A person can only know what they know.
They can only recall what they can bring to mind, and they can only do what they are capable of doing.
And all of this is built upon memory—memory is what forms the very essence of a person.
Just as I once defined that the Tang So-wol before the regression and the Tang So-wol after the regression were different people.
The women before my eyes now were likewise not the real ones—they were beings akin to illusions, created from my memories.
Perhaps I might come to acknowledge them as different beings and grow to love them anew. Hadn't I already done so once before?
…But I couldn't allow myself to do so.
That was only natural—everything in this world was a puppet crafted from memories stolen and read from my mind.
A dream endlessly friendly and sweet. A world that flowed only as I thought, only as I expected.
In this place, I was the only person.
And so I resolved to wake from the dream. The first step was to deny everything in this world.
And that meant cutting away everything that let me rest easy in this dream—for instance, my happiest moments. My most precious memories.
Sreung.
"I'm sorry, but die for me."
And so, this was nothing more than simple self-harm.
The smell of burning and blood brushed past the tip of my nose. By now, a red glow like a raging fire flickered at the edges of my vision, and the internal energy burning from the depths of my stomach made my Meridians tremble unsteadily.
Killing intent. I had reached the Harmony Realm by recognizing the purest true nature that lay beyond it, but that did not mean I denied the past.
The reason I wished to protect someone was… because I had once lost everything.
Thunk!
A sword strike, shot out as fast as a beam of light, buried itself straight into Tang So-wol's heart.
As if flaunting that this was our wedding night, Tang So-wol, dressed prettily according to my tastes, her eyes trembled faintly.
"Sword… ghost? Why…?"
Tang So-wol, alternating her gaze between the blade embedded in her chest and me, wore a sorrowful smile.
But I know the source of that smile. The angle of those brows. The movement of the corners of her mouth. That sorrowful voice.
It is identical to the way she looked when the Heavenly Demon pierced her heart, when she left me her last words—telling me she loved me, telling me to survive.
Because the only memory I have of Tang So-wol meeting death is that one, this is how it must play out.
"…How blasphemous."
And yet, it is effective.
The painful memory forced in. This time, I recreated it with my own hands—more than enough to be called a nightmare.
"A dream is, in the end, just a dream."
I repeated that to myself as I twisted the blade free.
Blood poured out in a torrent. Belated screams erupted from the startled Seol Ri-hyang and Seomun Hwa-rin.
I swung my sword reflexively at the intense surge of internal energy right beside me.
Clang!
"Blood Wolf! How… how could you do this?!"
A face twisted with grievance, anger, and betrayal. It was a murderous expression completely unlike her usual self, yet one I knew all too well.
It was the same look Seomun Hwa-rin had worn in this life when she saw the Black Heaven Sword Gate that the Lord of the Black Alliance had brought along after kidnapping me.
"I'll apologize later, Senior Seomun Hwa-rin."
"You won't even call me Alliance Lord anymore?!"
Seomun Hwa-rin shouted as she swung her arms and legs without pause. It was a fierce assault befitting a martial artist of the Harmony Realm, but… not a single strike would ever touch me.
That was only natural. Even this was all moving exactly as I thought and wished.
Each blow certainly carried the respect I held for Seomun Hwa-rin's martial art. But what use was that if they never landed?
Before even ten exchanges had passed, one of her arms was cut. Five swords I had never swung were embedded in her back, and her legs twisted beneath her as she collapsed to the ground.
I hadn't made her this way. She was simply drawing closer, with every wound, to the final image of Seomun Hwa-rin I remembered.
The woman who had once been my teacher and my parent, and who was now to become my family in a different sense, looked up at me in a thoroughly pitiful state.
"…Blood Wolf. Did you ever truly love me?"
A smile that seemed to try its best to reassure me. A tone laced with a strange sense of relief.
Seomun Hwa-rin left behind words of disbelief, her appearance infinitely close to the end, and then her head drooped.
Like a flower falling.
After gazing at her for a moment, I turned my head toward Seol Ri-hyang, the last one remaining.
"It will be over soon."
