The time it takes to drink a cup of tea.
That was all the time that had passed, but the Demon Bird had to admit it: he had underestimated the prey before him. No—the people of Shanxi.
“Loose!”
Fwish-fwish-fwish-fwish!
The defenders had done more than hold the cliffs.
Five earthen forts stood near the entrance to the gorge. Their ramparts of earth and stone were still incomplete, but a considerable number of archers waited atop them. At a sharp command, a rain of arrows fell on the heads of the people surging together into a single mass.
More precisely, on the steppe forces streaming toward the gorge without pause.
Fwoosh! Thud-thud-thud!
“Aaagh!”
“M-my eye! My eye!”
Screams rose on every side, and blood sprayed into the air. Nomads struck in vital spots writhed where they fell.
Several volleys followed in quick succession, opening gaps in the densely packed formation. The people of Shanxi, led by the Jin Family of Taiyuan, drove into those gaps like awls.
“Attack!”
“Waaaaah!”
Those trying to break through and those trying to stop them.
The two waves of people surged toward each other. Where they met, there would be no white foam—only red blood.
Clang! Krrrunch!
Thwack!
Steel struck steel, throwing sparks.
A nomad’s lance pierced a government soldier through the chest. A martial artist of the Jin Family of Taiyuan leaped over the soldier’s collapsing body and cut the nomad’s throat.
Shhk!
“Ghk—cough!”
Screams and groans spilled from every direction. Everyone kept killing, and everyone kept dying.
On this battlefield, there was no trace of the mercy or compassion a human being ought to possess.
The strong devoured the weak. The weak could never survive here.
That was a battlefield. And at the center of this terrible slaughter, the Demon Bird felt a pleasure he had forgotten decades ago.
“Yes! More! More!”
He laughed aloud and swung his two swords, just as he had in the days when nothing could stand in his way. He remembered the great war called the Great Faction War, when he had taken his enemies’ lives and drunk their blood to his heart’s content.
Shwaaa!
The wind split. Force surged from the long and short swords, cleaving through the air toward the most delectable prey.
“Scatter!”
Whoosh!
It all happened at almost the same instant: Jin Mukyung, at the head of the line, shouted like a thunderclap; Cheol Mubaek, the Tiger of Mount Heng, and Wipeng, the Ghost Sword, twisted aside at his command; and—
Shhk!
The red Force barely missed them and swept away the unlucky men standing near its target.
Fwoooosh!
There were no screams. Only severed bodies and fountains of blood.
“Aah! Aaaaaah!”
Someone screamed in terror. It was the only clue to what had happened to the thirty or so government soldiers and martial artists.
In an instant, a single swing had taken dozens of lives.
No—erased them.
As though they had never existed. As though that had been their inevitable fate.
So this is a Supreme Peak master…!
A chill ran down Wipeng’s and Cheol Mubaek’s spines.
Peak and Supreme Peak. Only one character separated the names, but the wall between those realms was vast beyond measure.
If another Supreme Peak master hadn’t unexpectedly become a retainer of the Jin Family of Taiyuan about half a year earlier, they might have lost the will to fight just from seeing that attack.
But even that Senior, as powerful as he was, fell to that monster.
That was true even considering that the Dongting Fisherman had only recently recovered enough to leave his sickbed.
Wipeng and Cheol Mubaek had studied under him for months. They knew better than anyone how strong he was—and what a fortuitous encounter it had been to hear even a few words from a master of his caliber, much less spar with him so often.
The Dongting Fisherman had always been grateful to the Jin Family brothers for stopping him when he had run wild, then helping him recover. Through the goodwill he showed them, the Jin Family of Taiyuan had grown dramatically stronger.
And yet he was dead.
Killed by one man.
No—by a monster who hardly seemed human.
Now the monster who had chewed up and swallowed the old fisherman opened his jaws toward the new prey charging at him.
Even now.
Whish.
The air split with a faint sound. The instant a red flash flickered in the darkness, Wipeng and Cheol Mubaek twisted aside with all their strength.
Pipip!
Hot.
They had dodged the attack by a handspan, yet its pressure split the skin at the backs of their necks.
The sudden sting cleared their muddled thoughts.
This is…
Their eyes had widened for a moment. Now their gazes steadied.
That dodge had been no coincidence, no movement born of instinct alone. It was the result of everything they had gained from sparring with the Dongting Fisherman—their senses, their techniques, all of it.
And in half of those countless bouts, the two of them had fought together.
We can do this.
They needed only a glance to know what the other intended. Their gazes crossed for an instant, and both men blurred into motion.
Fwap!
They shot off to either side. They vaulted over friend and foe swinging blades at one another in the blood-soaked chaos, then raced along the steep rock face, throwing everything they had into evading the monster’s Force. It was faster and stronger than the Dongting Fisherman’s.
Shhk! KABOOM!
