Chapter 1. A Third-Rate Warrior Who Remembers Everything
Between the mountain ranges that soared through the clouds, at the end of a sheer, blade-like cliff, a slight man sat hunched over.
The man gazed wistfully at the white clouds drifting past.
“……Hm?”
Then the man’s brows lifted, and the words that left his mouth lingered in the empty air.
“Yong So-ah…… No, should I call you the Taecheong Divine Sword now? An exalted personage has come all the way here?”
No sooner had the man finished speaking than a figure in spotless, pure-white martial robes appeared before him from empty space, moving with an ethereal movement art.
TAP.
The man called the Taecheong Divine Sword asked him in a voice as weighty as his majestic appearance.
“Are you Jin So-un, commander of the Sojeong Squad?”
“Commander, commander, is it……”
The man called Jin So-un kept looking at the clouds as he asked.
“……Are all the members of the Sojeong Squad dead?”
“……”
“Then I suppose I am the commander. If they are not, then I am not.”
“……I asked whether you are Jin So-un.”
“You must have known when you came here. Why bother asking?”
At Jin So-un’s words, the Taecheong Divine Sword drew his sword.
“I came because there is something I must take back.”
“……”
Jin So-un raised his head and looked at the Taecheong Divine Sword, then shifted his gaze back to the clouds drifting before his eyes.
Though the man’s killing intent was plain to see, Jin So-un’s voice remained utterly languid.
“Did I not restore all the lost records of the Murim Alliance?”
“There are many records you must not possess.”
“Most of what I restored was useless records and documents, was it not?”
“I know that you remember the materials of Sim Hyeon-gak.”
“……”
Sim Hyeon-gak.
The archive where all of the Murim Alliance’s highest-level secrets were gathered.
The innermost sanctum of the Murim Alliance, which only the Alliance Leader, the Grand Strategist, and a few designated others were permitted to examine.
It was the very reason the Taecheong Divine Sword, the present leader of the Murim Alliance, had come all the way here.
Jin So-un spoke in a hollow voice.
“Damn them. I told them I would not look. I knew I would end like this.”
“……”
“So…… did you come all the way from Bukhae to kill a single third-rate Warrior? While avoiding the eyes of the Demonic Cult?”
“For the justice of the martial world, and because this is a matter that must be dealt with beyond any doubt.”
Jin So-un chuckled and nodded.
“What happened to the men of our Sojeong Squad?”
“I do not know.”
“Heh. Of course you do not. From the beginning, dregs like us were nothing more than tools to people like you.”
“All of it was for the greater good……”
That damned greater good.
That hollow greater good that drove us into a death ground.
A thick sneer filled Jin So-un’s voice.
“Did that glorious greater good bring you prosperity in Bukhae?”
The tip of the Taecheong Divine Sword’s blade trembled.
The master of the martial world had changed, and the Murim Alliance had fallen.
The principal figures of the Murim Alliance had fled as far as Bukhae and were barely preserving the remnants of their line.
COUGH.
As So-un’s slight body shuddered and lurched toward the Taecheong Divine Sword, the Taecheong Divine Sword shifted aside ever so slightly.
Even the hem of his spotless white martial robes withdrew with him.
Jin So-un looked at him and gave a mocking smile.
“So, you failed in the end.”
“The Murim Alliance will raise the foundation of the Murim once more.”
“Though I once belonged to the Murim Alliance, I sincerely hope such a dreadful world never comes.”
“……You have been tainted by the Demonic Cult.”
The Taecheong Divine Sword was about to behead him with a single stroke.
He stopped dead.
As if he had sensed the presence of a ghost behind him, the Taecheong Divine Sword shuddered and turned his head like lightning.
It was the appearance of someone he had never imagined would come to this place.
“……How is he here?”
The Taecheong Divine Sword glared at Jin So-un once more.
“Were you already in secret contact with the Demonic Cult?”
Jin So-un slowly turned his head and looked at a single point, still as unhurried as ever.
“Who can say? What could a man like me possibly be for such a great figure to move on my behalf? It must be coincidence.”
