Chapter 46

Chapter 46.

RUMBLE―.

Each time the old man took a step forward in the darkness, the air of the Inner Archive grew as heavy as lead.

The shelves trembled faintly, and old dust bloomed into the air.

An overwhelming qi wave that seemed to dominate the space itself.

The watcher of the Inner Archive, Cheon Gyeon.

The formless tidal wave he released swept over the two of them.

“Ugh…!”

Yayul Hui groaned without realizing it and stumbled back.

It was a pressure like an unseen giant hand constricting her entire body.

It felt as though the air inside her lungs were being forcibly wrung out.

‘I can’t… back down like this.’

She bit her lip and held on to her senses.

She put strength into her trembling legs and forcibly drew up the energy in her qi center.

WOOONG―.

Mad Wind Qigong, the inherited core cultivation method of the Mad Wind Yayul Family.

Wind-like energy whirled through her body and opened her breathing.

A strange gleam entered Cheon Gyeon’s eyes when he saw it.

“Hooh… You smell of wind. Is that Mad Wind Qigong?”

“H-How do you know that?”

By nature, an internal energy cultivation method was an energy that operated in the deepest part of the body.

It was nearly impossible to discern its source at a glance from outside.

However, Cheon Gyeon was an eccentric said to have seen a thousand martial arts.

“Rough, but pure. Daughter of the Yayul Family.”

He saw through Yayul Hui’s internal energy as though he were smelling it.

‘My family…?’

Yayul Hui’s eyes widened, but Cheon Gyeon merely waved his hand as though he found it bothersome.

“You pass. The time given to you is one day. Go in first. I still have more to test with that boy.”

At once, the pressure weighing down on Yayul Hui like Mount Tai vanished like the receding tide.

Only then did Yayul Hui gasp for breath and raise her head.

Her gaze turned toward Uncheon, who stood beside her.

‘Are you… all right?’

A concern conveyed without words.

Now that Yayul Hui had been released from it, Cheon Gyeon’s force closed in on Uncheon with even greater persistence.

But Uncheon’s expression was calm.

Uncheon nodded to her.

‘Go ahead.’

A brief exchange of glances.

Yayul Hui read the signal.

The only thing she could do here was trust him and not get in his way.

‘…Yes. If it’s Uncheon, he can handle it.’

Yayul Hui turned without hesitation and disappeared into the darkness deeper inside the archive.

“I truly… cannot figure you out.”

Cheon Gyeon’s eyes narrowed.

Internal energy was flowing from Uncheon’s body as well.

A cool and clear chill.

However, it was far too clear to be the ice arts of the Demonic Cult, and its texture differed from that of the Northern Sea.

SLIDE.

Cheon Gyeon maintained his force as he approached Uncheon one step at a time.

“Let me test you a little. Just how many steps of my Thousandfold Step can you withstand?”

THUD.

With every step he took, the pressure bearing down on Uncheon increased exponentially.

“One step.”

Uncheon’s knee joint gave a crack.

But Uncheon still stood his ground.

“Two steps.”

RUMBLE.

Hairline cracks appeared in the hard black stone floor beneath Uncheon’s feet.

Cold sweat beaded on his forehead, but his gaze still did not waver.

“Three steps.”

RUMBLE…!

A ferocious force made it seem as though space itself were twisting.

A pressure equal to eight times the original was being applied to him.

‘Ugh… What tremendous internal energy. He’s no mere watcher…!’

Uncheon gritted his teeth.

He was enduring it by operating the Limitless Iceheart Formula to its utmost limit.

CREEEAK….

The archive screamed first.

The nearby shelves groaned, and the books placed in them trembled.

If he raised the pressure any further, the precious books of the Inner Archive would be damaged.

Cheon Gyeon stopped his steps at exactly that point and withdrew his force.

“Hooh… The internal energy you possess is only at the First Rate level, yet you endured three steps.”

Cheon Gyeon looked Uncheon over with strange eyes.

It was clearly not a martial art of the Demonic Cult.

Yet to call it a martial art of the Orthodox Faction, the fundamental energy beneath it was Yin-Cold Qi.

“Even I, Cheon Gyeon, who can recognize a thousand martial arts, cannot tell the source of your internal energy.”

It lacked the murky and violent energy unique to demonic qi.

Rather, it was clear and profound, like a Daoist martial art.

Cheon Gyeon asked with eyes filled with suspicion, yet also with a dreadful curiosity.

“…Answer my question.”

The verification of force had already ended long ago.

