Baek Yoonjun's heart's bolt was released.
'It's faster than last time.'
When the bolt was engaged, he had seen everything in the world calmly and coolly, but as soon as the bolt was released, he was swept away by the emotions and idle thoughts that came flooding in.
'This is really hard to get used to...'
Perhaps because of the effect of what had been locked up being released, Baek Yoonjun was feeling a strong aftereffect.
As a bonus.
"No! I said no!!"
Various thoughts came to him about the man who was struggling in front of him.
'I thought he was the real culprit until just now, but what if I caught an innocent person?'
Like a long afterglow after burning all of one's vitality.
Feeling like a sage, Baek Yoonjun looked at the man in front of him with pity.
'He looks so incredibly wronged, so I don't think he's the real culprit.'
He must have been so wronged that his voice was filled with resentment, and tears were welling up in the corners of his eyes.
'Although his martial arts are third-rate or lower.'
The man's martial arts were on the higher side among the third-rate or lower.
If he had to make a comparison, he seemed to be similar to or lower than Zhuge Hyun.
"I, I have thrown everything away!! I have thrown everything away solely for the great cause!!"
That third-rate or lower man was laying out his life story in front of Baek Yoonjun, as if he had been doing so for some time, while spewing out his resentment.
"I was also originally just a child of a martial family who was interested in ordinary martial arts!! But!"
A very meaningful long story.
But since Baek Yoonjun was thinking about something else, the man's words were not entering his ears at all.
'What if I really caught an innocent person?'
Although he was perfectly fine on the outside, Baek Yoonjun's inner self was an extreme homebody introvert.
It was a daily routine for useless worries to arise and for those worries to lead to more worries.
'The way it looks now, it's as if I'm bullying him. If I caught an innocent person here?'
Baek Yoonjun's mind was in a state of crazy confusion.
'Am I trash?'
The confusion naturally dug into the ground.
'Although Brother Zhang and the kids were badly injured, their lives are not in danger. But Elder Hyunjun Hyun has passed away. What if I misidentified the enemy of the deceased Elder Hyunjun Hyun and made a mistake?'
Baek Yoonjun wanted to leave this place right away.
But since he had no internal energy, he couldn't perform his lightness skill as before, and for some reason, even the lightness skill he had barely learned, the Void Stepping, was not being performed at will.
'...Should I just dig into the ground?'
Baek Yoonjun seriously considered whether to physically dig into the ground he was standing on.
While Baek Yoonjun was digging in his mind-image, the man in front of him, Namgung Jehyun, was laying out his story in detail.
Of course, not a single word entered the ears of Baek Yoonjun, who wanted to dig into the ground right away.
And so, time passed.
"Kehehehehehe!! I see! So that's how it was!!"
Out of nowhere, Namgung Jehyun began to laugh like crazy.
Even Baek Yoonjun, who had been digging in his mind-image, had to stop digging at the sudden burst of laughter.
'What? Did he suddenly go crazy?'
It was not unreasonable for Baek Yoonjun to think so.
Because Namgung Jehyun was laughing as if he had really lost his mind.
Baek Yoonjun stealthily moved his feet.
It was not a retreat or an advance, but an instinctive physical digging in place.
That appearance, rubbing the dirt with the tips of his toes and fidgeting, was a strange behavior like a lost mole heading for bare ground.
Fortunately, just before Baek Yoonjun began to dig into the ground in earnest, Namgung Jehyun's laughter stopped.
Namgung Jehyun glared at Baek Yoonjun with eyes full of fear, and yet, overflowing with madness.
"They say the immortals play with the secular world like a Go board! So you were such a being!"
Baek Yoonjun was at a loss for words at the sudden statement.
Namgung Jehyun, as if he had taken Baek Yoonjun's reaction as an affirmation, continued to spew out words.
"All of this was on the palm of your hand! Kehahahat!! Even the fact that I abandoned my son, cut down my friend, and cut down my master!! Even the fact that I betrayed my close friend and cut down his daughter was all in the palm of your hand!!"
Namgung Jehyun's voice was filled with resentment and madness.
At this point, Baek Yoonjun, whose inner self was a homebody introvert, became a little scared.
'Why on earth is the flow of the story going that way?'
Baek Yoonjun tried hard to recall the story from just before.
But since he had let it all pass by while diligently digging in his mind-image, he couldn't remember anything.
While Baek Yoonjun was digging into the mind-image of his mind-image and trying to grasp the flow of the conversation, Namgung Jehyun's story continued.
