A pure white world.

The ground, the sky, everything had turned white, filling the space with a thick sense of wrongness.

Standing still in that place, I reached up and pressed my fingers into the bridge of my nose.

“...You fucking piece of shit.”

The curse just tore out of me. There was no way I wasn’t saying it.

“Ugh...”

I’d already been here once before. If I bothered to count then it’d be a few times, but whatever the number, every single visit had been a completely fucked-up experience.

“...Why the hell am I here again.”

Why was I in this place?

The moment I started to recall the reason, I turned around and spoke.

“So when you said I’d ‘understand when I woke up’... it was for this, huh?”

As I twisted up my face and said it, the space behind me began to change.

Smoke started to gather, slowly clumping together into a shape, and by the time I really registered it, it had taken on a human form.

Sword Saint Yoo Cheongil.

That old man appeared in front of me.

“Keuk keuk.”

Yoo Cheongil was wearing that signature punchable smirk of his, like he was enjoying my reaction.

[How is it. Your impressions of coming back here after so long?]

“It’s fucking awful. That’s how.”

There was no chance a good reaction was coming.

‘I’ve died here how many times already.’

I’d died and died again here so many times I didn’t even want to count.

This place was the spirit-dream Yoo Cheongil had created.

‘...Same as that time.’

It was the same place I’d experienced back at Blue Moon Sect.

The place where I’d fought like a madman against Yoo Cheongil’s younger self.

No, calling it a fight was wrong.

That had been a one-sided slaughter.

“...What are you planning this time?”

What was his real intent in dragging me in here again?

When I asked, he put on an exaggeratedly puzzled expression as he spoke.

[What do you mean, ‘what.’ You just asked me earlier, didn’t you.]

“...Huh?”

[How to make the moon shine. You asked me how to do that.]

“...”

I had definitely asked that.

“...Then you could just explain it with words. Why’d you drag me in here?”

[Like I said back then too, explaining it with words is a pain, and it’s hard besides. This method seemed a bit easier.]

“...No, I mean...”

[Besides, it seems the time is right. So this is a necessary step.]

“The time is right?”

[Right. This, too, is something you said. Didn’t you say you wanted to go take some things from the pantry.]

“...”

I had said that. The snack pantry he supposedly built. He’d said there were far more treasures hidden deeper in than the stuff I’d seen that time.

In exchange for doing him a favor, he’d said he’d let me have them. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

‘And this is what’s ‘necessary’ for that?’

How the hell did it end up like that?

[Given how things stand, I want you to learn it as quickly as possible.]

As he said that, Yoo Cheongil flicked something toward me.

THUNK-!

The object flew through the air and planted itself right in front of me. It was a sword.

That part was the same as last time.

Which meant—

‘...He’s telling me to do the same shit again?’

No. No way, right? He wasn’t going to use that kind of meathead method again, was he?

I was busy trembling in unease when—

[This time will be a bit easier at least, so don’t worry so much.]

Whether it was a small mercy or what, Yoo Cheongil told me not to worry.

[You only have to block it once. Just once, even a single time is enough.]

“...Block it?”

[Right. And.]

As he spoke, Yoo Cheongil extended his index finger and pointed straight at me.

[Don’t focus only on making it shine. Look a bit deeper. The answer is in there.]

“What the hell is that— haa.”

Before I could even ask, Yoo Cheongil vanished from in front of my eyes.

That old bastard, seriously.

I ground my teeth.

Even so, I had no choice but to draw the sword stuck in front of me.

“...Ha...”

I never thought I’d have to go through this dogshit situation again.

‘I shouldn’t have asked.’

I raked my fingers back through my hair.

Fuck, because I was feeling stifled I went and asked that old man, and look at me now.

I’d thrown every possible tantrum last time, so I’d really believed he wouldn’t make me do it twice.

‘I’m insane.’

Of all the people I could have trusted, I trusted that old man?

“Huu.”

I let out a sigh and was about to look at the sword when—

JOLT!

“...”

