Wol sat on the edge of the narrow wooden bed.
He was back in his house. The rusted, creaking shack was quiet, the pale morning light filtering through the cracked wooden walls. His bed was completely covered, buried under a chaotic spread of opened scrolls, thick ledgers, and heavily bound letters.
He had left Elder Han's clinic early that morning. The sheer exhaustion of forcing Qi through Goo Yeon's blocked meridians had drained him completely, pulling him into a deep, dreamless sleep that lasted the entire day before.
When he finally woke, he hadn't lingered. Before stepping out into the morning mist, he had left the Mad Dogs with a final set of instructions.
"Keep the money for now," Wol had told Goo Jung, gesturing toward the carriage they had ridden in. Inside sat the heavy wooden boxes and stuffed sacks—the entirety of the Merchant House treasury they had completely cleaned out before it burned. "Use it if you need it. I only need this."
He tied the stolen letters and the sword into the cloth. "Help Elder Han with his chores. Take care of your sister until she fully recovers. And when the time is right… go and apologize for the inconvenience you caused at Yeonhwa-ru. Make sure you clear everything with Nari, her father, and the workers."
Goo Jung and his brothers had bowed deeply, agreeing without a shred of their former defiance.
As Wol had reached the clinic door, Elder Han stepped forward, pressing a small, tightly wrapped package into his hand.
"Take this," the old man grumbled. "They are Calm Pulse Pills. The strain you put on your meridians yesterday was reckless. These will help stabilize your newly formed Dantian. Take one per day. I put seven in there."
Wol had paused, looking at the small package, before letting out a faint, genuine smile. "Thank you. I will see you soon, Elder Han."
Now, back in the quiet isolation of his room, the warmth of that morning faded.
Wol stared at the scattered scrolls and letters covering his bed. His eyes scanned the wax seals and harsh ink, sifting through them one by one. Many were encoded. Some were heavily branded with Merchant House stamps.
Finally, his hands stopped.
He held a rather empty‑looking letter. There was no wax seal. No sender's address. Just blank, heavy parchment.
He unfolded it.
His eyes locked onto the first line.
The Date.
It was the exact same date his father had left for the escort mission eight years ago.
The Location.
It was the exact same mountain pass.
There were only three lines of text below it.
[Make sure he is there.]
[Forge the fake travel papers. We will abduct every single one of them.]
[Use the Demonic Sect's return as a cover.]
Wol's breathing slowed. The silence in the room became incredibly heavy.
That was it. Nothing else. But it was everything he needed.
The moment he saw the words 'Demonic Sect as a cover', a cold certainty settled over his bones. He had always known that the rumors of the Demonic Sect kidnapping and executing civilians was a lie—a convenient, terrifying ghost story used by the powerful to manipulate the public and cover up their own filth. He had known it in his past life, but he could never prove it.
Now, the proof was sitting in his hands.
His father hadn't been killed in a random slaughter. He had been caught up in a planned abduction.
Who? Wol thought, his fingers slowly clenching, the edges of the heavy parchment crinkling under his tightening grip. Who was the person mentioned in this letter? Who was so important that they needed to abduct an entire escort group just to hide their tracks?
He let out a slow, controlled sigh. There was only one man alive who knew who sent this blank letter. Shin Dae‑seok.
Wol set the letter carefully aside and reached for the remaining pile on the bed. He started reading through the rest of the Merchant House's hidden ledgers. Systematic smuggling. Ransom demands. Illegal slave trading. The manipulation of sect intelligence. The letters detailed an underground empire that stretched from well‑reputed sects down to small, vicious noble families.
But as he continued reading, his eyes snagged on two distinct names tied to the most heinous illegal business.
Elder Gu of the Beggar Sect.
Elder Tang Wei of the Tang Clan.
The breath hitched in Wol's throat.
His fist clenched so hard around the parchment that his knuckles turned white, the paper tearing violently under the pressure. A deep, primal anger flared in his eyes, turning them as dark as the abyss.
"Those damn bastards," Wol whispered, his voice trembling with a terrifying, suppressed rage. "I knew I would meet them again in this life… but I never thought I'd see these names here."
The sight of the ink violently ripped his mind backward through time.
The walls of his room blurred, instantly replaced by the suffocating stench of mildew, old blood, and damp stone,it was from the past, his mind collected that moment.
It was a cellar. Dark. Cold. Windowless. It was the underground prison where Wol had been held and ruthlessly tortured before he was eventually discarded and sent off to the Archives.
An older, thoroughly worn version of Wol lay chained to the jagged stone floor. He was barely breathing. His chest rose in shallow, agonizing hitches. It had only been days since he had suffered the absolute worst fate a martial artist could endure.
His Dantian had been physically shattered.
His hard‑earned Qi, his martial path, his entire future—all of it had bled out of him onto the dirt. He had given up. For the first time in his difficult, miserable life, he had completely lost his only hope. He lay there, waiting for death to simply take the rest.
