TRDS 03

Chapter 3

Return of the Sword 

“Alright, I’ve decided!”

It was around midday.

Heoncheon had spent the entire night lying awake after leaving Sanghwa Inn. Now he suddenly jumped to his feet and declared,

“I’m going home first.”

It was a decision he had reached after countless hours of thought.

Of course, giving up the comfort and convenience of modern civilization was not as easy as simply saying it.

But now that the Blood Demon Cult had been destroyed, there was no way for Heoncheon to return there from the Central Plains.

Even if he managed to find a way outside the Central Plains, it was unlikely that he could do so anytime soon.

Heoncheon suddenly found himself resenting Gu Cheonrak, the Nine Heavens Blood Demon who had sent him to Korea in the first place.

‘Damn that Blood Demon bastard. If he was going to send me there, he should’ve just made it a one-way trip. Why the hell did he have to make me go back and forth? Am I some damn dog being trained?’

They say there is nothing more despicable in this world than giving someone something only to take it back.

Heoncheon sighed and shook his head.

“Forget it. None of that matters now. Let’s just go home.”

The Murim Alliance had already been dissolved for a long time, so there were no longer any duties tying him down.

As for Namgung Hwi, he was probably managing his clan just fine on his own.

‘He’s always been an outstanding guy. There’s no need for me to worry about him.’

More than anything, Heoncheon wanted to see his family, whom he had not seen in so long.

“They’re doing well, right?”

He had checked on his hometown around the end of the Righteous-Demonic War, and there had been no problems then. So it should still be there.

Both of his parents had practiced martial arts, and neither had suffered from any particular illness, so there should be no major problems.

There was just one thing bothering him.

“Phew. When I get home, Dad’s going to beat the hell out of me, isn’t he?”

He would be lucky if that was all that happened.

At the age of ten, Heoncheon had recklessly run away from home because he wanted to become a wandering hero, only to end up becoming a miserable child beggar.

Then, while he was barely surviving from day to day by begging for food, a wrinkled hand had appeared before him.

‘I shouldn’t have taken my master’s hand back then.’

As he was thinking about going home, he had happened to meet his master.

At the time, he had no idea that his master would prevent him from leaving the mountain until he had fully mastered every martial art of their sect.

Nor had he known that after eight years of grueling training, he would happen to meet Namgung Hwi on his way down the mountain, who would later become the Murim Alliance Leader, and end up leading a bodyguard unit called the Eunwol Guard.

Of course, Heoncheon had not completely cut off contact with his family during all those years.

From before the Murim Alliance was even formed until the final battle, he had consistently sent word through messengers to let his family know he was safe.

But no matter how often he sent word, it was nothing compared to going home and seeing them in person.

‘I kept putting it off because I planned to return home in glory once the war was over…’

He had run away from home as a child because he wanted to become a wandering hero, driving a nail into his parents’ hearts. Because of that guilt, he had convinced himself that he could never return without having achieved something worthy.

But before that could happen, Gu Cheonrak had sent Heoncheon flying into another dimension instead of somewhere within the Central Plains.

And he had been there for twenty years.

‘I was a fool.’

When he had the chance, he should have gone to see them even once more.

Only now did he realize something so simple and obvious.

There was no son more unfilial than him.

As he realized how careless and thoughtless he had been all those years, regret came rushing over him like a tidal wave.

‘They must think I’m dead by now, right?’

The Murim Alliance must have contacted them separately.

They could not have revealed his true identity, but they would at least have told them that he had died a heroic death in battle.

“Phew. I’ll just go home first. I’ll get down on my knees and beg for forgiveness.”

Whether they would forgive him or not was another matter, but that was the least he could do as their son.

“Then shall I leave right away?”

Now that he had decided on his destination, there was no reason to hesitate any longer.

He had stayed awake all night, but fatigue of this level was nothing to him. A little meditation to circulate his qi during a rest along the way would wash it all away.

Heoncheon casually stretched his body before suddenly muttering,

“Ah. Come to think of it, Haomun. They’re almost too good at their job. That’s the problem.”

With those incomprehensible words, he lightly kicked off the ground.

His body shot straight upward at incredible speed, as if someone had grabbed him from above and pulled him up. He stopped about five jang above the ground.

Normally, he should have fallen back down. That was how the world worked.

Yet, somehow, Heoncheon remained suspended in midair as though gravity had no effect on him.

‘Let’s see. Is east that way?’

After roughly determining the direction, Heoncheon stamped his foot against the air as if he were kicking off solid ground.

Whoosh!

With the sound of air being split apart, his body shot forward in a straight line, covering more than twenty jang in an instant.

He repeated the movement several times.

Before long, his figure had become nothing more than a tiny dot, disappearing beyond the horizon in the blink of an eye.

Not long afterward, a masked figure suddenly rose like a ghost from the empty ground beside the main road where Heoncheon had been standing moments earlier.

