The Hero Returns

"What are you doing out there? You can just come in."

The Bull Demon King's voice came from inside the room.

Su-hyeun walked a little faster than before, opened the sliding door, and entered the room. The Bull Demon King was waiting with piping hot tea prepared for him.

"How are you feeling?"

"Ah, I feel fine. Thank you."

The warmth in the Bull Demon King's voice caused Su-hyeun to get confused about what to say, so his reply came about a beat late.

Did the Yogoe really see him as a little brother?

Apparently, the Bull Demon King had no emotions, so Su-hyeun couldn't help but think that all these actions were simply the results of the former calculating potential gains and losses.

Despite that, he still wondered whether or not it's possible for such a warm voice to come out from all those calculations.

A cushion on the opposite side seemed to be prepared by the Bull Demon King, so Su-hyeun settled down on it. He knelt down in a somewhat uncomfortable manner, prompting the Yogoe to narrow his eyes and speak.

"You can be at ease. Your knees will end up hurting later if you sit like that."

"No, I'll be alright."

"You think so? But then again, something like that wouldn't hurt you, anyway."

"I heard that you wanted to speak to me. What can I—?"

"You don't always see someone because you have a special business, do you? And simply having a chat with a little brother isn't all that unique an event either."

The Bull Demon King chuckled affably after saying that, and Su-hyeun could only say, "Yes, that's true," as his reply.

The "little brother" and the "big brother."

In a way, this was like having a family. Forget for a second about how Su-hyeun felt about this whole thing, both Sun Wukong and the Bull Demon King called him their little brother, and they asked him to call them big brothers in return.

The thing was, he still found it rather difficult to think of them in such a way.

"Big brothers and little brother…" he thought.

He was only now getting used to those terms.

No matter how grateful he was about their hospitality, it was only obvious that feeling the kind of closeness akin to a real family would be quite difficult to do so in only a matter of few days.

Su-hyeun's honest impression of these two was that they were merely nice people, no, Yogoes. That was about it.

"Just what am I to them?" he wondered.

Sip—

Su-hyeun sneaked a glance at the Bull Demon King who had begun sipping on the piping hot tea and then lifted up his own teacup.

His expression that was reflected on the tea's surface looked grave for some reason. On the other hand, the Bull Demon King's face was filled with affable warmth from the very beginning.

"You'll soon get used to it."

"Pardon me?"

Su-hyeun put the teacup down without taking a sip from it.

Those words sounded like the Yogoe had seen through what was in Su-hyeun's mind. And for real, the Bull Demon King seemed to have figured out what his little human brother was thinking about.

"I meant the relationship of being sworn brothers. At first, Sun Wukong was just like you. No, wait. He was even more uncomfortable than you were. It took about one year before he started calling me his big brother and another five before he became fully used to the term."

"In that case, you calling brother Wukong as your little brother was…"

"That was my one-sided whim. I probably told him to call me his big brother hundreds of times. But how is it now? Isn't he the most trustworthy little brother of all time?"

Having said that, the Bull Demon King exploded into a loud peal of laughter that could make others hearing it cheer up as well.

Su-hyeun felt slightly weird just then.

"It wasn't only me?" he thought.

He knew how particular the Bull Demon King's personality was. And it was even more so in reality.

To think that he would make a total stranger his little brother and tell them to call him their big brother solely because he found them to his liking.

At first, Su-hyeun wondered if this was some kind of a prank based off on curiosity. While the beginning might be simple, the process and the end result were definitely not so.

The Bull Demon King and Sun Wukong.

The relationship between the Great Sage who Pacifies Heaven and the Great Sage Heaven's Equal was like that. They remained sworn brothers even after eons of time had passed.

And their beginning wasn't all that different to Su-hyeun's own.

"Looks like you're feeling a little better now."

"Feeling a little better, huh?" Su-hyeun thought. He nodded at that observation.

It was true. He did feel a bit better.

He thought he finally got an inkling on how to treat the Bull Demon King from now on.

"Yes. I think I get it a little now."

Su-hyeun grinned a little and lifted the teacup again.

As it turned out, the answer was actually quite simple.

"If he's being genuine, then I simply need to reciprocate that," he thought.

Maybe he had been distrustful of these two deep inside his heart until now. Uncertain of whether or not the Bull Demon King and Sun Wukong really considered him their sworn brother.

"In any case, it seems that you've really mastered the basics now."

At this sudden change of the topic, Su-hyeun quickly nodded his head. "Ah, yes. If you were referring to the breathing technique, then I…"

Su-hyeun was maintaining the breathing technique even now.

Well, actually, he couldn't even say that he was consciously maintaining it. He was now breathing naturally in that pattern as if he had been doing so his entire life.

At this point in time, breathing in the old ways would come across as uncomfortable and unnatural to him.

"Indeed, youngsters are meant to mature through fighting. Paying attention to your breathing while struggling during an urgent situation would greatly hasten your natural mastery over the technique."

"Was that why you let me fight against Nezha?"

Su-hyeun was aware that the Bull Demon King interrupted the battle against the Heavenly World in the middle. He remembered it clearly since he plopped on the ground from exhaustion afterward.

If the Yogoe wanted to, he could have ended the battle so much earlier, yet he only stepped in after Su-hyeun's battle against Nezha had ended.

"Honestly, I didn't think you'd win." The Bull Demon King's warm and steady smile briefly disappeared just then. "I planned to interrupt the fight midway. I believed that Prince Nezha was too difficult an opponent for you at that time."

That was true.

Even now, Su-hyeun thought that he only won against Prince Nezha out of sheer luck.

"The difference in our stamina level was too great," he thought.

Unlike Su-hyeun who had to resort to activating the "Immortality" skill and went all out in a brief window of time, Prince Nezha did his best to control his tempo as he fought.

