Chapter ~ 02
“I was… definitely dead.”
Without realizing it, Yeon Mu-hyeok touched his chest.
For an instant, the excruciating pain returned—the pain of the Heavenly Demon’s Asura Overlord Dance, which had shattered his sword, severed both his legs with the force that followed, and crushed his heart.
His body, remembering that final agony, immediately broke out in a cold sweat.
“Ggh…!”
It was an overwhelming shock for a body that had not even finished growing.
It took quite some time for him to calm his pounding heart and spasming muscles.
His vision, which had been spinning from dizziness, gradually settled.
Even a Transformation-Realm master could cut through the mind itself.
And Heavenly Demon Dan Mok-jin had been a master of the Profound Realm.
Simply recalling that attack from his memories made even his spirit ache.
Not yet. I suppose even reviewing the fight is too much for now.
Yeon Mu-hyeok immediately understood the reason and groaned softly.
His battle with the Heavenly Demon had undoubtedly been one of the most extraordinary experiences among the countless struggles he had endured throughout his life.
If he could properly analyze that battle, there was no doubt he could advance several steps.
But Yeon Mu-hyeok changed his train of thought without hesitation.
As a martial artist who had once reached the pinnacle of the Transformation Realm, he understood that everything had its proper time.
First, I should figure out where I am.
He stretched his still-unsteady legs and climbed down from the bed.
Then he slowly looked around the room.
The furniture was unlike anything he had ever seen in either the Central Plains or the lands beyond the frontier.
The books scattered across the table and the characters written across the sheets of paper were equally unfamiliar.
They looked somewhat similar to Sanskrit, but the form and structure of the sentences were completely different.
Still, it did not take long for him to determine what the room was used for.
A smell that tickled his nose.
Liquid sloshing inside transparent bottles.
Bandages and small knives scattered nearby.
A clinic.
Apparently, the owner of this small body had been injured somewhere and was being treated here.
The moment he realized this, he felt an uncomfortable sensation around his head.
He reached up with his right hand and felt several layers of rough bandages wrapped around his head beneath his hair.
I see. An injury to the head? Is that why I…? No. It’s too early to jump to conclusions. I should investigate further.
Even when he carefully felt around the wound through the bandages, there was hardly any pain.
That meant the injury itself had not been serious.
Yeon Mu-hyeok continued thinking as he absorbed everything he could see into his mind.
Where was this place?
Whose body was this?
Why had he come back to life?
If someone had deliberately caused this, what was their purpose and what means had they used?
And so on.
It was not long before his thoughts, racing as swiftly as arrows, suddenly came to a halt.
At precisely the same moment, Yeon Mu-hyeok stopped walking around the room.
“…Huh?”
A large mirror.
He had never seen anything like it, not in the Central Plains nor beyond the frontier.
It was enormous and crystal clear.
It immediately captured his attention.
Golden hair.
Crimson eyes.
Features that resembled those of the foreigners he had occasionally heard about.
A boy with an exotic appearance that Yeon Mu-hyeok could never have imagined himself possessing was staring back at him from inside the mirror.
“Eh!?”
Then it happened.
Perhaps recognizing his own appearance had been the trigger.
The body, which had been suppressed beneath Yeon Mu-hyeok’s consciousness, suddenly released fragments of its memories.
For an ordinary person, such a situation might have caused a complete identity crisis.
But to the Sword Emperor, who had cut down countless inner demons throughout his life, it amounted to little more than a brief headache.
The memories of a child who had lived for barely fourteen years—and not even all of them, only fragments—could not overwhelm Yeon Mu-hyeok.
I see… This body’s name is Leonard, and he’s one of the trainees who carries the blood of the Cardenas family.
Yeon Mu-hyeok quickly regained his composure and muttered to himself.
And that was not all.
Unlike before, the unnatural sensation caused by his short, thin limbs had begun to disappear.
He could also naturally understand and speak the language he had previously been unable to read or utter.
Acting like “Leonard” would probably not be particularly difficult either.
At that moment—
Click.
The tightly closed door opened.
A knight and a healer appeared behind it, both widening their eyes.
They had been warned that they would be disciplined if the child did not wake by the following day.
Thus, when they saw him sitting up, relief flashed across their faces even before their surprise.
“Leonard! No, Number 381. You’re awake?”
“Haah… Thank goodness.”
The knight hurried over and examined various parts of his body before finally letting out a sigh of relief.