The solid cliff face, formed over what must have been hundreds of years, split like tofu. The tremendous energy that seeped into it tore everything around it to shreds, but Wipeng and Cheol Mubaek didn’t stop.
They couldn’t.
If they failed to bring down the enemy before them, everything would be over. And if they gave in to fear, or faltered at the wounds multiplying as they drew closer, how could they face the young man already ahead of them?
Second Young Master.
Heaven Shaking Sword.
They could see Jin Mukyung clearly, charging without hesitation through the ceaseless shower of Force. Flecks of blood scattered from him, but there was not the slightest tremor in his sturdy back or legs.
They found themselves wondering how he had spent those two years. How this other genius, briefly overshadowed by Jin Taekyung and Cheongpung, had lived in lightless darkness before finally emerging into the world.
And then they saw it.
Hssss.
Moonlight slid along the white blade.
No. It was a massive Sword Energy, shining brighter than either Wipeng’s or Cheol Mubaek’s.
Whish.
In a world that seemed to have slowed, the blue Sword Energy swept down at an angle and met the Demon Bird’s red Force.
KABOOOOM!
The explosion stopped everyone in their tracks for an instant and shook the gorge.
For someone at its center, it brought joy and astonishment as well.
Rumble.
“Ha! Hahahahaha!”
Beyond the fragments of rock scattering in every direction and the cloud of dust rising thick in the air, the Demon Bird laughed like a madman and thrust out his hand like a thunderbolt.
Boom!
Compressed air burst outward, clearing his view. Jin Mukyung stood at the far end of a deep furrow a full jang1 long. The Demon Bird bared his yellow teeth.
“Well, well! What a brazen little brat!”
Powerful killing intent mingled with delight. The two swords in his hands trembled—but not just because of what he was feeling.
Tap.
He already knew what had touched his heel.
A rock.
A fragment of stone that had been three steps behind him just moments ago, but now touched his heel. He felt its hardness and chill through his blood-soaked leather shoes, and that was the greatest reason for his smile.
“I can’t remember the last time someone made me step back.”
The rock had not moved toward him. He had retreated.
No—he had been forced back.
A brat not yet thirty had forced back an old monster whose life had been steeped in blood since the Great Faction War.
Though the distance of three steps and a jang1 was considerable, it meant nothing to the Demon Bird. He had seen it clearly.
Just before the two different streams of Sword Energy and Force met, the beautiful path traced by the brat’s fingertips.
That light, as blue as the sea.
“Ah. So that was it.”
Squelch.
The Demon Bird stepped forward slowly, his foot sinking into a pool of blood. Blood overflowed with his heavy step, a testament to his bulk.
“I thought it strange. Even while I fought that old Dongting Fisherman, why did your face keep coming to mind when I’d never seen it?”
A few days earlier, a messenger had brought news of the vanguard’s annihilation, along with the severed head of a Keshik commander of a hundred. In the cut, the Demon Bird had seen the Sword Demon’s handiwork.
“The moment I saw it, I was interested. The work was that perfect.”
Everything leaves a trace.
Beasts, people, martial arts.
Every death has its own cause, and that is especially true for a martial artist of Murim. Looking at the chillingly smooth cut, the Demon Bird had felt blood long gone cold begin to boil.
Was it because he had found traces of a divine art believed lost long ago?
Or because he had sensed the work of someone whose strength rivaled his own?
No.
Only now did he understand why he had been unable to put the Sword Demon out of his mind, even while fighting a Supreme Peak master like the Dongting Fisherman.
“One Strike.”
He could watch it hundreds, thousands of times and find not one wasted movement.
Dazzling. Beautiful, even.
A perfect strike.
That single movement was what the young Sword Demon before him possessed.
He had not accumulated several jiazi2 of internal energy or mastered a divine art that could look down on the world.
It was colorless and odorless.
That was what made it more lethal than anything else.
Like the Formless Ultimate Poison, swallowing a life before its victim could react. Like an assassin approaching unseen in the dark to cut a man’s throat.
“Amazing. No—extraordinary.”
The Demon Bird’s admiration was genuine. As he looked at Jin Mukyung, regret and sorrow entered his eyes.
“Why? Why did I have to meet someone like you now?”
Ptooey.
Jin Mukyung spat out dark red, bloody phlegm and answered evenly.
“Even if I’d met you much earlier, there’s no way I’d have called a mangy pig like you my Master.”
Wipeng and Cheol Mubaek closed in alongside him, moving to surround the Demon Bird. The old man sighed regretfully.
Why? Why now, of all times?
If they had met a year—no, three years—later, their match might have made his whole body tremble with joy.
Only a half-collapsed wall stood before Jin Mukyung now.
That moment of joy would never come again.
Jin Mukyung wouldn’t survive this place today.
“What a shame. Truly.”
Hssss.
Blood-red light rose from the Demon Bird’s entire body.
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