I'm an Infinite Regressor, But I've Got Stories to Tell-Chapter 424

There was a man called Hong Bicheong.

Hong Bicheong was an islander born on Ulleungdo.

Even among the islanders, his family was quite poor, so from childhood, Hong Bicheong’s belly was often empty.

Becoming accustomed to dyeing his hungry stomach with the blue of the sky and the blue of the sea seemed, for Bicheong (Flying Blue), an inevitable fate.

‘Do I have any meaning in being born?’

By coincidence, a martial-arts novel he came across hammered a temporary milestone into the life of the young Bicheong.

‘The Martial World! Chivalry! Yes! This—this is precisely the value a man born into the world must pursue!’

It was difficult to call that a correct understanding of life’s meaning.

However, for a child by nature, especially one who suffered from hunger as though it were an incurable disease—like Bicheong—the rightness or wrongness of meaning did not matter.

‘A single sword! In this turbulent world, the only thing a manly man like me can rely on is the sword!’

There were, at times, those who, from the moment they were born, felt the world around them as a boundless ocean.

They had to grab whatever came into their hands—whether a ferryboat or a piece of driftwood. Otherwise, as humans who did not know how to breathe underwater, they could only drown.

“Hey, Cheong-ah. What are you doing holding that stick?”

“Practicing martial arts! I’ll become the strongest master under heaven, Mom!”

“Has he gone crazy….”

The thing held in the hands of Bicheong, a castaway from birth, was a wooden sword.

No, to call it even a wooden sword was generous—it was a crude stick.

Yet every day the young Bicheong roamed the mountains, training his eye to discern which scrub tree might be the ‘greatest divine sword under heaven.’

“Cheong-ah. Are you done with your homework before you start your nonsense?”

“The gateway to the peak is right before me, Mother! Only if I overcome this obstacle can I finally stand tall as a swordsman in the martial world!”

“Good grief, our family must be cursed….”

In truth, his mother was wrong.

The household had been poor from the start, and there was hardly any crevice left for a demon to wedge itself into.

“I thought it’d pass after half a month, but it’s been six years. Six years! That kid’s insane.”

“If he loves the sword that much, shouldn’t we just send him to an actual kendo school or something?”

“I wonder if there’s even a kendo school in town….”

His mother, with great difficulty, found someone.

Though there was no commercial place nearby with a signboard reading Haedong Kendo or Korea Kendo, there was an old man who claimed to have studied ‘the Way’ under someone in his youth.

“Well, child? How about learning the sword properly from this man?”

“Hm.”

Sneak.

The young Bicheong looked over the supposed ‘teacher’ his mother had brought. His gaze was exceedingly arrogant.

“So that’s all…?”

“?”

Bicheong was thirteen.

Second year of middle school.

“Barely brushing the level of a first-rate, if even that. He should be learning swordsmanship from me. Hmph. He doesn’t please me much, but since Mother went to such trouble, fine—I’ll take him as my disciple.”

“??”

That day, the certified instructor of Ulleungdo cursed furiously and left, asking what kind of mother and son pair like this even existed.

“You little brat! If you keep living like that, what’ll you eat when you grow up, huh?!”

“Mother. Eating and living are important.”

Bicheong spoke solemnly.

“But soon an unprecedented age of chaos will arrive! Now is the time when heroes must each build their strength in preparation.”

“What are you going to build on this tiny island?”

“The Heavenly Demon of Chaos fears water. Like the ancient Mongols—invincible on land but helpless across the sea. Ulleungdo is a heaven-given fortress. The Dragon King of the East Sea dwells here; even the Heavenly Demon would not dare covet this final bastion.”

“Oh, damn! I should just die, really! Oh heavens! Please, just don’t let this bastard starve to death!”

Not long after, Bicheong lost his mother.

How much this lunatic of a son contributed to shortening her lifespan is scientifically indeterminate.

Neither Bicheong nor his mother knew her scientific cause of death—lymphoma.

“Mother!”

Bicheong’s tears scattered solemnly.

“This unfilial son failed to serve you with devotion! Please, watch over me from beyond the heavens! The filial piety I could not offer, I will repay with chivalry and dedicate someday to the world!”

For the mother who had married into a poor island home, lost her husband to the sea, and raised her child alone, such words would have been maddening—but unfortunately, the dead have no mouths.

Bicheong devoted himself to training.

“Dad, what’s that man doing over there?”

“Shh. He’s the famous lunatic of our village. Never talk to him.”

Training!

“Why does that guy always play weird Chinese songs on the radio while exercising?”

“You don’t know A Man Should Strengthen Himself? Never seen Once Upon a Time in China?”

“What’s that, you nerd.”

“Wow. That’s seriously not my fault.”

Only training!

“I have no idea how that guy’s still alive when he doesn’t even work.”

“I watched him carefully all day once. You know that little garden in his yard? He grows stuff there, and the vegetables have this strangely vivid color.”

“Maybe he’s got a talent for farming…?”

“So what? He only grows just enough to feed himself.”

