Crack. Snap.
The slender legs, unable to bear the weight, began to shatter like brittle cookies.
Merely by directing his gaze, Bu Eunseol caused the legs—and even the bodies—of the countless masked figures filling the reed field to break apart.
“Impossible.”
Watching the scene, the Intelligence Star’s eyes widened in shock.
“He didn’t dispel the suggestion—he used the suggestion itself to destroy everything?”
It was utterly unbelievable.
Until now, the Intelligence Star had dealt with countless powerful foes using ant-based suggestion.
Never once had the suggestion been broken.
Yet this young man had taken the suggestion to its most extreme, hyper-realistic conclusion and shattered the supposedly unbreakable Demonic Ant Barrier.
“You—!” In great alarm, the Intelligence Star once again commanded the army of human-sized ants toward Bu Eunseol.
But it was futile.
The moment they were formed, their legs exploded before his eyes, leaving them writhing helplessly.
If giant ants the size of humans truly existed in reality, this was exactly what would happen.
“The limit of a power that must be believed.” Looking at the Intelligence Star, Bu Eunseol spoke with an intrigued expression. “That means, in the end, the suggestion can only take hold at the level of imagination that a person can rationally accept.”
If suggestion could enlarge anything or create anything that exists, he could have conjured castle-sized tigers or legendary dragons and wielded god-like power.
But a tiger of impossible size, or a dragon no one had ever seen?
No matter how much it was “suggestion,” the human mind would struggle to accept it as real.
That was why the Intelligence Star had always relied on something plausible—enlarging tiny insects to human size—to defeat strong opponents.
Clack.
Raising the Silent Tiger Soul Sword, Bu Eunseol addressed the Intelligence Star.
“Surely that bizarre power isn’t all you have. Show me your other tricks.”
Yet the Intelligence Star could say nothing.
In truth, roughly half of those born with the power of the Hundred and Eight Stars never bothered to train in martial arts at all.
Since they possessed strength capable of crushing any martial art in an instant, they felt no need to painstakingly cultivate one. Instead, they devoted that time to further developing the power of their Star.
But at that moment—
“Impressive. To dismantle the Intelligence Star so easily.” From behind the Intelligence Star appeared a middle-aged man dressed in splendid crimson robes.
With wind-swept features and frost-white hair at his temples, he was clearly no ordinary person.
“Enough to have become Manwol’s key, I suppose.”
“Key?”
“You don’t know?”
When Bu Eunseol gave a strange look, the middle-aged man gave a short laugh.
“Or perhaps you didn’t think that witch would help a complete stranger without gaining anything substantial in return.”
Bu Eunseol’s eyes narrowed.
He had always found it puzzling why Manwol, while being pursued, wandered the martial world alone.
But from the middle-aged man’s words, it almost sounded as though she had approached him with some special purpose.
“You really didn’t know.”
Observing Bu Eunseol’s expression, the middle-aged man chuckled.
“That witch’s role is to drag young people like you down into hell.”
“And old men like you appear in person to personally slaughter the young?”
“Hahaha. You have a sharp tongue.”
The middle-aged man waved his hand dismissively.
“In any case, those she designates as keys must die. Otherwise the martial world will once again fall into ruin.”
“What are you talking about?”
“No time for conversation. Let’s end it here.” The middle-aged man gave a faint smile. “Death ends everything. All of it.”
He extended his right hand.
Boom.
The entire world rippled like water, and Bu Eunseol’s body suddenly became as heavy as lead.
Phase.
In that instant, the middle-aged man began to wield not the power of the Hundred and Eight Stars, but the Mental Realm used by Inbiin.
‘So this man is also Inbiin?’
Even amid the pain, a question surged in Bu Eunseol’s mind, but he could not voice it.
Seon Woojin had no known contact with Inbiin.
Asking carelessly might arouse suspicion about his identity.
“Do you know that if the one who created the Mental Realm dies… everyone trapped inside dies with them?”
The middle-aged man looked at Bu Eunseol and smiled faintly.
Pfft.
Then, without ceremony, he thrust his right hand forward and pierced straight through the abdomen of the Intelligence Star standing beside him.
Tremble.
The Intelligence Star collapsed to the ground, shuddering violently, unable even to cry out as his stomach was run through.
Swish.
With an indifferent motion, the middle-aged man retrieved a small, transparent orb from the Intelligence Star’s robes.
It was the Boundary Prosperity Jade.
“He was unworthy of possessing the Intelligence Star. To tremble in fear the moment the suggestion broke.”
Sighing, the middle-aged man gripped the Boundary Prosperity Jade and spoke to Bu Eunseol.
