Chapter 1
I had always been confident in my ability to survive.
I had sharp instincts and excellent physical abilities from a young age. To make full use of those talents, I joined the Army Special Mission Unit under the Defense Intelligence Command, better known as HID.
No matter where I went, I never found things particularly difficult.
Africa.
The Middle East.
Even places in the north that I could not exactly talk about.
Religious militant groups, pirates, terrorists...
I had been deployed on missions against all kinds of enemies.
Every time, I crossed the line between life and death.
And every time, I survived.
Naturally, that gave me confidence in my ability to stay alive.
After completing my mandatory service, I left the military.
Honor was nice and all, but I wanted money.
So I joined a private military company, a PMC, and continued making a living through survival.
Fortunately, people with backgrounds in military intelligence were treated quite well.
Unlike ordinary special forces that focused mainly on combat, the intelligence unit I had belonged to specialized in all kinds of special operations.
Protection.
Recovery.
Demolitions.
Infiltration.
Information warfare.
That was the main difference between an intelligence unit and an ordinary special forces unit.
People liked to divide units into tiers and compare them, but we had a much simpler standard.
[If all you want to do is shoot people, join Special Forces.]
That saying openly circulated within our unit.
The difference between a unit specialized in fighting and one specialized in operations was greater than most people imagined.
Protection, infiltration, rescue, demolition, asset recovery, and even illegal jobs.
A PMC would do almost anything if the money was right.
Naturally, clients preferred people like us over soldiers who were only good at shooting.
Not that we were bad at shooting either.
My ability to survive shone even in the PMC industry.
That was around the time people started calling me the King of Survival.
I volunteered for every region that other mercenaries wanted to avoid.
And I succeeded at the ultimate objective of every mercenary.
Coming back alive.
There was the time I fought enemies in the desert.
The time I was isolated in the jungle for months.
The time a fanatical religious militant group captured me.
And even the two long years I spent married.
I survived every one of those hellish death traps.
Before I knew it, I had become a top-class mercenary.
After everything I had gone through, I thought there was nowhere left in the world where I couldn't survive.
Looking back now...
That was incredibly arrogant of me.
I've been reflecting on that a lot lately.
Because this place is exhausting.
This place called Murim.
Chirp, chirp.
The sound of birds made it feel like I had overslept.
Soft orange morning sunlight slipped through the window.
I barely managed to drag my heavy body out of bed and started the day by opening the window.
Creak.
I pushed open the wooden frame.
A clear blue sky, bright white clouds, and cool fresh air entered the room and chased away the last traces of sleep.
It was a perfect view.
Still half asleep, I stared outside in a daze.
At least until my eyes reached the traditional Chinese-style buildings standing between the green vegetation and steep cliffs.
"Haa..."
This still wasn't easy to get used to.
It had already been a week since I woke up in this body.
Yet the unfamiliar sights that clearly showed what kind of era I was in still felt cruelly strange.
Every building was made of wood.
The decorations looked like things I had only ever seen in museums.
Even my clothes were strange.
Instead of an ordinary T-shirt and pants, I was dressed in some kind of traditional outfit.
It wasn't exactly like Korean hanbok, but it was close enough that I had no better comparison.
Back where I came from, it would have been difficult to see clothes and buildings like these anywhere outside a historical drama or museum.
Fine.
Let's say I could accept the clothes and buildings.
I'd worked in places where modern civilization had barely reached.
There were still communities that preserved their own ancient ways of life.
Maybe this was just some remote village full of people who would ask, "Has Qin Shi Huang died yet?"
I could accept that possibility.
Unfortunately, there was one ridiculous sight that destroyed that explanation completely.
The face reflected in the bronze mirror near my bed.
When I first woke up one week ago and looked into that mirror...
I fainted for another entire day.
The face staring back at me wasn't mine.
It belonged to someone much younger.
And he looked completely different.
His face isn't bad...
Actually, that wasn't important right now.
What had happened?
Was this some horrifying experiment?
China?
Russia?
North Korea?
Islamist rebels?
Had I been kidnapped during a mission and become the victim of some terrible human experiment?
