Grand Heaven Sect Leader So Heuk.
For some seven years he had repeated the same daily routine.
Take up the blade, meditate, swing, meditate.
And now and then, when hungry, swallow a grain-abstention pill, and when tired, sleep. That was all.
There was a reason of his own that he had been able to concentrate solely on training like that.
In one corner of the isolated training chamber hung a small wooden tally that always displayed the word ‘Calm,’ which meant that the sect was at peace with no particular calamity.
Then, one day.
As the Grand Heaven Sect Leader checked the tally first, as was his habit, a different word met his eye.
Change.
Without so much as a sound, the writing on the tally had quietly shifted to that.
It meant that calamity had befallen the sect and Vice Sect Leader So Cheon had operated the mechanism to send word to the Grand Heaven Sect Leader; lest it disturb his training, the mechanism did no more than change that one wooden tally.
And that truly was enough.
Though he had not reached the goal he had wanted, Grand Heaven Sect Leader So Heuk calmly accepted that the time had come to end his isolation.
So he set the inner mechanism in motion and opened the exit formed of a massive rock face.
And so the Grand Heaven Sect Leader, his isolation ended, returned to the sect, and all that met his eye were the traces of a chaotic battle and the blood of his disciples.
Far off, moreover, Vice Sect Leader So Cheon was staggering about in an ugly state, so the situation was plain enough.
TAP.
At the light press of his foot against the ground, his form shot forward. Movement technique at the level of true attainment carried him to the battlefield in an instant.
What he faced there were two men who were plainly cultivators, and the sect's old elders, who turned open hostility his way.
“Well, now.”
The Grand Heaven Sect Leader had reached sixty and was himself something of an old man by now, but those old ones had already been old before he ever aged, and their lifespans were in truth all but spent, with few days left to them.
What glory they meant to enjoy by committing such an outrage in their final years, the Grand Heaven Sect Leader had no way of knowing.
In fact, he had no wish to know.
He only turned his gaze to look at his staggering son.
“You are as you always were. By the look of you, you hoarded your primordial true energy to the last, took a proper beating all over, and only then finally began to burn it.”
“...Ah, hell. Your first words on returning are nagging after all. In any case, Father. My eye for people is crooked, so I failed to catch on to what those old codgers were plotting. So I shall pay it back now with this one life of mine, and you deal with those two cultivators over there.”
So father and son were reunited. The old man of sixty and the man of forty looked squarely at each other, then slowly turned their gazes toward the enemy.
“...Heh heh, it has been a long while, Grand Heaven Sect Leader.”
The Sword Sect Leader offered his greeting with feigned composure. He was the longest-standing among the Grand Heaven Sect's elders, and he and the Grand Heaven Sect Leader had known each other for long years as close companions.
“Sword Sect Leader. You have grown older.”
“The Sect Leader too looks less than he was in years past.”
The two old men regarded each other without expression. As they probed each other's momentum, the Sword Sect Leader and the other Grand Heaven Sect elders were suddenly startled.
That was only natural, for the momentum they felt from the Grand Heaven Sect Leader was that of the middle stage of the transcendent realm, past its threshold.
They had assumed the Grand Heaven Sect Leader was continuing his isolated training because he had not yet reached the middle stage, but in truth he had already reached it and stood at a level looking toward the late stage.
And noticing the elders' reaction, the Grand Heaven Sect Leader smiled faintly.
“...You seem surprised. In truth I was a little surprised myself. As you all know, my isolation was aimed at the middle stage of the transcendent realm, yet I reached that realm within half a year of entering. So I meant to ride the momentum, finish training up to the late stage, and only then emerge.... Thanks to you, that has been tangled up.”
And with that, the Grand Heaven Sect Leader's momentum surged up as though blazing into flame.
That wave of energy was so fierce that even Yeon Ri-ja, who had watched the whole affair with calm interest, flinched for an instant.
