Tudut, tuk.
The ground the Yellow Emperor tore up by force using telekinesis.
Chunks fell off the unstable edge. Tuk, tuk.
A rock fragment the size of a person’s head fell to the ground.
A cloud of dust rose on the ground.
Even so, no impact sound was heard.
That was how high Yi-gang and the Yellow Emperor had risen.
Even though they were still far south, the air was cold.
The oxygen was thin. It was hard to breathe.
But Yi-gang forced himself upright and sat.
He didn’t want to die lying down.
But he couldn’t stand.
That was Yi-gang’s state right now.
“Look to the west.”
The Yellow Emperor said that.
He was like the captain of a sailing ship.
If this were a ship, it would be a flying ship, and its speed would be a swift vessel dozens of times faster than a galloping horse.
He moved toward the southwest.
Yi-gang slowly turned to the west.
An unknown city came into view.
They were already beyond the Central Plains, so what lay there would not be the Central Plains.
Black smoke was rising from there.
It seemed like somewhere near the border of Tianzhu and Nanman…
“Outside the Central Plains, endless conflict has continued. Do you see that?”
The direction the Yellow Emperor pointed with a raised finger.
It was an immense distance, but even from that height something could be seen.
‘Cannons…?’
It looked like a dispute between villages, and yet they were using cannons.
The Ming army used cannons too, but they weren’t things you saw easily.
No, looking closely, they weren’t even using cannons to fight.
“It’s an execution method.”
They had people hanging from wooden poles.
And they were firing cannons at them indiscriminately.
What happens when a person is hit by a cannon was obvious.
Limbs blown into pieces.
Those who would be executed next trembled in fear as they watched.
Those firing the cannons were even dancing as they enjoyed it.
It was a brutal sight.
“You are born with cruelty. You don’t think such things happen only there. In the Central Plains they skin people alive, and in the West they tie people to wagon wheels and roll them down slopes.”
There was no way Yi-gang didn’t know how cruel humans could be.
“It’s… not for you to meddle in.”
So what was he supposed to do about it.
Even if humans were cruel as the Yellow Emperor said, the Yellow Emperor had no right to eliminate them.
Yes. The Yellow Emperor was trying to eliminate humans.
Turning back time meant that.
Everything that came into being after the point he returned to would return to nothing.
Yi-gang, Ha-jun, the Immortal Divine Sword, the Baek Clan, the Azure Forest Sect, the Central Plains too.
It meant they would become as if they had never existed.
It was more cruel and irreversible than any method of killing.
But the Yellow Emperor twisted the corner of his mouth oddly.
It was a clear sneer.
“Originally, you were fated to self-destruct long ago.”
“You were ridiculous things racing toward extinction on your own. If left alone, you wouldn’t even have built a proper civilization.”
If left alone?
That meant the Yellow Emperor had not ‘left them alone.’
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I stopped the collapse of your civilization again and again.”
The Yellow Emperor spoke.
That he had stopped humans from slaughtering each other into extinction, many times.
“When bronze swords first appeared.”
“When a horrible plague raged where ten thousand living people had been buried alive at once.”
“When the Central Plains split into dozens and slaughtered each other.”
The Yellow Emperor pointed at Yi-gang.
“I stopped it. I saved your lives. If not for me, neither you nor your family, no one would exist now. Your ruin would have come anyway, and I—’I’—postponed it!”
Everyone living on this land owed him a debt.
That was what the Yellow Emperor claimed.
“So… you want us to die quietly?”
The moment Yi-gang asked back.
The Yellow Emperor flinched and stiffened.
“To accept it, quietly?”
Yi-gang’s voice had no vigor, and it was so faint you’d have trouble hearing it if you didn’t strain.
But for some reason, the Yellow Emperor couldn’t even answer.
“I can’t do that. Doing nothing in the face of death… is giving up being human.”
Blood kept oozing out from the sword fragments still embedded in Yi-gang’s body.
It was a pitiful sight, but precisely because of that, it had a way of overwhelming anyone who saw it.
Wasn’t it exactly the composure before an unavoidable death?
The Yellow Emperor was still frozen.
Because someone seemed reflected in Yi-gang.
It was the Yellow Emperor himself.
He glimpsed himself, who could not endure inescapable mortality and struggled to gain Divinity.
Though the result had been catastrophe, the Yellow Emperor couldn’t bring himself to mock Yi-gang.