My body froze on its own mid-movement.

Then, just like that, my head turned and I stared off in a certain direction.

It wasn’t that I sensed a presence, or that I heard some sound.

It was purely—

‘Instinct.’

Some tiny instinct coiled around my body made my head move on its own.

Where my gaze landed, there was something there.

Against the white background, making the whiteness look pointless, there was suddenly a single random boulder jammed into the space.

‘...What the hell is that?’

Why was there a boulder there all of a sudden? There hadn’t been anything like that last time.

As I stared at the out-of-place boulder, I noticed something else.

Someone was sitting perched on top of the rock.

Whoever it was, they weren’t wearing a top, and their tattered pants were soaked with blood to a ridiculous degree.

Their bare upper body was covered in wounds and scars.

As I watched that in silence—

SWWWISH.

The figure’s head turned in my direction.

Our eyes met.

“...!”

I let out a strangled breath without realizing it and took a step back.

‘What the hell is that?’

What the hell was that?

The moment my eyes met those blue eyes, every hair on my body stood on end, and it felt like my heart had just dropped to the floor.

Cold sweat ran down my back.

What the hell was that? Could you even call that thing human?

‘Those eyes are...’

Despite being dyed a deep blue, they had no sense of light or shadow at all.

Under blood-stained hair, the expressionless face made me choke on a faint, soundless cry.

Terrifying.

Just facing it made me feel like I would be crushed under sheer fear.

SSSSSSSS.

There was no wind, but it felt like my hair was being blown.

Only then did I realize. Then this wind-like feeling was...

‘...Killing intent?’

Was that killing intent pouring off of him?

Did it mean his killing intent had taken on the shape of wind and was brushing past me?

‘Insane.’

That kind of thing is possible?

A thing called a human being could do that?

As I stood there dumbfounded by something that made no sense—

TAP.

The figure sitting on the boulder moved.

“...Huuu... huuuu...”

As I watched him stagger to his feet, a thought passed through my mind.

‘He’s thin.’

Weirdly thin. I could tell he was pretty tall, but how could someone that tall be that gaunt?

A skinny body riddled with both fresh wounds and old scars.

That only made him more frightening.

‘He looks like a starving beast.’

A predator so hungry it looked like it might do anything.

That was exactly the feeling I got from this man.

‘No matter how you look at it, this is going way too far.’

This wasn’t something I could shrug off or comment lightly on.

Pal Duyeok? Even when I’d seen that bastard, or when Poison King spread his presence, it hadn’t been like this.

The first thought that hit me the moment I saw this man was something like ‘far beyond reach.’

There was a wall I couldn’t see as anything human.

The moment I recognized that wall, helplessness surged up.

The helplessness and fear you felt when facing a being at a height so far beyond you it felt unreal.

That was what I felt as I stared at him.

CRRRUNCH.

The man started walking barefoot toward me.

One step, then another.

With every step he took, he left behind footprints.

Footprints made of nothing but a very, very bright red blood.

Before long, the man stood right in front of me.

My body was so stiff I couldn’t even manage ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) to properly stumble backward.

“...What... are you?”

“...”

His voice was thin and rough. There was almost no strength in it, and it even sounded a little like sobbing.

I hadn’t even known a voice could sound that exhausted.

Even so, my mouth wouldn’t open to answer his question.

Like prey frozen stiff in front of a predator.

I couldn’t easily show any kind of reaction.

All I could do was hide the cold sweat streaming down and try to stop my body from trembling.

That was the best I could manage.

After a brief stretch of time—

“...You are...”

The man tried to continue speaking.

“...No.”

Then he shook his head.

“...It’s fine. Now, it’s fine.”

And then, like he’d given something up, he murmured:

“Now... it’s all meaningless.”

His voice carried no emotion at all.

In stark contrast to that vicious killing intent, his voice was utterly flat.

That, more than anything, terrified me.

There are such things even among evil ghosts.

Some are filled with rage and crave only revenge.

Others fall and rot away, buried in regret or sorrow.

