Chapter 66: War Is the Way of Deception (7)

“Step back, Young Lady.”

Gong-eop’s sleeve snapped.

His two hands, filled with Prajna Great Ability, unfolded the Tathagata Divine Palm—one of Shaolin’s highest absolute arts.

He thrust out a single palm, as if he would embrace every living being across ten thousand miles of the mortal world.

The Buddha’s palm that even the Great Sage could not escape.

The instant the cart touched Gong-eop’s palm, it stopped—as if time itself had frozen.

At the same time, a dizzying burst of wind pressure exploded behind Gong-eop.

A method that receives force and diverts it elsewhere, neutralizing it.

An astonishing move of the Tathagata Divine Palm, holding the profound principle of emptiness.

Gong-eop, who had halted the cart, widened his eyes.

Eyes full of anger.

But the middle-aged man who had done it still looked relaxed.

He wasn’t even drawing up his inner power.

“What kind of person are you, that you would test us like this?”

“Test?”

“You do not draw your sword, yet you threaten us. What is it you want?”

Gong-eop’s voice sharpened.

Because he was genuinely furious.

Shaolin would rather break and shatter than bend.

And Gong-eop, who had carved that teaching into his bones, was the same.

“I have no intention of doing something as petty as ‘testing.’”

The man slowly set his hand on his sword hilt.

In that instant, Soyak and Gong-eop were overwhelmed by the aura he released.

Even though he was drawing the blade slowly—so slowly—they couldn’t move at all.

‘So this is the Transformation Realm...’

Soyak’s pupils shook.

Even if it was him, he would still fall far short of the Sword Sovereign—said to have gone beyond the Transformation Realm and reached the next.

And yet.

And yet her body couldn’t move under the pressure pouring out of him.

As if the entire sky was pressing down.

‘...The sky?’

She had felt something like this before.

It had been incomparably smaller and more pathetic than this, but—

from Namgung Seon.

The first move of Sky-Vault Unfettered Sword.

Jade Sky Presses the Crown was exactly like this.

“Y-you... you can’t be...”

“You’re too sharp, little lady. Usually that means you die early.”

A cold light flashed in the man’s eyes.

His aura streamed out in thick cords, and even the Arhat monks who had been inside the building burst out and threw themselves in front of Gong-eop and Soyak.

“Move back!”

Gong-eop roared, packing it with a lion’s roar.

The Arhat monks, who had instinctively stepped in and frozen in place, suddenly loosened.

They followed orders without hesitation.

“Yes, Master!!!”

They retreated behind Gong-eop and Soyak, leveled identical cudgels, and formed up.

There were eighteen Arhat monks.

What they unfolded was the Eighteen Arhat Formation.

It was inferior to the One Hundred Eight Arhat Formation—the pinnacle of Shaolin’s Arhat monks.

And yet it was a formation so refined it was hard to believe it was limited to so few people.

It was the mouth of hell Shaolin revealed only to those it had opened the Killing Precept against and named a Public Enemy.

“I asked who I am, didn’t I?”

The man leveled his sword at Soyak.

Killing intent flew along the blade tip.

Soyak shrank on instinct.

“If you so much as brush my sleeve, I’ll tell you.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because it’s fun. And because I’m starting to look forward to it.”

Heaven-Scorching Sword Tiger’s gaze sharpened.

Because he had seen something in Soyak.

Jegal Yeon had written it in her letter.

Someone Eunsong had chosen.

Eunsong was also one of the Heaven-Toppling Society.

And he knew how high, how strict, how mercilessly selective Eunsong’s eyes were when he judged talent.

This was the raw stone Eunsong had picked.

“...Is one exchange enough?”

“One exchange is enough. Touch me.”

So he wanted to test her.

Even that aura—rolling like a ghostly haze—stuck in his eye.

And more than anything...

that auspicious energy.

‘Even if Mount Hua is a Daoist sect, she can’t have been inside for even a month.’

When he brought in other disciples, Eunsong hadn’t given the Heaven-Toppling Society any special notice.

So this time as well, he had assumed it would be no more than “talented.”

But no.

That child was a monster.

Something young and off the rails was standing right in front of him.

“I’m going.”

“Young Lady Soyak, but—”

“It’s fine, Master.”

Light swelled across the Three Origins Twenty-Eight Mansions star pattern carved into Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge.

A vast Sword Light.

A blade brimming with brilliant radiance drew a dazzling trail every time it moved.

Soyak stepped forward, leaving Gong-eop behind.

She placed inner power into the tips of her feet as she executed her footwork.

More than usual.

When she drove the ground away underfoot, the scenery stretched in an instant.