A brief silence followed.
The Yellow Emperor kept moving south.
At some point, a deep-blue ocean came into view.
Dawn was breaking.
The dark-blue sky was dyeing itself ash-gray.
The seawater rolled in deep blue.
“Do you know about Pangu?”
In the end, it was the Yellow Emperor who spoke first.
Yi-gang looked at the Yellow Emperor quietly.
“Fuxi made the Eight Trigrams, Nüwa made humans, and Shennong created fire. But the one who made the world and all those gods was none other than Pangu.”
Yi-gang also knew the myth of Pangu.
No, Yinglong had even shown it to him in a vision.
Pangu, who enlarged his body to widen the gap between heaven and earth, collapsed and died.
They say his body became the terrain of this land.
“That is Pangu’s spine.”
At the sudden words, Yi-gang looked down.
It was the ocean.
In the vast sea, there was little besides the deep-blue surface and a few islands.
There was nothing like a giant’s spine to be seen.
Only several islands with sharp, high mountains…
Yi-gang looked at the archipelago.
The islands lined up in a row did look like a person’s spine.
But was that truly the spine of the giant who made the world? There was no way he could be that certain.
“And that is the head.”
But at the Yellow Emperor’s words as he pointed to one side, even Yi-gang flinched.
“You can tell that’s an eye, can’t you.”
Yi-gang said nothing.
There was a single island below.
From below, you wouldn’t find any shape.
But from this height, it was visible.
The island, far from small, clearly revealed its body made of bedrock.
And the shape of that bedrock was clearly the form of a human eye.
The eyelid unique to someone with closed eyes… it was clearly a giant’s eye.
If a single closed eye was the size of an island, how enormous was Pangu to begin with.
“Pangu’s temple exists only here.”
The ground that had carried Yi-gang and the Yellow Emperor here began descending again.
The descent was rough. It slammed down on the sea surface before where Pangu’s eyelid lay.
Spray flew, and Yi-gang’s body shook violently.
Drenched in the sea’s salt water, his whole body stung.
“Why… here…?”
The Yellow Emperor had clearly gained power surpassing most heavenly gods.
Yi-gang, who had even fought the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, was sure of it.
Why had he come to this place called Pangu’s temple?
“Even the Three Sovereigns can’t turn back time. The only one who can do that is Pangu.”
The Yellow Emperor exerted the telekinesis that had moved him here.
The Sealing Box floated up and fell before the Yellow Emperor.
The Sealing Box opened wide.
The dried goddess’s head inside slowly floated up.
Before Pangu’s closed eye, the Yellow Emperor shouted.
“Pangu—!”
With the Yellow Emperor’s booming shout, the waves began to stir.
“I will offer you a god’s head!”
Yi-gang realized what the Yellow Emperor was doing.
This was a rite of offering.
It was no different from the offering rites sorcerers and shamans made to the heavens.
Only, the recipient was Pangu, the creator god.
The offering was a goddess’s head.
What would the Yellow Emperor receive through a rite of offering that would never exist again in this world.
“Grant me the power to turn back time—!”
Something astonishing happened.
Pangu’s eye opened just a little.
That is, the enormous eyelid opened enough for a single fist to fit through.
Beyond it was darkness.
Pitch-black darkness, emptiness, or nothingness.
The eyelid closed.
Yi-gang felt as if his soul had slipped out for a moment.
Then the Yellow Emperor’s laughter was heard.
“It worked. It worked!”
Yi-gang looked ahead of the Yellow Emperor.
Before him, Nüwa’s head was still floating.
What had changed was that the head had caught fire.
It was a brilliantly five-colored flame.
The flame, faint like a candle, began slowly building momentum.
That flame would gradually grow massive like a furnace blaze.
Becoming strong enough to reverse time…
“Baek Yi-gang.”
The Yellow Emperor called Yi-gang by name.
Calling someone by name meant he had at least the minimum respect for his counterpart.
Yi-gang looked at the Yellow Emperor, feeling unfamiliar.
The Yellow Emperor walked toward Yi-gang.
“I will make one last offer. If you want, I will take you with me to the past.”
As if he had expected it, the Yellow Emperor tried to win Yi-gang over for the third time.
“Then your existence will not disappear.”
Yi-gang couldn’t understand why the Yellow Emperor was reaching out like that.
But in truth, the Yellow Emperor himself likely didn’t know the reason either.
