Chapter 61

Gooooong.

The Head Elder felt the air tremble. In the same instant, he grasped how much destructive power the spearhead hurtling toward his chest carried.

This is… dangerous.

A threat to his life he had felt only a handful of times. Every hair on his body stood on end, and the world slowed.

Shiiiiing!

Jin Taekyung’s spear came from the front, while Jin Wikyung’s sword flew in from behind. The two brothers’ pincer attack meshed with perfect timing.

A truly life-or-death moment.

Fwoooosh.

The sixty years of internal energy coiled in the Head Elder’s dantian spread through every limb and bone. It poured vitality into his aging muscles and awakened his blood vessels.

And the transformation did not end there.

Tssssss.

The Sword Energy that had risen nearly a foot—thirty centimeters—compressed to half its size.

But this was no loss of power. It was a concentration of it.

The Sword Energy that had fluttered like a thread wrapped the entire blade and took the shape of another sword.

Sword Force.

The symbol of the superhuman masters who had broken through the wall of the Peak realm and opened a great new domain.

It was still incomplete, only half-formed, but it was unmistakably Sword Force—the distilled essence of the martial arts the Head Elder had spent his life mastering.

Shhk.

Even the Jin Family of Taiyuan’s ancestral treasure sword was severed, Sword Energy and all. Jin Wikyung’s internal energy scattered in an instant, the shock wrenching his insides. His face went pale.

A single stroke would have been enough to take his head.

But the Head Elder had no time.

Shwack!

He reached for the spear already closing on his chest. His wrinkled hand, too, was wreathed in a dazzling radiance of qi.

This, too, was an incomplete Hand Force, but it was enough to stop Jin Taekyung’s spear.

No.

It only looked like enough.

Kraaaaaash!

Until the vortex spilling from the spearhead swallowed him whole.

A deathly silence settled. It felt as if the dozens of people here—or perhaps everyone standing on the battlefield—were watching us.

No.

Not us.

One man.

“This…”

Countless gazes converged on the Head Elder as he slowly opened his mouth.

“What form was that?”

I answered.

“One Flash.”

Even saying the words brought on a vicious hunger. Every muscle in my body stung, and not a scrap of internal energy remained inside me.

But that was all.

Unlike with Jopil, I didn’t pass out or crumple pathetically to the ground.

My body can handle it now.

I had grown enough to withstand One Flash’s side effects. And as I had grown stronger, so had One Flash.

The Head Elder’s current state was proof.

“One Flash. One Flash…”

Muttering under his breath, he pressed an acupoint on his shoulder.

The bleeding stopped, but that was all. The arm ground away without a trace by One Flash’s vortex did not return.

“I never thought I’d end up one-armed at this age. Heh heh.”

The Head Elder gave a hollow laugh and turned to Jin Wikyung.

“You’ve got a frightening younger brother.”

His face wan, Jin Wikyung asked, “Does that child frighten you?”

“What about you?”

“I’m proud of him.”

Not a hint of hesitation.

A smile bloomed across his pale face.

“I raised him like gold and jade, but he grew into steel. That’s the kind of child Taekyung is.”

The Head Elder stared at that smile.

“You’re a fairly impressive talent. Enough to shoulder the future of the Jin Family of Taiyuan.”

“Am I?”

“But not as much as your younger brothers.”

Jin Mukyung reaching the Peak realm at twenty was one thing. Having him rate me so highly was almost more than I deserved, but…

What is he getting at?

As if he’d read my mind, the Head Elder went on.

“Power is the one thing you don’t share, even with your own blood. When that time comes, will you still be so proud of your younger brothers?”

The air around us went ice-cold in an instant.

Everyone facing the Head Elder at close range belonged to the Jin Family of Taiyuan. Cautious looks clung to my cheeks, then quietly slid away.

Family Head? I have no intention of becoming anything like that, you bastards.

That was when Jin Wikyung spoke.

“So that was it.”

Bitterness and relief mingled in his voice. The Head Elder’s brow twitched.

“What are you talking about?”

“The reason you betrayed us. The reason a day like today happened.”

“…!”

The Head Elder’s trembling eyes answered for him. I sighed inwardly.

So that was what this was about.

A succession fight.

It felt like a huge puzzle piece had clicked into place. The smaller pieces that still hadn’t found their spots were fitting together one by one through their conversation.

