Chapter 184: Adversary (3)

There was a place where the Demonic Energy was even denser than in the heart of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult’s Hundred Thousand Great Mountains.

And it was inside the Namgung Household.

Sword Sovereign Namgung Ak stood before the severed head of the Little Heavenly Demon in place of his son, the current Family Head.

“Having such an inadequate son must be quite a burden.”

The voice was openly mocking.

With his head severed and no torso beneath it, it was almost impossible to understand how he could even move his tongue and produce speech.

Ordinarily, a severed head could not talk.

Mostly because the person was dead, of course, but there was another problem as well.

It was the same reason a soldier whose lung had been pierced from behind by a spear might be unable to scream.

To make a sound, air had to be driven through the throat.

Without lungs, there was no way to force enough air through it to produce a voice.

A severed head should have been no different.

Yet the severed head of the “Little Heavenly Demon” before him defied that simple truth.

It might have been a mystery to others...

but not to the Sword Sovereign, who had reached such extraordinary heights himself.

“You make remarkably good use of your upper dantian.”

“I may not have your talent, but I have had far more time than you.”

“Is that so.”

The Little Heavenly Demon unquestionably looked like a young man.

And yet, with astonishing arrogance, he claimed to have lived longer than the old man before him.

Unless he had reached the Mysterious Realm—a realm spoken of only in old records and oral tradition—and undergone such a profound transformation that his body had returned to youth...

then this was most likely the result of the Demonic Cult’s evil rites and Demonic Arts.

Through abilities cultivated over that long span of time, the Little Heavenly Demon could exert a faint degree of control over the natural energy around him despite being nothing more than a head.

That was likely how he forced air through his severed throat and managed to speak.

Of course, that was the extent of it.

He could not shout.

His voice could rise only a little above a whisper.

“You planted Demonic Energy in my son.”

“Did you enjoy my humble gift?”

“I burned all of it away. Surely by now you understand that your little tricks are useless.”

Sword Sovereign Namgung Ak narrowed his eyes as he looked down at the Little Heavenly Demon.

The severed head merely grinned back.

It was an almost shameless smile.

“Whether it was useless or not remains to be seen.”

“You should have learned over the past fifty years that your pointless schemes accomplish nothing.”

Contempt colored the Sword Sovereign’s voice.

Merely thinking about everything that “head” had done over the years left him deeply irritated.

The Little Heavenly Demon’s head hung suspended in the air, tightly bound within steel rings.

The rings had even been nailed directly into his skull to hold him in place.

Originally, the head had simply been placed upright atop the altar.

Then he had used the air to tip himself over and roll around.

That alone was nowhere near enough to carry him up the stairs.

But the mere fact that the loathsome head could escape restraint and move about at will had been enough to greatly displease the Sword Sovereign.

“Planning to crush my head again this time?”

“...I do not waste strength on meaningless acts.”

He had tried it once.

He had crushed the entire head into pulp.

And on that occasion, the Sword Sovereign had been forced to witness a sight so grotesque that he never wished to see it again in his life.

The shattered chunks of flesh had crawled back together.

They gathered, fused, and blended into one mass...

spitting out all the dirt and dust they had accumulated while dragging themselves across the ground.

As an added nuisance, the process had freed the head from its restraints again.

The Sword Sovereign had personally seized the restored head afterward and nailed it back into the steel rings.

Just then, a knock sounded against the closed door far above.

The Sword Sovereign slowly rose.

At some point, a mass of the Demonic Energy filling this secret underground chamber had gathered within his palm.

Naturally, the Sword Sovereign had no ability to control Demonic Energy itself.

Instead, he had used his internal energy to gather and compress the surrounding Demonic Energy through a delicate, almost elegant method.

A thin, transparent membrane of internal energy enclosed the Demonic Energy and pressed it together.

“Well then, until next time!”

The Sword Sovereign did not respond to the head’s farewell.

He simply climbed the long, steep staircase.

*****

As usual, Namgung Seon finished his dawn training and headed for the Family Head’s Office.

He had an appointment with his grandfather, the Sword Sovereign.

The problem was that no one was there.

“...Grandfather certainly wouldn’t oversleep.”

