Chapter 178: Running Rampant (12)

He was being pushed back.

Eun Jeong was losing ground to Ak Jupae.

In experience, strength, and speed, he fell short by just a fraction in every respect.

“...Hup!”

Eun Jeong suddenly drew up his strength.

Then he crashed head-on into the approaching Ak Jupae.

With a detonation like a thunderclap, the air around them was blasted outward in an instant.

“Y-you’re going to fall!”

“Hold on!”

Force collided with Force.

A power forged from internal energy, hard and unyielding as steel—something Sword Light or Sword Qi could never imitate.

This was no battlefield for weaklings who had yet to reach even Transcendent Apex.

And even reaching Transcendent Apex would make little difference.

What could a mere Transcendent Apex martial artist possibly do in a fight between these two?

Eunsong thrust his sword into the fray from time to time, but not because he himself had reached the Transformation Realm.

Eun Jeong was deliberately creating openings, carving out half a breath at a time for Eunsong to exploit.

And he was doing so because he knew that he could never finish Ak Jupae alone.

The reverse, however, was another matter.

“How long... do you think those petty tricks will work?”

Even more Demonic Energy began boiling out of Ak Jupae’s body.

The whites vanished from his eyes.

Physicians often said that the eyes were where the essence of the body gathered and took form.

When masters with profound internal energy drew upon their power and light blazed from their eyes, it was no coincidence.

“...As long as they need to!”

A battle of this magnitude had erupted here. Someone would come down soon enough.

A single Transformation Realm master.

No—even two or three martial artists at the very peak of Transcendent Apex would be enough to turn the situation around.

Two people could not form a Sword Formation.

But three could.

Then, just as cuts began appearing one by one across Eunsong and Eun Jeong’s bodies—

From far away...

A tremendous wave of energy rolled toward them.

Even Ak Jupae withdrew his saber and stepped back three paces.

“...Sect Leader?”

The only Transformation Realm master remaining on Mount Hua was Sect Leader Jeongbeop.

Of course, former Sect Leader Jeongyang was still here.

But he would probably not descend.

Retirement meant that unless the sect itself faced a crisis grave enough to seal its gates, he would no longer leave the mountain.

Both Eunsong and Eun Jeong frowned.

If Sect Leader Jeongbeop came down, Mount Hua’s main mountain would be left undefended.

Granted, there was hardly anyone else likely to attack Mount Hua under these circumstances.

Even so, an ominous feeling remained.

The Sect Leader was leaving the main mountain.

Everyone understood what that meant.

It meant there was no one else capable of answering this threat.

Fifty years of peace had made everyone weaker.

Prosperity had brought more spirit medicines. Everyone had accumulated profound internal energy, producing masters in abundance.

But this was no longer an age of solitude and desperation, where one fought while staking one’s life at every turn.

And therein lay the problem.

Insight most often came only in moments of that kind of desperation.

Perhaps that was not true for a handful of geniuses.

Koans. Insight. Enlightenment.

Such things concerned what one knew without knowing, what one did without being able to do.

Geniuses grasped them as easily as breathing.

Once they learned something, once they understood it, they never let it slip away.

They looked at the obvious as though it were not obvious, and at the extraordinary as though it were perfectly natural.

People whose minds seemed made to observe, feel, learn, and interpret martial theory.

People whose perspectives remained unfettered, unbound by prejudice.

The world called those who surpassed the ordinary bounds of humanity “geniuses.”

But in truth, they were “monsters” like Cheon Soyak.

The tremendous wave of energy soon disappeared.

Ak Jupae slowly rolled his neck.

“Looks like your Sect Leader isn’t coming down after all. Where is Cheon Soyak?”

“You won’t find that child either.”

“Even if I burn all of Mount Hua to the ground?”

“If you climb to the main mountain, the Sect Leader will stop you. Even you cannot defeat him.”

Ak Jupae’s lips curled into a grin.

Then he nodded.

“Indeed. That would be true... if I remained ‘myself.’”

“...What do you mean?”

“If I give up being ‘me,’ I can do it.”

Cold sweat ran down Eunsong’s back.

Eun Jeong, listening beside him, reacted the same way.

So did the Branch Family disciples gathered nearby.

“...Branch Family disciples, listen.”

Eunsong spoke quietly to the assembled guards.

“All of you, retreat to the main mountain.”

“What?”

