Chapter 608: Mirror-of-the-Sky Blood (12)

Nacheok gladly answers Qing’s provocation.

Why play prim when the message was: if you don’t come, your disciples die?

So the two masters mesh.

There’s a mistake common among civilians who don’t know martial arts—and among foolish fighters who dream of mastery.

They think a master’s fight will be elegant.

That, facing each other, they’ll trade countless set-ups too subtle for the untrained to notice—the momentum swelling, a dense tension pooling—

And finally collide, moves clicking with moves like old friends in long-practiced harmony, strewing the highest principles of martial arts like sparks.

One of the fortunes they dream of is witnessing such a match between peerless masters—how they must yearn.

Peerless masters would laugh them out of the room.

Elegance is what you see when a master handles a lesser.

Only then do you have spare bandwidth to think how you look to others.

But a real fight between real masters?

The higher the realm, the more starkly one thing grows: damage tolerance.

Sword-qi forged at super-transcendent holds the most destructive starlight; climb higher and it’s still just stronger sword-qi.

But Protective Steel Qi doubles and redoubles its function with each ascent.

A light feint that lacks true weight? Don’t bother blocking or dodging—eat it with your body; it’s easier, and it lures openings.

So when equals in realm collide, what you get is a proper dogfight.

The staff thrusts in—target: the flank.

Qing flicks a glance at the monk’s feet: weight on the left. Then the right-hand staff can’t carry full power. Feint.

Transition—up or down? Where can a light feint cause big shock? Under the armpit—or the peritoneum low under the ribs?

Qing braces her abdomen for impact.

Sure enough, mid-line the staff curves and needles cleverly under the ribs. Qing lengthens her side and meets it on the flank.

Thud—an ache that throbs—but instead of giving ground she drives her knee in to close.

A vicious shot at the groin; Nacheok handles it as quick.

Open distance, and you cede initiative—and you grant space and time for real kill-moves with real weight, not the endless jockeying feints.

She’s lifted a knee; footwork is compromised. Then he can tie himself in and answer.

Nacheok turns the pelvis, sends weight far to the right with a springing set, lifts the left leg—

Qing’s knee thumps the back of Nacheok’s thigh.

His body already pitched forward.

The balance holds taut—no pushback, no slip.

Of course neither of them is “thinking” any of this.

Martial arts are the process of engraving experience in the body; what happens is instant reactions in the unconscious.

Qing whips her upper body, juts her head.

Whack—the staff meant for her jaw clips her neck instead. That strike was a feint. The real move is the palm-shot that jets from the lower abdomen.

Clang! Palm to palm—their hands ricochet wild under fully loaded true-energy.

Nacheok stamps with a boom; Qing’s soles rasp back about 1 ft 2 in, bleeding off the remaining force.

It shows a clear difference in their realms.

But Nacheok has no leisure now.

What is she?

In Harmony, the wall between early and mid is bigger and stranger than the gap between super-transcendent and Harmony.

So how is he—mid-Harmony—brawling even with a woman at early Harmony? Absurd.

And yet: that outrageous, unmannered strength.

And flexibility enough to bend joints backward.

A ludicrous duality—she properly unfolds both softness and tyranny, two utterly different paths.

She makes up for short shock with bizarre brute force; you can’t casually brush aside her “lesser’s feints.”

Her body is both supple and tough; she’s eating attacks masters shouldn’t meet with the flesh and simply enduring.

And there are already several uncanny methods he must watch with full focus.

She unfolds Flowing-Wave Steps he’d thought a silly rumor, flies up and drops in impossible arcs, and then fumes pitch-black Demon-Energy to explode her speed.

That’s just the movement arts.

As for the bell-ringing strike—what the Central Plains fools insist on calling the Tathāgata Divine Palm—it must be the Indian Tathāgata’s Great Thousand Hands.

Then there’s that vicious Minor-Demon Art.

He took it for a feint until he saw the hand blacken; only the Iron-Bridge deflection saved him—otherwise that had to be Black-Slaughter Demon Palm.

If he’d met it with flesh, the match would already be decided.

And this woman—the Heavenly Flower Sword—wasn’t she known as a swordswoman?

Give her distance to draw a blade, and who knows what else will fly; he can’t afford to pull away and set up a grand kill-move that needs prep.

So it’s tiger-versus-dragon: trading blows, piling little shocks, both holding back the true releases while they watch each other’s eyes.

Only—

Time favors Nacheok.

Qing and Nacheok roll their eyes—together—as if by prearranged cue—flick.

By now their winter coats are rags, the three constantly eating dirt—Qing’s party.

Their opponent, the Vajrayana Monk, darts about, even affecting grace.

Of course—when a master handles lessers, he’s awash in leisure, limbs free to ply any service.

The human shield has long since outlived its use, tossed aside.

A giant hand descends as if to crack a skull.

Gyeon Pohee clamps Peng Daesan by the scruff—Hrk! Peng wheezes as she yanks him back and he tumbles across the ground.

In that beat, Seol Iri, wrapped in an ice-dragon, lands a clean straight—crack—across the monk’s back.

Clean on target—but the user’s “just” a petty super-transcendent, and it’s Ice Technique.

The monk takes a step, bleeds the shock, and whips around—eyes flaring.

Seol Iri, in her signature deadpan, thrusts both palms out and flutters them fast. Not me. Misunderstood.

A vein jumps on the monk’s brow.

He pistons off the ground.

Whoom—whoom—scarlet Steel Qi hacks wild from both hands.

