The world around Jeon-Yeol had narrowed down to a single, terrifying point. He knelt in the middle of the scorched courtyard, his hands—trembling from strain and horror—still clutching what remained of the most precious person in his life. His mother's head. Her face, which had once radiated warmth and care, was now a frozen mask of pain, severed from her body.
But the nightmare did not end there.
Suddenly, Jeon-Yeol felt a strange warmth beneath his fingers. It wasn't the fading heat of flesh—it was a vibration, akin to the decay of matter itself. His mother's skin began to lose its color, turning grey like predawn fog.
"No…" he whispered, his voice breaking into a rasp. "No, no, no!"
The impossible was happening right before his eyes. The flesh he was touching began to crumble. At first, it was just small flakes, like dry leaves, but the process accelerated with frightening inevitability. The head in his hands grew lighter. The hair he had so loved to stroke turned into grey dust, sifting through his fingers.
He pulled his hands back in horror, but it was too late. The body lying nearby suffered the same fate. The clothes collapsed, covering nothing but emptiness. Arms, legs, torso—everything that made up the physical vessel of the woman who had given him life disintegrated into a myriad of glowing grey sparks that instantly extinguished, turning into ordinary ash. The wind, wandering through the ruins, caught this dust, swirled it in a farewell dance, and carried it away toward the forest.
Jeon-Yeol remained sitting, staring at his empty palms coated in grey dust.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Something inside him snapped. It was as if a string, stretched to its limit, had burst, whipping against his very soul.
"They didn't even let me bury her…" he hissed.
The realization hit harder than any blade. This wasn't just murder. It was erasure. Whoever did this wanted to wipe away the very fact of his mother's existence. It was the highest degree of cruelty—to deprive a son of the last chance to show filial piety, to deprive a mother of rest in the earth.
Rage, hot and suffocating, rose from the pit of his stomach, veiling his eyes in a red mist. He wanted to scream, to run, to find the killer and tear their flesh apart with his bare hands, piece by piece, until nothing remained but a bloody mess. He wanted to make them suffer just as he was suffering now.
But when he tried to stand, his legs gave way. Weakness!
A monstrous, humiliating weakness pinned him to the ground.
Reality crashed down on him like an icy shower. Who was he? Jeon-Yeol looked at his hands. He was merely at the Apprentice Realm. The beginning of the path. A speck of dust in the world of martial arts.
His mother… she had never shown her true strength, but Jeon-Yeol knew—she was not weak. In her movements, when she chopped wood or carried water, there was always a hidden grace and power. To kill her, and in such a manner…
"A Transcendent Realm master…" he exhaled. "Or perhaps even higher."
The enemy was up there, in the cloud-covered peaks where Jeon-Yeol could not reach, even if he dedicated his entire life to it. The difference in power wasn't just great—it was the chasm between an ant and a dragon.
He clenched his fists so hard that his fingernails dug into his palms, drawing blood. The pain sobered him slightly. Mindless rage now would only lead to him dying in a ditch, his vengeance unfulfilled. He needed to understand. To understand what had happened here.
Jeon-Yeol forced himself to stand. His gaze, now cold and analytical, swept across the courtyard.
His attention was drawn to ropes scattered on the ground. They lay like snakes in the dust. Jeon-Yeol stepped closer and picked up a fragment. The ends weren't clean, as if cut by a knife. The fibers stuck out in different directions, frayed and stretched.
"They weren't cut," he muttered. "They were torn."
Someone—or something—possessed such physical strength or control over internal energy that they had simply snapped thick hemp ropes like rotten threads.
He raised his head and looked further, to where the courtyard transitioned into the forest. He knew this forest down to every bush, every creaking tree. But now, the forest looked alien.
The trees… Ancient pines, trunks too thick for two grown men to embrace, were felled.
Jeon-Yeol approached the nearest fallen giant. The cut was perfectly smooth, as if polished.
"A sword," he stated.
He walked further, into the depths of this clearing of death. Trees lay in rows, like mown grass. The air here was still oppressive. Residual Qi hung in the space—heavy, sharp, weighing down on his shoulders. It left a metallic taste of blood in his mouth. It was a power that would have stopped a normal person's heart.
And then, his gaze snagged on the ground.
Amidst the soil churned up by the impact of strikes, on one of the surviving stones, strange, scorched marks were visible. They weren't just burns. They were symbols.
...
