Episode 9: What I Think of as Magic.
The next day, Ian came to me with a puzzled look on his face.
“How did I get back yesterday?”
“You carried me back. I don’t remember how you got back.”
Then Ian’s cheeks turned red.
“Don’t lie. I wasn’t that drunk. It was heavy, wasn’t it? I’m sorry, Master.”
“I’d be lying if I said it was light. It wasn’t heavy enough to make me feel sorry. Look at these arms!”
“Oh my, your already thin arms have gotten even thinner.”
“Look straight at those lumpy muscles!”
After exchanging jokes like that, Ian nodded.
“Thank you, my lord.”
“Let’s drink again next time.”
“Yes, your highness.”
She asked again as she was about to turn around.
“If I made a mistake in my speech, please forgive me. Honestly, I don’t remember what I said.”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t make a mistake. Oh, and if you make a mistake again next time, I’ll use my right to pardon.”
“The right to pardon? What is that?”
“I have the right to be forgiven for my mistakes and wrongdoings.”
“Did you give it to me? I didn’t receive it.”
I reached out to her.
“handshake.”
Ian took my hand in his large one.
“Okay, it’s been issued now.”
“Since you’re giving me this, wouldn’t it be better to give me ten? I’ll be following you around my whole life, so wouldn’t one be enough?”
“No! There’s only one. So use it sparingly!”
“Yes! Your Majesty!”
Her brightly smiling eyes disappeared into the flesh.
‘If there’s anyone in this life who deserves forgiveness, it’s me. How about you? You should issue me with fifty pardons… … .’
* * *
That night, I was sitting alone and practicing my qi extraction.
While simultaneously detecting three places, the energy flying to the left detected one person.
I’ve been really into the fun of figuring out what kind of person someone is through their qi lately. When I find someone while sending qi, I start by looking them over from head to toe. How tall is they, what weapon do they use, what level of martial arts are they at?
This time too, right when I was trying to look at my opponent.
The opponent slightly dodged to the side.
I thought it was just a coincidence, so I sent my energy towards him. However, the opponent moved his body in the opposite direction again to avoid my energy.
‘You wouldn’t know about it and be avoiding it, would you?’
This thin and secretive energy was something that the opponent could never detect.
But the opponent started to avoid me in various ways, as if he could sense my energy.
Who the hell are you?
I was curious about the other person. I continued to emit energy and left the room.
Practice releasing energy while moving. Of course, you have to expend several times more psychic power than when releasing energy while still, but in real life, you will have more opportunities to release energy while moving.
I felt my opponent retreating. I chased after him as he ran away, seemingly within reach.
The place we arrived at was the Jeongja of the Civil War.
The moment I saw the person standing there, I let out a sigh of relief without realizing it.
“father!”
The person who led me here was my father.
“Well, that’s true. I was nervous because I thought someone else was sensing my energy.”
“What a great spirit. Even the dog sleeping under the fence will notice.”
“Dogs are naturally very perceptive, aren’t they? But what brings you to my residence?”
“I was just passing by.”
Even though he said that, it was clear that he had come to see me.
“It seems that we are destined to meet each other, even if it was by chance.”
“The banquet ends there.”
“yes!”
I closed my mouth and quietly looked up at the night sky that my father was looking at.
After a while I asked.
“When will you decide on a successor?”
“A hundred years later. You still have a long way to go.”
“Let’s do it after a hundred days. I think I’ve come a long way.”
“If that were the case, Bloodthirsty Demon wouldn’t have come looking for you.”
“How did you know?”
It was just the two of us, but my father knew about it. In other words, he was watching me. After all, he knew that I had been poisoned by a mountain spirit.
“As soon as I met you, the Bloodthirsty Demon came looking for me.”
“What did you say?”
“I wanted to punish you.”
“yes?”
I was startled by the unexpected words. Could it be that Hyeolcheon Doma went to see his father and asked him to punish him?
“It was unexpected. He’s not the type of person to come to me and make such a request when his disciple has died.”
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“Why on earth did that happen?”
Although he pretended not to know, I guessed what Bloodthirsty Doma was thinking. He was trying to test my relationship with my father. He wanted to see if my father would really punish me, and if so, what kind of punishment. He wanted to see if my father thought of me as his successor.
“So I plan to punish you.”
“There is no reason for you to punish me. That disciple deserves to die.”
“As long as you make up an excuse, that’s it.”
I drew my sword and drew a long line on the floor.
And he said, drawing a line about a tenth of the way across.
“The Bloodthirsty Demon told me that this long side is the size my father thinks he is. Did that justification come from this length?”
Instead of answering, my father asked me the same question I had asked him at the hunting grounds.
“Did you ask which of the Amazons you trust the most?”
“yes.”
My father just gave me the answer to that question.
“Nobody believes it.”
I could tell. With this answer, I was also answering that the line drawn by the Bloodthirsty Demon was not accurate.
“Which side are you on? Do you trust people or do you not trust people?”
“It depends on what kind of person the other person is.”
“How do you know what kind of person he is?”
“Won’t you find out as you go along?”
“That’s a stupid idea. You can never know the human mind. No matter how transparent the person next to you may seem, you should never think that you know them.”
Suddenly Ian came to mind. I thought I knew her well, but it’s like how you keep discovering new sides of her.
“I will keep that in mind.”
“Did you say that we need to maintain discipline in our school?”
“yes.”
“Stop talking nonsense about having to catch corruption. Tell me your honest opinion.”
“Can I be completely honest with you?”
“When did you lie?”
“No, but I think this answer would be rude.”
“Speak.”
