CHAPTER 03

“Alright, I’ve decided!”

By the time the sun had risen high into the sky, Heo Cheon, who had spent the entire night wide awake ever since leaving Sanghwa Inn, suddenly sprang to his feet and declared,

“I’m going home first.”

It was a decision he had reached after agonizing over it countless times throughout the night.

Of course, giving up the comfortable and convenient civilization of the modern world was not as easy as it sounded.

However, now that the Blood Demon Cult had been destroyed, there was no way for Heo Cheon to return there from the Central Plains.

Even if he somehow found a way outside the Central Plains, it did not seem like something he could accomplish in a short period of time.

Heo Cheon suddenly found himself resenting the Blood Demon Cult—or more precisely, Gu Cheonhyeolma Go Cheonrak, the man who had sent him to Korea.

‘Damn Blood Demon bastard. If you were going to send me there, you should’ve just made it a one-way trip. Why the hell did you have to make it a round trip? What am I, some dog being put through pointless training?’

They say there is nothing more despicable in this world than giving something to someone only to take it away again.

Heo Cheon sighed and shook his head.

“Ah, none of that matters anymore. Let’s just go home.”

Besides, the Murim Alliance had already been dissolved long ago, so there was no longer any responsibility tying him down.

Namgung Hwi would be managing his clan well enough on his own.

‘He’s always been an exceptionally capable man, so there’s no need for me to worry about him.’

More than anything, Heo Cheon wanted to see his family, whom he had not seen for such a long time.

“They’re doing well, right?”

As far as he knew, there had been no problems with his family home when he had checked on it toward the end of the War Between the Righteous and Evil Factions, so it should still be standing.

His parents had both learned martial arts, and neither had suffered from any particular chronic illness, so there should be no major problems.

There was only one thing that bothered him.

“Phew… When I get home, Dad is going to beat me half to death, isn’t he?”

He would be lucky if all he got was a scolding.

When he was only ten years old, Heo Cheon had run away from home on a whim, declaring that he would become a chivalrous hero. Instead, he had ended up becoming a miserable little beggar.

Then, while barely surviving from day to day by wandering around and begging for food, a wrinkled hand had appeared before him.

‘I never should have taken my master’s hand back then.’

As it happened, he had encountered his master just when he was thinking about returning home.

At the time, he had not known that his master would prevent him from descending the mountain until he had completely mastered every martial art of their sect.

Nor had he known that, after eight years of grueling training, he would coincidentally meet Namgung Hwi on his way down the mountain, the man who would later become the leader of the Murim Alliance, and end up commanding an escort unit called the Silver Moon Guard.

Of course, it was not as though he had never contacted his hometown during all those years.

From before the formation of the Murim Alliance until the final battle, he had consistently sent word of his well-being through messengers.

But no matter how many messages he sent, it was never the same as visiting them in person.

‘I kept putting it off because I planned to return home in glory once the war was over…’

Because he had run away from home as a child after declaring that he would become a chivalrous hero, he felt that he could never return without having achieved something significant. He had been burdened by the thought that he needed to accomplish something worthy before facing his parents again.

But before that could happen, Gu Cheonhyeolma had sent Heo Cheon flying into another dimension—not the Central Plains.

For a full twenty years.

‘I was foolish.’

Whenever he had the chance, he should have gone to see them at least once more.

Only now did he realize something so simple and obvious.

There could hardly have been a more unfilial son than him.

As he became keenly aware of how careless and indifferent he had been in the past, regret came flooding over him.

‘By now, they probably think I’m dead, don’t they?’

The Murim Alliance must surely have contacted them separately.

Even if they could not reveal his true identity, they would at least have informed his family that he had died a heroic death.

“Phew… Let’s just go home first. I’ll get down on my knees and beg for forgiveness.”

Whether they forgave him or not was another matter. It was simply what a son ought to do.

“Then shall I leave right away?”

Now that he had decided on his destination, there was no reason to hesitate any longer.

Although he had stayed awake all night, that little fatigue was nothing to him. A single session of circulating his qi and regulating his breathing while taking a break along the way would completely restore him.

Heo Cheon casually stretched his body, then suddenly muttered,

“Ah. Come to think of it, the Beggars’ Sect. They’re almost too competent at their jobs. That’s the problem.”

After saying something incomprehensible, he lightly pushed off the ground.

Whoosh!

His body shot straight upward as if someone had grabbed him from above and pulled him up, stopping at a height of roughly five jang above the ground.

Ordinarily, he should have fallen back down according to the laws of nature.

Yet, somehow, Heo Cheon remained suspended in midair as though gravity had no effect on him.

‘Let’s see… Is east over there?’

After roughly determining the direction, Heo Cheon stamped his foot in midair as if pushing off the ground.

Whoosh!

With the sound of air being split apart, his body shot forward in a straight line, covering more than twenty jang in an instant.

He repeated the movement several times.

