Chapter 237
Episode 237. Change (2)
“Hoo...”
After finally stretching my body at the training hall for the first time in a while, I let out a light sigh and sheathed my sword.
Maybe moving around without thinking had helped more than expected. The fog that had hung over my head all day—likely a side effect from overusing my willpower—felt a little lighter.
As the sky began turning red and gold with the setting sun, I murmured,
“Guess I should head out.”
I quickly washed up and wiped away the sweat, then made my way straight to Seo Mun-Hwarin’s room.
Standing before the tightly closed door, I revealed my presence and spoke up.
“Senior Seo Mun-Hwarin. May I come in for a moment?”
“It’s open. Come in.” A strangely listless voice.
When I opened the door and entered, I saw something like a cocoon wrapped in blankets, blended into the floor.
To be more accurate, it was Seo Mun-Hwarin, sprawled out in a daze and wrapped up in blankets to the point that she resembled a caterpillar.
“…What are you doing?”
“Nothing at all.”
“No, that’s not true. I’ve been thinking about a lot of things.”
“Yeah, I figured.”
I nodded and sat down beside her, her face barely poking out from between the rolled-up blankets.
A brief silence passed between us.
Eventually, Seo Mun-Hwarin spoke first.
“What brings you here?”
“Tang Sowol mentioned you’ve been feeling down lately, so I came to check in.”
“Sowol said that...”
“Well, I was going to visit at some point anyway. This just moved up the schedule.”
“Hmm?”
She tilted her head, but since she was lying down, only her neck moved, and her white hair fell over her eyes.
Uncomfortable, she squirmed to fix it—but obviously couldn’t tidy her hair without using her hands.
I chuckled softly and gently swept her bangs aside. For some reason, her expression stiffened the moment I did.
“You’re still bothered, aren’t you?”
“Nguh?! O-Of course I’m bothered!”
“What’s bothering you so much?”
“What do you mean ‘what’? You sat right beside me, who couldn’t even move, and then you messed with my hair however you pleased! And you even came after washing…!”
“I was talking about the Sword Demon’s journal.”
Silence returned.
Seo Mun-Hwarin rolled her eyes, then pulled the blanket over her head entirely.
She was now just a bundle of fluff.
I started gently rolling the blanket-wrapped Seo Mun-Hwarin across the floor.
“What exactly were you thinking?”
“Hyaaak! D-Don’t! It’s making me dizzy! Dizzy...!”
“Your mind is clearly filled with wicked thoughts.”
“I-I still say this is your fault— No, wait! I’m joking! Stop rolling me up and down vertically too—it’s so much worse!”
She was half-begging now, but I didn’t listen to someone with a head full of nonsense.
After rolling her around a good while, until all she could say was “Ugh, ack, blaargh,” I carefully unwrapped the blanket.
Inside, Seo Mun-Hwarin was curled up tight, resembling a pill bug—except that…
Poke.
When I poked her side as if to say get a grip, she uncurled and stretched out instead.
Still keeping her eyes shut tight, she lay with her arms and legs spread wide. After a moment, she peeked open one eye and glanced my way.
Then, without a word, she scuttled away and leaned her back against the opposite wall, wrapping herself in the blanket again for good measure.
“…Why are you so obsessed with blankets today?”
“Because I know you’ll torment me again.”
“Torment? That’s harsh. You know full well that I’ve now reached the Flowering Stage and undergone a body transformation, so I’d never overdo it.”
I hadn’t used inner energy or willpower—just rolled her around a bit. It wasn’t enough to throw off her sense of balance, and even if it had, one circulation of inner energy would clear it up.
In a calm tone, I remarked that she was being overly dramatic.
In response, Seo Mun-Hwarin thumped the floor through the blanket, sounding deeply aggrieved.
“Is that the issue here?! The problem is that you, of all people, disturbed me while I was resting peacefully!”
“Disturbed is a strong word. I think your slander came first, didn’t it?”
“Wh-what?! How dare you accuse me of obscenity?!”
“I said slander...”
Only one syllable was different, yet she’d wildly misheard.
I shook my head and pulled out some light snacks I had prepared beforehand.
As soon as I opened the neatly wrapped confections, Seo Mun-Hwarin’s nose twitched, her eyes locking onto my hand.
After a moment of hesitation, she threw off her blanket, crawled over on all fours, and snatched one from my hand.
Now squatting beside me, she slowly nibbled on the sweet, looking satisfied.
I gave a dry laugh and pulled out another.
“I brought plenty. Eat as much as you’d like.”
“Ahem. What’s the occasion for all this?”
She clearly looked in a better mood than when she’d been in her caterpillar state.
I let her snack in silence for a bit. Then, as she picked up the second confection, I finally spoke.
“You’re worried about the Sword Demon’s journal, aren’t you?”
“That’s not the only reason… but yes, it’s one of them.”
Her voice was heavy.
Following her gaze, I saw a tattered book lying in the corner.
It had been discovered while we were cleaning up after the Heavenly Demon vanished—tucked into the Sword Demon’s belongings, the journal he had written while still alive.
It began with a note that simply replaying things in his head wasn’t enough, so he had started writing.
Naturally, since he was completely obsessed with the sword, most of it was about swords and martial arts.
At first, he wrote about how to grip a sword and how to swing it. Later, he analyzed what made certain sword techniques excellent and recorded his own thoughts.
