Chapter 201: Perilous Road (12)

“Wrong.”

The low voice rolled out, laden with internal energy.

On a training ground reserved for the Family Head’s blood relatives, a man was moving through a sword dance.

But the vigorous old man watching him from above was clearly dissatisfied.

“Infuse a single sword with a single thread of intent. Have I not told you that?”

“...I’ll try harder.”

Namgung Ak, the Sword Sovereign, sighed.

Namgung Seon was already a genius of extraordinary talent.

So much so that there should have been no need to drive him this hard.

And yet... Namgung Ak was growing impatient.

At the last Ilji Gathering, Namgung Seon had lost badly.

There had been no narrow contest. No bitter defeat decided by a single move.

It had been a perfect, clean, utterly decisive loss.

The gulf between their realms had simply been that vast.

When the Sword Sovereign first heard the news, he could not believe it.

Only after Namgung Hyeong and Namgung Seon returned and told him exactly what had happened did he finally accept it.

Namgung Seon was an even finer martial talent than Namgung Ak himself.

Why else would he be called a Heavenly Martial Body?

He was a once-in-an-age prodigy who absorbed martial arts, insights, and spirit medicines like parched straw drinking in water.

And that prodigy was his grandson.

A man who has seen only pebbles can be satisfied by the brilliant luster of a jewel.

But once he has seen a star, no jewel can ever shine brightly enough.

Human nature always yearns for something higher. Something brighter.

And who was Namgung Ak?

When it came to the hunger for success and achievement, he yielded to no one.

That hunger, combined with his talent, had carried him to his present realm...

And made him the Sword Sovereign he was today.

Yet there were still things that neither effort nor ability could change.

And of all those things, the one that left him most helpless was...

His own child.

Namgung Hyeong, the Sword King.

His son, burdened with an epithet grander than he deserved.

Had Namgung Ak not been the Sword Sovereign, Namgung Hyeong would likely never have received it.

People had given him that title for one reason alone: he was the Sword Sovereign’s blood.

That was why they had called him a King.

Sword King sounded impressive enough.

But if Namgung Hyeong had truly been recognized for his skill and talent with the sword alone, he would have been called a Sword Emperor or Sword Lord.

He would have earned a place among the One Sovereign, Three Emperors, and Seven Lords.

Some dismissed such rankings as nothing more than games invented by marketplace storytellers.

But precisely because they were rankings born in the marketplace, they were impartial in their own way.

The babble of ignorant commoners mixed with the opinions of those who actually understood martial arts, spread as rumor...

And once those rumors hardened, they became epithets and rankings.

In other words, even the masses had not granted Sword King Namgung Hyeong the lowest seat among the One Sovereign, Three Emperors, and Seven Lords.

He had merely received the overly grand title of Sword King because he was the Sword Sovereign’s eldest son.

Until he turned thirty, Namgung Hyeong had struggled desperately to escape that shadow.

The moment he reached thirty, he gave up the struggle of his own accord.

He simply was not talented enough for the station into which he had been born—the eldest son of the Sword Sovereign.

Had he been the son of any ordinary martial household, there would have been nothing wrong with him.

But as the son of the number one sword of the Central Plains, he fell painfully short.

That inadequacy did not belong to Namgung Hyeong alone.

The fact that his eldest son could not inherit his sword...

Had been a profound shock to the Sword Sovereign as well.

He had thought his son would be capable of it.

Because he was his son.

Because he was his son.

And yet the world had a cruel sense of irony.

The son who had fallen short as the Sword Sovereign’s eldest had produced a grandson perfectly suited to being the Sword Sovereign’s heir.

Had talent simply skipped a generation?

Namgung Ak had placed all his hopes on that child.

And then that hope had shattered in a way he had never anticipated.

“...Seon.”

“Yes, Grandfather.”

“Is what I told you truly so difficult?”

Infuse the sword with intent.

The Sword Sovereign himself had mastered it more than twenty years ago.

Of course, he had already been past fifty at the time...

But now it was as simple and familiar to him as opening and closing his fist.

Namgung Seon lowered the tip of his sword.

His bangs were plastered to his forehead with sweat.

Slowly, he looked up at his grandfather.

“...Yes. It’s difficult.”

“You must accomplish it to enter the Transformation Realm.”

“I know. You’ve told me, so I know...”

Knowing in one’s head how something was done...

And being able to take hold of it and wield it oneself...

Were as different as heaven and earth.

That was why a Transcendent Apex martial artist was powerless against someone in the Transformation Realm.

Naturally, crossing the threshold from the very end of Transcendent Apex into the Transformation Realm was correspondingly difficult.

The problem was that the Sword Sovereign was now demanding that Namgung Seon accomplish it in a mere fifteen days.

Because...

He could not accept it.

His eldest grandson possessed the Heavenly Martial Body.

He was more talented than Namgung Ak himself.

He was the child who would truly inherit the name of the Sword Sovereign.

And yet he was being surpassed by some orphan girl from Mount Hua?

