Chapter 962

In an instant split into ever smaller fragments, the Demon Bird realized he had only one choice left.

Shwaa.

A faint whistle of displaced air approached like a ghost and brushed his ear.

At the same time, the world slowed.

Everything was clear.

The shallow breaths of Wipeng and Cheol Mubaek, both suffering severe Internal Injuries. The drops of blood spilling from between their lips.

And then the Demon Bird finally released the two beloved swords he had been gripping tightly and turned around.

He kicked off the ground with all his strength and thrust both palms forward like a bolt of lightning.

Fwoosh!

Blood-red Force flashed around his hands.

The tremendous energy, enough to reduce even a boulder weighing ten thousand geun¹ to dust in an instant, surged forward without resistance.

Toward the sea-blue Sword Energy falling over the Demon Bird’s head.

Toward the man who had brought that blade-sharp wave of Sword Energy crashing down.

Jin Mukyung.

The eyes of the young Sword Demon of the Jin Family of Taiyuan met those of an old fiend who had spent his life killing.

The two men could hardly have been less alike.

Not in the lives they had led, the eras they had been born into, or what they held in their hearts.

The young man had learned martial arts simply because he loved the sword. The old man had wielded one to kill.

The young man had wanted strength to restore his declining family.

The old man had craved strength because the stronger he became, the more people he could trample underfoot.

The young man was one of countless people who wanted no part of an age of chaos. The old man longed more than anyone for those bygone days when blood ran in rivers and corpses piled up like mountains.

The paths they had walked were different, as were the directions they would go from here.

Even now, the Sword Energy and palm force they hurled at each other sounded different.

Shhk.

The Sword Energy descended like a blue wave, or a single bolt of lightning, yet its sound was as faint as a child’s breath.

RROOOAR!

The enormous blood-red palm force roared like thunder.

And between those small differences lay a gulf as deep and wide as all the differences that had come before.

One crushed the wind. The other cut through it.

Gooooom.

A distant flash. Air seething with heat.

As the red and blue lights raced toward each other, a thought struck the Demon Bird.

Supreme Peak and Peak.

Perhaps the wall of enlightenment between Sword Energy Becoming Force and the level of injuring others with Sword Energy was not as high or imposing as he had thought.

This is…

Even amid the raging gale, the Demon Bird could see the blue light shining clearly.

That unwavering strike, descending at an angle along its destined path, was proof of all the enlightenment the young man had gained so far—and of his progress toward a new realm.

Rumble.

At last, the two immense forces met. They erased the wind.

They warped space.

And under pressure great enough to tear his body apart, Jin Mukyung closed his eyes.

It was a deep night, with even the moonlight dim. Once his sight was cut off, pitch-black darkness settled over him.

It was so familiar. Every bit of energy and sensation in his body surged and flowed into the sword in his hand.

He could see nothing, but he could feel it.

His opponent’s overwhelming power, ready to sweep everything away.

The openings in that ferocious, and therefore unstable, palm force.

Yes.

There.

As if entranced, Jin Mukyung brought his sword down. Blue light slipped between his closed eyelids, clearer than ever before.

A thousand times, ten thousand times—or dozens, hundreds of times more.

Hammer and cool it beyond counting, and even worthless scrap iron will one day become a fine sword.

A single drop of water can crack solid rock. A single thorn lodged in an elephant’s foot can bring it down.

Just as it did now.

Shwaaaash.

The Demon Bird saw it clearly.

A blue flash, so sharp it looked like a single thread, split his palm force from side to side. It was unbelievable.

And he marveled.

Ah.

Speed, power, trajectory.

All of it was dazzling. So perfect it sent a shiver through him.

That sharpness could no longer be called Sword Energy. The flash of a divine weapon cut through the blood-red Force and pressed on.

Truly beautiful.

The words never left his lips. The Demon Bird smiled brightly and reached both trembling hands toward the blue streak falling over his head.

Shhk.

That beautiful, dazzling wave was cold enough to make him shudder.

The world stopped.

No—everyone in it stopped moving.

The nomads who had kept fighting, not daring to interfere in the battle of a superior who was practically a tyrant. The Shanxi defenders who had been slowly tiring against the endless waves of troops.

Even Cheol Mubaek and Wipeng, who had watched everything from closer than anyone else on the battlefield, could do no more than cling to their fading consciousness.

Shhk.

The single, startlingly clear slicing sound from moments ago still rang in their ears.

Along with a question they couldn’t understand.

What on earth…?

What just happened?

The same thought crossed everyone’s mind.

Red and blue had flashed within a distant, swelling blaze of light. That was all.

Everyone on the battlefield had seen that dazzling light clearly, and at the same time, no one had seen a thing.

Now, only the two men standing a jang² apart with their backs to each other could break the silence that had settled over the narrow gorge, thick with blood and corpses.

Jin Mukyung and the Demon Bird.

The Demon Bird and Jin Mukyung.

The old fiend, who had spent long years killing countless people, and the young Sword Demon, who had spent the past two years swinging a sword in pitch-black darkness, slowly turned to face each other.

Splash.

A heavy step sent blood spilling from a puddle. No one knew whose it was.

Soon, someone’s fresh blood filled the space it had left.

Cough.

Lips pressed tightly together parted. Like a cracked dam giving way, blood mixed with fragments of innards burst through the tiny gap.

Splaaash!

Dark red blood sprayed through the air and soaked the ground. Reflected in the refilled puddle was the young Sword Demon’s pallid face.

“No! Mukyung!”

CLANG!

At the desperate cry from somewhere far away, the clamor of steel began again.

Thinking of the familiar voice behind that cry, Jin Mukyung smiled faintly. The Demon Bird suddenly spoke to him.

“What was that strike?”

