Myst, Might, Mayhem

Chapter 474 – One (2)

A baby born in black flames.

After the last intense memory, Mok Gyeong-un’s eyes slowly reddened as time flowed infinitely slow in the space around him.

-Whoosh!

The black flames that had been burning larger than his body moments ago had now subsided to about the size of a fist.

Mok Gyeong-un looked at him and sent a thought.

‘Why do you entrust this to me, a mere human consciousness?’

-…….

‘Couldn’t you take back everything yourself?’

At the point when he regained all his memories, Mok Gyeong-un was identical to him, albeit with a different personality.

However, the fact that he had become a human consciousness remained unchanged.

Regardless of status, he could easily devour his own consciousness that had lived such a short life.

Yet he did not.

Mok Gyeong-un couldn’t help but wonder at this entirely irrational decision.

Then the black flame flickered.

-It’s not mere.

‘……..’

-Isn’t it shining even brighter?

‘You……..’

[Someone once said. Because it’s short, it shines even brighter. That’s how we should live too, right?]

The image of her smiling brightly flashed by.

Was that your everything?

Born as the King of Demons, nearly immortal, you longed for a human life – fleeting yet shining brighter than anyone else’s.

-Hiss!

The black flame was growing smaller and smaller.

It was dying out.

-It was… truly… long.

‘Stop. There’s no need to completely dissolve your will into me like this. No, why are you trying to disappear?’

-I’m not disappearing.

‘You!’

-There’s no need… to think… that way. I am… you. You are… me. In the end… we are one.

As the black flame shrank to about the size of a finger, even the voice grew fainter.

Mok Gyeong-un tried to prevent him from seeping into himself.

But he did not stop it.

‘Enough! Stop. Didn’t you want to meet her? Didn’t you want to speak to her every moment you were awake?’

He could understand because all the memories had been assimilated.

In those few moments of wakefulness, he had repeated the same words dozens, hundreds, thousands of times in his mind.

[I missed you so much. My one and only bride.]

Yet he never uttered these words aloud.

He knew well why he had done this.

It was to leave no lingering attachments.

If even a hair’s breadth of attachment remained, he might be tempted to give up on assimilating with his human consciousness.

That’s why he never spoke to her in the end.

Even if it was just once, Mok Gyeong-un wanted him to say this while still maintaining his own personality.

However,

-Hiss!

As the flame burned out, only red embers flickered.

His faint voice echoed in Mok Gyeong-un’s ear.

-So…wol……and my……beautiful…..shining…..story…….ended…..then. Now……it’s the story……of Cheong-ryeong…..and you.

The dying embers.

In that instant, he pictured his meeting with her.

And he recalled his bride, who was so beautiful, for the last time.

-You were beautiful……so beautiful, like a single red peony.

-Whoosh!

The embers extinguished like that and scattered like heat haze.

As his final will settled in his mind, a single tear rolled down Mok Gyeong-un’s reddened cheek as their consciousnesses merged completely into one.

-Drip!

At that moment, a crack appeared in the infinitely slow flow of time.

-Crack!

***

-Crack!

As the Supreme Void Sealing Reversal Technique cracked, the three eyes of Mok Gan’s avatar trembled.

‘How?’

The Supreme Void Sealing Reversal Technique, known as the ancient gold technique.

This was an absolute technique created to capture beings trying to transcend the natural order, those approaching the realm of gods.

Unlike before, it had been perfectly executed, so no one but himself should have been able to break it.

But what on earth was happening?

-Crack, crack, crack!

The crack that had appeared once was gradually spreading in all directions.

At this, Mok Gan’s avatar’s gaze quickly turned to Mok Gyeong-un at the center of the Supreme Void Sealing Reversal Technique.

-Thump!

Just then, he heard a heartbeat.

In the infinitely slow flow of time, it should have been impossible to hear a heartbeat, but the bastard’s heart was gradually beating fast enough to be audible.

-Thump! Thump! Thump!

It wasn’t an illusion.

The heartbeat had returned to normal.

Mok Gan’s avatar immediately spread his arms wide.

Then, looking at where Mok Gyeong-un was, he brought his arms together, making a gesture of enclosing with both hands.

Then,

-Whoosh!