“Leave this place to Eun Jeong and me. Go up the mountain and place yourselves under the Sect Leader’s protection.”

Eunsong settled in his mind exactly what he and Eun Jeong had to accomplish here.

Their task could not have been clearer.

Even if that bastard transformed into a Demonic Beast, they had to make sure he could not defeat the Sect Leader.

They had to take an arm.

A leg.

Anything.

Eunsong tightened his grip on his sword.

Brilliant Sword Qi blossomed from the blade in his hand.

Eun Jeong did the same.

Unfinished Sword Qi burned and streamed from the sword clenched in his fist.

Before them stood Ak Jupae.

Demonic Energy surged from him with terrifying violence, as though it were limitless, while enormous black Sword Force rose from his saber like raging flame.

The flames of Sword Force pouring from his saber were huge and savage, like the great curved blade he had once wielded.

“You think you can withstand this?”

At that very moment—

Something came flying through the air.

It was...

a single, slender sword.

CLAAANG—!!!

Ak Jupae swung his great blade, blazing with Force, at the sword hurtling toward him.

And that was as far as he got.

He could not break that slender sword.

Nor could he knock it away.

With a deafening crash, the flying sword and his Force-shrouded blade locked against each other in midair.

Neither side yielded so much as an inch.

It was absurd.

“...That isn’t some ordinary sword-throwing technique.”

“Looks like you noticed, Brother.”

“That’s...”

The slender sword spun violently.

Its blade was black as the night sky, shimmering with five colors and sparkling like starlight.

“...Impossible.”

Everyone was thinking the same thing.

Eunsong and Eun Jeong, who were watching.

Ak Jupae, who was holding it back.

Even the Branch Family guards who had been climbing Mount Hua, only to stop and stare, captivated by the beautiful arc traced by the flying sword.

This was no mere sword-throwing technique.

It was sword control.

And the owner of that sword slowly descended from Mount Hua’s main mountain.

Stepping lightly upon drifting plum blossom petals.

Lightness Arts brought to perfection.

Everyone looked up at the figure extending one small, slender, snow-white hand.

Cheon Soyak.

With a gentle sweep of that hand, radiance spilled from the Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge.

She had infused Sword Force into a blade she was controlling across open space.

At once, Ak Jupae poured out all the Demonic Energy he had left and finally knocked the Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge aside.

Then he retreated nearly ten paces.

Yet even after being deflected, the Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge, wrapped in brilliant Sword Force, did not fall to the ground.

It simply traced a graceful, sweeping arc through the air and returned to Soyak.

Overwhelming internal energy alone could never accomplish such a feat.

This was an exalted level of internal-energy control attainable only through enlightenment.

After breaking her three years of closed-door training, Soyak had emerged as a martial artist who had fully entered the middle stage of the Transformation Realm.

“...So you finally decided to show yourself. Only after using your masters as shields.”

“I’m afraid you misunderstand. I was in closed-door training.”

The violent collisions of Force had filled the air with drifting plum blossom petals.

Soyak found that rather convenient.

Almost like the legendary art of freely walking up and down through empty air...

she could descend slowly, using the petals scattered all around her as steps.

Ak Jupae narrowed his eyes.

Soyak appeared to be walking through the air as though she had already reached the Mysterious Realm.

A mere Transformation Realm martial artist was not permitted to tread empty space itself.

She still needed something to “step” on.

Even if that something was no more substantial than a drifting petal or a droplet of water.

“...A trick.”

Ak Jupae quickly saw through what she was doing.

Soyak did not care in the slightest.

She lightly curled her fingers, drawing the Sword Force-clad Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge into her hand.

At that instant, the Sword Force shrank.

Ak Jupae furrowed his brow.

Soyak had compressed it.

So tightly that it barely extended beyond the edge of the slender blade.

“...What are you doing?”

“Preparing to cut through your Sword Force.”

Of course, Ak Jupae’s Sword Force was incomplete. It had yet to achieve a perfectly solid and stable form.

He was still only at the early stage of the Transformation Realm.

But things were different now.

What his Sword Force lacked in quality, he could compensate for with an overwhelming quantity.

Because Demonic Energy continued pouring into him in seemingly endless amounts.

“You killed my son, and still you have plenty to say.”

“You’re one to talk.”

Soyak leveled the Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge at him.

Just as she had back then.

Just as she had when she chose to die standing rather than submit.