Chapter 446.1
Fwoosh!
Deep red flames burst from the lantern, flaring in every direction.
They clashed fiercely with the surrounding flames, but soon, everything just blended together. After the initial clash, it was as though there was no resistance and the flames were calmly dyed a deep red.
It looks... pretty natural.
There was no discoloration; the two flames seemingly looked to have always been one. Feeling the fragment of his synesthetic mindscape he had once severed returning to him, Li Kenxie silently watched—he looked to the side all of a sudden, realizing there was something strange.
“...”
Just moments ago, Se-Hoon had been standing next to him. However, now there was nobody there. Li Kenxie scanned the area just in case, but there wasn’t even a trace of Se-Hoon’s presence. The only thing he could detect was the overwhelming surge of red flames that was seemingly mocking him, telling him that everything he had just witnessed had been an illusion.
Li Kenxie slowly closed his eyes.
No, it wasn’t an illusion.
And even if it had been, he had no intention of altering his decision. Li Kenxie took a deep breath to calm his restless heart, and once he had, he opened his eyes again... to an entirely new location.
This place is...
All he could see were trees, nothing but mountains. Somehow, he had found himself in a place where the only trace of modern life was the single shabby workshop built halfway up the mountain he was on. He was now somewhere so remote and isolated that it felt more abandoned than peaceful.
With mixed feelings, Li Kenxie laid his eyes on the workshop once more: his childhood home.
I didn’t think I would see this place again.
As he stood lost in thought, gazing at the hometown that had disappeared during the war, he sensed a presence from inside.
Creak-
A young man stepped out, having barely managed to push open the worn door. He looked sleep-deprived, his eyes dark from just waking up, and his steps were unsteady from a hangover. However, upon seeing the man’s face, what surprised Li Kenxie was the odd familiarity.
Is that... me from the past?
Observing, Li Kenxie realized it was the man he was back before the Towers of Heroes and the Abyss of Demons had emerged in his world. It was when he was still in his early twenties, living in the countryside as a blacksmith.
I would have guessed that I’d be experiencing this in first person.... Is it because this is a record of myself stored in the world?
While he pondered, the young man glanced up at the sky, squinted and grimaced as if the bright sunlight hurt his eyes, then dropped his gaze again. A gloom hung over him, stark against the clear sky.
Was this... when I ran out of money? Li Kenxie recalled as he watched.
His family had been in decline for a long time, ever since his grandfather’s time. And then, with his father’s long illness and eventual death, everything had finally collapsed. Even the little money they had was gone.
Back then, all that had remained for him were some worthless lands and unimpressive skills passed down the family line—he had nothing but his body to rely on.
“Phew...”
The young man slumped into a chair in the yard and let out a heavy sigh, then he looked up at the sky again.
“Life’s so damn hard,” he mumbled.
The sight before Li Kenxie brought back the emotions that had consumed him in his early twenties—when he had no idea how he would survive, no clear path forward, and no one to tell him either—and with them, another memory resurfaced.
Come to think of it, wasn’t this when...
RUMBLE!
The once-peaceful mountain shook violently, as if a landslide was occurring. A wall of the workshop crumbled, the sounds of things breaking repeatedly echoing.
“Wh-What the hell!?”
The young Li Kenxie panicked, looking around in confusion. Then, all of a sudden, he felt something and turned his head. There, beyond the mountain ridge, a pure white light was descending from the sky to connect heaven and earth.
“Why is there a tower there...?”
And with that mutter under his breath, everything vanished.
Whoosh-
Like a candle snuffed out, the flames all vanished in an instant. Now, Li Kenxie found himself in endless darkness—the same darkness he had faced when he first reached the 108th floor, his final trial.
Did I lose consciousness? Li Kenxie’s eyes narrowed.
Perhaps it was the darkness that separated him from Se-Hoon? Regardless, he had to get out. Li Kenxie began contemplating how—
Fwoosh-
A new jet-black flame, vividly distinct even within the darkness, ignited before him. Recognizing it as one of the flames from the other lantern, or in other words another fragment of his own synesthetic mindscape, Li Kenxie looked beyond it.
So he is there...
He couldn’t see or sense him, but the existence of the black flame proved Se-Hoon was still around. And that meant everything before wasn’t an illusion. Now certain of that, Li Kenxie understood what he needed to do and reached forward.
Fwoosh!