"Blood Wolf. You're a truly wicked bastard."
This, too, was a phrase I had heard before. With those repeated final words as her last, Seol Ri-hyang was cut down by my sword and fell.
It should have been the first night of our marriage, yet the surroundings had already become a sea of blood.
The three women each lay fallen in the manner in which they had met their deaths before the regression, and in my hand was a sword from which blood dripped steadily.
Yet still, it was a dream I could not wake from. I had a sense of the reason. There was still one more thing left for me to cut down.
"…I will follow you soon."
I brought the raised sword to my own neck… and drew it across.
Slicing.
My vision spun as I fell.
To cover the paradise the bell showed me with my own hell, merely recalling the memories of loss was not enough.
That final moment had to lead to a futile end, falling without having accomplished anything.
Just as I, before the regression, had lost my life to a single move of the Heavenly Demon.
Darkening vision. The last thing I saw was my body, having lost its master, collapsing powerlessly, and then I closed my eyes.
.
.
.
.
.
And when I opened my eyes again, there before me was the Iron Blood Faction, perfectly intact, and the Ghost Sound Witch pacing at the entrance.
"Ah."
The same scenery as when I first opened my eyes in the world the bell had created.
No—looking more closely, the faint sound of crickets I'd heard before was gone.
As if no matter how heavy the resolve I carried when I cut away my memories, it could only ever amount to the impact of a cricket.
"…Is this all it amounts to?"
I don't think my method was wrong. At the very least, the direction was right.
It's just that one time wasn't enough to shatter the illusion the bell showed me.
Looking back on my memories from before the regression. Those who were devoured by the bell and became Blood Buddhas numbered more than one or two, and their martial levels were all exceptional.
At the very least, Transcendent Peak. There were even cases of martial artists who had reached the Harmony Realm becoming Blood Buddhas.
It would be far too optimistic to dismiss them all as dumber than me, weaker of will, and utterly unprepared against sorcery.
So the question remains how many times I must repeat this before I can completely sever this dream. …And whether I can endure it.
Some would call it stubbornness. The blood-red scenery, as if seared into my retinas, has already vanished, and yet I still struggle so.
But this is not a matter of whether I can or cannot.
It is something I must do.
I gripped my sword with a hand that had yet to stop trembling.
As always, it was the only thing I could do.
…Never had I resented the fact that I was a swordsman so much.
How many times had I killed?
At some point, I stopped counting.
Still, each time I swung my sword, the scar of that cut remained in my mind's eye, so if I traced them back, I could make a rough guess.
When I had faced death ten times, the Iron Blood Faction had returned to its shabby past.
When I had faced death a hundred times, half of the servants had vanished.
When I had faced death a thousand times, the world beyond the Iron Blood Faction had disappeared.
But no matter how many times I killed or was killed, the figures of those three women never changed.
Even when the world lost its natural colors and was dyed in black and white, even when the Iron Blood Faction grew shabby and began to burn, even after the sound of the temple bell had ceased at some point.
Still, Tang So-wol, Seol Ri-hyang, and Seomun Hwa-rin appeared before me, radiant and full of life.
And then they whispered. I love you, so why do you only return killing to me?
Faces and tones of voice that were only ever shown toward enemies. And the deaths from before the regression, shown over and over.
Even knowing that what stood before me was not real, but merely a remnant of memory, it was not something I could easily brush aside.
Wasn't this pulling out my most precious memories and slaughtering them, again and again?
This was a pain of a different kind from any hardship I had ever endured.
No matter how difficult the situation, the reason I could grit my teeth and push through somehow was because there was always something behind me that I had to protect.
Because there was a place to return to once everything was over, and a scenery I longed to see someday, I could keep swinging my sword without giving up.
But this accursed dream denies all of that.
The ones I had to protect, I cut down with my own hands. The place I had to return to, I destroyed myself. And the scenery I yearned for so desperately, I turned into a sea of blood with my own hands.
Just as I deny the dream of the Liao River, that thing likewise forces me to deny myself.
Karmic Sin of Killing.