“...No matter. If I burn my primordial true energy like this, would it not come to roughly the late stage of the transcendent realm? I have never been at the late stage, so I cannot say for certain.”
“...What! His primordial true energy!”
“Just like that...!”
The elders were aghast. That was only natural, for burning one's primordial true energy meant resolving upon death; once the burning began, the flame could never be put out again, and it was a technique that ended only when all one's life had guttered away.
So it was a desperate secret art used only when driven to the very last extremity — yet the Grand Heaven Sect Leader had begun burning his energy on the spot, with his body still whole.
The Grand Heaven Sect Leader, however, calmly opened his mouth and went on.
“Since my youth I have always wondered. Why do the martial artists of the jianghu always start burning their primordial true energy grudgingly, only after they have been beaten about and are on the verge of dropping dead? If one has already made out that this is the plot where one will be buried, would it not stand to reason to burn the energy in advance while still whole, put out one's greatest firepower, and drag at least one of them down to die alongside?”
“What outrageous nonsense....”
“No, look at the present situation alone. Had I not burned my energy so.... would you all have been this dismayed?”
The moment he said it, the Grand Heaven Sect Leader's form vanished. A sound — SLASH! — followed slightly after.
“...!!!”
At some point the Grand Heaven Sect Leader had drawn a blade and severed the neck of the Sword Sect Leader, who stood foremost.
This was entirely at odds with what So Cheon had said earlier; the Sword Sect Leader and the elders had all assumed the Grand Heaven Sect Leader would naturally charge at Yeon Ri-ja first.
They were wrong. When So Cheon told his father aloud to handle the cultivators, he had at the same moment used telepathy to convey something else entirely.
‘Father. Cut down the Sword Sect Leader first. That is the most advantageous for us.’
He had also conveyed several other points to the Grand Heaven Sect Leader by telepathy in that brief instant, and in accordance with them the Grand Heaven Sect Leader had launched a surprise attack and stripped the enemy of their strength in a single stroke.
“...There is a saying. Know your own measure and the road ahead becomes visible. I am rather good at knowing my measure. Though I have burned even my primordial true energy, how could I dare guarantee victory against two cultivators armed with spell implements? But I declare it here.... You traitorous old wretches, at the least, I shall certainly take as companions on my road to hell.... Today this place shall be the plot where we are all buried.”
***
Meanwhile, at the mouth of the forest, a woman and a spider met each other.
The woman was pale of face and restless of eye; the spider had a hunchbacked old man riding on its back and two humanoid puppets armed at its side.
“......Grandfather? Old man? It is you, isn't it?”
Murmuring so, the woman slowly approached the spider. She was a woman who had come down from the sky on a flight implement shaped rather like a blade of grass.
Yet somehow her face was not unfamiliar to Black Spider either.
Black Spider gradually let go of the tension he had drawn taut. Click. The two humanoid puppets that had taken the stance of the Heaven Pinnacle Sword Arts withdrew their swords, and instead Gok Hon, who had been mounted on Black Spider's back, calmly stepped down and went to meet the woman.
The woman's identity was none other than Yu Ran. That young girl Yu Ran had become a woman at some point, and now, dressed in a cultivator's garb, she stood before a puppet that resembled Elder Gok and let the tears fall.
Tap.
Yu Ran came close and took hold of Gok Hon's arm. But it was hard. Cold.
That was only natural, for Gok Hon was nothing but a puppet made of wood. Its outward form had been dressed to look like a living person, but it could never become a true human.
In truth Yu Ran had already perceived it. A cultivator who has awakened divine awareness is not easily deceived by such puppet arts.
Moreover, Yu Ran had long known that Elder Gok possessed a hunchback puppet, so she could not have been deceived even if she had wished to be.
Only the bitter tears kept spilling out.
She was the one who had watched, right before her eyes, as Elder Gok was stabbed through the heart and killed.
