Chapter 93

Chapter 93

Chapter 93 Book Café (5)

“What did you do?”

“I cut the threads that were binding the Sect Master’s body.”

“Threads?”

“You could call them threads of fate.”

These people were characters in a novel.

Even the being that had become accumulated thought and then a monster couldn’t escape the limitations of its origin.

That was why all of them had threads stretching up into the sky like that.

They were puppets that moved wherever the strings pulled them. It was just that they had gone unmoving for so long that the threads had become tangled like this.

“What happens if you cut them?”

“I don’t know.”

“What kind of irresponsible...”

“You were trying to kill me just a moment ago. Are you really in a position to complain to me now?”

“Haha, I suppose that’s true.”

“Now that the strings moving you have been cut, Sect Master, you’ll have to create the story yourselves.”

“Ourselves?”

“Yes. You’re the greatest sage of all time, so I’m sure you’ll manage somehow.”

Their fate now belonged to them.

Though they would still have to borrow the author’s hand, the martial spirit and chivalry they displayed from now on would contain the will of Hyeongang, the protagonist.

After all, no matter how much the severed strings were pulled or untangled, they would only flutter in the wind like this.

“Are you leaving immediately?”

“Yes. I caught the monster, so it’s time to return.”

I pointed with a finger at the threads drifting in the wind.

“Then I’ll prepare a small gift for you. You’re my savior—no, the savior of this entire world. I cannot send you away empty-handed.”

“It’s fine. I’ve already received more than enough. I was badly out of shape anyway.”

I playfully raised an arm and flexed it like a bodybuilder.

It had only been four days, but since I had literally done nothing except eat, sleep, and swing a sword, my forearm had grown thick and lean.

Seeing that, Hyeongang smiled faintly and said,

“A sword technique without an internal cultivation method is only half complete.”

Then he took something from his clothes and tossed it to me.

“If we had a little more time, I would have gone to the storehouse and brought you some peerless secret manual, but I suspect you’d run away while I was looking for it. It’s modest, but please accept it as payment for saving us.”

It was a well-dried root.

It looked like deodeok.

“It’s a Thousand-Year Fleeceflower Root. Elder Poison Immortal says this one is actually more than four thousand years old. I caused some trouble once and threw these away, but one root happened to remain in my possession. Since it’s been dried, it no longer has the power to increase internal energy. Still, it may help you when your life is in danger.”

“That’s a precious gift.”

The Thousand-Year Fleeceflower Root was a staple of martial arts novels.

Of course, it had also appeared in Conquest of the Martial World. I remembered laughing quite a bit when Hyeongang, ignorant of the martial world at the time, did something outrageous and put the Thousand-Year Fleeceflower Root into duck soup.

Apparently one root had been left over back then.

“Why haven’t you eaten it until now? You must have been troubled countless times by your lack of internal energy.”

“Because leaving it as an opportunity to save someone would be a better choice than making myself stronger.”

“Then I’ll accept it gratefully.”

It was an answer perfectly suited to the Hyeongang I had admired back then.

I put Hyeongang’s gift into my pocket and released the Mind’s Eye.

As I rose toward the sky, Hyeongang clasped his right fist with his left hand and gave me a proper martial salute.

I lightly bowed my head in return.

Our greetings were different, but both contained gratitude and a wish that the other would fare well.

And just as my floating body was about to return to reality,

(There is one more gift.)

“What?”

The voice echoing inside my head was a sound transmission.

Another gift?

______________

At the same time, at Jinseong’s coffeehouse.

-Tatatak.

‘Huh? What? Why is it actually writing?’

The story had already stopped sixteen years ago.

No matter what sentence he wrote, it would soon be erased again, so this time too he had often typed meaningless things like ‘ABCDEFG’ and ‘I want to go home,’ assuming the same thing would happen.

But today was different.

The meaningless scribbles that had only occupied space were erased, and before long, the true story of Conquest of the Martial World was being written.

And the prose was far more polished than before.

It was almost as though someone else were controlling the hands striking the keyboard without pause.

And the owner of the coffeehouse, who had brought him the coffee, watched the scene with a faint, inscrutable smile.

______________

-Ding.

【New Release Update】

『Conquest of the Martial World - Chapter 202 (Threads of Fate)』

It went up sooner than expected.

No, since it had been sixteen years, perhaps it would be more accurate to say it was extremely late.

┗ n1

_____________

: What? Is this real?

┗ Riot: It’s an error, right? There’s no way this would actually show up.

┗ InsomniacBear: Holy crap lolololol Why is this suddenly restarting serialization out of nowhere?

┗ pdpf: Damn, this was the novel of my life. I can’t believe I’m seeing it again.

┗ OctoberPoem: Author. I. Am. Already. Seventy. Years. Old. Please. Finish. It. Before. I. Enter. My. Coffin.

┗ Ripari: But why do the characters feel more alive than before? Is it because the serialization restarted after so long? The writing got even better.

┗ ageha10: For real, why did the writing suddenly explode in quality? lol Did the author go into closed-door training or something?

The comments were nothing but praise.

Once a hiatus passed ten years, it apparently created this absurd situation where the return was welcomed so enthusiastically.

Since there was a new chapter, maybe I should reread the entire series too.

Someone might ask why I needed to reread it when I had personally gone there and even crossed swords with the characters, but reading it as text had a completely different charm.

