"I understand, but… is this really right?"
Seol Ri-hyang looked at the house the Heavenly Demon had turned his back on, her expression complicated.
Inside, the Heavenly Demon's wife would be holding their daughter, who had just begun to walk.
I, on the other hand, fixed my gaze on the Heavenly Demon and spoke.
"Perhaps the Heavenly Demon has realized what he must do."
"What he must do?"
"Stop the rampaging Spirit Beasts… prevent the destruction of this era. He believes that is the heavenly mandate given to him, and that he is merely parting from his family for a while to fulfill it."
Did the Heavenly Demon have no thoughts about his own regression? Since it was his own affair, he pondered it whenever he had free time, and as a result, he must have arrived at the conclusion he now held.
And this was quite effective.
The Heavenly Demon knew that he would regress again in the future, and during the year he spent at the Murim Alliance, he gathered as much information about the past as he could.
Then he began to work through it methodically, starting with what was most relevant to the present time.
He obtained the secret manuals and spiritual medicines of a previous generation's master from the cave beyond the waterfall, invested in trade ventures whose success was all but guaranteed, and secured a position within the Murim Alliance by giving advance tips on several incidents that had caused quite a stir.
A Fortuitous Encounter.
The Heavenly Demon compensated for his lacking talent and meager foundation through such encounters.
He had learned proper martial arts, increased his internal energy with spiritual medicines, never wanted for money, and even grasped a fair amount of power—yet his goal never wavered.
All of it was to fend off the beast attacks that were soon to come.
The Heavenly Demon did not stop for any bribe, any temptation, or even the news that the family he had left behind had starved to death in a drought.
And then the beasts' full-scale offensive began.
As Seomun Hwa-rin had said long ago, conflict between humans and beasts was a common occurrence in that era, but no one had expected a conflict on this scale.
No one, except for the Heavenly Demon.
The Heavenly Demon knew well that he had no talent for martial arts. And so, while he never neglected his training, he did not plan to face the beasts with his own strength.
Instead, he became a close aide to Jegal Bu, offering ceaseless advice drawn from all the information he had gathered.
Perhaps it was because he saved the Jegal Clan head, who should have died unable to withstand the Water Ox Divine Beast despite all their vigilance, and earned their trust in doing so.
The Murim Alliance began to willingly lend an ear to the Heavenly Demon's words.
Thanks to this, the Murim Alliance, which could learn in advance the locations of the Spirit Beast attacks he remembered and the characteristics of several powerful opponents, was able to hold out a little more easily.
The ending, however, was not greatly different.
The Black Alliance had long since collapsed, and the Murim Alliance, unable to withstand the concentrated offensive of the Divine Beasts, crumbled.
And the Heavenly Demon regressed. Merely a few days earlier than his previous regression.
Now, even the sight of his revived family left the Heavenly Demon unmoved, and Seol Ri-hyang furrowed her brow at his expression.
"This… it seems like only the Spirit Beasts you personally killed are included in the regression conditions?"
That would be the case. In the previous cycle, the Heavenly Demon had contributed greatly to survival as something akin to a military advisor to the Murim Alliance… but he had personally felled very few Spirit Beasts.
"Still, we gained information. For the Heavenly Demon, that alone made this cycle worthwhile."
In truth, the Heavenly Demon had lamented at first, but he soon reached the same conclusion I had and quickly pulled himself together.
Once again, he left a single letter warning of the drought before departing the house.
Using the information he had gathered while working at the heart of the Murim Alliance, he was able to obtain more Fortuitous Encounters, and this time he focused solely on raising his own martial power.
Perhaps thanks to that, when the Spirit Beast offensive began, the Heavenly Demon finally broke through the wall and reached the Peak Realm for the first time.
"…Hey. Cheon Hwi. Was the Peak Realm really that difficult to reach?"
"Hmph. Someone with talent like yours, Seol Ri-hyang, might not understand, but most Martial Artists spend their entire lives stuck against the wall of the Peak Realm."
"No, but still, you fought and died hundreds of times. It's a bit strange that you only reached it now."
"What's there to say. This time, I simply got the first button right."
Even someone utterly devoid of talent, having fought and died hundreds of times, cannot fail to gain some enlightenment.
But the martial arts the Heavenly Demon had mastered until now were so crude they could barely be called martial arts at all.
If the ground beneath you is sand that swallows your every step, how can you ever find a foothold?
Only now, having learned a proper martial art and made up for his lacking internal energy, was he able to break through the wall of the Peak Realm.
"But you learned a proper martial art last regression too. So why only now…?"
"That's precisely because the Heavenly Demon has no talent."
The Heavenly Demon's Martial Talent was at a level so pitiful it didn't even qualify as average. It must be that steady Training alone was never enough to gather enlightenment.
He had to abandon everything and cling to martial arts alone, barely managing to organize what he had gained and move on to the next stage.
Even so, the gap between the Heavenly Demon's Second-Rate days and his arrival at the realm of masters was like the difference between heaven and earth.
At the very least, he no longer had to risk his life even when facing the weakest Spirit Beasts.
In this cycle, the Heavenly Demon focused solely on hunting down and killing Spirit Beasts.
Unlike before, when he had cared about his reputation to secure a place in the Murim Alliance, he now slaughtered Spirit Beasts even at the cost of sacrificing those around him without hesitation.
He was able to massacre more Spirit Beasts than in any other cycle, and thanks to that, he gained an alias—though a bloody one.
…But becoming famous among humans meant the same for the Spirit Beasts.
In the end, the Heavenly Demon died fairly early, caught in a coordinated attack by the Spirit Beasts.
But he was able to go back one more year.
