If he had met Yi-gang in the past.
If it had been when green barley ripened on those plains, when the Yellow Emperor ran across the fields with those who stood shoulder to shoulder with him.
If he had met Baek Yi-gang back then, when the empire called Shang that he had built was brilliant.
The Yellow Emperor probably would not have killed Yi-gang.
He was that kind of person.
Hadn’t he ultimately spared even Chiyou, whom he had called his lifelong archenemy?
Chiyou had once killed three of the Yellow Emperor’s sons and one daughter, yet the Yellow Emperor took even Chiyou in.
And made him one of his vassals.
That was how the Yellow Emperor made vassals.
That was how the empire called Shang rose tall.
The Yellow Emperor saw himself in Yi-gang.
Not yielding, even to death that came inevitably closer.
Baek Yi-gang said to the Yellow Emperor, who had tried to kill him.
“Doing nothing is giving up being human.”
You had to struggle, and struggle again.
You had to resist to the very end. Only then were you human.
Yi-gang said it like it was nothing, and it didn’t even sound like such a grand statement.
But the Yellow Emperor knew. He knew how hard it was to act like that.
If truly ‘inescapable’ death came, people stopped resisting.
Prisoners locked in the underground torture prison beneath the nine-fold palace, tortured for dozens of days.
When their execution day approached, where was the one who still resisted?
Without a single exception, they all meekly stretched out their necks and died.
Not a few even shed tears of joy at being freed by death.
Yi-gang’s state right now was no different from that.
The vessels throughout his body had burst, and blade fragments were lodged all over him.
Even so, the light in his eyes had not died.
That was not something born of mere survival instinct.
Survival instinct was something one-dimensional that all beasts had, not just humans.
The reason Yi-gang refused to die was because there was something he had to protect.
The people down on that ground.
His family, his comrades, his friends. He was like that because he was trying to protect them from the Yellow Emperor.
Just like the Yellow Emperor long ago, when he tried to gain Divinity to protect his empire…
‘This bastard.’
The Yellow Emperor saw himself in Yi-gang.
He had said the ones covering this world weren’t human, yet the Yi-gang before his eyes was clearly human.
That was why his heart wavered.
When Yi-gang clenched a single shard of blade and ambushed him.
Puuk.
Even as he had no choice but to pierce his heart and kill him, it didn’t feel pleasant.
As the fallen Yi-gang twitched his body.
As blood poured from his mouth like a waterfall.
When he said that, it felt as if the inside of him was staining black.
Because it was clearly an apology to those he had failed to protect.
A will like steel was the most important element of Divinity.
In that sense, the Yellow Emperor at that moment was not complete.
A cracked mirror.
He realized far too late that the Eight Trigrams were rising from it.
There had been nothing strange at all about the mirror Yi-gang had taken out.
But the mirror was suddenly emitting immense Divinity and giving form to the Eight Trigrams.
“Impossible! That makes no sense!”
The Yellow Emperor was truly aghast.
If it was the master of the Eight Trigrams, someone who could create an object that even the Yellow Emperor’s sight could not detect…
“Taihao Fuxi!”
One seat among the Three Sovereigns.
The elder brother and husband of Nüwa, whom the Yellow Emperor had killed.
It was certainly that primordial monster.
“Since when…”
Since when had he been intervening?
Why did Yi-gang have Taihao Fuxi’s object?
And how, exactly, was he trying to intervene?
He had excluded Taihao Fuxi’s intervention long ago. He had dismissed it as impossible.
But from the Eight Trigrams floating above the mirror, a single spirit burst out.
That mighty soul wrapped in Taihao Fuxi’s authority settled into Yi-gang’s body before the Yellow Emperor had any opening to stop it.
Yi-gang ended up bursting into mental laughter.
The Immortal Divine Sword appeared. Baek Seong-cheon appeared.
His ancestor, his grandfather, had appeared.
The Yellow Emperor was frozen stiff.
No matter that the Immortal Divine Sword had appeared, there was no way the Yellow Emperor would fear a mere human soul.
He was clearly thrown off by Taihao Fuxi’s intervention.
A brief opening appeared to ask the Immortal Divine Sword something.
Countless questions swirled through Yi-gang’s mind, but he shouted the one he was most curious about.
「You told me to look into the mirror when it was urgent! Why didn’t you come!」
If he was going to leave a message, he should have been clearer. Why leave such a riddle?
Besides, no matter how much he shook the mirror in dire situations, nothing happened.
In the end, the Immortal Divine Sword only appeared after Yi-gang died.
‘K-khem! Khem! It seems someone conveyed it wrong. I told you to keep the mirror on you even in danger…’
Yi-gang recalled the face of Baek Do-yeom, who had passed on those words.
Had that quick-tempered old man added, since it was a mirror, that he should look into it? Who knows.
‘And I heard that bastard the Yellow Emperor can even see through a person’s mind. Taihao Fuxi’s intervention had to be hidden to the very end. There was no helping it.’
The Immortal Divine Sword’s excuse was persuasive enough.
