RIIIP—
The sound of flesh tearing rang in my ears.
At the same moment, I woke up.
BLEARGH—
The instant I opened my eyes I had to empty my stomach into rain-soaked mud. The most agonizing convulsion out of every pain I had endured in my life came over me.
Countless poisonings, internal injuries, external wounds.
Grand arts and Body Reformations, many times over.
Even all of those experiences combined fell short of this.
The screams came without end.
GUAAAAH!!!
Writhing in the pain, I drove my face into the mud.
KRAKOOM!
Along with the thunderclap that rolled out just then, horses snorting and blowing showed through the streaks of rain.
GRAB—
Someone hoisting me onto their back was the last afterimage.
***
Young Mas……ter?
A voice that sounds like an auditory illusion circles like an echo.
Reflexively, I jerked upright.
A scene so old it was unfamiliar, and yet familiar as well.
My room, from childhood.
“So this… works….”
Excitement rose enough to set my fingertips trembling for a moment.
Had there not been a woman watching me with a composed gaze, I would have let out a good, loud shout.
“You….”
A piece of memory so old it had hardened like stone.
But the moment I recognized that I had regressed, my old memories came back to life as vividly as if they were yesterday.
“Are you all right?”
I only stared at her in silence as she asked after my condition in that composed tone.
Skin as white as pure jade, as though she had come from the far north, silver hair, and features in perfect proportion without a single thing out of place.
Possessed of both a cold air and a dignified one, she was my childhood escort warrior, and the only person my departed mother had left behind.
Not a drop of blood shared between us, and yet.
At times like family, as an escort when needed, a warmer counselor than anyone and the closest of friends.
And the one I lost…….
For a while I could not pull my eyes away, and then I threw my arms around her.
“Yo… Young Master?”
“Yeah, I'm fine. Really. I'll stay like this for just a moment.”
Seol Ha, who had frozen, soon left me be and patted my back.
A woman only five years older, yet far more mature and wise than I was at this time.
I felt Seol Ha's warmth for a while, then pulled away.
Only then did Seol Ha straighten her clothes and speak again.
With a slightly worried look.
“Forgive me for speaking out of turn, but the Grand Madam has said to keep quiet and not cause needless worry for the Chairman while he is away.”
I let out a dry laugh.
Part of it was hearing talk of the Grand Madam after so long, but it was also because it struck me anew that I had returned to the past.
“Noona. Rolling around in the mud isn't a one- or two-day thing for me, so what happened today?”
An earthquake went through Seol Ha's eyes.
As a boy I had been sulking at the world, venting my feelings of powerlessness on Seol Ha and behaving cruelly.
So she could only be startled by my sudden calm.
But Seol Ha quickly recovered her composure and parted her full lips.
“The second young master called you out, saying he would practice for the Manor's polo tournament that opens in fifteen days. Do you remember nothing at all?”
Ah, I remember.
Taking into account the white bandage wound around my forehead and the stinging ache there, I recalled what day this was.
I was seventeen.
It was the day a specially made iron ball grazed me, leaving a scar on my forehead like a knife mark, and the memory of the day before the polo match flew away.
Of course, all of it was a board set up by the second son of the Golden Manor's Chairman, Geon A-seong, whom Seol Ha had mentioned, to torment me openly.
They had rehearsed it in advance, mocking and tormenting me in the practice match until they finally knocked me unconscious.
The me of that time had not gone without knowing.
I had simply stepped forward, unable to bear the torment that poured down all the harder if I ignored it.
When you were powerless, there was nothing to be done.
It was probably around this time that Seol Ha had begun tempering her body harshly through even more punishing training.
Seol Ha had been blaming and raging at herself for failing to properly protect and serve me, and I had been busy pouring out nothing but my own grief in front of her.
Before long I came to my senses and looked around at reality, but by then Seol Ha was no longer at my side.
“I remember it clearly. Taking one hit from an iron ball, I know exactly what I need to do, too.”
“……Pardon?”
Seol Ha's expression turned subtle, as if she sensed something had changed.
“First off, ease up on the training. Do you think my reality changes easily just because you alone build up your skill, Noona?”
Seol Ha swallowed dryly with a gulp.
The face of someone struck in the bull's-eye—
Seol Ha might take it as a venomous remark, but that was the reality now.
Because.
The master of this vast estate where I lived was Geon Wi-jin, Chairman of the Golden Manor, an enormous trading company that held the largest exchange house in Chengdu, Sichuan, along with many other businesses.
I was the son born of Geon Wi-jin's concubine. Naturally, in place of Geon Wi-jin, who went out as often as he ate and lived mad for work and drink, the Grand Madam, his principal wife, held a tight grip on most of the estate's affairs, great and small, and on its internal factions.
“Frankly, I know there's only one reason they leave me alive instead of killing me.”
“…….”
“It's because of you, Noona. They know your aptitude is outstanding, so they're trying to move you as they please under a promise to keep me alive.”
It was true.
The Grand Madam was a shrewd and vicious woman.
She was superb at toying with people.
And she had just as good an eye for a person's aptitude.
Seol Ha had taken the inherited formula of my mother's tribe, which had nothing to do with fighting, and reinterpreted and reworked it into a more aggressive, sharper martial art. From that alone, the makings of a grandmaster of an era could be seen in her.
In any case, the Grand Madam meant to use me as a pretext to make Seol Ha into a doll she could roll about to her own taste, with no room to move.
“That doesn't mean I'm telling you not to train. Thinking it over again, your choice was excellent, Noona. In the Grand Madam's shade you can receive the Golden Manor's full support without being harassed. Even if, officially, you treat me harshly and are drifting away from me.”
“…….”
