Chapter 377
"Huh?"
Wei Yan-ho opened his eyes wide and looked around.
'Where is this place?'
Familiarity and strangeness were mixed together.
It was certainly a place he knew, but it was different from the place he knew. Above all, there was no reason for him to be here. The place he was looking at now was…
"A cave?"
It was the cave where he had spent five years with Baek Mu-han.
Wei Yan-ho felt bewildered as he looked around.
"Why are you trembling like that? You're not even a rain-soaked chick."
Wei Yan-ho's body shuddered. When he turned around, he saw a familiar person.
"Whoa, Master?"
"Tsk tsk tsk."
Baek Mu-han was looking at him with eyes that said he was pathetic.
"Are you still not fully awake, you fool? Hurry up and snap out of it!"
"Ah…"
Wei Yan-ho nodded.
"It's a dream."
Baek Mu-han said nothing.
"Master is dead. So there's no way Master could be alive."
"I was already dead to begin with, you fool."
"That's true, but…"
To be precise, there was no way the annihilated Baek Mu-han could reappear in the world. In the end, what Wei Yan-ho was seeing now was either a dream or an illusion created by his unconscious mind.
"It must be quite difficult, seeing how you're looking for Master."
"Tsk tsk, pathetic fool."
Wei Yan-ho looked at Baek Mu-han.
The Baek Mu-han in front of him now was not the real Baek Mu-han. He was just a fake with Baek Mu-han's appearance. Created based on the Baek Mu-han that remained in Wei Yan-ho's memory.
But that didn't matter at all.
He was grateful that he could see Master's face like this. If not for this, it would be hard to endure the present.
"Master."
"What, you fool."
"I lost."
"Hm?"
"I lost. I was defeated without any room for excuses."
At Wei Yan-ho's words, Baek Mu-han's face turned sour.
"So?"
"I lost."
"And?"
At Baek Mu-han's blunt reaction, Wei Yan-ho began to get emotional.
"Hey! Your disciple says he lost, and that's all you have to say?"
Thwack!
"Kek!"
Wei Yan-ho squeezed out a tear.
Perhaps because he had been hit so often, even the pain was excessively vivid. After being hit hundreds of thousands of times, his body seemed to remember that pain perfectly.
"Why are you hitting me!"
"Pathetic fool!"
Baek Mu-han clicked his tongue while looking at Wei Yan-ho.
"What's so important about losing once for someone who calls himself a martial artist that you're whining like this? Victory and defeat are common in battle, and defeat is what makes a person strong. What martial artist hasn't experienced defeat at least once? Everyone loses and wins again. And the one who survives until the end stands at the top. If you didn't die, then you didn't lose."
"…Then has Master ever lost?"
"No?"
"…"
"…"
A subtle atmosphere flowed.
Wei Yan-ho looked at Baek Mu-han with an indescribable gaze.
"…I really don't know what to say. Seriously."
"It's a joke, you fool! A joke! Can't I even make jokes!"
Baek Mu-han looked at Wei Yan-ho with eyes that said he was pathetic.
"Of course I've lost before too."
"Whoa, really?"
"Isn't that obvious? Were you ever able to beat your father when you were young?"
"Huh?"
"I was the same way. I always lost."
"No, isn't that a bit different? That wasn't deciding victory or defeat."
"It wasn't deciding victory or defeat?"
Baek Mu-han's face hardened.
"Then what do you call victory and defeat?"
Wei Yan-ho couldn't readily answer.
"Is it only victory and defeat when people of the right time, right age, and somewhat matching levels fight each other?"
"It's not like that, but…"
"You idiotic fool!"
Baek Mu-han truly seemed angry as he raged.
"Does winning or losing matter? If there's even one person in the world you can't beat, then you can only be a loser forever. Yet you're discouraged because you lost once in such a fight? You, the disciple of Baek Mu-han?"
"No…"
"Someone who gets disappointed and angry over something like that – how can you endure the fact that there are people stronger than you in this world? You just haven't fought them, but the moment you do fight, you'll lose. Are you saying you can be satisfied becoming a coward instead of a loser?"
"No! That's absolutely not it!"
"That's right!"
Baek Mu-han nodded.
As if to say that's what qualifies you to be my disciple.
"I've never lost in my life. But I've always been losing. Before I turned thirty, I was always a loser. I knew that fact well, and I reduced my sleep to win."
Wei Yan-ho shook his head as if he was fed up.
Every once in a while, he was really someone who would calmly commit unbelievable acts. Perhaps this bad-tempered person was able to reach the position of the greatest under heaven – no, the greatest of all time – because he had such cruelly overwhelming competitive spirit.
But saying that if there's even one person stronger than yourself in the world, you're a loser. Where could such an absurd idea come from?
"So you fool, there's nothing to be disappointed about. What changes when someone who was already losing has lost?"
"Huh…"
Wei Yan-ho blinked and asked.
"Then do I have to become the greatest under heaven to escape being a loser?"
"No."
"What?"
"I'm here, aren't I?"
Baek Mu-han pointed to himself with an arrogant posture.
"You have to beat me. Only then will you not be a loser."
"Master is dead!"
"That's right. So what? Are you saying you can feel relieved that you won't be defeated just because you were lucky enough not to be born in the same era as me?"
"…Do I have to go that far?"
Just how strong did one have to be?
"Of course. After I obtained the position of the greatest under heaven, I traced the footsteps of those who held the title before me. The traces of those who could be compared to me, that is."
