Chapter 167: Running Rampant (1)

Everyone was steeped in melancholy.

Eunsong, Eun Jeong, Cheonjeong, and the other third-generation disciples.

Even Myeonggon and Jeonggang began visiting Eunsong’s residence from time to time.

It was a rare occurrence.

“You could have summoned me. Why did you come all this way...?”

“That child spent more time here than anywhere else, did she not?”

Jeonggang smiled bitterly.

Eunsong sensed a faint feeling of indebtedness behind that smile.

After a moment, he quietly asked,

“Great Grand Master... are your preparations going well?”

“If you mean my preparations to return home, then yes. Mount Hua did not cast me aside after all, despite my having devoted my entire life to it.”

Jeongbeop was not a heartless man.

He was merely strict.

He would provide Jeonggang with a carriage and guards for the journey home, as well as enough money to live comfortably for whatever time remained to him.

It was an old man’s journey home.

His final journey.

The cost of a two-month journey was no more than a handful compared to the gold accumulated by a great sect like Mount Hua.

“Even so, I cannot help but feel troubled.”

“Why does it trouble you?”

“Because I told that child she must cut off the Sword Sovereign’s head.”

Sword Sovereign Namgung Ak.

There was only one reason no other modifier—Azure Sky, Namgung, or otherwise—preceded his title.

Of all who wielded a sword, he was the strongest.

And that was no exaggeration.

The man who had severed the Heavenly Demon’s head.

The ruler who now held dominion over the Martial Alliance.

Even His Majesty the Emperor tolerated the methods by which he controlled and governed the martial artists.

The imperial court, of course, possessed countless experts.

Its vast and immeasurable wealth made that possible.

Yet among them, there was not a single martial artist who could rival the Sword Sovereign.

Even if the court mobilized every one of those supreme experts and somehow succeeded in killing him...

The resulting losses would be beyond measure.

The current emperor desired an age of peace.

So long as the Sword Sovereign did not challenge imperial authority—

So long as the martial world did not emerge to trample the secular realm—the emperor would remain silent.

And within the martial world that even the emperor chose to tolerate...

The Sword Sovereign was its absolute ruler, its sovereign, and the lord of its world.

Killing him may already have been the child’s own goal.

Even so, Jeonggang could not deny that he had placed yet another burden upon her shoulders.

A personal vendetta could be abandoned. She could flee from it.

But Soyak was now the sword of the Reverse Heaven Society.

“And I am hardly the only one who has done so.”

“...Everyone in the Reverse Heaven Society will owe her a debt.”

“I hope that child reaches the Transformation Realm as quickly as possible. And then the realm beyond it.”

Jeonggang spoke bitterly.

He wished she could simply ascend to the Mysterious Realm in the blink of an eye and defeat the Sword Sovereign.

He wished the years of hardship awaiting her would not last long.

“...Even so, this is the path she chose.”

“Eunsong. Do you truly believe that?”

“...Yes, Great Grand Master. The Soyak I saw was young, but she was not ignorant of the world. She was a child struggling desperately against her own helplessness.”

He still remembered.

Those tiny hands clutching the well bucket.

Her entire household had burned to the ground, and she had been sold as a servant girl...

Yet she had held that bucket as though it were a sword.

“So do not burden yourself with too much guilt. Besides, you were not the only one who said such a thing to her.”

“...What do you mean?”

“I was the first. I told her I would take her away from that place, bring her to Mount Hua, and give her the chance to train with a sword—if she would kill the Sword Sovereign.”

Jeonggang, Myeonggon, and even Cheonjeong turned to look at Eunsong.

Eunsong silently raised his eyes to the sky.

The sky he would never reach.

It lay beyond ordinary men like himself, whose feet were bound to the earth.

Even his junior brother Eun Jeong, a genius said to soar above all others, could never reach it.

Humans could not ascend to the heavens.

The Sword Sovereign was already a monster.

To face a monster that had climbed into the heavens...

They needed another monster.

Only a dragon could slay a dragon.

In a battle between such beings, humans were nothing more than insignificant creatures unworthy even of taking part.

*****

Her preconceptions about caves had been shattered to some extent.

She had expected the air to be musty.

It was not.

The water was cold and clean as well.

She had assumed a cave would be filthy inside.

That, too, had been wrong.

