“I… learned so much from you, Master…beyond just pharmacology and swordsmanship—how I walk, how I run, how I eat, how I breathe, and how I fall asleep…”

Cheon-oh’s voice was low and steady as he calmly explained how every facet of his daily existence stemmed entirely from his master.

Without even looking up, Cho Yoon could literally feel the boy’s pitch-black eyes clinging to the back of his hand.

A sudden, chilling sense of alienation brushed against Cho Yoon’s heart, but he forced himself to dismiss it as mere paranoia, desperately attempting to focus on the boy’s words.

“Even if I must eventually leave your side to fulfill my duties,” Cheon-oh continued, “and even if I intertwine with countless others and change during that journey, my foundation will never waver. Your influence will echo in my every word and action. The sum of your teachings will ultimately manifest in the result that is me.”

As the words left his mouth, Cheon-oh’s conviction only deepened. To Seomun Cheon-oh, his master—and the days they spent together—were not some superficial brand stamped onto his skin.

Cho Yoon had actively sculpted Cheon-oh’s very essence.

He had taken something twisted and hopelessly warped and remolded it with his bare hands.

He had thawed the boy’s frozen core with his own lukewarm body heat and poured his own vitality into him.

And the only person who could vividly feel those fingerprints etched into his soul was Seomun Cheon-oh himself.

“That is why… I wish to prove myself,” Cheon-oh confessed. “I wish to meet my own expectations of what your disciple should be. I want to proudly declare that the time and devotion you poured into me were not in vain. I want to show the world that your decision to take me in was not a mistake.”

“…”

“However, considering I suffered this much damage against a mere child, it seems I still have a long way to go.”

A long way to go?! You practically killed him! Cho Yoon shrieked internally.

His initial wave of emotion at Cheon-oh’s touching speech evaporated, instantly replaced by sheer, unadulterated disbelief as he processed the boy’s final sentence. He hadn’t witnessed the actual fight, having arrived just in time to physically tear them apart. His frantic brain had been so utterly consumed by the sight of Cheon-oh bleeding that he hadn’t fully processed the tactical reality of the clash. But as the one who had physically intercepted Cheon-oh’s final strike, he knew the truth.

He couldn’t not know.

Had Cho Yoon not intervened, Moyong Seo would have died in that alley today.

Being forced to confront the reality he had been desperately ignoring nearly drove Cho Yoon insane. That ‘child’ is only eleven on the outside! Mentally, he’s a hardened, veteran martial artist in his forties! He regressed over four years ago! By now, he’s undoubtedly hoarded every legendary elixir in Liaoning and mastered every hidden martial manual he could get his hands on!

And Cheon-oh just beat him to a pulp barehanded? What the hell am I actually raising?!

Moyong Seo’s ability to manifest Sword Qi—a feat confirming he had breached the realm of a peak-level master—was easily deduced from the nature of Cheon-oh’s lacerations.

What was a peak-level master?

They were absolute powerhouses capable of comfortably seizing an Elder position in any orthodox sect.

And Seomun Cheon-oh had just beaten that peak-level regressor protagonist with his bare fists.

When reading martial arts novels, Cho Yoon had easily glossed over the mechanics of ‘Sword Qi‘ to avoid getting bogged down in the minutiae. But experiencing it in reality, the concept of physically weaponizing an intangible, internal energy was profoundly illogical.

The natural qi of the world wasn’t a heavy metal; the entire process of ‘accumulating it internally’ fundamentally defied modern logic.

Had he not possessed the muscle memory of the ancient, seasoned ‘Cho Yoon’ upon transmigrating, the strictly rational Jeong Hayoon would never have mastered martial arts, even if he died and resurrected a hundred times.

For the first time in a long while, the sheer, terrifying velocity of Cheon-oh’s growth genuinely frightened him.

Cho Yoon possessed the physical vessel of a Profound Realm god, but mentally, he was still an ordinary modern man. He had absolutely no idea how many more years he could successfully masquerade as a competent teacher. Honestly, managing to fake it for eight years already felt like a miracle.

However, taking a moment to objectively evaluate Cheon-oh’s ‘specs,’ Cho Yoon realized his disciple was no slouch either.

My Cheon-oh isn’t a regressor, but he’s a heaven-ordained genius, Cho Yoon calculated. He’s consumed enough top-tier elixirs to rival any protagonist, and instead of relying on dusty, dead manuals, he receives daily, customized, one-on-one tutoring from a living martial god…

It was a clash between a desperate survivor who had memorized the answer key, and a peerless genius receiving private tutoring.

Furthermore, that genius’s tutor actually possessed the answer key and the teacher’s edition commentary that the survivor lacked.

The original storyline was thoroughly derailed, but simply knowing the overarching ambitions of the major players and anticipating the inevitable crises was infinitely better than flying blind.

When you look at it that way, the protagonist losing to Cheon-oh isn’t actually that strange… Cho Yoon conceded, desperately trying to suppress an overwhelming sense of impending doom.

Still, the protagonist has that raven artifact… wait a minute.

A sudden sense of incongruity struck him.

At the very beginning of The Returned Hero, the protagonist awoke in his seven-year-old body, bewildered and disoriented. It was only upon discovering the divine artifact hanging around his neck that he confirmed his regression wasn’t a hallucination. He wore it constantly thereafter; the raven-shaped necklace effectively became the protagonist’s defining symbol.