The widely spread Supreme Void Sealing Reversal Technique shrank, and the light around Mok Gyeong-un grew more intense.

It gradually transformed into a spherical shape.

He was trying to make the technique stronger by reducing the range of the main force of the wide-area Supreme Void Sealing Reversal Technique.

“Cough, cough.”

Blood spilled from Mok Gan’s avatar’s mouth as he coughed.

It was because he had forcibly moved the main force in an already weakened state.

But he had no confidence in stopping this anomaly without doing this.

Although it might be too late, if that bastard managed to escape from the perfect Supreme Void Sealing Reversal Technique……

-Crack, crack, crack!

‘!?’

At that moment, the brightly shining sphere began to split.

‘No. I must stop this somehow…..’

“Puh!”

Just then, black blood gushed out of Mok Gan’s avatar’s mouth like a fountain, and the sphere shattered, scattering the concentrated light in all directions.

-Whoosh!

From within the flowing light, a black shadow quickly stretched out and grabbed Mok Gan’s avatar’s neck.

-Grip!

“Kuh!”

It was Mok Gyeong-un.

The pupils of Mok Gan’s avatar, whose neck was grabbed, trembled violently.

The overwhelming pressure was beyond imagination, making it difficult to even meet his eyes.

It felt like facing an absolute being.

Although it wasn’t in this current body, he had felt this once before.

“Kuh….kuh…..you…….”

“Disappear.”

“Wh-what……”

It was at that very moment.

A sharp aura enveloping his entire body.

As soon as he sensed it,

-Splash!

Mok Gan’s avatar’s body simply exploded.

Despite the body exploding right in front of him and blood splattering everywhere, not a single drop stained Mok Gyeong-un’s body.

After killing him like that, Mok Gyeong-un looked towards the far south.

“Is it there?”

-Whoosh!

At that moment, a circular wave-like ripple spread out, the space trembled, and Mok Gyeong-un’s form vanished into a point.

***

-Throb!

The man in the bamboo hat standing in the shadows winced at a sudden headache.

Seeing this, a man with long hair and red lips who was guarding nearby approached and asked.

“Mok Gan. Are you alright?”

Mok Gan, as the man in the bamboo hat was called, held out his hand as if to tell him not to come closer.

At this, the man hastily stopped.

Mok Gan then opened his mouth.

“……..It seems he has broken free.”

“What? By ‘he’, do you mean that avatar?”

“Who else would I be talking about?”

“M-my apologies. However, Mok Gan. No one has ever escaped from the Supreme Void Sealing Reversal Technique, the ancient gold technique, by their own power.”

The Supreme Void Sealing Reversal Technique had even captured the Six Demons, who were said to be close to divine beings.

Even if one had reached the realm of Life and Death, considered the highest level among martial artists, it still fell short of the Six Demons.

But,

“Are you saying this one has misunderstood?”

At the sharp voice, the red-lipped man quickly knelt down and pressed his forehead to the ground in apology.

-Thud! Thud! Thud!

“Pl-please forgive me. How could this lowly one have such disrespectful thoughts?”

“Stand back.”

At Mok Gan’s command, the red-lipped man’s form blurred and disappeared.

Once he was out of sight, Mok Gan slightly raised his hand and then lowered it.

For a moment, he almost lost control of his madness and anger.

‘What is this?’

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that his souls were connected with his avatars.

Therefore, he could share their thoughts and see what they were seeing.

But the last thing he saw was the Supreme Void Sealing Reversal Technique cracking.

At this, his avatar was compressing the main force of the Supreme Void Sealing Reversal Technique into a sphere, but from that moment on, the avatar’s consciousness turned black and then was suddenly cut off.

Judging by the impact on his soul, the avatar had certainly died.

But why couldn’t he see the final moment?

‘Did someone intervene?’

Mok Gan, who had been lost in thought for a moment, shook his head.

It didn’t matter anyway.

Even if someone had helped the avatar and he had somehow broken free from the Supreme Void Sealing Reversal Technique by some stroke of luck, it was already too late.

It was too far from there to here.

By the time he arrived here, everything would already be over.

All he would see was death.

-Sneer!

