Chapter 514
He left Heaven-Law Cliff.
Through the gap in the cliff, he passed outside.
One step.
Two steps.
On the third, his knees gave out.
“...Mm.”
He gritted his teeth.
Blood rose.
He could not swallow it.
He spat it out.
A lump of blood fell to the ground.
It was not red.
There was black mixed within it.
Internal injuries.
The backlash of the Blood Demon Heaven-Collapsing Art’s Fourth Gate was beginning in earnest.
His blood circulation was twisted. Internal power was flowing backward throughout his energy channels. Pain as if his muscles were tearing apart. Two broken ribs.
Not two.
Not three.
Six.
The burn on his left shoulder.
The bruises and wounds covering his entire body.
They all crashed over him at once.
The bleeding would not stop.
Things he had not felt while the gate remained open.
Now that it had closed, everything poured out.
He tried to stand.
But his legs had no strength.
He placed his right hand against a rock.
He staggered.
One step.
He walked.
Another step.
The forest came into view.
The distance from Heaven-Law Cliff to the Blood Heaven Sect headquarters.
Half a day with movement arts.
Walking.
No.
Could he even walk?
Unhwi let out a dry laugh.
A laugh mixed with blood.
...I have to walk.
He continued silently.
How long had he walked?
The sun had risen.
He did not know.
When had the sun risen?
He was walking.
One step.
One step.
One step.
He held onto trees.
He held onto rocks.
When there was nothing to support himself with, he used his sword.
He walked with the True Fire Heavenly Spirit Sword as a cane.
Blood flowed.
From his wounds.
From his mouth.
From his nose.
There was no internal power left to stop the bleeding.
It was far.
His foot caught on a stone.
He fell.
His face touched the earth.
The smell of soil reached him.
It was cold.
I have to get up.
He got up.
He walked.
He fell.
He got up.
He walked.
He did not know how many times he had repeated it.
The sun reached its highest point.
The sun began to decline.
The sun disappeared.
Night came again.
A day had passed.
Unhwi was still walking.
His consciousness came and went.
His vision blurred, then cleared, again and again.
At one point, trees looked like people.
Chief Seong.
Ju Soa.
Namgung Wonyang.
He reached out his hand.
It was only a tree.
He gave a faint laugh.
Not yet.
He walked.
The morning of the second day.
Unhwi stood frozen in place.
Everything in the world had a flow.
The aftereffects that erupted after using the Blood Demon Heaven-Collapsing Art were the same.
At first, they were difficult.
But when a similar process repeated several times—
It could be controlled.
Unhwi was recovering.
He swallowed spiritual medicines from the storage pouch without choosing and spread their energy throughout his entire body, controlling the pain and easing the instability of his energy channels.
He began walking again.
The bleeding had stopped.
But his body was still heavy.
His legs trembled, and his vision remained blurred.
The energy from the spiritual medicines traveled through his energy channels, but it was like pouring water into a broken vessel.
It leaked.
Everywhere.
Even so, he walked.
One step.
One step.
The forest did not end.
Trees stood endlessly in rows.
The same scenery repeated again and again.
He could not tell whether he was walking forward or standing in the same place.
Unhwi’s consciousness began sinking deeper.
His eyes were open.
His legs were moving.
But his mind was growing dark.
The sounds outside grew distant.
The sound of wind.
The sound of birds.
The sound of his feet touching the earth.
Everything faded away.
Instead, the sounds within grew closer.
His heartbeat.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Slow, but clear.
Each beat sent energy flowing through his energy channels.
It was not the energy of the spiritual medicines.
It was Unhwi’s own energy.
The internal power of Unity of Heaven and Man.
A thin stream of energy forcing its way through his broken energy channels.
Unhwi felt it.
He walked while feeling it.
He felt it while walking.
At the boundary between consciousness and unconsciousness.
The Heavenly Wayfarer’s words surfaced in his mind.
He could not remember exactly what words they were.
His consciousness was too hazy.
But his body remembered the sensation.
When snow covers the world, does the snow rule the world, or does the world become snow?
Erasing boundaries.
In his battle with the Heaven-Law Immortal, Unhwi had done that.
He erased the boundary between the killing intent of the Blood Demon Heaven-Collapsing Art and himself.
He did not treat the killing intent as an enemy.
He acknowledged it as his own.
He only determined its direction.
And the energy that developed from Void-Origin Energy.
The new, yet more harmonious energy.
Boundless Energy.
What was Boundlessness?
It was the absence of extremes.
The absence of boundaries.
The transparent light that had emerged from Unhwi’s sword.
The light that erased the Heaven-Law Immortal’s energy.
The energy that erased all extremes.
That had happened outside Unhwi’s body.
Through his sword.
Through his martial art.
And now the same thing was happening inside Unhwi’s body.
The internal power flowing through his broken energy channels was changing.
The internal power of Unity of Heaven and Man flowed along the cracks in his energy channels.
It struck those cracks.
And every time it struck, something was born.
A new path.
New paths were being created where his energy channels had split apart.
Because they had broken.
Because there were empty spaces left behind.
His internal power had lost its original path and was searching for a new one.
Unhwi did not know.
His consciousness was too blurred.
But his body knew.
His body remembered.
The sensation from when he reached Manifestation of the Boundless in his previous life.
The moment he shattered the wall of Unity of Heaven and Man and stepped into the next stage.
He walked.
One step.
He placed a hand against a tree.
One more step.
He placed a hand against a rock.
His heart beat.
Thump.
This time, it was different.
Not a thump.
A deep, heavy beat.
His heart gave one powerful beat.
And something inside Unhwi’s inner core erupted.
No.
It did not erupt.
It opened.
The internal power condensed within his inner core expanded in an instant.
