novelraw Chapter 192
Chapter 192
Chapter 192: Coexistence of the Moon and the Stars
After fighting like our lives depended on it, I understood.
That crazy-eyed Sect Leader… the three of us couldn’t beat her.
I didn’t know exactly what that Moonlight Heart Cultivation Method she had muttered earlier was, but it seemed to possess a nature completely opposed to the Starfall Heart Cultivation Method I had cultivated.
Every time our swords collided, a shock surged into me—my realm being lower—twisting my insides as if my organs were being wrung.
They say a wise man avoids an unfavorable fight, so I started running my mouth against the Blazing Flame master.
Besides, judging from how she said earlier that she needed the Energy of Stars or something, it seemed like there might be room for negotiation.
Gi Hyo’s hands trembled violently with a blade pressed against her neck, while the Sect Leader of the Emei Sect glared at us as if she wanted to kill us.
An eerie purple light flowed from her eyes, but at least for now she had stopped pressing the attack, thinking of her disciples.
Shhk.
“Ahem, don’t come any closer.”
While pretending to talk back, she kept subtly closing the distance, so I pulled my sword even tighter.
Another thin red drop of blood ran down her pale neck like a thread.
Ilhong was holding Jeong Yo the same way I held Gi Hyo, helping me, but the look on her face clearly asked whether this was really the right thing to do.
“Boss, doing this really makes us look like the bad guys.”
Threatening to slit her disciple’s throat, Venerable Huiyin trembled with frustration yet could do nothing.
“What’s the problem? They threatened us first.”
We were just responding to attempted murder with a little intimidation. I shrugged, saying it went both ways.
“But we stepped into a Male-Forbidden Sacred Domain, so if swords came flying at us, we’d have no right to complain… and if you think about it, grabbing a disciple and threatening her after losing a fight is probably the worse crime, isn’t it?”
Ilhong muttered that since a bunch of shady men(?) had secretly infiltrated, the threat to our lives was only natural.
The female thief beside her nodded as if agreeing.
“…Do we really need to discuss it that much?”
Ilhong hadn’t heard the Soundless Transmission exchanged earlier, but this was just a staged situation done with their cooperation.
“Dan Mujin, I’d only heard rumors about you, but you really do go all out.”
“What are you talking about? Be quiet. You’re just a thief.”
A pot calling the kettle black. I snorted at the female thief’s scolding.
“I’m not just a thief! I’m the Divine Thief, Xiangyang!”
Divine Thief my foot—she was dressing it up even more than calling herself a Gentleman of the Beam.
In the end, she was still just a criminal stealing under the cover of night.
“You vile villains…! Do you truly believe you will keep your lives after threatening the disciples of Emei?!”
Having listened to the bickering between a Troubleshooter and a thief, Venerable Huiyin frowned and threatened us in a low growl.
“And you’re one to talk? You were about to suck out someone else’s Latent Energy just to save yourself. Right?”
Vile villain? Please.
I sharply pointed out the contradiction in her logic, but she didn’t budge, as if already armored in her own twisted reasoning.
“The life of a man who trespassed upon the sacred domain of Emei is doomed anyway! If it would be discarded, I merely intended to make use of it!”
After that, she said she would have gone on the Evil-Slaying Campaign, cutting down villains and secretly harvesting their Latent Energy.
It would mean continuing to live by killing people, but she insisted it wouldn’t be a problem as long as it allowed her to govern and strengthen the Emei Sect.
“No. You’d just go crazier and crazier. Evil karma would pile up.”
“…What do you know to speak such nonsense?”
Like a candle flickering in the wind, Venerable Huiyin barely maintained her sanity as she retorted.
The benevolence and wisdom I had sensed when I first met her had long since vanished.
“That was the Moonlight Heart Cultivation Method, right? The one who taught it to you… was it a Being Beyond the Heavens?”
“…!”
She had demanded what I knew, but the moment I seemed to actually know something, her body jerked.
When I mentioned those secret beings no one should know about, Venerable Huiyin stared at me in disbelief.
“H-how do you know that? Do you also know Daoist Ilseong…?”
She was so shocked that her speech even faltered.
But wait a second—she said Daoist Ilseong, not Daoist Ilwol?
Though the names sounded similar, the meanings were completely different. I tilted my head.
“So the mysterious Daoist who taught you the Moonlight Heart Cultivation Method is someone called Ilseong?”
“…Yes. When I was drowning in my inner demons and dying alone, he suddenly appeared before me and showed me the path I should walk.”
That sounded suspiciously similar to Hwang Geolgae’s story.
Offering help at a moment of crisis and arranging something for a distant future.
