Episode 950
How to untangle a tangled thread (10)
‘Who is it?’
The old man felt strange.
The face of the young man standing with his back to the moonlight was hard to see. Even the fine workmanship of the huge ax next to it was visible, but strangely the young man’s face was not visible.
The next emotion I felt was admiration.
‘It’s amazing.’
He wandered the world in a body that was not allowed to die.
Three hundred years felt so short. However, I remembered every single person I met while traveling around the world. Because he was deprived of even the freedom to forget.
But no one was like this young man.
‘Even though I’m ready to move toward the light, I’m stuck in this world.’
The reason is unknown. In fact, you may not know whether you know it or not.
What was important was that the young man’s studies reached the summit of Mount Tai.
The summit was not a place that could be reached simply through martial arts achievements. It was a place that only those who, through countless experiences and countless realizations, could go beyond the clear confidence in themselves and looked into themselves with transparency without any blemishes, could climb there.
No one has reached that level at that age. Looking at the history of blood religion, there were very few demon lords who achieved a level comparable to mine at a young age, but I can tell you that there was no one who reached enlightenment like me.
Even he, who was immediately called the greatest genius in the history of the Blood Religion, was unable to properly cultivate his mind, body, and ego at that age.
‘amazing. This is how you encounter a properly cultivated soul.’
A moment when admiration adds to admiration.
The old man, who was examining the young man, immediately felt a shock that made his whole body stiffen.
hook!
The brightly shining world seemed to suddenly turn dark.
The brilliant moonlight and the starlight that twinkled like the sun lost their shine in an instant. The pale earth sank into black darkness and became sticky, and the flowing air was heavy and stuffy, as if it had fallen into mud.
Yeon Ho-jeong’s eyes wavered.
As the old man’s emotions became dark and toxic, he felt as if the whole world was becoming dark.
It was truly an unprecedented level. It was not a mere illusion of force, but it seemed as if he was manipulating not only the light and darkness of Mother Nature, but also the density and gravity of the air.
The world holds its breath just because emotions have changed.
Even the leader of the Saeum Sect, who was so cruel, Cheongyo Hong, who fought not long ago, and Prince Moyong, who was called the Sword God after gaining the ultimate sword power in his previous life, did not dare to do this.
“…It was you.”
hook.
Light began to shine again in a world that was darker than the bottomless pit.
The old man looked at Yeon Ho-jeong with a stiff face.
“It was you. “The person who brought me here from the shadows of the distant Seongsan Mountain.”
Yeon Ho-jeong, who was looking at the old man with trembling eyes, closed his eyes.
The surprise of the teacher’s overwhelming power and military power that reached the sky was not great. To be exact, I didn’t have time to worry about that right now.
The teacher does not know himself.
Of course it had to be that way. He went back in time and returned to the past before meeting his teacher. Since we have never met in the first place, it is natural that we do not know ourselves.
But how can such an obvious fact make us so uncomfortable?
“I don’t understand.”
Three hundred years was more than enough time to wear down a person’s emotions to the bottom.
The old man was very surprised by Yeon Ho-jeong’s presence, but his surprise was not enough to make him lose his composure. Even though I witnessed by far the most incomprehensible moment since the end of the Blood Bridge Rebellion, there was no significant change in my expression.
The old man was alive but at the same time not alive.
He was a ghost full of life who wandered this world unable to die when he should have been.
“How…”
It was the teacher’s voice he remembered, but at the same time it was an extremely unfamiliar voice.
“Why do I sense the yellow dragon in you?”
Yeonhojeong didn’t move at all.
“Why do you call me teacher?”
I wanted to open my eyes, but I was afraid to do so.
Although he felt his teacher’s presence throughout his body, he did not open his eyes because he did not want to see his teacher’s face looking at him with unfamiliar eyes.
“What on earth is your identity?”
At that moment, Yeon Ho-jeong felt a line of conversation passing through her mind.
‘What on earth… what exactly are you?’
‘What’s important is not my identity.’
‘…?’
‘What’s important is what kind of relationship you and I build in the future.’
It was the first conversation I had with my teacher.
When Yeon Ho-jeong first saw his teacher, he was shocked as if the sky had turned upside down.
Although he did not show any particular force or looked extraordinary like the emperor of a country, he felt such an overwhelming majesty that it felt like he could not even breathe.
The teacher was now asking himself this question. What is it?
Yeon Ho-jeong finally opened his eyes.
Yeon Ho-jeong looked at the old man’s face for a while and slowly bowed.
The old man did not stop the young man from bowing towards him. This is because I felt like it wouldn’t stop even if I blocked it.
Yeon Ho-jeong bowed just once before kneeling and straightening her back.
Yeon Ho-jeong said, looking up at his teacher.
“What is important is not my identity.”
“…?”
“An important thing is.”
Destiny.
Yeon Ho-jeong remembered the fate.
I once wandered the world, leaving my extinct family behind, and climbed a mountain with a mind and body that had fallen into hell.
At that moment, I thought of the teacher who appeared like a revelation from heaven.
“The important thing is…”
And Yeon Ho-jeong finally realized.
That he shouldn’t have come here.
