episode_0102

When I got home, Soo was lying sprawled out in the yard.

Cheonma sits quietly on the porch and waves his hand at me.

“How long does it take to grow to the level of Cheonma?”

I was going to ignore So-oh, who was pretending to have collapsed on the floor with his eyes closed, but then I asked Cheon-ma.

“If he does it right, it’ll take 40 years.”

Cheonma listened to my words, thought about them carefully, and immediately gave an answer. 40 years. Does it take that long? Besides, Cheonma will be even stronger by then.

“Gap!”

“Yeah, no. Lie back down.”

phut.

There was a slight burst of air, and So-oh, who had been avoiding Cheonma’s gaze from behind me, got hit in the stomach. He was about to get up from his original position and rush in with his iron sword, but he got hit in the groin by something and fell back to the floor.

“What did you shoot?”

“Gi. You don’t feel anything at all?”

“Yes.”

Based on what I’ve heard so far, I’m guessing that I shouldn’t be able to feel it. But I figured out that if I were to shove myself into a monster with a huge amount of power, I could. In return, the monster would be used as fuel and be torn apart!

“I couldn’t feel any of the energy of the leader of the Tongcheon sect below.”

“That’s right.”

Come to think of it, he wasn’t originally born in this world, but was born in another world and then came over to this world.

I think there is a place somewhere I don’t know yet where they are fighting the world against the world. If I can go there someday, I might meet people fighting with glass bottles.

I’m looking forward to it.

I knew that if I could reach them, I could control them. That meant if I could get to that fight, I could get a lot of warmth.

It will spread like a plague and provide a lot of warmth.

If there are a lot of them, it would be really warm.

lol.

Ahem. No, stop fantasizing about how warm it is. It just makes you colder.

“You really don’t know what it is.”

I sat down next to Cheonma, who was staring at me blankly. Then, I said to her what I could say after empathizing with her from a human perspective.

“You called. Unfortunately.”

It’s a monster that people shouldn’t call. It’s because it’ll do anything for warmth. Even now, I’ve intentionally advertised the location of my house to many people to shake the Cheonmasin religion, and called Gumilmil and Ohmyeongseong.

I have to deal with it. It’s kept me captive for four years.

But Cheonma sits with his legs crossed and rests his chin on his hand.

“That’s not for you to decide. I don’t think anyone here is unhappy because they met you.”

Soo-oh, who had crawled slowly to the floor, was carried behind me. Of course, I was watching everything through Soo-oh and Cheonma’s eyes, but I just left them alone.

“Me too!”

The baby is covered in dirt and sand and looks dirty. How do I wash it?

I held Soo’s face, which was standing next to me, with one hand and pressed it gently.

“Wait, wait! No, first snow, it wasn’t like this, yaaah!”

It’s not about pressing hard, it’s about pressing on the sore spot. And since I’m big, I have a lot of muscle strength.

Have I forgotten that I did my housework and exercise separately until now?

“Oh, my. It stinks.”

After saying that and letting go of my hand, Soo-oh quickly steps back and takes my clothes to smell them. Then he frowns.

“There’s nothing you can do about the smell of sweat!”

“You avoided it because it smelled like blood?”

When I brought up the incident from just a little while ago, Soo-oh stepped back with a guilty expression.

“Cowardly! That’s different from this!”

“While you’re going down the cliff, get some water.”

When I told him to go and get some water in a jar while he was washing up, Soo-oh grumbled and headed to the kitchen. Then he grabbed a large jar from the kitchen and went down the cliff.

A normal person would have been in a mess right away, but So-oh slows down by stepping on the cliff a few times and lands safely on the ground.

It’s also a huge jar compared to Soo.

It gives the person who climbs it superhuman strength.

It’s so powerful that you wonder where they get such power. The gap between those who can use ki and those who can’t is huge.

So, the society of superhumans called Murim overlaps with the society of ordinary people.

If you think about it calmly, this is also strange.

In reality, they are completely different creatures in terms of physical performance, and they are not inherited genetically, but rather based on the knowledge of martial arts.

In my opinion, it looks like an information life form called Mu-gong is coexisting with humans.

Of course, bloodlines that have learned the same martial arts for a long time will benefit from co-evolution and coexistence with that information lifeform, but that doesn’t mean that those who aren’t bloodlines can’t learn it.

So, the realm of humans who coexist with those information life forms is the world of Murim, and for those who don’t, it seems like the world of ordinary humans.

The reason I came to think this way is because of the information I got from Daegon.

Daegon himself does not have a normal body. He existed a long time ago, but he became a god in his original world, so he was able to shed his body and exist only with his spirit.

But then, it became difficult for me to adapt to reality. Because it had such a strong influence on reality, I had to accept too many changes from reality.