“……”
“In any case, do you intend to remain here?”
No sooner had Jin So-un finished speaking than the Taecheong Divine Sword kicked off the ground and vanished.
Yet he did not leave completely. Instead, he took his place atop a peak overlooking the cliff.
A moment later, the sound of footsteps reached them.
STEP. STEP.
This time, a man in black martial robes was slowly approaching Jin So-un.
Without turning around, Jin So-un spoke.
“Black Lion Gwak Gung.”
At Jin So-un’s call, the man called Gwak Gung could not hide his astonishment.
Jin So-un had clearly had his back turned.
“How did you know?”
“There are strangely many guests today. On such a fine day, no less.”
“I asked how you knew.”
“The Blood Serpent Dance Step, the exclusive footwork of the Demonic Cult’s Young Cult Master, conceals a principle by which the third step twists and advances in all eight directions.”
Gwak Gung let out a sound of disbelief.
“Hah. Have we met before?”
“Our Sojeong Squad once stood as a wall of flesh against the Heavenly Demon Black Sword Unit. Do you remember?”
“Heh, who can say? In those days, everyone in the Murim Alliance was nothing more than a wall of flesh to us. Still, they said you remembered everything in the world. It is astonishing.”
“It is a useless talent for a Warrior.”
Gwak Gung’s gaze turned toward the Taecheong Divine Sword, who stood aloof atop the peak and looked down at them.
“So the Murim Alliance came to save you? All the way from Bukhae?”
At Gwak Gung’s question, Jin So-un shook his head.
“He said there was something he had to take from me.”
“?”
No matter how one looked at him, Jin So-un did not seem to possess even a single silver coin.
“What is it?”
“This worthless head.”
Gwak Gung looked toward the peak and clicked his tongue, as if he understood.
“Tsk. I heard the Sojeong Squad kept you alive to the very end because your head contained everything about the Murim Alliance.”
“That is not true…… They said it was because I was the one who wanted most desperately to live.”
Jin So-un muttered to himself, “Those fools.”
“What touching comradeship.”
At Gwak Gung’s words, a fire lit in Jin So-un’s eyes.
“They are not men a demonic cultist like you may speak of so lightly.”
“How amusing.”
Though Jin So-un scattered killing intent, Gwak Gung did not react. If anything, he seemed to be inviting him to do more, if he could.
Yet before long, as if his strength had left him, Jin So-un withdrew his killing intent.
“……Do you also want what the Taecheong Divine Sword wants? If you ask while the Taecheong Divine Sword is watching, I might give you everything about the Murim Alliance.”
“What value would such information have to the Divine Cult now?”
“……That is true. Then why did you come all the way here?”
“I came to capture the commander of the Sojeong Squad, the most persistent enemy of our Divine Cult.”
Jin So-un nodded two or three times.
At Jin So-un’s calm demeanor, Gwak Gung could not conceal his puzzlement.
“Are you not afraid?”
“……Would one whose life was hell fear death?”
“You said you wished so desperately to live, yet life was hell in the end?”
“Are you not capable? Try to imagine a life in which you remember everything. A life in which all you remember are countless deaths and defeats……”
After a brief silence, Gwak Gung nodded.
“Mm. It must not have been an easy life.”
“Ha ha ha.”
“What is so amusing?”
“A demonic bastard I once hated is pitying me. How could I not laugh?”
“You may take pride in it. You and the Sojeong Squad were the Divine Cult’s most persistent enemies.”
“To think that third-rate Warriors abandoned by the Murim Alliance received the Demonic Cult’s recognition. The fall of the Murim Alliance must have been decided from the beginning.”
After a brief pause, Jin So-un opened his mouth.
“Yet I am curious. Why did the Young Cult Master come in person to capture a single third-rate Warrior? Did you know the Taecheong Divine Sword would come?”
As if he had no interest in the Taecheong Divine Sword, the Alliance Leader standing nearby, Gwak Gung pointed at Jin So-un’s hand.
“That bracelet you are wearing.”
