To a martial artist, a wave of qi was power made manifest.
Jin Taekyung could feel that more clearly than ever now. He could feel just how terrifyingly powerful the enemy before him was.
Rumble.
The air refused to settle beneath the force of the Blood Lord’s qi. Faint tremors came from every direction, but Taekyung’s mind grew calm enough for him to answer evenly, despite the cold fire in the Blood Lord’s voice and gaze.
“You’re just the same as before. That damned mouth of yours.”
Taekyung let his smile fade. He raised his beloved spear, White Flame, and pointed it at the Blood Lord.
“This time will be different. Everything else will be.”
“Different? Ha!”
Now it was the Blood Lord’s turn to laugh. He eyed Taekyung with open contempt.
“I heard the Hidden Dragon had become a Divine Dragon, but you’re acting like you’ve gotten your hands on a dragon pearl, too. Struggle all you want. You’re still no match for me. You know that yourself, don’t you?”
To the Blood Lord’s surprise, Taekyung nodded readily.
“Yeah. Probably.”
“What?”
“Why the reaction? Shouldn’t you be a little happy I admitted it so honestly?”
“…You.”
The Blood Lord’s voice dropped, but Taekyung spoke before he could continue.
“I knew as soon as I saw you. I couldn’t tell exactly how strong you were.”
Even stones scattered along a roadside varied in size and shape. Why wouldn’t mountains tall enough to touch the clouds vary in height?
Taekyung had climbed from the very bottom of the Murim to the heights of Supreme Peak. The moment he came face-to-face with the Blood Lord, he understood.
“You’re stronger than me. No question.”
He didn’t know exactly how wide the gap was. But even if it was only one move—or half a move—Jin Taekyung accepted that the Blood Lord was the stronger one.
He remembered his not-so-distant past, when he’d been no better than an ant, helpless beneath a power so immense it felt absolute. Back then, the Blood Lord had seemed as unreachable as someone above the clouds.
“But you know what?”
Taekyung held the Blood Lord’s gaze as he asked the question quietly.
Past and present overlapped before his eyes. Alongside the knowledge that the Blood Lord was stronger came another realization, running down his spine like an electric current.
“Back then, I thought I could fight with everything I had and still never touch a hair on your head…”
His voice trailed off, and he smiled.
Only today had he understood. The Blood Lord whose mere presence had once left him struggling to breathe was no longer beyond the clouds.
“Now I feel like I could reach you just by stretching out my hand.”
“…!”
The Blood Lord’s eyes widened. A dozen or so zhang1 away, Taekyung’s figure wavered like a mirage.
Fshh.
His shape remained, but his body was gone. There wasn’t even a trace of his presence, yet the killing intent within it was unmistakable.
Whooosh!
The Blood Lord heard the eerie sound clearly, as though the wind itself were howling.
At the same instant, he saw it.
Space warped under immense pressure. With Shifting Form and Position brought to its pinnacle, a spearhead outran sound and tore through the compressed air.
“Jin Taekyung!”
And then—
KWA-A-A!
The Blood Lord’s furious shout and the muffled boom of a sonic blast rang out as a blood-red flash clashed with a dark-blue wave, swallowing the world around them.
One exchange.
A single exchange was enough to show me the gap between the Blood Lord and me.
KRRRACK!
The Blood Lord swung his Red Blade like lightning, and it locked against White Flame’s spearhead. The resulting boom was nothing a pair of weapons should have been able to make.
Neither was the shock wave that followed.
Rumble!
The hard ground cracked like a spiderweb. My feet slid backward under the force, and everything in their path crumbled to dust.
“You dared wag that tongue at me when this is all you’ve got?”
Beyond our crossed weapons, his eyes flashed blood-red. His voice seethed with fury.
Killing intent I could almost touch. A terrifyingly vast surge of qi.
Strong.
I was surprised all over again. The Blood Lord had grown stronger, too, over the past year—long or short as that might seem.
At least half a move above me. No, a full move.
At Supreme Peak, a single move made an enormous difference.
But it wasn’t only his insight into the martial arts or the depth of his internal energy that surprised me.
Grnnnk.
My spearhead began to give way. Slowly—no, faster than that.
Beyond it was a red blade that flashed without any blood-red Force, and a muscular arm, bulging with veins as he squeezed out every ounce of strength.
That’s… not human strength.
I could tell by instinct. After spending years fighting monsters instead of humans, how could I not?
The physical power the Blood Lord was unleashing went far beyond human limits.
No. It was more than that.
One look at the skin exposed by the rips in his clothes told me enough to guess what he’d done over the past year.
