“When you go in, the Strategist will be waiting.”

The servant only escorted Seolhwa as far as the main gate leading into the residence.

Seolhwa bowed, then watched the servant hurry away.

She was afraid.

“As well she might.”

Seolhwa looked over the residence.

Around it, a dense force like a Qi Screen flared in vicious pulses,

as if to say that no one would be admitted lightly.

To those without martial training, it would feel like standing before the lair of a crouching beast.

“They did say the Strategist’s guests are never ordinary.”

From the outset, ordinary people wouldn’t even be able to approach.

And judging by those bristling currents, the master of this residence was the least ordinary of all.

With a short sigh, Seolhwa opened the gate and stepped inside.

tap. tap.

A faint mist filled the grounds.

The atmosphere resembled the time she’d stepped into Jegal Myeong’s Array when he had been the Ten-Thousand-League Divine Thief, but this mist was something else entirely.

“A paralytic poison.”

Was this also to keep people from approaching the Array?

But why?

Here, in the very heart of the Demonic Sect’s main compound, who would attempt a rash intrusion?

The keen aura outside could be understood as a barrier against servants and guards—but this...

“Kh....”

“!”

From deeper within the hall came a groan choked with pain.

Seolhwa quickened her pace into the pavilion.

There was only a single human presence within.

No light entered; she passed through a dark corridor and slid open the door where she felt the presence—

“Ugh....”

A dense smoke that had been trapped inside surged out in an instant.

Seolhwa raised an arm to cover her nose and mouth.

Even knowing poison didn’t affect her, the thick miasma drew a reflexive reaction.

As the smoke veiling her vision gradually thinned, the room’s interior came into view.

She swept a hand to stir the haze aside and stepped in.

“Kh... ngh....”

The room was a wreck.

As if there had been an uproar only moments ago—books scattered everywhere, papers covered in unknown characters, apparatus in disarray.

And beside the broad desk at the very back, a man stood gripping his head and groaning.

Seolhwa approached him.

He already knew she was there.

“...So you finally came.”

Perhaps the paroxysm had ebbed; he cut her a sidelong glance and straightened.

A long, deep scar marked his face.

He was the one who had summoned her here: the long-scarred bamboo-hatted man.

“You took your time. I thought you’d find me in less than a month.”

“I didn’t have enough information for that.”

“Don’t make excuses. You know well the one you mean to oppose is not bound by common sense.”

Seolhwa pressed her lips together.

True.

Excuses don’t work on the Blood Demon.

The scarred man dropped into a chair and rolled a dried blade of grass into a palm-sized paper, then put it to his lips.

Smoke curled up at once from the tip of the rolled paper.

Watching the smoke rise, Seolhwa spoke.

“So the paralytic poison was for you.”

What he smoked was a dried poison-herb.

Poison to press the pain down.

Also the very substance of the mist pervading the manor.

The razored aura encircling the grounds was to keep people from approaching, so they wouldn’t fall under the intoxication.

He flicked her a glance.

Then tapped the scar crossing his face.

“As you see, it’s a wound that splits half my face. The pain surges without warning—like my face is being cleaved open.”

He gave a thin laugh; he looked a little worn.

“Do you know who gave me this wound?”

“The Blood Demon.”

“Right.”

He drew a deep pull of the poison-herb.

“Our mortal enemy. He did this.”

Seolhwa tried to gauge his realm.

As during the Friendly Match Tournament, she still couldn’t read it.

Perhaps he noticed.

He met her eyes and drew again, long and deep.

“You must have a great many questions.”

Seolhwa swallowed.

Questions.

So many.

So many that she was at a loss where to begin.

But the first was fixed.

“You also came back from the previous life, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

She had half expected that answer. But what followed was wholly unexpected.

“However, not in the same way as you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You only returned one lifetime. I returned dozens.”

He let out a dry laugh.

“After I passed forty, I stopped counting.”

“...F-forty... times...?”

He’d returned enough lives to exceed forty...?

That many?

“Don’t tell me—the Blood Demon too....”

“Him as well. He and I are repeating the same life.”

“...!”

****

Vast corridors lavish in crimson and gold, braziers set here and there with flames licking high.

