Chapter 367: Yearning So Deep I Could Not Forget
The Poison Dance Empress was strong.
As befitted a martial artist who had survived countless real battles even after reaching the Flowering Stage, her poison arts had reached a staggeringly high place.
The ground touched by her poison died black in an instant, and the poisonous haze that covered the surrounding area did not spare even a single tiny insect. Even the famed masters of the Demonic Cult melted away without so much as a chance to resist, reduced to nothing more than a handful of poisonous water.
Tang Sowol knew no one who handled poison this powerfully.
Even Tang Jincheon, who was called the Poison King, could not compare to her future self.
The Poison Dance Empress’s poison, and the martial art with which she wielded it, had reached a place far beyond the ideal Tang Sowol had only ever imagined in her head.
As though she were copying down an answer sheet someone had handed her, Tang Sowol found herself glaring wide-eyed at her breathing, her footsteps, her combinations of poison, even the trivial little habits that should have meant nothing.
That was only natural for someone who had the same constitution and practiced the same martial art.
So as she watched the Poison Dance Empress, Tang Sowol secretly let herself hope.
She knew the Heavenly Demon was strong, but at this level, surely she could fight him.
And was this not a situation where even the remnants of the Orthodox and Unorthodox Alliance had nowhere left to run and were throwing everything they had into one final all-out battle?
Tang Sowol thought perhaps if they overwhelmed the Heavenly Demon, weakened by poison, with sheer numbers, they might be able to bring him down.
It was a futile hope.
The Poison Dance Empress was certainly strong, but the Heavenly Demon was stronger still.
An incomprehensible, unreasonable level of force.
The ultimate meaning of the Ten Thousand Returns Poison Divine Art, which melted everything in the world and led it toward a single destination, and the Heartscape and willpower of revenge Tang Sowol had cultivated all this time........
All of it only perished beneath the blackened demonic sky.
“Ah.......”
The sigh slipped out on its own.
Not only Tang Sowol, who had been watching completely absorbed in the Poison Dance Empress, but even Seol Lihyang and Seo Mun-Hwarin, who had been standing a little farther away anxiously watching Cheon Hwi-da as he held off the other demonic practitioners alone—
No matter what they had been looking at, all three of them had no choice but to raise their eyes to the sky at the same time.
The sky had been dyed black by surging demonic energy. Even knowing that the overwhelming pressure radiating from that massive lump of force was nothing more than a replay of memory, cold sweat still ran down Tang Sowol’s back.
“Can that even be called martial arts......??”
“No matter how strong force manifestation is, how can it possibly be like that?!”
“We have to fight something like that??”
The three of them reacted with shock in their own ways, but the one whose reaction was the fiercest by far was Seo Mun-Hwarin.
Was it because she had briefly fought the Heavenly Demon once before? She simply had never imagined that the Heavenly Demon, already so powerful then, would become this much of a monster.
“I knew the stories that he had repelled the combined attack of Flowering Stage martial artists...... but can this truly be called the martial art of a human?”
“No. Perhaps it may not even be power built purely through human talent and effort, Sister Hwarin.”
At Seo Mun-Hwarin’s horrified words, Tang Sowol shook her head.
What suddenly surfaced in her mind were the questions Cheon Hwi-da had once asked the Illusory Illusion Witch.
“Defying Heaven.”
“Hm?”
“The Illusory Illusion Witch said that no matter how much one hones martial arts, there is a limit to the power a person can possess.”
“Well. Hearing something like that from a sorceress who has never even seen the end of martial arts makes it hard to believe.”
“Ah, she wasn’t talking about the end of martial arts. Tang Sowol didn’t understand it perfectly either, but if she had to compare it to something, it felt more like a realm. Like how you cannot manifest force unless you reach the Flowering Stage.”
“Mm. If that is what you mean, then perhaps.”
Seo Mun-Hwarin nodded with a rather dubious expression. Seeing that, Tang Sowol continued her explanation calmly.
“But that is only the case when one trains by normal methods. Young Hero Cheon suspected that if it was the Heavenly Demon, who walked not merely the unorthodox path but the demonic path, then he must have found a way somehow. And the Illusory Illusion Witch named slaughter karma as the most likely method.”
“Did you say slaughter karma?”
“Yes. Slaughter karma so immense it reaches the heavens. Deaths so far outside the natural order that the heavens, which flow by principle rather than judging by human standards, have no choice but to take notice. She said that if one achieves reversal through that, one can gain power beyond one’s limits.”
“Slaughter karma... power beyond one’s limits.......?”
“Defying Heaven, deaths piled up to the point the heavens cannot help but look back.......?”
As Seol Lihyang and Seo Mun-Hwarin murmured that, both of them widened their eyes at once.
They had thought of the countless people the Heavenly Demon had killed while destroying the Murim of the Central Plains.
Strictly speaking, they were wrong. Even if every person in the Central Plains were offered up as sacrifice, the limit that could be surpassed would only be slight.