“Thanks to that I get to keep my life and keep you as my escort. But rush and you'll choke. Don't overdo it, slow down. You have to train your qi while shaping mind and body in balance.”
Paying no attention whatsoever to Seol Ha's reaction, I snatched her wrist.
I took her pulse and let my qi flow in.
There was no need to survey her entire body.
From the fragments of qi I spread through her, I could judge Seol Ha's aptitude.
Having been involved in the recruitment of countless talents in the Heavenly Demon Cult, I was better at probing aptitude than most divine physicians.
Ha, this is astounding.
The Grand Madam was wrong.
Seol Ha, who was as good as my own sister, was not outstanding.
Not at the level of outstanding. With the right martial art in place, hers was a formidable aptitude.
The eyes I had now were those of a ninety-year-old martial artist worn down to the bone, the world's second-best, who had guarded the side of the Heavenly Demon, the strongest master ever to reign.
Of course, it was not because my martial arts were profound for my age.
It was possible because I had many miscellaneous skills and because the Heavenly Demon trusted me.
Perhaps that was why I could tell for certain.
Set against the aptitudes of all the many masters I had seen, hers stood within the count of ten fingers.
But before long she would meet a wall, the limit of her martial art.
And that wall was one I had to mend for her.
If only that wall were mended, she could grow with that formidable aptitude into a master counted among the finest under heaven.
So long as she did not suffer early qi deviation through some needless act and end her own life.
So I had to tell her.
That the burden of my life had to be carried by me, not her.
“Understood?”
It was also a word to myself.
“…….”
“I said, did you understand?”
Only then did Seol Ha nod.
“Yes…….”
“Devote yourself to training with an easy mind for the next fifteen days, and don't come looking for me for a while. I'll be holed up in this room and going nowhere, so you don't need to stay up all night. Just say I'm laid up in bed and it'll be quiet for a while. If anything, those bastards will be delighted, giggling that they tormented me properly.”
“Young Master, what on earth….”
Perhaps bewildered by the way I looked as though I saw through everything, Seol Ha's eyes were full of questions.
But I had no intention of kindly explaining it point by point.
Even without that, Seol Ha would follow my will.
“I'm asking you with my life on the line. Do as I say. All the more if you regard me as your Liege.”
Seol Ha, whom my mother had taken in.
Seol Ha, who called my mother her Benefactor Mother and had protected me out of that gratitude.
This time it was my turn to protect those feelings.
“See that no one comes near my room, the maidservants assigned to me included, and leave here. Most contemptuously.”
CRASH—
Seol Ha finally put strength into her eyes and kicked the door open on her way out.
“I said leave contemptuously. Who told you to break the door….”
I set the half-dangling door back and shut it.
It's cold. Like that day.
***
Me, lying face down in a snowfield, bleeding to the very edge of death.
And the youthful Young Cult Leader, Cheon Yu-wol, looking quietly down at me.
Heh—
Though it was a first meeting long past, whenever winter came that day would come to mind.
SHIVER.
With the winter chill that made my body tremble for a moment, I ended my musings.
Right, this is no time for pointless reminiscing about the past.
From the major events down to the trivial ones.
I had to gather everything I knew and be reborn as a stronger being, ahead of the Heavenly Demon.
Only then could I ward off, by my own hand, even the danger of the being presumed to be the Heavenly Demon's father.
The things she gained, or the things she lost.
Or the things she took by force.
Whether they were people or spirit beasts or precious treasures, if they had any use, I had to take them first.
I meditated again and again, putting my hazy head in order.
Unless I gave everything I had, I could not surpass her.
She was the strongest Heavenly Demon in history and the only Heavenly Demon to devour the world.
What would surpass that was thorough planning, plus my own aptitude and luck added to it.
Of those, what I could control at present was the environment called the Golden Manor, and one more thing.
“Aptitude.”
I repeated it as though chewing it over.
Had anyone heard it, they would have dismissed it as nonsense.
Aptitude is the sum of one's vessel.
Just as the clay that is the source of porcelain hardens as it bakes in fire.
Innate aptitude also hardens as time passes.
After that, however much one trains in martial arts, the degree of attainment is heavily influenced by innate aptitude.
This much is common reasoning.
They would say it is impossible to artificially change the innate aptitude one is given at birth.
But that statement is right and wrong at once.
Astonishingly, if one goes through the process of awakening hidden potential.
Innate aptitude sheds the husk that hides it, and its limit rises.
Essence, qi and body are strengthened, and one's self is reconstituted.
In exchange, bone-carving pain follows.
And an act like the Tortoise Breath Grand Art must be applied until one touches death.
All the turbid qi accumulated through life is drawn out, and pure qi is blown endlessly into bone and sinew, the qi center, the acupoints and the blood vessels.
Before the regression it had been forced through the Heavenly Demon's qi guidance.
Now it was my own will.
If anything, it was for the best.
Now, when no one would torment me, was the perfect opportunity to pull this off.
The Heavenly Demon called this the Heavenly Brahma Molting Art.
The molting passes through several stages.
This time, the first, its starting point.
I remember clearly.
The words the Heavenly Demon spoke to me.
-Had you come to me far earlier, your aptitude with potential added might have rivaled this body's own. There is a proper time for raising the limit of aptitude.
The Heavenly Demon was never the sort of person to say such a thing about something unreachable.
If her judgment held true.
With the Heavenly Brahma Molting Art performed at the proper time, my aptitude might come to rival the heavenly bone she possessed, the Beyond-Heaven Demon God Body.
In fact, my rate of growth had become formidably fast after the Heavenly Brahma Molting Art the Heavenly Demon helped perform herself.
How far my aptitude would reach because of this regression was something no one could know.
“Hssss.”
Little by little my consciousness floated free and my body's senses closed.
Now, the preparations to die for fifteen days were complete.