Before long, his figure had become a tiny dot before disappearing beyond the horizon in the blink of an eye.

Not long afterward, a masked figure suddenly rose like a ghost from the vacant lot beside the road where Heo Cheon had been standing moments earlier.

It was October, who had secretly followed Heo Cheon immediately after receiving orders from the woman of the Beggars’ Sect the previous night.

He looked around frantically. Even though his face was completely hidden behind his mask, his bewildered voice made his panic obvious.

“…The trail just ends?”

If someone traveled along the ground, no matter how fast or stealthily they moved, they would inevitably leave some trace behind. October had been confident that he could never lose his target.

But Heo Cheon had simultaneously used Riding the Qi to Soar Upward and Stepping Through Empty Space to travel through the sky.

In other words, he had left absolutely no trace behind.

October, who had no way of knowing this, was utterly confused by the unexpected situation.

Nevertheless, he thoroughly searched the surrounding area once again.

He wanted to make absolutely certain that he had not missed anything.

But the result was exactly the same as before.

“As expected, the trail ends here. To think he could shake off someone like me, who has devoted his entire life to the art of tracking… His skills are truly terrifying.”

Catching up to someone who possessed greater skill than oneself in the same field was an extremely difficult task.

October decided that pursuing Heo Cheon any further was meaningless.

“I’ll have to pursue him by another method and obtain information about him.”

After muttering softly, October shot off in the direction completely opposite to the one in which Heo Cheon had disappeared.

Late that night.

Above the night sky of the place where the Blood Demon Cult’s headquarters had once stood—but which had now become nothing more than a quiet field—faint dots began appearing one by one.

The true identities of those dots were none other than blood-red bats.

Dozens of Blood Bats flew frantically over the field, repeatedly flapping their thin, crimson wings.

Yet there was not the slightest sound.

Not even the sound of their wings beating.

It was as though someone had deliberately erased every trace of noise.

It was an eerie and unnatural sight.

Then, the swarm of Blood Bats suddenly came to a halt before a pit roughly two jang in diameter.

It was the very place where an unexpected earthquake had occurred not long ago, where a pillar of blood-red light had shot into the sky, and where Heo Cheon had fallen.

The swarm of Blood Bats circled around the pit for quite some time.

Then, suddenly, an ominous voice rang out.

[There is no doubt. This is His aura—or, more precisely, its lingering trace…!]

No sooner had the voice ended than the clustered Blood Bats split apart to both sides.

A man wearing a black blood-colored cloak stepped through the opening.

As though annoyed by the inconvenience, he pushed back the hood that had been pulled all the way over his head.

His face was pale as a sheet of paper, his eyes were covered with countless dark spots, and he had handsome features framed by blood-red hair and crimson lips.

“At last. At long last…!”

The red-haired man spoke with an expression full of certainty, desperately suppressing the emotions welling up inside him.

“Twenty years. A full twenty years, and His incarnation has descended upon this land once again…! Ah! As expected, He has not yet abandoned our Holy Cult…!”

He immediately approached the pit and reverently knelt before it, crossing both hands over his chest as he cried out,

“The Blood God’s Divine Glory—Eternal and Immortal…!”

Astonishingly, the red-haired man was a member of the Blood Demon Cult, which had been destroyed long ago.

And he was no ordinary member.

His hair was redder than freshly spilled blood.

It was one of the characteristic features of an apostle who had gained an incomplete form of immortality through the Blood God’s blessing—the so-called Blood Apostle.

The unknown Blood Apostle muttered with an expression of madness,

“We must find Him. This time, absolutely, under no circumstances will I lose His incarnation as pointlessly as I did last time…!”

It had been ten days since Heo Cheon had shaken off the Beggars’ Sect’s pursuit.

He finally arrived before a massive fortress-like city wall.

It was Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang—one of the two earthly paradises said to rival the Heavenly Paradise in the sky.

Standing before the city gate, where people had been lined up since early morning, Heo Cheon was overwhelmed by conflicting emotions.

‘I really did come back.’

The scenery of his homeland, which he had not seen in so long, was both familiar and strange.

More than thirty years had passed since he had impulsively run away from home as a child, after all.

‘That city gate used to look so huge back then.’

It was still enormous even now, but unlike when he was young, he could destroy it with a single palm strike if he wished.

Naturally, it felt completely different.

While he was thinking this, the line ahead of him gradually shortened.

Before long, it was his turn.

“Stop. Show me your identification token.”

“Here.”

Heo Cheon handed the examining soldier an old wooden identification tablet.

It was the identification token he had carefully kept ever since running away from home and throughout his years in Korea.

Because he had never allowed it to leave his body, it was covered in countless marks from years of handling, and the characters engraved upon it had become so worn that they were barely legible.

Even so, there was no problem getting through the inspection.

Once he passed through the city gate, countless people and buildings came into view.

“Wow. Hangzhou really is Hangzhou.”

