A night in which even the faintest light had hidden itself away.
In the center of the clearing, firewood that had finished its work days ago sat heaped in a soft mound of ash.
“CLICK...... CLICK.”
Jeong I-shin leaned back in his chair and muttered, not even bothering to light the fire.
For the past several days, all he had done was raise Namgung Baek's burial mound. The rest of the time he had simply sat there blankly, like this.
“......They turn well enough.”
Maybe it would have been better if I had gone mad instead.
CLICK, CLICK. KEEEEN.
Two energies rotating strangely around his heart.
They seemed like rings, and like gears, and also like cartwheels.
Whatever their shape...... as said before, they meshed with each other and turned well.
“Thunder Ring...... a Thunder Ring, is it......”
What Namgung Baek...... no, what the four old men had left to Jeong I-shin.
Since when in the world had they been preparing it?
The faint second wheel turning about his heart felt terribly heavy.
As heavy as the keepsakes of the old men he had tucked so carefully into his robes.
“Who asked you for something like this...... I suppose I can't say that, can I? Heh......”
Jeong I-shin bit down hard on his lip and rose from his seat.
Around the dead campfire stood four chairs with no owners.
He shook his head against the gloom that rushed over him.
“I can't keep on like this. They might already have taken the best seats in the underworld and be watching this place. ......Together with Grandpa and Grandma.”
Surely that was how it was.
The moment he steeled his heart, the sound of a temple bell rang inside his head.
But no verse formula followed. As if to say Jeong I-shin's spirit was not so weak as to crumble over this much.
“I should start with firewood. Let's go, Flying Squirrel.”
HUFF! Blowing air from his nose, Jeong I-shin reached into his robes. But there was nothing in his hand.
“......?”
When did he go out?
It was as he was puzzling over his only family member's outing.
RUUUUMBLE—
A strong vibration. A shaking of an entirely different order from anything he had felt in the Bottomless Abyss.
Vivid enough that he could feel its epicenter was the northern forest, the White Silk Web Forest.
“Already? ......It isn't time for that yet.”
No matter how much the Demonic Wind's cycle had shortened, it had never dropped below a fortnight.
And above all, the grain of the energy was different.
This energy, growing clearer by the moment...... was not the demonic qi of the Demonic Wind.
The Demonic Wind had been a disaster that rotted the four old men's heads, but to Jeong I-shin, who breathed with the Ultimate Heavenly Thunder Art, it amounted to no more than a slight nuisance.
Between Heavenly Thunder Qi and the Demonic Wind there was that much of a gap in affinity.
But the fragments of demonic qi now scattered toward his dwelling were different.
‘......Fathomless?’
Demonic qi so fathomless and heavy that it was hard to believe it was the same thing.
And an energy Jeong I-shin had experienced before.
‘The Heavenly Demon......?’
The short realization came at the very same moment.
CRAAAACK—!!
“Cough!”
It had clearly been a qi wave that burst out of that distant northern forest. And yet Jeong I-shin's insides turned over. Before he could do anything about it, blood surged up his throat.
KEEEEEN!
The Thunder Ring shrieked violently. At the same moment his qi center turned over as well.
The first thing to respond was the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture.
While its mighty true qi swept through the meridians of his whole body and settled his disordered qi and blood, the Heavenly Thunder Qi that had been sunk in his qi center surged all at once toward the Thunder Ring.
KEEEEN!
The ring of lightning he had formed along with the Ultimate Heavenly Thunder Art, the golden Thunder Ring.
The Heavenly Thunder Qi mounted that first wheel.
CLICK, CLICK, CLICK.
The slowly turning wheel gathered speed. And with each rotation, the Heavenly Thunder Qi circling within it visibly swelled.
Amplification.
Only then did Jeong I-shin realize the Thunder Ring's second function.
It was an absurd marvel. Already the amount had become double the original, and still the Thunder Ring showed no sign of stopping.
But.
‘It doesn't look like enough......!’
The thick demonic qi blanketing this place.
To sweep all of it away...... it looked considerably short.
Swallowing down another surge of blood, Jeong I-shin examined the Thunder Ring.
Its shape differed from before.
The two rings were not meshed and turning together.
The second ring, a faint amber Thunder Ring, hung slightly apart from the golden one.
‘Why? They always meshed and turned just fine before. If they turn together the amplification doubles...... ah!’
The question and the realization came at once.
Amplification upon amplification. The layering of functions.
