Hu-uk, huk.
White vapor mixed into Yi-gang’s breath.
The bottom of the sea.
This secret place, untouched by sunlight for tens of thousands of years, was chilling beyond measure.
Yi-gang had just brushed past the Yellow Emperor.
He straightened the waist he had bent.
The Aura Qi sword he had been gripping softly dispersed.
His hand trembled.
That sword strike just now was clearly the most perfect single sword he had ever unleashed.
Yi-gang turned and looked at the Yellow Emperor.
The Yellow Emperor had his back to him.
“Do you think you’ve won?”
The Yellow Emperor asked.
His tone was surprisingly calm.
The deep yearning that had been in his voice until just a moment ago could not be felt at all.
“You haven’t stopped anything. Nüwa’s head has already been offered to Pangu. It can’t be stopped anymore.”
“I’ll handle it myself. Don’t meddle.”
Kkeuk, a chuckle was heard.
“And if you stop it, then what? Do you think you can survive? You lot are monkeys who couldn’t even build a proper civilization without me.”
What he was spitting out was clearly a curse.
“I prophesy it will be only a hundred years. Within a hundred years, you will wipe yourselves out killing each other.”
That humans would ultimately self-destruct.
He was cursing that humans, whose innate nature was savage, would never bloom into a brilliant civilization.
To that curse, Yi-gang answered lightly.
“No, it won’t be.”
What he did not bother adding was, ‘Because I’ve seen it.’
Though the place Yi-gang had lived and this place were different, Yi-gang was clearly someone who had lived in the future.
Even on Earth where Yi-gang had lived, humans were savage and cruel.
But at least, they didn’t go extinct easily.
Even as they killed and killed each other, they didn’t lose the will to live.
“Hoo, huhuhu.”
The Yellow Emperor’s laughter gradually grew strange.
It could be called a miracle that he had even spoken until now.
Or perhaps it was because Yi-gang’s sword strike truly was transcendent.
And it made sense.
Because the Yellow Emperor’s body had already been split vertically in two.
His left half and right half were separated and lay rolling on the ground.
Yi-gang looked at a god’s corpse.
An ancient man who had been human, yet risen to the station of a god.
And a freak who had killed his own creator and even tried to turn back time at last.
Looking at the gruesome corpse, Yi-gang felt a strange reflection.
No matter how dangerous or great a human is, once they die, they are nothing more than a leather sack filled with blood.
The one dead and sprawled here was the Yellow Emperor, but it could have been Yi-gang.
If Yi-gang had been alone, that would have happened.
But he had the Immortal Divine Sword, wrapped in Taihao Fuxi’s protection.
Unlike before, the Eight Trigrams floated around the Immortal Divine Sword as it hovered as a soul.
「You worked hard.」
The Immortal Divine Sword smiled gently as he said that.
Suddenly, Yi-gang felt as if the inside of his throat had grown hot.
So he lifted his head.
Above, the sky was visible.
Not the ominous purple sky.
A deep-blue, clear sky could be seen beyond the canyon of seawater.
Sunlight poured down, scattering blue light.
It wasn’t far from the island so it couldn’t be called the deep sea, but it was deep enough.
The walls of seawater spread to either side were fantastical.
As sunlight lit parts of those walls, the sea rippled and revealed what lay within.
Unique southern fish swam around, watching what was happening inside.
Yi-gang barely steadied his trembling voice.
“…No. I’m fine.”
「Right. But listen.」
The Immortal Divine Sword asked carefully.
「Do you know how to swim?」
That bizarre phenomenon of the sea splitting had happened as the Yellow Emperor’s power and Taihao Fuxi’s power collided.
Now that the Yellow Emperor was dead, the Immortal Divine Sword could not maintain an environment like this.
「Run!」
Yi-gang ran with all his strength.
With his body regenerating and all his injuries restored, that leap in place was practically a divine jump.
But it was not enough to leap over the walls of seawater spread on either side.
Physical law began working again, and the seawater started surging violently back to where it belonged.
Yi-gang was swept up by the seawater.
So was the Yellow Emperor’s corpse that had been rolling below.
Barely keeping himself together in the raging torrent, Yi-gang watched the Yellow Emperor’s corpse being swept away.
That giant’s corpse would be dismantled by fish and the sea’s scavengers.
But now was not the time to worry about that.
Yi-gang struggled to regain his balance.
Fortunately, Yi-gang knew how to swim.
Even so, enough time had passed that an ordinary person would have suffocated and died.
Yi-gang barely reached the edge of the island.