Footsteps began to approach the heavy iron door.
Wol didn't look up. Not because he wanted to be defiant, but because he physically and mentally lacked the energy to lift his head. He was exhausted down to his very soul.
The iron door groaned open.
"You should have lived a normal life," a rough voice echoed, dripping with condescension. "You shouldn't have tried to meddle with our business… especially not for someone who is long dead."
The man stepped into the dim light. It was Elder Gu of the Beggar Sect. He looked down at Wol's broken form, a sneer twisting his bearded face. Wol couldn't properly hear him at first—his ears were ringing from the relentless beatings—but then the old man leaned closer.
"Do you want to know how we finally killed Jo Mak?"
That name.
Wol's head snapped up. The ringing in his ears stopped instantly. He stared straight at the Beggar Sect Elder, his broken eyes suddenly wide with horror.
Elder Gu grinned, flashing his yellowed teeth. "Look at that. Now that's a good friend. Jo Mak would be so happy to see that reaction. But don't worry. You will be sent down into that forsaken Archive for the rest of your miserable life… or you can choose to bite your tongue and go meet him faster."
"What did you do…" Wol croaked, blood spilling over his split lips.
"We fed him information," Gu chuckled. "Made him think he had enough leverage to prove his innocence. The info was so convincing he actually believed he could take us down. We baited him right out of hiding and ambushed him on his way to the sect. We didn't let a single piece of him remain. Just burned ashes in the wind."
Gu leaned in closer, his grin widening. "You and him both should have known better than to interfere with an elder's business. Maybe you'll remember that in your next life."
Another set of footsteps echoed behind Gu. The heavy rustle of expensive silk robes.
It was the Tang Clan uniform.
Elder Tang Wei stepped into the cell. This was the man. The exact man who had personally driven his palm into Wol's stomach and ruptured his Dantian forever.
"Elder Gu," Tang Wei said, his voice smooth and incredibly arrogant. "The poor vagrant still doesn't understand what's happening."
Tang Wei smiled coldly.
Wol gritted his bleeding teeth, the sheer hatred for this man threatening to tear his heart apart. He tried to lunge forward, pulling at the heavy iron chains like a rabid dog, but he lacked the internal strength. The heavy iron laughed at a normal man's struggle, slamming him brutally back into the dirt.
Tang Wei didn't even flinch. He casually pulled two pieces of paper from his silk sleeves and held them up in the dim light.
Wol looked up.
The instant his eyes traced the ink, he knew. They were the missing pages—the exact torn pages from the martial arts manual the Murim Alliance had been escorting. The very same manual Wol had been assigned to protect as a soldier, and the very same pages they had framed him for stealing.
It was a total setup.
He hadn't been chosen for the mission randomly. The person originally in charge of that patrol was a fellow warrior—a man Wol had considered a genuine friend. That friend had claimed he was critically injured and literally begged Wol to take his place as a substitute.
And Wol, being an honest man, had taken the job to help him.
He finally understood. His friend had been in on it the entire time. The whole patrol had been a trap designed solely to frame and ruin him.
The utter betrayal shattered the last remaining pillar of his sanity. He couldn't hold the anger in. He wanted to rip their throats out with his bare teeth.
Wol, who hadn't been able to speak above a whisper for days, suddenly threw his head back and screamed.
"I WILL KILL YOU BASTARDS…!"
His voice tore his throat, raw and agonizing. But the two Elders only smiled, offering no words, just mocking, silent pity. They turned and left, the heavy iron door slamming shut, plunging him back into total darkness.
Wol tried to break the chains again, thrashing wildly until he failed, collapsing face‑first against the jagged rock. The cold, suffocating helplessness set in. The sheer horror of being utterly powerless to protect his friends, his future, or even to exact his own revenge.
He felt that precise, paralyzing horror grip his heart right before he finally lost consciousness in the dark.
Wol sucked in a sharp breath, his eyes snapping back to his room.
He let out a long, heavy sigh, forcing his rapid heartbeat to slow down.
He had genuinely thought that the raw, agonizing desire to kill them had faded. He had thought that spending twenty‑four years buried in the meaningless, dusty life of the Alliance Archives had thoroughly erased the heat of his anger.
But feeling the names Gu and Tang Wei beneath his fingertips, it washed over him like a tidal wave all over again.
But this time… things were different.
Unlike the past, where the suffocating horror of helplessness existed, he was no longer a powerless victim chained to a stone floor. He had his physical health. He had his Dantian. And more than anything, he had the Heavenly Demon Ascension.
He knew with absolute certainty that with it, he could get his revenge.
Wol stared at the torn parchment in his hands and slowly forced his fist to relax.
Don't rush, he told himself, his eyes dimming into a terrifying calm. If I rush, my emotions will control me.
