The demon shrieked, jerking its hand back as if it had touched a red-hot stove. It stumbled back, staring at its own scorched fingers in confusion. "What... what is this heat?"
Ji-Hoon didn't answer. He lowered his arms.
His breathing slowed. His posture changed. The trembling in his legs stopped instantly.
He stood up. He didn't scramble or struggle; he rose with a fluid, predatory grace that belonged to a warrior, not a college student.
He looked at his hands. They were the same hands, but they felt different. Stronger. He clenched his fist, and the air around it seemed to distort, heavy with invisible pressure.
"Ji-Hoon?" the entity hissed, sounding unsure for the first time. "What did you do?"
He looked up.
The dark brown eyes of a scared grandson were gone.
In the dim light of the shaman's hut, his eyes now glowed a piercing, molten gold. The pupils had narrowed into vertical, reptilian slits.
He tilted his head, cracking his neck. A lazy, arrogant smirk curled onto his lips—the exact same smirk he had seen in the vision.
"You said you were searching for me," he said.
His voice had changed. It was deeper, resonating with a terrifying authority that made the paper talismans on the walls shake.
"Well? I am right here."
He stepped forward, and the shadows in the room recoiled away from him.
"But I think you made a mistake, little ghost. You weren't looking for a vessel."
He reached out, and an invisible force slammed the door shut behind him, locking them both inside.
"You were looking for your executioner."
"You..."
The entity stared into the molten gold eyes of the man standing before it. The arrogance, the pressure, the sheer weight of his soul—it was unmistakable.
The demon's mockery vanished. Its jaw snapped shut, and it scrambled back, tripping over the hem of the shaman robes.
"That gaze... those eyes..." The demon's voice trembled, vibrating with primal fear. "You are not a human. You are Heuk-Ryong. The Black Dragon of the North!"
The demon pressed its back against the wall, shaking its head in disbelief.
"But... how? Didn't the Three Dragons seal you for eternity?! You should be rotting in the Void!"
Ji-Hoon—no, the entity that was now awake inside him—tilted his head.
"So you recognize your King," he said. His voice was calm, but underneath lay a terrifying rage. "And you dare speak the names of those Traitors in front of me?"
He raised his right hand. He intended to summon the Shadow Claw, a technique that should have ripped the spirit right out of his grandmother's corpse and devoured it.
Die.
He grasped at the air.
...Nothing happened.
A tiny wisp of black smoke curled around his fingers and instantly dissipated.
The golden glow in his eyes flickered for a second.
'This body...'
He looked down at his trembling hand. This wasn't the body of a God. It was the body of Kang Ji-Hoon—a malnourished college student who had never cultivated a single drop of Qi in his life. The "Seal" breaking had restored his memories and his Authority, but it hadn't given him the fuel to use them.
He was a nuclear warhead without a fuse.
The demon sensed the weakness immediately. The terror in its eyes was replaced by confusion, then a cruel realization.
"You have no power," the demon hissed, a low cackle building in its throat. "The Great Black Dragon... is empty. You are nothing but a memory stuck in a meat sack!"
It lunged again, its claws extending, aiming for his throat.
The Ancestor didn't flinch. He didn't even try to dodge. He knew he couldn't win this fight in this timeline. His grandmother was dead. His clan was destroyed. The protection he had ordered centuries ago had failed.
'I told them,' he thought, watching the demon's claws inch closer in slow motion. 'I told the survivors of my clan: "I will return. Protect the vessel."'
But the Three Traitors—the Red, Blue, and Green Dragons—had done their work too well. They had hunted his people to extinction.
'This timeline is rotten. There is nothing left here to save.'
He closed his eyes.
He didn't need power to fight. He only needed enough power to burn.
"You are right," he whispered. "I cannot kill you today."
The demon's claws grazed his neck.
"Cycle of the Dark Star: IGNITE."
FOOOSH.
It wasn't a technique of attack. It was suicide.
He grabbed the remaining fragment of his divine soul—the very thing keeping him alive as the Black Dragon—and set it on fire.
The room exploded in blinding white light.
The demon screamed as it was blasted backward, blinded by the sheer release of temporal energy. "What are you doing?! You'll destroy your own soul!"
"I am not destroying it," the Ancestor said. His body began to crack, dissolving into particles of light. "I am sending it back to where the rot began."
He looked at the demon one last time with a cold, hateful smile.
"Enjoy your victory, little ghost. In a few moments... none of this will have ever happened."
The world shattered like glass.
[Year: 1525 - The Era of Chaos]
The smell of antiseptic and old incense vanished.
Instead, the air was thick with the stench of iron, wet earth, and rotting flesh.
Gasp.
He woke up choking.
His lungs burned as he inhaled sharp, cold air. Rain was pounding down on his face—heavy, unrelenting rain that soaked him to the bone.
He wasn't in his apartment. He wasn't in the shaman's hut.
He was lying face down in the mud.
He pushed himself up, his arms shaking. These arms... they were muscular, covered in scars and grime, wrapped in rough hemp bandages.
He looked at his reflection in a puddle.
A young man stared back. Long, wild black hair plastered to his face. Sharp, hungry eyes that were currently dark brown, not gold. A face he hadn't seen in five centuries.
Kang Mu-Hyeok.
This was him. Before the divinity. Before the betrayal. Before he became the Clan Leader.
He was just a twenty-year-old wandering shaman-warlord, trying to survive in a world gone to hell.
"Hey! Mu-Hyeok!"
A rough voice called out from the rain.
He turned his head. A man in tattered leather armor was running toward him, waving a spear.
"Get up, you crazy bastard! The demon wave isn't over! If you sleep now, the Goblins will eat your liver!"
Mu-Hyeok looked around. He was on a battlefield. Dead bodies—human and monster alike—littered the valley. In the distance, he could see the banners of the Great Sects... the sects led by the men who would one day become the Red, Blue, and Green Dragons.
They were still human. They were just "Young Masters" and "Generals" now.
Mu-Hyeok slowly stood up. The mud sucked at his boots.
His hand brushed against something heavy lying in the dirt beside him.
It was a rusted, rectangular blade. A straw-cutter. A Jakdu.
He gripped the handle. The weight was familiar. It felt like shaking hands with an old friend.
A slow, savage grin spread across his face—the first real smile he had smiled in five hundred years.
"I made it," he whispered, his voice raspy from the rain.
He looked at the oncoming horde of goblins cresting the hill.
"I have no clan. I have no authority. I have no divinity."
He lifted the heavy, rusted blade onto his shoulder.
"Perfect."