The moment he saw the faint blood-red glow rising through the darkness, the Tiger of Mount Heng, Cheol Mubaek, finally recognized the obese old man who had introduced himself as the Demon Bird.
“Blood Soul Fat Demon.”
The name escaped him like a groan. The Demon Bird’s face twisted.
“How does a brat like you know…?”
Cheol Mubaek would turn sixty in a few years, but even a veteran like him was little more than a green young pup in the Demon Bird’s eyes.
What bothered the old man most, though, was hearing that long-buried title again.
Blood Soul Fat Demon.
He had earned it by treating murder as a hunt. Even among the countless fiends, he had been unusually obsessed with death and blood. But the title carried mockery, too.
Fat.
That one word had always gotten under his skin, and the Demon Bird had never been one to resist his feelings or instincts.
“It’s been a long time since I heard that damned title. I’ve killed so many people for saying it that now, even when they recognize me, plenty pretend they don’t.”
He had killed the execution squads sent by the orthodox faction, the unorthodox rabble who bowed and scraped to curry favor with him, and even fiends he’d once been fairly close to.
The reason was simple.
They had called him by the title he couldn’t stand to hear.
Why else would he have named himself the Demon Bird, a title that didn’t suit his appearance in the slightest?
And now a green young pup with the unheard-of title Tiger of Mount Heng had dug up memories he’d put away.
How dare you.
Cheol Mubaek’s fate was all but sealed. The Demon Bird put his name at the top of the list of people he intended to kill, then spoke.
“A brat like you couldn’t possibly have met me before… Who was your master?”
Crack.
Cheol Mubaek clenched both fists.
“Fist Hero.”
“Fist Hero?”
The Demon Bird stopped in the middle of his unhurried approach.
He hadn’t expected much when he asked. He had spent his life killing, and once the count passed a thousand, he’d stopped keeping track. There was no reason to remember them all.
But Fist Hero’s title remained vivid in his memory. The man was one of the few who had survived a life-and-death duel with him.
“Well, isn’t this something. You’re Fist Hero’s Disciple? Wait—he raised a successor with that body?”
The Demon Bird forgot his anger and burst out laughing. Cheol Mubaek answered coldly.
“Don’t insult my master. He was a far greater man than you could ever be.”
“Of course he was. Even after his life as a fist fighter was over, he managed to raise a Disciple. I’ll give him credit for his grit. You should’ve seen his face when I cut off both his arms.”
“……!”
“Now that I look again, this is quite a lavish feast. The young Sword Demon of the Jin Family of Taiyuan, and the successor of the Shura Annihilating Fist.”
As the Demon Bird surveyed them with satisfaction, Wipeng spat.
“Can’t see me?”
“Of course I can. I can already picture your corpse lying there in a moment.”
“You have to see how long or short it is before you can tell.”
“That’s the kind of bullshit weaklings say.”
Thud.
The old man’s heavy, wrinkled flesh rippled as he stepped forward. His sharp gaze seemed at odds with his massive frame as he sized up the three men.
“Well, then…”
Whoosh.
“Who should I kill first?”
In a single step, the Demon Bird closed a distance of several jang.1 The two swords in his hands swept through the air in arcs.
Like the blood-red claws of a bird.
Whoooosh!
Shhk—KRRRUNCH!
A gale howled.
Mighty pressure swallowed the air and tore at their skin. Dirt and shards of rock blasted outward with a roar.
—Second Young Master!
Wipeng’s Sound Transmission pierced Jin Mukyung’s ears.
Mukyung had been retreating again and again to avoid the Demon Bird’s Force. He jerked his head aside.
Whoom.
Two razor-sharp streams of wind skimmed past the back of his neck.
The two Keshik gripping crescent-shaped sabers clicked their tongues in disappointment. Mukyung had dodged their ambush as though he’d been expecting it.
That was the last anyone saw of them alive.
Shhk!
By the time the blood-red flash appeared, it was already over.
The Keshik fell quietly, never knowing how—or why—they had died.
Behind their collapsing, headless bodies stood someone who could have told them, radiating enormous killing intent.
“You dare try to steal my prey?”
CRUNCH!
Blood Soul Fat Demon. Or the Demon Bird.
The obese old man angrily trampled the fallen Keshik’s bodies, as though he’d completely forgotten the other prey rushing at him from behind.
Or as though they weren’t worth noticing.
“You bastard!”
The Tiger of Mount Heng, Cheol Mubaek, roared and threw a punch.
He was the Disciple of a great fist fighter who had lost both arms to a fiend long ago. He had become a protector of the Mount Heng Sword Sect to help a friend’s only daughter.
Whoooooom—BANG!
Compressed air exploded. Fist Energy shot from his spinning fist and engulfed his master’s killer.
Or at least, that was how it appeared for an instant.
Fwoosh!
A long sword, tinged red like its owner, sliced through the air.
The Fist Energy that had seemed ready to reduce anything in its path to ash faded and scattered. A sneer touched the Demon Bird’s lips.
