Hyun retrieved the old, worn leather diary from the hidden compartment of his knapsack. The material was soft, smoothed by years of handling, and even after three harrowing years in this strange new Murim world, the scent of the dry, aged pages was a potent, comforting link to his past life and his lost father. He sat cross-legged on a thin mat by the fading, flickering light of the oil lamp in the isolated annex, a silence so profound it felt heavy pressing in on him.
With careful reverence, he traced the familiar, disciplined handwriting of his father, Joon-Ho. It was the script of a focused scholar or a dedicated student, precise and economical. Hyun turned past pages filled with complicated technical Murim diagrams and cryptic cultivation notes—knowledge he was only beginning to scratch the surface of—until he reached the section detailing the bizarre, terrifying jump between worlds.
Joon-Ho's entry began not with adventure or excitement, but with profound, visceral disorientation. He described the sickening wrench of his soul, the pain of being a grown man, a seasoned mid-level martial artist who had just met his end in a skirmish, only to wake up alone in an unfamiliar, damp forest. His body had instantly regressed, transformed into the fragile, scared shell of a skinny ten-year-old boy.
The paradox was staggering: he retained the flawless muscle memory, the ingrained discipline, and, most crucially, the cultivation base of his past life. Yet, the air here was lifeless. It felt thick and suffocating, deeply lacking the rich, vibrant chi energy he was accustomed to drawing into his dantian. He recognized instantly that this quiet, grey realm was not Murim. It was a world of stillness and profound limitation.
After days spent foraging and hiding like a wild animal, driven by instinct and survival, a chance encounter with a kind, passing elderly couple led him, weeks later, to the gates of an institution in Seoul: The House of Warm Hearts Orphanage. He had traded a life of deadly skill for a life of quiet waiting.
The transition from the rigorous training, the constant threat of deadly skirmishes, and the absolute focus of the martial world, to the simple, almost tedious routine of an orphanage was jarring enough to break a lesser man. But Joon-Ho, armed with the adult mind and the iron discipline of a Murim warrior, adapted with unnerving speed. He became a ghost of a child: quiet, efficient, and unnervingly self-reliant, a trait that often startled the well-meaning but overwhelmed caregivers.
It was here, amidst the noisy, forgotten children, that he met Eun-Ji. She was only seven years old then, a small girl with a painfully shy demeanor, but a persistent, almost challenging curiosity glowing in her dark eyes. She was instantly fascinated by the strange, intensely focused older boy who read advanced textbooks and would spend silent hours practicing peculiar, slow-motion movements in the quiet, dusty corners of the yard.
"Why do you stand so still?" she would ask, her voice barely a whisper as she tugged insistently on his sleeve. "Are you waiting for a ghost to come play?"
Joon-Ho, initially annoyed by the disruption to his secret meditation and Neigong, would brush her off with curt indifference. But Eun-Ji was relentless in her quiet way. She didn't seek his attention in the usual, childish way; she simply existed in his space, a tiny, steady, grounding shadow. When he read, she sat silently beside him, drawing clumsy pictures in the dirt with a broken stick. When he performed his chores, she tried to help, even when she was more of a hindrance than a help.
Her quiet, steady presence acted like an unbreakable anchor, holding the displaced, chaotic soul of the martial artist to the reality of his new, terrifyingly peaceful life. Through her, Joon-Ho began to relearn how to breathe in this world. She taught him how to simply be a child—to laugh without analyzing the tactical weakness of his position, to trust without expecting immediate betrayal, and to love this gentle, unfamiliar world that offered warmth instead of blades.
As the years blurred, their bond deepened from shared survival to mutual reliance. They weren't just friends; they were two people who had grown up leaning entirely on the other's singular existence. When they both reached the threshold of twenty, they married quietly, a ceremony devoid of grand gestures but rich in unwavering commitment. Joon-Ho had established a respectable but deliberately mundane career in accounting, a profession that demanded the focus he was trained to have, yet promised absolute, bureaucratic safety.
He had found true happiness with Eun-Ji, a love that was simple, solid, and entirely detached from the chaos and blood of Murim. They had Hyun, and for long, precious years, Joon-Ho believed he had successfully buried his old life beneath a mountain of spreadsheets and domestic tranquility.
Yet, every one of the final entries in the diary ended with the same anxious, ominous observation: "The link isn't broken. I can still feel the energy, dormant, waiting. I pray my peace is not the peace before a storm."
Reading those last, fear-filled words, Hyun finally understood the chilling depth of his parents' unspoken terror. His father hadn't died in a random car accident or a sudden illness; he had been pulled back—violently and agonizingly—into the exact danger he had fought so hard to escape and conceal. And now, three years later, Hyun was living his father's old nightmare in his father's second body. The choice to go to the Demon Peak was not merely about saving the village and his master's legacy; it was about finally confronting the storm his father had always feared and, ultimately, failed to prevent. Hyun gripped the diary, the leather warm against his palm, understanding his destiny was simply the continuation of a decades-old flight.