And so I entered the book room and found Conquest of the Martial World without difficulty.

“Huh?”

Something was strange.

There was a book on the shelf that shouldn’t have been there.

【Conquest of the Martial World Volume 1】

【Conquest of the Martial World Volume 2】

...

【Conquest of the Martial World Volume 9】

It was definitely volume nine.

Only then did I understand what the other gift sent by Hyeongang, the protagonist of the novel, had been.

A newly released volume that I could read before anyone else.

Even before the author who was writing it.

As I pulled out the new volume that had yet to appear in the world, I suddenly remembered something a famous author had once said in an interview.

‘When a novel is written well enough, I can’t decide the ending myself. The characters inside it come alive and begin writing their own ending.’

At the time, I had simply thought, I see, and moved on.

But the fact that I remembered that interview now made me wonder whether countless other novels also contained protagonists whose threads of fate had been severed, living and breathing just as mine had.

-Jingle.

“Welcome.”

“Owner, um... could I write on my laptop here? The support program is over, but I just can’t seem to write anywhere except here.”

“Of course. Would you like the Wi-Fi password?”

“Thank you! Thank you so much!”

It seemed a web novel author with an illustrious history of abandoned serializations was about to become a regular at our coffeehouse starting today.

_______________

The underground parking lot of the NIS.

“Elder, it’s time to go.”

“I know, you brat. Stop rushing me.”

The two people bickering in the parking lot were the Nine-Tailed Fox and Director Baek Mahyeon.

All the Elder had to do was get into the car, but he kept stopping because he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the novel in his hands.

“Is it really that entertaining?”

“Heh heh. You should try reading it too. To think I lived all this time without knowing something this enjoyable existed.”

“I’m fine.”

“Have you ever even tried it? Once you do, you’ll change too, heh heh.”

When the Nine-Tailed Fox had first been forced to move books at Jinseong’s coffeehouse with coffee held hostage, he had scolded Jinseong for wasting money on something pointless.

But once he got a taste for it, he became an even more obsessive reader than Jinseong.

After finally getting into the car, the Nine-Tailed Fox stopped midway through fastening his seat belt and looked around.

“No, it was definitely here... Hah, this is enough to make even a ghost howl.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Right! You look too. I definitely left all of Conquest of the Martial World in the car, but I can’t find it anywhere.”

“Didn’t you leave it at the coffeehouse?”

“I said I didn’t!”

Even though he was the one who had lost them, the way he became angry instead gave off a strange sense of urgency.

It was because of the scolding he had received from Jinseong when he took the books away from the coffeehouse.

‘If you take them outside, you’ll lose them. Just read them at the coffeehouse.’

‘Ha! You brat, are you treating me like some senile old man? That will never happen, so don’t worry!’

He had definitely said that.

If he couldn’t find them now, it would mean admitting that he really was a senile old man, so at this point, he simply wasn’t allowed to have lost them even if he had.

They opened all four doors, the trunk, and even the hood and searched everywhere, but the books they were looking for refused to appear.

“Who else has ridden in this car?”

“No one but us, Elder.”

“What about cleaning or something!”

“I do it myself. I’m almost fifty and I still go wash it by hand.”

“Then did you go yesterday?”

There were two suspects.

Himself or Director Baek Mahyeon, so the interrogation was already proceeding under the assumption that the culprit had been provisionally identified.

But Director Baek Mahyeon felt just as wronged.

“It’s been parked here the entire time since the day we went to the coffeehouse together.”

“Then where could all eight volumes have gone!”

“Send the men out. We must find them.”

And so the NIS suddenly went on emergency alert over an unexpected theft.

But because every movement of the two men was classified top secret, there was no information recorded on the CCTV or dashcam, so the culprit could not be found.

“This won’t do. Go buy them.”

“Pardon?”

“I said go buy them.”

“I’ll send the team members immediately.”

“Wait!”

As he was harassing the innocent NIS employees, the Nine-Tailed Fox remembered something else Jinseong had said.

‘This is out of print, so you can’t even find books in this good a condition anymore. Do you really have to take it with you?’

“Don’t buy just one set. Buy every copy you can find, then select the set in the best condition. Understand?”

Giving specific instructions was one of the virtues of a good superior.

But to the employees who had suddenly been ordered to visit used bookstores and buy books, it merely raised the difficulty of the assignment another level.

As more people began searching for Conquest of the Martial World after its serialization resumed, the used-book market suffered for a while from the strange phenomenon of having no listings at all.

It was thanks to the members of Director Baek Mahyeon’s team, which consisted exclusively of agents far superior to those in other departments.

Only after searching all across Seoul with a fine-toothed comb and somehow obtaining the complete set of Conquest of the Martial World again, then sealing it inside a security bag, were the two finally able to leave the NIS.

And after they had driven toward Jinseong’s coffeehouse for some time,

-Rumble.

Thunder suddenly echoed across a cloudless sky.

“Do you think it’s Jinseong again?”

“Yes.”

Whenever Jinseong used the power of the Divine Eyes, mild anomalies such as lightning from a clear sky or sudden showers appeared just like this, so Director Baek Mahyeon could easily guess that Jinseong had done something again.

“Tsk. I already feel uneasy enough, but those Divine Eyes of his just keep getting stronger.”

The Nine-Tailed Fox was afraid that Jinseong might use those incredible Divine Eyes to discover that he had lost the books and bought replacements.