Chapter 601: Chapter 601

Behind Jeong Yeon-shin’s back.

Suddenly, there was a clattering sound.

The clank of rusted iron armor—imperial scale armor. Eo Ung-gong had landed on the ground, carrying the crippled Drunken Beggar King on his back.

There was no need for him to remain aloft using his aerial movement technique. Jeong Yeon-shin’s still-step forward progression hadn’t lasted long.

The Drunken Beggar King opened his mouth calmly.

“My joints creaked just now. Guess my bones haven’t reversed aging like the rest of me?”

“You got that way because I tried to save you.”

Eo Ung-gong spoke lightly of his battle with the Southern Emperor. He was trying to lighten the mood.

Two aged martial masters who looked vastly different in age fixated their eyes on the youth. Reflected in their pupils was the Lord of the Divine Sword Sect—Jeong Yeon-shin, who stood silently, gazing down at the Sword Saint in his arms.

Not once during his step clouds had he looked toward the enemy. It was as if he had suddenly acquired a vagabond’s sense.

Eo Ung-gong let out something between a sigh and a groan.

Then he began speaking at length.

“If that kind of continuous strike is possible with just footwork, then that’s a level not unlike a natural form. Though his heart must be boiling with fury, which makes it hard to reach a state of naturalness... even so, that’s the realm where one can still protect at least one person.”

“Don’t speak nonsense,”

the Drunken Beggar King scolded him. But Eo Ung-gong, his young-looking face impassive, shook his head.

“Look more closely. Even with all that stepping, it didn’t send any shockwaves to So-baek. He still has a faint breath left, doesn’t he? Even with a vagabond’s body, that should’ve been impossible...”

His small mouth was quickly covered by the Drunken Beggar King’s wrinkled hand.

Thankfully, Jeong Yeon-shin was too absorbed with examining the Sword Saint’s body using both hands.

The arms that should have been cradling him didn’t move. He was instead using only internal energy to stimulate and circulate energy points—Pushing Palace and Passing Acupoint. From the moment he started stepping to now, he hadn’t stopped.

‘No. That’s not a good thing.’

The Drunken Beggar King thought to himself.

Even standing several steps away, he could still feel the Sword Saint’s breathing. It was fading rapidly. As if revealing the collapse of a master’s distinct trait—his union of essence, energy, and spirit—his exhalations were growing weak.

The foundation of his internal energy breathing had been shaken.

The life of Sword Saint Hyeon So-baek ended here. It was literally fate. Something no man could grasp.

The one who must have sensed that most acutely was Jeong Yeon-shin.

When he had gone wild like a child, the Drunken Beggar King had felt deep sorrow.

Though losing others over and over again was the fate of the Beggars’ Sect leader, the old beggar still hadn’t grown used to death.

‘But the Ming Sect’s end is not yet here. This is a demon’s den.’

You never knew when or where some monstrous horror would emerge from this number-one demonic faction.

Earlier, the Ming Sect’s Grand Elder had gone up to some place called the “altar.” And even now, they were still deep underground.

He needed to stay alert.

the Drunken Beggar King called out softly.

Jeong Yeon-shin muttered suddenly. The Drunken Beggar King immediately replied with a question.

“You said... spell formation?”

“They said there’s a spell formation that makes this underground cavern livable. One that draws air down from the surface and reinforces the ground so it won’t collapse...”

“Well, that makes sense. There must be ancient demonic mysteries layered into this place.”

“I need to give the energy from that spell formation to the Sword Saint, sir. A formation this big should still have power to spare.”

At some point, Jeong Yeon-shin had tilted his head upward.

The ceiling, high enough to fit a two-story pavilion, reflected in his eyes. The dim, smooth cave walls. All around, shattered fragments of luminous pearls glimmered faintly like stars.

A vagabond. One who walks with the waves. One who sleeps under the sky and befriends the earth. The Sword Saint had wanted to see the real sky.

The Drunken Beggar King shook his head.

“Look at his body. He’s not in any state to accept foreign energy anymore.”

But Jeong Yeon-shin was just as far gone. He wasn’t in a state to hear other voices.

He stepped forward once more with Hwanik Seven Steps, and the moment his foot struck down, a dark ripple burst upward in a perfect circle from the ground beneath him.

It shot straight into the ceiling, creating a spiderweb of long fractures. The shockwave from a single step reached all the way up the next floor.

It was similar to Hwanik’s one-step piercing momentum but fundamentally different. It was footwork that truly crushed anything obstructing his path.

