Chapter 131: Kim Min-soo (4)

“What are you suddenly talking about?”

“You, you bastard! Enemy of the True Immortals! Enemy of the world! Monster!”

As Kim Min-soo screamed, Jang Woo-hyun looked at him, wondering why this man was acting out again.

“Die! Enemy of the True Immortals! Adversary of the gods! Destroyer of the world!”

Thinking he was playing around again, Jang Woo-hyun grabbed the hilt of his sword.

“Are you going to keep doing this?”

“……”

“Explain it in a way I can understand.”

“Even if I were a True Immortal, I would’ve killed you. I’m the victim! Because of you, I ended up like this… uuuurgh!”

Unable to listen any longer, Jang Woo-hyun swung his sword. Kim Min-soo flopped backward to dodge.

“Hey! I said explain it so I can understand!”

“It’s because of you, damn it! You’re growing too fast!”

“Huh? What are you even saying? Out of nowhere.”

Kim Min-soo suddenly sprang up and pointed a finger at Jang Woo-hyun.

“Do you think that growth rate is normal?”

“Uh…”

He couldn’t answer definitively. Even he didn’t think it was normal. Neither in the Central Plains nor in the Central Heavens had there been anyone who showed such a growth rate. Everyone was shocked by Jang Woo-hyun’s rapid development.

“That’s the problem!”

“What does my rapid growth have to do with the True Immortals attacking us?”

“Take a good look.”

Kim Min-soo crouched on the ground and jabbed his finger into the dirt.

“To the True Immortals, humans probably look like this. Vermin. Insects. Ants.”

“I get that we’re small compared to them, but do you have to put it like that?”

In response, Kim Min-soo shook his head and pointed at Jang Woo-hyun.

“All humans may be vermin, but not you.”

“Why not me?”

“Let’s think from the perspective of the True Immortals.”

Kim Min-soo drew a circle about the size of two fingers on the ground.

“One day.”

Then he drew a larger circle, about the size of a palm, next to the smaller one.

“Two days.”

Next, he drew a circle about the size of two palms combined.

“What is this supposed to be…?”

“This is the growth rate of the ant named Jang Woo-hyun. An ant that could be stomped on anytime suddenly grew to cockroach size in just one day, and then the next day, became palm-sized. Even at that size, the True Immortals could still stomp it, but what if more days pass? What if half a month or a full month goes by?”

As he continued, Kim Min-soo drew a circle the size of a human torso.

“What if the ant grows to the size of a large dog or maybe even a wolf? Could you win against it? Wouldn’t you be scared? That’s what you are to the True Immortals right now. Think about how long they’ve trained to ascend to the Upper Realm. We probably can’t even guess. Maybe thousands, or even tens of thousands of years. But then an ant from another world suddenly starts growing at an unbelievable rate. Of course, they’d be scared. If I saw an ant the size of a large dog, I’d scream too.”

“……”

Hearing that he was feared made Jang Woo-hyun fall silent.

When he faced the giant silver hand that covered the sky in the Central Heavens, he saw the figure of a True Immortal seated on a shattered throne far in the distance.

Even though he didn’t see its full form, just the silhouette made his eyes feel like they were burning and his brain melt in pain.

Truly a god-like existence.

Yet, when Jang Woo-hyun stepped into the Boundless Realm, that True Immortal had shown a reaction—shock.

Yes, it had definitely been shock.

“…Are we really being attacked because of me?”

“To be honest, until just now, I was half-joking. But as I talked about it, I started to think maybe it’s true. The talent we have—no, the overwhelming talent you have—is enough to make even those in the Upper Realm feel threatened.”

Three years—could that even make sense? Kim Min-soo muttered to himself in disbelief.

Seeing him like that, Jang Woo-hyun also remained silent, lost in thought. That his talent was so overwhelming it made beings from the Upper Realm want to kill him—it still didn’t quite make sense.

As both fell into thought, the cave grew quiet.