The healer, who had narrowly avoided having his pay docked, reacted similarly.
Yeon Mu-hyeok watched their reactions and clicked his tongue.
Even in this confused state, I failed to notice an approach this obvious. I need to reflect on that.
The fact that this body was not even at the level of a third-rate martial artist, let alone the Transformation Realm of his previous life, was no excuse.
After blaming himself for his carelessness, Yeon Mu-hyeok remained silent for a moment.
The knight, puzzled by his lack of response, met his eyes.
Only then did Yeon Mu-hyeok recall his name.
“Instructor… Gerard?”
“Yes. I’m Instructor Gerard. Your reactions seem a little slow. Is there any confusion or gaps in your memory?”
“Um… Why am I here?”
Yeon Mu-hyeok asked in a manner similar to how Leonard might have.
As though he had expected this, the knight Gerard answered,
“You were struck on the back of the head by a wooden sword swung by the person behind you during training.”
“Ah…”
Only then did Yeon Mu-hyeok understand the reason for the bandages.
He nodded.
“It’s good that you’ve regained consciousness, but it doesn’t seem like you’ve fully recovered yet. Don’t attend training for a week starting today. Focus entirely on recovering from your injury.”
“Yes, Instructor.”
“If you have no difficulty moving around, eat your meals in the dining hall. Otherwise, live as you normally would.”
When Yeon Mu-hyeok answered yes, Gerard merely nodded once and left the room.
Perhaps because his worries had disappeared, he looked considerably lighter.
The healer also let out a long sigh as soon as Gerard left.
“My goodness, what a mess. It wasn’t your fault, but I’ve never experienced anything like this before.”
“I’m sorry.”
The healer apparently had no intention of accepting an apology from a little boy, because he waved his hand tiredly.
“Forget it. What fault does an injured child have? I’ll give you a few potions to help with your recovery. Drink one a day before going to sleep.”
He took five small bottles from a shelf and evenly divided a green liquid from another container among them.
Then he handed all of them to Yeon Mu-hyeok.
“Th-thank you.”
“If you’re grateful, don’t get injured again, and don’t come back here. Now go.”
“Yes.”
Holding the bottles against the front of his clothes, Yeon Mu-hyeok left the medical room with an even more subdued gait.
Fortunately, thanks to Leonard’s memories, he did not get lost or wander around aimlessly.
Perhaps because it was still working hours, he did not encounter a single person.
Eventually, he arrived in front of the room assigned to Leonard.
Creeeak.
He pushed open the door, which was much stiffer than the one to the medical room.
Inside was a space that seemed barely large enough for someone to sleep in.
There was no desk.
Only a bed and a wardrobe.
Even the wardrobe was occupied by a few sets of training clothes and two or three wooden swords.
It was hardly an appropriate room in which to raise children.
“It isn’t bad, aside from being a little cramped.”
But the Sword Emperor Yeon Mu-hyeok had spent decades living as a wandering martial artist in his youth.
He had even frequently slept wrapped in clothing stripped from the corpses of enemies he had slaughtered.
As long as a room was clean, free of foul odors, and had clean bedding, it was practically luxurious to him.
He first placed the potion bottles neatly in the corner of the wardrobe.
Then he climbed onto the bed, sat cross-legged, and closed his eyes.
I need to learn more about myself.
He was not talking about seeking martial enlightenment.
He needed more memories about the person named Leonard.
He had recovered fragments concerning the body’s sensations, its name, and its identity.
But that was nowhere near enough.
He had even needed a moment to remember the instructor’s name.
If there were someone who had been close to Leonard, they would immediately notice something strange.
I need to go through everything from the very beginning.
Entering the state of Selflessness without using even a trace of internal energy was an ability that could only be achieved by someone at the Transformation Realm or higher.
With fewer than ten breaths, Yeon Mu-hyeok concentrated his mind and delved deep into the body.
His spirit touched his brain.
The realm where body, inner energy, and mind could be operated independently.
The storehouse of memories had closed its doors in response to the unwelcome intruder.
But it could not withstand the power of the Sword Emperor for long.
Whoosh!
The life of “Leonard” unfolded inside his mind and began merging with Yeon Mu-hyeok’s own life.
He was not taking over the body.
He was merely opening a storehouse whose owner had disappeared and examining what was inside.
From the very moment Yeon Mu-hyeok first awakened, there had been nothing resembling the original owner’s soul within this body.
And soon, Yeon Mu-hyeok understood what had happened.