But for the Heavenly Demon, who repeated slaughter karma over and over through repeated regressions, even that slight amount had been enough.
They were a little off, but the three of them had at least correctly guessed where the Heavenly Demon’s strength came from.
And while their eyes trembled with shock and anxiety like that,
The battle between the Heavenly Demon and the Poison Dance Empress was steadily heading toward its end.
It was far too short a time to call it a battle between Flowering Stage martial artists.
Though one had to wonder whether the current Heavenly Demon could even be called merely a Flowering Stage martial artist...... in any case, the difference was only one of scale and precision. What he could do was still, in principle, something other Flowering Stage martial artists could do as well.
Of course, that difference in scale and precision was overwhelming.
The final poison the Poison Dance Empress created by staking everything she had.
Though Tang Sowol had watched every step of the process, she still could not understand the ultimate poison that dyed the Heavenly Demon’s arm a deep green.
And it carved something like a small burn scar there.
That was all.
No matter how dreadful the poison was, once it broke through the Heavenly Demon’s protective force, it had already lost most of its power.
Realizing defeat, the Poison Dance Empress turned to look at Cheon Hwi-da, who was fighting a little farther away.
Even in the midst of battle, Cheon Hwi-da had been constantly paying attention to both the Heavenly Demon and the Poison Dance Empress. It was not strange for their eyes to meet.
With Cheon Hwi-da reflected in her dark green eyes, an awkward smile bloomed across the Poison Dance Empress’s face.
And then came a whisper shaped only by her lips.
‘Please live.’
With those as her final words, the Poison Dance Empress gathered all the poison remaining within her and stretched out her hand.
A supreme poison born through the Poison Spirit Constitution and reborn through Transformation, potent enough to melt even the body of the greatest poison wielder in the history of the Tang Clan.
Like a martial artist driven into a corner igniting innate true qi, she sent all the poison she had accumulated in her lifetime into simultaneous rampage.
That strike truly possessed power worthy of being called a final blow.
In fact, the skin exposed to the poisonous dance of the Heavenly Demon began to burn away across a wider area, but......
Boom!
With one powerful step from the Heavenly Demon, the poison the Poison Dance Empress had built up over her entire life scattered away in vain.
And then—
Bang!
The sound of something exploding. She had allowed him only a single direct blow, but that alone blasted a huge hole through the Poison Dance Empress’s chest.
If one wished, one could call the end of the Poison Dance Empress vain.
If one wished, one could call it magnificent.
Thus the three women came to know
Why Cheon Hwi-da hated the Heavenly Demon, and regarded the Demonic Cult as his mortal enemy.
Blood poured from the hollow wound.
Cheon Hwi-da’s world collapsed.
“Ah..”
For the first time since the destruction of Ironblood Hall, burning hot tears of rage spilled from Cheon Hwi-da’s eyes.
The sharp scent of poison rising from the corpse of the Poison Dance Empress as it melted away in her own poison. The roar of a beast that had lost what it meant to protect. And the single sword that had always remained by Cheon Hwi-da’s side.
The killing intent of Cheon Hwi-da, his face twisted like an evil god or murderous demon, drove back even the Heavenly Demon’s presence that had dominated the surroundings an instant before.
It was killing intent that was that pure, and that intense.
“I’ll kill you!!”
Though he had clearly heard the plea to live, Cheon Hwi-da still rushed toward the Heavenly Demon’s limbs without hesitation.
Internal energy, lifespan, reason itself—he burned every last thing he still had left and charged straight in.
A thrust launched with everything that had been permitted to him.
His clean and swift sword shot toward the Heavenly Demon’s heart.
A sword burning in bloody crimson flames bored into the Heavenly Demon’s protective force.
It drove in—
And stopped before even piercing halfway through.
It was power unworthy of being called that of a Sub-Perfection master, yet before the Heavenly Demon, it meant nothing.
With bleak eyes, the Heavenly Demon looked down at him, and Cheon Hwi-da, as though making one last desperate struggle, ignited even his innate true qi.
And then.
The Heavenly Demon merely flicked his hand with the same weary expression.
Woooong!
An enormous mass of black force fell from above Cheon Hwi-da’s head.
It looked as though the sky itself were collapsing.
At that, Cheon Hwi-da did nothing but grit his teeth, gripping his sword so hard his fingers seemed ready to shatter.
“So I still could not reach him.”
His face held a desperate regret, the sort that wondered whether anything might have changed if only he had possessed a little more talent, a little more time, a little better martial arts.
And so Cheon Hwi-da was pierced by the falling force, collapsing headfirst into the bloodied ground.
A death beyond doubt.
And thus Cheon Hwi-da died. By the time he had finally realized that he was not a beast but a man, it was already too late. By the time he had realized that he could hold someone in his heart, it was already too late. Even the love that had found him once again, he could only let slip away.
A life filled with loss, in which he could not grasp a single thing and could only watch it slip through his fingers.