“What happened?”

Jin Wikyung asked in a respectful tone.

The shift was so natural that no one else there would have noticed.

“Do you know anything about your grandfather?”

“I have heard nothing. Father never said a word about him.”

“He was a cold man. Toward his children, and toward his only younger brother. And…”

The Head Elder gave a dry little laugh.

“He was petty. For many reasons, we brothers, once so close, gradually drifted apart. Then that happened.”

“The Great Faction War.”

“Have you heard the phrase ‘the Ten Myriad Demonic Forces’? They came in endless waves. The Murim Alliance was formed, but it was little more than an alliance of the Nine Sects and One Gang, and they were too busy defending their own bases.”

That was also when the Head Elder had begun making a real name for himself.

Under the Jin Family of Taiyuan’s banner, he rallied Shanxi’s martial artists and finally drove out the Demonic Cult’s forces.

“The last battle was fought right here, at Eight Spring Gorge.”

His gaze seemed to grope for some distant point in the past.

“It was a long war. Many people died, and everyone was exhausted. But there was hope, too. Hope that we could finally return to our families. The three hundred volunteers sworn to die all shared that same hope.”

“In the end, you won a great victory.”

Three hundred against three thousand.

The result was the Demonic Cult’s annihilation.

It was a glorious victory, and the reason the Head Elder was still remembered. Everyone had believed that without question.

Until just now.

“There was an ambush.”

What?

“We fought while retreating deeper into the gorge, but we were hopelessly outnumbered. Even as I swung my sword like a madman, one question refused to leave me.”

The Head Elder’s voice was unnervingly calm.

“How could they have set an ambush in advance? My elder brother should have been blocking the road into Eight Spring Gorge.”

“…!”

Silent shock spread through the crowd. What little color remained in Jin Wikyung’s already pale face vanished.

“The battle lasted half a day. We fought waiting for reinforcements that never came, and it was useless. Of the three hundred volunteers, only eight survived. When we finally returned to the family, I have never been able to forget the look on my brother’s face when he saw me.”

“Is that… true?”

“Enough time has passed for mountains and rivers to change several times over. Did you think I had come this far on mere suspicion?”

Decades were more than enough to turn suspicion into certainty. The Head Elder laughed hollowly.

“My brother turned the war into an opportunity. I became a hero on the battlefield, but he became Family Head. By then, everyone who followed me had either died or gone missing on the battlefield.”

“Then going straight into the Elder Council—was that why?”

“Because that was the only way he would feel at ease. The only way my people and I could stay alive.”

My people?

I thought back to what he had said. The eight survivors who had followed the Head Elder and lived to the end.

It wasn’t hard to guess who they were.

The Elders and the Sect Leaders of the Five Gates of Shanxi.

The survivors had sworn revenge—revenge against the Family Head and the family that had betrayed them.

The Head Elder slowly swept his gaze over the crowd.

“It has been a very long wait.”

Silence swallowed them. Disbelief, shock, shame. The feelings differed, but no one could easily speak.

Well, except me.

“You sure dragged that bullshit out.”

“…!”

I couldn’t hold back the little snorts of laughter escaping me.

I had listened all the way through to see where this was going, and this was what I got.

“In the end, you’ve only got one goal.”

I flicked my thumb at the Head Elder.

“Revenge, my ass. You’re trying to become number one, aren’t you?”

“What did you say?”

“I’m right, aren’t I? Clear away everything in the way—the Jin Family of Taiyuan, the Mount Heng Sword Sect—and swallow Shanxi whole.”

“You bastard—!”

Had the old man swallowed a train whistle?

Oh, right. No trains here.

“Revenge? Sure. Fine, revenge…”

I picked at my ear and went on.

“But why now?”

This had happened a full forty years ago. Even considering the Head Elder’s age, he had waited half his life.

“How many of the people who stabbed you in the back are even still alive? There’s late, and then there’s this late. And please, I’m begging you—don’t start with that bullshit about a gentleman waiting ten years to take revenge.”

If waiting ten years made you a gentleman, did waiting forty make the Head Elder Jesus?

It was nothing more than a crazy old man’s self-justification.

“You run your mouth just because you’ve got one.”

“I did. What are you going to do about it?”

“Do you think you know everything?”

“Do I have to? After it’s gone this far?”

The question was so obvious I snorted a laugh and pointed at the battlefield.