From this point on, it was an ideological test.

“What is a strong person?”

Uncheon’s eyes glinted.

Answers that Demonic Cultists who worshiped power would naturally give passed through his mind.

‘A person who tramples others and rises above them,’

‘a person who survives until the end,’

‘a person who places the world beneath his feet’….

But Uncheon shook his head and erased all those obvious answers.

“A strong person is one who possesses an unbreakable will.”

“…Strength of will. Good. Then what do you believe The Strong Are Exalted means? Is it the strong devouring the weak?”

The doctrine forming the foundation of the Demonic Cult.

Most equated it with the strong devouring the weak.

They claimed it was natural law for the strong to eat the weak.

Yet the boy denied that head-on.

“The strong devouring the weak is merely the path of beasts.”

Cheon Gyeon’s eyebrow twitched.

“…Then? What do you believe The Strong Are Exalted means?”

“The true meaning of The Strong Are Exalted is not a beast’s struggle to survive, but a struggle of wills fought with one’s life on the line. That is what I believe The Strong Are Exalted means.”

The boy’s answer did not deny the doctrine of the Demonic Cult, yet it raised its dignity by one level.

‘A Life-Contending Struggle….’

It was an answer he had never heard even once, though he had asked countless Demonic Practitioners until now.

“There is no scent of the demonic in your internal energy, nor in your answer.”

Cheon Gyeon took one step closer.

His eyes flashed as though they would pierce through to the very bottom of Uncheon’s soul.

“Are you… a Demonic Practitioner?”

Uncheon chose his words for a moment.

Was he a Daoist priest of Gonryun, or a warrior of the Demonic Cult?

How should he define himself, a man who had set foot on the Demonic Path for vengeance?

“I am merely… a man who could not overcome the fire in his heart and entered the demonic path by his own feet.”

Qi Deviation.

It was a term that referred to a state in which one had gone mad while learning martial arts.

But Uncheon redefined those four characters as his own fate.

A man who carried the fire of revenge and walked into the path of the Demonic.

“Qi Deviation, is it….”

An uncanny twist formed at the corner of Cheon Gyeon’s mouth.

It was a deep answer that could never come from those born and raised in the Demonic Cult.

“You stepped onto the path as a Demonic Practitioner… Yes… No one is a Demonic Practitioner from the beginning.”

It was a wise answer to a foolish question.

“Khhh! You are young, but you give very interesting answers! An interesting one has entered!”

Cheon Gyeon seemed to mull over Uncheon’s answer, then suddenly burst into laughter.

“Go in. I grant you one day as well.”

Once Cheon Gyeon’s permission fell, Uncheon carefully stepped into the depths of the archive.

‘That Gal Muheun fellow. I thought he was wasting his time… but he really did discover a remarkable talent.’

Cheon Gyeon, who had at some point climbed onto a ceiling beam of the archive, held a strange expectation in his eyes.

The air was far colder and heavier than outside.

The smell of old paper, the fragrance of ink, and the strange energies dwelling in the secret manuals mixed together and stung his nose.

‘Is this the place?’

Uncheon’s eyes moved busily.

He wanted to go straight to Gonryun’s shelves, but, conscious of Cheon Gyeon the watcher, he restrained his steps.

Instead, Uncheon calmly turned and began looking over the other shelves.

‘This is….’

The sight was completely different from what Uncheon had expected.

The archive, packed with secret manuals of renowned Orthodox Faction sects, was truly an enormous tomb.

Shelves stood in rows, keeping a heavy silence as they stretched into the endless darkness.

‘It feels as if… I’ve come to a burial ground.’

The name plaques of renowned Orthodox Faction sects lined up on the shelves were like tombstones.

That meant those sects had either been annihilated by the Demonic Cult or plundered.

Among them, when Uncheon confirmed the names of two sects in particular, his heart sank.

‘Even Qingcheng and Emei….’

Judging by the considerable number of secret manuals displayed there, those two sects also seemed to have failed to avoid the calamity of sect destruction, just like Gonryun.

‘They are all… sects geographically close to Gonryun.’

A corner of his heart ached at that horrific sight.

‘I hate the Martial Alliance… but to think the roots of Qingcheng and Emei have been severed like this….’

Just by looking at the sects in the archive, it was possible to roughly estimate how far the Demonic Cult had advanced into the Central Plains.

‘The Demonic Cult’s influence has extended beyond Qinghai Province, where Gonryun is located, all the way to Sichuan Province…!’

