Chapter 1010: The Divine Tree and the Master.

Calmness seeps into the air.

A calmly flowing lake.

The scent of grass brushing the tip of my nose.

Even the warm light that could easily be mistaken for sunlight, and the unknown wind that continuously tickles my hair.

Things that are particularly nothing special, and if you were to be precise, extremely ordinary things.

And even an ordinary tree, no different from the others I am touching.

Amidst all this ordinariness. I had to frown seeing the special person who appeared in front of me.

‘What is it?’

What could I be seeing right now?

Thump-!

As if my body had stopped working, it feels like my blood circulation has noticeably slowed down. This must be the fault of the person in front of me.

I met their gaze.

Magenta eyes that looked as if they had completely transplanted the aurora flowing in the night sky.

Flowing white hair, white skin resembling it, and even the soft voice that used to call me.

By the time I gradually took each one in, my frozen body gradually started to react.

‘How?’

How is she in front of me?

Did she follow me?

That was possible. Since a Master is an unfathomable being, I didn’t know if appearing like this was possible, but.

‘……Just now.’

Her words spoken just now had something that instinctively pleased my mind more than the wariness caused by them.

‘My son.’

The Master’s words. How could I not understand those words?

“……Mother?”

So, as I carefully spat out the term of address I wanted to say, she smiled brightly.

Next, she reached out a pure white hand and stroked my cheek. The approaching touch was truly slow, but I couldn’t deliberately push it away.

Soon, her fingertips touched my cheek.

“Ah……”

Receiving Mother’s touch, only then could I realize.

I felt no sensation at all.

I’m not talking about temperature. I really felt no tactile sensation.

This means.

‘Phantom?’

The Mother in front of me is not a living being.

Also, since I know she is plainly alive, it’s awkward to call it a phantom.

‘Is this also the power of a formation or sorcery?’

It doesn’t seem like a simple illusion. If you were to be precise, I thought it might be one of those two.

Realizing this, plain disappointment rises within me.

It was because I realized what was in front was fake.

At that time.

“I’m sorry.”

Mother’s phantom offered me an apology.

“You look very disappointed?”

“……Mother.”

“Nevertheless, there was no other method.”

Saying so, Mother changed her expression.

Her sadly smiling face crushes my heart. A face I can’t even remember well now.

I couldn’t forget that expression she wore within it.

When she left me behind. Her last face looking at me was exactly like that.

“I can’t ask you to understand… that we met like this, my son. In the end, it means there was no other method, right?”

“……What kind of situation is this?”

What on earth could have happened? How did Mother’s phantom appear here?

Unable to understand the matter, as I asked, Mother said to me.

“This was the only method I had to convey words to my son.”

“……Method to convey?”

“Yes, furthermore, this is thanks to my son touching the Sacred Tree.”

Mother pointed with her hand at the tree behind me. The Sacred Tree, and said.

“Also. It’s also a meaning that that child made an effort.”

“……That child?”

“That child who took care of my son instead of me, I mean.”

“……Is that perhaps the Divine Elder you mean?”

“That’s right.”

“……”

Hearing the words, I had to wear a dumbfounded expression for a moment.

Calling the Elder a child? Only by appearance, Mother would be fine hearing the title of granddaughter, let alone daughter, yet calling him a child?

“Thank you. For seeming to have done diligently.”

“No……”

Thanks to that, there are not just one or two things I want to point out, but now, considering even that, the situation was not good.

Because there were things to ask, like a mountain.

“Did you call me to Man-gye…… Mother?”

At my question, Mother quietly looked at me for a moment. As if choosing words, she mumbled her lips, then.

“That’s right.”

Not long after, she uttered an affirmation.

“My son being here…… clearly, it must be because I called.”

As expected.

Although it was a fact I had already heard, I became certain in the question I asked just in case.

That the reason I came to Man-gye was because Mother called me.

If this is the case, the next words to follow were one.

“……Why did you call me?”

What is the reason for calling me?

Furthermore.

“Am I really the being who must become a calamity?”

“……”

As the Divine Elder said.