When I pressed his acupoints, I didn’t feel any artifact on his chest. Was he wearing it somewhere else? Or did he leave it behind?

In the original timeline, Moyong Seo never once separated himself from his brother’s final memento—the very catalyst that had defied causality and granted him a second chance. Its absence was deeply unsettling.

However, Cheon-oh’s voice sliced through Cho Yoon’s spiraling thoughts, demanding his attention.

“This may be incredibly presumptuous of me, but… I am well aware that you do not place immense value on my martial achievements, Master. I firmly believe you will continue to cherish me regardless of how I grow or what path I take.”

“…”

“Therefore, this is purely my own selfishness,” Cheon-oh admitted. “It is my greed and my utter reliance upon you. As your disciple, I wish to become stronger so that I need not be ashamed of myself. Because my victory is your victory, I refuse to lose to anyone. Even if I am torn to shreds, I fight with the absolute faith that you will heal me… That is what I rely on.”

The reason these seemingly admirable, deeply considerate words felt so chilling was because the unspoken, colossal truth lurking beneath them was far heavier than this shy confession. The boy was merely revealing the tiny tip of the iceberg, keeping the massive, obsessive foundation submerged in the dark.

Cho Yoon instinctively sensed this, but he couldn’t articulate it. He could feel the monstrous obsession coiling just behind the boy’s earnest sincerity, yet he couldn’t bring himself to expose it. He knew that if he simply asked a few more questions, if he pushed just a little harder, he could uncover the horrifying truth.

“I am going to apply the salve and wrap the bandages, so remain still.”

We don’t have time right now, so we’ll talk later. When we get back. Later. Instead of offering a proper response, Cho Yoon gently stroked Cheon-oh’s hair and abruptly changed the subject.

He was entirely unaware that he was instinctively using their current crisis as an excuse to flee, terrified of what he might uncover if he actually looked into the boy’s heart.

***

The moment a sliver of consciousness returned, a violent coughing fit wracked his body. With every desperate gasp for air, dry powder coated his nasal passages. Hacking violently as if trying to expel his own lungs, he weakly raised an arm, dislodging the darkness that had been loosely draped over him.

Ignoring the tattered sack tumbling to the dirt, Moyong Seo clamped a hand over his mouth and nose, swallowing hard to lubricate his parched throat.

Only after several agonizing minutes of focused breathing did his mind finally clear.

The high walls of the secluded alleyway cast long, dense shadows. Glancing upward, he noted the sun was setting. He felt no physical pain, yet his entire body felt bizarrely lethargic and entirely devoid of strength.

Twitching his fingers and toes in a desperate bid to reboot his nervous system, the chillingly familiar sensation finally registered.

Ah. My acupoints were sealed.

By whom?

For Moyong Seo, memories were like a jagged mountain of shattered glass.

The things he desperately wanted to forget constantly collided with the things he absolutely needed to remember, guaranteeing a perpetual state of psychological fragmentation.

Waking up often resulted in terrifying moments of chronological disorientation; he had to scramble frantically through his own mind until he could confirm he hadn’t lost anything else.

Mentally rewinding and forcefully piecing the timeline back together was a grueling but familiar routine.

Where am I?

Shaanxi Province. 

He had joined his older brother’s expedition to prevent the impending catastrophe. In his past life, the Shaanxi poison disaster had slaughtered thousands, acting as the catalyst for the world’s rapid, chaotic decline.

What was I trying to do?

I was trying to hand the Purification Stones over to Zhuge Seol-rin. 

No, he had handed them over.

He trusted that the girl—who would eventually be revered as the ‘Heavenly Wisdom Phoenix’—already held substantial authority within Shaanxi despite her youth, and his gamble had paid off perfectly. He had spent the following days monitoring the province, but the lethal plague never materialized. He had simply been running to Zhuge Seol-rin’s estate to confirm the final status of the operation.

Yes, that was it.

During their previous visit, he had arrived officially with his family’s entourage before sneaking into her private annex. This time, he needed to infiltrate her estate in absolute secrecy from the start. He had used the excuse of ‘sightseeing’ to ditch his guards and was sprinting toward her location.

And then… while cutting through the main thoroughfare, he had felt an inexplicable, gravitational pull. It wasn’t the killing intent or the oppressive aura a trained martial artist usually detected. It was too subtle to even be called instinct; it felt entirely natural.

It was an absolute, undeniable attraction, like iron snapping to a magnet or a shattered puzzle piece finding its exact match.

In that moment, Moyong Seo had completely forgotten his objective and blindly followed the pull. Something was calling out to him, violently dragging his footsteps off course. Surrendering to the trance, he had crossed the threshold of an unfamiliar guest house. Amidst the swarming crowd, the stench of cheap food, and the chaotic din, he saw someone sitting alone.

It was as if his every sense had been violently vacuumed out of his skull and impaled directly into that single figure.

“Son of a bitch…”

Letting out a hollow, incredulous scoff, Moyong Seo forced his leaden arm upward and wiped his face. A cascade of fine white flour tumbled from his hair and shoulders.

Covering the lower half of his face with his hand, Moyong Seo glared straight ahead.

His eyes burned with an unquenchable, absolute hatred.