Chapter 74
Part 24: Extinction
Until just moments ago, Yeon Sang-hyeon had been immersed in meditation inside his bedroom.
It was a temporary lodging that the Inner Court protocol secretary had prepared with great care.
But now, he was standing in an entirely different place.
The weight of time, deeply twisted and sunken, rotten to the point of decay.
A suffocating sense of space.
To Yeon Sang-hyeon, it was now a sensation he was slowly becoming accustomed to.
The inside of The Ruler Of Darkness.
Or perhaps the outside of the universe.
Yeon Sang-hyeon took a deep breath.
“…Elder?”
He called out to the fallen immortal.
But the answer that returned was a voice he did not know.
“…The one who ca-called you was not him, but th-this lord, successor.”
That voice was not trembling from tension or fear.
It was because the owner of the voice bore such a severe heavenly punishment upon his body that he could not help but stutter.
“…A congenital deformity.”
Yeon Sang-hyeon grasped the nature of his heavenly punishment without much difficulty.
“K-kle, klekle. C-correct. As expected, your skill is truly ex-exceptional.”
The hunchback seemed pleased by Sang-hyeon’s reaction, which remained utterly calm even after seeing his hideous appearance.
“You seem to know me, but I do not know you.”
After several attempts, the hunchback succeeded in raising his head enough to look at him.
“Who th-this lord is, or wh-what this lord is, does not matter in the slightest. This lord is nothing more than a remnant that has already fulfilled his long-cherished wish and been devoured.”
The eyeball hidden beneath his drooping hump gleamed strangely.
Yeon Sang-hyeon nodded.
“…Then may I simply call you Senior?”
“As y-you wish.”
“Senior, for what reason have you sought me out?”
The hunchback raised an arm so long it nearly dragged along the ground and pointed precisely at Yeon Sang-hyeon.
“A warning.”
Yeon Sang-hyeon prepared himself to listen carefully.
The hunchback before him might, as he said, be nothing more than a remnant now,
but he possessed a vast presence that the current Yeon Sang-hyeon could not dare to fathom.
“Hm.”
The hunchback closed his mouth for a moment, as if choosing his words.
“…Do you know by wh-what standard The Ruler Of Darkness chooses its successors?”
“I do not.”
He could have pretended to know and spoken at length, but in the end, all he could offer would be conjecture based on guesses.
“As expected. W-wise.”
The hunchback nodded with difficulty.
His abnormally thick and short neck was not suited to the act of moving his head.
Yet he deliberately did so anyway.
“The Ruler Of Darkness ch-chooses its successors based on ‘talent.’”
Yeon Sang-hyeon silently repeated his words.
Did he mean talent in martial arts?
Did he mean talent in scholarship?
There were far too many kinds of talent in the world.
There was still nothing he could be certain of.
“What kind of talent do you mean?”
The hunchbacked man smiled, revealing teeth whose entire arrangement had collapsed.
Yeon Sang-hyeon felt a strong sense of déjà vu from that sight.
A dry, twisted, and terribly artificial smile.
It was the smile of the successors chosen by that ancient demonic treasure known as The Ruler Of Darkness.
“Th-that is the talent to destroy the world.”
At that very moment, Yeon Sang-hyeon’s vision was dyed red.
It was the hunchback’s memory.
Flames whipped about savagely.
The fire that filled every direction stretched out its tyrannical hands in search of air.
Everything that could burn was being consumed by the fire demon.
The flames, unable to find anywhere else to go, howled as if they meant to burn even the atmosphere itself.
The enormous buildings, the gardens, and even the thousands—tens of thousands—of corpses no longer retained their shapes.
The entire world was burning.
At the center of that scorching hell, “he” smiled.
The one standing there was not an ugly hunchbacked man.
He was a massive, muscular giant reaching nine cheok in height.
Every time his body stepped upon the earth, the ground caved in deeply, and the flames moved aside as if fearing him.
Strictly speaking, it was not that the flames feared him.
He was controlling the flames.
He was ruling over fire.
“Are you watching?”
An overwhelming power and stature, difficult even to imagine, descended upon Yeon Sang-hyeon.
“…I am watching.”
He said to Sang-hyeon,
“Look upon this great calamity, and feel the power possessed by one called a successor when he reaches the end…”
He lightly waved his hand, as if playing an instrument of fire.
A massive pillar of flame rose up and swallowed a huge palace hall, which had barely been maintaining its shape, as if sucking it in.
“A power like a natural disaster.”
But his eyes were hollow.
“…However, it was not because of this power that this lord’s world was driven to destruction.”
Yeon Sang-hyeon’s eyebrow twitched.
“What do you mean?”
A self-mocking smile formed on the giant’s lips.
“It means this power was granted as a result of what is unfolding before your eyes.”
Yeon Sang-hyeon immediately understood.
“You did not destroy the world with overwhelming power. Rather, because you destroyed the world, you received overwhelming power…!”
