Chapter 76

—Don’t get any ideas about Master. Just keep doing well like you are now.

The day before they parted ways in Sichuan, Sa-yeong had grabbed his wrist, locked eyes with him, and left him with a single, cryptic sound transmission.

At the time, he hadn’t understood what his Senior Sister meant when she warned him about ‘ulterior motives.’ He believed he was merely sending his master boundless trust and admiration. While he occasionally endured her nagging that his devotion was excessive, he had never once thought he needed to hide it.

But now… he wasn’t so sure.

Why must my breath catch and my heart ache like this for no reason?

Unable to rein in his wildly straying thoughts, Cheon-oh merely chased the back sprinting ahead of him.

He agonized over whether his poisoned master’s condition was deteriorating, yet simultaneously, a perverse desire flared within him to see his master lose that perfect serenity once more.

For someone whose entire life consisted of waking up, eating, training, cooking, training, studying, and sleeping, this overwhelming chaos was entirely unprecedented, leaving him completely unable to find his footing.

Whenever those fluttering robes and flying white hair brushed perilously close to him, his mind went blank. Reason barely managed to suppress his primal urge to dash forward and snatch them. 

Master is currently ill. The situation is incredibly urgent. I have no logical reason to randomly grab him. I don’t fully understand it, but these emotions are wrong.

In other words… it is a wicked act.

“Cheon-oh.”

“Yes?”

Abruptly calling his name, his master came to a smooth halt.

Startled by a sudden spike of guilt, Cheon-oh violently slammed the brakes on his accelerating body, coming to a stop by his master’s side.

Following his master’s unwavering gaze forward, Cheon-oh realized they had already arrived back at the Yeonpa River.

To be so lost in useless thoughts that he hadn’t even noticed they had arrived was profoundly embarrassing. He felt utterly ashamed to have laid such an absentminded display bare before his master.

Letting out a short groan, Cheon-oh lowered his eyes and clamped his mouth shut. Just then, his master slowly raised a hand.

Soon, Cho Yoon’s touch landed softly atop Cheon-oh’s bowed head.

“Let us finish this quickly and return.”

“…Yes, Master.”

Does my sorrowful heart melt away at a single touch simply because you are so incredible?

Looking noticeably softened and slightly less despondent, Cheon-oh received a firm pat on the shoulder before Cho Yoon descended to the riverbank.

Possessing a ghost-like intuition for his master’s intentions even without a single word spoken, Cheon-oh remained standing in place, his eyes tracking Cho Yoon’s back.

Gazing out at the flowing river, Cho Yoon stroked the hilt of his sword a few times before finally drawing the blade. 

Schwing— 

A crystalline, chillingly sharp ring of metal reached Cheon-oh’s ears. Despite not having been maintained even once in nearly ten years, Cho Yoon’s Sudden Rain Sword boasted an immaculate, pristine white blade that remained terrifyingly sharp.

Adjusting his grip on the hilt—whether because it felt awkward or because he was trying to resurrect a long-forgotten sensation—Cho Yoon took a single step toward the river.

Simultaneously, the razor-sharp tip of the sword drew a flawless, unwavering straight line from left to right. It was the very first technique of the Slight Fog Sword, the foundational half of his sword arts: Clouds and Haze Gathering the Evening Drizzle.

Every single movement was undeniably slow enough to track with the naked eye.

Cheon-oh had learned that, given the fundamental nature of swords gaining power through the arc of a swing, they could not generate destructive force without speed.

Furthermore, there was no special aura or crushing pressure radiating from the strike; it was as remarkably ordinary as simply cutting through empty air.

However, Cheon-oh—who had reviewed this exact motion tens of thousands of times—instantly recognized the profound, static transformation melting within it and became utterly mesmerized.

He instinctively realized that the absolute pinnacle of the sword art he was currently learning was unfolding right before his eyes.

A sword aura resembling white mist coalesced around the Sudden Rain Sword, and a formless energy rippled through Cho Yoon’s exhaled breath.

When that unchanging horizon was finally completed at the tip of the sword…

KABOOM!

An explosive roar abruptly erupted, tearing through the sky.

Snapping back to his senses, Cheon-oh shot his gaze forward, only to see the very center of the massive river splitting wide open and surging upward, as if the water itself had suffered a fatal sword wound.

The towering column of river water formed a colossal wall, eclipsing the sky. Fist-sized water droplets plummeted like heavy rain, violently battering the dense canopy of leaves and creating a deafening uproar.

Amidst the chaos, Cho Yoon adjusted his stance.

Extending his sword far out, he traced a massive, sweeping circle before slicing sharply upward from below. It was a flawless fusion of the Slight Fog Sword’s third technique, White Clouds Embracing the Hidden Stone, and the eighth technique, Birds Scattering as Lingering Flowers Fall.

The profound principle of the sword art Cho Yoon had internalized was neat and unadorned.

It didn’t radiate an overwhelming, apocalyptic power capable of leveling mountains or splitting oceans.

However, much like how a gathering drizzle eventually collapses a dam, or how a minor tremor triggers a catastrophic landslide, the result brought forth by a sword completely unified with nature defied all imagination.

