Chapter 335

Chapter 335

They say human memories gradually fade as time passes, but everyone has memories that never fade no matter how much time passes.

Memories that become major turning points in life may lose their luster, but they never fade no matter how many years pass. It might be related to the human instinct to deeply preserve important memories.

-Young Master. The Madam is…….

In my case, it was my mother’s death. After that, my life deviated from its set path and began pioneering a completely new road.

But there’s something I’ve become curious about now. Have I properly ‘overcome’ it, or have I been ‘avoiding’ it?

When I think about it, it’s a simple matter. A problem I kept putting off, thinking it was something I needed to think deeply about someday.

“You’ve grown a lot since I last saw you.”

It has merely revealed itself before my eyes now.

“Are you a hallucination?”

“If I said I’m not a hallucination, would you believe me? If I said I’m a summoned dead soul?”

“I wouldn’t believe it.”

“You wouldn’t, would you?”

At my words, Mother, who gave a bitter smile, approached me and looked up at me. She seemed so tall before, but now that my body has fully grown, her eye level is far below.

“Mom is a hallucination, Un-ah.”

“…….”

“I’m a trace of lingering attachment remaining within you.”

“Lingering attachment, you say.”

“That’s right.”

Mother, who smiled brightly, spread her arms and spun around once.

“This Monster Technique isn’t anything great. It doesn’t have the power to kill people, nor does it have the power to make falsehoods into reality. It simply digs into a person’s spirit and shows the wounds and hardships they’ve experienced as hallucinations.”

“…….”

“Unlike other formation techniques, it doesn’t have the ability to trap people here forever either. It just…… makes people waver. That’s all.”

It’s a shallow trick and an utterly crude formation technique.

This kind of Monster Technique can be easily broken through by simply covering your ears, closing your eyes, and walking upward. No matter what the hallucination says, if you don’t listen or look, you can break through it without difficulty. However.

“You mustn’t do that.”

“…….”

“If you do that, you’ll end up wavering.”

That’s not the correct solution. The moment you capture your ‘wound’ in your eyes, your spirit will waver.

Avoiding it is the method Heukya desires most. Nothing is as weak as a warrior who cannot establish the measure of their convictions.

“Are you eating properly?”

“I’m eating well.”

“Training?”

“……I’m working hard at it.”

“You would be. Unlike Seon, you were a good child. You never skipped martial arts training even once, did you?”

“I never thought of it as doing it because I was told to.”

“To protect your family. Right?”

“…….”

“That’s precisely your kindness.”

A hand rises above my head.

Even though it’s clearly just a hallucination, the sensation I feel stroking my head made my strength drain completely. But Mother’s phantom continued speaking without caring.

“My son. You’ve worked so hard.”

“…….”

“But this isn’t the final destination. You know that, right? You need to work a little harder.”

“If you’re a hallucination…… shouldn’t you be making me sit down? Shouldn’t you be making me believe that this is the end?”

“Because this is how to make you sit down.”

Mother, who smiled sadly, stroked my hand.

“You’re clever, so if you feel something is off, you’ll definitely isolate the wound from reality and view it separately. If it’s something I wouldn’t have said while alive, speaking it in this hallucination would be foolish.”

“You’re shrewd.”

“Did you forget where you and your brother’s heads came from? You inherited them from me.”

“…….”

“San is…… well, he resembles Ga-ga so he’s a bit foolish, but that’s also that child’s charm.”

After speaking and pausing, Mother, who had been stroking my head for a moment, continued in a low voice.

“You established a sect in Hwayonghyeon?”

“…….”

“Did you want revenge? Or did you want to commemorate my death?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re thinking that it doesn’t matter now. You mustn’t do that. You need to face it.”

Mother, who smiled gently, removed her hand and turned her back as if looking toward a distant place. The sight of Mother directing her gaze toward the far east.

“I told you that Hwayonghyeon was my hometown.”

“…….”

“Actually, it’s not. You probably suspect this, but Hwayonghyeon isn’t my hometown. It’s just…… a place like a hometown of the heart.”

“Hometown of the heart, you say.”