“So it really is demonic energy! But then why does it feel so... pure?!”

As Eo Ung-gong muttered in disbelief—

Jeong Yeon-shin was already launching upward off the floor. Even his leap was Hwanik Seven Steps, and of course, before his head could touch the ceiling, it shattered completely.

The ceiling collapsed.

A huge shockwave cracked through the stone surfaces. Dust rained down in thick clouds from all sides.

Jeong Yeon-shin silently placed a foot on the stairs above. It was another dim corridor, just as dark all around. But this one stretched nearly ten spans wide.

He quietly called to the Sword Saint, but no reply came.

The gaunt old swordsman was now resting in his arms with eyes closed, as if the junior martial artist’s arms were no more than a patch of earth to sleep on.

The ones who reacted like lightning were not the ones he addressed—but others.

A group of people standing guard at a pitch-black iron door on one side of the corridor. Just a rough count showed there were over thirty of them.

“Heretic! He’s a heretic!”

“The Lord of the Divine Sword Sect—!”

Jeong Yeon-shin’s voice slipped naturally into the middle of the commotion. He was walking toward the Ming Sect members as he spoke.

And unbelievably, their cries actually stopped.

Even though many among them had abnormally large limbs, or eyes darkened by blackened energy...

Even they couldn’t understand why.

Demonic energy, by nature, was meant to bow to stronger demonic energy. But throughout history, no one had reached such peerless heights with demonic energy alone.

Late to arrive, the Drunken Beggar King shouted as he climbed up alongside Eo Ung-gong.

“That’s it! It was right above the medicine chamber all along! Of course, to power such a grand spell formation, even the tiniest sliver of elixir energy would have to be drawn upward!”

An iron door resembling that of the Heavenly Demon’s treasury.

Jeong Yeon-shin didn’t look at anything else. He simply walked, eyes fixed on the altar the Ming Sect Grand Elder had climbed to.

It was an ordinary step.

This time, it wasn’t even Hwanik One Step or Two Steps.

But not a single one of the thirty or so demonic warriors charged at Jeong Yeon-shin.

Perhaps it was because the black radiance had fully settled around his heart. Though their blackened eyes shimmered like demons, they all recoiled—as if compelled by an overwhelming force.

Those who practiced lower-grade arts could not challenge one who had attained an upper realm. Their own demonic energy would not permit them to act.

Those who forcibly tried to mobilize their internal force coughed up blood on the spot.

“What the...! Why...?!”

“The Lord of the Divine Sword Sect has used sorcery—gahk!”

[Bright Phoenix Divine Form], [Bewildering Devil Scripture], [Divine Demon Eight Methods], [Microcosmic Heaven-Reversing Classic], [Three Cords that Offend Heaven], and even the Heavenly Demon Secret Canon...

The crowd parted on both sides.

He didn’t need to swing his sword—his path opened on its own.

The third black radiance was the culmination of demonic cultivation, and it lent Jeong Yeon-shin a presence akin to the Heavenly Demon himself.

He reached the great iron door while all the Ming Sect warriors stepped back on either side.

The entrance to the spell formation that created the heart of the Ming Sect in this immense underground chamber.

Ssskk... Ruuummmble—!

The moment his palm touched it, the massive iron door opened swiftly. As if reacting on its own to his high-level demonic cultivation. This time, Jeong Yeon-shin didn’t even need to reverse-calculate the seal's incantation.

A wizened voice echoed through the stone chamber.

An elderly man in pure white robes stood before the altar. His face, usually unreadable, now bore furrows between his brows.

“The Cult Master has never spoken falsehoods, but... someone with the same qualities as him... truly...”

The Ming Sect Grand Elder cut himself off mid-sentence, eyes widening. As if in a trance, he murmured,

“I was blind. This... this was his will all along.”

He looked like someone who had just realized a profound truth. A slow, crazed smile curled at the corners of his lips.

“Yes, this is who he was seeking all this time. Someone closer to the Heavenly Demon than us, who cared for him for over twenty years... someone who understands the Heavenly Demon’s path more intimately than the cultivation itself...!”

Each word was laced with laughter. It was the laugh of a man completely lost to madness.

He even shook with excitement as he stepped back. All his guard was lowered. His behavior made no sense.

“Use it! Do whatever you wish! The wish of our entire sect has been entrusted to you—!”

A rounded shockwave exploded, slamming the Ming Sect Grand Elder into the stone wall.