“Poo-ha!”
He took a huge breath and swept his wet hair back.
The sun welcomed Yi-gang.
Since the Immortal Divine Sword was a spirit, he came out without getting wet.
「Heheh, you look like a drowned rat.」
He wanted to chat more with the Immortal Divine Sword, but there was no time for that.
“There’s still something to do.”
「What do we do about that?」
The Yellow Emperor was dead, but what he had done did not vanish.
On the island’s rocky shore.
Nüwa’s head was still floating there.
“…Its condition is worse.”
The problem was that the blue flame coiling around Nüwa’s head had grown even fiercer.
The Yellow Emperor had offered Nüwa’s head to Pangu and demanded the power to turn back time.
「It looks like the flame is growing and shrinking too.」
It wasn’t just the blue flame wavering. The space around it looked distorted.
“We have to stop it, quickly.”
Yi-gang hurried closer.
Even as he died, the Yellow Emperor cursed.
That turning back time had already begun, and it couldn’t be stopped.
Yi-gang stomped the ground with a thud.
A pile of stones rose into the air in a rush.
Using his left foot as a pivot, he spun his body sharply.
Papapapapap!
He kicked those rocks as if firing them.
The rocks flew toward Nüwa’s floating head.
Paseuseu-
But astonishingly, the rocks couldn’t reach Nüwa’s head and scattered into powder.
It was a hair-raising sight.
「S-s-stop, Yi-gang!」
The Immortal Divine Sword lightly pointed to one side with his thumb.
Even Yi-gang, frantic as he was, had no choice but to stop for the moment.
Where the Immortal Divine Sword pointed, there was a broken mirror.
A broken mirror might not seem frightening, but the Eight Trigrams floated around it, and Taihao Fuxi was watching Yi-gang through that gap.
It’s fine. We cannot give that child’s head to Pangu.
Taihao Fuxi was not angered by Yi-gang’s actions.
Fortunately, he seemed to take Yi-gang’s actions as an attempt to retrieve Nüwa’s head.
Yi-gang quickly pleaded with Taihao Fuxi.
“Taihao Fuxi! Please stop that! We cannot turn back time as the Yellow Emperor intended!”
If this continued, wouldn’t everything they had worked for so far be for nothing?
Fortunately, what Taihao Fuxi wanted and what Yi-gang wanted did not conflict.
That’s right. It must be stopped.
Taihao Fuxi had orchestrated all of this to reclaim Nüwa’s head, his younger sister and wife.
It was an obsession and effort comparable to the Yellow Emperor’s.
“Then how…?”
「Fuxi!」
Then the Immortal Divine Sword suddenly stepped in.
He shouted as if he had made up his mind.
「I’ll do it! Leave it to me!」
Yi-gang stared at the Immortal Divine Sword.
He didn’t know how to deal with Nüwa’s head, but he could at least sense one thing.
The Immortal Divine Sword wanted to handle it himself instead of Yi-gang.
The reason was clearly that it was extremely dangerous.
Impossible. Only the living can serve as the medium.
The Immortal Divine Sword made a sorrowful expression.
Yi-gang asked with a bitter smile.
“Why do you look so down? Is it that dangerous?”
「Down, my ass! …It’s dangerous. Taihao Fuxi wants to take Nüwa’s head back. Since he can’t intervene in the world directly, he needs someone to retrieve it for him instead.」
“If I grab that and hand it over there, that’s it right?”
Taihao Fuxi answered.
That’s right.
The method itself was absurdly simple.
Grab Nüwa’s head and move it into the Eight Trigrams floating in the hand mirror.
But carrying it out would not be simple.
Yi-gang recalled just now, when he had thrown rocks at Nüwa’s head.
If even rocks became powder, then a human hand…
“It’s certainly a dangerous task.”
I will protect you.
Yi-gang felt power filling his body.
The form of the Eight Trigrams rose around his body. It was a state similar to the Immortal Divine Sword.
「Even so, it will be dangerous. You can feel it too, can’t you?」
The Immortal Divine Sword’s voice was gloomy.
But Yi-gang answered lightly instead.
“There isn’t anyone else who can do it anyway, is there? Then it doesn’t matter.”
「You could die if things go wrong.」
“Then I die, I guess.”
「For a kid, you sure can say anything.」
Yi-gang laughed.
“I’ve grown quite a bit now. I’m not a kid.”
The Immortal Divine Sword’s eyes widened.
He looked at Yi-gang.
Clearly, he was different from before.