Mok Gan, with a sinister smile curling his lips, sent a thought to his avatar in the Ten Thousand Great Mountains.

***

‘Seventh Form of the Crimson Flame Sword Technique, Surpassing Fire Form!’

-Whoosh!

The sword of Lee Ji-yeom, the Corpse Blood Valley Master, created an incredibly intricate trajectory of flames, overwhelming the frost-based sword technique.

-Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang!

‘Damn it!’

-Crack!

The Snow Field Sword of Neung Jin-soon, the second-tier of the Secret Society, which was blocking the flaming sword technique with all its might, couldn’t withstand the heat and cracked, then,

-Clang!

It split in half and flew away.

Not missing that instant, the flaming sword cut from Neung Jin-soon’s right shoulder through his heart and down to his waist.

“It’s… your victory.”

Acknowledging his defeat, Neung Jin-soon used his last strength to utter those words.

Then his split upper body fell backward.

-Thud!

Due to the heat, the cut area was cauterized, preventing blood from gushing out.

Lee Ji-yeom, who had barely defeated him, knelt on one knee and exhaled rough breaths.

“Huff…. huff….. huff……”

He was truly a formidable opponent.

Having reached the Transformation Realm and perfected his divine technique, Lee Ji-yeom thought he could defeat him easily, but this man was an supreme master comparable to the Eight Stars.

If he hadn’t sacrificed one arm with the determination of “returning to the same destination,” he wouldn’t have won the battle.

His left arm, more than half severed, was dangling.

It was essentially a lost arm.

-Swish!

Lee Ji-yeom then cut off his dangling arm.

It should have been painful, but he didn’t make a sound of pain as he cut off his arm, instead pressing the blood-stopping point to stem the bleeding.

Just then, he heard someone clapping.

-Clap, clap, clap!

Lee Ji-yeom’s expression hardened at the sound coming from behind.

Despite being injured, he hadn’t lowered his guard, yet he hadn’t sensed anyone approaching from behind at all.

‘He deceived my qi sense?’

He was now comparable to the Eight Stars, considered the highest level in the martial arts world.

If someone could deceive his senses at this level…….

-Swish!

Lee Ji-yeom’s complexion darkened instantly as he turned his head.

He saw Jeong Hyeon-mun, the leader of the Righteous Alliance, clapping in front of him.

“…….Jeong Hyeon-mun.”

“Impressive. I thought you were too obsessed with useless solar energy to achieve great things, but it seems I was wrong.”

‘!?’

Lee Ji-yeom furrowed his brow and opened his mouth.

“…….What are you talking about?”

Having never left the Corpse Blood Valley, he had no particular conflict with the Righteous Alliance.

Therefore, even the leader of the Righteous Alliance shouldn’t know anything about him.

So how does he know that his Crimson Flame Sword Technique is based on solar energy?

As he was puzzled,

-Shing!

Jeong Hyeon-mun approached, drawing his unique weapon, the famous sword Il-hwi.

“It’s a pity. To meet such a fate of death just as your talent has blossomed.”

-Whoosh!

Just by drawing his sword, the overwhelming aura made Lee Ji-yeom’s hand holding his sword tremble.

Even if he hadn’t been injured, this wasn’t an opponent he could defeat.

How many forms of the Seven Heavens, considered the pinnacle of the current martial arts world, could he block?

Could he even block a single form?

Lee Ji-yeom, who had been glaring at the approaching man, took a deep breath.

‘It’s meaningless.’

Winning wasn’t the goal.

What he was trying to do was to protect.

-Rip!

Lee Ji-yeom tore a strip from his clothing, then bit the cloth with his teeth and used his sword and hand to wrap it.

It was a resolution to never let go of his sword, even in death.

“Impressive. But it’s a futile act. If you step back, you might be able to preserve your life a little longer.”

“Cut off my head and pass.”

“Pft.”

Jeong Hyeon-mun, the leader of the Righteous Alliance, snorted at Lee Ji-yeom’s resolve, then was about to step forward.

It was at that moment.

-Slither!

Suddenly, drops of blood spilled by the dead on the mountain peak began to rise one by one.

Jeong Hyeon-mun’s lips curled into a sinister smile at this strange sight.

‘He’s here.’