“Fall into hell together, amicably.”
Shuuu.
A red aura surged from the Intelligence Star’s body.
With a cracking sound, fine fractures appeared in the sky.
The middle-aged man intended to use the dying Intelligence Star to collapse the Mental Realm.
‘Suggestion? Or truly a Mental Realm?’
Staring at the spiderweb-like cracks in the sky, Bu Eunseol immediately unleashed sword techniques to cut down the middle-aged man.
But now his body was not merely heavy. It had hardened completely, unable to move at all.
“Hahaha. Savor death slowly.”
Sneering at the immobilized Bu Eunseol, the middle-aged man turned away.
Saaaak.
As the middle-aged man vanished, the fractured sky began to crumble.
The heavens fell away in shards like broken glass, while the ground turned into thick, sluggish liquid.
If this entire world collapsed completely—whether suggestion or Mental Realm—Bu Eunseol, trapped within, would meet his death.
‘No chance in hell.’
Ziiing.
A five-colored radiance began to bloom from Bu Eunseol’s entire body.
He had already experienced reconstructing a collapsing Mental Realm during his time with Yeon Wol.
‘If this is a Mental Realm, all the better. I can rebuild it.’
Ziiing.
As Bu Eunseol poured all his strength into it, the collapsing world began to restore itself, as though time were reversing.
The sluggish ground solidified once more; the fragmented sky regained its original shape.
‘Just a little more.’
A little more restoration and he could fully repair the collapsing world.
Then he could immediately escape this Mental Realm.
Ziiing.
But something felt strange.
As he rebuilt the collapsing world, unfamiliar memories began flowing into his mind.
‘These memories…’
Shockingly, they were not the memories of the dying Intelligence Star but those of the mysterious middle-aged man who had created this Mental Realm.
‘So he didn’t truly seize another’s spirit to create the Mental Realm.’
The middle-aged man had retrieved the Boundary Prosperity Jade from the Intelligence Star’s robes.
Using its power, he had placed a powerful suggestion on Bu Eunseol and then unfolded the Mental Realm.
Bu Eunseol had witnessed him killing the Intelligence Star with his own eyes. Thus he had fully accepted and believed that the Mental Realm was being unfolded through the dying Intelligence Star.
—Aaaahhh!
Suddenly his vision blurred, and screams erupted from all directions.
His heavy body lightened; his hazy sight cleared.
Before him appeared the burning Saha Manor.
Black shadows moved swiftly through the estate, and endless screams rang out.
The memory of Saha Manor unfolded once again before his eyes.
‘Why?’
Bu Eunseol could not understand.
He had recognized the suggestion and was breaking it—so why were memories of Saha Manor surfacing?
Thud. Thud.
Though he did not understand why, Bu Eunseol instinctively walked slowly toward the center of that hellish estate.
Finally, in the front courtyard stood a massive wooden pillar, beneath which roared fierce flames.
‘Mother.’
Tied tightly to that pillar was an incomparably beautiful middle-aged woman, eyes tightly shut.
It was his mother.
Murmur murmur.
Strange mantras echoed around his ears.
Looking around, he saw the same scene he had witnessed in Yeon Wol’s Mental Realm.
‘Am I recalling again what I saw in Yeon Wol’s Mental Realm?’
Mysterious black-robed sorcerers surrounded his bound mother, still forming bizarre hand seals while chanting mantras.
‘Wait.’
Suddenly Bu Eunseol sensed something odd.
The perspective from which he now viewed his mother was not the same angle he had seen through Yeon Wol’s eyes but from a group standing somewhat farther away.
‘Could this be inside that middle-aged man’s memory?’
If so, then walking into the burning Saha Manor had not been his own will but movement from the middle-aged man’s point of view.
‘That means this middle-aged man was also present at Saha Manor.’
This confirmed that not only Inbiin, but also the Jungson family, had been involved in the bloodbath at Saha Manor.
Flash!
At that moment, radiant light burst from his burning mother’s body and soared to the ends of the sky.
Because this space was far removed from where Yeon Wol had been chanting mantras, Bu Eunseol could see the ascending light far more clearly.
—Waaah! Waaah!
A baby’s faint cries rang out.
Turning his head, Bu Eunseol saw a large metal box not far away.
Inside lay an adorably tiny newborn infant.
‘Why a child?’
Strange characters written in blood were engraved on the metal box, and various ritual tools and treasures were densely affixed to it.
Even the box itself seemed to be a treasure imbued with power.
Shuuuk!
Astonishingly, the massive light that had soared into the sky now descended back to the ground.
Kwaaaa.
The light that seemed ready to swallow the entire earth poured into the metal box.
