Chapter 356: Sword (1)
The Sword Demon, who should have surely died from that combined assault, survived.
One arm and one leg were broken, and there were hardly any bones left intact. It looked difficult even for him to breathe…
Yet in the end, he survived. And alive, he emitted even more vicious killing intent.
The blood-colored haze rising around the Sword Demon was killing intent, and killing intent was willpower. When willpower arose, internal energy and the body naturally followed.
Thus, the Sword Demon’s killing intent, which had gone beyond limits, naturally merged with qi and settled into his sword.
Perhaps because our roots were the same, I knew the moment I saw it.
I could not afford to be hit even once.
Just as wounds inflicted by those of the demonic path healed slowly due to demonic qi—or even festered—
The moment that sword struck, even the smallest wound would be infiltrated by killing intent as deadly as poison, eventually leading to death.
If refining willpower purely for the sake of harming others to this extent was considered talent, then it was indeed talent…
But this time, I couldn’t laugh.
The Sword Demon steadied himself despite his staggering body.
Though his injuries were clearly hindering him, and his balance looked off… the trajectory of his sword remained flawlessly clean.
Watching all this, Jeong Hyeon spoke with a trembling voice.
“Heaven-Slaughter Star…….”
“It’s not to that extent.”
“But he is accomplishing things that only a fully awakened Heaven-Slaughter Star, as my master described, could do.”
“That’s……”
“If not Heaven-Slaughter Star, then the killing intent born from Benefactor Cheon’s Heart Demon must have reached the heavens. I cannot tell the difference between a fate of slaughter bestowed by the heavens and a will that rose from the earth to reach the heavens.”
I agreed to some extent.
But I didn’t want to nod.
Because I didn’t like the fact that I could become like that.
It was surely because the heartscape I had realized upon reaching the Flowering Stage was the opposite of the Sword Demon’s.
The Sword Demon, breathing roughly, pointed his sword at me.
I tightened my grip on my sword and stepped forward, and Seo Mun-Hwarin naturally followed behind me.
I reached out and stopped her.
“This time, I’ll fight alone.”
“Is that necessary? He looks like he could collapse at any moment, but he’s at his most vicious. It would be better for all of us to finish him quickly together.”
“No. That’s exactly why I’m going alone.”
I knew. Because I was myself, I could tell.
Even if he died, the Sword Demon would never go down quietly.
If we fought together like before, we could defeat him faster and more easily.
But one of us would surely die.
Even if his head was severed, he would try to land at least one fatal blow on someone else.
And he would succeed. Though his body was more than half destroyed, his sword had never been sharper.
“That’s why I have to do this.”
“…I see.”
“You’re saying that because you’re confident you won’t allow even a single wound?”
“And the others can?”
“…They cannot.”
“That’s arrogance.”
“But it’s the truth, isn’t it?”
I wouldn’t go as far as to say I was the strongest…
But at least against the Sword Demon, it was true.
Perhaps she knew it as well. Seo Mun-Hwarin looked like she had much to say, but in the end, she could only grit her teeth in silence.
As I stepped past her, Tang Jincheon’s voice came from behind.
“Would hidden weapons or evil arts not be of help?”
“Of course they would. But I think it only has meaning if I defeat him with my own strength.”
“…I see. If it becomes dangerous, we will intervene immediately. So achieve what you want without putting yourself in danger.”
With those words, no one tried to stop me anymore.
As I stepped forward alone, the Sword Demon’s red eyes wriggled within his shadowy form.
It looked as if he was smiling—though the streaks of bloody tears beneath his eyes made it grotesque.
We pointed our swords at each other, gauging the moment to strike—
Then the Sword Demon’s tightly shut mouth split open, and a voice resembling mine—yet horribly twisted—flowed out.
—Have you never wondered why life is filled with suffering?
“You could speak?”
—It was a life where I held nothing. Nothing remains. Only this wretched life I have barely sustained.
“Not for me.”
—Do you truly think so?
I didn’t want to give meaning to his words.
Yet before I knew it, I was thinking of it.
That this was a world after regression.
That what I had lost before regression would never return.
—I thought and thought. Why was I born into such a world?
“That’s a pointless thought. There’s nothing more futile than seeking meaning in what has already happened.”
—And I realized. There is no separate hell. This world itself is hell.
“That’s quite the grand realization.”
I answered indifferently… but inwardly, I flinched.
Because I couldn’t say I had never thought that way.
But the conclusion the Sword Demon reached went further than that.
Suddenly, his shadow flickered ominously, and drops of blood-colored qi began to drip from his raised sword.
Like a blade soaked in blood from cutting too many people.
Or like the tears of blood from his eyes flowing through the sword as well.
—If life is nothing but loss, if the world is nothing but suffering, if that is only natural—
His voice was rough, unpleasant to hear, yet his tone remained calm.
But now, emotion seeped into it.
—Then both I… and you…
At that moment, I deeply understood the Sword Demon as another possible version of myself.
—It would have been better if we were never born.
Where I had drawn up the very first wish from the depths of the well within my heart—
What the Sword Demon drew out was the source that kept filling that well with killing intent.
