Killing a Spirit Beast sent one back to a slightly more distant past, and securing that time opened a path to survival from the horde of Spirit Beasts that came crashing down.
This newly discovered rule of infinite regression became a kind of beacon and guideline for the Heavenly Demon.
Thanks to it, the Heavenly Demon had experienced far more deaths than he ever had with the Stone Monkey pack, yet he steadily pressed forward.
"Cheon Hwi, this…"
"…Something is going wrong."
Just as they were nearly out, he had the misfortune of encountering a Spirit Beast, and the Heavenly Demon threw his own family out as bait.
He managed to bring it down somehow, but… it was clear that the Heavenly Demon's way of thinking had begun to twist.
Seol Ri-hyang had brought down the Spirit Beast, but as she looked down at the Heavenly Demon, who was himself on the verge of death, she spoke in a bitter tone.
"He's died several hundred times by now, so it wouldn't be strange if he'd gone a little mad…"
"I think differently. That's not Qi Deviation, nor is it some kind of madness."
"Huh? You're saying it's sane to throw the very family you've been trying to protect all this time out as bait?"
"Exactly. The moment he faced the fox Spirit Beast, if he decided to give up on this cycle and prepare for the next one, that would be a rational choice."
"Still, how could he do that to his own family…!"
"However, just because something is rational doesn't mean it's the right choice."
This cycle had failed. So, to return to a further past by any means necessary, he brought down the Spirit Beast before him. If that was impossible, then he had to at least extract information from it.
It was easy to tell that this conclusion had been reached through such reasoning.
From the Heavenly Demon's perspective, it was a choice made to flail as efficiently as possible by any means necessary, and it was also true that he had been worn down from being far too accustomed to death—whether his own or others'.
"The real problem lies elsewhere."
"What is it?"
"His priorities have been inverted, and he has made exceptions to his own principles."
He prioritized the next cycle over the current one.
And he had made an exception to his principle of protecting his wife and daughter, becoming willing to cast them aside if necessary.
"The first time is the hardest. The second and third come relatively easily. …And people are not as strong as they believe themselves to be."
This was something I had been thinking about ever since my regression.
The bonds from before my regression. And the bonds I had built anew.
What should I prioritize, and where should I draw the line to separate the two?
After much deliberation, I had arrived at my current conclusion, but in truth, whatever answer I chose, what mattered more was seeing it through to the end.
If I had compromised along the way, and compromised again, expanding the exceptions… I would surely have merely wandered between my life before the regression and my life now.
But this was only possible because I had been given enough time.
No matter how many times one regresses, a Heavenly Demon thrown headfirst into the battlefield would never have had such leisure.
…An infinite regressor claiming to lack time. Isn't that quite the paradox?
"Though I may seem fine right now, that's only because this incident served as the catalyst."
"So, if what you're saying is true, Cheon Hwi, you're saying I'll start losing my mind from now on?"
"Unless something unexpected happens, that's the case."
"Well, I don't know about anything else, but if you—who are practically an expert on Qi Deviation—say so, then I'll take your word for it."
Seol Ri-hyang shrugged and refocused on the Heavenly Demon's memories that continued to unfold.
Perhaps it was thanks to having used her family as bait to bring down one more Spirit Beast.
This time around, the Heavenly Demon had managed to escape the city safely before the war against the Spirit Beasts even began.
Naturally, she was taking a detour to avoid the path where she had encountered the fox Spirit Beast.
She had succeeded in avoiding danger, but now that safety was secured, perhaps the deeds of her past self in the previous cycle weighed on her mind.
The Heavenly Demon's words and actions had become noticeably awkward… but still, she managed to take refuge in a safe neighboring village.
The problem was that even that held little meaning.
Three days.
In just three days, a water buffalo wreathed in drought and flames came to the village where the Heavenly Demon had taken refuge. Along with the Spirit Beasts under its command.
Probably something even the full strength of the Jegal Clan couldn't handle.
Considering when she faced the Azure-White Flood Dragon in the North Sea, that made sense.
Even weakened by poison, the divine beast remained formidable—hadn't it taken two Harmony Realm martial artists working together to barely drive it back?
The Jegal Clan was strong, but if the clan head was the only Harmony Realm martial artist among them… it was only natural they couldn't stop a water buffalo leading a herd.
This time, she hadn't slipped away in advance, nor had she survived by luck among the rubble.
The Heavenly Demon had died, and with a slight margin of error, she regressed once more.
Yes. Right back to the moment the water buffalo spirit beast was about to shatter her homeland.
She hadn't expected to return to this moment, it seemed—her dazed expression lasted only a moment. The Heavenly Demon steeled her resolve anew and prepared to escape.
A plan that proceeded without a hitch, since she'd succeeded once before.
This time, she headed not to the neighboring village that would have been the water buffalo spirit beast's next destination, but to a place completely removed from it.
And she was killed by bandits, not a spirit beast. The Green Forest of this era hadn't been subjugated at all—if anything, they'd grown stronger in the chaos, and their ferocity was chilling.
At the very least, the current Heavenly Demon was not an opponent he could hope to contend with.
Even afterward, the Heavenly Demon repeated his regressions, searching for a safe option—but there was none.
At most, seven days and nights. After that, death came without fail.
Only then did the Heavenly Demon realize it. No matter which direction he went, his retreat was cut off.
No—the only retreat lay not in the present, but in the past.
