Chapter 89: Jaseung, Dreams

Clang, clang.

The metallic sound tickled his ears, and Lee Jaseung came to his senses.

Where on earth was that sound coming from?

He listened again, but the metallic sound was gone.

Lee Jaseung opened his eyes. It was a familiar room, one he had entered before.

‘This place? Ah! this is our bridal room.’

It was the very room that had been prepared for them in the Northern Sky Clan.

‘But why am I here?’

Something felt off. The objects around him seemed strangely enormous.

Lee Jaseung looked down at his body.

In that instant, he was shocked. His entire body had turned to metal. The metallic sound was coming from his own body.

Clang, clank.

His body began to move against his will.

Surprisingly, the movements unfolding were the very techniques he had learned from the Limitless Iron Chest. That was when he realized he had become a bronze puppet of the iron case.

Only then, did he realize he was dreaming.

Lee Jaseung clenched his teeth.

What he hated most in the world was being controlled or forced by someone else. Even if it was in a dream.

He tensed his body and resisted the force that was moving him. Pain surged through him as his flesh tore and bones cracked, but he gritted his teeth and endured it.

The next moment, there was a snap, and he heard the sound of chains breaking.

Something had broken, and all strength left his body. At the same time, the forced movements ceased. Even if it meant being unable to move, he would rather choose that than be controlled.

What on earth was going on?

At that moment, a huge face appeared before him.

It was Baek Seolyoung, wearing a shocked expression. Since he was now the size of a puppet, she looked like a giant.

If she saw him turned into a puppet, her surprise was only natural.

“What on earth happened?”

He simply stared up at her, unable to think of how to answer, and she asked again.

“Who are you?”

At that moment, Lee Jaseung opened his eyes.

The moment he realized it was a lucid dream, he woke up.

“Whew.”

He let out a sigh, a mix of relief and regret.

It was the first time she had appeared in one of his dreams. In truth, he rarely dreamed at all, and even when he did, the people around him usually did not appear. If he dreamed, it was usually about fighting.

But this time, Baek Seolyoung appeared.

And in such a bizarre dream, no less.

Lee Jaseung smirked.

Just then, Mook Young sent him a sound transmission.

— What is the matter?

— I had a dream.

— May I ask what it was about?

— Hey, don’t try to pry into my dreams. You already know enough about me as it is.

— My apologies.

Mook Young was curious. In all the years he had served Lee Jaseung, it was the first time he had seen him make that kind of expression.

Lee Jaseung got down from his bed and stretched widely.

He flung the window open. The sky was clear and high. He had a feeling it would be a good day.

Amid the fine weather, there was a certain presence only he could sense.

It was the tension between the Murim Alliance Leader Jang Wonso and the second-in-command Ban Yeo. The tighter that tension, the more it pleased Lee Jaseung.

Yesterday, his request for a meeting with the Alliance Leader had been denied on the grounds of busyness. That was fine. The point was not to meet and talk with the Alliance Leader, but to let Ban Yeo know that he was trying to make contact with him.

Just then, the question from the dream floated up in his mind.

“Who are you?”

His eyes deepened.

Closing the window, he told Mook Young,

“I will do morning training. Make preparations.”

* * *

Lee Jaseung’s martial arts training had been going on for four hours.

It was as if even if the world stopped turning, his effort would not cease.

He believed this.

If everything in the world was uncertain, the one certain thing was his own effort.

He repeated the techniques again and again.

Some might say it was his diligence that made it possible and that effort never betrayed a person.

But Lee Jaseung’s case was a little different. He had reached such a high level that one could say there was nowhere further to climb.

The usual levels of martial skill rose from Third-rate, to Second-rate, to First-rate, to Peak Realm, to transcendent Peak Realm or what they call supreme masters. Naturally, the higher one climbed, the harder it was to improve.

It was easy to go from third-rate to second-rate, but reaching transcendent peak from peak was far more difficult.

Because of that, most warriors, even if they trained their whole lives, would remain First-rate, with only a rare few reaching Peak Realm.

Thus, those like Lee Jaseung, Mujin, Ma Young-gi, and Mook Young, who reached transcendent Peak Realm at a young age, were rare geniuses, perhaps one in tens of thousands.

But even among transcendent peaks, the range of ability was vast.

The gap between top and bottom was like heaven and earth. The very end of the path was the realm of gods, the Martial God’s Realm.

Though seemingly unattainable, history recorded one man who had reached it not from the Orthodox Faction, but the Demonic Cult.

It wasn’t from the current Asura Demon Sect, but the original Demonic Cult. The Absolute Demon God Cheol Murin, founder of the Heavenly Demon Cult’s Nine Divine Demonic Arts.

Thus, climbing even one sublevel within the transcendent peak was as difficult as plucking a star from the heavens.

For convenience, if the transcendent peak was divided into ten sublevels, Mujin was at the ninth, Ma Young-gi and Mook Young were at the tenth.

