Splash!
On the surface.
There’s only one person here.
First, there’s a corpse with a split back. That corpse was once a person named Jeonyang.
After the impact of the fall, his limbs scattered like they were thrown into a blender, so it’s more accurate to call it a chunk of meat than a corpse.
Next to him stands the girl who had just fallen from above and shattered into pieces.
It’s not a height from which a living being could survive a fall. Hitting the water from such a height feels like crashing onto concrete.
Naturally, if it’s a young girl, her body would be so mangled that it would be hard to recognize its shape. Yet, as if time has rewound, she gathers herself back into a human form.
In short, she is not human.
In front of the girl, and inside the meaty mass, is another person.
The one who bore the title of Cheonma barely survived thanks to the energy he possessed in that body. However, due to the shock, his insides were nearly ruptured, and he was dying from total organ failure.
At least for now.
He is the only living person here.
His face is a mess from makeup and blood, not resembling a human at all. His left arm and right leg are severed, bleeding profusely. Both bodily openings are gushing blood, making anyone who sees him think it’s already too late for him.
If a person were to look.
A girl with alien purple hair approaches Jeongha.
“The question to ask here is: Do you want to make a contract with me if you want to live?”
Naive.
That tone makes this place bizarre. In this odd location where a corpse and a dying person are, Jeongha barely regains his sanity.
Is it because he stands at the boundary of life and death, or is it because his level is at a stage called Wonyunggi?
Of course, it doesn’t mean he has completely transcended the cycle of reincarnation and possesses infinite lifespan like an immortal in a xianxia novel.
It’s just that his martial arts have gone through Taoism, which is why he uses such terms.
In other words, this world is neither martial arts nor immortal realms; it just happens to look similar. In this respect, the Outsider’s suspicion towards memories of his past life as a human is correct.
But at least, even if he is at the threshold of transcendence separated from the human world, it’s not wrong to call him Wonyunggi.
Thus, having bled too much, something that was not easy to see caught his gaze beyond the person.
As if the sea was laid out upside down in the sky.
If the world was once formed from chaos, then the sea covering the sky must be that chaos.
There are incantations engraved on a wall only the church leader can see.
Three Great Cheonma.
The only one with a record of conquering the Murim.
The Immortal.
Fear and despair of an entity that cannot be escaped are etched there.
Publicly, it’s said that the Immortal ascended, but it only leaves behind traces of a human who was defeated trying to resist something they couldn’t fight against.
Yet Jeongha called out anyway.
He was confident.
While mastering Gyuwa Protection, he believed he was alone in this world who could compete against him.
Even if his body twisted due to Gyuwa Protection, and his heart followed suit in a distorted manner, or the possibility of not achieving enlightenment emerged, his pride of being the best remained.
So he thought he could somehow make it happen and called upon the ominous deity.
To call a god took many things, but this was the Cheonma Church. Among the ten factions, there was an organization that gathered this world’s otherworldly laws.
Wolgadang.
There, there were methods and materials to summon the ominous god.
Not to mention, methods to control the god once summoned were all there too.
So Jeongha brought the materials he had been preparing to become a complete Cheonma.
The materials were descendants with purple hair like Eunjai. Based on him, Eunjai was a former Cheonma. He deemed it too dangerous to let that lineage live when he became the leader and wiped them out, but decided not to kill them all thinking of the Cheonma’s singularity.
Instead, he raised them as elixirs.
When he seized that, he called upon the ominous deity known to instill fear in the Immortal – the purple luminary of four chaotic realms.
At first, witnessing the world split before him, he braced for a ferocious battle, but it turned out to be so weak that he looked foolish for being prepared.
He felt no energy at all; there was no overwhelming presence that dominated the world. The movements were clumsy, resembling a common thug, and any special ability was nothing more than the power to grant strength to others.
At first, he doubted if he was deceiving himself.
But seeing how affectionately the being he sent out of spite treated that child, he fully cast aside his doubts.
Thinking that it wanted warmth.
Feeling the loneliness of the absolute being, Jeongha understood the Outsider. That was what he thought.
Of course, it was a delusion.
And now he realized that delusion.
A chaos wearing the skin of a child is visible.
It said if you want to live, make a contract.
The scene of the child near death instantly recovering flashed in his mind, and Jeongha hastily shouted.
“Me, no! Make a contract with Jeonyang!”
But the Outsider denied Jeongha’s desperate plea.
“I can’t do that. As I said before, you seem unable to remember, so let me explain. First reason: Once someone makes a contract, they can’t do so again.”
The Outsider approached the sprawled Jeongha, crouching down to match his gaze and raised a finger.