One day, Bicheong met in a dream an immortal-like old man.

—I am the 260th head of Mount Hua Sect.

—I believed there would be a successor in the East Sea to inherit Mount Hua’s lineage. Indeed, it is you.

—I bestow upon you Mount Hua’s true transmission!

Gasp.

Bicheong sprang up in shock. His whole body was damp; his hair stood on end.

After a while, he sighed.

“Ah! A fateful encounter!”

In short, it was a meaningless dream.

After completing ritual purification (it required a walk to the public bath in town), he bowed nine times toward Mount Hua in the west.

From that day, every time he dreamed, Bicheong continued training within Mount Hua Sect.

“I once thought it enough just to wield a sword as a man. But now that I have inherited the lineage of the sect, I can call myself the True One!”

“Hey, what’s that old man muttering again?”

“Don’t know. Idiot, just pass quietly….”

Bicheong.

As years passed, he purchased a noble title from the Grand Duchy of Syrand and styled himself an aristocrat.

Never once had anyone respected him. Naturally so.

Bicheong was poor. Strange. On the Korean peninsula, the very mindset of dedicating one’s life to the sword was alien—like meeting an extraterrestrial.

“Hm.”

Then came emptiness.

“It has begun.”

Ulleungdo trembled in fear.

Thanks to the wall of the East Sea, the chaos there was somewhat orderly. Surely, the madness occurring on the mainland would not easily cross the sea.

Bicheong—now the Sword Marquis—stood only a few steps removed from the anxiety engulfing the island.

“It’s about time to leave the island.”

His eyes flashed.

“Eh? Where are you going?”

“The Martial World.”

“Crazy old man. Do you even know what kind of hell’s happening on the mainland? Go there and it’s death, death! People are dying in droves!”

“The Martial World.”

“……”

“Only the martial world.”

“Damn.”

The shabby ship’s captain swore. He swore to treat the old man before him not as a human, but as a living savings box who had just paid his entire fortune—thirty million won—as passage.

“I’m only taking you because I’ve got a relative to pick up from the East Sea, got it? Don’t you dare think I’ll dock anywhere else. You’re on your own.”

“That’s enough.”

“Crazy geezer. Bad luck’s sticking to me….”

Splash—waves curved.

To digress briefly:

Once he reached the mainland, this was roughly the fate awaiting the Sword Marquis.

—Ah, Lord Sword Marquis! We’ve been waiting for you! We’ll escort you—please, this way!

At the port of the East Sea, a man called the Undertaker would be waiting; upon seeing the Sword Marquis, he’d bow deeply, exclaim “Oh—oh!” and whisk him off to Busan.

—Hmm. The ability to cultivate plants? After seeing nothing but people cutting things all the time, this is refreshing indeed….

—We look forward to working with you, elder….

A dictator of near-state-power level would courteously address this shabby old man as elder and treat him with respect.

—Ah, found you, Grandpa!

—Hm? You know the True One?

—Of course! Of course I do! I’m Oh Dok Seo, and there’s a flower only you can make bloom! It’s called the Udumbara—only you in this world can cultivate it! Come quickly, please!

—Hmm. The True One has duties….

—Ah, damn it! Without you, Grandpa, the world will end!

A girl wearing a hat would act friendly, hook her arm through the Sword Marquis’s, and drag him away somewhere as if abducting him.

Truly bizarre destinies.

True to the reputation of a man considered a mad eccentric his whole life, the tale fated for the Sword Marquis was equally strange.

But today, he stepped outside that fate.

No matter what destiny invited him, the tip of the Sword Marquis’s blade was fixed upon another ending.

When time had passed and the world perished—

Whether that destruction was the hundredth, the thousandth, or the two-thousandth—such things no longer concerned the Sword Marquis.

“Hm.”

Busan—the final defense line annihilated.

The puppet army commanded by Lee Ha-yul was obliterated to the last unit. The witches of the Three Thousand Worlds could no longer ascend; the warriors of Baekhwa Girls’ High could no longer advance.

The Undertaker and the rest of the command fell in battle.

Now upon the earth remained only the flower garden bloomed by the northern Saintess—the greatest flower field in the world.

This was the world of the epilogue.

A ruined land where no further time could flow.

“At last, the time has come.”

There the Sword Marquis walked.

Holding a false sword—an aluminum replica—he crossed the battlefield alone.

—Uhhhhh, uhh.

—Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee.

In this world of aftermath, only beings frozen in time wailed and cackled.

Strangely, they did not attack him.

Though they hated and envied living beings above all, they brushed past as if they could not perceive him.

After the old man’s weary feet trampled the earth, at last he reached his intended adversary.

From the beginning, his target—his prey—had always been the same since decades ago, since he realized this world was an age of chaos.

“The Heavenly Demon.”

“……”

Still.

The being called by his voice turned around. Pink, beautiful hair fluttered.

“The True One has been waiting for you.”

“……”

Softly.

The being called the Heavenly Demon lowered her gaze to the ground beneath the old man’s feet.