Servants in pale pink garments, martial guards in light-blue uniforms.

“I greet the young master.”

“I greet the young master.”

As Yu Gang entered, the servants lined along the corridor prostrated as one, and the guards dropped to one knee.

Told that the Cult Lord of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult had summoned him, Yu Gang had followed his guide inside—then stopped dead.

All along the way people bent so low it seemed their foreheads would touch the floor; it had embarrassed him enough already. But this—what in the world was this?

In his confusion he wanted to turn around and leave at once.

“Please, this way.”

But the middle-aged man leading him urged him on with a smiling face.

It was a summons from the Cult Lord of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.

He knew it was not a place he could flee easily.

Awkwardly, Yu Gang walked between the prostrated servants.

“The Cult Lord awaits.”

Srrrk—

The door barring his way slid open smoothly.

From within drifted the thick scent of ancient wood.

But beneath that fragrance, Yu Gang could smell the reek of slaughter.

The scent of one whose hands had been steeped in the blood of countless people.

He swallowed.

Clenching a fist tight, he stepped into the room.

Behind him, the door slid shut.

Srrrk—

****

“Strictly speaking, I’m being forced to live out the lives he rewinds.”

Seolhwa’s lips quivered.

It was unbelievable.

Not only had he repeated lifetimes by the dozens; the two of them were looping those lives together.

“Explain it in detail. I... don’t understand any of this....”

He fixed his gaze on her and drew long on the poison-herb.

The paper roll burned down to ash and fell away.

“A Great Law.”

He exhaled smoke and continued.

“The Heaven-Defying Time-Reversal Great Law. The magnum opus I achieved by dedicating my entire life.”

“A... Great Law?”

Heaven-Defying Time-Reversal Great Law.

A Great Law that turns back time against Heaven.

If that were true—

“Are you saying you’re the one who turned time back?”

“I had intended to. There was something I wanted to undo.”

“...”

“Unfortunately, I wasn’t ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) the one who enacted it. He was.”

“...The Blood Demon.”

“Yes.”

He nodded, a deep, bitter smile on his lips.

His eyes sank into a darkness without bottom.

“He was my slave.”

“!”

A... slave...?

“Khuhuhuh....”

At her shock, he began to laugh.

“Hahahahaha!! Hahahahahaha!!”

What started as a leaking chuckle swelled until it shook the room like madness.

Still stunned, Seolhwa stared at him.

“He was waiting! For the moment my Great Law would be complete! And when the time came to enact it, he killed me as if he’d been waiting for that very instant!”

With a wild look he stroked the scar crossing his face and stared into empty air.

His eyes flashed white.

“But there was something he didn’t know. That the blade with which he tore his own flesh to enact the Law—was stained with my blood!”

Stupidly, the slave had cut his own forearm with the very sword he had used to kill his master, to draw blood.

Not knowing at all that his master’s blood had mixed with his own, he enacted the Great Law.

Thus the two of them returned to the first life together.

“At first I couldn’t tell what had happened. I didn’t know why, but the wound his blade left on my face remained etched on me as a scar.”

He said that while he drifted on knowing nothing, not long after, time turned back again.

“Once, twice, three times... Then I understood. He was completing the Great Law over and over, turning time back. Only, without knowing that I was returning with him.”

And as the cycles went on, he grew stronger. And more wicked. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

“He craved blood, seized power, raised a faction called the Blood Cult, and began to take the Central Plains under his grip.”

What he wanted, why he kept rewinding time—none of it was clear.

“Then, at some point, he became aware of me.”

His expression looked more desolate than ever.

“Because I tried to stop him.”

As if he regretted the choice.

“I threw all the knowledge I had against him.”

He honed his strength, gathered people, used the future he knew.

But through battles repeated and lives repeated, he was not the only one growing stronger.

He was not the only one who knew the future.

While he wasted several lives knowing nothing, the Blood Demon was that far ahead.

A mere difference of two or three cycles, perhaps—but in years, it came to more than a hundred and fifty.

A gap of a hundred and fifty years had yawned into an abyss.

“Do you understand?”

Drugged eyes lifted, he looked at Seolhwa.

Deep, age-old rancor filled his gaze.

“You can never cross that gap.”