Bu Eunseol left the Martial Alliance and immediately returned to Majeon.
Leading the elite forces of Death Shadow Corps, he headed straight for Cheonsan without delay.
Cheonsan was where Southern Sky Great Hero Gwanhai Geum—disciple of the nameless elder who had volunteered to be the shadow of the Seven-Finger Demon Blade, and a renowned orthodox hero—lived in seclusion.
The monstrous old man, a master of the Three Realms and heir to the Blade Emperor’s martial arts, had been relentlessly pursuing him.
When Bu Eunseol had previously encountered Gwanhai Geum, the old man’s attack had forced him to flee Cheonsan once more.
But Bu Eunseol knew.
Gwanhai Geum was still hiding there.
Because Cheonsan was the optimal place to evade the Three Realms’ pursuit alone.
What was strange, however, was the old man.
He bore a lifelong regret for never fighting the Seven-Finger Demon Blade and obsessively hunted Gwanhai Geum, who had mastered the Seven Blood Tear Forms. So why had he never tracked or ambushed Bu Eunseol, who also wielded the Seven Blood Tear Forms?
For someone from the Three Realms, that shouldn’t be impossible.
‘Then he’s not the leader of the Three Realms either?’
The old man’s blade arts surpassed Bu Eunseol’s; they were on a level he couldn’t dismantle in one strike.
Yet if he wasn’t the leader…
The power of the Three Realms and the masters within would be beyond measure.
‘Incredible blade arts.’
So far, Bu Eunseol had fought and defeated the descendants of the Eight Emperors and Three Stars.
But the old man was different. He displayed a profound martial prowess on another plane entirely from any master Bu Eunseol had faced.
‘At the very least, his rank is higher than the Three Realms’ Emissary.’
Given that overwhelming skill, even if he wasn’t the leader, he was surely close to the core. Capturing him could yield new information about the Three Realms.
Purrut.
Wi Cheongyeong, commanding the troops on site, approached.
“We arrived around the same time they withdrew their forces—traces are visible.”
Even though they had come the moment Death Spirit Corps obtained intel, neither the puppets nor the Blade Emperor’s heir remained. In the end, Bu Eunseol’s intelligence network still couldn’t match the Three Realms.
“There’s nothing new.” Bu Eunseol spoke calmly, swallowing a bitter sound. “Take the troops back to Majeon at once. I’ll scout the surroundings a bit longer.”
“Understood.” Wi Cheongyeong and Death Shadow Corps’s elite warriors immediately returned to Majeon.
As Bu Eunseol gazed impassively at Cheonsan, Soyo’s low voice reached him. “You’re looking for Hero Gwanhai, right?”
“Yes. You noticed.”
Even if the Three Realms had withdrawn, Gwanhai Geum would likely still be here. Bu Eunseol intended to deliver news of the nameless elder and find him.
“Let’s go.”
Unleashing his movement art, Bu Eunseol raced through Cheonsan without hesitation.
Cheonsan was vast so finding one man was impossible. But Bu Eunseol knew how Gwanhai Geum chose his hiding places and could easily track the signs.
Terrain where large forces couldn’t enter, with multiple escape routes.
Places where arrays or traps could be set against the Blade Emperor’s heir.
Bu Eunseol searched every such location.
“There he is.” Bu Eunseol smiled, looking at a cave at the edge of a Cheonsan cliff.
No human traces were visible, but with Void Heart Command activated, countless signs of Treading Snow Without Trace appeared to his eyes.
“Hero Gwanhai.” Bu Eunseol deliberately made his presence known as he approached the cave.
“……!”
A sudden, intense foreboding struck him. He sensed faint, dying breaths from within.
“Hero Gwanhai!” Shouting loudly, Bu Eunseol rushed inside.
After running thirty chang, the narrow passage widened into a clearing with jagged stalactites hanging overhead.
In one corner lay a shadow, gasping, with a blade planted in the ground.
Southern Sky Great Hero, Gwanhai Geum.
“Hero Gwanhai!”
“You came.” Gwanhai Geum clutched his blood-soaked belly.
A sharp blade had shredded it, spilling intestines.
“So… how is the Elder?” Even with life hanging by a thread, he calmly asked after the benefactor he hadn’t seen in years.
“The Elder…” Bu Eunseol couldn’t continue.