The Yellow Emperor’s eyebrow twitched.
Yi-gang was holding something in his hand.
It was a hand mirror smeared with blood.
Yi-gang glanced at himself in the mirror, then showed it to the Yellow Emperor.
“What do you see?”
Only the Yellow Emperor’s own face was reflected.
Yi-gang let out a bitter smile.
In the end, nothing happened.
“Fine, then…”
Yi-gang hurled the hand mirror straight at the Yellow Emperor.
Right at the Yellow Emperor’s face.
It was a sudden ambush. The mirror flew sharply like a hidden weapon.
But the Yellow Emperor didn’t blink once.
There was no way he would be rattled by an ambush like this.
The mirror rebounded on its own before the Yellow Emperor’s face.
The old mirror cracked and was flung away.
And when the mirror vanished from sight, Yi-gang was charging in.
How did Yi-gang ambush without a weapon? In his hand, he held a shard of the shattered Shooting Star Fang.
He had yanked out a blade fragment embedded in his own thigh and aimed it at the Yellow Emperor’s neck.
It was astonishing willpower.
But there are limits to what willpower can do.
Even when Yi-gang could exert all his skill, he couldn’t do anything to the Yellow Emperor.
With an emotionless face, the Yellow Emperor raised the Xuanyuan Sword.
He moved late, but he was faster than Yi-gang.
Yi-gang’s hand stopped dead.
If he had gone just one more inch, he could have stabbed the Yellow Emperor’s neck.
No, since the Yellow Emperor had been fine even after being half-cut, it might have been useless anyway…
Blood poured from Yi-gang’s mouth like a waterfall.
The Yellow Emperor’s Xuanyuan Sword was lodged in Yi-gang’s chest.
The blade jutted out from his back.
The Xuanyuan Sword pierced his heart precisely.
He had moved on willpower until now, but someone with their heart pierced couldn’t do any more.
Strength left his entire body.
At that moment, Yi-gang recalled the prophecy.
Yinglong, who once served the Yellow Emperor, had foretold Yi-gang’s fate.
That Yi-gang would stop the Evil Cult’s fate, and die with his heart pierced.
The latter came true.
Yi-gang truly had his heart pierced.
‘A bogus prophecy.’
But in the end, he couldn’t stop the Yellow Emperor.
The Xuanyuan Sword slid out of his chest.
With no choice, Yi-gang dropped with a thud and lay down.
Slapping waves drenched Yi-gang’s back.
Yi-gang clearly felt his own condition.
Ah.
His vision darkened.
He had fainted dozens of times, but this was on a different level.
Yi-gang was dying.
Death, which no human could ever avoid, was coming to claim Yi-gang.
“Sor… ry…”
He didn’t know who he was apologizing to.
But he apologized anyway.
The Yellow Emperor’s face twisted.
He started shouting something.
“…This… can’t be!”
Then he stumbled back in haste.
Yi-gang’s vision wavered.
His hearing was fading too, and he couldn’t tell what the Yellow Emperor was saying.
“…Taihao Fuxi. Since when…”
He was clearly thrown into panic.
In Yi-gang’s flickering vision, he saw the mirror that had been tossed aside.
The broken mirror was glowing.
That was the last thing.
Yi-gang’s heart stopped.
He died.
Thump—
It was the sound of a heartbeat.
There was no way a heart muscle pierced by a sword could function properly.
If it had started beating again, it meant the wound to his heart had been restored.
The blood that had poured through his insides and filled his abdominal cavity vanished by an unknown divine power.
His ruined heart began beating again.
Yi-gang’s body, which had fallen, stood on two feet.
The shards of Shooting Star Fang embedded in his body pushed themselves out and fell away.
His wounds healed as if it were all a lie.
Yi-gang’s hair floated lightly.
His stance was proud, and he no longer looked like a dead man at all.
But more than anything, what was astonishing was that Yi-gang was seeing his own body from a third-person viewpoint.
The body that had been his was standing tall again.
「What?」
A voice rang out.
Yi-gang’s state right now was a spirit itself.
When he turned his gaze, the mirror had lost its shining light.
Then.
Then who was moving Yi-gang’s body now?
“How dare you. Do you know who you have harmed?”
Yi-gang recognized that identity at once.
“As the price for harming my descendant, I’ll cut off your limbs!”
That grin was unmistakably—
It belonged to the Immortal Divine Sword.