“You’re certainly no match for your master. I’m not even sure that’s the Shura Annihilating Fist I knew.”
But the Demon Bird knew the truth.
Some two hundred years ago, the Shura Annihilating Fist had ranked among the ten greatest fist-and-foot arts in the world. Cheol Mubaek’s current realm wasn’t all that far from Fist Hero’s, either.
Neither the art nor its successor fell short. The Demon Bird had simply grown stronger.
“Come!”
He felt the blood in his body boil.
The two swords in his hands had never felt lighter. Every movement his prey made looked clear—and slow.
As though reading a future that had yet to happen, he raised his blade to meet a flash thrusting in at an angle.
KABOOM!
The impact was far too loud to have come from two swords simply clashing.
Wipeng groaned as the tremendous recoil sent him flying. The Demon Bird launched his massive body after him, certain of what would come next.
One first.
Water flowed from high to low. People grew old and died. Everything in the world had its destined course.
To the Demon Bird, Wipeng’s death was just as certain.
A Peak master who had reached an impressive realm for his age. An outstanding swordsman whose practical sword technique justified the title Ghost Sword.
But that was all Wipeng was.
With enough effort and luck, he might reach Supreme Peak in ten or fifteen years. That day would never come. Meeting the Demon Bird in this gorge was proof that Heaven had already abandoned him.
Those who had yet to cross the wall, and those who had.
That was the difference between Peak and Supreme Peak.
Become a ghost. Live up to your title.
Blood-red light flashed as the Demon Bird swung both swords.
The short sword in his left hand went for Cheol Mubaek, who was rushing to save his comrade. The long sword in his right went for Wipeng, who met it with all his strength.
But the clash unfolded in a way the Demon Bird hadn’t expected.
CRUNCH—KRRRRANG!
“……!”
A substantial recoil traveled up both sword blades.
The Demon Bird’s eyes widened at the dazzling sparks blooming where three different streams of energy met.
What?
He was more shaken than he could have imagined.
Cheol Mubaek and Wipeng—those young pups who hadn’t crossed the wall, prey who should have been no more than a meal—had stopped his strike.
With nothing more than their paltry Fist Energy and Sword Energy, they were holding out against Sword Force he had unleashed with all his strength.
How?
The Demon Bird was a born killer and hunter. He knew better than anyone how far beneath him his prey stood, both in their enlightenment in martial arts and in the internal energy they held.
Yet the impossible was happening before his eyes.
A mere Peak master had met head-on the Force he’d swung with several jiazi2 of internal energy. It was something that couldn’t happen—and shouldn’t.
Cough. Spurt.
Blood mixed with bits of their innards poured from Cheol Mubaek’s and Wipeng’s split lips.
The Demon Bird stared, frozen in shock. The two men bared their bloodied teeth and smiled.
They could barely hold out against the blood-red Force. Cheol Mubaek’s snow-white gauntlet and Wipeng’s sword blade trembled beneath its overwhelming power.
Then the Demon Bird noticed the faint glow of their prized weapons, visible even through the thick blood, and remembered something he had briefly forgotten.
A Supreme Peak master’s Force could be resisted by something other than Force of the same kind.
Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron…!
The Demon Bird caught his breath.
How could he have known? In all his long life, even he had never obtained a divine weapon like these. Yet two Peak masters from remote Shanxi Province each held one.
Nor could he have guessed that the weapons he mistook for Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron were made from the bones of a spiritual creature that had guarded a river unseen for hundreds of years.
His moment of surprise gave someone who was still standing an opening.
Hup!
Wipeng wrung out every last bit of his strength and twisted his sword.
His wrist was already broken and his hand mangled, but he swallowed the blood rising from his severe Internal Injury and turned aside the energy bearing down on him.
KRRRRUNCH!
The long sword slid along the snow-white blade and drove into the ground.
Deep—driven by all the force behind it.
Thud!
Anger flared in the Demon Bird’s eyes as he recovered from his shock. At that very instant—
CRUNCH!
Cheol Mubaek grabbed the short sword that had been slowly forcing his gauntlet back. His hand closed around the Force shrouding its blade.
Crack. Krrrunch.
Something broke with a sickening sound, and unbearable pain followed.
The irresistible power crushed the flesh inside his gauntlet and splintered his bones. Without a divine weapon made from the Water God Dragon’s bones, both his hands would have vanished without a trace the moment they touched the Force.
But Cheol Mubaek did not let go.
The pain was too great even to groan. His organs twisted under the immense energy, yet he held on to the blade with all his strength.
He remembered the great master who had taught him long ago, even without his arms.
And he waited for someone to kill the bastard in his stead, to do what he, an unworthy Disciple, could not.
At last, that wish reached someone’s sword.
Shwaash.
A sound so faint it raised goose bumps.
A flash shot forward like a bolt of lightning and descended toward the Demon Bird.
Comments
Comments need a network connection.