TSBIRBV Ch 137

Chapter 137 A Stolen Kiss (14)

Haryang’s five-star aptitude, once spoken of as a candidate for the next foremost under heaven, would not let go of its master.

Even with death pressing close, it clawed out a way for him to survive.

Haryang could not turn away. Bound half by fate and half as a puppet to the loneliness of the Demonic Sect, he burned through even the last shred of true qi in his dantian as he crossed the line of life and death.

At last, drawing upon the final breath of his life, he set it aflame. In that instant, as his body reached a state of perfect emptiness, Haryang seized enlightenment again and leapt across a realm in a single bound.

The body, little more than ruin, was swiftly restored. A vessel incomplete, unable to hold balance, now brimmed with a power it had never known, surging as if to spill over.

When the bloodstained demon, sword in hand, suddenly broke into a jagged laugh, the body and head of the foe who had approached him were cleaved apart in one stroke.

‘When…’

Down his ashen face, streaks of blood-tears streamed.

‘When do you mean to let me go?’

What stood before him was no orthodox martial artist, no watcher sent by the Demonic Will—it was Mun Yegyeol.

Every soul he cut down appeared to him as his disciple.

“Yes… If that is what you desire.”

Between the twisted balance of orthodox and demonic, incomplete yet never vanishing, the seed of qi deviation coiled within him.

“How could I disobey?”

Haryang’s life was no longer his own.

Thus, it was only natural he survived against all odds.

One, two… fifty-six.

Haryang cut down Yegyeol again and again without cease. And yet the boy’s figure never vanished, smiling brightly as he approached.

‘It will never vanish. Not for all eternity.’

He knew it instinctively.

From that moment on, Yegyeol was ever by his side.

‘What now?’

His loneliness disappeared with his transformation. Freed from his shackles, Haryang now had the liberty to set a goal.

First, he learned to tame his madness. He burned the harsh medicine Samrang had prescribed within his pipe, chose to subdue rather than kill, and taught himself to manage the inner demons.

Gathering subordinates, building power, Haryang cut down the cult leader and rose as Heavenly Demon, placing the sect beneath his feet. The formula of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art, passed down to him by the Demonic Will, had been incomplete; only by becoming cult leader did he obtain the complete text.

It was only after cultivating the art properly that Haryang’s hallucinations began to fade.

He could only surmise this was because his attainment of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art had far surpassed the level of the Taehomuryang Mind Technique he had once studied. From the beginning, his unstable qi was the result of cultivating both orthodox and demonic arts at once.

Yet though he was freed from Yegyeol’s illusions, joy eluded him.

What he felt was not liberation, but loneliness.

And so sleepless nights began. He could no longer set aside the pipe he had come to loathe. Unless he burned its fragrance, his nerves, strung taut, would never ease.

At least until the day he met Yegyeol again.

‘It feels as if… something is in my grasp.’

He stretched his hand into the air, groping for something unseen, then gave a bitter laugh.

How foolish he was.

Escaped from hallucination, yet yearning for it still; with the true Yegyeol just across the courtyard, yet wandering his chamber alone, too fearful to seek him.

Fearful of rejection.

‘All because of some young heir of the Namgung Clan… what a pitiful sight I am.’

Yegyeol might never know, even in dreams, but Haryang was steeped in dread.

What had happened in Hangzhou had brought his disciple closer to his heart—perhaps even within it. Haryang had been forced to admit he harbored unseemly desire for his own junior.

When Yegyeol had snapped in anger at the Black Ghost for speaking ill of his Senior Brother, Haryang had been delighted.

Just a little more—he thought—just a little more sway, and his disciple would willingly step into the web he had woven.

But the moment Namgung Un appeared, Haryang grew wary.

In the present martial world, late-blooming prodigies like him were among the rarest, yet across history they were as countless as grains of sand on the Yellow River. Those who withstood the currents and became stone were few indeed.

To his eyes, Namgung Un still bore the immaturity of youth.

Yet Haryang could not deny the way his gaze lingered upon him.

The young heir of the Namgung Clan recalled Haryang’s own youth—righteous, trusting in human goodness, never doubting that tomorrow would be brighter.

Chivalrous, young, upright, and valiant—

All that Haryang once had. All that Haryang had lost.

‘My disciple is weak to such men.’

As he had told the Black Ghost, Yegyeol shrank from contact with other men—not only in mind, but even in the depths of his unconscious.