Each time The Ruler Of Darkness devoured a demon, it bestowed greater power.
His power was the price paid for destroying an entire world.
The giant looked down at his own hand.
“…This lord merely planted sparks here and there.”
Yeon Sang-hyeon nodded.
“Historically, great fires have always left behind the worst results. Even in the world I live in now, there is no way to successfully suppress great fires that break out simultaneously in several places.”
The giant looked at the burning world with empty eyes.
“All I did was wander the continent long ago, wearing out my feet. Just like that, this lord won a war that had seemed absolutely impossible to win.”
A burning palace hall collapsed with a thunderous roar.
“Those enormous empires all crumbled.”
“All their foundations were in their cities. And the moment their major cities were engulfed in flames, this lord’s revenge—this lord’s grudge—came to an end all too emptily.”
But in exchange, his world also ended along with them.
Yeon Sang-hyeon expressed neither agreement nor disagreement with those words.
The giant smiled at him.
“After you became the new successor, this lord has continued to observe you. And I became certain.”
Yeon Sang-hyeon still remained silent, only looking at the giant.
“You hold within you the power to destroy the world faster and more efficiently than this lord ever could.”
The giant raised one massive finger and pointed at Yeon Sang-hyeon’s head.
“For you, destroying that small clan would be far too easy, would it not?”
It was somewhat unreasonable to describe the Luoyang Sword Clan, called the greatest clan in the Central Plains, as a small clan. But the one saying it was a man who had burned his entire world to the ground.
“But you have no intention of taking that easy path.”
At last, Yeon Sang-hyeon opened his mouth.
“…I joined hands with The Ruler Of Darkness in order to fulfill my responsibility, not to destroy my clan.”
The giant gave a faint smile.
That smile was astonishingly virtuous.
So much so that it was impossible to believe it belonged to a man who had burned his entire world in hatred.
So much so that it was hard to believe it was the smile of a successor to The Ruler Of Darkness.
“This lord became a successor of The Ruler Of Darkness simply because he wanted to make one woman happy.”
“……”
He came before Yeon Sang-hyeon and sat down.
But even then, Yeon Sang-hyeon still had to look up at him.
“However, as all successors did, this lord also ended up destroying everything.”
His deep eyes stared directly at Yeon Sang-hyeon.
“…Just as The Ruler Of Darkness desired.”
Yeon Sang-hyeon fell silent.
Today, he had needed to display patience without end.
Everyone he saw carried karma, great or small, and the ancient demonic treasure known as The Ruler Of Darkness had shaken him without distinguishing between friend and foe.
“But you did not answer that madness. You were not shaken by that hunger.”
Yeon Sang-hyeon had endured it.
He had restrained it.
What the Luoyang Sword Clan needed right now was the sharp blade called First Young Master Yeon Sang-hyeon, not the all-consuming blaze called Dark Heaven Venerable One.
For the future he desired, the Luoyang Sword Clan had to remain intact.
Yeon Sang-hyeon smiled.
“…Ever since I was young, I simply hated living according to what others told me to do.”
The giant laughed with a sound like thunder.
The surrounding flames danced madly.
After laughing for a long while, he looked at Yeon Sang-hyeon with a smile.
“…Do you think this lord does not know that one pillar supporting you is the promise you made to those precious to you?”
Yeon Sang-hyeon shook his head.
“…The senior successors truly seem to have no intention of respecting their junior’s privacy.”
Once again, the giant burst into boisterous laughter.
Whatever he found so funny, he laughed until tears flowed.
Though the tears evaporated in an instant.
“…I do apologize for that. But I cannot help but continue watching from now on, so there is nothing to be done.”
Yeon Sang-hyeon shrugged.
“There can hardly be anything entertaining in a place like this, so I shall try to understand my senior’s unpleasant hobby.”
At that moment, raindrops began to fall from the sky filled with black smoke.
“…The time permitted to me is coming to an end.”
As the giant looked up at the sky, Yeon Sang-hyeon asked him,
“Then what was the warning you mentioned at the beginning, Senior?”
The giant looked down at him.
“Is the very end of this lord’s existence not itself a great warning to you?”
“…I suppose it is.”
In the giant’s eyes, Yeon Sang-hyeon could feel regret and repentance so deep they could not be measured.
How long had he been suffering in this space?
The rain gradually grew heavier.
***
Yeon Sang-hyeon opened his eyes while sitting cross-legged atop the bed.
Through the open window, he could see the eastern sky brightening.
At that moment, along with a knock on the door, Jeong-ah hurriedly entered the room.
“…I sensed an ominous presence, so I dared to enter without asking first.”
Yeon Sang-hyeon smiled.
“It is nothing.”
There was no way it was nothing, but Jeong-ah could only nod.
For now, she was the only one who understood, even slightly, the weight her master bore.
“…They say the investigation has been concluded for the time being. Thus, word has come that the Law Enforcement Court’s lockdown imposed on the Inner Court has been lifted.”
It was now time to leave the Inner Court.