Return Of The Mount Hua Sect [EN]: Chapter 1755

Because I, too, am one who failed to do what I should.

Red. Blood red everywhere.

The path to the top of the very high peak was completely covered in dead bodies. They lay twisted like broken dolls.

His fingertips shook and he couldn’t stop them.

He felt sick to his stomach and burning anger rose inside him. Hatred burned in his chest like fire.

“Myeongjo.”

He called out to his deceased martial brother, his eyes wide with shock. His hand trembled so violently he couldn’t stop it, no matter how hard he tried.

Many dead eyes stared at him, open and unblinking.

Eyes that once held warmth, sometimes jealousy, and other times fear and joy. Now, they held nothing. Amidst those empty eyes, Chung Myung’s gaze turned upward.

He felt an overwhelming hatred.

He hated the enemy so much, he would sell his soul to kill him.

But what tormented Chung Myung the most right now was not this intense hatred.

“So…….”

Crack!

His tightly clenched lip finally tore, and red blood streamed down. He felt no pain.

“Martial Brother…….”

He took a difficult step forward.

He saw him. The figure he had missed so dearly. But also the figure he never wanted to see.

“Sect Leader…….”

Tears wouldn’t come. They had dried up long ago.

“So, I…….”

He reached out his hand. It was a weak, hopeless gesture.

Lost forever. Unrecoverable.

Even if he were to behead the hateful enemy, tear his body into a thousand pieces, and chew on his flesh, those who were already dead would never return.

Nothing remained.

Those he had looked up to. Those who had looked up to him. Those who had allowed him to live, those who made him want to live. Not one of them was left.

“Ah…….”

Then what had he been fighting for?

He knew the righteousness, the sacrifice, the integrity of those who had fallen. He also knew that it was so great that Chung Myung couldn’t possibly deny it.

But if the price was this, what meaning could it possibly have?

A moan, close to a wail, escaped his lips.

If they had truly accepted even this ending, why did the faces of the dead look so pained? Did they truly desire such a death?

“Ugh…….”

Chung Myung’s hand flailed forward.

It was then.

“Do you regret it?”

At the sudden voice, Chung Myung, soaked in blood, slowly turned his gaze. A man was standing beside him, dressed in bright clothes that did not suit this terrible battlefield.

“Tang…….”

Chung Myung’s eyes wavered.

“Bo.”

The one whose name was called wore a cold smile.

“I asked if you regret it.”

He knew Tang Bo was dead. This had to be a nightmare. He couldn’t be here.

“What right do you have, brother?”

“……”

“They died as they wished. My death will be the same. You are not responsible for it. You cannot call failing to stop it a responsibility.”

“Bo.”

“Nevertheless, feeling responsible for their deaths is just arrogance. You are not a god. You cannot do everything.”

Chung Myung stared blankly at Tang Bo.

Tang Bo’s face, as he spat out the cold words, seemed truly indifferent. There wasn’t a trace of the warmth he once had in his eyes.

No, rather, his gaze seemed to cut Chung Myung sharply.

“Don’t you know it well? Regret is something you can only feel when you haven’t done what you could have done. The word ‘regret’ doesn’t suit you. So…….”

Tang Bo’s head slowly turned. He looked around at the destroyed mountaintop, his eyes cold and careful.

“This isn’t regret, but fear.”

“……”

“Fear of losing. Isn’t that right?”

Things were changing.

The moment Tang Bo’s words ended, the familiar faces around him gradually began to change into unfamiliar ones. No, rather, it was more accurate to say that they were changing into more familiar appearances now.

The face of Sect Leader Chung Mun changed. Chung Mun had died in pain, never finding peace. Now, his face changed into someone else Chung Myung knew well.

“……Sasuk.”

Baek Cheon lay collapsed, his eyes wide as if he had died before his terrible pain could subside. He was stained with dried blood and a chilling cold.

This sight was all too familiar, but he had hoped that Baek Cheon would never end up like this. But now, Baek Cheon was lying there in exactly that state.

“……Sago.”

Beside him, Yoo Iseol lay collapsed.

“Yoon Jong…… Jo Gul, Soso, Hae Yeon…….”

Everyone he knew was filling this place.

“Sect Leader…… Namgoong Dowi, Sobak Ah…….”

Everyone from Hwasan, everyone from the Mount Heaven Alliance, everyone he knew was here.

His world was lying collapsed in this place.

“Ah…….”

His whole body trembled like an aspen tree. But Tang Bo still sneered in a chilling voice.

“Do you understand? You aren’t regretting it. You’re afraid. You’re just afraid of losing.”

“I…….”

Tang Bo chuckled quietly.

“It’s a joke. The Plum Blossom Sword Saint, trembling like a coward in a corner. If the Demonic Sect saw this, they’d laugh themselves to death.”

Chung Myung glared fiercely, red veins beginning to appear in the whites of his eyes.

“What…… do you know?”

“…….”

“What does a bastard who died so easily know!”

Anger and fear erupted in a scream-like shout.

“What does a bastard who hasn’t lost anything know! How can you understand the feelings of someone who is losing everything they shouldn’t lose, one by one?”

“So you’re scared?”

“You……!”

Chung Myung clenched his trembling hand into a fist.

He steeled his heart countless times.

This was the right path, what he had to do, what he had no choice but to do. There was no alternative. He had to fight and win, no matter the cost. Only then could he avoid losing more.