"Then."
With a very tragic face, Namgung Jehyun asked.
"You are the being who has the black sky below you!"
Of course, to Baek Yoonjun, it was an incredibly sudden story.
Since he couldn't follow the flow of the story, he naturally couldn't answer, and it seemed Namgung Jehyun had taken that reaction as an affirmation.
"You... you are the mastermind of this Central Plains! Then all of this makes sense."
Namgung Jehyun looked as if he had reached enlightenment.
On the other hand, Baek Yoonjun was on the verge of reaching enlightenment from frustration.
'Why does the ending have me as the mastermind?'
Of course, since his homebody introvert tendency was pressing down on the question from coming out, he couldn't ask it outright.
"Why?"
Instead, he expressed his question briefly and very timidly.
Namgung Jehyun, as if he had taken that statement as an affirmation again, let out a deep sigh as if he had given up on everything.
"Didn't I say! The being called the black sky that I saw in the imperial palace, the place that is below you!
Therefore, I tried to have an overwhelming reputation and martial power to stand against them!
You stepped up as if to show off and foiled it, so a small creature like me must be ridiculous in front of you!!"
Namgung Jehyun began to speak very briefly, as if Baek Yoonjun naturally knew something.
Of course, '?' was rampant in Baek Yoonjun's head, but since he didn't express it on the outside, it didn't show at all.
'No, what did I do to make him angry at me?'
On top of that, at the words of being a small creature, Baek Yoonjun was very timidly hurt.
The timidly hurt Baek Yoonjun was timidly angry.
That aura was like a rabbit that had just poked its head out of its burrow and was roaring.
Baek Yoonjun wanted to somehow find fault with Namgung Jehyun's words.
And from the words he had just heard, he found a thread of fault.
'Why is he messing with an innocent temple, leaving alone the strong guy he said he saw in the imperial palace?'
It was a good thread of fault.
But Baek Yoonjun, the extreme homebody introvert, could not utter those words and could only roar inwardly like a rabbit that had poked its head out of its burrow.
And so, in the frustrated Baek Yoonjun's mind-image, a word got stuck.
'Pathetic?'
The word 'pathetic'.
That word somehow seemed to fit what Namgung Jehyun in front of him had done.
At that, Namgung Jehyun began to look different in Baek Yoonjun's eyes.
'Pathetic!! That's right! Pathetic!'
Baek Yoonjun was an extreme homebody introvert.
The incarnation of the strong against the weak and the weak against the strong itself.
As the man in front of him began to look pathetic, Baek Yoonjun felt a strange sense of kinship and superiority.
'At least I don't take out my anger on other guys, right? I'm better than this guy.'
Baek Yoonjun's back and head straightened towards the sky.
A sense of superiority welled up from his throat, and that sense of superiority immediately came out.
"Then why aren't you fighting the being you saw then?"
"Didn't I say! Because it is an unreachable being, I need to build up my strength!!"
Namgung Jehyun refuted with a story that Baek Yoonjun did not know.
Although it was a story he did not know, since Baek Yoonjun had already judged that he was better than his opponent, he lightly ignored it.
"Why aren't you fighting that being? You pathetic guy."
"P-pathetic?!"
"That's right. What else should I call a guy who is taking out his anger on the wrong place?"
"T-taking out my anger!! It's not like that, for the great cause...!"
"The fact that you're packaging it like that is what's pathetic."
Namgung Jehyun was at a loss for words, and Baek Yoonjun was triumphant.
At some point, a crowd of people had gathered at the place where Baek Yoonjun and Namgung Jehyun were, but Baek Yoonjun did not mind at all.
'Because there's a guy who's more pathetic than me!'
Since he thought the gazes would naturally be drawn to the guy who was more pathetic than him, Baek Yoonjun was not intimidated at all even though a crowd of people had gathered.
On the contrary, he was even feeling the joy of life.
"How pathetic."
Thanks to that, he was unhesitating.
"The height of patheticness."
"Keoheok!"
At Baek Yoonjun's words of being pathetic, Namgung Jehyun spat out blood again and knelt down.
"And I am not the mastermind. You pathetic guy."
"Keolluk!"
As a bonus, Baek Yoonjun inserted the words he wanted to say pathetically in the middle, but since he was on a roll, it passed by stealthily.
"Pathetic."
"Keoheok!"
"Pa."
"Keolluk!"
The sight of him spitting out blood at just the letter 'pa' was a sight to behold.
"Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic, pathetic."
"Kuaaaak!"
Baek Yoonjun became crazy triumphant.
It was the most confident moment of his life so far.
And so, as Baek Yoonjun was fully enjoying the joy of life, Namgung Jehyun on the other side was on the verge of death.
Although it was a shock to be crushed by an overwhelming martial power, he was shocked again by Baek Yoonjun's scathing criticism.
And so, Namgung Jehyun, who had been pushed to the edge of a cliff mentally.
"Ugh, uwaaaaaaah!!"
His eyes went crazy.
He drew his sword and rushed at Baek Yoonjun.
Although Baek Yoonjun flinched at the sight of Namgung Jehyun's crazy eyes, he lightly blocked it.
'His eyes have gone crazy?!'
Although it was not very threatening, the sight of his crazy eyes was very burdensome.
Feeling burdened, Baek Yoonjun turned his gaze away from Namgung Jehyun to the other side.
The sword form that Namgung Jehyun had been swinging from before.
'This sword... it's good, but something is lacking.'
He genuinely felt that it was good.
Although it did not have a grand power because it was swung by a third-rate or lower by Baek Yoonjun's standards, it was good.
But that was all.
"It's excellent. But."
After blocking the sword of Namgung Jehyun, whose eyes had gone crazy, he expressed his impression.
"That's not how you do it."
"Keoheok!"
"Your posture is wrong."
"Keolluk!"
"Your basics are not there."
"Kuaaaak!"
Expressing his triumph, Baek Yoonjun interpreted the king's sword in his own way and returned it.
After Baek Yoonjun came out of the grotto.
His progress was witnessed by numerous people.
He had turned all the martial artists of the alliance into human firecrackers, regardless of their realm, and had extinguished the fire with his sword.
At that overwhelming sight, the battle that had been taking place inside Shaolin entered a lull.
At the unpredictable depth of his martial arts, no one could act rashly.
And so, Baek Yoonjun headed for the main gate, and the people left behind could not take their eyes off his back.
They could not even think of following him.
And so, time passed, and one by one, they were barely able to get up and take a step, as if they were just starting to walk.
At that time, there was a being who had quietly moved his feet towards the place where Baek Yoonjun had headed.
'Master!'
It was Baek Sowol, Baek Yoonjun's disciple and the leader of the Heavenly Mountains group.
Even after collapsing on the floor due to Namgung Jehyun's unknown sorcery, Baek Sowol had continued to maintain her consciousness.
She had also clearly seen the situation just before Tang Yuhwa was about to be cut down.
Although she had not seen her for that long, for some reason, she felt very close to Tang Yuhwa.
Therefore, she had tried to somehow move her body to block that situation.
'Damn it! Damn it!!'
But all she could do was grit her teeth and barely open her eyes, which were about to close.
Namgung Jehyun's blade fell towards Tang Yuhwa.
'No!!'
Baek Sowol screamed in her heart.
At that moment.
For some reason, Namgung Jehyun had stopped his movement and was staring blankly at the Shaolin side.
Baek Sowol could not understand at all why he had stopped.
And so, a moment later, Baek Sowol could also see why Namgung Jehyun had stopped.
It was because of a being that Baek Sowol also knew.
A person she had missed so much, and yet, because she had left the mountain without permission, she had not even dared to go and find him.
'Master? Why on earth are you here?!'
Although Baek Sowol was pleased, she felt a question because she could not understand at all why Baek Yoonjun was here.
But since she did not even have the energy to open her mouth, she could only stare blankly at Baek Yoonjun.
'Master... it's reassuring that you've appeared in a situation like this, but why can't I feel anything from you?'
In the middle of that, Baek Sowol recalled what she had forgotten at Baek Yoonjun's sudden appearance.
'By the way, Namgung Jehyun! That person used some sorcery, right?'
As that thought came to her, Baek Sowol became urgent.
In her memory, Baek Yoonjun was an overwhelming strong person who was difficult to even look up to.
But the situation was not good now.
A situation where the allied martial artists, except for Namgung Jehyun, had collapsed helplessly.
It was a situation where it seemed they could not use their internal energy due to some unknown force.
'Could it be that I can't feel anything from Master either?!'
Baek Sowol thought that Baek Yoonjun was no different.
'I have to tell him!! I have to!!'
Although Baek Sowol tried to somehow hold onto her fading consciousness and warn Baek Yoonjun, it was a futile act.
(End of Chapter)
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