Jeon-Yeol froze. Memory, like an obliging demon, brought forth a recollection.
...The dim light of an oil lamp. His mother sits at the table, using a brush to draw strange, flowing signs. They look nothing like the strict lines of the Imperial script. They writhe, like living creatures.
"Watch closely, Cheol," her voice is soft, but there is a strange tension in it. "This language... it is ancient."
Jeon-Yeol frowns as he watches. The meaning of the words slips away from him like water through fingers. His head hurts when he tries to memorize these squiggles.
"I don't understand, Mom," he says. "Why do I need this? It's too hard."
She smiles, but her eyes remain sad. She draws one complex symbol. It looks like an intertwining of thorns and flames.
"Memorize at least this one. This sign means... 'Demon'."
Jeon-Yeol blinked, returning to reality.
Right before him, burned into the stone by the residual energy of someone's technique, was that exact symbol.
It looked exactly as it had back then.
Jeon-Yeol shifted his gaze. There were other signs nearby, the same flowing, incomprehensible language that had once given him a headache.
"Who were you really, Mother?" he whispered into the void. "And who were we hiding from all this time?"
Clearly not from common bandits. These traces… they couldn't be left by a kitchen knife or a woodcutter's axe. The only sword in their house belonged to Jeon-Yeol himself, and it was a simple practice blade. A battle of masters had raged here. Was someone defending his mother? or did she fight alone?
He took another step and stumbled. The toe of his boot hit something soft beneath the branches of a fallen pine.
Something glinted in the rays of sun breaking through the gap in the canopy.
Jeon-Yeol bent down and recoiled, barely suppressing the urge to vomit.
It was a hand.
A male arm, severed at the elbow. The skin was pale, well-groomed—this hand clearly did not belong to a peasant or a laborer. But that wasn't what caught Jeon-Yeol's attention.
On the remains of the forearm, a sleeve survived. The fabric was magnificent—dark blue silk, dense and smooth to the touch. Even now, stained with mud and blood, it looked like a treasure. Intricate embroidery wound across the fabric in silver threads: clouds floating across the sky, and dancing cranes. A master's work. Such clothing cost a fortune.
And on the ring finger of the dead hand shone a ring.
Massive gold, with a large jade inlaid in the center, deep and green like a forest lake.
Jeon-Yeol removed the ring. As he examined it, he brought it closer, as if noticing something, and peered at the inner side of the band. There, barely visible, was an engraving.
"Luo Qingxi," he read aloud.
A name!
Luo Qingxi.
Who is this? The owner of the arm? Or the one to whom the owner was loyal? This name was the only thread leading out of this labyrinth of death.
He tore a piece of the blue silk with the embroidery from the severed arm, wrapped the ring in it, and hid the bundle deep within his clothes, close to his heart. He kicked the arm away into the bushes with disgust. He had no more use for it.
Jeon-Yeol turned and trudged back to the hut. Or rather, to what remained of it.
The fire had already died down, having devoured everything it could. Now, in place of their home, there was only a black ruin, from which heat and thin trails of blue smoke still rose.
He stepped over the charred threshold. The heat hit him in the face, drying the tears he had never shed.
"Nothing is left," he whispered, stirring a pile of coals with a stick.
The table where they ate, the bed where he slept—everything had turned to dust. His gaze fell on the corner where the bookshelves used to stand. His mother loved to read; they had a small but valuable library.
He walked closer, raking the ash with his boot. But it was useless; it was empty.
Jeon-Yeol frowned. Books burn, that is true. But there should have been at least charred spines, traces of paper, ashen pages. But here… here there wasn't even a hint of book remains. The shelves lay toppled, but there were no books on them or beneath them.
"They took them," realization dawned on him. "What the hell happened here?"
He walked out of the ruins and stopped at the edge of the clearing. Before him lay a picture of destruction.
Jeon-Yeol inhaled the scent of burning deeply, as if trying to imprint it in his memory forever. This scent would become the fuel for his vengeance.
He turned and walked away, never looking back. The forest, changed beyond recognition, swallowed his figure.
The world swayed and creaked.
Mi Sun regained consciousness slowly, as if surfacing from a deep, viscous swamp. His head was splitting, his mouth dry as a desert. The first thing he felt was rough shaking and pain in his wrists.
He opened his eyes and immediately squinted against the bright light. When his vision focused, he realized he was lying at the bottom of a cart. But it wasn't his comfortable carriage. It was a crude wagon covered by a tarp.
