Childhood Friend of the Zenith - Chapter 335

I didn’t have many memories of my mother.

-Son.

Her voice was slightly high-pitched but warm, and she would gently brush my rough hair with her soft hands.

I remembered her watching me with a smile with my little sister in her arms, as she enjoyed the gentle breeze of spring.

By the time I realized that this memory of mine was called “reminiscence”, my mother was already gone.

My mother loved every season.

She seemed to love spring the most, but she loved the other three as well.

She loved spring for the blooming flowers.

Even during summer which made me annoyed due to the heat, my mother found beauty in it.

She would often sit on the living room floor, watching the summer rain pour down.

I could never forget her warm hand I held during fall and winter, as leaves and snow gently fell.

Yes, my mother loved all four seasons, and she loved the world.

At least, that’s how I saw it.

-Son.

She would lay in her bed during the night after tucking Gu Ryunghwa in, and closing her eyes.

-Are you sleepy?

-Mhm...

In response to my whiny answer, Mother would rub my belly and softly hum a song in my ear.

Maybe it was because of the comfort I felt from her singing, but I somehow always used to fall asleep almost immediately.

The only reason I was able to have a reminiscence in this dreary place, was only thanks to my mother’s warmth in the end.

Because of that...

-Son... I’m sorry...

The last touch of her hand I felt on my cheek, and the last sound of her voice still haunted me, like a shackle I couldn’t escape.

“...What do you mean?”

I bit my tongue, hesitating before I finally responded.

Why was the World Tree bringing up my mother?

“Are you saying that the beast inside my body is connected to my mother?”

I struggled to suppress my boiling emotions.

It has never crossed my mind that my mother would be mentioned in any of this.

Mother... is connected to this?

How could that be possible?

[ Calm down, apostle. ]

“You expect me to calm down after dropping a bombshell like that. How selfish can you be?”

I had never thought about it even once.

I may have endlessly thought about the beast’s existence inside me, yet all I discovered was its name.

I never considered it as very vital information.

Just what was the beast?

Initially, I assumed that it was something that came along with my Demonic Absorption Arts.

Doesn’t that make sense? Whenever the beast devoured the Demonic Qi from Demonic Stones, my Demonic Absorption Arts would activate on their own..

When I absorbed Demonic Qi, it was purified into normal Qi.

Because of that, I thought the bastard’s existence was part of the authority that the Heavenly Demon gave me, but my thoughts changed as time went by.

I started to think that the beast wasn’t related to the Demonic Absorption Arts, but my Destructive Flame Arts instead.

If the beast’s goal in the first place wasn’t to consume Demonic Qi, but to cleanse Qi instead, then it must be related closer to Destructive Flame Arts rather than Demonic Absorption Arts.

Regardless of which it was, the real problem was that I had no idea why this beast existed within me.

The Immortal Healer said this once.

Tao Qi was inside my Dantian along with my normal Qi, so it wouldn’t have been weird for my body to explode at any moment.

But it was Elder Shin who kept the chaos in check, stopping the Tao Qi and normal Qi from clashing.

Truthfully, if Elder Shin didn’t do that, then my body would have suffered intense pain whenever the Tao Qi raged out of control.

Elder Shin helped me by preventing my Qi from colliding with Tao Qi in my Dantian.

Another thing.

There was another matter on my mind.

It was about my Demonic Qi in my body alongside my Tao and normal Qi.

Becoming a Demonic Human means that all Qi inside one’s Dantian transforms into Demonic Qi.

However, as soon as Demonic Qi entered my body, my Destructive Flame Arts purified it almost immediately.

However, the purification process was slow, meaning Demonic Qi lingered in my body for a while.

This meant that, at any given time, three different types of Qi coexisted within me.

Elder Shin might have been dealing with Tao Qi, but what about the Demonic Qi?

I thought to myself.

Demonic Qi mixing with other Qi isn’t really a big problem to begin with.

The Heavenly Demon was able to turn even strong masters into Demonic Humans, because Demonic Qi and normal Qi could coexist.

But that’s if a person is a Demonic Human.

That is only possible after the Heavenly Demon turns a person into a Demonic Human.

Why do I say this?

...Demonic Qi eats away Qi and one’s body.

If Demonic Qi enters a normal person’s body, it blocks their Qi, causing the body to gradually decay.