“Hwayonghyeon was where I first settled after coming down to the Central Plains.”

When voices advocating war grew loud in the Divine Cult.

Mother thought this. That she needed to see with her own eyes what kind of place the Central Plains was. That she needed to evaluate with her own two eyes whether they were truly such vicious people.

“Leaving the Divine Cult was good, but I had no destination. Since my purpose was just to see the Central Plains, I had no choice but to wander aimlessly.”

“Why didn’t you enjoy wandering the Jianghu?”

“When my family was suffering, how could I enjoy myself alone?”

“It doesn’t seem like something you would do with your personality, Mother.”

“You know that.”

Mother, who chuckled, continued with distant eyes.

“When I first came down to the Central Plains, what I saw were people starving to death.”

“…….”

“The Central Plains was experiencing famine at that time. Beggars were catching and eating insects, and high-ranking people squeezed the common people because their own food was running short. I was shocked seeing that scene.”

“Because of the lowliness of the Central Plains people?”

“No, because I thought the Divine Cult and the Central Plains were no different at all.”

The Central Plains people, whom she had only considered the axis of evil, were actually in the same situation.

It couldn’t be considered exactly the same situation. They didn’t have to tremble at monster attacks, and their food was more abundant than the Divine Cult’s.

However, the Central Plains, which she had thought was paradise, wasn’t actually paradise either. People weren’t fighting due to greed but were engaged in vicious struggles because they didn’t have enough food for each other.

“I thought if hell existed, it would be this place. At least in the Divine Cult, people didn’t kill and fight each other over such things.”

“…….”

“I was so shocked that I just wandered throughout the entire Central Plains. Everywhere wasn’t much different.”

Disillusionment.

Did they sacrifice so much to protect such a scene?

“Just when I was thinking such thoughts, my steps reached Hwayonghyeon. Since food was worth its weight in gold, the gold I had packed from the Divine Cult for travel expenses had run out, and I had sold all my jewelry…….”

“…….”

“But I didn’t want to steal or rob anything, so I just sat down somewhere along the roadside. I didn’t have the strength to move. But you know what? Beggars shared food with me.”

“……Beggars, you say?”

“That’s right. Since I looked like a beggar too. They might have thought I was a comrade.”

Beggars who brought various things trying to save a person’s life.

Of course, the beggars had almost nothing to give. Tree bark. Grass roots. Roasted insects were about it. However.

“But still, they desperately gathered things from here and there trying to save a person and put them in my mouth. Do you know what I felt then?”

The taste of dirt.

“That this wretched taste of dirt is what it means to be alive.”

In the end, that living as a person is the same everywhere.

“You have a new family now, don’t you?”

“…….”

“I know, Un-ah. That you’re a person who lives to protect your family.”

Now.

“Will you abandon your new family to protect your old family? Or will you abandon your old family for your new family?”

Choose here. Whether to be caught by the specter of the past and look only at the past, or take one step forward toward the future.

Looking at Mother, who blocked my path and spread both arms while asking refreshingly, I gritted my teeth and forced a smile.

“Isn’t it already decided?”

Yes.

Cheonui Divine Technique

The answer was decided.

Severing Bonds

From the beginning.

***

What a dog-like situation.

“I wanted revenge, Sabaek.”

“…….”

“I wanted to repay the Central Plains people for what they did to us all this time. What’s wrong with that?”

Looking at the old man muttering in a low voice, Ilryun pressed hard on his tired eyes. Displeasure surging from deep within his heart.

“What an unpleasantly mood-dampening formation technique.”

Suddenly the surroundings darkened and people disappeared.

Even up to that point, he thought Heukya had pulled some trick and didn’t consider it significant. He couldn’t speak for others, but no matter what trick he got caught up in, if it wasn’t Heukya herself descending, he was confident he could easily break through and climb upward.

But this.

Isn’t it somewhat different when those who should be dead come back to life and speak to you?

“Directly facing one’s abyss is originally unpleasant to that degree. Even knowing that this is a specter, not simply a hallucination.”

The specter of the past, Hyeolgeom, who lightly deflected Ilryun’s words, twisted the corners of his mouth crookedly.