After murmuring to himself, Kim Min-soo seemed to have finished thinking and snapped his fingers.

“Alright! Having overwhelming talent is in our favor, so let’s stop thinking about the True Immortals for now. Even if there’s another reason, we wouldn’t know it right now. Once you return to the Central Heavens, find another projection of mine or my real body. If I’m still alive, I’ll definitely be investigating the True Immortals. For now, let’s do what we can do.”

The man who had been shouting had regained his calm.

“But with growth like this, you must’ve lived an intense life these past few years.”

“That’s true.”

Kim Min-soo knew this too, as a martial artist.

No matter how gifted someone was, strength didn’t come from just breathing. And it was impossible to grow strong through solo training alone.

He hadn’t seen it, but he could tell—Jang Woo-hyun must have been endlessly training and fighting.

“How did you live during those three years?”

Kim Min-soo looked at him with sympathetic eyes. That gaze felt burdensome, and Jang Woo-hyun frowned slightly before beginning his story.

Starting from the White Tiger Martial Hall, then his life in the Demon Extermination Sect. The battle with the Asura Sword Sect. After getting involved with the Demonic Cult, he crushed them and encountered the Heaven Beyond Heaven, leading to his ascension. He briefly summarized his journey in the Central Plains.

“After arriving in the Central Heavens, I got involved with Bi Ik-ryeon right away.”

While chasing Bi Ik-ryeon with the Beast King Sect, they encountered the Ascension Cult, and ultimately saw the power of the True Immortals. Due to Kim Min-soo’s arrangement, he was then dropped into the Dawn Continent.

Through this short story, what came through was a series of unending battles.

When the story ended, Kim Min-soo asked with a worried face.

“Are you… alright?”

“What do you mean all of a sudden?”

“You’ve been fighting and killing—well, clearing away enemies who blocked your path. Doesn’t it bother you?”

“Uh… I don’t know.”

He had never really thought about it. He only fought to survive, to grow stronger.

“We weren’t from this world to begin with.”

To martial artists, wielding weapons and harming or killing others wasn’t a big issue. Such actions didn’t go against their norms.

But for Jang Woo-hyun and Kim Min-soo, it wasn’t the same.

The two were originally from Earth. Killing someone was a grave crime, and even if one had to fight, it had to be resolved within the boundaries of the law.

Jang Woo-hyun had been in this world for just over ten years, but only about three of those years had been spent as a martial artist.

During that short time, he had fought constantly.

‘It is strange.’

Until Kim Min-soo brought it up, he had never really thought about it. He had felt neither unease nor a sense of wrongness.

Why was someone who had once been an ordinary person completely unbothered? Why hadn’t he even been conscious of it?

“Thinking about it, it’s a bit weird, right? I started feeling the same way later too. Wondering why I took all the fighting for granted.”

Kim Min-soo let out a bitter smile.

“Maybe we were sent to this world with the purpose of causing destruction. Something like Heaven-Slaying Stars in this world’s terms? Otherwise, there’s no reason we’d keep getting into battles like this.”

For a moment, Jang Woo-hyun wondered, ‘Are we really tied to some kind of fate?’—but then he shook his head and brushed the thought away.

All the fights he had been in up until now hadn’t been ones he started. He had responded to battles that came to him first, and he didn’t go around indiscriminately killing like some bloodthirsty demon.

‘I chose this path myself.’

From the moment he started learning martial arts, he became a murim-in, and he had been prepared for it.

This was the Murim, also called the Sword Forest of Dosan. He hadn’t learned martial arts without resolve.

Jang Woo-hyun had no doubts about the path he had walked.

“I don’t regret it.”

“What?”

“I don’t regret it. It was the path I chose. And most of the time, the fight was started by the other side. You can’t avoid every fight.”

Finishing his words, Jang Woo-hyun looked up.

The ceiling of the cave, pierced through and letting in beams of light, came into view. But his gaze reached further—toward something unseen.

A shattered throne and the being who had sat there.