Toward the end, it evolved into deeper insights.
But Seo Mun-Hwarin wasn’t a swordswoman—she was a fist-user. And she had reached the Flowering Stage long before the Sword Demon and had already stabilized her cultivation.
She wasn’t someone who’d be shaken by such things.
No—the part that had driven her into the blankets was something else entirely.
Near the journal’s end was the story of how the Sword Demon reached the Flowering Stage.
In it, he wrote of his despair at his lack of talent.
He had thrown himself into life-or-death duels with any strong swordsman he could find, trying to gain real combat experience—but he couldn’t glimpse the realm beyond Sub-Perfection.
In fact, before my regression, he had remained at that level for over ten years.
He blamed his lack of talent, his poor foundation in cultivating pure inner energy...
To me, someone who believed the Sword Demon’s ideology—that one had to become the sword—was flawed, it was hard to feel anything but detachment.
Still, when he was in despair, the Heavenly Demon appeared.
He tempted the Sword Demon with a shortcut—an unorthodox way to reach the Flowering Stage.
At first, the Sword Demon was skeptical, but eventually he accepted the offer and received a secret manual and a technique.
The manual described the “completed” version of the Sword Demon’s sword techniques—as if it had been written by his future self.
And maybe it really had.
Both the Sword Demon who learned the manual, and Seo Mun-Hwarin who read the journal, probably assumed the Heavenly Demon was a genius who developed the Sword Demon’s techniques to perfection.
But from my perspective—knowing the Heavenly Demon is likely a regressor or something similar—it seemed different.
Given what the Heavenly Demon had shown so far, and the context, it seemed very likely he had simply copied down the future version of the Sword Demon’s martial arts.
Still, that wasn’t what weighed on Seo Mun-Hwarin’s mind.
The real problem was the other technique the Sword Demon had received.
“I… I thought everything was over. That I could just live peacefully if I did my part.”
“This isn’t your fault, Senior.”
“No. My hands are already stained with blood. Maybe things would’ve been better if I’d been more ruthless.”
“Then you wouldn’t be the Seo Mun-Hwarin I know. Besides, even without the Sword Demon, the Heavenly Demon would’ve come on his own. Nothing would’ve changed.”
The technique the Sword Demon received resembled the elixirs the Demonic Cult had recently begun producing.
Things like the Blood Core Pills, made by torturing beasts to death and extracting their blood essence.
Or the Blood Elixirs, crafted by grinding up humans consumed by vengeance and hatred—supposedly volunteers, but horrific nonetheless.
To create these, the Heavenly Demon gathered followers willing to die for revenge and subjected them to brutal deaths.
Their unrefined blood was consumed as-is, and their lingering grudges—normally too dangerous to ingest—were absorbed directly into the Sword Demon’s upper dantian.
The Sword Demon had wanted to become the sword so completely that he couldn’t even grasp the concept of willpower.
So the Heavenly Demon forcibly infused him with the most intense will imaginable.
Normally, absorbing foreign inner energy or others’ grudges would drive one mad.
But the Heavenly Demon had noted in the journal that the Sword Demon, having hollowed himself out to become a sword, would probably be fine.
That’s why he used people who held similar grudges—specifically, survivors of the Jiangxi unorthodox sects who had learned the same martial arts and resented Seo Mun-Hwarin.
There weren’t many.
Seo Mun-Hwarin had spared the innocent—but that also meant she killed anyone with even a trace of guilt.
And the most powerful group, the Black Heaven Sword Sect, had sided with the Black Lotus Sect, not the Demonic Cult.
When our escape made waves in the martial world, they paid the Sect Master a price and came to challenge us.
I defeated them all myself.
And even among the survivors, not all sought revenge.
Some felt shame for having destroyed the Seo Mun Clan first. Others just wanted to live quietly.
At most, thirty were eligible. Two gave up during the torturous process and wished for peace, leaving twenty-eight.
Using those twenty-eight, the Heavenly Demon forcefully pushed the Sword Demon into the Flowering Stage.
The Sword Demon had wanted to become the sword, but the hilt of that sword was handed to those who wanted revenge against Seo Mun-Hwarin.
Unlike his refined and razor-sharp former techniques, his aura now felt unstable—oddly soft.
That was surely the reason.
His enlightenment had not been genuine. His breakthrough had been a shortcut.
The fact that such a shortcut could even lead to the Flowering Stage was insane in itself—
But for Seo Mun-Hwarin, what hurt most was that her past mercy had returned like a blade to haunt her.
Though she still held a sweet in her mouth, her expression darkened as she let out a long sigh.
“I don’t know. I really don’t know anymore.”
“Don’t know what?”
“If I continue living as a martial artist—and a righteous one at that—then I’ll need a clear line.”
“Yeah. If a thug with a sword wants to be called a hero, that line matters.”
“But I don’t know where to draw it. I was never taught this. From the Black Heaven Sword Sect incident to this... all I’ve learned is that half-hearted mercy turns into poison. But if I want to fight someone like the Heavenly Demon...”
She trailed off and sighed again.
So that’s why she’d turned into a burrito today.
I nodded and stood up.
“Let’s sneak out together. Just the two of us.”
“Hmm? Go where?”
“Somewhere nice.”
Her face flushed red for some reason, and she froze.
I grabbed her hand and opened the door.