The vessel of Unity of Heaven and Man reached its limit.
And instead of breaking, the vessel expanded.
Larger.
And deeper.
Unhwi’s feet stopped.
It was not that he stopped while walking.
He had no choice but to stop.
Every energy channel in his body was opening at once.
Not his original energy channels.
New paths created between the broken ones.
Those paths opened simultaneously.
Internal power poured through them.
Not like a thin stream.
Like a river.
Through his entire body.
From the crown of his head to the tips of his toes.
Unhwi’s body shone.
Faintly.
Transparent light.
Boundless Energy.
It was not coming from his sword.
It was coming from his body.
Unhwi’s eyes widened.
His consciousness returned.
Clearly.
The haze from before disappeared.
The world became sharp.
He could see the grain of trees.
The patterns in rocks.
The flow of wind.
The movement of birds’ wings appeared slow.
The pain in his body had not disappeared.
But the nature of the pain had changed.
It was not pain.
It was transformation.
What was broken was not being repaired.
It was becoming something new.
Unhwi understood.
This is.
A sensation he had experienced once before in his previous life.
Manifestation of the Boundless.
The stage after Unity of Heaven and Man.
The second realm of the Five Realms of Martial Divinity.
...This is... now?
Unhwi let out a faint laugh.
A laugh escaped him.
Controlling the Blood Demon Heaven-Collapsing Art’s Fourth Gate.
Drawing out Boundless Energy through his body.
His physical body being pushed to its limit and broken in his battle against the Heaven-Law Immortal.
And forcing his broken body to move for two days.
Everything had combined into this result.
A larger vessel required the old vessel to break.
The vessel of Unity of Heaven and Man had shattered.
By the Heaven-Law Immortal’s fists.
By the backlash of the Blood Demon Heaven-Collapsing Art.
By two days of walking.
And from the place where it shattered, the vessel of Manifestation of the Boundless emerged.
The question the Heavenly Wayfarer had given him.
Erasing boundaries.
Within the Blood Demon Heaven-Collapsing Art, he erased the boundary between killing intent and himself.
Within the Heavenly Origin Boundless Sword, he erased the boundary between sword and world.
And now the boundary between Unity of Heaven and Man and Manifestation of the Boundless was disappearing.
Transparent light spread from Unhwi’s body.
In a circle.
It touched the surrounding trees.
The rocks.
The grass.
The earth.
The things it touched did not change.
But what Unhwi felt was different.
He felt the trees.
The energy of the trees.
The flow of water rising from their roots.
The breath released from their leaves.
He felt the rocks.
The tens of thousands of years trapped within them.
He felt the earth.
The flow of energy channels beneath it.
He felt the world.
If Unity of Heaven and Man was the unity of heaven and man, then Manifestation of the Boundless was the appearance of a body without limits.
The boundary between the world and oneself becoming faint.
Feeling the world’s energy as if it were his own.
Strength returned to Unhwi’s legs.
Not completely.
The breakthrough was not finished.
It had only begun.
Stabilizing the realm would require time.
But it was enough.
He could walk.
No.
He could run.
Unhwi stepped forward.
He was light.
Unimaginably lighter than before.
The sensation of his feet touching the earth had changed.
It felt less like his feet stepped upon the ground.
And more like the ground itself pushed him upward.
He used his movement arts.
The wind struck his face.
He ran.
The forest passed by.
Quickly.
The distance he had failed to cover even after walking for two days was shrinking.
With a face stained in blood.
With a torn robe.
With a battered body.
Unhwi ran.
He was alive.
And he had grown stronger.
He had not intended it.
But the result was favorable.
A realm he did not know when he would reach.
A realm he had firmly believed he would reach if he continued advancing step by step.
Manifestation of the Boundless.
He had arrived.
Beyond the hill, the Blood Heaven Sect headquarters came into view.
Unhwi stopped.
He silently straightened his back.
Then he walked.
He did not stagger.
The main gate came into sight.
A guard saw Unhwi.
His eyes widened.
“Blood Heaven... Arbiter...?”
Unhwi gave a small nod and passed by.
He entered the headquarters.
The martial artists saw Unhwi.
They stopped what they were doing.
Stopped training.
Stopped talking.
A robe covered in blood.
A shoulder burned black.
A body that was a wreck.
But his steps were different.
It was clearly a broken body.
Yet there was a weight in his steps.
Something that had not been there before.
Something that had not been there when he left.
The martial artists could not understand.
But they could feel it.
Something about this person had changed.
Unhwi arrived before the Blood Spirit Hall.
Chief Seong stood there.
Ju Soa stood there.
Namgung Wonyang stood there.
The three looked at Unhwi.
Unhwi looked at the three and smiled.
“I’m back.”
One sentence.
Then the smile collapsed.
His eyes closed.
His body leaned forward.
Chief Seong caught him.
With both arms.
Unhwi’s head fell onto Chief Seong’s shoulder.
Heavy.
The smell of blood.
But Chief Seong felt something different from before.
He was a martial artist.
He could sense that the energy flowing from Unhwi’s body had changed.
It was not Unity of Heaven and Man.
Something beyond it.
Moisture spread in Chief Seong’s eyes.
A mixture of shock and relief.
“...Young... master...!”
Unhwi did not answer.
He was asleep.
Held in Chief Seong’s arms.
With a peaceful smile.
***
It was a place far from the Central Plains.
Deep within a mountain range.
A pavilion stood inside a valley.
It was not extravagant.
Nor was it plain.
It was orderly.
The dwelling of someone meticulous, where everything had its proper place.
This was a secluded residence where the master of the Black Emperor Pavilion, the Black Emperor Daoist, occasionally stayed.
Inside, two men sat facing each other across a single table.