He couldn’t bear to tell a dying man about the nameless elder’s wretched state, imprisoned in Blood Shaolin’s Repentance Cave.
“I see.” Reading everything from Bu Eunseol’s expression, Gwanhai Geum smiled faintly.
“Was his end… peaceful?”
“Yes.” Bu Eunseol spoke gravely. “And until the end, he wished to die as the shadow of the Seven-Finger Demon Blade.”
“So he did. That too was the Elder’s choice.” Gwanhai Geum’s eyes grew dim.
His breath was fading.
“Was it the Blade Emperor’s heir again?”
“No. I started the fight.” His gaze clouded. “I found someone who mastered the complete blade arts of the Seven-Finger Demon Blade… so I thought it was time to let go of this harsh life.”
“Elder.” Bloodlight flared in Bu Eunseol’s eyes.
“I will avenge you.”
He never intended to share the same sky as the Three Realms anyway, and since they had cruelly killed his benefactor, who had helped him find traces of his grandfather… he would have revenge.
“No.” Gwanhai Geum shook his head.
“You must not fight him yet.”
“Elder.”
“The blade arts he wields transcend the realm of martial studies… they are demonic blade arts.”
“I have the Seven Blood Tear Forms.”
“That’s exactly why you must not.” Gwanhai Geum spoke in a low voice. “He too has mastered the Seven Blood Tear Forms. Perfectly.”
Shocked, Bu Eunseol’s eyes widened. The nameless elder’s dying words resurfaced.
—Deceived by a vile person, I taught them five techniques of the Seven Blood Tear Forms…
‘Then was he the one who stole the Seven Blood Tear Forms?’
“He used the Seven Blood Tear Forms?”
“Yes. Even if it was only one form, he performed it more perfectly than me, someone who has practiced it all my life.”
“It’s probably only five forms.” Bu Eunseol relayed the elder’s words.
“Then all the more reason you must not use the Seven Blood Tear Forms.” Gwanhai Geum struggled to continue. “He is the Blade Emperor’s heir, whose blade arts have reached the realm of embodiment. The moment you use the remaining two forms, he may complete the full blade arts of the Seven Blood Tear Forms.”
With fading eyes, he said, “Until you perfectly master the Seven Blood Tear Forms and can fell him in one strike… do not fight him. Do you understand?”
Bu Eunseol bit his lip.
The nameless elder. Gwanhai Geum.
Both Master and disciple were alike.
Even in death, they worried for others.
“I understand.” Bu Eunseol nodded, holding Gwanhai Geum’s hands.
It was all he could offer now.
“Life in the martial world is bound by grudges and debts. So… no need to rage or pity my death.” Gwanhai Geum smiled softly. “Forget as much as you can. Even the memory of me.”
If he remembered, he would seek revenge on the old man.
Until the end, Gwanhai Geum worried for Bu Eunseol’s safety.
“I hope you achieve your goals.”
With those words, his eyes slowly closed.
He was gone.
“Elder.” Bu Eunseol bowed his head.
Even in this barren martial world, there were those who lived for others.
They willingly gave their lives to help, leaving no regrets in death.
Why…
Why had Gwanhai Geum and the nameless elder chosen such lives?
Would wandering the martial world longer reveal the reason?
After respectfully bowing to Gwanhai Geum’s body, Bu Eunseol quietly turned away. He had spent his life fleeing the Three Realms, making all of Cheonsan his home.
Thus, the entire mountain was his house—he would want no stifling tomb.
Step step.
Emerging from the cave, Bu Eunseol’s eyes blazed like a blood-soaked sun.
He had promised not to fight until completing the Seven Blood Tear Forms. But if the old man came seeking to kill him? He wouldn’t sit and die—that wouldn’t break the promise.
“Soyo.” Bu Eunseol spoke coldly.
“Tell the Death Spirit Corps to immediately stop concealing my movements.”
“To lure him out?”
“Yes.” Gazing at the distant sky, Bu Eunseol said, “He has always craved to fight Bu Zhanyang, who wields the Seven Blood Tear Forms.”
Bloodlight surged in his eyes.
“Once he knows I wield the Seven Blood Tear Forms, he will surely track me down.”
“Understood.”
Soyo didn’t try to stop him.