A dragon soared from the very bottom of the river.

It was a colossal green dragon, boasting a diameter of two jang and a length that seemingly stretched from one end of the river to the other.

Enveloped in Cho Yoon’s vortex-like internal energy, the dragon appeared to be cloaked in five-colored clouds, radiating a fiercely auspicious aura.

Because of what his master had previously taught him, Cheon-oh knew full well that the rainbow was merely sunlight refracting through water particles, and he clearly saw with his own two eyes the horrifying human face attached to the creature—something a true dragon would never possess.

Yet, to Cheon-oh, this dragon’s ascension remained an overwhelmingly magnificent and mystical spectacle.

Piercing straight through the cloud layer, the dragon vanished completely into the sky. The river, which had just experienced a cataclysmic upheaval, rapidly settled back into absolute tranquility. Unbothered by the rain-like downpour of river water soaking his face, Cheon-oh stared blankly upward, completely spellbound.

Just then, Cho Yoon, who had been standing with aloof majesty, his sword resting at his side, abruptly staggered forward.

“Master!”

Cheon-oh, who had been looking elsewhere, instantly kicked off the ground, closing the distance in a single bound to catch Cho Yoon.

The moment he wrapped his arms around the collapsing body, Cho Yoon’s knees lost all strength and buckled. Tumbling to the sandy ground alongside his master, Cheon-oh frantically inspected his face. Witnessing his master’s vulnerability for the very first time, he didn’t care in the slightest that the water was soaking his legs.

“Master… Master! Are you alright? We must return to the Estate of Deep Mists! We must go back. You need to rest. You must recuperate immediately!”

Cho Yoon’s parched lips were already flaking with stark white scales. Beads of cold sweat dotted his forehead, his brow was deeply furrowed in agony, and above all, Cheon-oh could feel a frantic, wildly racing heartbeat entirely unlike his master’s usual calm rhythm.

Realizing his master’s condition was far more severe than he had anticipated, all color violently drained from Cheon-oh’s face.

“…It is fine. Every second is critical right now.”

However, swiftly regaining his composure, Cho Yoon pushed against Cheon-oh’s thigh and forced himself to stand. Retrieving four or five of the medicinal pouches he had prepared, he tightly bound them to round pebbles using the silk strings.

As if determined to impart knowledge to Cheon-oh even in this dire situation, his slightly raspy voice followed.

“The creature you just witnessed was a Human-Faced Water Snake that resides at the bottom of this Yeonpa River. It swallowed the Zhenniao and died. Its internal organs were already completely dissolved by the poison, so I concluded that leaving it there would continuously leak toxins. I sent it up into the mountain. Did you see which techniques I used?”

“…Yes, I saw everything.”

“For now, follow what you saw as your primary goal, but once you break through the wall, you must discover your own absolute scenery. Nature is perceived differently by every observer, and it varies vastly depending on the time and weather. Therefore, a sword technique imitating it can never be exactly the same for everyone.”

Rising alongside his master, Cheon-oh nodded, but for the very first time, the content of his master’s voice failed to reach his heart. Cheon-oh’s mind was entirely consumed by his master’s physical condition. He wondered just how unimaginably atrocious this poison must be to inflict such agony upon his peerless master, and terror gripped him, not knowing when that body might collapse again.

If he were being completely honest, he didn’t want to care in the slightest about the safety of the humans living downstream. He genuinely didn’t care. Dying miserably from an unforeseen tragedy was a painfully common occurrence in this world; he couldn’t fathom why his master had to drag his agonizingly ill body all the way down there for their sake. If it were entirely up to him, he would snatch that waist right now and force them back to the Estate of Deep Mists.

The only reason he didn’t was entirely due to the ‘compassion’ Cho Yoon had systematically instilled in him.

It wasn’t that he had suddenly developed genuine empathy for others; rather, he was utterly consumed by the singular desire to avoid appearing as a heartless, inhuman monster in his master’s eyes.

Cho Yoon tossed the pebble-weighted medicinal pouches into various spots across the now-calm river.

As the pouches sank without resistance to the riverbed, Cho Yoon watched them for a moment before turning around.

“We must follow the river downstream and continue the purification. Can you run once more?”

“…Yes, I can.”

Running was nothing.

If he only had permission, he wanted to take all those medicinal pouches himself and handle the entire purification process.

He wanted to safely deposit his master back at the Estate of Deep Mists, receive the recipe for the antidote, and descend the mountain alone.

His absolute lack of ability to do so filled him with crushing lamentation.

“Good. Thank you for your help.”

If his master’s voice hadn’t drifted to him like a soothing pine breeze at that exact moment, he might have spiraled back into vicious self-flagellation. However, once again, Cho Yoon preemptively severed Cheon-oh’s negative thoughts.

Momentarily stunned by his master’s incredibly rare expression of gratitude, Cheon-oh hastily chased after the rapidly retreating back.

The tips of his ears and his nape, peeking out briefly between his pitch-black hair, were already dyed a brilliant shade of red.