Shock spread across Seolhwa’s face.

“Cease to exist? What do you mean by that?”

“Exactly what it sounds like. I don’t know why. I have no proof, either. But through countless regressions, both I and the Blood Demon came to realize it. Whoever destroys the Heaven-Defying Time-Reversal Great Law will vanish entirely along with it.”

It was like how humans are aware of the existence of gods even without effort.

The Blood Demon and Sama Cheon, after repeating the regressions, had come to that realization naturally.

The moment the Great Law was destroyed, their very existences would vanish.

“I understand the words—but why me? If I were the Blood Demon, I would’ve borrowed your hand first.”

The Blood Demon and Sama Cheon.

Just as Sama Cheon was the Blood Demon’s greatest adversary, so too would Sama Cheon be the one the Blood Demon most feared.

So perhaps he’d wanted to make Sama Cheon destroy the Great Law with his own hands, to erase his existence along with it.

“...”

Sama Cheon fell silent.

Seolhwa gazed at him, waiting in silence until he spoke.

There was no longer anything to hide.

Now that they were in the same boat, Seolhwa was determined to hear the whole truth from him.

As if he understood that, Sama Cheon let out a long, weary sigh and forced himself to speak.

“I failed.”

“...Failed?”

“In a life more than five cycles ago. The bastard brought the incense burner before me and said—since I was the one who created the Great Law, I should destroy it myself.”

Exactly as Seolhwa had guessed—the Blood Demon had sought to erase Sama Cheon and the Great Law together.

“At first, I tried to destroy it.”

When the Blood Demon gave him the chance, Sama Cheon raised his sword without hesitation.

But in the instant before he struck down the incense burner, he could not move.

They said it was because of the Blood Demon, but Sama Cheon had lived for centuries.

There was no corner of the world his steps hadn’t reached, no place beyond his influence.

And when he thought that his existence would disappear completely from this world, leaving only the Blood Demon—Yeon Hwi—behind, an unbearable rejection welled up inside him.

It was like a world ruled by two gods suddenly losing one.

Having lived through countless lives, Sama Cheon had, without realizing it, grown deeply attached to the world and to life itself.

“I couldn’t destroy the Great Law in the end.”

Instead of shattering the incense burner, he had tried to turn back time again—and the Blood Demon immediately severed both of his arms.

Then he laughed.

[As expected, you’re just like me.]

Sama Cheon had been unable to deny those words.

“I am a monster just like him. Even now—if the Great Law were in my hands, I would turn back time.”

He would bring his wife and children back, even now.

Even if it was the most selfish choice, if the Great Law were before him—

He knew he would make that choice.

“Such is the nature of humans. Even if I deny it, in the end, we are creatures that can never abandon our selfishness.”

He had thought that, after living through so many cycles, he had given up everything.

Yet when the opportunity presented itself again, the greed he had forgotten raised its head.

The Blood Demon had seen that greed within Sama Cheon, and so he would never again rely on Sama Cheon’s hand to destroy the Great Law.

And thus—the one chosen.

That was Seolhwa.

“...”

Her eyelids grew heavy.

There were still too many things she wanted to ask, but as she looked at Sama Cheon, her eyelids sank slowly.

A faint clinking sound drifted from him.

As that sound faded into the distance, Seolhwa slipped once more into deep sleep.

****

“Ha—! Haah! Ha!”

The Demonic Cult’s training hall.

Yu Gang once again stood on the pavilion overlooking the entire training ground beside the Heavenly Demon.

Behind them stood the Heavenly Demon’s loyal retainers and the heads of the Cult’s martial divisions.

His stepmother, Lady Cheon, and her attendants were also present.

She looked at Yu Gang standing beside the Cult Lord with a pleased smile.

The golden armor bestowed by the Cult Lord suited him splendidly.

So, in the end, he accepted it.

She didn’t know exactly what words the Cult Lord had used to persuade him, but she had expected this outcome.

No matter how upright and pure he pretended to be, no one could easily turn away from the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult’s authority and power.

It bothered her that he wasn’t her biological son, but this at least ensured that the Cheon family would maintain its influence.

Their relationship wasn’t particularly warm for now, but—

Without the Cheon family’s backing, he can’t secure his position in the Cult anyway. He’ll bow his head soon enough.

And when that time came, she could simply pretend to give in reluctantly, and their strained relationship would be easily mended.