With the golden Thunder Ring alone, Heavenly Thunder Qi exceeding double everything he had accumulated so far had already sprouted. And if amplification were applied to that once more?
Surely a power beyond imagining would arise.
Worse, he could not even guess whether the still-incomplete second Thunder Ring could endure such a torrent.
Whether he could control it was in doubt, and whether his body would hold was in doubt, so the separation of the two Thunder Rings was purely for their owner's sake.
But he could hardly do nothing and let the demonic qi crush him.
‘......Move. At this rate I die anyway.’
CLACK!
At Jeong I-shin's resolve, the two Thunder Rings meshed again as though it had all been a lie.
KEEEEEEN—!
The instant the once-swollen Heavenly Thunder Qi rode the flow of the second Thunder Ring, the power exploded upward again.
As the rotation grew faster, the faintly glowing Thunder Ring flickered as if it could not bear the strain.
The area around his heart ached sharply. It seemed he could not keep both Thunder Rings turning for long.
But that brief operation alone was enough.
CRACKLE—!
A staggering amount of true qi poured out of the Thunder Ring.
Without a moment's hesitation, Jeong I-shin drove all of the Heavenly Thunder Qi out into both arms.
“Kuuuugh......!”
True qi on a scale he had never handled before raged through him. Both of his arms shook. But he was not swept away by it.
From the very beginning, Jeong I-shin was a body that had held lightning even before he set foot on the martial path.
If it was lightning qi...... he could handle it, without fail.
“Hup!”
He slammed both palms roughly together.
He brought his hands together in prayer with golden thunder and lightning.
CRAAACK!
With a roar like an actual lightning strike, a flash burst out from between his joined palms.
The lightning qi that spread out in every direction tore the demonic qi crushing the clearing to shreds without mercy.
KRAKAKAKRACK!
It did not end with a single burst. The golden lightning qi raged on for a long while.
KUUUUU—
Only when both of his arms had gone numb did the light dim.
“Hah, haa......!”
Jeong I-shin dropped where he stood and breathed raggedly.
This one had not even been a technique of the Thunder-Severing Myriad Transformation Hand. It was no more than releasing force in all directions.
Even so, perhaps because the scale of the power he had swung was so great, his whole body screamed.
The state of the second Thunder Ring, flickering faintly as though about to vanish, and of his trembling arms, was especially serious.
DONG—
At his first internal injury, the true qi of the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture hurried to tend his body, but Jeong I-shin's mind was elsewhere.
“What in the world......”
That truly fathomless demonic qi.
There could be no other energy like it in the world.
“Why in the world is the Heavenly Demon's energy here?”
Hadn't that bastard thrown the old men into the Bottomless Abyss and left?
Hadn't he left? Had he come back? ......Why?
Why. Every question ended in another question.
At this rate no conclusion would come.
He was clutching his aching body and his throbbing head when.
SQUEEEAK!
A familiar cry reached him.
He turned his head to find the flying squirrel, wreathed in golden energy, scurrying toward him in a hurry.
SQUEAK!
“Hey! Where have you been in all this chaos?”
SQUEEAK!
“Oh ho! What have you done right to talk back...... wait, what are you holding in your mouth?”
When he crouched down in front of the flying squirrel, he finally saw what the creature was carrying.
For a moment he was startled enough to forget the Heavenly Demon's energy.
“An earthworm? ......A snake?”
A small snake that looked thinner than his little finger.
A snake with pitch-black scales hung limp in the flying squirrel's jaws.
SQUEAK!
As if to say that was the right answer, the Heavenly Thunder Flying Squirrel dropped the snake onto Jeong I-shin's palm and looked up at him.
SQUEAK!
The way it stared at him with bean-sized eyes made what it wanted to say perfectly clear.
I did well, didn't I?
“Uh...... yeah.”
It was a feeling hard to put into words.
If anything was fortunate, it was that the snake was so small that it stirred less revulsion.
It also felt strange, like a beast he had raised bringing back a kill to repay its keep.
“All right, thank you. For now the situation isn't ordinary, so let's look around the...... huh?”
It felt unpleasant to tuck into his robes, and he was caught between doing one thing and the other when.
Two red lights came on in the snake's head. It seemed this snake's eyes were a dark crimson.
“......It was alive?”
The snake lifted its head and looked back and forth between the Heavenly Thunder Flying Squirrel and Jeong I-shin.
Then it slithered forward and wound itself around his wrist.