“Unusual for a prosthetic arm.”
I put everything I had into holding back the force pressing against my spear and studied him. More precisely, I studied the arm swollen to an unnatural size and the marks that looked like seams.
The Blood Lord bared his teeth and growled at me.
“Everything is thanks to that person’s grace.”
The Sword Saint, Mae Jonghak, had taken one of the Blood Lord’s arms during the Shaolin Bloodshed. The Blood Lord had fled.
He should have spent the rest of his life with one arm. Yet here he was with two, wielding this kind of strength. That could mean only one thing.
“Did you want to get stronger that badly? Enough to splice yourself together with a monster?”
“…!”
“Then again, forget about me. If you wanted revenge on the Sword Saint, you’d have had to tear something off and stick it on. Right?”
“…You.”
Had I struck a nerve? Or had I figured out the truth too easily?
The Blood Lord glared at me, eyes wide, and clenched his teeth.
“I look forward to seeing whether you can still run that mouth after you’re dead.”
At that moment—
Crack—KWA-AANG!
His arm swelled larger still, as thick as an old tree trunk. With a force that could only have come from a monster, he knocked my spearhead upward.
Clang!
Even my Strength stat, which had been in triple digits for a long time, couldn’t withstand that combination of raw power and internal energy. The shaft flew into the air.
My grip tore open. In an instant, I was empty-handed, and the Blood Lord’s Red Blade traced a dazzling arc toward me.
Whoosh! KWAANG!
Crude and brutal, the strike could have smashed anything in its path. Another followed it, cutting through the air like lightning.
His blade pursued me as my feet kept moving, the blood-red Force at its edge bending like a whip.
Whish—slice!
Every hair on my body stood on end. The Force skimmed past, slicing off a few strands of hair before slamming into the ground.
KWAANG! Rrrumble!
The earth shook like an earthquake, unable to withstand the tremendous force carried by the Force.
Dust billowed across dozens of zhang in every direction, but even that couldn’t block the Blood Lord’s view.
“This! This is all you’ve got!”
Whoosh!
The dust cloud split beneath a fierce sonic boom. I threw myself to the side on instinct, dodging the blood-red Force plunging down like an axe swung by some ancient giant.
Slice!
The ground split in two and opened a pitch-black maw.
I’d gotten out of the way in time, but the wind from the strike alone left me covered in blood. The Blood Lord smirked.
“Narye tagon. I heard you’d become the Divine Dragon while I was away, so I expected more. Instead, I find a lazy donkey rolling around on the ground.”
To martial artists—especially proud masters—Narye tagon was humiliation itself. Nobody who was anybody in the Murim wanted to be seen rolling through the dirt.
I didn’t care.
In low-level dungeons, I’d flattened myself against damp cave floors to avoid poison darts fired by kobolds. When an enemy got too close for my spear, I’d gone for the eyes or head-butted them without hesitation.
A character in a pirate manga that still hasn’t ended2 once said a wound on the back was a swordsman’s shame. I’ve never agreed with that.
“A wound on your back just fucking hurts. You have to be alive to feel ashamed.”
“What?”
I stopped moving.
The Blood Lord’s face seemed to ask what the hell I was going on about. I stood up, my body aching, and continued.
“I know it’s nonsense, so stop staring at me like that. You’re so cute I want to bite you to death.”
“You little—!”
“And what the fuck does it matter whether I’m a dragon or a donkey? You’re the one who tore the limbs off some monster nobody’s ever heard of and stuck them onto yourself.”
“…!”
A heavy Patriot missile of a fact3 was what hurt the most.
Grind.
The Blood Lord clenched his teeth so hard they seemed ready to break and started forward again.
Or tried to.
The killing intent around him thickened. Blood-red Force stirred around his blade. Then a tremendous explosion jolted his long-paralyzed reason back to life.
KWA-AANG!
The boom shook everything around us. It had come from behind him.
The Blood Lord had chased me for over a hundred zhang, raining attacks down on me. The two giants who’d filled the opening he left behind were none other than the Fire King and the Slaughter Saint.
Crack—boom!
Flames erupted everywhere, and fountains of blood sprayed without pause.
Only then did the Blood Lord realize what was happening. He shot me a blood-red glare, but I just shrugged.
“Baiting you. Obvious as can be.”
“You—!”
“Oh, I can’t take all the credit. Someone said something pretty similar a little while ago.”
At that moment—
Whoooosh!
From the city wall, now much closer, a streak of light like a bolt of lightning pierced the pale dust cloud and plunged down.
KWA-A-AANG!
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