No, considering the law of heaven, I had to come, but I realized that this place would be an extremely complicated and sad place for the human Yeon Ho-jeong.
Yeon Ho-jeong smiled.
My heart was beating irregularly. It seemed like the middle game would explode and collapse at any moment.
But I couldn’t show how sad I was.
Because the teacher would not want that, and at the same time, because he knew that he would not be able to send the teacher off with a sad face.
“With this, my relationship with Master is complete.”
“What does that mean?”
Yeon Ho-jeong looked up at the sky without answering.
It was still dark, but bright light was slowly coming out again.
“It’s really ironic. During those five years, I thought of myself before my teacher. “It was only after I went out into the world that I felt that Master’s grace was like heaven. Is there any other disciple in the world who is so ungrateful?”
“…?!”
“It seems that the teacher gave me one more chance to beat the head of my ugly student.”
The old man could not understand what the young man was saying.
“What the hell is that…?”
“Looking back, Master didn’t just teach me martial arts.”
“what?”
Yeon Ho-jeong’s eyes sparkled.
At least the two of them didn’t know whether it was the tears or the starlight.
“I was a person who was prone to breaking down. Hitting a rock on a cold winter day without even wearing shoes was like trying to kill yourself. “At that time, Master stopped me.”
“….”
“When I was looking for medicinal herbs and came across a tiger weighing more than 500 pounds, if Master had not appeared in time, it would have ended up in the stomach of the mountain king.”
“….”
“The more I try to separate them, the deeper the hatred and resentment becomes. When the images of my enemies appear like illusions outside my eyes, if you hadn’t stopped me from running towards them, I might have fallen off the cliff and died.”
“Look here.”
“Master, you have saved me countless times.”
“….”
“But more than that, what is even more memorable to me is how you shared your affection for me, even though I had a hard time saying a single word, and showed me that there was hope, and prepared me well to go out into the world.”
“I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about…”
That was then.
Wow!!
The yellow dragon curled up in Yeonhojeong’s chest appeared, clad in a fantasy-like light.
The appearance of the yellow dragon, revealing its entire body beyond the solar plexus, was truly dazzling. A body covered in golden scales, two horns that were much grander than those of a deer, a dragon blowing in the wind, and five claws that looked as if they could grab and break anything could not have been more mysterious.
The old man’s eyes wavered.
‘An epiphany!’
If the realization and enlightenment of the Five Colored Hell Balls are exactly aligned, the hell beasts residing within the body can be brought out. It is called an epiphany.
If you are an expert whose Qi is so enormous and the depth of your upper level battle is beyond its limits, you can show something similar to me without having to learn the Five Colored Hell Balls.
However, there are only two martial artists of all time and history who have such vitality that the true energy itself has another self rather than being forced out of it.
Yeon Ho-jeong held out his hand.
Then the yellow dragon, colored with a mysterious light, wriggled and approached the old man.
“Look.”
“…?!”
“The Master is there.”
The old man touched the yellow dragon without realizing it.
It was then.
Flash!! Crrrrrrrrrrrrr!!
A ray of blue lightning struck from the sky where the clouds had passed.
The thunderbolt appeared from a place it shouldn’t have appeared and instantly consumed the old man’s body. Only after the lightning struck did the thunder spread out in all directions, announcing the majesty of the sky.
‘omg!’
The old man’s mouth opened wide.
The thoughts of Emperor Wu residing within the yellow dragon of Yeonhojeong returned to the original owner and brought back memories that had never existed.
Even if time goes back and the world changes, the enlightenment that has reached heaven will not go anywhere.
However, the history that only flowed forward was cut off, and the history that was cut off fell infinitely deep beneath the coloring of time that filled the empty space, causing echoes.
In the hands of the disciple who brought with him a piece of that echoing history, the overlapping memories of the teacher who gave him another opportunity, even giving up Deungseonjiro (登仙之路), were revived.
Countless scenes, countless conversations, and countless memories filled the old man’s head like a river rushing through a canyon.
An old man who feels the passage of time and history with his mouth open.
How much time has passed like that?
The moonlight became brighter, presenting a bright night, and the stars were as splendid as before, praising the moment in history when the two priests returned.
Slur.
The brightly shining yellow dragon dispersed without a sound, and a little bit of hazy light flowed from the body of the old man who was looking up at the sky blankly.
Yeon Ho-jeong’s eyes wavered.
That strange group of lights, similar to light powder but emitting bright light, was the sight of the teacher’s body falling apart.
The image of the teacher reaching the summit in my memory was now unfolding in reality.
“Master!”
“It was a long, long, long, long time.”
There was no longer any confusion on the old man’s face as he looked up at the sky.
“A long time ago, the young man who brought his soul down to the bottom, looked at me with dead eyes and screamed silently, came back to life in hatred after years of suffering, and bloomed proudly.”
Yeon Ho-jeong’s eyes widened as if they were torn.
It was the same voice, but a completely different voice.
Where had the unfamiliar hardness gone? That voice, blunt yet affectionate, heavy yet soft, rang distantly in Yeon Ho-jeong’s ears.
“Master.”
The old man, Heavenly Dragon, nodded.
“I finally see you now.”