With a complicated state of mind, Uncheon left the Qingcheng and Emei shelves behind and moved on.

Then, in a corner of the archive, Uncheon saw two thin books lying about with their covers torn in half.

As though someone had been reading them and ripped them apart in a fit of anger, their rough cut edges were hideous.

‘…What are these?’

Uncheon picked them up as though bewitched.

[Soul-Division…]

‘Dividing… the soul?’

When he turned the pages, sentences like the ravings of a madman leapt out.

[The left does not know the right, and the right betrays the left.]

[Heaven splits into two, so the mind, too, ought to divide.]

“…….”

The context before and after did not match at all.

The more he read, the more his head throbbed as if it would split open.

An ordinary martial artist would have thrown it away, calling it the scribbles of a lunatic lost to Qi Deviation.

But Uncheon knew instinctively.

Hidden inside these chaotic sentences was the answer he had been searching for so desperately.

He picked up the other half, [Twin Absolutes].

‘Soul-Division Twin Absolutes?’

He opened the two books side by side, but the writing still did not connect.

But Uncheon closed his eyes and breathed deeply.

‘I must not simply read them.’

[Soul-Division].

Dividing the soul.

That meant splitting his consciousness in two.

Uncheon focused not on his sight, but on his consciousness.

His left brain rationally disassembled the sentences of [Soul-Division], while his right brain took in the diagrams of [Twin Absolutes] through sensation.

The sensation of splitting his mind in half.

THROB.

Along with pain that felt as though his head were splitting apart, his vision separated into two worlds.

In the left world, a Daoist priest of Gonryun swung a sword; in the right world, a warrior of the Demonic Cult swung a saber down.

BOOM―!

Thunder struck in his mind.

The sentences of the two books mingled in midair, then interlocked as the pattern of Taiji and began rearranging into entirely new sentences.

[In the Changes, there is Taiji; Yin and Yang are originally one, and also two.]

[If nature follows that principle, why should consciousness not do the same?]

“……!”

Goosebumps rose over Uncheon’s entire body.

This was not the nonsense of a madman.

Orthodox and Demonic.

Yin and Yang.

A solution devised to handle mutually opposing forces at the same time.

‘It also connects to the Union of Two Extremes.’

Uncheon’s eyes shook fiercely.

Dividing the self was an idea only a madman would conceive.

To an ordinary martial artist, it was something that would make him recoil, calling it the direct road to Qi Deviation.

But Uncheon knew of a precedent for a martial art with such a function.

‘They say Wudang’s Two Polarities Heart Art is like that. Then… it isn’t an impossible goal.’

In truth, did Uncheon not already hold two different energies, Yin Qi and Yang Qi, inside his body at the same time?

‘…I found it. The last piece I need.’

Uncheon fell into the secret manuals on the spot.

The one who had left this bizarre book behind must have been a senior who had struggled not to go mad after learning both the martial arts of the Orthodox Faction and the Demonic Cult.

With his eyes, he read the two books simultaneously; inside his head, he ceaselessly split his self.

Accordingly, his body moved naturally.

Uncheon’s two hands moved in completely different directions.

‘By dividing the soul, one attains twin absolutes.’

WOOOONG―.

‘It works….’

It was still faint, but a path was clearly visible.

A constitution born with Yin Qi and Yang Qi tangled together.

The Yin-Yang Great Spirit Severed Meridian Affliction.

‘If I can unravel Yin Qi with one consciousness and unravel Yang Qi with the other!’

He had an intuition that a new path might open.

Uncheon stowed the two books inside his robes and sat cross-legged on the spot.

“Hooh….”

High on a ceiling beam.

Cheon Gyeon, who had hidden himself in the darkness, had eyes that widened roundly.

‘He… read that bizarre book?’

Cheon Gyeon knew.

In the past, countless Book Ghosts had opened the book, seduced by its function of allowing one to handle two martial arts.

But without exception, their two selves had collided, making them cough blood and go mad.

‘It is truly Demonic Arts….’

That was why he had torn it apart and thrown it into a corner so that it could not be read easily.

‘But that boy… instead of going mad, his eyes have grown even clearer.’

Uncheon sat cross-legged and entered a state of selfless trance.

As Cheon Gyeon watched him, a strange smile settled on his lips.

The one Gal Muheun had sent was a far more interesting thing than he had expected.

“It has been a long time… I never thought I would see someone learn Soul-Division Twin Absolutes again….”

Having decided to watch over Uncheon, Cheon Gyeon came all the way down from the ceiling and stood guard over him.