Chapter 185: Adversary (4)

There was a place where mountain peaks rose without end, stretching away like waves upon a sea.

Beyond the Central Plains.

The Hundred Thousand Great Mountains, lying in the most rugged reaches of the vast Chinese continent.

Even the view from a pavilion alone was enough to take one’s breath away.

And inside that pavilion stood Seon Byeok-il, Left Luminary Guardian of the Demonic Cult.

“So... Ak Jupae is dead. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“...Yes. That is correct.”

“What a shame. Gwangyeol will be terribly disappointed.”

Jak Gwangyeol, the Right Luminary Guardian.

A powerhouse at the middle stage of the Transformation Realm, considered nearly equal in cultivation to Seon Byeok-il.

He was also a friend with whom Seon Byeok-il often shared a drink.

“Have you told him yet?”

“...Not yet.”

“Then go ahead and tell him. Don’t worry. He knows how to tell right from wrong. He won’t charge straight into Mount Hua demanding vengeance for his disciple.”

To the bitter end, the Flame-Saber Lord Ak Jupae had insisted that he and Jak Gwangyeol were not master and disciple.

Jak Gwangyeol, for his part, had respected that pride to some extent.

So, outwardly, they described their exchanges merely as “watching each other train”...

But anyone looking at them could tell that one side was plainly teaching the other.

In the end, the Flame-Saber Lord had even changed his weapon to a thin saber resembling Jak Gwangyeol’s curved blade.

Changed was not quite the right word.

He had remade it entirely.

He melted down the Flame-Dragon Saber he had once wielded in a renowned forge reserved only for masters of the Demonic Cult, then had it reforged from scratch.

As a result, his saber art became even more precise and lethal.

Jak Gwangyeol had given him advice tailored perfectly to him.

And once Ak Jupae realized that he was no longer a martial artist walking the righteous path, he absorbed Jak Gwangyeol’s methods without reservation.

The Demonic Cult’s intelligence network ran deep and wide.

They had willingly provided the Flame-Saber Lord with the information he sought.

Information on Falling Plum Elegy.

One of the two sword arts wielded by the Great Grand Master around the time Mount Hua was founded.

Nor had it been difficult to discover whether that divine art had ever been passed down.

In the year the War of the Righteous and Demonic ended, a Branch Family disciple had received it from Mount Hua.

The Demonic Cult had already been watching him closely because he had used the Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword to kill several of their masters during the war.

In other words, he had been easy to trace.

Even the great war fifty years ago had not completely destroyed the Demonic Cult.

The conflict had ended in their defeat because the Heavenly Demon—their symbol, strongest warrior, and supreme ruler—had died.

The cult had certainly been crippled.

But its organizations had survived.

Its intelligence apparatus was no exception.

Naturally, the whereabouts of prominent righteous masters marked as threats remained among its highest surveillance priorities.

Going even further, the Flower-Halo Sect itself had been intended, in an emergency...

to be turned from within, just like the Shandong Ak Family.

They had planned to plant their own spies there as well.

The Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge.

Falling Plum Elegy.

The gift of the Harmonization Scripture.

Marriage, followed by the birth of a young daughter.

The Flower-Halo Sect’s success and rise as one of Mount Hua’s Branch Families.

The Demonic Cult had recorded and tracked all of it.

There had been only one uncertainty.

Whether the “sword mark” that killed the Flame-Saber Lord’s son truly came from Falling Plum Elegy, the art bestowed upon the Black Plum Sword Lord.

After all, no one shouted the name of a technique every time they swung a sword.

But the Flame-Saber Lord’s death had settled the matter.

The sword mark Soyak left matched the one preserved from the Great Grand Master.

And among the unknown martial arts created in the Great Grand Master’s era and connected to her, there was only one possibility.

“...Falling Plum Elegy.”

The Demonic Cult possessed only one piece of information about the art.

The sword mark left by a single form.

And its name.

This incident, however, had given them a little more.

“...Is it really that extraordinary?”

The low-ranking cultist in front of him knew nothing.

Seon Byeok-il quietly looked down at him.

His expression was kindly.

His eyes were not.

“...My apologies.”

“As long as you understand. You may go.”

The moment he received permission, the man practically fled, even resorting to Lightness Arts as he raced away.

He had just taken the full pressure of a Transformation Realm master head-on.

Cold sweat had already soaked his back.

The Left Luminary Guardian was not a man who enjoyed killing without reason.

The very fact that someone with such a temperament had risen to his position was unusual within the Demonic Cult.

There was even a rather unflattering rumor that he was the most merciful master in the entire cult.

But at the moment, Seon Byeok-il could not have cared less about any of that.

By nature, he preferred problems that required thought.

And for a man like him...

the story of a young master who had cut down a Transformation Realm Demonic Human in a single exchange was deeply fascinating.