I had seen this firsthand with the Sword Queen in this life, and I remembered others who had suffered the same fate in my previous life.

Demonic Qi was deadly to a martial artist.

It was true that the Heavenly Demon had absolute strength, but the Demonic Cult’s swift conquest of the Central Plains was largely due to the overwhelming might of Demonic Qi.

It was as if Demonic Qi was specifically designed to annihilate martial artists.

But what about me, who had such a dangerous QI inside my body?

I am not a Demonic Human.

I knew how to control them, but I wasn’t a Demonic Human yet.

By all accounts, my body should have begun decaying the moment Demonic Qi entered it.

Things had been unusual ever since I absorbed a Demonic Stone for the first time in this life.

The World Tree’s voice was tinged with sorrow.

[ I am very grateful for that child for protecting me, so how could I not know? ]

My eyes widened in shock at the World Tree’s words.

The Demon with the shape of a giant snake and the tree with white leaves inside that room, all seemed to have relations with the World Tree in front of me.

The World Tree had said that all traces of it had been erased, so how had those remnants endured?

...But more importantly,

“...So did the beast wake up because of what happened in there?”

This was the first thing I needed to ask.

The World Tree’s roots shifted, pressing against its chest after hearing my question.

[ Do you know about resonance? ]

Was it for an explanation?

[ What you consumed that day, was the dream that child had, and a seed of mine. ]

“...Pardon?”

[ The child had been holding that marble with great love, to rise above the sky. ]

“Please make it easier for me to understand.”

[ By consuming my seed, you allowed a ruler’s essence to merge within you. ]

Craack-!

The tree’s root moved towards my chest, pressing against the spot where my Dantian lay.

[ The entry of another ruler’s power caused a resonance within you, awakening the beast. ]

“...Resonance you say.”

[ It too, is a ruler of a world, so it reacted to my power. ]

“...!”

I instinctively rubbed my Dantian after hearing the World Tree.

This whiny growly beast is also a ruler of another world?

Then, I was reminded of what the Blood Demon said to me.

-The ruler of Abyss...

That’s what the Blood Demon called the growling beast.

The ruler of Abyss.

Back then, I had dismissed those words, unable to grasp their meaning, but now, I was certain about the term “ruler.”

The Abyss.

Ruler.

According to the World Tree, the beast within me was a ruler of another world, just as the tree once had been.

Perhaps this bastard was way more important than I thought?

“Wait, but why is such a thing inside me?”

It was bizarre to think that a ruler from another world resided within my body.

And the fact that the bastard was coonnected to my mother.

Mother.

It meant that my mother wasn’t just an ordinary woman.

I remembered my mother’s lifeless face fading into the Demon Gate suspended in the air.

That moment marked my transformation, the moment I stopped trusting anyone within the Gu Clan.

[ Apostle. ]

The World Tree’s voice was gentle, almost hesitant.

“...You said you knew about my mother, right?”

[ I do not know much. As I said earlier... I am just an existence that was erased from that world. ]

“But that means you do know a little.”

My voice grew more desperate.

It was something I had pondered many times before.

I didn’t think that my mother had something special.

“Please tell me. About my mother...”

But, of course, everything seemed to be intertwined.

It felt like all of my experiences were connected.

If me being a child of Gu Clan was a reason, and the fact that everyone around me ended up miserable because of my burdens, I had to hear it.

I had to hear secrets about me I didn’t know about.

I gazed at the World Tree, which fell silent for a moment before speaking again.

[ I may have been erased from that world, but I do know a little. It used to be my world after all. ]

[ From what I feel, it seems like you have run into two calamities so far. ]

“Two times?”

I considered what the two calamities might be.

If the first was the Blood Demon, then what was the second?

The Heavenly Demon...?

Was it the Heavenly Demon after all? That was the only existence that I could think of as the second calamity.

Unless, of course, I was a calamity myself, as Yeon Il-Cheon had hinted.

As I had that thought in my mind,

[ You said you wanted to learn about your mother, correct? ]

The World Tree began talking about my mother.

A frown creased my forehead as I listened.

...Why is she being mentioned?

We were just discussing calamities, and now you’re bringing up my mother?

Right as I questioned,

[ Your mother- ]

The World Tree spoke.

[ She is the second calamity that fell upon your world. ]

Hearing the World Tree, it felt as if the world around me stopped.