Yi-gang decided to stop pressing the issue.
In truth, just hearing Immortal Divine Sword’s voice made laughter seep out.
More than that, he was curious how he had borrowed Taihao Fuxi’s power.
‘Grudges born of losing one’s family are terrifying. And though it may seem irreverent to us, Fuxi is also Nüwa’s husband.’
There was no way Immortal Divine Sword could fail to understand Taihao Fuxi’s resentment.
That might be why Immortal Divine Sword had been chosen by Taihao Fuxi.
‘They say that thousands of years ago, he personally destroyed the earth. After bearing the storm of causality as the price, he could never greatly intervene in the present world, nor descend.’
The enemy the Yellow Emperor would fear most was Taihao Fuxi.
Just from the way he recoiled at Taihao Fuxi’s intervention, you could tell how far outside his expectations this was.
But Yi-gang knew Taihao Fuxi had already intervened in the present world.
Hadn’t they offered sacrifices at Azure Forest and received his Eight Trigrams Diagram?
The Yellow Emperor glared once at Immortal Divine Sword, then glared at the shape of the Eight Trigrams that had risen.
“Impossible. How dare you intervene on the earth?”
A mighty presence could be felt beyond the Eight Trigrams. Beyond it, Taihao Fuxi was certainly there.
“You came to kill me using that spirit and a human body as your proxy. How? Even a reincarnator couldn’t bear that causality!”
A reincarnator born without the Mark of Oblivion bears less burden from causality.
But that didn’t mean they could do anything.
In the Yellow Emperor’s judgment, for Taihao Fuxi to intervene in the present world again, he would need an offering on the level of Nüwa’s head.
Even using a reincarnator with fewer constraints as the medium, it would be the same.
Even if he used a complicated roundabout method, possessing Yi-gang with a spirit granted his authority…
A foolish bastard.
However, Taihao Fuxi even spoke with his own voice.
From the start, his soul wasn’t even one of this dimension. I guess you didn’t know that.
He mocked the Yellow Emperor.
The Yellow Emperor snapped his head toward Yi-gang.
And muttered as if he couldn’t believe it.
“So from the start, you weren’t just someone without the Mark of Oblivion…!”
Yi-gang was not a simple reincarnator.
When Yi-gang was born into the body called Baek Yi-gang, he had not simply regressed to the past.
A place without martial arts, without yokai, without heavenly gods.
He had come from another dimension.
“An outsider flowed in, with no registry even in the ledgers of the underworld!”
That origin.
That point where he was different from the root up became a calamity for the Yellow Emperor.
Taihao Fuxi had been watching Yi-gang long ago.
For him, who could no longer intervene in the present world, the only medium that could avoid the backlash of causality was the transmigrator called Baek Yi-gang.
He contacted the Immortal Divine Sword, Yi-gang’s ancestor.
The Yellow Emperor’s plan was the most secret in the world, but Taihao Fuxi knew.
Hearing it, the Immortal Divine Sword gladly accepted the proposal.
‘If I can help my descendants even after death, what chance could be better than this!’
And Taihao Fuxi and the Immortal Divine Sword waited a long time.
Because Yi-gang was fated to die once, they waited for that singular point of fate to be resolved.
In the end, Yi-gang died once.
The Immortal Divine Sword and Taihao Fuxi revived that life before Yi-gang’s soul could leave his body.
Yi-gang’s body, finally made whole.
And the Immortal Divine Sword’s soul controlling that body.
Pay the price of the sin that was deferred.
Taihao Fuxi pronounced the sentence, and the Immortal Divine Sword carried out the punishment.
Movement meant shifting position from one coordinate to another.
Its trajectory naturally formed a line.
But the Immortal Divine Sword’s movement left no line connecting coordinate to coordinate.
Discontinuous movement.
The Immortal Divine Sword, who had been standing there, reached the Yellow Emperor’s position in an instant.
He kicked out, and the Yellow Emperor flew over the sea surface, skipping like a stone.
The Immortal Divine Sword shouted loudly.
“Yi-gang! Where the hell did you sell your sword off to!”
「That bastard broke it!」
He’s the culprit who destroyed Shooting Star Fang!
Shouting that, the Immortal Divine Sword ran across the sea surface.
He ran on the water like it was only natural, and spray surged violently behind him.
Taking a proper hit for the first time, the Yellow Emperor rose, drenched in seawater.
His face twisted like a ghost.
The Yellow Emperor, ruler of Shang, was also Shang’s greatest swordsman.
He raised the Xuanyuan Sword.
On the other hand, the Immortal Divine Sword grabbed at empty air with both hands, as if gripping a sword.
「You don’t even have a sword, what are you doing!」
“If you don’t have a sword, you just make one and use it, isn’t that right?”
The Immortal Divine Sword, who had ascended and been with Taihao Fuxi.
He had not been idling away his time either.
Once the Baek Clan’s greatest genius, he opened a new horizon in martial arts.
Aura Qi burst from the Immortal Divine Sword’s hands.
