Chapter 938

“Has it been about fifty years?”

Jeok Cheongang murmured as he looked out over the garden, filled with rare flowers and plants of every color.

“Back then, Mount Li in Shaanxi looked just like this. It was the height of spring, and everything was in bloom.”

This wasn’t merely an old man reminiscing aloud. He was speaking to someone seated against a moss-covered wall.

“Mount Small Hua.”

“Hmm?”

“It was Mount Small Hua, not Mount Li.”

Her voice was calm and clear.

Jeok Cheongang shook his head at the Bow Saint’s correction.

“That can’t be right. I remember soaking in hot spring water. Mount Li’s been famous for its hot springs since ancient times.”

“It wasn’t a hot spring. It was a small pond—until someone said he couldn’t stand cold water and heated it with Scorching Yang Qi.”

“Did he?”

“You’ve completely forgotten how the Thunderbolt Saber King flew into a rage and nearly started a fight.”

“That Peng bastard?”

The Bow Saint nodded. Jeok Cheongang frowned.

“I don’t remember it, but he was an idiot then and he’s an idiot now. All that fuss over a little warm water.”

“He had good reason. The Thunderbolt Saber King was already in the pond.”

“He’s a big fellow. I must’ve mistaken him for a bear.”

The Bow Saint gave a small sigh at his shameless reply.

“You haven’t changed.”

“People aren’t so different from those flowers. Wind and rain batter them day and night, and a sudden change in their surroundings can kill them. If you want to live even one day longer, you have to stay the same—like this old man.”

“So you came to tell me the secret to a long life?”

“Does this old man look like he has that much time on his hands?”

“You showed up out of nowhere and started telling stories I’d rather not remember. You don’t look that busy.”

Jeok Cheongang smiled bitterly at her dry reply.

This time, he couldn’t disagree. No matter how he looked at it, those weren’t happy memories.

They’d gathered there one spring more than fifty years ago—not simply to laugh and talk. He couldn’t even remember the exact year now.

“Three thousand members of the death squad climbed that mountain together. Before a day had passed, half of them had been buried there.”

Mount Small Hua, green beneath the bright spring sky, had become a mountain of fire, dyed red from end to end.

He could still see it clearly: flames surging up the mountainside, blood mingling with the water in the valleys, and more corpses than he could count strewn everywhere.

The Zhongnan Sect. The Huashan Sect. The Hebei Peng Family.

And alongside them, smaller orthodox factions whose names had faded from people’s memories long ago.

The Blade of Flowers, Jin Baekyang—then the Second Young Master of the Jin Family of Taiyuan—had been there too.

The three thousand elite members of the death squad surged like a wave toward ten thousand Demonic Cult followers led by five great fiends. They broke against them, scattering blood instead of white foam.

At dawn, when the survivors stood atop a mountain of Demonic Cult corpses and shouted in victory, two kings and one star stood at their center.

“One thousand three hundred and nineteen.”

“……!”

“That’s how many people died that day.”

Her quiet voice cut through the night air.

Jeok Cheongang stopped short, then slowly turned.

“You remember? All of them?”

Though his body had grown young again, the years remained in his eyes. And in those eyes, the woman’s gaze looked much like his own.

“I’ve never forgotten. Not for a moment.”

“……I didn’t know you were that kind of person.”

“Knowing changes nothing. All I do is remember them.”

The Bow Saint fell silent for a moment before adding, “That was simply the kind of time it was.”

Jeok Cheongang gave a faint nod.

“Yes. It was.”

The Demonic Cult’s momentum had been terrifying back then.

No—overwhelming.

The Hundred Thousand Demonic Disciples swept in like a wave, crushing the Kunlun Sect as they crossed Qinghai. Then they split into three forces and advanced unchecked.

Toward Sichuan. Toward Gansu. And beyond Shaanxi, into the heart of the continent known as the Central Plains.

Not even the Nine Sects and One Gang or the Five Great Families could stop that wave. The orthodox factions, still divided and guarding their own territories, crumbled almost at once.

The Demonic Cult’s long-cherished dream of a world ruled by the Demonic Path no longer seemed far-fetched.

Until one man appeared.

“Do you know what I was thinking the day I came down from Mount Jiuhua, after killing every last bastard who’d dared set it on fire?”

Jeok Cheongang didn’t wait for an answer.

“I swore to myself that until my dying breath, I’d kill as many Demonic Cult followers as I could.”

With the war already turning against them, taking on the Demonic Cult alone was madness.

The kind of madness only Jeok Cheongang, the Fire King, could attempt.

“But it turned out someone was even crazier than this old man.”

Jeok Cheongang laughed. He remembered preparing to charge straight at the Demonic Cult forces that had occupied Anhui after driving out even the Namgung Family.

“I just couldn’t believe it. Three thousand Demonic Cult followers defeated by one man.”

Those three thousand weren’t a rabble who’d barely risen above Third Rate. They were elites forged by the Demonic Cult’s brutal training, fanatics who had sworn absolute loyalty to the Heavenly Demon.