"Awake?" a quiet whisper came from beside him.
Mi Sun turned his head with difficulty. Next to him, bound hand and foot, sat his brothers and sisters. Their faces were pale, their clothes torn in places.
He tried to move his hands and realized he was tied with rough rope.
Mi Sun's gaze swept around the wagon. Their belongings were piled around them: boxes of rare pills, chests of gold, their personal weapons. All of this no longer belonged to them.
"Bandits…" he remembered. An ambush in the gorge. Their guards were slaughtered, and they themselves were knocked out.
The wagon jerked and stopped.
"Halt!" a gruff voice barked from outside. "The horses are tired, and we could use a wet whistle ourselves!"
The tarp was thrown back, and an ugly, unshaven face with rotting teeth peered into the wagon.
"Well now, little chicks, are you awake?" the bandit cackled. "Get out! We've arrived!"
They were roughly dragged outside.
They were on a forest road, at the foot of some mountain. A dense forest surrounded them, the very same one that seemed to exude coldness and anxiety.
Mi Sun, swaying, stood up. His comrades were lined up. There were about a dozen bandits. Dirty, smelly, dressed in mismatched armor stripped from corpses. But each had a weapon, and their eyes gleamed with a thirst for profit and violence.
One of the bandits, skinny and twitchy, walked up to Mi Sun's younger sister, a young girl trembling with fear. He reached out a dirty hand and grabbed her chin, turning her face toward the light.
"Heh-heh, look, Guan!" he shouted to his friend. "This girl isn't bad! Soft as a peach. Nothing bad will happen if we play with her a little, eh? The ransom for damaged goods won't be any less anyway!"
The girl screamed, trying to pull away, but the bandit's grip was iron.
Anger flared in Mi Sun's heart, drowning out the fear.
"Don't you dare touch her, you filthy animals!" he shouted, taking a step forward despite his bound hands. "Do you have any idea who we are?! If a single hair falls from her head, our elders will find you even in hell!"
The bandits glanced at each other and burst into loud laughter.
"Ooh, of course we know who you are!" the leader, Guan, smirked, spitting on the ground. "Rich kids who've never held anything heavier than a spoon. That's exactly why we kidnapped you, idiot! Do you think your elders will find us here? These are the Wild Lands!"
The skinny bandit reached for the girl again, deliberately slow, savoring the terror in her eyes.
"Save your threats, boy," he hissed. "Right now, we are the law here, and we are gods."
At that moment, Mi Sun's gaze, darting around in search of salvation, snagged on movement behind the bandits.
From the thicket of the forest, like a ghost, a figure emerged.
It was a young man, about the same age as Mi Sun himself. Tall, with hair as black as a raven's wing. His clothes were simple, scorched in places and stained with soot, but his face…
Mi Sun froze. The stranger's face was beautiful, with fine, aristocratic features, but absolutely devoid of emotion. His eyes were empty and dark, like an abyss. He walked calmly, not hiding, straight toward their group.
Mi Sun, driven by some inexplicable impulse—whether a desire to save a random passerby or hope for a distraction—screamed:
"Hey! Brother! Run! Run away from here! There are bandits!"
His scream tore through the air.
The bandits flinched and spun around sharply. The skinny one let go of the girl and grabbed the hilt of his saber.
"Who else is yapping there?" Guan growled.
They saw Jeon-Yeol. He stopped ten paces away from them, calmly surveying the scene: the bound captives, the wagon with the loot, and a dozen armed men.
Guan squinted, assessing the new guest. A lonely, skinny guy who looked battered. Easy prey.
He relaxed and smirked nastily, beckoning the skinny one to him.
"Hey, Xiao, look who the wind blew in! Ho-ho-ho!"
Guan took a step toward Jeon-Yeol, toying with a heavy club.
"And what a pretty face! Just like a doll. Beautiful…" he licked his lips. "It would be a pity if such a beautiful face got ruined, right? Maybe we can find a better use for you than just killing you?"
The bandits cackled, throwing out lewd jokes. Mi Sun watched the stranger with horror, expecting to see fear or panic on his face.
But Jeon-Yeol didn't even blink. He looked at the bandit leader the way a human looks at a buzzing fly. There was no fear in his gaze, nor challenge—only cold, murderous indifference.
He tilted his head slightly to the side, and a single, barely audible sound escaped his lips, yet it rang out louder than any scream in the silence:
"Hmm…"