Chapter 58: North Venerates Shaolin (8)

A sword, by nature, carries an aura.

And martial artists were more sensitive to that aura than anyone.

That was why Number Seventeen had dulled the blade.

The only part left sharp was the very tip.

Only the razor-pointed point.

Quietly, quietly, he curled his body in.

He braced one hand on the ground so he could spring off with his feet.

With the sword aimed tight and true......

Beyond the brush, he targeted the small chest of the girl sitting there, unaware of anything.

‘......It’s all for Yehwa.’

If it had been a rare illness like Ninefold Severed Meridians, he would have given up instead.

If it had been Severed Meridian Syndrome she’d been born with, he would have accepted it.

But it wasn’t.

It was a meridian system ruined by a very special martial art, gained only after she’d been cast out.

A ‘made’ Severed Meridian Syndrome.

A freezing-cold energy clogged her channels and strangled her heart.

That was why she needed an energy of extreme yang.

If not the inner core of a ten-thousand-year Fire Fox, then at least something like a Seven-Leaf Mountain Ginseng—rare enough to be called a living miracle.

But how expensive would something like that be?

That was why Number Seventeen entered the Namgung Clan and became a martial artist.

They paid more.

And when Night-Heaven Hall promised even more, he stepped into it without hesitation.

That was all.

With that, he had finished preparing himself to kill someone.

No matter how young, how small, how fragile that girl might be.

‘......I’m sorry.’

In an instant, he forcefully dragged his internal power up.

Following the incantation of Extreme-Night Full-Shadow Steps, his toes kicked off the ground.

Becoming a ghostlike shadow that burst dimly out of the brush......

Even so, he thrust his sword at the girl.

Killing Soul Sword, Absolute Technique.

Death-Stealing Ghost Wail.

You will have your life stolen, become a ghost, and wail.

A terrifying move that said you could only wail after you died.

The final hidden essence of the Killing Soul Sword extended from Number Seventeen’s hand.

But at that moment—

Number Seventeen met the girl’s eyes.

Those black, unbound eyes—eyes with no end he could measure.

It felt like they were digging through everything he was.

His sorrow, his resentment, and even the vicious story he carried.

The tip of his blade stayed straight, but for an instant his gaze wavered.

SKRRAAAAK!!!

The soot-smeared short sword was shoved aside.

A single motion.

With a single motion—lifting her sword along with its scabbard—she diverted the opening sequence of Death-Stealing Ghost Wail.

In that instant, Number Seventeen felt something had gone wrong.

‘Without knowing in advance, she could never have responded to that!’

Cold sweat ran down his spine.

Why—how—had this small girl predicted where he was hiding?

And how had she turned aside a killing move with something that simple?

“......Only that place stayed quiet the entire time.”

Soyak opened her mouth, as if to answer his doubt.

SHIIING—she drew her sword from its scabbard.

A sword long for her height.

Narrow in width, its blade black yet shimmering with five-colored radiance.

And constellations—Three Enclosures and Twenty-Eight Mansions—densely engraved across it.

“Everywhere else, I could feel rabbits hopping, insects moving, snakes slithering.”

She aimed the tip at him.

Those immeasurably deep eyes stared at him from within the dark.

“But only where you were. It was quiet with nothing at all.”

Only then did Number Seventeen realize his mistake.

The problem was that he had stayed there too long.

If it had been a day or two, she might have dismissed it.

But he had endured there for nearly seven full days and nights......

When a person lies flat like that, no matter how much they lower their presence, animals do not come near.

It might be possible if he had reached the Return-to-Origins level......

But Number Seventeen’s Turtle-Breathing Method had not reached that level yet.

To identify that blind spot and reason it out like this—

Even if she had defeated the Namgung Clan’s young clan lord,

her observational power was not something you could call the power of a fourteen-year-old girl.

“......Impressive.”

Number Seventeen exposed his voice with a heart that felt half-given-up.

Either way, he was going to die.

That girl was an expert who had even butchered Deputy Hall Lord Gisan Gwang to death.

Now that it had become a head-on fight, he had no chance.

But—on the premise that he would not be going back.

He would stake everything on the final move.

Even if that move became a move of suicide.

“Stop there. If you go any farther, I will cut you.”

Soyak delivered her last warning in a low voice.

But Number Seventeen didn’t care about something like that.

He had a reason to stake his life.

A duty that required him to stake his life.

“I have to kill you.”

“......Why?”

Soyak had seen it.

The hesitation filling the eyes visible above that mask.

Even in the instant he drove his sword in, he hesitated.

The tip didn’t waver.

But his heart did.

And once the heart wavered, you could read where the sword would extend.

That man had circumstances.

Of course, Soyak didn’t know if they were circumstances she could forgive—enough to overlook that he had come to kill her......

But Soyak wasn’t a cold girl who wouldn’t even listen to someone’s story.

Because that man still hadn’t lost someone.