“Still, the naming is quite ironic.”
The Daoist Ilwol, whose name carried the moon, taught me about the stars.
Meanwhile, the Daoist Ilseong, whose name contained a star, taught her the power of the moon.
I didn’t know why, but these two Beings Beyond the Heavens seemed to wander the world, giving paradoxical teachings.
“But that Daoist Ilseong sounds dangerous. Trying to turn the Sect Leader of the Emei Sect—someone who cultivates the Dao—into something no different from a demonic practitioner.”
I murmured while gazing at the full moon blazing far brighter than the tiny sparkling stars.
Her eyes widened at the word “demonic practitioner.”
“…Insolence! What do you know to judge him so lightly? He is the one who gave new life to me when I was crying out to live!”
She tried to charge again in anger, so I tightened my sword and pushed Gi Hyo forward.
“Ah yes, that ‘new life’ where you steal other people’s lives to keep living. Very admirable.”
“….”
Now that they had heard the whole conversation, Gi Hyo and Jeong Yo wore extremely complicated expressions.
“You would have done the same if you were in my place… yet you speak so lightly because it is not your affair…!”
Struggling to extend one’s life had nothing to do with me?
Listening to that nonsense, I slowly recited the incantation of the Starfall Heart Cultivation Method.
“Seongnyeong Hoilche… Sujeon Gipase… Suchojeokjugaejin…”
Embracing the stars of the heavens to illuminate the entire world.
Like gentle ripples spreading across water, the energy of the Starfall Heart Cultivation Method slowly began to rise throughout my body.
Instead of directing it through the Blood Meridians to unleash martial arts, I simply nurtured the Energy of Stars and released it, letting it spread in all directions.
Normally it would be a foolish act that only wasted Internal Energy.
But to someone who cultivated the Moonlight Heart Cultivation Method under the moon, it seemed to hold tremendous significance.
“H-how…? How can your body contain the Energy of Stars…?”
Yes. The Energy of Stars she had searched for everywhere before finally giving up as impossible.
“Who knows? It just happened somehow.”
I didn’t believe this meeting was mere coincidence.
Daoist Ilwol’s arrangement delivered to the Heaven-Slaying Star through Hwang Geolgae. And now meeting someone who needed it perfectly in such a remote mountain.
When coincidences pile up to this degree, it’s practically destiny.
“He said… that no matter how much I struggled, I would eventually lose my sanity and die…”
She said everything she had done until now had been an attempt to avoid that fate.
It sounded eerily familiar. Someone had once told me the same thing—that I would eventually go mad and die.
“That Daoist Ilseong said that? That no matter how hard you try, it’s a destiny you can’t escape?”
Venerable Huiyin silently swallowed and nodded.
The woman who had seemed terrifying and violent under the moon now looked dejected, her shoulders slumped.
“I don’t believe in that kind of destiny nonsense at all.”
A transcendent order set by heaven that humans supposedly cannot resist.
I had never believed in that—neither in my previous life nor this one.
“So how about this? That nonsense about predetermined destiny… I’ll help you overcome it.”
Justice didn’t always require someone’s head to fall.
Even rotten flesh had parts that could still be saved.
“But the power of the moon is immense and violent… If you are swept up in it, you may also go mad.”
Now that she had a chance to live without absorbing someone else’s Latent Energy, Venerable Huiyin seemed to regain some sanity and warned me.
She probably thought I was just some martial artist who had luckily accumulated the power of the stars.
But I was the Heaven-Slaying Star, living with a gigantic mad star embedded in my mind.
“B-Boss is already half crazy anyway… so he’ll probably be fine.”
Ilhong chimed in beside me, and I couldn’t tell whether she was supporting me or mocking me.
Venerable Huiyin examined my female disguise and the sword at her disciple’s throat, then nodded as if convinced.
“…Yes. If he’s already not sane.”
She accepted that a little too easily.
Already not sane? I felt slightly offended, but swallowed it and extended my hand to her.
“Dan Mujin Master, please take good care of the Sect Leader.”
Seeing that the situation might resolve without anyone dying, Gi Hyo and Jeong Yo spoke with earnest eyes.
Their voices were full of worry and loyalty toward their master.
“And could you move that sword away from my neck?”
Because of those eerily glowing purple eyes, I couldn’t relax my guard. With an awkward face, I lowered my sword.
Once we released the two Emei disciples, Venerable Huiyin stared into my eyes for a long time, deep in thought.
After a moment of silence, she slowly nodded.
“…I ask this of you.”
At last, her cold, trembling hand grasped mine.