Jin So-un lowered his head and looked at the Azure Dragon Bracelet.
A Azure Dragon Bracelet engraved with an uncanny dragon pattern.
It did not suit his shabby clothing in the slightest.
“That is a sacred relic of the Divine Cult.”
“……Is that so?”
Jin So-un raised his arm and studied the bracelet closely.
His eyes were filled with longing, as though he were recalling something.
Countless lives that had fallen, and all they had achieved in exchange for their lives.
“When we brought down the Guardian Dharma King……”
He had thought the Murim Alliance, and the world itself, would change.
How truly foolish that had been.
Jin So-un soon snorted, as though mocking himself.
“Do you have any last words? If you die by the hand of one of the Divine Cult, the Demon God will grant your wish.”
“Heh. To think such absurd doctrine could inspire faith. You truly are a gathering of madmen.”
“Our god is real.”
“A wish…… Very well. In my next life, I wish to be born in a world without the Murim Alliance that abandoned us, and without the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult that killed us.”
“Alas. That is a truly difficult wish. The world now belongs to the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.”
Jin So-un’s body floated up and was drawn neatly into Gwak Gung’s hand.
‘Guh.’
Soon after, Jin So-un felt Gwak Gung’s demonic energy flowing into him through his entire body.
It was pain as though his nerves were being torn to shreds and every joint in his bones was being shattered.
‘Ah, what a life full of regret. May the karma of this life, I pray, end with this life.’
His senses slowly began to fade, and the world darkened.
“……I am certain that happened.”
I had definitely died.
My memory had always been good, but the memory of the day I met my death was especially clear, so vivid that I could recall even the scent of the wind.
In other words, that bastard had definitely appeared and killed me……
My back itched, so I reached for it.
SCRATCH SCRATCH.
A cool, refreshing sensation. A sensation far too vivid to be false.
“What in the world is going on?”
I, who had died at Black Lion Gwak Gung’s hand, had bewilderingly returned to the age of nineteen, a full thirty years in the past.
Not as Jin So-un of the Murim Alliance’s Sojeong Squad.
But as Jin So-un of the Taeul Sect.
Not to the age when the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult had overturned the world.
But to the age when the Murim Alliance ruled the martial world.
“Was that talk of a wish actually true?”
I recalled the last conversation I had shared with Gwak Gung.
I had never believed that such a petty god, indistinguishable from a false idol, would grant a wish in the first place……
Could it truly have possessed power after all?
“But…… true to being the Demon God, he truly does not listen properly to a man’s words.”
I had said, ‘I want to be born in a world without the Murim Alliance and the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult’…… Yet he had sent me back to before that hellish Great Righteous-Demonic War broke out.
As expected, whether it was the Demonic Cult, a demonic cultist, or the Demon God, one must never have dealings with anything bearing the character ma.
“Haa……”
I had regained my youth, but I was not the least bit pleased.
The hellish reality that would unfold over the next thirty years remained clear in my mind, and I was still nothing more than a disciple of the Taeul Sect who, at best, could become a second-rate Warrior.
In other words, the fact that I had returned to the past did not particularly seem like a sign that I was meant to save the world.
“Had that been the case, he should at least have given me some special ability, or bound the soul of Patriarch Jang Sambong to me. Is that not so?”
That damned Demon God.
In time, the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult would return.
No, the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult had already returned. Everyone except me simply did not know it.
The Murim Alliance, which believed absolutely in its own strength, would be swept away like leaves before an autumn gale.
Those who trusted the Murim Alliance would be swept away with it.
My own sect, the Taeul Sect, had also believed in the Murim Alliance.
And so it was swept away with them. Damn it.
“The memory alone is agony. Must I watch that dreadful scene again?”
After piecing together everything that had happened to me thus far, I reached only one answer.
In other words, to put it plainly—“I was doomed.”
For some reason, I had the feeling that the wretched Demon God was watching this miserable state of mine from somewhere and grinning.
Why? Because if I had been in the Demon God’s place, I would have wanted to do the same.