At his touch, the black flame trembled before beginning to spread outward. Once again, everything around him was entirely consumed by the new flame.
Like before, Li Kenxie watched, and then, when he blinked, another scene from the past started unfolding before him.
ShhhhhhhShhhhShhhhhShhhh
Heavy rain was pouring nonstop through the broken ceiling. Li Kenxie found himself in a building so dark that he could hardly discern anything. Wondering what scene was occurring, he slowly followed the flow of the rainwater pooling and streaming across the floor, and soon spotted a crouched figure in the darkness.
“Goddamn it.... Stop shaking already...!”
A man in his late twenties was rummaging nervously through a bag—his own past self. He had bloodshot eyes, a scruffy beard, and a face ravaged by days of sleeplessness. Worn down to the core after several days of sleepless nights, he kept smacking his trembling, weakening hands as he frantically rummaged through his bag.
“...”
Li Kenxie’s gaze turned heavy, then he slowly turned to another shadow nearby.
“Can’t believe you’re freaking out over a bit of blood...” weakly grumbled another man, leaning against the wall.
Blood poured endlessly from the wounds all over his body. Yet despite the wounds that would have sent any hero into a panic—and the gaping, head-sized hole in his stomach that was oozing sticky, black, rotting blood—the man was calm.
The man’s extreme calm, worthy of being a signature of theirs, allowed Li Kenxie to recall who the man was.
Gao Long... The man was one of the friends Li Kenxie had met on the battlefield—and the first among them to leave his side.
Watching the final moments of his friend replaying, Li Kenxie quietly looked at his past self, who had not stopped muttering desperately.
“I’ve been thinking... Kenxie, maybe you should quit blacksmithing altogether...”
“Just shut up and focus on stopping the bleeding!”
“You’re already getting tremors... and you don’t even enjoy it anymore.... You’ll burn out soon...”
Disregarding Gao Long’s ramblings, his former self ripped open the bag and spilled everything onto the floor. From the mess, Li Kenxie hurriedly snatched up a hard-to-find healing potion and rushed to pour it over Gao Long’s wound.
Smack!
But Gao Long grabbed his wrist, stopping him.
“Don’t you know how rare Russian healing potions are? Are you really going to waste it on a dying man...?”
“Let me go.”
“And that thing hurts like hell.... You’re not trying to kill me from shock, are you...?”
“Cut the crap and let—”
Crack!
With the last of his strength, Gao Long tightened his grip, shocking the young Li Kenxie into meeting his eyes.
“Li Kenxie. Snap out of it. Can’t you see that demonic aura has already started eroding the wound?”
“...”
“Whatever you pour on me now, it won’t make a difference. Stop wasting that stuff and put it away. That’s your backup life, you idiot.”
Gao Long’s voice was full of firm resolve, more determined to save the potion than himself. It was a side of him... that the young Li Kenxie had never seen before.
Speechless, his past self forced out a reluctant reply. “...Fine.”
Only then did Gao Long relax his expression.
“Still, I had a feeling I wouldn’t live long.... Bad hunches always turn out right, huh?” he muttered tiredly.
“...”
“I really should’ve just asked for another region when you told me to.... I got stubborn and screwed it all up...”
Though Gao Long’s lamenting put the blame on himself, the truth was the opposite. To protect Li Kenxie from a demon that had pushed all the way to the rear lines, Gao Long had fought recklessly. However, the spear Li Kenxie forged for him had broken under pressure during that fight—turning what should’ve been a winnable battle into one that ended in mutual destruction.
Stubborn bastard...
Even as he lay dying, he made up pathetic lies to stop Li Kenxie from feeling guilty.
“What’re you talking about? This is all my—”
The young Li Kenxie abruptly shut his mouth. Gao Long had gripped his wrist tightly. Both Li Kenxies stared at Gao Long, and a beat later, a dark light flashed before a foreign power settled on the younger one’s self.
“You...”
“I found out about this recently.... Turns out I can pass it on too...”
Gao Long’s signature technique, the one he’d crafted himself and boasted about constantly, had been transferred to Li Kenxie.
“It’d be a waste if it vanished with me... So take it,” Gao Long said, a faint smile on his face.
“...”
“Just pay me back by... carrying me to the crematorium, yeah?”
Gao Long then looked up at the gray sky through the hole in the ceiling, and within that view, he recalled a moment from the past.
“If I’d known it’d end like this, I would’ve...”