The question was far too short to contain everything he felt and wanted to know.

Jin Mukyung swallowed another surge of blood before answering.

“I don’t know either. I’ve never done it before.”

The Demon Bird gave a wry laugh.

He wasn’t mocking him. Those who stepped into a new realm in a moment of No-self, forgetting even themselves, always gave the same answer.

He had too, when he was young.

“Honest, at least.”

“Can’t help it. It’s true.”

“If only I could see that strike of yours one more time. Just once, before the end.”

“I’ll pass. I’ve seen enough of your face.”

The Demon Bird’s smile widened.

“Have you named that form?”

Jin Mukyung quietly shook his head.

What he had trained was a martial art. In a sense, it wasn’t one at all.

Only One Strike.

He had spent two years searching for a single path for his sword, and today, in this place, he had glimpsed its very edge.

He had never thought to give the form a name.

Not until the old monster in front of him brought it up.

“Blue Wave, Falling Bird.”

A blue wave surges, and a bird falls.

The Demon Bird murmured it like a line of poetry, then asked Jin Mukyung with unmistakable pride, “Well? Pretty good, isn’t it?”

“Hard to say. It’s kind of cheesy.”

“Oh.”

Disappointment spread across the Demon Bird’s face. Then Jin Mukyung went on, his voice calm.

“But I suppose I could get used to it.”

“Really? I knew you’d see it my way.”

The Demon Bird grinned from ear to ear.

He had no idea faint red lines were beginning to appear all over his body.

No—he was doing his best to pretend he hadn’t noticed.

“Heaven Shaking Sword, Jin Mukyung. Of the Jin Family of Taiyuan… Cough, you young Sword Demon.”

Drip. Drip.

Blood fell in scattered drops.

The Shanxi defenders rushing to save Jin Mukyung and the steppe fighters who had held them back, certain of their superior’s victory, stared wide-eyed at the Demon Bird.

The old fiend steadied himself as he swayed, his gaze fixed on Jin Mukyung alone.

“Kill. Kill, and kill again.”

His eyes and voice burned with the obsession he had kept all his life: murder.

“With the strike that cut me down. Everything that stands in your way. Every last thing. Guh. Every last…!”

Slith.

The Demon Bird never finished.

The red lines crossing his body, and the beads of blood swelling along them, finally burst in a magnificent explosion.

FWOOSH!

A fountain of blood surged upward, staining the air.

Everyone stared in shock as the Demon Bird collapsed like a rotten tree.

One man had fallen. One still stood.

There was no mistaking the victor.

Jin Mukyung looked down at the corpse lying face-first in the pool of blood it had made, its upper body and both arms severed. Then he spoke quietly, returning the words the Demon Bird had said before the battle began.

“When you get to the afterlife, tell them a man from Shanxi killed you.”

He gripped the sword hilt, which felt heavier than ever, and without hesitation cut off his enemy’s head. He raised it for all to see.

Shhk.

“I, Jin Mukyung of the Jin Family of Taiyuan, have slain the Blood Soul Fat Demon!”

“……!”

“……!”

The force of his shout, carrying what little internal energy he had left, froze the air in the gorge.

Jamukha’s personal guard, already well aware of the Demon Bird’s identity, was stunned by his end. The Shanxi defenders stared wide-eyed at the title of the fiend who had stained the world with blood long ago.

The Demon Bird was dead.

And in that same moment, another Supreme Peak master had been born.

“Waaaaah!”

A tremendous roar shook the gorge. Their blood boiling like erupting lava, the Shanxi defenders charged without regard for their lives.

They looked ready to swallow the personal guard, still frozen by the unexpected turn of events, and the nomads in the rear, bewildered by the connection between their Great Chieftain Chinggen and the Blood Soul Fat Demon.

“Attack!”

“We are Shanxi! We will not fall!”

“Wipe out every barbarian who dared invade this land!”

“Loose!”

Shh-shh-shh-shshsh!

Beneath a downpour of arrows, thousands of martial artists and government troops drove like a wedge into the broken enemy line. Jin Wikyung led them, his eyes bloodshot.

“They’re coming!”

“Shields! Sh—!”

Puhpuhpuk! KRRUNCH!

The blood mist that had briefly settled rose thick again.

With the tide turned and their morale at its peak, the Shanxi defenders charged into the jaws of death.

They swung their weapons with every last ounce of strength, and endured the pain, biting at their enemies until their final breath.

Shhk! CRUNCH!

Cut one down, and two took his place. Cut two down, and three came on.

After that, there was nothing. Only death.

CRUNCH!

Seven in ten Keshik were First Rate warriors. They were unquestionably the finest troops on the grasslands. Yet the roughly three hundred deployed in the gorge were cut in half in no time.

“What do we do? What are we supposed to do now?”

The Keshik squad leader gave no answer to his subordinate’s desperate shout.

He couldn’t.

The three commanders of a hundred were dead. So was the Demon Bird, an absolute master alongside Jamukha.

And that was not all.

Even now, his men were dying to blades coming at them from every direction.

And at the center of it all was a ghost, staggering as he drank in blood without end.

Shhk. Shhk!

He brought his sword down, slashed, and thrust.

With those simple movements, Jin Mukyung felled twenty Keshik.

Despite his unmistakably severe Internal Injury, the Sword Demon of the Jin Family of Taiyuan stood in the middle of the gorge, protecting his two companions.

What is this…?

The Keshik squad leader squeezed his eyes shut.

After a brief hesitation, he ordered a retreat.

Or rather, he was about to.

Then a familiar sound rang out behind him.

Boooooo!

The squad leader knew what it meant.

That great call from dozens of horns sounding at once was for one man alone.

Jamukha.

The great Khan, the supreme ruler of the grasslands.