“...She must have crossed the wall of the Transformation Realm sometime during those three years.”

A Transcendent Apex master possessing an art that allowed them to kill a Transformation Realm master in one exchange?

That was the sort of thing that existed only in pulp fiction.

If Falling Plum Elegy truly were such an art...

there was no chance Mount Hua itself would ever have allowed it to be lost.

Once one reached the Transformation Realm, every individual insight created an absolute difference.

The gap might indeed be as thin as a single sheet of paper.

But what if that single sheet of paper could never be crossed?

If both martial artists stood at the early stage of the Transformation Realm, it should not be possible for one side to establish such overwhelming superiority that they slaughtered the other outright.

Which meant...

Seon Byeok-il had no choice but to estimate Cheon Soyak at the middle stage of the Transformation Realm, at minimum.

“Frankly, it might be more believable to say Mount Hua failed to recognize an unparalleled divine art and left it gathering dust somewhere.”

After muttering the bitter thought, Seon Byeok-il left the wine bottle behind in the pavilion and rose.

A new Transformation Realm master had appeared among the righteous factions.

And of all places, at Mount Hua, where a hardliner had recently risen to become Sect Leader.

A master who, by his estimate, was at least middle-stage...

His appetite for wine vanished entirely.

“This... must be reported to the Heavenly Demon.”

Muttering to himself, Seon Byeok-il raced toward the highest peak of the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains.

*****

Even Mount Hua’s Great Grand Master had not been the number one martial artist under heaven in his time.

But when it came to martial theory, there could be no doubt that his talent had been unsurpassed.

Otherwise, he could never have created both heart methods and martial arts himself.

All the more so when those creations were supreme arts.

The more Soyak took them apart and examined them anew, the more astonishing they became.

Heart method, martial art, and the weapon designed to wield that martial art existed in perfect unity.

Using internal energy imbued with the Harmonization Scripture’s properties to perform Falling Plum Elegy through the Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge—a sword slightly longer and slimmer than an ordinary blade...

The difference compared with performing Falling Plum Elegy under any other conditions was like heaven and earth.

“...But this is as far as it goes.”

Soyak murmured quietly.

The middle stage of the Transformation Realm.

That had been the limit of the Great Grand Master’s cultivation.

It had also been the limit reached by Elder Jeonggang, the Mount Hua Sword Emperor.

She had fully absorbed everything they had left behind.

“So you’ve performed all of it?”

Eunsong’s voice came from behind her.

Naturally, Cheon Soyak had known he was approaching.

She had simply let him come.

“...Everything I can perform right now.”

“I see. Then I’ll need some time as well.”

The Great Grand Master’s true gift had not been martial might capable of reaching the heavens.

It had been the ability to create martial arts that might one day do so.

That was less the talent of a warrior than the talent of a scholar of martial theory.

Much like Eunsong.

Of course, Eunsong’s own talent did not reach the Great Grand Master’s level.

Neither had Jeonggang’s, despite possessing both the mind of a martial scholar and the gifts of a warrior.

But both men were closer to martial scholars than Soyak was.

The spark needed to analyze an established body of knowledge, dismantle its principles, and reconstruct them into observable form.

That was the perspective of a martial scholar.

“When you say you need time...”

“It looks ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) to me as though you’ve already absorbed nearly everything contained within that martial art.”

“...Yes.”

Hearing her master say aloud exactly what she herself had been thinking left a faint bitterness behind.

To have absorbed the full essence of a martial art...

was almost the same as being told that the art could no longer take her any further.

“...If you’re willing, may I take a look at the manual for Falling Plum Elegy?”

Eunsong was trying to help her.

Soyak considered it for a moment, then nodded.

“Falling Plum Elegy has a paired heart method. I’ll show you that as well.”

“...So that was why you had already learned a separate heart method before you joined us.”

“Yes.”

Soyak nodded slowly.

Only then did Eunsong finally understand the heart method Soyak had been practicing—the one that had clearly originated from Mount Hua, yet whose exact source he had never been able to identify.

“...Until now, I assumed it was simply a heart method your sect had developed for itself before receiving Mount Hua’s manuals. So that too came from Mount Hua.”

“The Flower-Halo Sect never used a heart method of its own. Anyone could learn what Mount Hua taught us.”

That was true.

Mount Hua’s Primordial Origin Clear-Heart Method was practiced by everyone from Branch Family disciples to main mountain disciples.

With the exception of the Purple Haze Divine Art, which was passed only to the Sect Leader, every disciple of Mount Hua shared the same heart method.

That alone spoke to how complete it was.

“I’ll give you the Harmonization Scripture manual... in seven days. The original was destroyed in the fire, so I’ll have to write it out from memory.”

Soyak gave a rueful smile and shrugged.