Drip. Drop—

Thick tears fell endlessly.

Namgoong Seolhwa shed them without even realizing she was crying.

“Ha....”

The feeling of her heart being wrung out would not fade.

It felt like she had been swimming through a mire of dark, sticky shadow that clung to her whole body.

Without question, the final trial of the array had been the most tormenting one yet.

Not physically—but mentally.

It was like being trapped in an endless swamp, where struggling only dragged her deeper.

Seolhwa clutched her chest and looked at the figure before her.

Through the mist of the array, the Long-Scarred Bamboo-Hatted Man stood in front of her.

“Why did you show me this?”

Was she supposed to pity the Blood Demon?

To convince her of why Jeok Yeon Hwi had no choice but to become him?

“Do you think seeing this will make me... forgive that man?”

“It was not to make you forgive.”

“....”

“It was only to make you understand. Since you have chosen to confront Jeok Yeon Hwi, you must know who he is—what kind of man, what kind of thoughts he bears.”

“....”

“That was the reason I began constructing this array. Once, I tried to understand him and find an answer from within him—but...”

Thud—

Seolhwa finally lost consciousness and collapsed.

The Long-Scarred Bamboo-Hatted Man, already beside her, caught her falling body.

“It was useless to me.”

This array had not been made for Seolhwa, but for himself.

To understand the Blood Demon, even a little—to find a weakness in his past.

It was the residue of his long, bitter struggle against that man.

“....”

The Long-Scarred Bamboo-Hatted Man looked down at the fainted Seolhwa.

He could feel the immense current of energy flowing through her Blood Channels like a surging torrent.

He had thought she would never return alive.

Yet not only had she cleared all the array’s trials in such a short time—she had achieved this level of mastery.

A monster was a monster after all.

“Yes. There must be a reason that thing chose you.”

If she had been an ordinary mortal, the Blood Demon would never have chosen her.

“We will have much to speak of.”

A story long, and heavy with the years.

****

The faint chirping of birds made Seolhwa frown slightly as she opened her eyes.

The first thing that greeted her was thick smoke.

“Lie still. You will recover faster that way.”

Turning her head, she saw the Long-Scarred Bamboo-Hatted Man bustling around with medicinal herbs in hand.

Now that she noticed, her entire body ached.

When she slightly lifted her head to look down, needles and moxa were set in several places across her body.

Following his advice, Seolhwa gave up on rising and simply stared at the plain ceiling.

“Sama Cheon.”

At the sound of her cracked voice, the man’s movements stopped.

After a brief silence, he replied.

“...It has been a very long time since anyone called me that.”

Now Seolhwa knew the man’s name.

In the illusion, the Black-Path men had called him Sama Cheon.

The Sama Clan—an old surname rarely heard now.

Barely thirty years ago, the Sama Clan had been as renowned as the Zhuge Clan, celebrated for their mastery of arrays and True Arts.

But grasping too much power had entangled them in political strife, and branded as traitors, the clan was exterminated by the Emperor’s hand.

Rumors had lingered that a few surviving descendants of the Sama Clan had fled into the mountains and clung to life among the Black-Path.

And the proof that those rumors were true stood right before her eyes.

“So that was it, then? You tried to turn back time because of that?”

To restore his fallen house?

Sama Cheon’s hands began moving again.

“I had no interest in my clan’s survival. My only obsession was with arrays, mechanism designs, and strange Great Laws.”

“Then why...?”

“While I was consumed by such things, my family starved to death. They could have lived had I sold just a few of my treasures or secret manuals.”

Sama Cheon let out a short, bitter laugh.

That laugh was not directed at anyone but himself—the man who had failed to notice his wife and children dying from hunger and cold.

“They must have thought there was no money to be had from a man shut in a dark room. One day, the meals they had always brought stopped coming, and when I went to look—there they were, huddled together, dead.”

His wife and three young children lay cold in their room, clinging to one another.

Around them were spilled bowls of darkened porridge—herbal gruel made from poison weed.

