Chapter 970

In the hazy darkness, unable to see an inch ahead, Jin Mukyung faced the only path left to him. He saw it not with his eyes, but with his heart.

A future that could never come to pass.

Eternal death.

So this is the end.

Even Jin Mukyung was surprised by how calmly he accepted it.

He’d already done everything he could.

He’d fought with all his strength, enough to look up at the heavens without a shred of shame. At last, that strength had run out.

Body and soul.

He’d poured everything into the fight. There was nothing left. In a world that had slowed to a crawl, he watched a spear rise and knew the death in its blade was drawing near, yet he couldn’t twitch a finger.

And still, somewhere deep in his heart, one thread of regret remained. It was for the people he would leave behind.

What will happen to them now?

He didn’t care what awaited him after death.

Even if a pale-faced Grim Reaper dressed head to toe in black appeared right now, bound him in chains, and dragged him before Yama,¹ it wouldn’t matter.

He had lived an honorable life as a martial artist and as the Jin Family of Taiyuan’s Second Young Master. The lives he’d taken had been taken to protect others, not because he wanted to kill.

But now he had to leave.

He had to leave everyone behind and be dragged into the unknown darkness. Not by choice.

Everything he’d wanted to protect, everything he had ultimately failed to save, would remain here.

…No. Anything but that.

In that instant, Jin Mukyung clenched his teeth.

He forced his fading consciousness awake and screamed silently.

Everything I could? What did that even mean?

How could he accept death so weakly?

If he was still alive, it wasn’t over. Not until his last breath.

He had to get up. He had to fight until his pounding heart stopped.

I—I…!

His fingertips trembled. The smell of blood rose between his clenched teeth.

But even biting his own tongue couldn’t rouse a body that had long since passed its limit. The cruel reality didn’t change.

Whoosh.

The sound of something cutting through the air rang clearly in his ears. In his blurred vision, the slanting flash seemed unusually slow.

Slow enough to look back on his entire life.

Slow enough to picture the most infuriating face in the world.

If you were here instead of me… everything would be different.

As the spearhead fell toward his head, Jin Mukyung spoke in his heart to the only younger brother he had. The words would never reach him.

Looks like I won’t be able to keep that promise after all.

Two years ago, the brothers had made a promise through the wall of the training hall.

They would meet at the Star-Array Grand Banquet, the gathering of countless stars that lit up the world.

In the end, Jin Mukyung hadn’t kept his promise.

He’d been ashamed. His accomplishments had felt nowhere near enough.

When he’d first picked up a sword, he’d wanted to become a great martial artist. Later, he’d wanted to become the pride of the Jin Family of Taiyuan and a younger brother his elder brother could be proud of.

But there was another reason—his greatest reason—for spending the past two years swinging his sword without rest in suffocating darkness.

He wanted to be an older brother who could hold his head high.

He wanted to become strong enough to surpass the wall that was Cheongpung, so his younger brother, who’d become the Divine Dragon and soared freely through the sky, wouldn’t be ashamed of him.

But…

So this is how it ends.

Jin Mukyung, the Heaven Shaking Sword.

The time of opportunity granted to a young genius, overshadowed by other monsters, was over.

The sword he’d honed in the dark had shone brightly enough to light this gorge today. But that fleeting light would be swallowed by the long, deep night.

Forever.

Damn it.

Jin Mukyung struggled to lift his half-closed eyelids.

He would not close his eyes in the face of death. It was the last pride he had as a martial artist, proof that his fighting spirit remained unbroken. And he wanted to say goodbye to his troublesome younger brother, even if his voice would never reach him.

“…I’m sorry.”

The words had barely left Jin Mukyung’s lips when—

KABOOOOOM!

The sky and earth shook.

His world, dark and hazy until then, turned blue-white. The flash falling toward his head changed course and swept sideways.

Toward the terrible heat that had arrived faster than light, outrunning even the thunder of its arrival.

No—toward the spear carrying that heat.

Wooooom.

The wind vanished. The air stood still.

Two currents of qi met. In that instant, they enveloped everything within dozens of zhang,² then swelled.

KRAAAAAASH!

A tremendous shock wave tore across the gorge, its roar deafening.

Lying in the deep pit, Jin Mukyung reached out on instinct. He held the unconscious Cheol Mubaek and Wipeng with all his strength and watched the corpses of people and horses, along with countless fragments of rock, fly in every direction as if caught in a storm.

Amid the blinding light that engulfed everything around him, he could just make out someone’s back.

Jin Mukyung coughed up dark-red blood. A thought struck him.

Perhaps he was already dead. Perhaps his lingering attachment to life was making him see things even now.

But…

No.

Everything he saw, heard, and felt was too vivid to belong to the dead.

The stinging pain in his skin where the rock fragments had scraped past. The muscles screaming throughout his body. The blood surging from his insides, twisted by severe Internal Injury.

And, finally, the familiar voice that reached his ears.

“What are you throwing up for? Did you drink too much last night?”