The reason for that was obvious.

While Su-hyeun focused on the enemy before his eyes, Prince Nezha was different. He kept Sun Wukong in his mind throughout the battle.

This was unsurprising, really, considering that his eternal rival was not Su-hyeun but Sun Wukong, the Great Sage Heaven's Equal.

"If that hadn't been the case…No…If I missed his throat by a hair's breadth…"

The one to fall would have been Su-hyeun instead.

Since that was the case, he couldn't argue against the Bull Demon King's opinion. The one thing that he definitely needed to bridge the gap in power was the breathing technique.

"The only possible way for you to win against that fool in a battle was to gain an even greater mastery of the breathing technique. In order to fill up the gap of status and strength brought on by the differences in the time that you've lived, you'd need to exercise the breathing technique more perfectly than ever before. Only then would you have even one percent higher odds of victory. But then…" The Bull Demon King spoke with a pleased expression. "You managed to use that one percent to your advantage. Wait, maybe it's wrong to call it odds of victory since you won with your skills and not through some random luck."

Upon saying that, he put the teacup down. He had finished it before Su-hyeun noticed, and the bottom of the cup could be seen now.

The Bull Demon King stood up and said, "When you're finished as well, come to the backyard. But don't be in a hurry to finish it. I still have a lot to teach you."

"Ah, it's fine. I'm finished anyway."

"You haven't even taken a proper sip yet, so what do you mean, you're finished? It's necessary to know when to take it slow. Especially so when it's you. Right now, you need to practice how to rein in your heart that's in a rush."

"…"

After hearing that, Su-hyeun closed his mouth shut and looked down at his own teacup.

Steam was still rising from the hot tea's surface. If he wanted to, he could down this whole cup in one go, but doing that would be just like what the Bull Demon King had implied—an action born out of how much rush he was in.

A way to be patient, to be more relaxed. He didn't expect the Bull Demon King's advice of needing to practice that touch him so deeply.

"I understand."

Du-ru-ruk—

The Bull Demon King left the room first and closed the sliding door firmly shut.

Su-hyeun fidgeted around with the teacup before taking a sip of the hot liquid it contained.

Just a tiny little sip. And slowly, too. Slowly enough that he would soon realize that he had forgotten how long it had been since he last drank tea this leisurely.

Doing that might have been as easy as breathing for some people, but for Su-hyeun, it was as difficult as fighting itself.

* * *

Save points—safe zones—existed on all of the floors.

Su-hyeun also paid close attention to them. It was an absolute must to memorize the locations of these zones that allowed him to travel between reality and the tower's trials.

In most cases, the safe zones that didn't fall under the trial's scope were designated as the save points. However, the situation this time was somewhat unique.

"Are all the areas excluding the Heavenly World really designated as one big save point?"

During the night, he took a bit of time out to search for the save points and soon found something important.

And that would be the fact that every part of the world where humans and Yogoes lived, the one right below the Heavenly World, had been designated as the save point.

"Which means, this whole place is…"

Meaning, this place was unrelated to this trial.

"Big brother's residence is also the same."

What he found most strange was that even the house where the Bull Demon King and Sun Wukong lived in was included inside the save point as well.

He could understand a save point being excessively vast, sure, but not when it also included the Bull Demon King's residence. His breathing technique training and the battle against the Heavenly World's army took place near that location, after all.

"I just can't figure out what's going on here."

Su-hyeun went back to reality for a little while before returning to the trial. After confirming the range of the safe zone one more time, he couldn't help but scratch his head.

No matter how much he tried to organize his current situation, he could glean only one message from this vast scope of the safe zone.

"This place I'm in is not related to the contents of the trial itself."

Defeat the Jade Emperor and bring down the Heavenly World.

In a way, those two would be the final aim of this trial. In that case, perhaps it wasn't strange to see that the safe zone's range extended to the entire surface world where humans and Yogoes lived together.

The Jade Emperor existed in the Heavenly World, after all. And the surface world would have been a brief stopover, a place to take a short break, during the trial.

"If that's true, then what about these things I'm doing now?"

The Bull Demon King's friendship or the Sage Arts he was teaching Su-hyeun…

"Were they really unrelated to the current trial as well?"

Su-hyeun thought of them as a kind of reward. During the progress of trials, one would sometimes receive new skills and the like as if they were rewards.

However, from what he had experienced so far, such things were always treated as parts of the trial itself.

"Well, it will work out somehow."

Su-hyeun could only sigh at the complicated thoughts in his mind and returned to the Bull Demon King's residence.

Smack, smack—!

Bang—!

He found Sun Wukong swinging around his Ruyi Jingu Bang as he sparred against his own clones, no less.

"Ah, you're home already?"

"Yes, I'm back."

"I guess your hometown was pretty close by? You came back sooner than I thought."

Su-hyeun used the excuse of going back to his hometown for a little while to leave the residence. But he came back even before half a day had passed, so he had to immediately come up with another excuse. "Ah, yes. I just, you know, went to say hello, that's all."

"Oh, is that so?"

"Looks like I need to show up there every now and then. Folks at home were worried about me, so…"

"Sure. Doesn't sound like it's far away anyway, so it's fine."

Perhaps Sun Wukong was too focused in the sparring session that he answered in a disinterested manner.

Thinking that he somehow got through with his story, Su-hyeun deeply sighed in relief.

But before he could enter the residence, he sensed lots of gazes falling on him and took a look around. "And what's the meaning of this?"

Sun Wukong and his clones who were engaged in a sparring session only until a second ago were now all staring at Su-hyeun.

"What do you mean?" Sun Wukong replied in his usual mischievous manner at Su-hyeun's question. "Training, obviously."