I had heard rumors.
There were certainly groups out there conducting horrifying experiments on people.
But that theory was easy to reject.
Because I knew one thing for certain.
I had died.
I had simply been a mercenary carrying out another mission in what anyone would call the modern world.
And according to my memories, I had definitely died during that mission.
I could still remember it clearly.
It had been a relatively simple transportation job.
The cargo was a medium-sized wooden box wrapped in chains.
Apparently, it had come from the secret collection of some fallen African dictator.
Or something like that.
The problem happened while we were traveling through international waters.
Some unknown enemy had apparently heard rumors about the cargo.
They launched a large-scale attack on us.
My team successfully defeated them.
But the real accident happened afterward.
For some unknown reason, the cargo we were transporting suddenly exploded.
I was the team leader and field commander, so I had been guarding it personally.
Naturally, I was caught directly in the blast.
"Team Leader!"
"Don't come any closer!"
BOOOOM!
I could still remember the last sound I heard before losing consciousness.
I could still remember the brilliant light filling my vision.
I had even watched pieces of my own body flying away.
There was no other word for that.
I had died.
After that...
Actually, I did have one more memory after the explosion.
Something mysterious.
Something I couldn't really explain with words.
A dog... No. Was it a wolf?
Grrrrr! Awooooooooo!
But I hadn't paid much attention to it.
People supposedly saw all kinds of strange things before death.
"Haa..."
Anyway.
The situation was clear.
I had died.
Then I woke up inside this body and received a new life.
The small problem was that this wasn't the world I knew.
At first glance, someone might think I had been transported back to ancient China.
But there was a much bigger problem.
Knock, knock.
"Young Master. This is Jin Woon. I have brought the physician."
And right on time, someone who perfectly represented that problem came to visit.
I had heard the name Jin Woon so many times over the past week that I could now welcome him without surprise.
"Mm."
Jin Woon was the warrior who had faithfully taken care of me ever since I woke up in this body.
Judging only by the respectful way he called me Young Master, I had apparently gotten a decent result from the reincarnation lottery.
At least, that was what I thought at first.
"Greetings, Third Young Master. I heard you recently suffered a terrible accident."
"You were caught in a large explosion while practicing alchemy. Fortunately, you appear unharmed on the outside, but... I asked Physician Song to examine you carefully. Especially regarding that matter..."
"Yes. I have examined the Third Young Master's body many times before, so I know his condition better than most. You may relax, Warrior Jin."
"Thank you, Physician."
"Young Master, please excuse me for a moment."
The elderly physician, whose hair had already turned white, approached me and carefully took my wrist.
It looked just like what I had seen in traditional medicine clinics.
I simply let him examine me while listening to their conversation.
"Hmm. Incredible. I had my doubts, but Warrior Jin was telling the truth. The tangled meridians and blocked acupoints have completely recovered. Even the bones and muscles are perfectly aligned, almost as though they were reconstructed. Truly amazing. This can only be called a miracle."
"So the previous physician's words were true."
"Yes. There is no doubt. His pulse is full of vitality. In fact, his condition is even better than before."
"Then... what about the cultivation he lost?"
And there it was.
Another problem.
The word cultivation had come up naturally in their conversation.
It was a word people occasionally used metaphorically in the modern world.
But that wasn't what these two meant.
They were talking literally.
About internal energy.
The kind that existed only in martial arts novels and comics where people fired energy from their palms and flew through the sky.
Because this was a world where martial arts truly existed.
A world called Murim.
And unfortunately, even that wasn't my biggest problem.
Jin Woon's expression brightened after hearing Physician Song's words.
But the physician's face quickly became serious again.
Despite Jin Woon's hopeful question, Physician Song firmly shook his head.
"I am sorry, but the Young Master's cultivation has not returned. His dantian remains empty."
"That can't be..."
"However, unlike before, his body is now capable of learning martial arts again. That alone is nothing short of a miracle."
The physician clearly explained both the good news and the impossible part.
It was half good and half bad.
But Jin Woon had clearly been hoping for more, so his expression darkened.
And the reason he looked so depressed was entirely because of my condition.