It was October, who had secretly followed Heoncheon as soon as he received the order from the Haomun woman the previous night.

He looked around.

Even though his entire face was hidden behind his mask, his bewildered voice made it obvious that he was completely stunned.

“……The trail just ends here?”

If someone moved along the ground, no matter how fast or stealthy they were, they were bound to leave traces behind. October was confident that he would never lose someone he was pursuing.

But Heoncheon had used Soaring Against the Flow of Qi and Void-Stepping simultaneously, traveling through the sky.

In other words, he had left absolutely no trace behind.

Of course, October had no way of knowing that.

He was left confused by this completely unexpected situation.

Even so, he searched the surrounding area thoroughly once more.

He wanted to make sure he had not overlooked anything.

But the result was exactly the same.

“As expected, the trail ends here. To think he could shake off someone like me, who has devoted his entire life to the art of tracking. His skill is truly terrifying.”

It was difficult enough to catch someone who was more skilled than you in the same field.

October decided that continuing to pursue Heoncheon was pointless.

“I’ll have to find another way to track him down and learn more about him.”

After muttering those words, October shot off in the exact opposite direction from where Heoncheon had disappeared.

Late that night.

Above the night sky of what had once been the Blood Demon Cult’s headquarters, but had now become nothing more than a quiet field, faint dots began appearing one by one.

The dots were none other than blood-red bats.

Dozens of Blood Bats flew frantically over the field, constantly flapping their thin, crimson wings.

Yet not even the slightest sound could be heard.

Not even the sound of their wings.

It was as if someone had deliberately erased every trace of noise.

It was an eerie and unnatural sight.

Then, the swarm of Blood Bats suddenly came to a stop before a pit roughly two li across.

It was the very place where an unexpected earthquake had occurred not long ago, where a pillar of blood-red light had shot into the sky and Heoncheon had fallen.

The Blood Bats circled the pit for a long while.

Then, a chilling voice suddenly rang out from among them.

[……There is no mistake. This is His aura. No, more precisely, it is His lingering trace……!]

The moment the voice ended, the clustered Blood Bats split apart to both sides.

A man wearing a black blood-colored cloak walked out from between them.

As though the cloak’s hood was bothering him, he pushed it back from his face.

His appearance was revealed.

He was a handsome man with a face as pale as paper, eyes covered in countless marks, and hair and lips as red as fresh blood.

“At last. At last……!”

The red-haired man spoke with a face full of certainty, desperately suppressing his overwhelming emotions.

“Twenty years. After a full twenty years, His incarnation has returned to this land……! Ah, as expected, He has not abandoned our Blood Demon Cult yet……!”

He immediately approached the pit and knelt down reverently.

Then he crossed both hands over his chest and cried out,

“May the Blood God’s divine might remain eternal and undying……!”

Amazingly, the red-haired man was a member of the Blood Demon Cult, a sect that had been destroyed long ago.

And he was no ordinary member, either.

Hair as red as freshly spilled blood.

That was one of the most distinctive characteristics of the Blood Apostles, followers who had gained the incomplete power of immortality through the Blood God’s blessing.

The nameless Blood Apostle muttered with a crazed expression,

“We must find him. This time, I will never, ever lose His incarnation as helplessly as I did before……!”

It had been ten days since Heoncheon had shaken off Haomun’s pursuit.

He finally arrived before a massive fortress wall.

It was one of the two earthly paradises said to rival the heavenly paradise above, and the capital of Zhejiang—

Hangzhou.

Standing before the city gate, where people had been lining up since morning, Heoncheon was overcome with mixed emotions.

‘I really came back.’

The scenery of his homeland was both familiar and strange.

It had been more than thirty years since he had recklessly run away from home as a child, after all.

‘The city gate looked so huge back then.’

It was still enormous, but unlike when he was a child, he could now smash it apart with a single palm if he wanted to.

Naturally, it felt completely different.

While he was lost in his thoughts, the line moved forward, and soon it was Heoncheon’s turn.

“Stop. Show me your identity plaque.”

“Here.”

Heoncheon handed the inspecting soldier an old wooden plaque.

It was his identity plaque, which he had carefully kept from the day he ran away from home, even throughout his twenty years in Korea.

Because he had never taken it off his person, it was covered in years of grime and fingerprints, and the characters carved into it had become so worn that they were barely readable.

Still, there was no problem passing the inspection.

Once he entered through the city gate, countless people and buildings came into view.

“Wow. Hangzhou really is Hangzhou.”

It was completely different from Zhongyang County, which he had passed through earlier.

Like a country bumpkin visiting the capital for the first time, Heoncheon kept looking around in every direction.

“Huh? They built that there? Oh, that place is still around? It used to be the second-generation original shop, but now it’s the third generation. I wonder if it still tastes the same?”

The people around him paid no attention as he made a huge fuss while walking down the street.