If we use a game analogy, it’s like raising attack power and lowering defense power.

So I set up a little bit away from reality, and if necessary, I talk to my limbs or I put on a psychic body like the one I’m in and come back to reality.

I thought this was similar to martial arts.

Considering that there are martial arts that involve losing one’s ego, it doesn’t seem all that different from becoming stronger by instilling something powerful into one’s body.

As I was organizing the thoughts that suddenly occurred to me, Cheonma looked at me and smiled.

“Why?”

“Contrary to what you think of yourself as a monster, you look like that child’s mother.”

If it looks human, it means my stomach is working well. It’s worth pretending to be human and not knowing it.

No, but.

“Mom? No, at least a friend. Both So-oh’s parents are alive, right?”

I know the location too. I don’t know the exact path because Soo passed out while being dragged there, but I know where it is.

The background that Soo saw when he was young. Especially, if you combine the location of the mountain, it is not difficult to figure out the location.

At my words, Cheonma made a strange expression.

“So you’re going to leave Soo so lightly?”

Oh, come to think of it, when I went to the village, Soo consulted with Cheonma. He said that after four years, I would leave Soo behind. When a child consults with his teacher, it means that they are on good terms, so I didn’t care.

And speaking as if you’re throwing it away, that’s a misunderstanding.

“It’s not light.”

But I shook my head from side to side. Because I really wasn’t leaving lightly. We’re not family, but we’re close like family.

“There’s something more important than that.”

“Warmth, right?”

“Yes.”

A look of understanding crossed Cheonma’s face. Cheonma had also experienced the cold I was feeling.

Cheonma straightened his posture.

And then he sat down facing me and asked me carefully.

“That day. When the leader of Tongcheon Church turned into a monster, you said it was warm.”

uh?

No, wait a minute. At that time, I was so happy that I completely lost sight of the situation. So I don’t know what kind of gaze Cheonma was giving me.

I don’t even know what I was like.

Aaaah.

What should I do with this?

No, but Daegon was really warm. Every time I stood naked in the middle of Antarctica, occasionally picking up a hand warmer for a little while, it felt like I was in a warm hot spring.

My whole body feels relaxed, and I feel truly happy.

The problem was that they took me straight out of the hot spring and threw me back in the middle of Antarctica, so I thought I would go crazy, but I somehow managed to maintain my sanity.

“Is it still cold?”

I nodded to that question.

In fact, I felt like if I said it out loud, it would all spill out and I wouldn’t be able to contain it, so I just nodded silently.

That should be enough.

The warmth is temporary, the cold is eternal. It is not always the same cold, and the cold becomes more intense when you feel it. It gets colder without end, but your nerves don’t get damaged.

People say that when it’s too cold, the brain gets damaged and people feel the cold as hot and take off their clothes, but that’s not true.

Every day, every moment, it gets colder and colder.

At times like this, I feel envious of the monsters that made fun of me and died…

No, don’t even think about that.

Then Cheonma looked at me and asked.

“How can I make you warm?”

Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.

The thought that Cheonma would feel warm if he went out into the world of martial arts and killed people came to the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it somehow.

yes.

Discipline has to be maintained. If I let it slip even once, I don’t have the confidence to get it back. I know that if I don’t stick to it with an idiotic focus and narrow-mindedness, I’ll never get back to how I was.

The problem isn’t who will see it, it’s that I can’t stand it.

I can clearly see a future where we will all degenerate into single cells that only seek warmth, and eventually end up with nowhere to go.

Even the warmth that falls very occasionally, the future is clearly visible as it disappears.

If you have intelligence, you can predict what’s ahead.

So, we have to shout that we love freedom. Strictly speaking, it is freedom without responsibility, so it is more like indulgence than freedom. But, indulgence has a bad connotation, doesn’t it?

“Cheonma.”

“Say it.”

“You should live freely. Ignore my will. You don’t have to have that. Don’t sympathize with anything. You don’t have to be understood by anyone. Just do what you want.”

I believe that if given infinite freedom, humans would kill each other and live infinitely.

Bet on it, share me.

Then, warmth will come to me forever.

“What if that wish moves for you?”

Cheonma said that while quietly observing my expression. So I shook my head again. And I quoted what Cheonma said.

“Don’t move for nothing. Do you remember Jeon Yang?”

When I told her the name of the man she loved, her expression hardened.

This is certain.

“I want to live my life doing what I want, whether it be Cheonmado or Soodo.”

Only then.

I can be warm.

Cheonma sighed deeply at my answer and said he would leave for now, returning to the Cheonma Shingyo main building. The thought crossed his mind that mentioning a dead person was too much.

This is correct.

I held my breath and waited behind the house, pretending not to notice Soo, who was listening to our conversation.