The frightening thing about depression is that it narrows a person’s thinking so extremely that normal reasoning becomes impossible.
Thoughts one could never imagine under normal circumstances begin to feel reasonable. Like many mental illnesses.
So when something happens that allows a person to regain their senses—
“Good heavens… what in the world was I trying to do all this time…?”
They realize how wrong their way of thinking had been and truly recognize their own state.
“To live by absorbing another person’s Latent Energy… How is that any different from a demonic practitioner?”
Venerable Huiyin’s voice trembled.
The eerie light faded from her eyes, and their original clarity returned.
Now that she had driven out the madness that had seeped into her bones and regained her clear mind, she was horrified by what she had tried to do.
She had even tried to harm Venerable Huiyul, the only one who noticed first. And even Gi Hyo and Jeong Yo…
As the Sect Leader of a Daoist sect, she deeply reflected under the heavens.
“Primordial Heavenly Lord… this foolish one has wandered in hardship…”
She confessed her sins to heaven.
Under the starlight, her face carried regret, shame, and the relief of finally seeing light after a long tunnel of darkness.
Gi Hyo and Jeong Yo came over and asked what had happened.
“Dan Mujin Master, what exactly happened?”
“Venerable Huiyin carried the power of the moon, and you carry the power of the stars?”
From their perspective, I had infiltrated in disguise and resolved everything at its root.
No wonder they looked at me strangely.
“The moon is radiant yet lonely, driving humans into madness. But when the moon harmonizes with the stars, it becomes like the night sky where yin and yang of heaven and earth are balanced. Then the clouds of madness recede on their own.”
White energy from the Starfall Heart Cultivation Method rose throughout my body.
As it softly illuminated the darkness, I continued spouting plausible nonsense to cover things up.
Gi Hyo and Jeong Yo stared at me blankly.
Once Venerable Huiyin fully regained her senses, the two rushed to support her.
“Boss, what are you even talking about?”
Ilhong whispered.
“No idea. I just made it up.”
I was just imitating the nonsense Hwang Geolgae sometimes spouted under the starlight.
“Dan Mujin Master… even if I had ten mouths, I would have nothing to say to you…”
Venerable Huiyin spoke with deep remorse.
She had attacked to steal my Latent Energy, yet instead I had saved her life.
Now she thanked me sincerely—not as the Sect Leader of a great sect, but simply as a human being.
Despite leading a massive sect, she acknowledged her wrongdoing without excuse. In that moment, I glimpsed the person she had once been before the moon’s influence.
“How could I ever repay this debt…?”
She told me to name what I wanted. Within reason, she would grant anything.
Her gaze was calm like a lake.
“Anything, you say.”
I had saved a mad moon.
Whenever such inevitabilities piled up like this, I felt something strange.
As if some unseen arrangement was urging me to escape the fate already decided.
Even the previous Heaven-Slaying Stars, despite their immense Internal Energy and supreme martial arts, had ultimately met the same end.
“Then let me ask you this.”
I looked straight into her clear eyes.
“When the day comes that the entire world declares me its enemy and tries to kill me…”
My reflection in her pupils looked deadly serious.
“Will you stand on my side?”
Venerable Huiyin fell into brief thought.
Then she spoke with firm resolve.
“You seem to carry a story of your own. I cannot endanger the disciples of the Emei Sect over my personal debts. But I, Venerable Huiyin, as an individual, will stand on your side whenever you need.”
A declaration of support from a Blazing Flame martial artist who held enormous influence in the Orthodox Murim.
Its weight was anything but light.
The Sect Leader of the Emei Sect—one of the Nine Sects One Gang—had promised to stand with me.
Since I had saved her from the evil path, she said that if I ever walked that path myself, she would pull me back.
It felt like gaining another lifeline while climbing a sheer cliff.
“Thank you. I will remember that.”
The successor of the Tang Clan of Sichuan, the successor of the Hao Sect, the Dragon Head Sect Leader of the Beggars’ Union, the Purple Tenuity Star, Cheon Sugong of the Eastern Depot, and even Princess Peach Blossom of the Imperial Household.
Each one held extraordinary status and influence.
With allies like these… maybe even if my identity as the Heaven-Slaying Star were revealed, I might still survive.
“How ridiculous… your dreams are enormous.”
Salseongi sneered again in disbelief as I seriously tried to escape the Heaven-Slaying Star’s fate.
But we’d see about that.
“You and I are not the same.”
Just because it failed didn’t mean I would.
And with that step toward carving out my own destiny—
Along with the white Energy of Stars, I felt another presence that had seeped into my body.
The purple energy of the moon.
And I made that vow in my heart.