Because, for now, he still wasn’t her target of revenge.

“If I tell you, what can you do?”

“You would have to tell me first for me to say what I can do, wouldn’t you?”

“......You, who grew up cherished as the Great Mount Hua Sect’s qilin—can you even understand?”

A sharpened voice.

The words themselves were soft, warm, and polite.

But the tone was not.

He was someone who had once received refined education.

Soyak let out a breath and quietly lowered her sword.

Then, looking straight at Number Seventeen, she opened her mouth.

“......My father was beheaded before my eyes.”

In an instant, Number Seventeen’s blade tip twitched.

“My mother was burned alive.”

The eyes watching her shook.

His blade could no longer point at her.

But Soyak’s words didn’t end there.

“After that, I dream of that day every night. Even knowing it is a Heart Demon, I cannot let it go. Because it is the only way I can remember my parents.”

“......But—”

“—You hesitated. So I will ask. Why do you have to kill me?”

He had hesitated.

That was true.

In the brush, and even while watching her for days......

Because she overlapped.

Three years ago, when his younger sister had been only fourteen.

She overlapped with the way she looked until just before she was cast out.

She overlapped with the way she had looked—more adult and mature than him, and healthy.

Even now.

Even in this moment, she overlapped.

But that was the past, already gone, that could never return.

Even Pure Clear Stone Oil could not completely cure Yehwa’s Severed Meridian Syndrome.

“There’s nothing you can do.”

The short sword in his right hand froze.

The soot smeared over it cracked and scattered.

With each breath, white vapor leaked out.

Number Seventeen—

No.

Seol Yegang, the cast-out collateral blood of the North Sea Ice Palace’s Palace Lord—

broke the vow he had sworn never to use, and pulled up his original martial art.

Snow-Heaven Cold-Ice Art.

A fierce chill coiled around his sword and dragged down the temperature around them.

A swordsman only at the early Apex.

A dim, dark Sword Light filled the short blade.

“If I kill you, I can save my younger sister.”

In his frost-laced breath, even his mask froze, then cracked apart.

True energy forced up to its limit.

Even if this move succeeded and he killed that girl, he himself wouldn’t come out unscathed.

But he didn’t need to return alive.

If he killed her, his sister would drink the Pure Clear Stone Oil.

Even if it was only a single drop......

With that, she would live at least another half year.

“Martial arts of the North Sea Ice Palace....... I have heard of them.”

Soyak raised Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge straight up.

The constellations of Three Enclosures and Twenty-Eight Mansions immediately began to glow.

The internal power she poured into the sword became light......

And a Sword Light of brilliant, dazzling radiance took form.

That art froze all things.

A martial art that took as its symbol the ten-thousand-year snows and glaciers of the North Sea—snows that never melt.

What was trapped inside did not rot, and did not change.

A stopped moment.

A seized instant.

That was the direction of eternity the Snow-Heaven Cold-Ice Art pursued.

But right now, it was nothing more than prey for the black qilin.

Along the channels of her entire body, the killing energy infused with the Harmonization Scripture’s power raced.

For an instant, light filled her jet-black eyes—the light of the Army-Breaking Star.

Hair like black silk rippled, riding the internal power she had drawn up.

If you tried to suppress an assassin clumsily, the assassin would take their own life.

You had to knock them unconscious in a single strike to capture them.

And she had to ask.

Why he was trying to kill her.

Who had ordered him to kill her.

“That is true Sword Light.......”

“You say there is nothing I can do, but there is much I want to ask you.”

Soyak aimed the tip straight at him.

There was no Killing Intent in it.

Even so, Seol Yegang went faint for an instant under that distant, immeasurable pressure bearing down on him.

Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword, Second Form—

Snow Cannot Break the Plum.

A plum branch that cannot be broken even by a blizzard.

Soyak kicked off the ground and drove her sword in.

Piercing through the bleak cold, the edge of Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge shot forward like a sharp plum branch.

A distant Sword Light split the air......

And in the next instant, it collided with the short sword in Seol Yegang’s hand.

“......How, in this instant!”

Seol Yegang couldn’t even catch the timing to form a proper defense.

Before Sword Light that was close to Sword Qi, his crude Sword Light shattered along with his blade.

Blade fragments burst apart and scattered, glittering as they flew.

And then, Soyak’s sword turned, drawing an elegant arc.

Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword, First Form—

Spring-Blooming Blossoms.

It surges up like a flower blooming in full upon meeting spring.

Soyak inverted her grip on the sword that had dropped low.

Then, following the Sword Path of Spring-Blooming Blossoms, she swung the flat of the rising blade up into Seol Yegang’s jaw.

THUNK—!!

The sound of a broad blade-face colliding with a human jaw.

A ringing resonance spread out, as if a sword had been flicked......

And Seol Yegang, lifted off the ground, slammed into it again—spinning and collapsing unconscious.