Yes, knowing that, he pushed himself, forcing himself to endure, driving away the part of himself that wanted to give up.

But…….

“Still, you must be scared. Because fighting is the same as losing.”

“…….”

“But you are afraid of that losing process. Like a child on a white sandy beach, unable to do anything because they don’t want to lose even a single grain of sand from the handful they’re holding.”

So he fought. Most fiercely at the very front. Because then he wouldn’t lose anything.

But at some point, he realized. That the path he was walking wasn’t so different from the past.

The longer he stood on the blood-stained battlefield, the more he repeated the act of beheading people, the more the Plum Blossom Sword Saint, not him, stood in that place.

So he was scared. He couldn’t shake the fear that even if the process and method were different, the end might be the same.

“You are a selfish person. You don’t know anything about righteousness, you only know yourself.”

Tang Bo raised one corner of his mouth.

“At first, you must have been proud. Seeing the trees you raised spread their names across the world and carry on the will of the past.”

“…….”

“But at some point, you realized. That they will always…….”

Tang Bo’s gaze turned back to the summit of the mountain. So many corpses, it was hard to count, were wearing the uniforms of Hwasan.

“Are in the most dangerous place. Even now, when you aren’t there.”

Chung Myung covered his face with his hands. Even in that moment, the sword he was holding left a wound on his cheek. Blood began to drip.

Chung Myung peeked through his fingers, his eyes darting around, lost and scared.

“Like…… the Hwasan of the past.”

“Shut up…….”

“Proud. It’s a great thing. Magnificent. Yes…… just like those of the past.”

“I said shut up!”

“But you know.”

Tang Bo’s face twisted, turning into a demon.

“Where that end is.”

Wham!

Chung Myung swung his sword with all his might. Tang Bo’s body was cut diagonally. But even with his body split, Tang Bo calmly continued to speak.

“You’ve been lucky so far. But someday that good luck will run out, and the moment your strength can’t reach…… Master Swordsman will face this same sight again. Don’t you know it well? Even if others don’t, you should know.”

“You……! Shut that mouth!”

“I wonder what kind of expression you will make then. There won’t even be anyone to resent then.”

Chung Myung, gritting his teeth, asked. The whites of his eyes turned red as blood vessels burst.

“What should I have done? I! What the hell should I have done!”

“Why are you asking me that?”

“……What?”

“You should ask them.”

At Tang Bo’s chilling words, Chung Myung flinched. He forced his stiff neck to turn slowly.

The corpses that had been lying there so miserably were now all standing. They were extremely grotesque, as there was no sign of life in them.

“You should have just left us alone.”

“……Jo Gul.”

“Then I wouldn’t have died. I could have gone back to Sichuan and lived happily.”

The other corpses opened their mouths in mournful voices.

“I would have walked the path of a Taoist alone in the ruined Hwasan.”

“Even if I had stayed in the Tang family, I wouldn’t have died if you hadn’t been there.”

“I would not have been expelled from Shaolin. And the Abbot would not have lost himself because of you.”

Everyone slowly raised their heads, which had been lowered.

“Ah…….”

The places where their eyes should have been were gaping holes. Those hollows stared at Chung Myung.

After a while, they all began to stagger forward, one step at a time.

Chung Myung unknowingly took a step back.

“It’s because of you.”

“If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t have died like this.”

Chung Myung, who had been stepping back, gritted his teeth.

“You! That’s what you wanted! You said you wanted that! I…… I didn’t want it. I……!”

“It’s because of you.”

A hand reached out and grabbed his sleeve. Another hand grabbed his foot.

Hands. Hands. Hands. Hands. Hands.

Countless hands covered his entire body.

Among them, one particularly skinny, noticeable hand covered his face as if to grab it.

“Sa…….”

“It’s because of you.”

The gaunt hand, filled with only terrible hatred, tore at Chung Myung’s face. The once vibrant face could no longer be found on the wretched face with two gaping eye sockets.

“No…… You’re not dead! No one is dead yet! I……. I!”

“But you will lose them soon, won’t you?”

Chung Myung whipped his head around.

In the deep red darkness of despair that covered the world, Tang Bo, standing alone and aloof, sneered at him.

“Unfortunately.”

“You…….”

“That place is also hell.”

In the midst of the deep darkness, Chung Myung, who had been burying his face in his knees in the corner of the room, opened his eyes. Then, he slowly raised his head.

Drip.

Black blood dripped thickly from his lips. A self-deprecating look appeared in his eyes.

He knew that Tang Bo was dead. The Tang Bo he had seen a moment ago was not the one he knew.

But that made it even more ridiculous.

If that wasn’t Tang Bo, then it was Chung Myung. All those remarks that Tang Bo had coldly poured out were perhaps the words that Chung Myung wanted to say to himself.

The terrible nightmare that came when he closed his eyes.

A terrible sense of alienation, as if he wasn’t himself.

And…… the growing sense of loss. The feeling of gradually losing what he had, even though he hadn’t done anything yet.

Chung Myung knew what to call all of this.

He had to overcome it. He had to win. Just like he had always done.

But he couldn’t. At some point, his body was betraying him. As if his body, not his head, was being consumed by an unknown fear.

All he could do now was grit his teeth and pretend to be calm.

Because if he couldn’t even do that properly, everything would collapse in an instant.

“Sect Leader…….”

Chung Myung buried his face again in his knees, soaked with black blood.

“……Give me strength.”

Everything was gnawing at him.