Among them were two great fiends who had reached the Supreme Peak realm.

“Of course, eventually I had no choice but to believe it.”

The story was too incredible to accept, so he’d caught several Demonic Cult followers as they fled and interrogated them. He confirmed that their two leading great fiends and nearly half their forces had vanished.

All because of someone no one could identify.

“That was when I remembered what my late Master used to say. The world is vast and there are many masters, so I must never stop striving.”

Before long, though, he understood.

Jeok Cheongang wasn’t lacking. That unknown man was exceptional.

No—beside him, anyone would have seemed ordinary.

“The Martial God.”

No one knew where he came from, what his name was, or how old he might be. Hardly anyone even knew his face.

He could wield every kind of martial art at will, and the disguise technique was no exception.

Yet everyone believed in him and followed him.

That was the kind of person he was. The only lamp lighting a world sunk in darkness. The sun, alone in the sky.

But precisely because of that, they could only circle him, instinctively unable to draw near.

They feared that the wind from a cautious outstretched hand might snuff out their only light.

Afraid that one step closer to the sun would leave them burning in its heat.

“So the Martial God’s identity remained a mystery to the very end. No—no one could even dare imagine it. Not even the Thousand-Faced Fox, who served him more closely than anyone.”

But now Jeok Cheongang knew the secret the world had never learned. At last, he understood why that man could be called the Martial God.

“Was it divine strength? That incomprehensible power.”

At his near-whisper, the Bow Saint slowly rose.

“Why? Are you planning to spread the word?”

“This old man’s only just started living like a proper person again. I won’t have people calling me senile.”

Jeok Cheongang gave a quiet laugh.

“So that’s why you kept talking when you knew I could hear you? Just because I’m that brat’s Master?”

“I simply saw no reason to hide it.”

The Bow Saint met his gaze.

“I saw you on the battlefield. A Master and Disciple willing to throw away their lives to save each other.”

“……!”

“That was when I understood how much you trust each other. Hiding the truth would have been pointless.”

Where nothing was hidden, there could be no secret.

The Bow Saint had seen the bond between Master and Disciple clearly. And as the unbelievable story unfolded, she sensed Jeok Cheongang’s qi remain steady while he silently watched, confirming what she had understood.

“When did you realize your Disciple was different from everyone else?”

Jeok Cheongang answered calmly.

“From the beginning until now. Always.”

“I think you misunderstand. I mean, when did you learn the truth about that boy……?”

“Does it matter?”

Jeok Cheongang cut her off. Her reflection appeared in his eyes, now dark and solemn.

“Nothing changes. From the day I took that brat as my Disciple, we’ve shared everything and faced it together.”

At that moment, the Bow Saint frowned.

Not because she hadn’t gotten the answer she wanted, but because she felt the air around them slowly heating up.

Rumble.

The wind stopped. The air trembled.

And at the center of it all stood Jeok Cheongang, the Fire King.

“But……”

He slowly turned his head away from the garden. His eyes glowed red, flickering in the darkness like ghost fires.

“Did you put my Disciple in danger just to make that trivial confirmation?”

Jeok Cheongang had not forgotten the rage and despair that seized him when Jin Taekyung collapsed, spraying blood.

His Disciple might have grown strong enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Elders of great sects—perhaps even their Sect Leaders.

He might no longer be a rash young man like others his age, but someone with the stature to call himself a grandmaster.

Jin Taekyung was still his one and only Disciple.

Whoosh!

White hellfire spiraled upward.

Through the heat haze rising from its terrible warmth, the Bow Saint spoke calmly.

“Two thousand five hundred and sixty-two.”

Jeok Cheongang stopped in his tracks. He had been moving toward her, but he thought he knew what that unexpected number meant.

“That’s how many of our people died in the grand banquet hall three days ago.”

“You know the number well. But……”

His voice came out cold, utterly unlike the power blazing around him.

“If someone had stepped forward sooner, fewer than half of them would have died.”

“Yes. I’m sure you’re right.”

“What!”

Whoosh.

The flames around Jeok Cheongang burned hotter. The Bow Saint went on, unruffled.

“Even so, I had to see it with my own eyes. Whether that boy truly was the chosen one. What power he possessed, and what kind of person he was.”

“How dare you……!”

“After every battle, I counted the dead. It was one way I could remember them.”

“Shut your mouth!”

“But if ten times as many died as they did three days ago—one hundred times…… No, more than a thousand times as many—could you still be angry as you are now?”

“……!”

“To you, it may have been a trivial test that put your precious Disciple in danger. To me, it wasn’t.”

The Bow Saint looked into Jeok Cheongang’s trembling eyes.

“I made that decision for far more people than that. Perhaps for everyone in this world.”

“That was also why that person—the Martial God—chose me.”

Her soft murmur drifted through the cold night air.

Step.

Far away in the darkness came the faint sound of someone approaching.

They turned at the same time. Hyuk Mujin was running toward them with all his might.