In the end, the Heavenly Demon had no choice but to erase the option of running away.
To return to even a slightly more distant past, he had to defeat the spirit beast.
What followed was little more than a repetition of everything that had happened so far.
A battle for the sake of escape. The Heavenly Demon died again and again, and again and again he fought the spirit beast.
…And just as he had feared from the start, the Heavenly Demon's moral line crumbled with terrifying speed.
To bring down an opponent he could not defeat, he began sacrificing not only his own limbs, but others in earnest.
He shoved a martial artist who was fighting well into the beast's path, then stabbed at the eyes of the spirit beast as it lunged to bite the fallen man's head.
He used a helpless old man who hadn't managed to flee as bait for a trap, and used a child weeping over its fallen parents as a shield.
As if, having already offered up his own family as sacrifices once, there was nothing beneath him now.
Thanks to this, the Heavenly Demon was able to bring down the spirit beast with an efficiency that seemed impossible for someone at the Second-Rate level… but.
Perhaps his family could not simply watch him cast aside the righteous path. At some point, the two of them began trying to stop him.
Thus, the Heavenly Demon left his wife and daughter, who were in his way, behind and began to move alone.
"…If he keeps this up, he'll just die like the first time."
"Didn't I tell you? It's only the first time that's hard. The second and third times are easy."
Perhaps, in his heart, he considered this yet another unavoidable sacrifice made to save his family.
Or perhaps he was enraged at his wife and daughter, who kept telling him that his repeated deaths and struggles were wrong.
What mattered was that the Heavenly Demon was slowly but surely beginning to lose his mind.
And in exchange, he had gained the ability to rewind ten days of time.
In the end, he managed to escape safely to the Murim Alliance, but… the Heavenly Demon could no longer smile at his family.
Seol Ri-hyang, who had been watching this, let out a long sigh.
"So you knew this was how it would turn out, Cheon Hwi?"
"Actually, this kind of thing is surprisingly common. …Isn't your own father a perfect example?"
"Ah."
Seol Du-ho probably hadn't intended to sell Ri-hyang off from the very beginning.
The reason he'd fallen into gambling in the first place was the justification that he needed money to feed his daughter.
But in the end, he sold Ri-hyang to a brothel and chose the gambling that had become an end rather than a means.
He consoled himself by thinking that at least as a courtesan she would never lack for food, so she would be able to keep herself alive.
But lies meant to deceive oneself never last long.
If Seol Du-ho had belatedly realized what he had done and fled his hometown as if to deny reality.
The Heavenly Demon, as if repeating to himself that he had not been wrong, threw himself into hunting Spirit Beasts with even greater fervor.
Naturally, the distance between the Heavenly Demon and his family grew… but perhaps it was because he remained affiliated with the Murim Alliance, fighting in relative safety time and again.
The Heavenly Demon survived for nearly a year—the longest he had lasted across all his regressions.
Thanks to that, we too were able to learn much about the era in our memories.
"So… you're saying the divine beasts started rallying other Spirit Beasts to attack humans in an organized manner? And the reason is survival?"
"That does seem to be the case."
As time passed, Natural Qi grew thinner. Partly because the domain of humans had expanded that much, and partly, according to the Illusion Witch, because at some point the heavens withdrew their attention, and the Natural Qi that naturally welled up plummeted.
Martial Artists, as martial arts developed with the passage of time, did not keenly feel the shortage of Natural Qi… but.
For Spirit Beasts, who used Natural Qi itself as their power, it must have been the event of a lifetime.
Besides, even if internal energy vanished, humans would just go on living, as most common folk do.
But Spirit Beasts, originally ordinary animals and plants, would see no new Spirit Beasts born without Natural Qi, and if they were unlucky, they would lose all their power and even the intelligence they had barely gained could scatter.
To put it in human terms, it would be like breathing growing harder and harder while children could no longer be born.
And so, the Spirit Beasts — among them, the Harmony Realm Spirit Beasts called divine beasts — made their decision.
If they kept living like this, maintaining a moderate distance from humans, they would all wither and die.
So before quietly going extinct, they would kill humans and tear down the civilization they had built, returning nature to its original state.
That alone was the path by which the Spirit Beasts could survive.
The survival competition between humans and Spirit Beasts that I had vaguely sensed in the North Sea — that had expanded to encompass the entire Central Plains in the era I remembered.
"The reason the Heavenly Demon was chosen as the regressor… I suppose it's because if things continued as they were, the world — or more precisely, humanity — would be doomed?"
The seal prevented me from answering Seol Ri-hyang's question, but she likely hadn't expected an answer anyway.
The rule that each Spirit Beast killed sent me further back into the past. And a mental fortitude that, while beginning to fray as my karma collapsed, could still easily endure several hundred deaths.
Didn't that fit perfectly with the rules of regression and regressors that the Martial Princess had spoken of?
If the Spirit Beasts' final flailing had sealed humanity's doom, then the only one who could overturn it was the Heavenly Demon.
If the destruction of my timeline had been caused by the Heavenly Demon.
Then the destruction of this timeline was caused by the Spirit Beasts.
***
Was it because I had joined the Murim Alliance, survived for over a year, and felled countless Spirit Beasts?
The Heavenly Demon's next regression sent him back three years before his previous regression.
The first thing the Heavenly Demon did, finally given time to prepare calmly, was…
Leave his family behind with a single letter.
His reason was that they interfered with his training.