People said sleep grew lighter with age, and in any case, the Sword Sovereign was the number one martial artist under heaven.

If ordinary human common sense still applied to him, he would have been bedridden with age and illness long ago.

Namgung Seon sat in one of the comfortable chairs prepared for guests and mentally retraced that morning’s training.

The movements he remembered from Soyak had been soft and graceful, yet powerful.

They were unmistakably from Mount Hua, but at a glance they could almost bring Wudang’s Taiji Wisdom Sword to mind.

Of course, part of that was probably due to Soyak’s natural disposition.

A martial artist born with a powerful physical frame had to walk a different path from one who was not.

It was true that martial arts and internal energy could overcome differences in the body...

but between martial artists of equal level, there was no denying that the one born with the stronger frame and physique could bring greater raw strength to bear.

And Namgung Seon had been born with better physical conditions than Soyak.

Now twenty, he stood well over six feet tall.

Fourteen was certainly an age when a person could still grow considerably...

but he could hardly imagine Soyak growing tall enough to rival him.

The same was true of the sturdiness of their bones and the thickness of their musculature.

No matter how intensely a girl barely five feet tall trained for three years, there was a limit to how much muscle she could put on.

And her slender frame was something she had been born with. That could not be changed.

Which meant...

the essence of the martial arts and swordsmanship Soyak relied upon was unlikely to have changed even now.

She wouldn’t be stupid enough to start trying to build raw strength at this point.

She was an intelligent, brilliant girl.

A girl whose swordsmanship, armed with subtlety and profound intricacy, had once suppressed his Azure Sky.

That was why Namgung Seon regarded Soyak as his adversary.

He had replayed what she had shown at the Ilji Gathering countless times and fought innumerable imaginary spars against her in his mind.

Of course, the Cheon Soyak of that time would now be an easy opponent for him to defeat.

The difference between their levels had grown that large.

Namgung Seon now stood at the very end of Transcendent Apex, knocking on the door of the Transformation Realm.

So time and again, Namgung Seon imagined a stronger version of Cheon Soyak.

The problem was that he could not imagine a degree of subtlety and profundity beyond what she had already displayed then.

Even so, Namgung Seon possessed a certain confidence.

All he had to do was pressure her so relentlessly that she could no longer employ the soft swordsmanship that was her greatest strength.

That was a viable strategy.

Even simply pouring enormous amounts of internal energy into his sword and producing greater Sword Qi could accomplish it.

He was the Namgung successor acknowledged by the Sword Sovereign himself, a direct descendant of the main bloodline, and the spirit medicines he had consumed over the years could have filled an entire chest.

If the contest came down to internal energy, he was certain he would never lose.

Before overwhelming dominance, principles like softness overcoming hardness or yielding first to seize the advantage eventually ceased to matter.

That was the path of supremacy his grandfather, Sword Sovereign Namgung Ak, had walked.

Just as his thoughts reached that point, he heard footsteps.

Namgung Seon narrowed his eyes and looked around.

The sound...

was not coming from the direction of the door through which he had entered.

Then, with a creak, an enormous bookshelf swung open like a door.

“You’re already here.”

Namgung Seon rose and stared at the Sword Sovereign standing at the entrance to the secret passage.

His expression was faintly stunned.

“...What in the world is that?”

“That is precisely what I summoned you here to explain. Sit back down.”

Namgung Ak lightly pushed the bookshelf closed again, sealing the passage behind him.

But the secret passage itself was not what truly shocked Namgung Seon.

It was the black, beadlike object floating above Namgung Ak’s palm.

“...What is that?”

Namgung Ak had contained it so perfectly that not even the Demonic Energy’s characteristic chill, foulness, and clinging discomfort could leak out.

Namgung Seon narrowed his eyes and studied the sphere.

Inside it, something resembling dense, murky black mist churned like liquor swirling within a gourd.

Instinctively, he understood what he was looking at.

“...Is that Demonic Energy?”

“It is time I told you what lies beneath this place.”

Slowly, the Sword Sovereign began explaining to his true successor, now twenty years old, the unnatural thing sealed underground.

But the truth...

was slightly different from what the world believed.