Up to that point, it was what you would call a pugilist’s Hand Aura.
That Aura Qi swelled enormously in size.
The Aura Qi that surged to over three meters in length compressed at high speed.
It was the realm of the Aura Qi Compression Sphere the Heavenly Demon had shown.
And beyond that, the Aura Qi began to be refined.
Into the form of a straight, sharp sword.
Into the form of Shooting Star Fang.
“I name it, the Aura Sword!”
「Isn’t that just Sword Aura reversed?」
The Immortal Divine Sword retorted that a name didn’t matter, and swung that Aura Qi sword.
The Yellow Emperor clenched his teeth and met it with his blade.
He was the Yellow Emperor, holding within him the power of three Cardinals.
There was no way he should be pushed back by mere human martial arts.
Yet the Immortal Divine Sword’s sword split the Xuanyuan Sword in half.
The meteorite-iron sword split in two, and the Aura Qi sword dug into the Yellow Emperor’s collarbone.
The same place Yi-gang had cut not long ago.
“Kwaaaargh—!”
The Yellow Emperor roared thunderously.
What was different from before was that the Aura Qi sword couldn’t cut the Yellow Emperor’s body.
The blade couldn’t sever his collarbone.
Right now, the Yellow Emperor’s flesh had become tougher than meteorite iron.
Trusting his own body, the Yellow Emperor did something brutish.
He grabbed the Immortal Divine Sword’s blade with his bare hand.
The flesh of his palm peeled away, but the Yellow Emperor didn’t stop.
The Yellow Emperor was far larger in sheer build.
At this rate, the blade would be pushed back.
The Immortal Divine Sword clenched his teeth.
His expression twisted like a king of hell, and his arm muscles bulged.
“Uwaaaaargh!”
The Immortal Divine Sword roared back.
He didn’t yield at all to the Yellow Emperor’s momentum.
Taihao’s Eight Trigrams rose around the Immortal Divine Sword.
The power of the Three Sovereigns lightly twisted physical law.
The Yellow Emperor, trying to press the blade down, was pushed back little by little.
His body slowly sank.
He was literally sinking.
He had barely managed to stand on the surface, but seawater was shoved aside left and right around his feet.
It was as if the sea itself was fleeing from the Yellow Emperor and the Immortal Divine Sword.
The sword made of Aura Qi grew larger.
The sea surface where the Yellow Emperor had stepped split sharply to both sides.
The Immortal Divine Sword screamed.
“Die!”
It was a shout with not a shred of dignity, but its force was truly terrifying.
The bottom of the sea split open left and right was revealed.
The two of them fell into that dark, gloomy canyon of seawater.
The Aura Qi sword gave off bright light, and the two looked as if a meteor were falling from the sky.
The impact was fierce.
The Yellow Emperor rolled several times and bounced back.
In contrast, the Immortal Divine Sword stood on two feet, unscathed.
However, his expression wasn’t good.
The fact that the Yellow Emperor had been knocked back meant the Immortal Divine Sword had not cut him.
In the end, the blade had not managed to sever the collarbone.
「What do we do now?」
‘There’s no time.’
The Immortal Divine Sword let out a sigh.
Even with power bestowed by Taihao Fuxi, he couldn’t sustain the possession indefinitely.
Yi-gang was in danger. Even if he couldn’t defeat the Yellow Emperor, the Immortal Divine Sword decided he would not let Yi-gang die.
The decision was swift.
The Immortal Divine Sword smiled.
‘My descendant, cut him yourself.’
「What?」
Yi-gang felt some measure of control returning to his body.
It was not that the possession had ended. It felt like controlling the body together with the Immortal Divine Sword.
‘Didn’t you already cut him once? That single sword of yours, descendant.’
Unbelievably for a swordsman with towering pride, the Immortal Divine Sword acknowledged Yi-gang.
‘That single sword was better than mine.’
He scratched his chin as if embarrassed.
‘No, even that is not enough to express it. I have never held a sword like that.’
A single sword that cut the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, that cut the Yellow Emperor.
He said it was a realm even he had never achieved.
‘That was surely transcendence. It must have been possible because your soul is extraordinarily special, descendant.’
Zhang Sanfeng said there were limits humans could not cross.
But for Yi-gang, whose soul’s origin was different from the beginning, those limits might not apply.
That was why the Immortal Divine Sword handed the sword over to Yi-gang.
Yi-gang moved his fingers.
The sword shaped from Aura Qi held a warmth different from a meteorite-iron sword.
Yet it was clearly the familiar balance point and length of Shooting Star Fang.
If so, there was nothing he could not unleash.
Just then, the Yellow Emperor rose.
“This can’t be. This can’t…”
Beyond the canyon of split seawater, the enemy stood.
To save all humans on this earth, he had to bring that enemy down.
Then there was nothing he could not bring down.
‘Cut him!’
It felt as if the Immortal Divine Sword was gripping the sword together with him.
There was nothing he couldn’t cut.
Yi-gang cut the Yellow Emperor.