He would make them fall to the ground. He would strip them of their positions. And he would kill them when they were at their absolute lowest—when they were completely helpless.
It was exactly what they deserved. Simply claiming their lives wouldn't quench this thirst, and he knew that.
I need to find Jo Mak, Wol thought, his mind snapping back from the distant future to the immediate present.
Jo Mak should be in River Dragon City by now. But Wol knew that getting the man to trust him wouldn't be simple. In their past life, they had trusted each other enough to share the deepest, darkest pieces of their tragic pasts without a single second thought. But that bond hadn't been an instant connection; it wasn't a sudden spark. It was a friendship slowly and brutally forged through absolute misery, survival, and rotting in the gutters together.
Right now, Jo Mak was a total stranger. He was likely drunk or getting beaten halfway to death by street thugs. Jo Mak used to tell him that when he first arrived in the city, he was mercilessly beaten and robbed every single day of the few miserable copper coins he managed to scrape together from begging.
Wol decided to head out immediately. He didn't know exactly where to look, but he knew the pattern of a man hitting rock bottom.
The city swallowed him whole the moment he stepped past the inner districts. The noise returned instantly—overlapping voices, the scrape of boots against stone, merchants screaming out exaggerated prices that no seasoned local believed.
Wol moved through the chaos without slowing his pace. His eyes shifted constantly, scanning the alleyways and shadows with cold purpose.
Jo Mak wouldn't be out in the open. Not like this. At this specific point in time, the man wouldn't have rebuilt anything resembling his former glory. He had no network, no standing within the martial world. He was just a ghost with a name dragged through the dirt and a reputation that sensible people actively avoided.
That meant one thing: cheap taverns. Places where no one asked questions as long as someone paid—or at least promised to pay before passing out.
The first tavern he approached was incredibly loud before he even reached the wooden doors. Wol stepped inside, the harsh smell of sour alcohol, stale sweat, and cheap tobacco hitting him immediately. A few hardened patrons glanced at him, sizing up the young boy, then quickly looked away when they met his dead, calm eyes.
Wol walked straight to the scarred wooden counter.
"Anyone causing trouble here?" he asked, his voice cutting through the ambient noise perfectly.
The man behind the counter barely looked up from wiping down a mug. "Be specific, kid."
"A drunk. One who doesn't pay and usually gets into fights."
The bartender paused, giving Wol a dry look. "That's half the people in here on any given night."
Wol didn't argue. He calmly placed a single silver coin on the sticky counter.
The man's eyes flicked down, widening a fraction before he swiftly pocketed the coin.
"…Try the lower streets," he muttered, suddenly much more helpful. "We throw people like that out before they become an actual problem for the guards."
Wol nodded once and left.
The second place he tried was significantly worse. It was smaller, dirtier, and quieter in a way that felt heavy with contained violence.
He asked the same question, but received a different answer.
"Yeah," a patron muttered, spitting onto the dirt floor. "Saw a beggar like that yesterday. Got dragged out by his collar. Couldn't even stand straight."
"Where?" Wol asked.
The man gave a vague, dismissive gesture. "East side. The slum districts."
By his third stop, the pattern was agonizingly clear. Unpaid tabs. Senseless fights. Thrown out into the mud. Dragged away by angry proprietors. It was the exact downward spiral Wol remembered.
Wol didn't need any more information. He turned his steps sharply toward the eastern part of the city.
As he progressed, the streets narrowed significantly. The vibrant energy of the merchant district died away, replaced by the grim reality of poverty. The people here changed; there was less movement and far more watching from darkened doorways and cracked windows.
Wol slowed slightly, letting his senses expand. He began paying attention to the smaller details. Scuffed ground near a crumbling brick wall. A broken crate that had been violently kicked aside. And then, the voices—low, uneven, and cruel—carrying from deeper inside a dead‑end alley.
He followed the sound. He turned one corner, then another, and finally stopped just before the alley fully opened into view.
Three men stood over a single huddled figure.
Kicks landed without any rhythm or technique. It was just raw, malicious force. The man on the ground didn't resist. He didn't even try to block his face. His body simply moved with the devastating hits instead of bracing against them, absorbing the impact loosely.
He was drunk. Or simply past the point where the pain mattered.
"…Pathetic," one of the thugs muttered, crouching down to roughly check the bleeding man's torn pockets. "Nothing left on him."
"Check his boots again," the largest of the three grunted.
A brutal kick to the ribs followed anyway, entirely unnecessary.
Wol watched from the shadows. He didn't sprint forward. He didn't shout to interrupt them. He simply observed.
He studied the angle of the bleeding man's face as it turned slightly to the side in the dirt. He listened to the way the man let out a quiet, broken laugh between laboured breaths, utterly unfazed by the beating.
Even covered in mud and blood, looking like a discarded corpse—it was him.
Jo Mak.