But among them, the scariest kind is—

‘The ones that’ve let go of everything.’

They’ve let go of their emotions, and even their memories.

Beings that pour their entire being into nothing but flowing malice.

I know from experience those are the hardest kind of evil ghosts to deal with.

And yet—

‘...He feels kind of similar.’

The feeling radiating from the man in front of me was disturbingly close to that.

Was this really okay?

The moment I looked at him with that anxious thought—

CRACK.

There was a sound like something breaking.

“...Huk...”

My eyes flew open wide.

****

“Haaak...! Hah!!”

I shot my upper body upright and panted harshly as I scanned my surroundings.

It wasn’t the white world.

It was a familiar backdrop. The room I was staying in.

Confirming that, I clamped a hand over my mouth.

“Urk...”

Dry heaves forced their way up.

My stomach churned so badly I could hardly stand it.

“...Ghh...”

Did I die?

Yeah, that’s probably what happened.

When did I die?

Was that breaking sound my skull?

‘I didn’t see a thing.’

I didn’t see at all how I died.

Thankfully it hadn’t gone into a repeat loop, and thanks to that I managed to wake up from the spirit-dream, but—

‘This is fucking insane.’

Just remembering what I’d gone through made me almost scream.

‘What the hell was that thing?’

What was that existence I’d faced?

‘...Was that Yoo Cheongil too?’

The first one I met in the spirit-dream had been Yoo Cheongil as a child.

So this man I met this time might also be Yoo Cheongil in the past.

‘...Really, though...?’

I wasn’t sure. The problem was, he was far too gaunt for me to confidently call him Yoo Cheongil.

‘The height seemed about the same, and he had Moon Eyes, so it feels like it should be him, but...’

If it was him, then when in his life was that?

At what point in his life did he have that kind of monstrous atmosphere about him?

“...He was already weird enough as a teenager, but this is on a completely different level.”

Even if I was being generous a hundred times over, this version was too much.

‘How am I supposed to fight something like that.’

Somehow he’d turned into a ‘thing’ in my head in an instant, but I couldn’t help it.

There was such a thing as a reasonable limit. No matter how hard I worked, this was not something I could handle.

There was a limit to what effort could do, and this was way past it.

‘That old bastard has no conscience.’

I immediately looked around, ready to chew him out on the spot.

But Yoo Cheongil was nowhere to be seen.

Where the hell had he gone now?

I couldn’t see him. Not that he hadn’t disappeared on me without warning plenty of times before.

‘He dumps a spirit-dream on me without a word and then vanishes?’

He’d shoved me into a spirit-dream without permission, so where the hell had he gone?

As I was turning that question over—

‘Oh.’

A thought came to me and my brow furrowed.

‘Maybe... that old man...’

Was it that he couldn’t come out while the spirit-dream was in use?

Until I cleared whatever condition there was to escape the spirit-dream—

Maybe he couldn’t show himself.

‘Come to think of it, that time too.’

Back when I entered the first spirit-dream at Blue Moon Sect.

Yoo Cheongil hadn’t appeared the whole time I was going through hell in there.

I remembered it clearly because I’d cursed him out nonstop for being useless when I needed him most.

Then, only after I’d overcome the trial in the spirit-dream had he finally shown himself again.

If that was the case—

‘Now too?’

Maybe it was the same this time.

Thinking that, I ran a hand over my stomach and chest.

“Ugh...”

The urge to throw up still wasn’t going away.

I figured I needed to at least get some air, so I pushed myself to my feet.

If I kept thinking like this, I really was going to puke.

I hurried to leave and grabbed the doorknob.

RRRATTLE-!

But before I could open it, someone else opened my door first.

“You’re probably awake by now, right? It’s time to ea—”

“Urk...!!”

I slapped my hand over my mouth and fought back another dry heave.

“...”

The person who saw me like that—

A woman who’d clearly put a lot into her appearance even this early in the morning.

Liaoning’s First Beauty, Murong Yeongsun, roughly furrowed her pretty brow.