“...”

The Heavenly Demon said something to Yu Gang.

Yu Gang nodded without a change of expression, but the sight of the two standing together, father and son side by side, drew smiles from those behind them.

Before long, the shouts of the Cult’s warriors resounded through the training ground.

Yu Gang watched their training in silence.

****

Seolhwa drifted between sleep and wakefulness again and again.

Each time she woke, she felt her body changing in perceptible ways.

The violent storm of energy that had raged inside her after the Array’s Test was gradually calming—like a once-tempestuous sea now turned serene.

Sama Cheon remained by her side to ensure she did not fall into Qi deviation.

Her condition was as though seawater had been poured into a river’s course. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

Ordinarily, her Blood Channels would have torn apart, her bones split at every joint.

But with Sama Cheon’s aid born of centuries of experience—and Seolhwa’s monstrous gift for controlling energy—she barely managed to stabilize.

Time passed.

“...”

One day—one moment.

Seolhwa opened her eyes.

And instantly she knew her body was completely different from before.

Sama Cheon, who had always hovered nearby, fiddling with one thing or another, was nowhere to be seen.

Swish—

For the first time in a long while, Seolhwa sat up.

It felt as though her body were floating in midair.

She looked down at her own hands.

She clenched and unclenched her fists, and it felt not like she was seeing them, but like she was hovering above herself, looking down.

Strange.

There was no other way to describe it.

Tzzzz—

Through the open window, two small birds perched on a branch came into view.

A thread-thin ray of sunlight passed through the leaves.

The wind drifted between them.

Everything looked strangely new.

It was as though she had opened a new set of eyes she had never possessed before.

Seolhwa stood, loosely draping a long outer robe over herself, and stepped outside.

She sensed movement from the adjoining room.

It was Sama Cheon.

Even without opening the door, she could feel him moving about within.

His restrained energy entered her vision vividly.

She could perceive the flow of Sama Cheon’s qi that she had never been able to before.

Click—

When she opened the door, Sama Cheon glanced over at her.

He didn’t seem surprised; he must have known she was awake.

“Come here. There’s something I want to show you.”

Seolhwa approached him.

Around him were countless desks and cabinets—each piled with things she had never seen before.

Books written in indecipherable script, strange objects whose use she could not guess.

Sheets of paper covered with incomprehensible diagrams.

Yet every one of them radiated power; none of them were ordinary.

“It must have been... two lives ago. One day, that man came to me. It was my third life hiding within ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ the Demonic Cult after abandoning our conflict.”

Perhaps the Blood Demon had grown uneasy that his only rival was lying dormant in obscurity.

One day, the Blood Demon came personally to the Demonic Cult.

“He examined everything—my surroundings, my research—as if curious about what I had been doing all this time.”

Seolhwa glanced over the items on the desk.

So the Blood Demon knew about all of this.

“The illusion you saw in the formation—it wasn’t created by me. I may have started the formation, but it was he who completed it.”

“...The Blood Demon?”

“He saw the formation I made and laughed.”

It hadn’t been a sneer.

At that time, the formation contained only the Blood Demon’s life as known by the Long-Scarred Bamboo-Hatted Man.

Only what the Long-Scarred had witnessed of the Blood Demon.

“Before he interfered, the illusion I made was simply the life of a twisted man filled with resentment toward the world from birth to death.”

That was why the Blood Demon had laughed.

Because in truth, he had once been a bright, diligent, and upright man.

“He changed the illusion of the formation—from the ‘Blood Demon’ to the life of ‘Yeon Hwi.’ The vision you saw was that.”

Not the Blood Demon’s, but Yeon Hwi’s life.

The life of the man before he fell into the abyss.

“...”

Seolhwa’s expression hardened.

Yeon Hwi was, in some sense, the shameful face the Blood Demon would most want to hide.

Unlike the Blood Demon, Yeon Hwi had been weak—trampled by low-grade bandits not even of the first class.

So why had the Blood Demon laid bare that pitiful life?

What was it he wanted her to see?

“I watched that illusion over and over,” Sama Cheon said softly, “but even now, I still cannot grasp what he intended. So I wish to hear it.”

He turned toward Seolhwa.

Looking at the first person the Blood Demon had ever revived—other than himself.

“What did you think,” he asked, “when you saw that illusion?”