Soyak slowly ran a hand across the smooth wall.

“...He did not simply choose some random cave.”

Had Eun Jeong said he had discovered and inherited a place that already existed?

Everything about it felt ancient.

The walls had been polished smooth and painted with plum blossoms, though the red pigment had faded with age.

The blue pigment across the ceiling had faded as well, perhaps painted there in an attempt to replace the sky.

Soyak slowly walked toward the center.

The cave contained little more than a fairly large circular training ground and a small living area beside it.

A deep opening had been carved into the ceiling above the center of the training ground, revealing a mere handful of sky.

It had been made to allow the air to circulate.

“...Master Eun Jeong was right. Trying to build up my body would be pointless.”

Internal energy granted power independent of muscle strength.

A sword imbued with Sword Light or Sword Qi could be swung with no more strength than a child possessed in their wrist, yet still slice through stone and steel as easily as tofu.

At that point, physical strength was meaningless.

No matter how rigorously she trained her body, she could never surpass Shaolin’s Vajra-Indestructible Body.

No matter how much she cultivated brute force and raw power...

She could never overcome the advantage granted by an inborn physique.

Dragging what she lacked up to the level of an ordinary person would only waste time.

Instead, she had to perfect what she excelled at until no one else could ever catch her.

Beneath that handful of sky, Soyak sat cross-legged at the center of the small training ground.

Then she began to contemplate her inner self.

Her consciousness slowly sank into the depths.

Silence.

A cold stillness unlike anything she could find anywhere on Mount Hua surrounded her...

And the next moment, Soyak opened her eyes above the surface of the water once more.

“...Ah.”

The black qilin was licking her cheek.

Soyak gave a faint laugh as she rose and pulled it into her arms. It had shrunk until it was no larger than a puppy.

The black qilin could now change its size at will.

“You have imprisoned yourself.”

The black snake gazed down at Soyak.

“Yes. I have.”

“Do you believe enlightenment will come faster because of that? That you will grow more quickly by training in solitude? Humans truly never change, no matter the age...”

“No.”

Soyak shook her head.

The black snake’s pupils narrowed.

It moved closer until Soyak could have touched its scales merely by extending one slender arm.

She felt the black snake’s breath.

It was unbearably cold and heavy.

Every breath she drew seemed to freeze her lungs.

“There is only one reason I shut myself away.”

Soyak calmly drew the Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge from her waist.

At the sight, the black snake straightened and towered over her.

The black qilin judged the movement a threat. Its body expanded, curling around Soyak protectively.

“So that no one would have to worry about me.”

“Are you pointing your sword at me?”

“I thought about it for a long time. About how I could reach the Transformation Realm—and surpass it—in the shortest possible time.”

Soyak filled her lungs with air.

Then she slowly lowered the sword she had drawn.

The instant its tip touched the water, she understood that this entire mindscape was no different from her own heart.

This place was her mind.

Her inner world.

And here, at least, she was the master of everything.

“How interesting.”

The small girl intended to drive herself to the edge of a cliff.

Either she would die...

Or she would be forced to become stronger simply to survive.

The girl’s sword was forever aimed at something far above her.

At the Sword Sovereign, who had cut down the Heavenly Demon and risen to become the number one martial artist under heaven.

Soyak may have been a dragon and a monster, but she was still young and incomplete.

The Sword Sovereign, by contrast, was a mature and complete monster.

And so, to defeat the Sword Sovereign, she now turned her blade upon a monster even greater than he was.

“If I truly bare my fangs, I could shatter your soul, kill you, and leave your body behind as an empty husk. You must already know that.”

“Because you will not do that.”

Silence followed.

Then a booming laugh shook Soyak’s very soul.

“How interesting. How very interesting!”

The next moment, darkness spread across the serpent’s body.

It transformed into the shape of a man.

Yet it could hardly be called fully human.

Its entire body was black as darkness itself, without even the faintest trace of facial features.

Only its eerily white hair rippled around it.

In one hand, it held a sword forged from darkness.

Having taken the form of a man, the black snake conveyed its will in a low voice.

“Then speak the name I whispered to you. The two stars bound to your fate—the Heavenly Killing Star and the Army-Breaking Star—are my two eyes. Do so, and I will gladly answer you.”

“...Then I shall, Dijiang.”