If I were the only person existing in this world, then the only karma existing in this world would likewise be the Karmic Sin of Killing alone.
Perhaps because my thoughts had reached that point. At some moment, something began to appear that would not disappear even if my neck were severed and the world returned to its starting point.
Corpses.
Tang So-wol, whose heart had been pierced through, Seomun Hwa-rin, who had lost an arm and had swords sprouting from her back like thorns, and Seol Ri-hyang, who was clutching her belly and vomiting blood.
Their corpses did not disappear but began to pile up endlessly in this world of nothingness.
As if reminding me over and over: this is what you did. Was your work truly worth that much?
A mountain of corpses rising like a mountain. The hollow resentment pouring toward me.
I do not know how many years passed within this place. But one thing was certain… I was tired.
The weight of karma pressing down heavily on my shoulders. My body, crushed under an unending yoke, collapsed beyond my will.
Squelch.
My legs gave out beneath me without my consent. The sea of blood surging in every direction was of my own spilling, and the mountain of corpses blocking my path was of my own piling.
This was a hell of my own making.
My hell, layered over the paradise of the bell.
***
How many times had he died?
Tang So-wol, who had fallen into Cheon Hwi's mindscape, did not know the answer. But she could at least tell that finding the answer was itself a meaningless task.
'Young hero Cheon…'
Her view seemed to look down from the heavens. On the ground below, Cheon Hwi was once again cutting his own neck.
And even at this very moment, all the negative emotions Cheon Hwi was feeling were flowing back into Tang So-wol's heart.
The Chief Steward's formation, though hastily assembled, worked without issue. Love (Yeonjeong) was more than enough to serve as the medium, and Tang So-wol's will remained firm.
It was not her fault that, having come all the way into Cheon Hwi's mindscape, she could only drift about aimlessly, unable to do anything.
The paradise the bell had conjured — and the hell engraved upon Cheon Hwi's mindscape — was the problem. It was too heavy, too dense.
Just as one sinks slower through water than one falls through the sky, Tang So-wol had managed to touch Cheon Hwi's mindscape, but it would take considerable time before she could fully enter it.
And this difference in density accelerates the distortion of time between the outside and the inside.
Ordinarily, the Blood Buddha borrows the bell's power to slightly accelerate time within the mindscape, the better to quickly shatter an opponent's spirit.
But in this case, because Cheon Hwi kept repeating his own hell to resist the bell's dream, the acceleration became all the more severe.
Of course, Tang So-wol knew nothing of such complicated circumstances.
All that mattered was that while she descended, Cheon Hwi had repeated death and killing over and over, and that she was too far for her hand to reach him, leaving her no choice but to watch.
How many times did Tang So-wol stamp her feet in frustration at her own slow descent?
Slow as it was, she eventually set foot on the ground… and having fully entered Cheon Hwi's mindscape, Tang So-wol could finally move her body.
"This is…"
The influence of a seal. And because she had forced her way in using a formation, she couldn't tell whose corpses lay scattered here.
It was as if a fog had settled—she could see, yet she couldn't properly recognize anything.
But she could see the towering pile of corpses, the sword submerged in blood that lapped at ankle height.
And before all of this, kneeling motionless, was Cheon Hwi—and surrounding him as if mocking him, three figures.
That was enough for Tang So-wol to move.
"Step away from young hero Cheon at once!"
Out of habit, her hand slipped into her sleeve to draw a hidden weapon and unleash her poison art. But there was nothing to grab, and no sensation of her internal energy converting into poison.
It was because Tang So-wol here was but a brief, uninvited guest.
At the short commotion, the silhouettes of three unknown women twisted grotesquely as they turned to look at Tang So-wol.
It was a truly horrifying sight, but to Tang So-wol, whose eyes had already rolled back, it hardly mattered.
"How dare you lay a hand on another's betrothed…!"
Tang So-wol simply moved to shove aside the obstacles blocking Cheon Hwi with her bare hands, crude and forceful. Perhaps because her body could not use martial arts, her movements were utterly graceless.
She bit, scratched, and at times even yanked at hair—fighting like a child, yet she somehow succeeded in pulling the three figures away from Cheon Hwi.