Resentment.
That dense emotion seeped into me like poison.
At this moment, I was the Sword Demon, and the Sword Demon was me.
However—
“That’s ugly to look at, and ugly to hear.”
I cut him off and thrust my sword forward.
A strike crossing the shortest distance, aiming for his relatively intact wrist.
Of course, even with his half-destroyed body, he naturally swung his sword and deflected it.
No—looking closer, his swordsmanship had grown even sharper.
Kaang!
The pain in my grip was intense. I was not someone who lost in power of technique, yet the current Sword Demon seemed to be a step above me.
But what of it?
I continued to swing my sword. Strongly, softly, swiftly, unpredictably.
All the martial arts and principles that had melted into the Raging Wave Death-Stealing Art, I unfolded once more with my own hands.
But all of it was blocked. Because everything I knew, the Sword Demon knew as well.
Swords clashed in the air, scraped past each other, sometimes only cutting each other’s clothes.
Yet the flow was no different from before. No—it had worsened.
My sword, unable to withstand the tangible killing intent, was sometimes knocked away against my will.
And his bizarre ferocity—charging headfirst at even the smallest opening—chilled me more than once.
So I abandoned it.
I abandoned the Raging Wave Death-Stealing Art… and the sword I had built up until now.
—A foolish act.
My sword path changed abruptly. But instead of matching him, I was pushed back even more blatantly, drawing a mocking laugh from the Sword Demon.
It didn’t matter. As long as I didn’t die immediately.
I discarded all knowledge of swordsmanship.
How to respond to such principles, how to maintain distance, how to take the opponent’s life—
I forgot it all.
Instead, I simply swung my sword as my heart dictated.
Crude, clumsy, easily broken—it didn’t matter. What mattered was what I placed within the sword.
“As you said, perhaps life is nothing but suffering, and this world may be hell. But I do not regret being born.”
The first love I ever received. My parents endured much and gave much for me and for each other.
Even if their deaths carved a well into my heart, what they gave me did not disappear.
Though time had passed and regression had blurred those memories—
They still remained among the few good memories within me.
Even if their end was an unjust death.
Ka-gak!
My sword, which had been pushed back all along, suddenly clung to his, smoothly deflecting his techniques.
“No matter how much the world wishes for my despair, not everyone living in it is evil.”
There was a young man who rose up for me, a worthless orphan.
There was a wandering martial artist who pitied me and taught me a few techniques.
Though their small acts of righteousness may have led to nothing—
They still became the support that allowed me to live on.
Chaeng!
Our swords collided head-on. A strike that should have been blown away by his killing intent remained in place.
“The reason losing someone feels like having flesh torn away is because they gave you that much of themselves.”
The reason I collapsed before the deaths of Seol Lihyang and Seo Mun-Hwarin,
The reason I spent days drenched in blood for revenge—
Was because they had become my family, and the Ironblood Hall had become my home.
No matter how painful the end was, I was happy. Because for the first time, I realized I could hold someone in my heart.
Kaang!
The tip of the Sword Demon’s blade began to falter. Unable to respond cleanly to my completely changed—yet not inferior—sword path.
“And as long as you don’t die, there is always a next time.”
On the night the Ironblood Hall burned, after losing Seol Lihyang and Seo Mun-Hwarin, I thought my life would only have painful days and less painful days ahead.
But Tang Sowol seeped into my life so naturally, leaving me no room to resist.
Even if the end didn’t go as I wished, I was able to hold someone in my heart once more.
There was no such thing as absolute.
Slash.
A thin cut formed on the Sword Demon’s limp left arm.
Though he had simply offered an unmoving limb at a dangerous moment—
It was the first time my sword had reached him.
“No matter how painful life is, no matter how everything slips through your fingers, leaving only deep scars behind—”
What flashed through my mind were memories from right after my regression until now.
Many things had happened.
I confirmed things I already knew, and discovered things I never knew.
I realized that I would once again hold Tang Sowol, Seol Lihyang, and Seo Mun-Hwarin in my heart—
And that Sangwan Geuk, whom I thought narrow-minded, and Sama Yuryeon, whom I thought disliked me, had even considered taking me in as an adopted son.
Ugh.
The Sword Demon began to move more forcefully, unable to follow my unfamiliar sword. Somewhere in his body, something broke.
“Looking back, whether I realized it or not, I was never alone.”
Thinking about it, I was not a being completed by myself alone.
I was shaped by others, learned from things, and became what I am through what filled me and what changed me.
Surely, I must have been such a presence to others as well.
“In the end, people come to love people.”
That was my answer.
The vast gap between me and the Sword Demon—
It lay in whether one looked not only at what was lost, but also at what was received.
At the moment I reached my conclusion about myself, the sword path I was swinging transformed drastically.
The Raging Wave Death-Stealing Art had been a collection of martial arts I had reassembled to my liking.
In the end, I had merely been using others’ martial arts.
But this was different.
A single sword born entirely from me, representing everything I am.
For the first time, my own sword traced its path across the world.
Thud.
A faint moonlight illuminated the shadow’s heart.
The Sword Demon’s sword fell from his hand.