It took only a blink to reach right in front of him.

KAAANG—!!!

Blade met blade, and sparks burst.

Ordinarily both swords should have snapped—

but both were treasured blades, stuffed full of inner power.

Not only did they not break, neither edge even chipped, as they spat killing intent at each other.

“With that light body, a straight charge is insufficient—!”

Before he could finish, Soyak shifted her center of gravity in midair.

She changed the point of application of her force, gripping the end of the hilt.

And as the edges slid past each other—

Soyak invoked the fourth move of Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword first.

Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword, Fourth Form.

Riotous-Blossom Vortex.

A whirlwind of flower-wind scattering in chaos.

At point-blank range, the blade tip—packed with Sword Light—summoned countless black plum blossoms.

Each and every one was a blade of inner power, swirling in confusion.

If the goal was to “brush” him, it was optimal.

But her opponent was Transformation Realm.

An expert commonly said to have reached the level of becoming something beyond human.

And he didn’t even use Sky-Vault Unfettered Sword.

Three-Talents Sword, First Form.

Mount Tai Presses the Crown.

A vertical cleave that carried the crushing weight of a great mountain.

The Three-Talents Sword was the sort of thing people called a “five-penny street-market martial art.”

And among it, the first move was nothing more than a simple downward cut.

A trace of Sword Force—the mark of the Transformation Realm—flickered on his blade, then scattered.

But it didn’t simply scatter and vanish.

It acted like a net, a surface that covered space itself—

and still crushed and pinned the air.

“...Ah.”

Soyak gripped her sword and raised it above her head.

But how could a narrow strip of steel stop rain that fell across her entire body?

By the same principle, she couldn’t block Heaven-Scorching Sword Tiger Namgung Byeok’s move completely.

Her shoulders, her head, her whole body were crushed downward.

She bit her lip and endured, but the pressure only grew heavier and heavier.

And yet a strange light came into Namgung Byeok’s eyes.

She should have already been flattened into the ground.

But she was enduring.

And the inner power flowing through that sword...

‘It’s canceling out my inner power.’

He felt what Namgung Seon had felt.

This was close to an issue of “compatibility.”

The inner power flowing through his sword was slowly splitting apart and fading.

Of course, compared to Namgung Byeok’s deep inner strength built over decades, it was laughably small.

But the power residing in the girl’s blade was unmistakably cleaving his inner power apart.

Right now, he was crushing her with overwhelming quantity of inner power.

That was all.

A single cup of water was helpless in front of a vast fire-demon.

But if she grew, it would certainly extinguish fire and flow cold.

“...This is interesting.”

Namgung Byeok withdrew his sword.

The moment he did, Soyak collapsed where she stood.

Gong-eop couldn’t even move.

Neither could the Arhat monks.

“Huff... hngh... haa...”

“You, Shaolin friend. Take her.”

Cold sweat poured off her like rain.

Gong-eop rushed in, lifted Soyak, and pulled back again.

He supported her fragile body to her feet and wiped the sweat from her brow with his sleeve.

“Are you all right, Young Lady Soyak?”

“I’m... fine...”

“You didn’t brush my sleeve, so I won’t tell you. Still, I’ll give you a hint.”

He smiled faintly.

Then, as if he were lightly floating, he sprang up onto a thick tree branch and stood there.

“I know your master. And I know your father.”

“...What?”

“That’s all. Someday, ‘we’ will come find you.”

With that, he disappeared.

What remained was the two-story safe house layered with corpses.

And the unconscious younger sister of Seol Yegang, locked inside the cart.

*****

Anhui City.

Night-Heaven Hall safe house.

“D-do you know who we are?! You dare—knowing who we are—!”

A safe house caretaker with one arm smashed to ruin staggered as he vomited blood.

He was a Night-Heaven Guest as well, but there was no such thing as “tough” in a sudden assault.

And more than anything, the one who had ambushed them was the Beggar Union’s Seventh-Knot elder.

Elder Gwak Bakdeuk, proud of seven knots.

The arm struck by Eighteen Dragon-Subduing Palms had been reduced to dumpling filling.

Muscle and tendon were completely severed, bones shattered into dozens of pieces...

He would never be able to use that hand again.

“You asking if I know who you are? I do. But I’m going to pretend I don’t.”

“...What?”

“You’re just going to die as Assassin Organization scraps. Got it?”

Elder Gwak smirked.

A terrifying level of inner power gathered into his two hands.

Eighteen Dragon-Subduing Palms, First Form.

One Palm Rejects the Dragon.

With a single palm strike carrying an immense dragon force, the bastard’s ribcage collapsed inward.

Instant death.