Jin Mukyung’s body went rigid.

His eyes flew wide, a storm raging in their depths.

There was no mistaking it. This wasn’t a hallucination. He wasn’t hearing things.

This was…

“I’d pat you on the back, but, well, the situation’s a little tricky.”

The voice came through clearly as the roar died away.

In the fading light, he could see him.

That infuriating voice alone was enough to make Jin Mukyung want to raise a fist. That wastrel’s back had, at some point, grown broader and sturdier than his own.

“You…!”

Where had the strength come from?

Jin Mukyung squeezed out a voice rough as scraping metal and raised his hand. Though his fingers shook like leaves, he reached toward his only younger brother’s robe.

Rustle.

The sound of fabric brushing against something was so faint he had to strain to hear it.

Perhaps it was the wind, not Jin Mukyung’s hand, that touched the edge of the tattered robe.

But that was enough.

What he wanted to convey was more than a touch. It was a desperate wish for his brother to protect everyone.

Thud.

His hand fell limply. His whole body went slack.

At last, the pathetic older brother, having spent every last bit of his strength, lost consciousness.

Before him stood his wastrel younger brother, returned after two years away. A dozen zhang² from him stood an unfamiliar, graying middle-aged man, watching him with a dark, steady gaze.

“I have one question.”

His eyes blazed with flame. His voice, by contrast, was cold as ice.

“Did you beat up my hyung?”³

The wastrel had returned.

As a dragon whose roar shook the heavens.

Beyond his low voice rose the tearful cheers of the people of Shanxi.

Not long ago, someone told me not to carry everything alone.

To trust them a little more.

Now I knew they’d been right.

I could tell the moment I reached the battlefield.

Blood was everywhere. Limbs torn from bodies I couldn’t identify lay among countless corpses of people and horses. They had piled into small hills that filled the narrow gorge.

Most of the dead were nomads.

The enemy had outnumbered the people of Shanxi by at least two to one. They’d been badly outmatched in fighting strength, too. But they hadn’t given in.

No. They’d fought back with every bit of strength they had.

The Imperial Army. The martial artists. Even ordinary people who probably hadn’t learned a single move of martial arts.

And Jin Mukyung.

They did everything they could. Even when it meant overcoming their fear of death.

I knew how hard it was for the weak to stand against the strong.

And I’d taken Jin Mukyung’s wish to heart. There could be no more sacrifices like theirs.

Wooooom. BOOM!

I reached out. With a thunderous crash, the spear buried deep in the cliff twisted like a living creature and flew toward me.

White Flame trembled faintly in my grasp, back from its brief journey.

The blue-white flames coiling around its blade lit the pitch-black darkness and heated the cold night air as they surged toward the enemy before me.

System Lv.??? Murong Baek

A graying, middle-aged man stood before me, gripping a dark spear much like the charging spears the nomads used.

I’d be lying if I said the System window I read with my razor-sharp Qi Sense hadn’t caught me off guard. But the reality before my eyes was the truth.

I looked at the Family Head of the Murong Family, a man I’d heard of but never met.

Another blade Dark Heaven had hidden in the vast forest of the Central Plains’ Murim.

The North Heaven Demon Lord.

“I asked you. Did you beat up my hyung?”³

The North Heaven Demon Lord was silent for a moment.

“Well, now.”

His gaze swept over me, and he gave a small sigh at the arrival of an uninvited guest.

“This complicates things. In more ways than one.”

I bet it was. In more ways than one.

I lifted my spearhead, ready to strike at any moment.

“Why so troubled? You’re making me worry.”

Why the Family Head of the Murong Family had become Dark Heaven’s lackey, or when, didn’t matter to me right now.

I had only one thing to do: take down Murong Baek, without a doubt the North Heaven Demon Lord, and the nomad behind him, standing there with a thoroughly stiff expression.

“So why not just crack your skull while we’re at it? Then it won’t hurt anymore.”

Step.

The North Heaven Demon Lord took a step forward and answered calmly.

“That’s a treatment I’ve never heard of.”

“I know more about medicine than you’d think. I picked up a thing or two watching the Divine Physician.”

“Maybe. Even so, I suspect that method would be a problem.”

The North Heaven Demon Lord looked at me with a clear gaze that seemed to see through everything, then added:

“Especially in your current condition.”

I wanted to deny it, but he was right.

I’d paid a price for crossing ten thousand li⁴ without proper sleep, meals, or time to circulate my qi.

So I answered without hesitation.

“Yeah. You’re right.”

Step.

The footsteps that had been steadily closing the distance suddenly stopped. The North Heaven Demon Lord furrowed his brow as he looked at me.

“What did you say?”

“I said you’re right. Honestly, like this, it’d be tough. Really tough.”

“What are you—”

His voice trailed off. I shrugged at the North Heaven Demon Lord, who was staring at me as if I were crazy.

“So I brought someone I know along while I was at it.”

Before the North Heaven Demon Lord could grasp what I meant, two sharp whistles swept through the air.