Knowing full well that the dead do not walk about alive at this late hour, she had been unable to set down that one strand of obsession called hope and had forced her way here.
But in the end, what she had found was not the old man but a single spider.
“...Black Spider. It is you. Isn't it?”
The woman asked, weeping like a girl. Black Spider lifted one foreleg and tipped it lightly, just as he had once answered the village children.
Seeing it, Yu Ran laughed a small laugh even as she wept. She too remembered that gesture of Black Spider's.
Sorrow and gladness stood side by side.
Yu Ran laid out for Black Spider, one by one, all that she had been through over the intervening years.
Being abducted by the assassins who killed Elder Gok.
Being rescued in the midst of that abduction by a certain young man.
That the young man was in fact a cultivator, and that Yu Ran herself was found to have the qualities of a cultivator as well.
That through the young man's introduction she had gone to a cultivation clan called the Yeon Clan.
That her inborn gifts were recognized and she was received as a member of the Yeon Clan.
That she had trained thereafter and reached the fifth level of Qi Refinement.
That she had then happened to hear the story of a hunchbacked old man who rode about on a spider.
And that in searching for that old man she had come all the way here.
Listening to the twists and turns she poured out so bitterly, Black Spider realized the natural conclusion.
That in the end, this affair had come about because of his own existence.
If he had lived quietly at the Grand Heaven Sect without stirring up any commotion at all, Yu Ran would never have heard news of him.
Then the Yeon Clan would not have attacked the Grand Heaven Sect, and Yeon Pung would not have died, and Seok Cheol would not have made that final choice of uncertain life or death.
But.
Had it been so, the bond between Black Spider and Yeon Pung and Seok Cheol would never have existed either, nor would this reunion with Yu Ran.
And so the spider realizes. Vast and wide as the human world may be, the threads of ties, of gratitude and grudge, are woven through it every which way.
That in the end human affairs too are no different from a tangled skein of thread, like a spider's web, and everyone lives bound to those strands, swaying.
So there is no guilt. No disillusion either. There is only understanding: I see, so that is the truth of it.
For he is a spider. A beast born to spin thread from his rear, to join it and fasten it and crawl about upon it, and nothing more.
If the gratitude and grudge of this world are truly like a tangled skein of web, then perhaps there is some other way to handle that gratitude and grudge as well.
Like the silk that flows from his own rear....
But.
At times even the spider itself is bound by a web.
Perhaps this very moment was one of those times.
“Senior Sister Yu Ran!”
A shout came from some way off. With it, a young man came flying this way with difficulty, his face stricken with terror, riding a blade of grass torn ragged here and there.
“There is a madman of an ordinary out there...! A mere ordinary...! He has cut down... Senior Brother Yeon Ri-ja...!”
As the young man cried out with a death-pale face and came flying this way, a flash of blue blade light seemed to sweep past behind him.
SLASH!
The flight implement the young man rode split clean in two, and he tumbled to the ground.
“Hyeeek!”
The young man let out a shriek of terror, then hurriedly rummaged in the small pouch at his waist and pulled out a long pole.
This was a physically impossible thing, for a pole of at least three feet had come out of a pouch barely a hand-span across.
This was a spell implement the cultivators used, called a storage pouch; space sorcery had been applied to it so that its inner and outer dimensions differed.
Thanks to the storage pouch, cultivators could carry bulky objects with them at all times.
In any case, the young man hurriedly tried to draw a spell implement from the storage pouch and respond, but it was too late.
SLASH!
Blue blade light flashed once more, and the young man's body was split clean in two. And behind him, an old man burning a strange energy through his whole body revealed himself.
His left arm was gone, the stump bound roughly about with cloth, and this old man was none other than Grand Heaven Sect Leader So Heuk.
Together with his son, Vice Sect Leader So Cheon, he had burned his primordial true energy and dealt with every one of the old wretches who had betrayed the sect.