But for some reason, Cheon Hwi-da’s memory, which should have ended there, did not end.
The Heavenly Demon left the place with calm indifference, as though it were nothing of consequence.
And all that remained behind was Cheon Hwi-da’s corpse, but.......
Something was crawling toward that blood-soaked body.
In that world dyed red, there was something that alone maintained a deep green.
It was all the enlightenment left behind by the peerless poison wielder known as the Poison Dance Empress, and the final trace made from the melting of her body.
The poison contained within it was still extraordinary, yet it had already lost its master, had it not?
Normally, it should have slowly dispersed. It should have dissolved into the blood and thinned, then scattered away with the passage of time...... and yet, for some reason, it still remained and moved of its own accord.
“Could it be she’s still alive?!”
“No. That is not it.”
At the sight of the still-moving poison liquid in a memory that refused to end, Seol Lihyang voiced a hopeful guess, but Tang Sowol denied it firmly.
Cheon Hwi-da had died, and the Poison Dance Empress had not even left behind a proper corpse.
That was an unchanging fact.
But.
“Something still remained. The willpower she had poured into it.”
Cheon Hwi-da came to realize, after cutting away his own Heart Demon, that he was not a being made solely of himself.
If he had become who he was now by sharing hearts with countless others, then did it not follow that the people from before regression, those who could no longer be seen anywhere ever again, also remained within him?
Like the tiny droplet of poison now climbing against the stream of blood toward Cheon Hwi-da.
Just as the Illusory Illusion Witch had said, through Cheon Hwi-da’s Demon Bell, they were peering into his Heartscape...... and into a part of the Poison Dance Empress’s Heartscape contained within it.
To others, it would have been nothing more than an incomprehensible phenomenon, but there was only one person who could instinctively understand what was happening.
Tang Sowol.
Even if Cheon Hwi-da’s life had ended, the willpower the Poison Dance Empress held to the very last still remained, returning to Cheon Hwi-da.
The final Heartscape of the Poison Dance Empress contained within that little droplet...... those feelings seeped into Tang Sowol.
Apology, affection, gratitude, and worry.
“So that was it.”
In the end, the Poison Dance Empress could not let go of revenge, but even so, after meeting Cheon Hwi-da, she had come to learn many things.
She was sorry for making a promise she could not keep, and sorry for dragging him into her revenge and putting him in danger.
She had learned that there was someone who loved her, and learned that she herself could love someone.
And for all of that, she was only grateful.
But faced with death, there was one thing that worried her alone.
After she died, she worried how much more Cheon Hwi-da—already so full of wounds—would break.
In response to that willpower, Tang Sowol’s fragment moved......
And so it reached Cheon Hwi-da.
A corpse turning cold. But the green poison liquid paid that no mind and coiled around his little finger.
It looked like a ring, and also like thread wrapped around it.
The poison that should have melted everything it touched did not melt Cheon Hwi-da alone. It only clung to him.
And at the final moment of the Poison Dance Empress, who only became one with him in death, Tang Sowol realized it.
That this, too, was a message left behind for whoever would meet Cheon Hwi-da next.
“Please. Take good care of him.”
She could no longer remain by Cheon Hwi-da’s side, but the next person would be different. So please, make this man happy.
No one else would probably ever notice.
Only Tang Sowol could know it, because she was Tang Sowol, and because the Poison Dance Empress was another her.
A message Tang Sowol left to Tang Sowol.
The moment it was delivered, it was as though there was nothing more left to show them, and the three women’s bodies began to be pulled upward.
Cheon Hwi-da’s corpse receded farther and farther away.
And the world darkened into blackness.
No matter how much one borrowed the power of the Demon Bell, no one would ever be able to steal a look at the process of regression itself.
But perhaps it was possible to accompany it.
The deep green knot engraved upon Cheon Hwi-da’s little finger glimmered faintly in the darkness.
At the final moment, Cheon Hwi-da had clearly ignited his innate true qi, and even that had erupted into deviation.
No matter how much his body recovered while returning to the past, his madness should have remained.
And yet when he came to his senses, he had been fine.
Just as the poison called Love Poison had once healed his internal injuries,
So too had the willpower Tang Sowol left behind wrapped itself around his little finger, and that heart which had left a trace upon his own.
As consciousness awakened, Tang Sowol looked at the only thing shining in the scenery that could no longer be distinguished clearly—Cheon Hwi-da’s finger—and gave the final poison left behind by the Poison Dance Empress a name she could not tell anyone.
Yearning So Deep I Could Not Forget.
Because she longed, and longed again, and so could not forget.
Life and death had separated the two of them, and yet even by turning back through time, that did not change.
Tang Sowol came to her senses and, with tears dripping down, said,
“Come here, Young Hero Cheon.”
“Hm???”
“This time, I’ll lick you all over while you’re awake.”
“Calm down first and think again about what you just said.”
They were not the only ones here.