Anyone visiting Hangzhou for the first time, or returning after a long absence, tended to react just like Heoncheon did.

So everyone simply assumed he was another one of those people and went on with their business.

Heoncheon, for his part, did not care in the slightest about the attention.

‘I wonder if our house has changed too. It was newly built back then, so it must be pretty old now. Oh! There’s our house!’

Before long, a familiar building came into view.

It was Heoncheon’s family estate, the Heo Estate.

Heoncheon hurried over and was just about to knock on the door when he suddenly stopped and looked down at his clothes.

Compared to ten days ago, his outfit looked much more like that of a proper Central Plains man.

The old, shabby straw hat and loose hemp clothing he had stolen from a commoner’s house had been replaced with a stylish bamboo hat and a well-made black changshan tailored perfectly to his body.

A long sword he had not possessed before hung from his waist.

He had bought all of it just yesterday with money he earned by selling the hides of wild animals he had hunted along the way, as well as valuables he had taken from a band of bandits he happened to encounter.

The reason Heoncheon was suddenly so concerned about his appearance was simple.

‘This should be enough. Even if it isn’t exactly a triumphant return, at least I don’t look completely miserable, right?’

After all, what parent would be happy to see a son who had run away from home as a child return looking shabby and pathetic?

Especially after a reunion lasting several decades.

At the very least, he had to look presentable.

‘Ah, if only I had shampoo, soap, and toothpaste, it would be perfect.’

Compared to Korea, the cleaning products available in the Central Plains were far less effective.

Even though Heoncheon was not normally someone who obsessed over cleanliness, the difference was enough to leave him feeling as though he had not properly cleaned himself after using the bathroom.

Once again, even something as trivial as this made him painfully aware of how far ahead Earth’s civilization was compared to the Central Plains.

‘Phew. I’m really starting to miss Korea.’

Heoncheon had just pushed his regrets aside and was about to knock on the gate when—

BANG!

“Gaaah!”

“Huh?”

A man suddenly smashed through the door and came flying out with a scream.

Heoncheon had not expected a particularly enthusiastic welcome, but this was far beyond anything he had imagined.

“You bastaaards! Do you even know where you are messing around?!”

Then came a familiar voice shouting angrily.

‘That sounds like the Chief Steward. He must be really pissed. What the hell is going on?’

Curious, Heoncheon looked through the broken doorway.

His expression hardened.

Two groups were engaged in a fierce standoff inside.

At that moment, a young man dressed in a splendid dark-blue robe leisurely waved his fan and spoke with an irritatingly relaxed smile.

“Heh heh. The old tiger may be past his prime, but he certainly hasn’t lost his temper. If you keep acting like this, you might die without even leaving your skin behind.”

At the young man’s warning, the elderly man facing him immediately glared furiously.

Though he looked old, his sturdy physique was far more impressive than his age suggested.

He was Im Ho-pil, the Chief Steward of the Heo Estate.

“Nonsense! You’d better get the hell out of here while I’m still asking nicely, you lawless bastard!”

“Hahaha. I merely said that I wanted to see the Estate Lord’s face once. Why are you getting so angry? It’s hardly an unreasonable request.”

“Hmph. How many times do I have to tell you that my Estate Lord is away? Stop making such ridiculous demands and get out of my sight immediately.”

“Hmm. Hearing that only makes it harder to believe. Are you perhaps saying he’s not here when he’s actually inside? I suppose I’ll have to see it with my own eyes before I’ll be satisfied.”

The moment the young man finished speaking, he moved.

Im Ho-pil hurriedly tried to stop him, but—

Papapapapap!

Before long, their hands and feet became a blur.

In the end, before even twenty exchanges had passed, the young man struck Im Ho-pil squarely in the chest with his palm.

BANG!

“Ugh!”

Im Ho-pil let out a strangled groan and fell flat on his back.

“Heh. This could have ended peacefully if you had simply let me see the Estate Lord. But since you kept getting in my way, you ended up suffering this humiliation at the hands of someone generations younger than you.”

The young man mocked the defenseless Im Ho-pil.

Then, just as he was about to deliver the final blow—

Tap.

A single finger lightly poked the young man’s shoulder.

“Huh?”

His knees suddenly slammed into the ground with a loud thud, completely against his will.

“……What?”

The young man was bewildered for only a moment.

When he quickly raised his head, he found a stranger standing over him.

The man was dressed in a black changshan, with a bamboo hat hiding his face.

Just as the young man was about to call out to his subordinates for help, he belatedly noticed the men sprawled unconscious around the bamboo-hatted stranger.

‘Did he really take all of them down by himself in that short amount of time?’

The realization sent a chill down the young man’s spine.

“Wh-who are you……?”

“Me?”

The bamboo-hatted man, Heoncheon, casually lifted his bamboo hat.

“The son of this house.”