It was possible only because, as Cheon Hwi had been worn down, so too had the power of the technique been worn down, leaving the three women as mere reproductions of their pre-regression appearances.
Tang So-wol kicked the flailing figures far away, then urgently knelt before Cheon Hwi.
The blood pooled on the floor rippled with the motion, and the blood splattered across Cheon Hwi's body was far from little.
But Tang So-wol, heedless of dirtying her hands, grabbed Cheon Hwi's bowed face and lifted it toward herself.
A complexion as pale as a corpse. After being worn down and worn down again, his hollow eyes held nothing at all.
Shocked by his utterly shell-like state, Tang So-wol grabbed his body and shook him.
"Young hero Cheon? Are you all right? Wake up, young hero Cheon!"
…
Cheon Hwi still gave no answer. His hand merely stretched out reflexively, scraping and clawing at the blood-soaked floor, as if trying to grasp a sword he had let go of.
His gaze was fixed on her, yet it seemed to be searching for someone else, not her.
At that, Tang So-wol understood instinctively. The precious people from the past that Cheon Hwi had always glossed over—they were exactly these people.
A bond that brought only pain, yet one so beloved that he would willingly embrace even that pain and sink down together with it.
Even Tang So-wol, who had spent a considerable amount of time with Cheon Hwi and prided herself on their deep connection, was momentarily overwhelmed by the sheer weight of it. But.
"The one standing before young hero Cheon right now is not some other woman—it is me."
This was a declaration of sorts.
"…So, from now on, please stop hurting yourself."
A declaration that no one would ever make Cheon Hwi suffer again—even if that someone was Cheon Hwi himself.
Of course, it would be a lie to say she wasn't curious about the connections of Cheon Hwi that she didn't know about, or why she could faintly see herself in features she couldn't fully recognize.
But for Tang So-wol, more important than all of that was the fact that Cheon Hwi was currently tormenting himself with self-blame.
If what Cheon Hwi had witnessed was the deaths of other women, then what Tang So-wol had witnessed was Cheon Hwi's death.
Because every time he swung his sword, it wasn't his opponent that was cut open—it was Cheon Hwi's heart.
But even knowing this, there wasn't much Tang So-wol could do.
The formation was gradually losing its power, and the martial artists who had sensed the intruder's presence had moved to exclude Tang So-wol.
Whoosh.
From the ruins of the Iron Blood Faction, the half-extinguished flames surged high into the air.
Feeding on the blood that flooded the floor, using the piled corpses as kindling, the fire swelled its body.
But Tang So-wol simply held Cheon Hwi in her arms, unmoving.
She had decided to use the little time that remained—and the last of her words—entirely for Cheon Hwi.
She wrapped her body around Cheon Hwi, shielding him from the heat of the blazing flames. With her hands, she covered his ears against the resentment and curses rising from all directions.
And then, with pure compassion and affection, she whispered.
"Young hero Cheon. I will forgive you. Even if you cannot forgive yourself…"
With those final words, Tang So-wol's body began to grow faint, rising upward.
It was likely the reverse of the fall from above when she had entered this mental landscape.
Perhaps it was the force pulling her upward. Some of the blood around her began to rise along with her.
It looked as if Cheon Hwi's body were being wrapped in a flower bud.
The blood had turned a pale pink, like the poison Tang So-wol had used to enter this place. As if she had left her love behind in this very spot.
Had anyone witnessed the sight, they would surely have called it a lotus. Whether that was the influence of Vajrayana or whether her original form had been shaped by the Buddha's teachings, he could not say.
What was certain was this: a single lotus blooming amid the murky blood. As Tang So-wol receded into the distance, the flower slowly sank, and within its unfurling petals, Cheon Hwi opened his eyes.
His eyes, their radiance restored, now looked up at a sky that showed nothing at all.
The sword he had released had been swept away somewhere, beyond recovery, leaving him empty-handed. But it did not matter.
For Cheon Hwi's sword had already regained its edge.
Above his clenched fist, a translucent blade shimmered into being.