

Her careful footsteps carried her past the blades of grass. Faint moonlight fell over her as she walked through the garden.

“I couldn’t believe it, but I had no choice.”

Because he was the Martial God.

Awe she couldn’t conceal filled those words. Her voice as faint as the moonlight, the Bow Saint continued at the pace of her steps.

“So, after several decades, I went out into the world and traveled the land. I spent most of my time in the Central Plains, but once I went as far as the endless desert in the west. Another time, I crossed the grasslands and reached the Northern Sea, where moss and ice covered everything.”

Searching for the “chosen one” mentioned in the Martial God’s letter was like searching a field of sand for one special grain. The Bow Saint had to shoulder the entire burden alone.

“I couldn’t ask anyone for help. The letter said not a single detail about the mission could be revealed until I’d succeeded.”

But the Bow Saint hadn’t given up.

The Martial God’s arrangement, almost a prophecy, required someone called the chosen one.

“When the whole world is covered in darkness, that person will become a lamp and light the way. The only one who will open a new sky and bring the morning.”

The Bow Saint murmured the words, then turned her face toward the sky.

“But no matter how long I searched for someone whose age, face, name, and even gender I didn’t know, the chosen one never appeared.”

Of course not.

Finding one person in this vast land—someone who might not even have been born yet—was nearly impossible.

“But not entirely. If what he wrote in the letter was true, the chosen one would stand out with astonishing speed.”

A needle in a bag.

Sooner or later, the needle was bound to poke through. No matter where it was, or how deeply it was buried in a crowd.

“I followed rumors and sought out people I thought might be the chosen one. But even at Heaven’s Gate Temple, where the brightest talents in the land gather, I found no reason to be certain.”

Heaven’s Gate Temple was where Jin Mukyung, my second older brother and the Second Young Master of the Jin Family of Taiyuan, had spent some time.

It was a cradle of talent, crowded with the heirs of prominent sects and gifted people of every kind.

But even its cadets, remarkable as each of them was, fell far short of what the Bow Saint expected of the chosen one.

“They were all outstanding, but that was all. Every one of them had a clear limit. As did I.”

I’d listened in silence until then. At last, I understood why she, like the other Three Saints, had disappeared from public view—though her disappearance had been overshadowed by the Martial God’s.

And why she had been staying in the Imperial Palace.

“You used the imperial information network.”

“‘Cooperating with’ would be more accurate than ‘using.’ That was before the current Emperor, then the Fourth Prince, staged his coup.”

“Then does the Emperor know…?”

“No. He suspects something, vaguely, but he knows nothing. That was one of my conditions. What matters is that after he took the throne, I gained access to information from every corner of the land.”

The Bow Saint was a weight on the scales, powerful enough to tip the balance in an instant.

Disguised as a palace attendant, she stayed by the Emperor’s side and learned what was happening across the land, from the smallest incident to the largest. The presence of an unidentified Supreme Peak master also restrained the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord’s movements.

“In many ways, it was the right choice. Staying in the Imperial Palace let me learn things I’d never seen or heard before.”

One was Dark Heaven, which had sunk its roots deep into the imperial court. The other was…

“Someone who was growing beyond my sight.”

The Bow Saint looked away from the sky and toward me. Our eyes met, and I quietly swallowed.

“The Jin Family of Taiyuan. Jin Taekyung. At first, the names were unfamiliar, and I had no interest in them. Not until the second piece of news came from Shanxi.”

“What second report?”

“The unbelievable story that the Fire King, Jeok Cheongang, had taken on a Disciple.”

The Bow Saint smiled faintly.

“Of course, the reports that came in quite some time after that were far more surprising.”

A year after the Jin Family of Taiyuan took control of Shanxi Province, I finished my secluded training on Mount Jiuhua and descended the mountain.

I was nothing like the person I’d been before.

In my martial prowess. In my state of mind.

And there were major events waiting for me, too.

“Each time I heard news of you, I grew more interested. No—it was more than interest.”

The chosen one.

The lamp that would light the night. The one who would open a new sky and bring the morning.

The unknown person the Bow Saint had searched for so long was slowly emerging from behind the curtain.

“That was why I had to see for myself. I needed to know which of the two people I was weighing in my mind was the chosen one.”

Two people.

The word cut through my ears with unusual clarity. A name flashed through my mind like lightning.

“…Cheongpung.”

At the name that escaped me, the Bow Saint gave a small nod.

“Yes. Cheongpung, the Huashan Divine Dragon. He had every chance of being the chosen one, too. If I hadn’t seen you in the grand banquet hall, I would have believed the Sword Saint’s Disciple was the one.”

But from her point of view, there had been no need to bring both of us here.

She was already fairly certain one of us was the chosen one.

And I had enough ties to draw me into what had happened.

“I already knew of your connection with Prince Shangshan—no, the Imperial Younger Brother. When Dark Heaven reached out to Hong Jin first, pretending to be on our side, I thought it might work in our favor. But I needed something more definite.”

Then I remembered.

Ma Sanbao had been the one who first contacted Hong Jin.

And saving Zhu Bao wasn’t the only reason I’d thrown myself into the death trap of the Imperial Palace.

“Blood Soul Gu…”

Was this what it felt like to be struck in the back of the head with a sledgehammer?

I spoke through a groan.

“Were you the one who planted the Blood Soul Gu in the City Lord of Sichuan Province?”

The Bow Saint’s bitter smile burned itself into my eyes.