“I think at some point we… lost the way of magic.”
The area under my father’s eyes trembled. At least, it was not something I should say in front of my father.
“What do you think magic is?”
“The magic I think of is… … .”
After a brief pause, I revealed a thought that had been pent up for a long time.
“I think it is our school’s unique belief to fight against absolute evil.”
My father turned to me with his eyes wide open, perhaps because it was an unexpected answer.
“… … Is this the belief of our church that we should defeat absolute evil?”
“I don’t think that what is at the opposite end of our spectrum is a political party.”
“Then what is it?”
“It is absolute evil.”
Obviously, what I’m about to say won’t be easily accepted by my father. Nevertheless, I calmly conveyed my thoughts to him.
“There are evils in the world that are so cowardly, vicious, and terrible that humans cannot bear them. Absolute evils that even the devil would turn away from. The justice and cooperation that the Jeongpa advocates may be able to suppress minor evils, but I believe that they cannot bear this absolute evil. This is because the Jeongpa inherently has forgiveness in its foundation. As long as we have a heart that cares for humans, how can we bear evils that run wild, abandoning humanity?”
My father was staring at me. It was the first time I had seen him so intently listening to what I was saying. Maybe deep down inside, he was thinking about this.
– Weren’t we the absolute evil?
-No, Father. I hope that the Heavenly Demon Church of my world is not an absolute evil. I will make sure that it is not.
My speech continued.
“The only being in the martial arts world who can eradicate vile and vicious evils in a more vile and vicious way, I think we must find our reason for existence here. It doesn’t matter whether we are good or evil. Sometimes with the face of good, sometimes with the face of evil. When the great evil that the orthodox faction cannot handle kneels and trembles before us, I think that the true magic world has been established. Only then will the martial arts world truly bow its head before the majesty of our sect. When they cannot solve their problems on their own, they will ask for our help. They say that only the Cheonma Sect can save the martial arts world. This is the magic world that I believe in.”
I can confidently say that my father has never thought or heard anything like this in his life.
This idea was not something I learned or realized in school. It was something I felt on my own while wandering around the Central Plains my entire life.
“If we don’t set up the magic properly, we won’t last long. In order for us to survive… … we have to punish ourselves.”
Even my father, who was good at hiding his emotions, couldn’t hide his shock at this moment. He was blowing wind in my face to confirm my lie. But at this moment, my father showed no reaction. Even though the story unfolded as if the wind had blown ten times more.
My father was deep in thought. Although I had lived a longer life than him, I could not guess what he was thinking right now.
But one thing I feel for sure.
It’s only been a few days since we returned, but both my father and I have felt our fates changing. We have begun to turn toward a different future.
Finally, my father broke the long silence.
“Do you have any more arrogance left?”
“No, not today.”
I scratched my head and smiled awkwardly.
“I think I know why Bloodthirsty Demon came to me to punish you.”
“Why?”
The father’s confident eyes shone brightly.
“I read something from you, so I’m going to test you through me.”
“I see you’ve read the possibility of becoming a successor.”
“It might be dangerous enough to destroy our school.”
“Either way… … that old skeleton-like man has some sense.”
My father stared at me for a moment, then walked out of the pavilion with brisk strides as if he had made up his mind.
“Follow me.”
* * *
My father took me to the deepest part of Cheonmajeon. It was a place I had heard of and was familiar with.
A small signboard hanging on a stone cave.
Sochon-dong.
I was startled and shouted at my father.
“You’re not telling me to go in here, are you?”
This is a place for the later generations of the Heavenly Horse, and is a kind of training center.
It is usually used when the disciples or children of Cheonma take the test.
You should never ignore the training center.
You can go in however you want, but you can’t come out. I heard that if you don’t get through the gate, you’ll never be able to get out. The success rate is 50%. In fact, half of the blood relatives of Cheonma who entered here lost their lives here.
That’s why even the ambitious older brother didn’t bring up the idea of going there on his own.
However, it was also a place that had to be passed through at least once in order to become a Cheonma. Everyone who became a Cheonma passed through this place. In this way, Cheonma is also one of the extreme occupations.
“I came here when I was your age too.”
“So how long did it take you to come out?”
“Two months.”
“Oh my God. You want me to spend two months of my bright youth in this dark and damp place?”
“Make no mistake, it’s two months for me, but the average breakthrough time is three years.”
His father is considered to have the greatest martial arts talent among all the Heavenly Demons of all time. The Heavenly Martial Arts Body was probably possible because he inherited his father’s blood.
“Father, why are you doing this to me?”
“Didn’t I tell you earlier? I’m planning on punishing you.”
“Isn’t that too harsh a punishment?”
“The sheep you killed will spend eternity underground.”
“With cheers and applause from the people he had tormented.”
But my father had already made up his mind.
Father, are you really sending me to a place where I could die? That old man from Bloodthirsty Cave told me to punish him?
Suddenly, I remembered the poison my father had told me about while hunting.
‘Do you not mind if your son dies? Or do you want me to come out stronger?’
Because it was a place where not getting out alive would be a punishment, but getting out alive could be a reward.
‘Or are you trying to protect me from the blood chopping board that sticks out of my pocket like an awl?’
Since my father never revealed his feelings, I couldn’t know what his intentions were.
When the father touched the stone slab attached to the side of the cave and infused it with its own unique power, the stone gate opened.
Ring ring.
I no longer refused under the gaze of my father, who told me to stop nagging and go in.
“Okay. I’ll get out faster than my father.”
Dingling.
My father spoke with a cruel yet mischievous smile through the closing stone gate.
“Just in case. Don’t die.”