There was not a single grain of rice left in the house, not even a twig to make a fire.

Was it hunger, or cold that killed them?

Was it the mother’s choice, or had they all decided together as they embraced?

Even when the thin white porridge they brought him stopped coming, Sama Cheon’s own room had remained warm.

“My wife believed I would restore our family.”

She had thought his research was for their clan—trusted him so completely she did not even tell him they were dying.

She had used the last handful of rice and the last stick of firewood for him.

After seeing the bodies of his wife and children, Sama Cheon began researching a Great Law to reverse time.

He sold everything unnecessary to fund his research into the Heaven-Defying Time-Reversal Great Law.

It was not from guilt over his family’s deaths.

He had only thought them foolish when he saw them lying dead.

‘You only had to say, “We need money.”’

If they had just said that.

‘We can’t find food.’

Then their deaths would not have been so meaningless.

‘We’re out of firewood.’

He wanted to teach those foolishly dead lips to say that one short phrase.

He wanted to hear those words—to prove that death had not been the only way.

“You regret it too, don’t you.”

A tear slipped from Sama Cheon’s chin.

He wanted to turn it all back.

His own wretchedness—so obsessed with research that he hadn’t seen his family dying.

His indifference—not even asking why the porridge grew thinner each day.

No—his selfishness, pretending it would be fine even as he knew.

He wanted to undo it all.

Drip. Drop—

He missed his family.

He wanted to feed them warm soup again.

“....”

“....”

For a long time, Sama Cheon wept silently.

He had been a man wholly consumed by research, ignorant of martial arts.

Yet such a man had fought alone against the Blood Demon all this time.

Having his completed Great Law seized from him again and again—those losses had been the only thing keeping him alive.

“I no longer wish to recover the Great Law or revive my family.”

He could no longer even recall their faces.

After living so long, he understood that bringing them back would be nothing but selfish greed.

“Now, I only wish to bring it all to an end.”

He looked utterly exhausted as he said it.

The excruciating physical pain from the wounds the Blood Demon had left him with each repeated lifetime had worn him down further and further.

“That must be why he brought you back.”

“!”

Seolhwa turned to him, startled.

“You know why the Blood Demon revived me?”

“It is only a guess. Since I made the Great Law, I can surmise.”

Seolhwa’s eyes trembled faintly.

“...What is it?”

“He intends to destroy the Great Law.”

“To destroy it...?”

So that was why he brought her back—because he needed her?

“Even if he does not enact it, as long as the Great Law exists, the possibility of regression will never disappear.”

The true end of regression.

That did not mean simply ceasing to turn back time—but erasing the Heaven-Defying Time-Reversal Great Law itself.

“To realize such a Great Law requires a vessel capable of containing its power. A normal object could never withstand it.”

Sama Cheon stopped what he was doing, approached his desk, and burned a medicinal herb that dulled pain.

His trembling hand steadied; he exhaled deeply, then continued.

“So I chose a divine relic said to have descended from Heaven itself—the Celestial Incense Burner.”

An incense burner of the gods, who dwell above the heavens.

It was an artifact spoken of only in legend throughout martial history.

It was said that lighting its flame could purify any poison or curse, even summon the souls of the dead—an uncanny divine relic.

But its powers were so absurd, and no one had ever seen it, that it was dismissed as a myth.

“It really exists?” 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

“Yes. With each regression, that man and I fought to claim it. Every time, he took it. Even now, he surely possesses it.”

At that moment, an image rose in Seolhwa’s mind—the Blood Demon’s private chamber deep within the Blood Cult’s headquarters.

Behind his room was a secret space where no one else was permitted to step.

No one knew what lay there.

No one but him.

“If that incense burner is destroyed, the Heaven-Defying Time-Reversal Great Law can never again be used. That is the perfect way to erase it entirely. However...”

Sama Cheon paused.

Then, from his lips came words that defied belief.

“The one who destroys the Great Law... will cease to exist.”