“I… was reincarnated?”
Among the countless collateral descendants of the Grand Duchy of Cardenas, a child named Leonard had suffered many hardships from the moment he was born.
The Cardenas bloodline was known for producing bodies so robust that even if they tripped over a rock, it was the ground that would be scraped rather than their skin.
Yet Leonard fell ill almost every day.
At first, people suspected that his mother had conceived him with another man.
But magical examinations confirmed that this was not the case.
Perhaps this child’s blood is simply too diluted.
It would have been better if things had ended there.
But the mage’s inability to determine the cause of Leonard’s illness eventually led to a desperate attempt to shift responsibility, and that ultimately destroyed the family.
Leonard’s parents kept blaming each other until they separated, leaving their child alone at the main family estate.
Neither of them had died.
Yet Leonard had become an orphan.
“Tsk. I can’t really blame them.”
Yeon Mu-hyeok smiled bitterly.
There was no helping it.
The reason “Leonard” had repeatedly fallen ill from a young age was because Yeon Mu-hyeok’s memories and consciousness had been pressing against his brain.
It was not merely the sheer volume of memories accumulated over nearly sixty years.
There was also the harshness of a life spent crossing mountains of corpses and seas of blood, along with the martial enlightenment he had honed to the very pinnacle of the Transformation Realm.
If all that information had flooded into a brain that had not yet fully developed, it would hardly have been surprising if Leonard had suffered a high fever and become brain-dead.
His survival instinct must have blocked the memories of his previous life for that reason.
I suppose the body had only finally become ready at this age.
Being struck on the back of the head had merely been a trivial trigger.
The memories had probably been preparing to awaken at any time.
“If that old Divine Monk ever finds out about this, he’d probably turn the world upside down.”
No matter how many times Yeon Mu-hyeok thought about it, the whole thing was bizarre.
He, who had never had any particular interest in either Taoism or Buddhism, had personally experienced reincarnation.
He had not met the Jade Emperor or Yama during the process.
But he had nevertheless learned that there were laws of existence beyond the boundaries of human perception.
If that was true, then the legendary Ascension to Immortality, which had existed only as rumors throughout the martial world, might also be real.
…Though that’s a very distant matter for me right now.
Yeon Mu-hyeok—or rather, the boy who was now Leonard—looked down at his two palms for a moment and gave a quiet chuckle.
Small and fragile hands, with calluses only beginning to form.
Everything he had accumulated throughout his entire life had been lost.
Yet, according to what the Heavenly Demon had told him, this was nothing less than a blessing in disguise.
A chance to build himself perfectly again from the very foundations.
“This place… makes it possible.”
He could confidently say so.
He was certain that he could reach the Profound Realm, which he had failed to reach in his previous life, and perhaps even a realm beyond it.
The reason was extremely simple.
“Inhale… exhale…”
Leonard closed his eyes and took a single deep breath.
Dense qi immediately flowed into him and surged through his body.
The quantity and density of qi distributed throughout nature were astonishing.
Even the hidden sanctum of the Mystic Forest, the most spiritually potent land in the Central Plains, had not possessed qi this dense.
With nothing more than a basic breathing and energy-gathering technique, he could probably accumulate sixty years of internal energy in only ten years.
Shamans and Taoist practitioners who relied on external qi rather than internal qi would probably be at least ten times more powerful in this world.
Those must be the people they call mages here.
Leonard thought so.
He had not yet had the opportunity to see one with his own eyes, but they were certainly not people he could afford to underestimate.
The realization that he had even more opponents besides the martial artists of this world caused his competitive spirit to burn fiercely.
Ding— ding— ding—
At that moment, the sound of a bell ringing in the distance brought him back to reality.
Dinner?
His stomach growled in response to the bell announcing the evening meal.
Leonard chuckled and stood up.
“Hmm. It’s been a long time since I’ve eaten an actual meal instead of fasting pills.”
Part of him wanted to rush out into the world immediately and enthusiastically cross swords with enemies he had never encountered before.
But this small body was already complaining that it could not even skip a single meal.
Even so, Leonard did not become impatient.
Sudden enlightenment came only after there was nothing left to refine.
Until then, he needed gradual cultivation—tempering his body and techniques and refining his internal energy—to create a vessel capable of holding something greater.
A vessel greater than the one possessed by the Sword Emperor Yeon Mu-hyeok.
For now, it was time to accumulate.
And then accumulate some more.
