A skin-slicing wind blew.
A black fog lay thick.
The smell of blood stung his nose.
In that fog, Seonwoo Hyun flailed his hands like a madman.
In the fog, where he could not see an inch ahead, something hot and sticky touched his fingertips.
…It was blood.
He slowly lowered his head.
At his feet lay corpses mangled beyond recognition.
Crushed flesh and overflowing dark red blood.
“Ha… Haah…….”
He couldn't breathe.
No matter how deeply he inhaled, his chest only tightened further; it did not get any better.
Just then, an eerie voice came from somewhere.
-You killed them all.
Seonwoo Hyun's body flinched, and he turned his head toward where the voice had come from.
A pile of corpses heaped like a mountain.
Atop it sat himself—no, someone else with the same face as his.
He slowly curled up the corners of his mouth, his gaze eerie.
-You killed them all because you wanted to live.
“Then what was I supposed to do? Just sit there and die?!”
-The reason doesn't matter. The one who killed them was you. You're nothing but a murderer.
“No!”
Seonwoo Hyun screamed and shook his head.
But his cry was swallowed by the blood-stained fog and made no echo at all.
At that moment.
The floor shook as if collapsing, and darkness stretched out and coiled around Seonwoo Hyun's body.
“Ah, AAAAAH!”
Seonwoo Hyun let out frantic screams and struggled to escape the darkness.
But in the end, the darkness swallowed him, and he fell endlessly.
Into the pit of a red abyss.
***
“AAAAAGH!”
With a scream, his eyes flew open.
His body, as he jolted upright, was drenched in cold sweat.
A moment later.
‘…A, a dream?’
As his ragged breathing gradually subsided, his blurred vision slowly cleared.
Unconsciously feeling over his body, Seonwoo Hyun recalled the scene of his collapse.
‘I'm alive. But I was definitely stabbed by that sword……?’
Seonwoo Hyun looked down at his body with a dumbfounded face.
A scar carved into the skin of his belly.
And the dark, dried bloodstains all over his body proved that everything he had gone through was not a dream.
‘What on earth happened?’
When Seonwoo Hyun raised his head with a baffled expression, his surroundings gradually came into view.
Walls closed off by rock on all sides.
A soft light shining from the ceiling and the quiet sound of water coming from somewhere.
‘Where… is this? A cave?’
Seonwoo Hyun slowly searched his memory.
He had undoubtedly been stabbed by an assassin's sword and come face to face with death.
But right now, he was undoubtedly alive.
He couldn't have moved here on his own.
In that case, someone must have saved him and brought him here.
As an inexplicable sense of relief washed over him, the scene from the dream he'd just had suddenly came back to him.
For the first time in his life, he had killed someone.
It had been an unavoidable choice to survive, but the feeling of the sword cutting through flesh and bone.
And the stench of blood that had rushed into his nose.
“Urk!”
At the sudden wave of nausea, Seonwoo Hyun clamped a hand over his mouth.
‘No. Don't waver. Ever since I became a martial artist, this was something I'd have to go through someday!’
Seonwoo Hyun shook his head hard and steeled himself.
But that lasted only a moment.
He sank into despair again.
The memory of his qi center shattering the instant the sword plunged in, and of his inner arts scattering to pieces, had come back to him.
“…It's all over.”
An ending no different from death for a martial artist.
A hollow smile formed on his lips.
It hadn't been much, but those inner arts had been everything to him.
And now, not even that remained.
Seonwoo Hyun stared blankly at the sword scar carved into his belly.
But then.
“Huh……?”
Something was strange.
His qi center had definitely been shattered, so there should have been nothing there.
Yet he felt an unknown, heavy energy in his lower abdomen.
Puzzled, Seonwoo Hyun closed his eyes.
And calming his consciousness, he slowly began to examine the inside of his body.
A moment later.
‘Th-this can't be… My qi center is intact?!’
Opening his eyes, Seonwoo Hyun couldn't believe it.
Thinking he might still be dreaming, he pinched his own cheek.
However.
“Ow!”
‘…It's not a dream? Then what on earth is going on?’
Just as he sat there in a daze.
The sound of someone's footsteps came from beyond the entrance of the stone chamber.
Startled, Seonwoo Hyun hunched his body and, without realizing it, felt at his waist.
But naturally, no sword was strapped there.
Soon, beneath the gap lit by the glow of the luminous pearls, a white hem came rippling in like a wave.
And along with it appeared a woman whose long hair shone a mysterious silver.
‘Huk!’
At the woman's appearance, Seonwoo Hyun's breath stopped.
With his mind gone completely blank, he stared intently at the woman's face.
‘G-good heavens… To think there's someone that beautiful…….’
That wasn't all.
He sensed something from the woman that went beyond mere beauty.
Her silver hair and the pure, clear aura that faintly emanated from her.
Everything about her was different from other women.
To Seonwoo Hyun's eyes, her appearance was absolutely not of this world.
Just then.
The woman opened her mouth.
“Luckily, it seems your mind has come back. I won't have to dirty my hands just yet.”
The woman's voice had a resonance more pleasant to hear than any birdsong.
But it was cold, as if she were addressing a slab of ice.
“Ah!”
Belatedly snapping to his senses, Seonwoo Hyun asked the woman:
“D-did you save me, Lady?”
“…….”
When the woman did not particularly deny it, Seonwoo Hyun bowed his head to her again.
“Truly… thank you.”
But the woman still only stared at him without any answer.