Namgung Ak had already investigated her bloodline thoroughly.

The Flower-Halo Sect.

A Branch Family of Mount Hua that Namgung Ak himself had ordered the Flame-Saber Lord, Ak Jupae, to burn to the ground.

But that was all.

Aside from its connection to Mount Hua, it had neither pedigree nor roots worth mentioning.

Her father’s achievements amounted to taking the heads of a few demonic fiends during bloody battles with the Demonic Cult. He had never accomplished anything so great as slaying the Heavenly Demon.

Heavenly Killing Stars had appeared more than once throughout history.

But even a Heavenly Killing Star—

Could it truly overcome a Heavenly Martial Body born as the eldest grandson of the foremost of the Five Great Households, fed spirit medicines as casually as meals, and granted the near-miraculous fortune of direct instruction from the number one sword of the Central Plains?

No.

There should have been no way.

Yet reality had been merciless.

Reality had raised the hand of an orphaned Heavenly Killing Star girl from a Branch Family.

Namgung Ak could not accept it.

He believed that he himself was heaven.

If heaven had given °• N ?? v ?? l i g h t •° the wrong answer, then he would simply decree a new one and change it.

“If you understand, then you must do it.”

“...I will do my utmost.”

“This is not about doing your utmost. If you carry Namgung blood, the Sword Sovereign’s blood, and were born with the Heavenly Martial Body... then you must do it!”

His low roar rang across the entire estate.

The sky was steadily darkening.

Storm clouds were gathering.

It was not the Sword Sovereign’s doing...

But it seemed almost as though the heavens were reflecting what lay inside him.

Before long, rain began to fall.

The drops were heavy from the very beginning. It looked ready to pour violently for a long while.

Yet the Sword Sovereign did not move a single step from beneath the eaves as he stared at Namgung Seon.

And so Namgung Seon could not step down from the training platform either.

“Again.”

“...Yes.”

Only then did Namgung Seon truly understand why his father had lived the way he had.

And why his father had said those things to him.

To be hounded by a man who was forever looking higher, forever demanding that you continue climbing...

Was a terrible thing.

*****

For the first time in a while, the nightmare returned.

Her father and mother, their bodies burned black.

Corpses cracked apart beyond recognition, embers still glowing within the charred flesh.

Soyak slowly looked down at them.

Her father had no head.

The Flame-Saber Lord had cut it off and taken it with him.

Of course, the head itself must also have been burned so badly that no one could have recognized it...

But burying her father without his head had always remained a wound in Soyak’s heart.

“...I’m still too soft.”

Because of a few words from Seongeung.

Because she had opened up a little about the Flame-Saber Lord...

Old memories had already risen from the deepest part of her heart and begun gnawing at her again.

It had not reached the level of deviation or an inner demon...

But there was no denying that she had been shaken.

And she would probably never be able to cast it away completely.

Soyak quietly knelt before her parents’ bodies.

Then, beyond them...

There was another corpse.

One that had never appeared here before.

The corpse of someone she knew.

“...It isn’t over yet, Mother. Father.”

Soyak took one of her parents’ blackened hands in each of hers.

Slowly, the carbonized bodies began to crumble apart and scatter on the wind.

She felt no need to cling to them.

These were wounds carved into her heart.

They would return again in the next nightmare.

And once her parents’ bodies had vanished, she saw the body of a man lying farther away, drenched in blood.

He had been split diagonally from his right flank to his left shoulder.

His body seemed almost divided cleanly in two. The entire floor beneath him had become a pool of blood.

It was Ak Jupae, the Flame-Saber Lord.

The man she had killed with her own hands.

Soyak slowly walked toward him.

As she drew closer, the beautiful, elaborate clothes she had once worn at the Flower-Halo Sect...

Gradually changed into Mount Hua’s martial uniform.

She extended a hand.

The Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge appeared out of empty space and settled into her grasp.

The neatly braided hair of her childhood changed into the way she wore it now, simply pulled back and tied.

“Hrk... Haaah... Kh...”

Even though his body had been split in two, Ak Jupae was still alive, gasping for breath.

He looked as though he might die at any moment.

Yet his gleaming eyes...

Were fixed directly on Soyak.

Soyak slowly drew her sword and turned it into a reverse grip.

Then...

She plunged it straight down through Ak Jupae’s head.

His limbs, which had been convulsing in agony, fell limp.

“...I really am too soft.”

Some part of her still pitied him.

He was the enemy who had taken my parents from me.

But I had also made him a father who lost his child.

She had wanted him to suffer the same pain she had suffered.

That was why she knew what his pain must have been.

Perhaps that was why Ak Jupae had now appeared in her nightmare as well.

Soyak slowly raised her eyes toward the sky.

The sky...

Was golden.

A faded, hardened gold, cracked here and there, so rigid that not even clouds could drift across it.

A gilded sky.

The Alliance Leader’s reign.

Soyak flicked the blood from the Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge and returned the sword to its sheath.

It was time to wake up.