She knew Bu Eunseol’s nature better than anyone. When he made a perfect decision in his heart, he always looked to the far sky.
No one could sway a decision made that way.
Afterward, Bu Eunseol wandered the martial world alone, no longer hiding his tracks.
Surely then, the monstrous old man, the Blade Emperor’s heir, would come for him. But no matter how much time passed, no pursuit came, no trace of the old man appeared.
Instead, trouble erupted elsewhere.
“The Thunder God?” Lightning flashed in Bu Eunseol’s eyes at Soyo’s report.
The Thunder God, Nae Bihon—who had pursued the Three Realms’ Emissary from Soho warehouse—was now fleeing with irreversible fatal wounds.
Shocking news.
‘The Emissary defeated the Thunder God?’
The Emissary Bu Eunseol had seen at Soho warehouse possessed astonishing skill and unique martial arts.
‘No, impossible.’ Bu Eunseol shook his head.
The Thunder God was the Thunder God.
No matter how skilled the Emissary, he couldn’t win.
Something must have happened while pursuing the Emissary.
‘It’s all my fault.’
Nae Bihon had lost his family to the Three Realms, wandering the martial world as a madman. Though they shared the common enemy of the Three Realms, Bu Eunseol had used him twice to protect his Seon Woojin identity.
And now, gravely wounded and fleeing because of him… he had to help.
Udeuk.
To prepare for any possibility, Bu Eunseol used Face and Bone Shifting Art, transforming into Seolso’s appearance.
“Where is he?”
Soyo led him deep into Daehong Mountain’s forest. The lush woods were gone leaving only blackened rocks behind.
Nae Bihon must have fought fiercely here.
But deeper in, the burn marks vanished, replaced by lifeless, withered ancient trees.
“The trail ends here.” Soyo pointed to the ruined surroundings.
The ground was covered with traces of Thunder Spirit Annihilation that Nae Bihon had unleashed.
“He likely unleashed a full-power attack here, then fled quickly.”
Bu Eunseol, carefully surveying, shook his head. “No. He’s nearby.”
“Huh?”
“He left traces deliberately to shake pursuit. With Thunder Spirit Annihilation, he can fake escape signs easily.” Examining a withered tree, Bu Eunseol’s eyes deepened. “But martial arts that dry trees to death like this…”
Taak.
Bu Eunseol swiftly scanned the area, then unleashed his movement art.
He began sweeping through the forest.
‘Over there.’ He stopped at a small valley with a three-jang-high waterfall.
Quickly searching, he lifted a large boulder not far from the stream.
Kururu.
Beneath was a sunken pit, where a man lay staring wide-eyed.
Over seven cheok tall, with long limbs, his body was a mass of wounds with no unscathed spot. His pupils were ash-gray, and unfocused.
Even a corpse wouldn’t lose this much life in its eyes.
The Thunder God, Nae Bihon.
“Brother Thunder.” Bu Eunseol immediately dragged him out.
But he lay blankly, hearing nothing.
‘No way.’
Even close, Bu Eunseol felt no Thunder Divine Energy. Sensing something wrong, he examined the wounds thoroughly.
‘These wounds.’
Spiderweb-like cuts from sharp blades covered Nae Bihon’s body.
They weren’t from ordinary swords, but from materialized sharp qi.
Clearly traces of the Black Blood Demon Saber used by the old man who killed Gwanhai Geum.
‘It was him.’ Bu Eunseol bit his lip.
The Blade Emperor’s heir.
It wasn’t the Three Realms’ Emissary who fought Nae Bihon, but the monstrous old man.
He had left Nae Bihon near death and even extinguished the Thunder Divine Energy within.
“So the trees…” Trees touched by the Blade Emperor’s blade arts had lost all vitality, becoming withered husks.
Nae Bihon, too, was draining of life like those trees.
‘Similar to the Seven Blood Tear Forms, but different.’
The Seven Blood Tear Forms embodied ‘death.’ But the old man’s blade qi contained a destructive energy that endlessly extinguished vitality.
‘Moreover… extinguishing Thunder Divine Energy with ordinary blade arts is impossible.’
The Thunder God, Nae Bihon, could unleash the infinitively destructive Thunder Spirit Annihilation and instantly heal internal and external injuries with Thunder Divine Energy.