Compared to the Zhongyang County he had passed through earlier, the difference was like heaven and earth.

Heo Cheon looked around repeatedly like a country bumpkin who had just arrived in the capital.

“Huh? They built that there? Oh, that place is still here? It used to be the second-generation original shop, but now it’s the third generation. I wonder if it tastes the same?”

The people around him paid no attention to his excited behavior.

People visiting Hangzhou for the first time—or returning after a long absence—often made a fuss just like Heo Cheon was doing.

So everyone simply took it in stride, and Heo Cheon did not particularly care about attracting attention.

‘I wonder if our house has changed too. It was newly built back then, but it must be a little old now. Oh! There’s our house!’

Before long, a familiar building came into view.

It was the Heo Family Manor, Heo Cheon’s ancestral home.

Heo Cheon hurried over and was just about to knock on the door when he suddenly stopped and looked down at his clothes.

His appearance had become much more like that of a Central Plains martial artist compared to ten days ago.

The shabby chorip he had stolen from a commoner’s house and the loose hemp clothes he had been wearing had been replaced by a stylish bamboo hat and a high-quality black jangsam tailored perfectly to his body.

A long sword he had not possessed before hung from his waist.

He had obtained those things only yesterday with money he earned by selling the hides of wild animals he had hunted along the way, as well as valuables he had forcibly taken from a group of bandits he happened to encounter.

The reason Heo Cheon was suddenly concerned about his appearance was simple.

‘This should be enough that, even if I can’t exactly call it a glorious homecoming, I won’t look too pathetic, right?’

After all, what parent in the world would be happy if the son who had run away as a child returned looking shabby and miserable?

Especially after being separated for several decades.

At the very least, he had to make sure he looked presentable.

‘Ah, if only I had shampoo, soap, and toothpaste, it would be perfect.’

Compared to Korea, the cleansing products of the Central Plains were nowhere near as effective.

Because of that, even though he was not normally the type to obsess over cleanliness, he constantly felt uncomfortable, as though he had not cleaned himself properly.

Once again, he could painfully appreciate just how far the civilization of Earth had advanced beyond that of the Central Plains—even in such trivial matters.

‘Phew… I’m starting to miss Korea.’

Just as Heo Cheon was about to knock on the gate, trying to push his disappointment aside—

BANG!

“Gaaah!”

“Huh?”

A person suddenly smashed through the door and came flying out with an unexpected scream.

Heo Cheon had not exactly expected an enthusiastic welcome, but this was far beyond anything he could have imagined.

“You bastaaards! Do you even know whose territory you’re fooling around in?!”

A familiar voice rang out in anger.

‘That sounds like the steward’s voice. He must be seriously pissed. What on earth is going on?’

Curious, Heo Cheon looked through the broken doorway.

His expression immediately hardened.

Inside, two groups were engaged in a fierce confrontation.

At that moment, a young man dressed in a lavishly decorated dark-blue robe leisurely waved his fan and spoke mockingly.

“Hehehe. This old tiger may be well past his prime, but he certainly hasn’t lost his temper. Keep this up, and you might die without even leaving your skin behind.”

The young man’s warning immediately enraged the elderly man facing him.

Though he looked old, the man had a sturdy build.

He was Im Ho-pil, the chief steward of the Heo Family Manor.

“You’re talking nonsense! Get the hell out of here while I’m still asking nicely, you bastard!”

“Hahaha. I merely said that I wanted to see the Manor Lord’s face once. Why are you getting so angry? It’s hardly an unreasonable request.”

“Hmph! How many times must I tell you that my lord is away? Stop being so unreasonable and get out of my sight immediately.”

“Hmmm. Hearing that only makes it harder to believe. Perhaps he’s actually inside, and you’re deliberately claiming that he isn’t? I suppose I’ll have to see for myself before I’m satisfied.”

The young man moved the instant he finished speaking.

Im Ho-pil hurriedly moved to stop him.

But—

Papapapat!

Before long, their hands and feet began moving in a blur.

In the end, before even twenty seconds had passed, the young man struck Im Ho-pil squarely in the chest with a palm strike.

BANG!

“Ugh!”

Im Ho-pil let out a groan and collapsed flat on his back.

“Hehe. This could have ended peacefully if you had simply let me see the Manor Lord. But you kept getting in my way, so now you’ve been humiliated by this distant junior of yours.”

The young man mocked the defenseless Im Ho-pil.

He was just about to deliver the final blow when—

Tap.

A finger lightly poked the young man on the shoulder.

“Huh?”

Immediately, against his own will, both of the young man’s knees slammed into the ground.

“…What?”

The young man was momentarily bewildered.

Then he quickly raised his head.

A bamboo-hatted man wearing a black robe he had never seen before was looking down at him.

Just as the young man was about to call out to his subordinates for help, he belatedly noticed the men sprawled around the bamboo-hatted stranger.

‘Could he have taken all of them down by himself in that short amount of time?’