Yet toward Namgung Un, his guard loosened. He showed hints of easy affection, sometimes even stepped forward himself.

Haryang’s unease grew.

Fortune had let him discover the opened lock upon his disciple’s heart before anyone else, but how long could Yegyeol remain blind to his own feelings?

Watching them together, Haryang felt a defeat deeper than any he had known, even in the hot-blooded days of his youth.

If Yegyeol knew what he truly was—how ugly—would he not turn to the young heir of the Namgung Clan instead?

If he learned that the Senior Brother who had once saved his life had spent half of twenty years resenting him, and the other half steeped in killing intent?

Smothering his unease, Haryang busied himself with his overdue tasks. What he needed now was patience.

After Jinyeong left to deliver an order, the door opened again before long.

At the sound of quiet steps, he raised his head—and saw Yegyeol moving to Jinyeong’s place.

“Gyeol-ah? Why have you returned so soon?”

After a long silence, Yegyeol stood with hands folded, restless. From that posture, Haryang sensed something amiss and set his brush aside.

“…Jinyeong.”

“My apologies.”

“It’s nothing.”

The return of his inner demons.

Though qi deviation had plagued martial history as long as it had existed, little research had been done; it was hardly strange that his psyche faltered and the demons returned.

For now he could quickly recognize the hallucinations, but the line would grow thinner. If clarity remained, could it truly be called madness?

“Jinyeong. Bring my pipe. And there is something to be sent to the Qinghai Trading Group.”

At last, Haryang moved up his plans, which he had meant to delay.

He drew the Black Ghost into the game and pressed his disciple into a corner.

To engrave into him that beneath this sky, there was no one he could cling to but him alone.

At first, Yegyeol seemed wholly consumed by the Black Ghost, going to Seonyeong repeatedly to meet him. Though Haryang had cleared the path not for Namgung Un but for the Black Ghost, it was the latter whom his disciple sought.

The fact that nothing bent to his will irked him—but alongside the displeasure, there was greater joy.

For it was a sensation only living Yegyeol could bring him.

And yet, with his living disciple, the emotions he received were more varied still.

To return to the manor with Yegyeol, he went to the Qinghai Trading Group, only to receive word from Samrang that his disciple had been attacked, and he rushed to the physician’s house.

Fear gripped him.

For the truth struck home—his disciple could be slain by another’s hand, even now.

Believing the boy had suffered grave wounds, he had frozen before the door.

“I am relieved. I thought only that a swordsman had injured his arm, which would have been disastrous…”

From his disciple’s voice, concern dripped freely. For a moment, Haryang thought his mind had gone awry.

Without years of waiting, without years of twisting—the care of Yegyeol, the young chivalrous knight, was laid bare before him.

The figure he had once dreamed of in the distant past was suddenly before his eyes.

Knowing full well he was flustering his disciple, Haryang nonetheless tore him away from Namgung Un by sheer force. On the way back to the manor, Yegyeol watched him warily, time and again.

He accepted then—he was a pitiful man.

Back at the manor, Haryang waited for Samrang. In the ink-dark night, before dawn, she appeared before him.

She had just returned from Seonyeong. The cleaned-up assassination site had been her work, to keep the hounds of the Namgung Clan from sniffing out any trace.

Her face was solemn, even at that late hour, as she came directly to her lord.

“The one behind it?”

At his question, Samrang replied,

“It has been disguised as the act of remnants of two already-destroyed families. But it is certain one of the Six Demonic Families had a hand in it.”

“Not one. At least two.”

His voice was cool as he lowered his gaze. Against a Heavenly Demon who had already cut down two of the Eight Demonic Families to six, no single faction would move alone.

‘They have learned of my disciple.’

Since Yegyeol’s return from Kunlun, he had deliberately stirred noise.

He had placed the Qinghai Trading Group’s leadership in the boy’s hands, though he appeared to be nothing more than an ordinary man sprung from heaven or earth. He had avoided returning to Ten-thousand Great Mountains, moving instead in the open.

With Yegyeol by his side, it was inevitable he would be revealed as his weakness. Haryang had done all he could to delay that moment.

He had intended not to bury the truth deep, but to dress it as bait, impossible to swallow. But their move now betrayed their impatience.

“If the lesson of cutting the Eight Demonic Families to six was not warning enough, then I shall shred the rest as well.”