Then, with the chance bought by offering up one of his own arms, he had shattered Yeon Ri-ja's protective implement.
And when his son threw himself at Yeon Ri-ja with the intent to cast away his life.
He had slipped in behind his son's back and, driving his blade through his own son's back, run the protruding blade tip through Yeon Ri-ja's neck.
Ordinarily this could not have happened. However great a master of the middle stage of the transcendent realm, defeating a cultivator of the seventh level of Qi Refinement fully armed with spell implements was near enough absurd.
But at times there are coincidences like fate, and three coincidences worked upon the Grand Heaven Sect Leader's victory.
First, the old man had by chance attained sudden enlightenment in the midst of the battle and reached the late stage of the transcendent realm after all.
Second, Yeon Ri-ja, who was still at an advantage armed with numerous spell implements, happened to be slow in judging on the instant which among that multitude was the fitting one, and so his response came late.
Third, the old man had only a single blade in any case, so he had no reason to deliberate over any choice, and thus it was enough for him to stab into that momentary opening as it came.
And so a martial artist beheaded a cultivator. Yeon Chung, no more than the third level of Qi Refinement, took fright at this and fled in haste.
In the midst of it he had come running to Yu Ran to scatter the old man's attention and preserve his own life somehow, but he had failed in the end and had been wretchedly cut in half.
Now that old man looked this way. The unhurried gaze of the old man burning his own life swept over Yu Ran and Black Spider.
“...I see. That spider is the friend of the Azure Heaven Sect's guest elder that Cheon spoke of. And the lady there would be a cultivator.”
For the old man, who had now burned away nearly all his life, the lifespan remaining was no more than a quarter of an hour. But even that brief span was enough to slay the woman before him.
The old man raised the Azure Heaven Blade. Never in his life had he handled the blade this perfectly, and so, standing before death, the old man was joyous beyond measure.
That was the difference between a martial artist and a cultivator. Cultivators of immortality were, by nature, those who aimed to become true immortals one day, shed the husk of the flesh, and be freed from death itself.
Martial artists of the loftiest realm, by contrast, were nothing but madmen who swung a blade until they dropped dead; to borrow their own words, it was: hear the Way in the morning, and it is fine to die that evening.
That is, if one grasps the Way in the morning, one may die by evening and be content.
And as the old man swung his blade, three puppets suddenly threw themselves in front of him, as though to protect the woman.
SLASH!
It was meaningless. The swords of the puppets wielding the Heaven Pinnacle Sword Arts were split in half along with their bodies, and Gok Hon, built of thunderstruck jujube wood, was no different.
As the puppet of an assassin that had slaughtered countless people over untold years was cleaved in two, a spider came bounding out and hurled itself at the old man, its motion so desperate that it was as if a beast had grasped the duties of a human and was thrashing about with everything it had.
He did not know the particulars, but that spider likely shared some deep bond with the woman cultivator.
In that case.
To the old man, it was simply defined as an enemy.
SLASH-SLASH!
The blade swung once seemed to split into fifteen shadows. Those dozen-odd swings carved the spider's body to pieces.
CRACK!
The spider's black cursed core failed to withstand the impact and shattered.
And with it shattered the blue cursed core of the jade-hued hawk, swallowed long ago and kept within his body because he still did not know the proper method of absorbing it.
“Black Spider...!”
Hearing Yu Ran's weeping cry, near enough a scream, as the last sound, Black Spider suddenly wonders.
Just now.
Why on earth did he try to sacrifice himself to save Yu Ran?
There is no telling. At this very moment his consciousness is fading, so no further thought is possible.
And so a spider dropped dead....
***
A spider the size of a bull opens its eyes in the Eight Peaks Forest.
Its name was Black Spider, and it still remembers receiving that name from a girl called Yu Ran in a previous life.
Its lives before that had been repeated only as a lowly creature, nameless and brief.
So this may well be called the first regression as Black Spider.