The tremor tore across the floor. In that instant, Jeong Yeon-shin had taken the Grand Elder’s place, stepping down with Hwanik Eight Steps.

The step’s ripple had manifested exactly as the strike he had visualized—an attack in the form of a step. Extremely aggressive, yet exquisitely refined. It carried the influence of the First Heavenly Demon, who had once walked like a god among mortals.

Everything had gone smoothly.

It would take a month to fully restore the two previous black radiances. Since there would be no more fights here in the Ming Sect, this place could serve as a temporary hiding place.

Jeong Yeon-shin let out a low, dry voice from his throat.

“We’ve arrived. This is it.”

He could sense the massive current of energy swirling beneath his feet. It wasn’t visible, but it was definitely there.

Though cities of the demonic realm meant to summon back the God of War might also be built atop such formations, what mattered to Jeong Yeon-shin now was the energy stored within this spell formation.

This would be enough. Enough to repay the Sword Saint.

Jeong Yeon-shin seated the old swordsman upon the altar.

But he couldn’t straighten his posture. A bony, sinewy hand had suddenly grabbed his arm.

Sword Saint Hyeon So-baek.

A blazing force surged through it. The old leader of the Murim Alliance was sitting upright, lifting his head ever so slightly.

“Don’t be stubborn, boy. Just let me feel the breeze one last time.”

His voice was shockingly clear. His eyes, looking up at Jeong Yeon-shin, sparkled—like the sky briefly brightening at dusk.

Jeong Yeon-shin didn’t answer. Instead, he stepped in place.

A deep boom rang across the underground chamber.

At the center of the altar, the spell formation’s energy, which had been extending in all directions, surged upward as Jeong Yeon-shin struck the ground with Hwanik Seven Steps.

“This should be enough.”

He had already internalized the Sword Saint’s structural energy pattern.

Just like before, Jeong Yeon-shin placed his hand on the Sword Saint’s key acupoints, twisting the energy of the formation using Yojon Bukmyeong Great Shift, and began pouring it into the old master.

The Ming Sect’s divine art, which allowed one to forcefully reverse the flow of qi, was perfectly suited for this situation.

The Sword Saint spoke even as energy surged into him.

One shouldn’t speak during energy circulation, but a master of his level could break such rules with ease.

“Will you hear me out?”

“You’ll have plenty of time to talk later, sir.”

“Listen now. An old man’s rambling might hold some insight for a young man like you. In any case, I’ll begin.”

“Sword wielder. It was a term once used for people considered lower than the natural order of mankind. And why wouldn’t it be? Those who reap human lives can hardly be equal to noble farmers who reap the land. It’s enough to simply know that one must never fall below what has already fallen. I picked up a sword instead of a sickle to survive... and I’ve always been ashamed of that. I wanted to become a better human being.”

His aged voice echoed solemnly from the very heart of the number-one demonic sect.

“One day, while starving in the marketplace, I met my teacher. Yeongchun—Eternal Spring. That was his name. I heard he was mocked for his lackluster swordsmanship, but as a child taken in by him as a servant, I gave it my own meaning.”

A quiet laugh «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» from the Sword Saint filled the stone chamber.

In this moment, the room holding the Ming Sect’s spell formation was entirely under Jeong Yeon-shin’s control.

Even the Grand Elder, who had risen while brushing off stone dust, and Eo Ung-gong and the Drunken Beggar King, who had just entered the altar room, could not interrupt.

The atmosphere made it so.

This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.

The only one allowed to speak was the Sword Saint.

“Even a vagabond selling his sword for a few coins... could still take part in meaningful causes. Like a child orphaned by some evil sect offering me coin with smudged hands to avenge their parents. Or common folk begging me to rescue their child taken as a disciple by a dark gang. Ipwang Fortress’s warriors aren’t scattered across the world, after all.”

The Sword Saint chuckled again.

“And so, in my eyes, the sword is a blade that brings spring to the faces of the weak. So what if it splashes blood or reeks of iron? If it lets someone take one step away from hell, if it brings flowers to their face... Then that’s a flower many in the martial world could bloom with just a bit of courage.”

“Even if you lose much, have the courage to move forward. The courage to hold human decency as natural. Wielding my sword that way... I eventually found myself at the top of the martial world. People began to call me a star.”

Jeong Yeon-shin suddenly felt the Sword Saint’s acupoints close off. The old master had sealed them himself with the energy he’d received. It was the inner skill of an ancient peerless martial artist.

“In the martial world, beware the elderly.”