Only at his life’s end did he finally understand. The regret... the longing... Gao Long opened his mouth to speak his emotions out loud, but then he stopped. Realizing the futility of doing such a thing, Gao Long just let out a bitter laugh instead..
“What a shit life...”
And with those words, his eyes dimmed.
ShhhhhhhShhhhShhhhhShhhh
In the building where only rain could be heard, the young Li Kenxie reached out in agony and gently closed the eyes of his friend, who had died without even the chance to blink.
Whoosh-
Then the flames were snuffed out once more, leaving behind an empty darkness for the second time.
“...”
However, even though the past he had just witnessed had faded without a trace, the emotions remained. The pain Li Kenxie had long buried in his heart now clawed its way back, making Li Kenxie furrow his brow without even realizing it.
Is this... truly the right path?
Why had Se-Hoon returned these memory fragments to him? Which answers were wrong enough to be eliminated? What did it mean to become human again?
Crack!
The more of the purified synesthetic mindscape he accepted, the more thoughts that flooded in. His mind tangled in chaos, strengthening the urge to sever everything more and more.
But Li Kenxie endured the storm, clenching his fists. And as he did so, he saw the next flame appear before him.
Fwoosh-
A gently flickering blue flame. Seeing it, Li Kenxie felt fear creep in. After what he had just saw... he had no clue what would happen if he accepted the one before him too. Yet he knew he couldn’t stop. Forcibly steadying his heart, Li Kenxie grasped the blue flame, which seemingly calmed the storm within his chest.
Fwoosh!
Like before, flames spread and quickly engulfed the surroundings, unfolding new memories.
A bitterly cold winter night, moonlight slicing down like ice. Beneath the frosty sky, a collapsed building stood in ruins.
“...!”
Recognizing the scene, Li Kenxie’s eyes widened—
“No!!!”
His past self came running in screaming. It was the day the war against the Demon Force had finally calmed; the day when the Heroes Association was founded, and he was confirmed to receive the grand title of S-rank; and... it was also the day he had returned home, only to find out that the demons had left his house in ruins.
With bare hands, his past self desperately dug and dug through the debris, never stopping until he found his wife’s crushed body.
“Ah... Aaah...”
Despite a hero’s effort, their body would hit a limit no matter how strong they may be. Sometimes, though, the highly sought higher limit became poison—especially for the dying.
Attacked by demons, his wife had suffered beneath the wreckage, pinned there until her very end.
Grit-
As his past self cried out while clutching his wife’s corpse, every emotion from that day became vivid to Li Kenxie once again. But unable to do anything, he just stared with bloodshot eyes.
Why had he discarded the memory? Why did he accept it again, only to be tormented by the accompanying self-loathing and pain? Feeling the emotions within him, he desperately wanted to rip them out of his chest and cast them away, but he didn’t.
Clench-!
Instead, his hands suffered, blood trickling down his fingers.
In that moment, both versions of Li Kenxie were enduring the same torment. But then...
“Wahhhh-”
A faint sound echoed from somewhere. His past self, driven to madness, paused, then pinpointed the noise to be coming from where his wife had fallen. With trembling hands, he reached into a crack in the floor and lifted a heavy steel panel.
“Ah...”
The existence of his frail son crying weakly inside the blanket wrap sent a rush of indescribable relief and joy through him.
Whoosh-
The scenery vanished again without a trace. Though the event had happened years ago, Li Kenxie wore a dazed expression. He felt... as if it had taken place just yesterday. He could still remember that his wife had been killed by a demon, but that was all. At the time, he had suffered a mental collapse.
The memories were still there, but they were devoid of feelings—making them no different from memories that didn’t exist. Now he knew the difference. And with the understanding of why Se-Hoon had described the process as “eliminating the wrong answer.”
Without emotion, you can’t understand your wishes... or even yourself.
Yet the man he once was had been completely consumed by the idea of anatta, unable to see that truth. Blinded, he had twisted into the warped Perfect One known as the Sacred Craftsman.
Why did the old me cling so desperately to the state of anatta?
Was it to become better than the pathetic person he used to be? Or... was it simply to escape the painful past he couldn’t bear? Lost in thought, Li Kenxie slowly looked up and noticed a white flame had appeared before him without him realizing it.
“...”
To find that answer, he would have to embrace all his delusions and obsessions—and become human once more.
Reaffirming his decision, Li Kenxie resolutely reached out.