In the end, unable to bear the silence, Seonwoo Hyun asked:
“But where on earth is this place?”
“You'll find out in time. More importantly, there's something I want to ask you first.”
“Pardon? What……”
When Seonwoo Hyun made a puzzled expression, the woman asked in a sharp voice:
“What on earth are you?”
“Pardon? What do you…… If you're asking my name, it's Seonwoo Hyun, but…….”
“I'm not asking your name.”
She frowned and pointed her finger at Seonwoo Hyun's qi center.
“How is it that you, a human, harbor such energy? What on earth are you?”
“Pardon? Energy? What on earth are you talking about…….”
“The power inside your qi center. It isn't human. So how do you have it?”
The woman pressed Seonwoo Hyun.
“…….”
But Seonwoo Hyun couldn't give any answer.
He himself was bewildered, not knowing why his qi center was intact, so what answer could he possibly give?
When Seonwoo Hyun only wore a bewildered expression, the woman let out a long sigh.
“Haah… So you don't know either?”
“…….”
“Fine. We'll talk about this again in a bit. For now, wait here quietly.”
Leaving only those words, the woman turned sharply and left the stone chamber again.
‘Not human? What on earth does that mean?’
Left alone, Seonwoo Hyun went over what the woman had said.
But no matter how much he thought about it, he couldn't understand.
He was human, so how could he harbor energy that wasn't human?
‘First… let me take a closer look.’
Seonwoo Hyun sat cross-legged again and closed his eyes.
And he began to look into his body even more deeply than before.
Then he, too, could feel the energy settled within his qi center.
“…….”
Seonwoo Hyun's brow slowly knitted.
It was definitely strange.
It was not the inner arts built up through the Great Expanse Divine Art he had practiced all this time.
‘What……?’
Seonwoo Hyun focused his mind even further.
The energy he felt was completely different not only from the inner arts of the Namgung, but from any orthodox energy he knew.
How on earth could such a thing be inside his body?
But there was something even more surprising.
The power of the energy filling his qi center was so immense it was hard to believe.
‘This much… is at least sixty years' worth.’
He couldn't believe it at all.
He was the one who, despite three years of effort, had accumulated only three months' worth of inner arts.
Because of that, his qi and blood had twisted in the middle of a fight, and he had nearly died.
But now.
Within his body, an enormous power he had never once felt before lay sleeping.
Gulp.
Seonwoo Hyun swallowed dryly.
His face gradually flushed, so much that his suspicion about its nature just moments before seemed pointless.
‘Incredible. If only I could properly draw on these inner arts…….’
A small hope seeped into his heart.
That hope soon became curiosity, and the curiosity gradually turned into an urge to reach out for it.
‘Should I try drawing on just a little?’
In the end, unable to resist the urge, Seonwoo Hyun slowly raised his qi.
At that moment.
“……!”
The energy that had been quietly sleeping suddenly heaved and surged up, breaking through the Sea of Qi acupoint in one burst.
“Ngh!”
Horrified at the feeling of his blood meridians twisting, Seonwoo Hyun hurriedly circulated his cultivation method to withdraw the energy.
But once surged, the energy did not subside.
No, on the contrary, it raked through his whole body even more violently, burrowing into his blood meridians.
“Gah, gaaah!”
Pain as if his blood were rushing backward struck his whole body, and his reason gradually grew faint.
His vision turned red, and an unknown rage surged up from deep within his chest.
“Grrrrr…….”
‘No! I have to s-stop…….’
Seonwoo Hyun's mind was clouded.
He exerted all his strength to grasp the thread of his fading reason.
But the energy that had already spread out did not obey his control at all.
Just then.
CRASH!
“You fool!”
The woman, who had hurried back to the stone chamber, flung down a bowl of water and shouted at him.
At Seonwoo Hyun's alarming aura, the woman's expression hardened.
But without hesitation, she swiftly placed her hand on Seonwoo Hyun's back.
‘Oh no, the cursed energy is rising rapidly through his blood meridians. At this rate, this child will!’
The momentum of the cursed energy now spreading through Seonwoo Hyun's body was completely different from before.
If back then it had felt like newly stirred cursed energy that had not yet settled, now it was rampaging madly to devour his body by any means.
“KRAAAAAH!”
Seonwoo Hyun's eyes rolled back red, and he let out a monstrous cry.
‘This won't do! What should I do?’
The woman thought frantically.
If the child became a fiend like this, then she would destroy him with all her might.
That much was certain.
But even so, she couldn't just stand by and watch as he turned into a fiend before her eyes.
‘There's no choice. I'll have to try to control the cursed energy by force. Even if it damages his blood meridians, it'll be better than this!’
Steeling her resolve, the woman began to draw up all of her power.
Then her hand was dyed a brilliant silvery white.
A clear, cold energy extending from the woman's fingertips swiftly burrowed into Seonwoo Hyun's blood meridians.
‘Ngh!’
Meeting resistance fiercer than expected, thick beads of sweat formed on the woman's forehead.
But even so, she was slowly pushing the rampaging cursed energy back into his qi center.
A moment later.
THUD!
When the cursed energy finally quieted, Seonwoo Hyun, overcome by extreme exhaustion, lost consciousness and collapsed on the spot.
The woman, withdrawing her energy from his body, also kept breathing roughly, as if it had greatly strained her.
Catching her breath, the woman looked at the collapsed Seonwoo Hyun and muttered in a low voice:
“Foolish boy. Not even knowing what's inside his own body…….”