Before Jeong I-shin could stop it, it settled shamelessly into place as though it had become a bracelet.
“What in the world.”
The scales coiled about his wrist felt cool, but the sensation they conveyed was better than expected.
It felt closer to metal than to a reptile's scales.
SQUEAK!
Jeong I-shin, who had been studying the bracelet...... the snake, came back to himself at the flying squirrel's cry.
Normally the creature would have burrowed into his robes at once, but now it was slapping its tail against the ground.
That was the behavior it took when it wanted something from Jeong I-shin.
“What? I already said thank you.”
SQUEEAK!
“Stop grumbling and come here. We have to go look around.”
The flying squirrel's repayment had distracted him for a moment, but he had to confirm that energy from before.
He had felt it only indirectly, but that energy earlier had certainly been the same as the Heavenly Demon's.
He was not afraid, and he had no thought of hiding.
That bastard was an enemy of the old men too, so if he could land one blow at this chance, that alone would be enough.
“If the Heavenly Demon really has come here...... it's over anyway.”
Jeong I-shin rose to his feet.
***
“Hey! I said wait!”
The road heading north was the same as always.
As if the demonic qi that had raged just before had been a dream, the Bottomless Abyss was terribly quiet.
Jeong I-shin, chasing after the flying squirrel, was the noisiest thing in it.
“It's dangerous, you brat! Let's go together!”
He had learned about internal injuries from Tang Mu-jeong.
He had been told that with a body scoured by the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture his qi and blood would hardly ever be harmed, but Tang Mu-jeong made no exceptions in his teaching.
Thanks to that, Jeong I-shin was not flustered even by his first internal injury.
‘So this is what it feels like when true qi can't circulate smoothly.’
It was the symptom that appeared when the qi meridians were damaged.
For Jeong I-shin, who had an inborn feel for handling true qi, it was an extremely unfamiliar experience.
The inner arts obeyed him, but the roads those inner arts had to run down were broken. Either way, it meant his inner arts were not flowing smoothly.
“So, it isn't an excuse. I can't catch up to you because of an internal injury.”
SQUEAK!
“Hey!”
Keeping a moderate eye on his internal injury, he chased after the flying squirrel.
The northern forest he arrived at looked very different from the way he remembered it.
“Huh?”
Especially the deep part of the forest.
The true White Silk Web Forest that Tang Mu-jeong had spoken of once.
That place, said to hold the dwelling of the Human-Faced Spider, was burning with black flames.
“......The Heavenly Demon.”
The moment Jeong I-shin opened his mouth, his face gone stiff, the flying squirrel that had stopped bolted forward again.
SQUEEEAK!
“Hey, you......! If I catch you, you're finished!”
Since the trees had all burned away, nothing blocked his steps.
Drawing up his true qi carefully, he avoided the black flames and pressed deeper in.
The place where the flying squirrel had stopped.
What waited for Jeong I-shin was not the Heavenly Demon.
“......I'd have preferred the Heavenly Demon.”
Was this punishment for spending days in a daze?
A sight he could never have imagined greeted him.
Black flames wavering here and there.
A single sword driven into the ground.
The Heavenly Thunder Flying Squirrel perched on its hilt.
And spread out behind it...... a torn space.
Something dreadfully dark wavered within that vertically split rift.
SQUEAK!
Spotting Jeong I-shin, the flying squirrel hopped up and down on the hilt.
It looked like a signal to come closer, so he walked slowly toward the sword.
It was an ordinary iron sword, but the very fact that a sword existed in the Bottomless Abyss was strange.
The only real sword Jeong I-shin had seen until now was Vast Plain, Namgung Baek's, hanging at his waist right then.
“......The Heavenly Demon's sword?”
He naturally reached a hand toward the hilt.
But Jeong I-shin's gaze did not rest on the sword. His aim from the start was to snatch up the flying squirrel.
With a ‘torn space’ right behind it, there was no way anything else could hold his eyes.
‘It looks insanely dangerous.’
The Heavenly Demon did not seem to be nearby. The proof was that his own neck was still soundly attached.
‘Got you, you little——!’
That was why his eyes flew wide.
SQUEAK!
“......!”
Because the creature spun its body around and leapt into the torn space.
It even spread its gliding membrane, vanishing in an instant.
There was no time even to scream.
Jeong I-shin threw himself after it without hesitation.
It was an infuriating creature, but it was the only thing close to family he had left now.
‘You are so dead!’
Though regrettably, it seemed he would be the one to die first.