Not anyone else, to be precise, not the Heavenly Demon, but am I precisely the person who must become the calamity of the Central Plains?

At words asking so, Mother widened her eyes.

Then, wearing a more bitter expression than before, she gave me an answer.

“……It reached that far. Unfortunately.”

“……”

It was words more frightening than silence or affirmation.

My fist automatically clenched.

“Really, I’m a calamity?”

Mother’s reaction meant a being that would erase all living beings of the Central Plains and reconstruct them anew.

That was the meaning – that it was me.

This too was something I expected.

Already, through my conversation with the Elder, I was aware that it could be so, and the possibility was absolutely not low, but.

“……Why?”

If you ask if I completely accepted that, I could not.

“Why is it me?”

I don’t know how my face looks right now, but I know it’s greatly distorted.

“……What on earth, why is it me? I… how have I lived.”

It wasn’t the joy of meeting Mother, whom I greatly missed even as a phantom, but the damn complexity I had been enduring inside took form and burst out.

“Damn it-! I…! What have I been doing with my life until now!”

It’s been less than ten years since my regression.

Even if it’s a short time compared to my previous life, the things I did within it were not few.

At first, for a slightly better life.

At least, I wanted to live a decent life compared to my previous life. To quietly avoid getting involved in future events as much as possible. I would live a better life than my previous life.

Like that, what I decided was the first time.

As time flowed, the second time was when I thought that to protect my precious people, I myself must stop the Heavenly Demon.

For that, I did many things.

My body was too rusted and dulled to pursue conviction and justice.

I did not discriminate against any means or methods.

Quietly leaving my remaining conscience behind, my hands were also stained with blood that should not have been.

Without chasing honor and fame, I considered even that as a means.

Everything was for the place to go forward.

Like that, advancing and advancing, for those people who lived and died for me.

I endured so much and came this far.

“Why am I a calamity……”

In reality, will it be me who ends up killing those people?

“What on earth……? Why is it me? At least, it shouldn’t be me, right?”

“……”

“Even if I don’t know about other things. It shouldn’t be me, right?”

“……That doesn’t make sense.”

In my previous life, I remember the bloody calamity the Heavenly Demon wrought. The wind blowing in the Central Plains had a lingering scent of blood.

It was a time where only screams and desperation remained.

Horribly burning flames and the cry of anguish from a mother who lost her child.

Beneath the fallen residence, the husband’s corpse burning while holding his wife in his arms.

The moon sets and stars fall.

It was the day numerous heroes who could illuminate the world died, and petty, bleak people rose.

How much blood flowed, the sky formed it, and the ground was filled with a blood-red world.

If you ask what hell is, I would definitely point to that.

“Why am I a calamity?”

The Heavenly Demon who wrought such things is not the calamity, but I am?

No matter how much I thought about it, I could not understand that.

“……What did I do……”

Saying I did nothing would be a lie and arrogance. However, even though I have lived doing something, that was a drop in the ocean compared to the Heavenly Demon in my previous life.

At my indignant outburst, the words Mother spoke were.

“……I’m sorry.”

It was not a long apology.

Damn it.

“Ha……”

I exhaled helplessly. Unconsciously, a laugh formed.

“So much I wanted to see you, but I didn’t know I would meet you like this.”

How much I missed you.

And paradoxically, how much I wanted to forget.

To me, Mother was like an endless thirst.

A thirst so empty because of a holed jar that it couldn’t even be filled with water.

Having spent my lifetime so thirsty, to meet again and hear words like these.

“……Truly……”

It sucks.

I barely endured the words about to pop out up to my throat.

“So. Is the reason you called me to make me a calamity…?”

I realized there was anger in my tone. But I couldn’t return it to normal.

My soul was twisted, wasn’t it? Because of that, my fate as a calamity wasn’t moving properly, they said.

They said that by eating the Divine Fruit, I had returned to my original state.

The problem here is.

“That Divine Fruit was Mother’s doing, wasn’t it…?”

“That’s right.”