The two may have been in the same rank, but even then there were gaps between Ma Young-gi and Mook Young. Officially, Ma Young-gi’s skill ranked higher than Mook Young’s.

Lee Jaseung was at the fifth.

It might’ve only been the fifth rank, but the difference between him and Mujin was unbelievably huge. Ascending one sublevel within the Transcendent Peak Realm was the same as one going from Third-rate to transcendent peak, if not harder.

Mujin would reach Lee Jaseung’s level only after doing that four times.

But Lee Jaseung did not obsess over moving up.

He believed that constant training was the way to protect himself. Even if he faced someone of higher strength, if that person had grown lazy, he could win.

What mattered was not the stage of his level, but himself in the present.

The self who trained as if his life depended on it.

Pah, pah, pah, pah, pah!

Was it because the start of the morning was good today? The sound of him cutting through the air was particularly lively today.

Pah, pah, pah, pah, pow!

His movements were smoother than usual. He could feel the difference himself.

It was not just his imagination as his body felt different.

After a full run of the Limitless Iron Chest’s techniques, he began practicing the Yama’s Dagger Art.

These too felt different, smoother, more invigorating.

From the first form to the second, then third, he flowed through them.

That was when Baek Seolyoung arrived.

But he did not stop. He had already shown her the Yama’s Dagger Art before anyway.

If possible, he wanted to show her the techniques from the iron chest, which would inspire her and boost her martial growth greatly.

But he could not yet reveal them to her.  

He moved on to the fourth, then the fifth form. Just like the first time, Baek Seolyoung watched with fists clenched.

For some reason, seeing him perform martial arts made her heart race and her fists tighten.

She wanted to jump in and exchange moves, and even fight him. His martial arts stirred something in people.

He even used the Dagger of the Enlightened One, a technique for truly desperate moments.

In that instant, he realized.

He was about to overcome the wall of martial arts he had been stuck on.

He had to keep going, unleashing everything to step into the next stage. That meant using the final Yama’s Dagger Art technique, the one he had never shown to anyone.

Whooosh!

The wind howled.

Baek Seolyoung could not open her eyes against it. It was the wind stirred by the final technique, Dagger of the Radiant King.  

At that moment, she saw it. Or rather, she sensed it, because the wind was too fierce for her to see clearly.

Flash! Flash! Flash!

Something kept gleaming. Though she could not see clearly, she knew that dozens of Sword Forces were swirling in the wind.

An incredible martial art was unfolding, one no master could avoid.

Whooosh.

The wind roared once, then subsided.

Her hair and clothes were a mess.

She was about to ask him what technique that was, but swallowed her words.

His expression was deadly serious, lost in deep thought.

She knew. He was at a crucial moment as a martial artist. And she knew when a martial artist was in such a state, one must never interrupt.

He had advanced, from the fifth to the fourth sublevel of transcendent peak.

Advancement came either from the fruits of long training or from great enlightenment.

Most martial artists at his level improved through certain enlightenments.  

But this was the result of pure, relentless training.

It was something that no one would believe.

He studied his new realm. This process was even more important than the advancement itself.

Fortunately, Baek Seolyoung understood and stood utterly still, even trying her best not to make a sound while breathing.

His contemplation deepened.

All the martial arts he had learned replayed in his mind. He remembered learning the Yama’s Dagger Art as a boy. He remembered the day vividly.

Other moves came back too. The one he used to kill for the first time, the one he used against true masters, the one that saved his life.

They flashed by like a lantern reel.

He now thought of the martial techniques he would use from now on. They were all the same forms, same breathing, but they were also different. Even if it were the same techniques, he was able to kill faster, kill more, and even kill the unkillable.

Yes, this was a different martial art.

This was the gap between the fifth and fourth sublevels.

The extreme Yang and extreme Yin Qi in his body alternated through his meridians.

He also saw a new way to control them and more effectively than before.

No one taught him, but he just knew.

A smile crept onto his lips.

Now he was at the fourth sublevel. To reach the third, he would need as much effort as he had already spent, or a powerful trigger.

That trigger could be sudden enlightenment, but that required heavenly luck.

He grinned broadly. His whole being overflowed with good energy.

“Hahahahahahaha!”

Laughing heartily, he emerged from the state of no-self.

The next moment, Lee Jaseung was startled.

It was dark around him. Morning had turned to night. He thought only a quarter of an hour had passed, but eight hours had gone by.

And from far away, Baek Seolyoung stood in the distance.

She spoke with difficulty.

“…Can I move now?”

She had stood there all day, without moving an inch, so as not to disturb him.

She wasn’t just standing either. She had even controlled her breathing, which had consumed immense mental strength.

When he nodded, she collapsed on the spot.  

Flash.

He moved like lightning and caught her before she fell to the ground.

She was drenched in sweat.

His eyes were full of emotion as he looked down at her.

— She did not move for even a single moment.

Even without Mook Young’s voice transmission, he was able to tell what had happened.

With a deepened gaze, he placed his hand on her forehead as she lay unconscious in his arms.

“…You idiot.”

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