Seol Iri jumps, runs, rolls.

She flees so hard her cap flies off; she scrapes by, barely keeping breath in her lungs—

Gyeon Pohee, panicked, snatches Seol Iri by the hair and yanks her back.

Kyak! A short scream and Seol Iri spills.

At the same time Peng Daesan charges again and...

Time is not on Qing’s side.

Her party is barely holding on.

They’ll last—to the moment Qing beats the old bald donkey and comes to help.

But fights between masters and lessers end with the lessers dropping first.

So even if Nacheok simply maintains parity, in the end the senior disciple who finishes off those rats will come help him.

Gods, Gunyeong. That one.

If only Gunyeong were super-transcendent—if only “Seol-gunyeong’s Gunyeong” weren’t that hole but the other kind of hole.

How are you still not super-transcendent, when you train that hard?

To be fair, Seol Iri has her grievance.

Reaching super-transcendent in her twenties, and with Pathetic Heart Technique—no precedent, an achievement without parallel.

Even North Sea couldn’t stomach that talent; they banished her far off to the Central Plains.

Either way, Qing grinds her teeth.

If I just finish this with the Dokgo Nine Sword Forms—

But that’s truly flesh-breaking and bone-grinding for real—no, body-shattering for real.

A finisher that cuts the foe at the cost of becoming a critical patient; it’s a supreme art you only use when someone can take care of you after.

And here I am, looking like I’ll have to go save them myself, never mind leaving the aftermath to anyone—

Thwack! Qing’s head snaps around.

A proper slap—vision flashes white.

A catastrophe born of a blink of carelessness.

Nacheok smiles, satisfied, and lifts his hand over his bald crown to ready a kill-strike—

FLASH! This time, lightning actually falls.

A dense violet Steel Qi forks in a lightning’s segmented path, linking Qing and Nacheok—kzzzak!

“Self-driving—”

“Yeah! Self-driving! The earth rotates!”

Qing yells over him and clamps the old fool’s flapping mouth.

Why is this geezer so desperate to announce my demon-arts for me?

Thanks to it, Qing barely reclaims sword-spacing; she sets the Moonlight Sword forward and scrawls a snarl of strokes in the air.

If you had to write it out, it’d be the jabbering character packed with sixty-four strokes, with four dragons clustered and brawling—how noisy a picture would that be?

Swordcraft that fills every span with qi like a character stuffed to the brim with strokes.

Moon Maiden Sword Art, Seventh Stance: People Fade, Order Is Hollow.

People vanish in futility; order is empty and meaningless.

The Moon Maiden swings her sword. Everywhere is only corpses—in the savage heart of a battlefield—

Lady Moon, we’ll do the imagery next time.

Qing hides behind the dense trails of sword-qi.

It’s blade-play used just to dazzle and blind the foe’s eyes.

In the blink she slips from sight, she drags every shred of true-energy up from her lower abdomen and draws a deep breath.

Qing’s palm blazes gold.

For a moment, behind her, a vision—beautiful arms spreading left and right.

Gold and coral and azure and jade and mother-of-pearl, bracelets layered so thick no skin shows; only the most exalted woman in the three thousand worlds may wear such adornment.

The most exalted one’s arms rise slowly over Qing’s head; they leave countless after-images, at last left and right meeting as one.

The number of those after-images is a thousand; a thousand arms form a nimbus, shedding resplendent light.

With a thousand hands she caresses and consoles all beings; with the eyes set in a thousand palms she will not turn from any soul in the three thousand worlds.

She who regards the world, Buddha of the Present Age, Tathāgata of the King of Right Law—most exalted woman—Guanyin.

Tathāgata Divine Palm, Eighth Movement: Thousand-Hands, Thousand-Eyes Tathāgata.

Qing thrusts her palm.

Duuuuuuung.........

A thousand temple bells sounding at once.

Yet never raucous or loud—only a depth a thousandfold deeper, the most tranquil music in the world, spreading faint and tender as if embracing all samsara.

But—

Over that pure Brahmā-sound comes the wrath of a Buddha.

Oooooom......!!!

A giant Blood Handprint—a blood-red palm—surges for Qing.

Her golden palm, ringed in aureole, drives out—and when they finally meet—

!!!!!!!!!

A hideous thunder the world has never known, shaking heaven and earth.

At the same time, gold and blood-red light geysers up, a blinding flare filling the world.

Within it, Qing coughs a mouthful of blood.

Her lower abdomen throbs; as a bonus, every meridian and channel feeding the center of her left palm feels torn open with awful pain.

Damn, that’s bright.

She shields her eyes, slits them, and stares through the glare.

...Did I get him?—Gasp—what the hell am I thinking?

Qing realizes she just muttered the resurrection mantra without meaning to.

And that it’s become an automatic thought.

It’s a resurrection mantra for a reason.

She locks eyes with Nacheok beyond the glare—he’s in the same posture, grimacing.

Both faces scrunch in the same instant.

Stubborn old man—he tanked that?

Crazy witch—you tanked that?

Even their thoughts match.

When Qing hid her body behind the packed qi of People Fade, Order Is Hollow, Nacheok, without a breath’s delay, had readied the best move he could make.

The front of the old monk’s robe is wet and red—he took a heavy shock from the clash of divine arts, too.

Tough old bastard. / Vicious wench.

They stare, both a little sick of the other.

Then—

Qing’s eyes fly wide; suddenly she raises her voice and roars:

“Amukhablap! Now! Now!”