From the Tower of Babel in Busan all the way along his steps, in each footprint grew a silver weed that had never before existed upon the earth.

“…Eunshinch’o.”

Murmured the pink-haired being.

“A herb that disappears from the perception not only of humans but of monsters. Even Jeong Ye-ji’s clairvoyance can’t detect it—what a poisonous weed.”

“You knew the True One would come.”

“Yes. Because you always do.”

“Indeed, a cunning thing.”

In the middle of the battlefield—

Upon this land already doomed, with no one left to watch, the two beings faced each other.

“Normally I’d humor you a little, but today I’m serious, so I must ask in earnest.”

“Good. I permit the question.”

“Why do you call me the Heavenly Demon?”

The Sword Marquis sneered.

“This sky, the hearts of men—all the corruption and evil spirits began with you. Why should you not be called Heavenly Demon?”

“……”

“Buddha—one who attains enlightenment and exists by his own realization. Buddha—one unbound by the wheel of time, who himself raises time. The Heavenly Demon, the Demon King, Māra Papiyas was once the specter of time that tempted the Buddhas striving to escape time; thus in this world, no name suits you better.”

“Ahaha….”

The Heavenly Demon laughed softly.

“You knew that I avoid crossing the sea, and so you purposely stayed on Ulleungdo.”

“Indeed.”

“Though not as much as a gun, a sword is still a weapon loved by spirits. Hence a false sword, not a real one—something despised by both humans and spirits alike—as your weapon.”

“Truly so.”

“In the end, aura is also a kind of spirit. Therefore, from the start, you never relied on aura.”

“You know well.”

“To kill me.”

The Sword Marquis drew his sword.

He discarded the scabbard—it had served its purpose.

“Today, here, evil shall be extinguished.”

The Heavenly Demon’s eyes narrowed.

“I am human. I am all humans.”

“Then it is humans I must cut.”

“I am the enlightened one. A reincarnator, a Buddha.”

“Then it is a Buddha I must cut.”

“I was your daughter.”

“Then I shall cut my own child.”

“I am strong. And even if I die by your hand, that will not be my end. This is not the first time we’ve had this conversation.”

“So it must be.”

“No one will ever know your struggle. They cannot see it. They will not remember.”

“A chivalrous man does not seek understanding.”

The Sword Marquis raised his sword high.

“Throughout heaven and earth, I alone am the honored one.”

“……”

“I am the strongest under heaven, the greatest of all ages, the Marquis who guards Yuldo Nation, the direct disciple of the 260th head of Mount Hua.”

He stepped forward.

“And a human, born as a mother’s child.”

They clashed.

The Heavenly Demon was indeed mighty. No human or monster could possibly block her.

Yet the bloody battle lasted the entire day.

Each time the Sword Marquis set foot upon the ground and bled, flowers bloomed there. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Though the northern Saintess had already turned the whole world into her flower garden, though the world tree Udumbara had contaminated the earth—somehow, wherever his footprints and blood fell, the Udumbara rotted and died.

Instead, plum blossoms bloomed.

The Twenty-Four Plum-Blossom Sword.

Within each of the twenty-four petals of the blade, the Sword Marquis imbued time.

In the brook infected by Udumbara, a plum blossom bloomed.

The petals scattered like butterflies, spreading outward in a dancing drift.

The fragrance of the plum covered the Udumbara.

The petals climbed the corrupted world tree, forcing from its roots to its tips as though slicing living flesh.

The plum that enveloped the world tree of Busan shone brightly, drinking the falling sunlight.

Now the great plums that replaced the world tree shed their blossoms again and again from its branches stretched over the land.

The countless falling petals signified not the flowering of chaos, but its end.

The petals fell like rain.

The petals tore into nine streams, flowing throughout the world.

To bloom life by killing itself—that was the petal’s way of being.

Even when winter passed, its fragrance did not fade.

12. Thus, each time the Sword Marquis swung his sword, the plum blossomed from a single brook.

13. It spread across the earth,

14. Burst forth in the heavens,

15. Scattered through the world,

16. And became an unending monsoon of blossoms.

17. Even the shadows cast by the fallen petals formed blue rivers flowing.

18. Beneath those rivers, even the deepest roots of the world tree Udumbara decayed coldly.

19. The world willingly became drunk on that scent.

20. The Sword Marquis felt the fragrance he had kindled seep into his old bones.

21. Soon, the butterfly dance of the first petal that had formed the brook quieted.

22. Since childhood, the blue of the waves that had dyed his heart no longer felt cold.

23. The waves now carried petals afar, far away, curling onward.

O blueness, fly. Fly high.

Be Flying Blue.

Thus—

The Flow of Flying Blue. The Fragrance of Plum Ten Thousand Li.

The scent of the plum will flow for ten thousand li.

Neither the beginning nor the end of that battle could anyone know.

No one knew his name.

The end of the end. In a time without form, he was fighting.

It always ended in defeat.

With time shrouded in the scent of petals, the old man was always sure of victory.

The waves carrying red flowers were no longer lonely.

- He was a patient. 結.