A mountain of corpses. A sea of blood. Utter pandemonium.

The scene before us was exactly that.

“That…”

The chill in the Head Elder’s eyes wavered.

But only for an instant.

“I see. What more is there to say?”

He muttered it as if mocking himself, then raised his sword.

“Head Elder.”

Jin Wikyung’s lips moved, but that was all.

This fight would end only when one side was dead. They had come too far to turn back.

“Come.”

I wasn’t about to decline.

“Attack!”

It was time to hunt the wounded beast.

I remembered the first day I saw the Head Elder.

His imposing bearing and dignity had made his age seem meaningless. His white beard had called an immortal to mind.

Fwoosh!

Of course, no immortal would mercilessly cut a man in half.

Even rotten, a prized fish is still a prized fish.

Drenched in blood, he swung his sword without pause. Looks mixed with awe and fear poured toward him.

“Monster…”

He had lost an arm, but the Head Elder was still strong.

He just clearly wasn’t as strong as before.

This is doable.

Peak master or not, the martial artists here were the Jin Family of Taiyuan’s elite. Men who had fought across the battlefield under Jin Wikyung, skilled enough to have survived the earlier clash with the Head Elder.

Clang-clang-clang!

The Head Elder knocked aside blades driving in from every direction, his face dark. In the old days, he would have cut down everything in his path with Sword Energy.

Proof that the internal energy that had once seemed like a spring that never ran dry had finally hit bottom.

On top of that, his aged body had reached its limit.

Shraaaak!

Sword wounds began multiplying across the Head Elder’s body. Unlike before, most of the blood was now his.

Now!

I wasn’t about to miss that opening. The spear I drove forward with all my strength tore a handful of flesh from his side.

“Hk!”

Even through the pain, the Head Elder cut down a martial artist and charged at me. He had clearly made up his mind. Faint Sword Energy gathered along his swinging blade.

But…

Shhk.

The Sword Energy scattered in a rising spray of blood. Jin Wikyung appeared behind the staggering Head Elder.

“I’d forgotten you were there.”

The Head Elder turned with a twisted face.

“Did my elder brother teach you to put a knife in someone’s back?”

“My people are dying. Does a sneak attack really matter?”

“Aren’t you ashamed, as a martial artist?”

“I am the Lesser Family Head before I am a martial artist.”

“The Lesser Family Head, is it? Heh heh.”

Jin Wikyung looked at the Head Elder with a complicated expression.

“The tide has already turned.”

“So? Are you going to ask me to surrender?”

“Please stop this meaningless fight.”

The flow of the battlefield had shifted to our side long ago. But the black-clad men kept resisting stubbornly, and the screams and corpses still showed no sign of thinning out.

“You’re right. It may be a meaningless fight. But…”

The staggering Head Elder straightened his back. A sharp gleam was already flashing in his eyes, and a blade-like aura began to rise.

“We’ve come too far to stop.”

A last desperate struggle?

No. It was more than that.

Someone suddenly came to mind.

Jopil.

The Head Elder’s current appearance overlapped with the last sight of Jopil as he lay dying.

Innate qi. He’s drawing up his innate qi.

If internal energy was an acquired force accumulated by circulating one’s qi and consuming elixirs, innate qi was the opposite. It was the root of the human body—life force itself, for all intents and purposes.

The Head Elder was staking his life to use it.

“Cough.”

He spat blood and raised his sword. His life was going out fast, but his sword shone more brilliantly than it ever had.

The moment I saw that overwhelming sight, a single word slipped out of me.

“Sword Force…”

It was instinct.

My heart pounded just from looking at it. I could feel a terrifying power that far outstripped Sword Energy.

And then—

“Yes. You were here.”

His red eyes, the capillaries bursting one after another, locked on me.

Jin Wikyung lunged to stop the Head Elder.

“No!”

But the Head Elder was already gone from that spot.

In a single step he compressed fifty feet and brought his sword down on me.

Whoooong.

So this is how I die.

An attack I couldn’t dodge or block.

I was dead.

I was going to die.

But…

I can’t die like this.

I wrung every muscle in my body. The last scant handful of internal energy raced for the spearhead.

It was a final desperate struggle, and a show of respect for the life I had lived so fiercely until now.

“One Flash.”

Shiiiiiiing!

My final strike, carrying every last bit of strength I had, shot forward.