The Heavenly Demon gently lifted his daughter, who had become a newborn baby unable to even hold up her own neck, let alone walk.
After much deliberation, he decided to give up a cycle for the first time.
He used all his knowledge and martial power solely for his family. Though he could no longer cherish his wife and daughter as purely as before, their standard of living had changed completely.
With the money he had scraped together, he built a manor. With his strengthened martial arts, he earned the respect of those around him. And when the Spirit Beast attacks began, he crossed the sea and left the Central Plains, just as he had prepared.
There were some hardships, but for the first time, the Heavenly Demon and his family were able to live out their natural lifespans.
Having even seen his grandchildren, the Heavenly Demon closed his eyes in peace…
When he opened them again, he was holding his daughter, who had become a newborn baby, in his arms.
The Heavenly Demon wore a dazed expression, as if waking from a dream.
Only then did he dimly realize that his infinite regression might be a curse, not a blessing.
No, even so, there was hope. There was a method he could guess at for breaking this curse.
"Regression is a power given to fight against Spirit Beasts. If that's the case, then if I defeat every Spirit Beast, the regression will end… That's what you're thinking, isn't it?"
Seol Ri-hyang let out a sigh in a pitying voice.
Yes. The Heavenly Demon's judgment was sound. The problem was that the remedy of regression itself had already been broken long ago.
The Heavenly Demon of that time hadn't known that, apart from defeating Spirit Beasts, there was always an error in the point of regression—that the phenomenon of regression itself had become extremely unstable.
Without knowing, he continued to burn with unwavering resolve.
Having reached the Peak Realm, the Heavenly Demon brought down Spirit Beasts with greater skill and avoided attention more cleverly.
When he hit a wall, he would spend an entire cycle gathering information on training methods or Fortuitous Encounters.
The Heavenly Demon grew stronger with each pass, and the point of his regression crept further and further back.
The infant daughter vanished, replaced by his wife's swelling belly—and that belly, once so large, shrank a little more with every cycle.
Eventually, the Heavenly Demon regressed all the way back to the day of his marriage.
Then, suddenly, he realized it: at some point, he could no longer recall his daughter's face.
He knew her name, of course. But what she looked like, how she smiled, what she loved and hated, what memories they had shared—
none of it came to mind.
And so, the Heavenly Demon decided to rest this cycle, just as he had in the previous cycle when he had enjoyed his full lifespan.
…But the child born the following year was a son, not a daughter.
The Heavenly Demon would never be able to meet his daughter again.
It was too late to turn back. There was a way to return to the past, but no path that led to exactly the same future.
It was the first time a crack had appeared in the Heavenly Demon's will, which had never been broken even by countless repeated deaths.
For the Heavenly Demon, slowly descending into madness, even that small flaw was fatal.
And so, the Heavenly Demon fell into Qi Deviation. It was the beginning of the madness that would persist for dozens of cycles.
It was also the first time he had ever laid his hands on demonic arts.
Sometimes he died at the hands of Murim Alliance martial artists who called him a Demonic Head, sometimes he was devoured in the territory of a Spirit Beast he had recklessly charged into, and sometimes he simply dropped dead from his qi and blood violently surging out of control.
Yet the red light in his eyes, born of that rampaging energy, remained unchanged, and Seol Ri-hyang shook her head bitterly at the sight of the Heavenly Demon.
"In the end, it happened just as you said, Cheon Hwi. If he had properly kept to the righteous path, at least he wouldn't have been mad for this long."
"Well. Probably."
To flee from what he had done, and to preserve himself through the endless cycles of regression.
The Heavenly Demon had been keeping his distance from his family, whether consciously or unconsciously. That must be why—why he could no longer remember the daughter he had cherished so dearly.
If he had truly faced his wife and daughter in the slowly rewinding flow of time, then even if the same situation came to pass, he might have grieved—but he would not have gone mad like this.
The Heavenly Demon, tormented by madness, began to act like a man already dead.
Rather than suppressing the rampaging energy of Qi Deviation, he unleashed it with even greater ferocity, amplifying the power of his martial arts.
He would also swallow the inner cores of Spirit Beasts whole—cores that should have required dozens of days of alchemical refinement before they could be consumed.
And all of this only served to accelerate the Heavenly Demon's madness.
Just as I had once done, the Heavenly Demon's martial arts were also tempered within the crucible of Qi Deviation.
Martial arts originally designed to fight humans transformed into techniques meant to slaughter Spirit Beasts far larger and sturdier than any person.
Even the concept of guarding oneself—the foundation and common thread of all martial arts—grew faint, and every Technique took on an extreme, aggressive bent.
Within a Qi Deviation that did not end in death but only worsened, the Heavenly Demon's mental landscape was scorched black. No matter what Mental Cultivation Method he practiced, his internal energy was invariably stained with Demonic Qi.
After hundreds upon hundreds of regressions, reaching into the thousands, the Heavenly Demon finally became one with the demonic and escaped the madness.
In the eyes of the Heavenly Demon, now a young boy, a familiar abyss dwelled, and his martial art had become something worthy of being called the original form of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art.
Only after losing everything could the Heavenly Demon stand at a proper starting line.
His gaze met the Heavenly Demon's, venom dripping from the words.
That was the last scene the Heavenly Demon's memories showed him.
***
When he opened his eyes, there was the Haomun Leader, prostrated flat on the floor.
"?"
"Bae, Great Hero White Moon Sword Lord. Please, do not misunderstand. This matter was not the will of our Haomun…!"
"Ah."
Right. I had been hit on the back of the head.
The Heavenly Demon's memories were so long that I had forgotten.