“Sabaek. Many people died.”

“…….”

“Because of the Murim Alliance and Sado Alliance who only look after their own interests, we always had to be exposed to the front lines against monsters. Without receiving proper support at that.”

“I know.”

“Sabaek always said. That we must strike down those Murim Alliance bastards and Sado Alliance bastards. That we must fight and seize what is ours.”

“You’re cleverly distorting what I said.”

“Where is my statement wrong?”

“Hah.”

At the sight of Hyeolgeom glaring at him with eyes full of hostility and regret, Ilryun, who clenched his fist, calmed his mind and opened his mouth.

“Hyeolgeom-ah. Hyeolgeom-ah. How could you be so foolish?”

“I’m foolish?”

“What I advocated was for the Divine Cult’s future all along. Not for the past.”

“Sabaek said we must strike the Murim Alliance and Sado Alliance.”

“I said we must strike. I didn’t say we must annihilate them. I thought it would be enough to cast off the duties we’d shouldered until now, and that was my intention.”

Who was the leader of the war faction?

Ilryun. Unlike the peace faction that believed they should live by keeping their duties as they had done until now, Ilryun actively advocated war with the Central Plains Murim.

But was that advocacy to destroy the Central Plains Murim? That was different. That’s because.

What Ilryun wanted to obtain was land for the Divine Cult to settle on.

“The Central Plains Murim is vast and the land they occupy is abundant. We wanted to be integrated by releasing the Great Sealing and penetrating into the Central Plains. Not to annihilate them.”

“What a weak plan. Do you think they’ll properly accept our cult’s people if we do that?”

“They might discriminate against us. No, they will discriminate. Human hatred isn’t something that can be easily uprooted. However.”

Time is strong.

Just as wind and rain carve down a thousand-year boulder into a fist-sized stone, if it’s not carved away in decades, then hundreds of years, if not carved away in hundreds of years, then thousands of years will carve away the hatred between them. Moreover, now that the ones who released the Great Sealing aren’t them, that time will be shortened even more.

“I cannot accept Sabaek’s will.”

“You did. You were always like that. Like your teacher Saje, you were upright yet self-righteous.”

He didn’t even think he could persuade him. This is just a hallucination created by the obsession within himself anyway.

“Rest.”

Swooooosh-!!!

Looking at Hyeolgeom’s hallucination disappearing far too easily for something that was supposed to be one of the Chilryun’s hallucinations, Ilryun exhaled deeply at his worn mental strength and let his hand drop.

“A formation technique made to shake people…….”

It has no combat power.

He had already met dozens of phantoms, but there were no cases where those phantoms brought any harm to him. They simply spoke to him and told their stories.

However,

“Even though my age has exceeded longevity, it’s this painful, so I wonder how the other children are doing.”

Geomseon or Taeag.

He’s not worried about those two. They’re people whose mental fortitude stands upright even more than Ilryun himself, whose cores literally don’t waver, and they have abundant experience too.

But the case is different for others. Those who have lived hoping their wounds would only heal and haven’t overcome them won’t be able to withstand this spiritual blow.

When the spirit wavers, the sword tip wavers, and a wavering sword tip cannot properly aim at the opponent. Moreover, this wavering of the spirit doesn’t just stop at making the heart flutter, does it?

“Half…… no, it will fall below that.”

It has nothing to do with the level of martial arts. The results will differ depending on how firm their mental fortitude is and how they’ve lived.

“……I’m worried. Who will climb up…….”

──!!!

Ilryun, who had been looking down for a moment, saw a pale light exploding far away and wore a bitter smile. The familiar Ki wave bursting forth.

‘There was no need to worry.’

Yes. It was always like that.

In this world, while there are humans who can’t directly face their wounds and are desperate to cover them up, there are also people who overcome and transcend their wounds. And.

Among them, some people don’t stop at transcending their own wounds but even embrace others’ wounds.

“I should just wait up there.”

Ilryun, who smiled faintly, loosely held his pipe and deeply inhaled smoke.

Below, Uicheon was rampaging.