Following Ya-rang, what led me to eat the Divine Fruit was ultimately Mother’s deed.

“……Did you also twist my soul?”

“That’s right too.”

I did not utter questions like “how.”

Because what I needed to know now was not “how,” but “why?”

“Why? After all the trouble blocking it… bringing me up to here, why did you return it?”

If coming to Man-gye was not simply a miracle or coincidence, this too must be Mother’s intention.

What on earth does she wish for from me?

Could it be?

“That you wish for me to become a calamity-“

“That’s not it.”

As soon as I asked the question, Mother came with a denial.

“……”

“Absolutely not.”

“Then-“

“Fate, you see.”

Before I could ask more words, Mother cut me off and added her own.

“It’s like a path that cannot be twisted or blocked. A path that must be continuously walked because it can never stop.”

“……What do you mean?”

“The world’s will permeated you… it was something that could not be changed by any means.”

Grrrind.

Mother reached out her hand and touched the Sacred Tree.

In contrast to the sensation not being felt by me, a sound was heard from her fingertips touching the Sacred Tree.

“So, if I cannot stop it or twist it. I decided to hide it.”

“Hide…?”

“Yes, if there is no method, to hide it from the world’s eyes. Like that, I decided.”

“To hide from the world’s eyes……”

What on earth could that mean?

As I frowned, trying to understand, at that moment.

“The Central Plains is an alien place.”

Mother added words without stopping, looking at me.

“Overcoming the calamity that was absolutely expected to be insurmountable was the root cause.”

This likely means the first bloody calamity wrought by the Blood Demon.

“It made the impossible possible. That attracted the world’s gaze… and not long after, it discovered alienness and contradiction. Overcoming the ‘absolute’ means someone did what they shouldn’t have done.”

What should not be done.

And someone.

In my head, I recalled Mu-a, who was originally called the master of the Central Plains, and Yeon-il-cheon, who had regressed.

“Therefore, regarding such problems, the world tried to handle many aspects. Because the same mistake shouldn’t happen.”

“……So, you sent Mother to the Central Plains, wasn’t it?”

So there wouldn’t be two mistakes.

Lowering the limits of the Central Plains martial artists, another calamity was thrown down.

That was Mother, but.

“And failed.”

Even that failed.

Mother could not become the master of the Central Plains, nor could she descend as a calamity.

That another plan created by the world that experienced failure.

‘Me.’

It makes me a calamity.

As far as I’ve learned until now, all possibilities contained that as the result.

Why specifically me?

If it’s me, how am I to become a calamity?

I didn’t want to understand it, nor could I, but reality was so.

No matter how much it sucks, this was the reality.

So, gritting my teeth, as I was about to speak.

“……You’re wrong.”

Mother denied my words.

“The world did not fail.”

“Yes……?”

“What……?”

“Son, from the beginning, the world… did not have the intention to send me to the Central Plains as a calamity.”

“……But you came, didn’t you?”

“That’s right. I came. But… it wasn’t found as a calamity.”

What does this mean? It wasn’t found as a calamity?

“In the world’s view, entrusting a task to a master who lost their world would have been unwelcome, and I was simply the only being who could move even for a moment, leaving my own world behind.”

This was also what the Elder said.

That there were possible aspects because two masters exist in Man-gye.

However.

‘……Because of that, isn’t it even more likely that I could come as a master?’

That is also the reason Mother could come as a calamity.

Because that failed, isn’t it that this guy named me got caught as the next alternative?

I thought the current situation might be exactly that.

“I didn’t go to the Central Plains as a calamity, to be precise, not as a master but….”

Mother stopped speaking and furrowed her delicate space between her eyebrows, looking at me.

Emotions were deeply felt in the few wrinkles formed.

Like that, the name of the emotions formed like that was sadness and regret.

How is she making that kind of face before speaking? As the question arose.

“……It would be correct to say I went as a being who would give birth to a calamity.”

Mother said so to me.

Hearing that, I could not utter any words for a while.

I couldn’t help but.

That means.

‘Then, from the beginning……’

Because it meant my entire life was the world’s plan.