He even seemed to have grown as tall as the Immortal Divine Sword had been in life.
Young, but clearly not a child.
There were more than one or two scars on his exposed body, including his face.
He even carried the calm detachment unique to someone who had lived through a slaughterhouse.
Undeniably, Yi-gang was no longer the young boy the Immortal Divine Sword remembered.
「Hah. Say that again after you’ve lived even a quarter of my age.」
The Immortal Divine Sword chuckled as he said that.
Hurry.
Taihao Fuxi urged him.
Yi-gang didn’t take his time anymore.
He walked up to the burning head of Nüwa and stood before it.
The Eight Trigrams floating around Yi-gang’s body began to shine and tremble.
Kiiiiing-
Yi-gang slowly reached out his hand.
Hot heat rolled off Nüwa’s burning head.
Chijijik.
A pungent smoke rose from his fingertips, and he pulled his hand back for a moment.
‘Tch. This isn’t something I can take lightly.’ Yi-gang thought.
But it was not something he could stop.
He might lose his life, but Yi-gang decided to do what he had to do.
“Then.”
Letting out words that might become a farewell.
Yi-gang reached out and grabbed Nüwa’s head.
A pillar of light shot up.
Below Nanman.
To the west, close to Tianzhu.
And even further down than that.
The coast was a beautiful jade color.
Beyond it, the deep sea was a deep-blue ocean.
There were islands there untouched by the hand of civilization.
It was a pillar of light that rose from an island among that archipelago, called “the Giant’s Eye” by the local natives.
The pillar of light was astonishingly huge, and it soared high.
Its diameter was large enough to encompass several islands.
And its height? It pierced the cloud layer in the sky and rose to where the air grew thin.
The pillar of light rose as high as several of the world’s tallest mountains stacked on top of each other.
Even the nearest inhabited island to that pillar was quite far.
Even so, those unlucky enough to see the pillar with the naked eye lost their sight for several days.
To the clouds in the sky, the pillar of light was no different from a disaster.
The clouds were shattered and scattered by the aftermath of the storm that burst forth with the light.
A vast region became clear, without a single cloud.
A tremendous explosion rang out, but what spread farther than it was the light.
At the time, by Nanman time, it was the start of the Mao hour, near dawn.
Nanman’s sky was still dark, but in an instant it brightened like daytime.
Dam Hyun raised his hand and pointed at the sky.
“I-I see it too.”
Yu Jeong-shin was looking at the southwestern sky.
A pillar of light was shooting up.
It was clearly visible even from this faraway place.
“I-it’s Yi-gang. I’m sure of it!”
“Did it go well?”
Everyone here had seen the Yellow Emperor and Yi-gang fly over there.
“It must have gone well. It must have…!”
The Azure Forest disciples survived.
Dam Hyun and Ha-jun were exhausted too, but they had tended their injuries and were looking up at the sky.
The moonlight lost that ominous blood color.
And the sky was no longer an ominous purple.
That light held hope.
The only worry was whether Yi-gang would be safe.
Feeling a strange anxiety and swelling emotion at the same time.
They looked up at the pillar of light.
That pillar of light could be seen from even farther away.
Wuhan.
Hebei.
Yokai swarmed out of season, and terracotta soldiers that rose from underground attacked people’s cities.
Even near dawn, screams and shouts did not stop, when something sudden happened.
The terracotta soldiers that had been moving collapsed all at once.
They couldn’t even bear their own weight, toppling and breaking.
It was something even ghosts would wail at.
Then, far away, the pillar of light could be seen.
It was clearly visible from other cities in the Central Plains as well.
That line of light rising in the southwestern sky.
From that far away, it looked thin as a thread, yet it was supremely auspicious.
And in that moment, more hopeful things happened.
“The yokai are retreating.”
“We survived! W-we survived…!”
The constables guarding the civilians’ legs gave out and they sank to the ground.
The night like a nightmare ended.
As dawn brightened, that light was driving away everything ominous.
People cried as they shared the joy of survival.
That light could even be seen near Kunlun, far to the north.
But unfortunately, the people trapped in the Crouching Dragon Basin couldn’t see it.
As the Cardinals, the formation-casters of the barrier, died, the Shamanic Gu Formation and the Red Cloud Barrier began to break apart.
That was why the people inside couldn’t see that beautiful pillar of light.
There was a slight time difference between the pillar of light vanishing without a trace and the Shamanic Gu Formation fully collapsing.
From the perspective of those trapped inside the barrier, about two hours passed, and because time was distorted, about sixty days passed outside.