Apparently, the person now known as the Third Young Master had suffered qi deviation while practicing martial arts.
Qi deviation was basically a death sentence in this era.
Most people who suffered from it died.
The original owner of this body had somehow survived.
Naturally, he didn't escape without consequences.
The consequences were simple.
And devastating.
He lost his martial arts.
For a martial artist, that was practically everything.
His meridians had become tangled.
His acupoints were blocked.
His dantian shattered.
His internal energy scattered.
His muscles and tendons weakened.
He had essentially become crippled.
Apparently, he had once been considered a remarkable genius.
So the sense of loss must have been enormous.
Because of that, I...
No.
The previous owner of this body had desperately clung to something else in an attempt to recover.
That something was the alchemy Jin Woon had mentioned earlier.
In Western terms, calling it alchemy was probably the easiest explanation.
You mixed all kinds of ingredients and tried to create miraculous pills capable of turning someone into an immortal.
Since martial arts existed here, so did miraculous herbs and spiritual medicines.
There were even Taoists who devoted their entire lives to researching them.
People were like that.
When they lost something important, they instinctively looked for something else to hold onto.
Religion.
Other people.
Anything.
The previous owner of this body was no different.
He developed an unfounded belief that if he could create some miraculous immortal pill, he could heal his body.
He had already tried precious spiritual medicines without success.
That only made him more obsessed with creating a cure himself through alchemy.
And conveniently enough...
One week ago, a huge explosion occurred during his research.
That was when I woke up in this body.
According to what I had heard, the explosion was so large that brilliant light filled the entire manor.
The original owner had probably died in that explosion.
And strangely enough...
The explosion that killed me while I was guarding that wooden box had also been filled with brilliant light.
Perhaps my soul and his somehow came into contact at the moment of our deaths.
Maybe something impossible happened then.
That was the only explanation I had.
That box...
The box I had been transporting definitely had something to do with this.
The strange energy.
The mysterious shape I saw.
After everything that happened, I couldn't help believing that.
Well.
Whatever the truth was, if you looked only at the result, the original owner had technically achieved what he wanted.
His body had returned to the condition it was in before he lost his martial arts.
Actually, it had become even better.
The only thing he hadn't considered...
Was that he wouldn't be around to enjoy it.
Apparently, the internal energy was gone, but the body itself was healthier than ever.
That was good enough for now.
Even if I wasn't a martial artist by this world's standards, I was also someone whose body had always been his greatest weapon.
"I see..."
"This is practically a complete bodily rebirth, Warrior Jin. Forgive me for asking, but... could that person have intervened?"
"That... is unlikely. If so, then it would have happened much sooner. Much, much sooner."
"Ahem. I heard there isn't much time remaining before he must go to 'that place,' so I spoke carelessly..."
"Thank you for coming today."
After finishing his examination, Physician Song and Jin Woon exchanged a brief conversation in low voices.
The physician had accidentally mentioned something, and Jin Woon quickly moved to send him away.
Perhaps because rest was still my priority, Physician Song didn't continue the topic.
He simply turned to me and offered his farewell.
"Congratulations on this miraculous recovery. It is all thanks to the great fortune bestowed upon us by the Divine Cult. Hahaha."
"Indeed. It is thanks to the Sacred Moon's protection."
"Of course. Of course. If anything happens, please call for me again."
The physician clasped his hands in the martial salute I had seen in movies and bowed deeply.
But before leaving, he said something that made my situation even more complicated.
The moment I heard it, I was reminded of my final and greatest problem.
The words Divine Cult felt strangely heavy against my chest.
Right before leaving, the physician spoke.
"Then I shall take my leave. The Heavenly Demon Returns, Ten Thousand Demons Bow."
Jin Woon answered immediately.
"The Sacred Moon Manifests in the Heavens, Ten Thousand Heavens Bring Light."
Then Physician Song left the room.
And once again, I was forced to accept reality.
I had awakened in a new body.
In a world where Murim existed.
And somehow...
I had become a member of a fanatical religious military organization.
A group that everyone else called...
The Demonic Cult.