At once, the engraved characters and talismans began to emit mysterious radiance.
Woooong.
That light seeped into the infant’s body.
‘So that was it.’
At last Bu Eunseol understood the entire situation.
They had not intended to burn his mother to death—they had been transferring the power within her body into this newborn child.
‘Lady Manwol.’
Bu Eunseol felt as though he had been struck in the back of the head.
‘She inherited my mother’s ability.’
Only now did he realize why, in those memories, his mother had displayed such mysterious power and spoken to his father words that seemed to predict the future.
‘Then Mother was also a shaman.’
In a conversation with his father, his mother had confidently declared that Bu Eunseol would one day hold the Silent Tiger Soul Sword.
And that had been possible because she was a shaman.
‘Inbiin’s shaman? Or did Inbiin steal her power?’
Inbiin was a wicked cult that brought countless calamities upon the world.
Had his mother been Inbiin’s shaman?
Or had her power been taken from her as she died?
Or perhaps…
‘Could Mother have grown weary of Inbiin’s tyranny, left them, and been discovered?’
While Bu Eunseol was lost in deep thought,
Rumble. Crash crash crash.
In the meantime, the scenery of Saha Manor began to collapse.
‘No.’
Snapping back to awareness, Bu Eunseol poured his power into restoring the collapsing Saha Manor landscape.
He had to reconstruct it to escape this layered Mental Realm.
Rumble rumble.
But the Saha Manor scenery was crumbling uncontrollably.
If this continued, Bu Eunseol’s spirit would plummet into an irretrievable abyss along with the collapse of the Mental Realm.
Crack crack crack.
Thick veins bulged across Bu Eunseol’s body.
At the same time, white qi began to envelop him.
‘This is the only way.’
Five-colored radiance bloomed from Bu Eunseol’s entire body.
He intended to unleash Harmony and completely erase this layered Mental Realm in an attempt to escape.
Crack.
Drawing up every ounce of power, the disguise as Seon Woojin unraveled, and he returned to his true form as Bu Eunseol.
Whoooosh.
The light rising from his body grew denser.
This was a gamble.
He himself did not know what would happen if he unleashed Harmony within a Mental Realm but since it had been said that a Phase was not mere illusion but rooted in reality, he had no choice but to try.
Ziiing.
Then the entire world vibrated lowly, and from extremely close by, he sensed a familiar yet unfamiliar energy.
‘This is…?’
As Bu Eunseol inwardly startled,
Goooo.
Suddenly a sphere of scarlet radiance began to swirl violently right before his eyes.
[Escape through there.]
At the same time, a strange resonance spread through Bu Eunseol’s mind.
It was not a voice, but rather the transmission of someone’s ‘will.’
If Bu Eunseol had been an ordinary person, he would have thrown himself into the sphere without a second thought.
‘If I can’t get out on my own, how will I ever face these people in the future?’
Crack crack crack.
Because this was a Mental Realm overlaid upon reality, his power was not perfectly aligned.
With the sound of breaking bones, his skin began to split like brittle pastry.
Ziiing. Ziiing.
Suddenly his body flickered like a star, and blue and black light began to pour out.
As his flesh reached the point of destruction, an unknown power suddenly surged from within him.
But Bu Eunseol found that power irritating.
“If I had wanted some unknown power like this…”
Flash!
A yellowish glare exploded from Bu Eunseol’s eyes.
“…I wouldn’t have staked my life on cultivating martial arts!”
Flash!
At last his power perfectly aligned, and Harmony extended outward.
Whoosh!
For an instant, it felt as though his head were being split in two.
Whoosh—whoosh!
Countless points of light poured before his eyes, and his entire body seemed to be sucked into a tiny distant hole.
Flash!
The world turned pure white.
Then, in the same instant, the tranquil scenery of the reed field reappeared.
‘It worked.’
He had staked his life on Harmony, and fortunately it had succeeded.
By unleashing the martial art of Harmony, Bu Eunseol had escaped the collapsing Mental Realm.
Looking around, Bu Eunseol’s eyes widened.
To his left lay the corpse of the Intelligence Star, and standing calmly beside it was a masked woman in red robes.
“You are…”
Realizing she was the one who had helped him, Bu Eunseol respectfully clasped his hands.
“My Lady, you…”
“What exactly did you do?”
The woman’s voice was strange.
Her tone sounded quite young, yet she deliberately spoke in a low, solemn register.
“How did you make the Phase materialize and then cause it to dissipate?”
Her expression held not just shock, but outright fear.
‘Phase.’
The term “Phase” had until now been used only by the Three Families or Inbiin.