“And second: Jeonyang is already devoid of warmth.”
Then she raised a second finger.
Jeongha fully understood, as he had misunderstood all along; Jeonyang had died.
“No, but, it’s so warm, though?”
The Outsider, without a flicker of emotion, reached out and touched Jeongha’s cheek.
“This is a person’s body temperature.”
Jeongha knows well. His body was a mess, and he felt a burning pain as if his whole body was on fire, yet the corpse he clung to was already cold.
Though not freezing, it had absorbed enough warmth to distinguish between the corpse and a living person.
While Jeongha was reluctantly recognizing the harsh reality, the Outsider asked him.
“Do you want to make a contract?”
His already blurred vision couldn’t see the Outsider’s expression. But the brightening spirit eye from his impending death clearly showed what was inside the girl’s body.
He couldn’t help but understand why the Immortal left such a desperate scar underground. Chaos was now looking down on him from this spot.
“Now? Jeonyang is already dead.”
Jeonyang’s last words while falling echoed in Jeongha’s ears.
“If you don’t want to, that’s unfortunate. I won’t force you. I just wish humanity could do what it wants.”
The Outsider’s hand fell away from Jeongha’s cheek.
Jeongha felt incredibly sleepy. If he closed his eyes now, could he follow Jeonyang?
As he thought that, he tried to look away from the chilling sight of the Outsider.
No, he was going to turn away.
Splosh!
At that moment, the sound of someone landing on the water hit Jeongha’s ears.
With his hazy eyes, he looked over.
It was Guseongyong.
“You dumb fool! You’ve broken a taboo! To summon the culprit that led the Immortal to a miserable fate into this world? Did you think you could become Cheonma with something like that?!”
He extended his sword, triggering a fierce wave of energy that whipped up the water.
Well, with Jeonyang’s corpse half-submerged, it was inevitable that the body wouldn’t be fine, and the strong current swept the corpse away.
To Jeongha, it felt like separating him from Jeonyang.
Glaring!
Murderous intent filled his eyes.
Filled with illogical hatred, Jeongha felt overwhelmed.
After confirming Jeongha’s condition, Guseongyong decided he was as good as dead and pointed his sword at the purple girl.
Guseongyong knew something that had made the Immortal fear and despair to the point of breaking.
He had been to the Immortal’s abode. If the girl before him was a being similar to what the Immortal saw, then the greatest threat was now in front of Guseongyong.
Moreover, by pure coincidence, she had the same face as Eunjai’s kin whom he had killed before.
Though there was a possibility that the girl standing in front of him was not chaos, he was certain that someone with that face would resent him. His entire life experience had unknowingly led him to that conclusion.
In the Cheonma Church, others were either enemies or subordinates.
Of course, it had actually been the opposite.
Choseol was already being processed as a material since she was a newborn. So she knew nothing about the world, not even having a proper personality.
While Rebecca retained personality in her body, Choseol wouldn’t have even thought anything while looking at Guseongyong.
To the Outsider watching the situation unfold through the harvesting process, Guseongyong was merely human.
No, more accurately, in this situation, he was a gift.
“I’ll make a contract.”
With a voice filled with hatred, Jeongha opened his mouth, glaring at Guseongyong.
Faintly, a smile appeared at the corners of the Outsider’s lips.
“I’ll give myself to you. But once you finish everything, I’ll take everything you have then. How does that sound?”
Originally, it was a powerless statement. However, after being repeated tens, hundreds, thousands, and hundreds of thousands of times, the words gained weight.
“Deal.”
The concept of a contract between two beings—an Outsider and a target—twisted the world, and Guseongyong lacked the power to intervene with the laws they had broken.
Crack.
His skin transformed as hard as porcelain. His entire body became like pottery. Then, blue, inhuman arms pierced through his chest.
Crack.
Like a bird hatching from an egg, a woman with blue skin emerged from Jeongha’s mismatched body.
And she opened her eyes.
Her whites turned black, and her pupils shone brightly.
No matter how one looked, she was not human, yet an unexpectedly beautiful woman stood there, unable to take her eyes away.
She moved a few times in her nudity and bent down to lift Jeonyang’s sword, which had been stuck beside the corpse. However, the sword broke with a snap.
Unbothered, she aimed the broken sword directly at Guseongyong.
And in the next moment…
Without any warning, a purple flash melted everything in front and pierced through space.
Afterward, there was a lower half of a body with no upper half.
The sword glowed bright red and melted.
Seeing that, the Outsider asked,
“Why use a sword?”
Once a he, she responded.
“A woman can’t hit with bare hands, right?”
The Cheonma has returned.