'I feel like I've heard this story before… '
Well, that would be the case. The current Baek Mu-han wasn't the real Baek Mu-han but the Baek Mu-han created by Wei Yan-ho. In the end, he could only repeat the stories Wei Yan-ho had heard.
"And then?"
"They were all pushovers."
"But how can you compare them?"
"It's simple. If you want to know what level Master Zhang Sanfeng's martial arts were, you can go to Wudang, look at the secret manual of the Taiji Wisdom Sword, learn it intensively, and see what level you reach, right?"
"…Would Wudang show you that?"
"And what if they don't?"
"If it were me, I'd try to stop you even if it killed me."
"But they seemed to prefer not dying."
Wei Yan-ho closed his eyes and mourned for the martial artists who lived in the same era as Baek Mu-han.
They were terribly unlucky to be born in the same era as that gentleman.
Honestly, he wanted to understand even if the martial world had declared Baek Mu-han a public enemy of the martial world and tried to kill him through joint attack.
No, wait. Didn't he say they all got beaten up trying?
Honestly, at that level, it should be considered a natural disaster. What's a natural disaster? It's a natural disaster if it can't be handled by human power.
"…So what happened?"
Anyway, he had to satisfy his curiosity.
Baek Mu-han answered nonchalantly.
"Dharma, Sanfeng, whatever – they weren't much. Looking into it, Master Dharma wasn't even the greatest of Shaolin."
"What?"
"The one who completed the Seventy-Two Ultimate Arts wasn't Master Dharma but the Sixth Patriarch Huineng. So the actual greatest of Shaolin should be considered the Sixth Patriarch Huineng. As for Master Dharma, well… the Muscle-Bone Classic was genuine, but other than that, there wasn't much."
What a long life to witness.
Living long enough to hear that Dharma wasn't much.
"Then what about Master Sanfeng?"
"He doesn't even compare to Dharma."
"…"
He wanted to argue back, but couldn't.
What could he say when this gentleman was the greatest of all time? Not just in his own opinion, but that's what history says. What could he say?
"There was exactly one, just one. One guy I thought might be worth fighting."
"Who?"
"The Mad Blood Demon."
Baek Mu-han said nonchalantly.
"Since they called the Mad Blood Demon fellow the greatest of the demonic path, I studied all the demonic arts he left behind."
"You must have stormed into the Demonic Cult, grabbed the kids by their hair, and told them to hand over all their demonic art manuals."
"How did you know?"
"…"
He didn't want to say anything anymore.
"Anyway, I conducted tremendous research using the demonic art manuals I obtained that way. While I could learn and use other martial arts to some degree, demonic arts have a different system, so I couldn't learn them. Thanks to that, I suffered quite a bit."
"So what's the conclusion?"
"This guy is strong."
Baek Mu-han said with a stern face.
"This guy is really strong. Thinking about it the other way, it's natural. Founding masters like Dharma or Master Sanfeng would be frantically glorified by their descendants, right? Saying those gentlemen were the greatest."
"That's right."
"On the other hand, someone like the Mad Blood Demon would be cursed to death, yet he receives similar treatment to those two, right? That's proof that the Mad Blood Demon was twice as strong as those two."
"Now that you mention it, that's true."
"All demonic arts in the world begin with the Mad Blood Demon and end with the Mad Blood Demon. If that guy's martial arts were properly transmitted, it's no wonder you're struggling."
"But the Mad Blood Demon is dead. And if the Mad Blood Demon's martial arts were properly transmitted, why didn't the Demonic Cult prosper? In Master's time, the Demonic Cult was barely maintaining its existence, wasn't it?"
"That's right."
"Then why did the Demonic Cult suddenly revive?"
"I've been thinking about that part too…"
"Yes."
Baek Mu-han scratched his head.
"I don't want to admit it, but that Mad Blood Demon fellow seems to have had martial arts at a similar level to mine."
"That much?"
"Of course, he's inferior to me. If we fought officially, I'm confident I could cut off his neck within a hundred seconds. But even that is almost at a level that transcends humanity…"
"…I suppose so."
"So couldn't he do what I did?"
"What?"
When Wei Yan-ho didn't understand, Baek Mu-han beat his chest as if frustrated.
"Just as I created my inner core to make my thought-form, couldn't the Mad Blood Demon do the same thing?"
"Whoa?"
Wei Yan-ho's eyes wavered.
'That could really be possible.'
"He might even leave a more sophisticated thought-form than me. That's his specialty, after all. I'm not proficient in death arts, but isn't he the source of Ten Thousand Deaths?"
"Master is the source of ten thousand evils, right?"
"Do you want to die?"
Wei Yan-ho flinched and cowered in the corner.
"Anyway, if the Mad Blood Demon left his thought-form and it was discovered beyond my era, it wouldn't be strange for the Demonic Cult to revive."
"Hmm…"
Wei Yan-ho slowly nodded. It was certainly a plausible statement.
"Be careful, Yan-ho."
"What? Careful?"
Baek Mu-han nodded seriously.
"I used this method because I wanted to leave behind my martial arts. But the Mad Blood Demon would never have left his thought-form for such a purpose. Probably… the Mad Blood Demon has a different purpose."
"A purpose?"
Wei Yan-ho tilted his head.
A purpose?
Baek Mu-han quietly looked at Wei Yan-ho and then opened his mouth.
"If someone with the Mad Blood Demon's level of mental power left his thought-form, what would his purpose be?"
"No way…"
Baek Mu-han nodded.
Words he never wanted to imagine were flowing from Baek Mu-han's mouth.
"That's right. Revival."