That meant the woman before him did not belong to any ordinary martial sect.
“Lady Manwol. Was she the one who sent you?”
Even before she transmitted her voice, Bu Eunseol had sensed a very familiar energy from her. It was remarkably similar to the aura he felt whenever Manwol appeared.
“Yes.”
The masked woman readily admitted it.
“I came at her request.”
It was astonishing.
Manwol had always wandered the martial world alone yet she had an ally after all?
‘Moreover, this woman’s martial arts…’
No internal energy waves or exceptional cultivation could be sensed from her, yet Bu Eunseol instinctively knew: among the young generation of experts he had seen so far, she was undoubtedly at the very peak.
Moreover, hadn’t she just transmitted her voice using a technique similar to Radiant Mind Transmission?
—Or perhaps you didn’t think that witch would help a complete stranger without gaining anything substantial in return?
The middle-aged man’s murmur suddenly resurfaced in his mind.
Could Manwol actually possess immense power and a hidden force behind her?
If so, why was she being chased and subjected to trials by certain factions?
“I have something I wish to ask.”
Suppressing the flood of thoughts, Bu Eunseol spoke politely.
“The one who just attacked me said this.” Taking a deep breath, he continued. “He claimed that Lady Manwol intends to make me a ‘key.’”
Instantly the masked woman’s eyes narrowed, but she gave no reply.
“What exactly is a ‘key’?”
“Exactly what it sounds like—a key.”
After a moment of silence, the masked woman answered in a low voice.
“A key that allows one to contain… the power of any of the Hundred and Eight Stars.”
“The power of the Hundred and Eight Stars.” Bu Eunseol’s eyes flashed. “Even the power of the Heavenly-Mandate Star or the Heaven-Dark Star?”
Looking back, Manwol had reversed four hundred years of time to revive the Blood Emperor’s power among the Eight Emperors and Three Stars.
Did that mean her goal was perhaps to awaken unmanifested Stars among the Hundred and Eight Stars?
“I cannot say any more.”
As the masked woman prepared to leave, Bu Eunseol asked, “What about Lady Manwol? Is she safe?”
The masked woman, who had maintained a calm and subdued demeanor throughout, finally showed a flicker of emotion in her eyes when Bu Eunseol expressed concern for Manwol.
“Yes.”
After a brief silence, she let out a low sigh.
“If you are worried about her, then become stronger—strong enough that no one in the world can touch her.”
Bu Eunseol’s eyes widened.
Her words were identical to what Manwol had once told him.
“One piece of advice.”
The masked woman spoke again in her composed voice.
“The Mental Realm is not invincible. Depending on the Weight of Heaven, counterattacks are always possible, and it can even be nullified with Infinite Power.”
“Weight of Heaven… you mean there are stages?”
“Correct.”
“Just who are you, my lady? Where do you come from?”
The masked woman did not answer. She simply gazed at the distant sky.
Then she said briefly, “I’ve said too much. I’m leaving.”
Her body gradually turned transparent.
When even the trees behind her became visible through her form—
Flash.
With a short burst of light, she vanished completely.
“Lady Manwol.”
Staring at the spot where the masked woman had stood, Bu Eunseol’s gaze was as dark as the sky before dawn.
He recalled what Manwol had once said.
—What does that matter? In this world there are no eternal enemies or eternal allies.
—Everything changes and shifts with time.
“I don’t know what purpose you have… but I sincerely hope we never clash.”
He truly, earnestly hoped she would never become his enemy.
She was surely connected to his mother somehow—he wanted to remain on good terms if at all possible.
Swish!
After gazing blankly at the sky for a moment, Bu Eunseol unleashed the Void-Piercing Leap and shot into the air, vanishing toward the distant horizon in a single breath.
The reed field, now empty of both groups, was filled only with the silence of death.
Swish.
Then suddenly a hazy figure appeared among the reeds.
It was an old man dressed in clerical robes.
It was the Martial Venerable, disguised as the Divine Mountain Sage.
“Hmm. Things are becoming complicated.” Stroking his chin, his eyes narrowed. “Moreover, it seems he escaped not through the power of the Baekri family, but through martial arts.”
Even the Martial Venerable did not fully understand how Bu Eunseol had escaped the collapsing Mental Realm.
“I tried to rescue him from danger and build a measure of trust.”
But the appearance of the masked woman had completely derailed his plans.
“I suppose I’ll have to employ a variety of methods.”
The Martial Venerable’s gaze sharpened.
Bu Eunseol was not yet fully ripe, but time was running out.
If nothing else worked, he would have to resort to schemes to bring him to the Star Guard Division.