Yet the blade arts had erased the powerful Thunder Divine Energy inside him?
‘Then he adapted the Seven Blood Tear Forms into the Blade Emperor’s blade arts.’
Thunder Divine Energy resided in the Thunder Spirit Body. It could be suppressed temporarily, but never extinguished.
But if combined with the Seven Blood Tear Forms that inflicted death on contact and the Blade Emperor’s ultimate arts of destruction…
It might be possible.
“Brother Thunder. I’ll check your pulse.” Bu Eunseol thoroughly examined the death-like Nae Bihon.
But no Thunder Divine Energy was felt.
The problem: vicious blade qi still lingered in his body, gnawing at his life force.
‘He’ll die like this.’
Without Thunder Divine Energy, his body was limp like a boneless frame. If the demonic blade qi wasn’t purged, he would soon breathe his last.
“Shouldn’t we take him to a physician?”
At Soyo’s words, Bu Eunseol shook his head. “Ordinary physicians can’t treat him. And… if we don’t act fast, he’ll die soon.”
Re-examining Nae Bihon, Bu Eunseol injected Ban-Geuk Method qi into his Myeongmun acupoint.
But it couldn’t expel the vicious energy within.
To revive his dying flesh, a powerful spark to awaken his life force was needed.
‘A spark.’ Recalling his first fierce battle with Nae Bihon, Bu Eunseol’s eyes flashed. ‘Could Yeolha Great True Energy work?’
The reason he had leisurely defeated Nae Bihon, who wielded all-destroying Thunder Divine Energy was all thanks to the Yeolha Great True Energy, which was very similar to Thunder Divine Energy.
Ordinary people exposed to Yeolha Great True Energy would melt meridians and cook organs instantly. But with Nae Bihon’s Thunder Spirit Body that could contain Thunder Divine Energy… it might awaken him instead.
‘If I’m wrong, Brother Thunder will melt and die.’
Whether Yeolha Great True Energy could rouse his life and expel the vicious qi was uncertain. But leaving him meant death.
Better to try this.
“Soyo, stand guard.”
Hwarrrr!
Bu Eunseol immediately released the Yeolha Great True Energy. His blood vessels twisted, and salty blood rose in his mouth.
‘Still too much to wield extreme yang arts.’
Since receiving Water God Energy from Gongsun Dana, the Heavenly Glacial Secret posed no great strain when used. But the Yeolha Great True Energy twisted his meridians, making his blood surge like during an internal injury.
‘No matter!’
Uung.
Bu Eunseol began injecting Yeolha Great True Energy into Nae Bihon.
Chiiiii!
White smoke rose from Nae Bihon’s body as it turned red-hot.
If this judgment was wrong…
His body would ignite into a fireball instantly.
Uuuung!
But it only glowed red—no burning or melting.
His body was accepting Yeolha Great True Energy.
Uuuung!
Nae Bihon’s body blazed crimson, flickering like stars in the night sky.
The more Yeolha Great True Energy poured in, the brighter the light, heat pouring endlessly.
‘Ughhh.’
Bu Eunseol’s blood vessels bulged on as he continuously unleashed Yeolha Great True Energy.
Extreme yang force made the mixed energies in his body riot. The longer he wielded it, the more they clashed, and eventually, he felt pain tearing through his body like paper.
But Bu Eunseol ignored it and kept pouring Yeolha Great True Energy.
He had driven Nae Bihon to this state, so he had to save him, even at the cost of his life.
Beonjeok!
Suddenly, scorching light shot skyward from Nae Bihon’s body,
Hwaaaaak!
Black smoke poured out, scattering in all directions.
The demonic blade qi that had devoured his life was finally expelled.
“Urrrgh.” Writhing in pain, Nae Bihon screamed, eyes rolled back white.
“You’re the one who killed my son!” Foam bubbled from his mouth, only the whites of his eyes visible. “Hiding behind that identity like a rat—that’s why I couldn’t find you!”
Nae Bihon roared as if spitting blood.
“You… you were the Blade Emperor’s heir!”
Bu Eunseol’s eyes widened.
Nae Bihon had said the Three Realms’ Emissary killed his wife and son.
Yet the Blade Emperor’s heir was the culprit?
And ‘that identity’… did that mean that the Blade Emperor’s heir had another identity too?