The flow that had been pouring magnificently into the Sword Saint suddenly reversed—rushing straight back into Jeong Yeon-shin’s palm.

The energy, already once refined as it passed through the Sword Saint’s acupoints, returned intact.

In an instant, it surged through the vessels of his right arm and into the left side of his heart. The faded radiances began to glow dimly once more, one by one. All of them were rapidly returning to their original form.

Jeong Yeon-shin’s eyes lost focus.

“You take it. If you send it into me, it’ll only scatter in vain.”

The Sword Saint slowly rose from the altar. Then he turned to the Ming Sect Grand Elder.

“Can you show us the way out? Staying here any longer will only damage the relics.”

The Grand Elder answered without hesitation.

The religion of mad devils, unfathomable in its rituals.

And Jeong Yeon-shin—who to demonic warriors was no different from the Heavenly Demon himself.

At the entrance, the Drunken Beggar King and Eo Ung-gong stood in stunned silence, unable to comprehend what was unfolding. But the events within this chamber flowed forward like a sudden flood.

“Outside... let’s go outside.”

It was the Sword Saint who grasped Jeong Yeon-shin’s sleeve this time. The Ming Sect Grand Elder, as if entranced by a glimpse of the Invincible Demon within Jeong Yeon-shin’s face, guided them to a strange pulley system.

It was a moment where many things seemed to fall perfectly into place.

The whole flow of events was like a sword strike from the Alliance Leader who once claimed the world with a single blade. Smooth and fluid, like water.

Before they knew it, Jeong Yeon-shin and his companions were standing atop a wooden platform being raised toward the surface. By then, Jeong Yeon-shin was the one clutching the Sword Saint’s sleeve in return.

As if feeling the old man’s pulse even a little longer was the only thing that mattered now.

The Drunken Beggar King sensed that this was a form of closed-door cultivation. A final lesson from the elder Sword Saint to the still-young Jeong Yeon-shin.

It was nothing like the years-long cultivation of warriors who trained with fasting pills in isolation. This was the moment when the Lord of the Divine Sword Sect, who lived an eternity in each breath, emerged from a timeless retreat.

They ascended endlessly, endlessly, through the cave of madness.

The friction of wood against stone walls echoed like eternity, and just as pale starlight began to trickle from above, Jeong Yeon-shin opened his mouth.

The Sword Saint slowly shook his head, as if already knowing the question.

“I felt the wheels embedded in your heart. How long would it take you to fill them?”

That was the end of it.

The pulley raised them completely into the outside world, and cold, clear air rushed over their skin.

They stood atop what looked like an unusually large well. The Ming Sect’s Iron Clan had disguised the entrance with a massive device, posing as a sealed well on the outskirts of a city.

“So this is the Ming Sect’s entrance. Remember it.”

The Sword Saint said that, but before he could even take a single step, he collapsed where he stood. Just before his back hit the stone rim of the well, Jeong Yeon-shin caught him.

An endless moment stretched on—an intersection of eternity and an instant.

The pounding in his chest was thunderous.

Something was coming to an end. Jeong Yeon-shin didn’t want to look at the Sword Saint’s face. But he had no choice—because the old man’s lips were moving.

“I’ve seen many weapons in my life. Swords forged from inner strength, finely crafted steel, the pens of mighty nobles... But none of them were anything at all. Because they lacked courage. What weight can a weapon have, if it's wielded lightly?”

Darkness surrounded them.

It was night. Jeong Yeon-shin wanted to say something, but the old swordsman held him back with a faint smile.

The Sword Saint’s hand rose suddenly, searching the air. Jeong Yeon-shin silently placed his own hand into the old man's grip. Their fingers clasped just as a subtle smile lifted the old swordsman’s lips.

Everyone present felt it instantly. That the breath that came next... was the final breath powered by the Sword Saint’s inner energy.

The Sword Saint slowly held Jeong Yeon-shin’s hand. Above them, the late winter night sky stretched out.

“This is the last sword I ever held.”

Suddenly, the darkness veiling the night sky seemed to thin—and the Drunken Beggar King, who had been carried in silence on Eo Ung-gong’s back since they emerged, opened his eyes wide.

A great sword-shaped silhouette of starlight shimmered and overlapped with Jeong Yeon-shin’s body. It flickered like a deep blue flame, scattering across the heavens.

It was the sight marking the end of the unintentional closed-door cultivation endured by the Lord of the Divine Sword Sect.

And also—the end of a boyhood.