Heavenly Venerable of the Silver Radiance and Universal Transformation of the Three Pure Ones.

As he thought of the True Immortal, he made a firm vow.

“That goes for the True Immortal too. If he targets me, I don’t care how great he is—I’m not going to die for him.”

Even if the opponent was a god, he wasn’t going to give up.

He would struggle, resist, and do everything within his power.

That was who Jang Woo-hyun was.

And that was how he had lived since becoming a martial artist.

Jang Woo-hyun stood tall within the pillar of light falling from the ceiling. Even after witnessing a god-like existence, he showed no sign of shrinking away.

Seeing that, Kim Min-soo smiled in satisfaction.

“Well, it’s not like we came here because we wanted to. And they’re the ones attacking us first. If they’re such great beings from the Upper Realm, they should be trying to resolve things through conversation. Not brute force.”

Jang Woo-hyun’s gaze, which had been looking into the distance, turned back to Kim Min-soo.

“So what preparations did you make?”

“I told you earlier, didn’t I? I made a lot of projections. That’s my preparation.”

With a proud stance, arms crossed, Kim Min-soo declared grandly.

“Baekmu Cheonbeop Nayuta Bunche Technique (百武千法那由他分體術)!”

“……”

Jang Woo-hyun’s face showed a question.

He didn’t understand what had just been said.

Silence fell over the cave.

The two stared at each other.

“…Doesn’t that sound cool?”

“What does?”

“The Baekmu Cheonbeop Nayuta Bunche Technique!”

“What even is that?”

“It means a hundred martial arts, a thousand methods, and Nayuta number of projections!”

“I don’t know what Nayuta means.”

“Ah, that explains it. It’s a number—a ridiculously large number. Practically infinite.”

“I see.”

Jang Woo-hyun gave a small nod. At that, Kim Min-soo’s face crumpled.

“That’s all the reaction I get? It’s Nayuta Bunche Technique!”

“But you don’t actually have that many projections, do you? You said at most fifty or maybe a hundred.”

“Uh… well, yeah.”

“So it just means you scattered various martial arts, methods, and projections, right?”

“W-well… yeah.”

Put simply, Jang Woo-hyun’s explanation was correct.

But Kim Min-soo didn’t like how plainly he’d put it.

“It’s my masterpiece. I created countless projections to leave as much as I could for those who come after. And not just here. I left them in other Lower Realms and throughout the Central Heavens. And they’re not all the same either—martial arts, spell arts, techniques of cultivators. I gathered everything I could.”

“…Do I have to go find them all?”

“No, that’d be impossible. Most of them are probably gone by now.”

Though he said he’d prepared a lot, now he claimed they’d vanished. Jang Woo-hyun couldn’t understand and asked why.

“Did you forget who our enemy is? If you’ve clashed with that power in the Central Heavens, you’d know. You’ve seen how absurd its abilities are.”

It felt like the sky was collapsing and the world was shattering.

But that attack wasn’t even the full power of the True Immortal—just a fraction. A mere shard of the True Immortal.

The True Immortal of the Upper Realm. A god-like being.

Not technically a god, but their power alone was beyond imagination.

“I left behind all those preparations precisely because I knew things could disappear. The Ascension Cult and others acting under that being’s orders are probably going around destroying them.”

At those words, Jang Woo-hyun nodded. Just as Kim Min-soo predicted, the Ascension Cult was already seeking the traces he left behind.

“What did you prepare here?”

When asked, Kim Min-soo grinned.

“I had my limits when it came to martial arts talent. That’s why I learned spell arts and formations. Fortunately, I had talent for that. That’s when I realized the Middle Dantian was actually very useful. Martial artists in this world mainly cultivate techniques that use the Middle Dantian. Here, you’re going to learn the Five Elements Qi, which uses the Middle Dantian.”

Training in martial arts centered on the Middle Dantian—

That was the true beginning of the preparation Kim Min-soo had left behind.

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