Chapter 64: War Is the Way of Deception (5)

The stench of blood.

The stench of blood was everywhere.

Byeoksa Gok couldn’t believe it.

Not his right arm, blown clean off.

Not his left leg, crushed into pulp.

“Clearly... I clearly cut— cough—.”

Ten Thousand Ghosts Descend to Heaven Sword was no ordinary art.

When he launched an ambush in tandem with perfected Extreme-Night Full-Shadow Steps, it had killed even experts at the very entrance of the Transformation Realm.

But it hadn’t worked.

“Just who... just who are you, that you’re beyond the entrance of the Transformation Realm— cough— and why would you do this...?”

“My, my. Looks like my face has changed quite a bit.”

“With skill like this, I— cough— there’s no way I wouldn’t know you...”

Extreme-Night Single Sword, Byeoksa Gok.

Night-Heaven Hall Lord of the Namgung Clan’s Night-Heaven Hall, an assassin who had reached the very lip of Transcendent Apex.

The disciple of the Dark Sovereign, the legendary assassin of the Assassin Organization.

Objectively speaking, there weren’t many people left in the Central Plains that he couldn’t assassinate.

And his perfected Extreme-Night Full-Shadow Steps and Ten Thousand Ghosts Descend to Heaven Sword had climbed to a ferocious height.

Meaning he could even trade blows head-on with most swordsmen of respectable caliber.

And yet—yet—he had lost, completely.

He had been ground into the dirt.

Why?

He couldn’t understand it.

“Who... who the hell are you! Who are you to— cough—!”

“Who am I...? My friends call me the Heaven-Scorching Sword Tiger.”

Byeoksa Gok’s eyes shook.

Not because he recognized the sobriquet—

but because he didn’t.

He was an assassin. He had dossiers on an enormous number of martial artists.

And yet the name Heaven-Scorching Sword Tiger was one he had never, not once, heard.

“Heaven-Scorching... Sword Tiger...? I’ve never even heard of—”

“Of course you haven’t. It’s a name from inside the Heaven-Toppling Society. It’s never leaked.”

Heaven-Scorching Sword Tiger.

A sword-tiger that burns the heavens.

And the Heaven-Toppling Society.

“The Heaven-Toppling Society... cough...”

“Are you that curious? You’re about to die.”

The man raised his sword high.

Then he drew up his inner power.

Brilliant Sword Light unfurled, became Sword Qi—and then that Sword Qi condensed again, compressing into the blade until it formed a blue crystal.

Sword Force.

The mark of the Transformation Realm.

Byeoksa Gok’s eyes bulged.

Not because the man was a Transformation Realm expert—

but because that posture was far too familiar.

“Y-you... you’re— cough— Namgung’s...”

“You recognize it? Then die.”

Sky-Vault Unfettered Sword, First Form.

Jade Sky Presses the Crown.

He brought down the entire blue sky, crushing and pinning it.

It wasn’t even a complete Sword Force—he couldn’t expand it from the blade into full extension.

Proof that he was only at the entrance of the Transformation Realm.

And yet Byeoksa Gok finally understood why his Ten Thousand Ghosts Descend to Heaven Sword had shattered so miserably.

That was the Sky-Vault Unfettered Sword of the Namgung Clan, that illustrious sword family.

A sword art that did not bow to some assassin’s killing sword armored in cowardice and filth.

A tyrant’s sword that sealed the whole sky inside its cage.

“That’s— that’s impossible, that—!”

He couldn’t say the next words.

Because his body had been split in two—starting at the crown of his head, down past the philtrum, past the solar plexus.

“GRRKKK...!”

He couldn’t even leave last words behind.

All that remained was the wet, bubbling sound of blood and phlegm.

The middle-aged man looked back and forth between the corpse, split into a grotesque ruin, and his own sword, drenched in blood.

Then he sat down in the ebony chair Byeoksa Gok had been sitting in only moments ago.

“...Yeah. I’m Namgung Clan’s bastard son, Namgung Byeok.”

The middle-aged man spat the words bitterly.

He flicked his bloodied sword once, shaking off the clinging drops, and slid it back into its scabbard.

At this point, all he had left to do was wait.

So he quietly chewed on his wretched past.

A bastard.

And yet in the Namgung Clan—where talent was everything—he had once surpassed Namgung Hyeong and even risen as a candidate for clan lord.

If Namgung Hyeong’s wife hadn’t given birth to Namgung Seon, he might have become clan lord.

If the Sword Sovereign hadn’t laid eyes on that grandchild with the Heavenly Martial Body.

“Fine. Fine. I can swallow getting my wrists and ankles slit and being thrown out of the clan.” 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

He rubbed at a scar that still throbbed sometimes.

The marks where the tendons in his wrists and ankles had been severed.

That was how they discarded him.

Along with his mother’s corpse.

“But you shouldn’t have killed my mother, you bastards.”

PTUI!

He spit a gob of phlegm onto Byeoksa Gok’s dead face.

Then he rose.

On the way up here, after slaughtering the Night-Heaven Guests, he had interrogated one slow-witted bastard by cutting off his fingers one by one.

Soon, a young girl would be transferred here.

So he’d heard.

Every Night-Heaven Guest who arrived would die.

As for the innocent girl...

Well.

He’d decide after he met her.

*****

Abbot Gwanggyeong decided to keep everything he had heard sealed behind his lips.

There was only one reason.

Killing the Assassin Organization’s hidden inheritors was justified.

The Namgung Clan would have no grounds to raise an issue—

as long as Shaolin truly believed, without a crack, that they were “a branch of the Assassin Organization.”

But what if Shaolin had attacked them while knowing they were Namgung’s shadow group?

What if the Beggar Union’s Seventh-Knot Elder knew, and attacked them anyway?

From that moment on, it would become a muddy brawl between the Sword Sovereign and them.

That could not be allowed.

“Elder Gwak has already gathered everyone, and he says we’re striking immediately.”

Jang Hongnak spoke first.

Shaolin warrior-monks—carrying cudgels and wrapping cloth around their fists—lit their eyes with hunger.

Abbot Gwanggyeong dipped his head slightly in thanks.

“Please tell the Beggar Union Leader at the Main Hall that this old monk is grateful. Amitabha.”

“Ah, no, not at all. Just—please—make sure everyone comes back safe. Especially Young Lady Soyak. She can’t push herself too hard.”

Soyak blinked at Jang Hongnak, who so pointedly fussed over her.

She didn’t understand why.

Of course, Jang Hongnak had no intention of letting that connection go to waste.

A young martial artist who had crushed Namgung’s young clan lord.

In twenty years, once she was in her thirties, she would probably become an expert comparable even to the Sword Sovereign.

Sure, countless prodigies hit walls they could never cross and shatter there...

But this girl was different—something about her was different.

“The Branch Hall Chief is very worried about me.”

“How could I not be? You’re the greatest talent in the Central Plains martial world. Hahaha!”

Cheonjeong didn’t understand why his waist and shoulders straightened on their own.

This proud, swelling feeling—he’d never felt it before.

*****

Sun Tzu’s Art of War says, “War is the way of deception.”

Commanding troops means deceiving all opponents.

A line Abbot Gwanggyeong, Master Gong-eop, and even the Flame-Saber Lord, Ak Jupae, all knew.

And they used it to the fullest.

They disguised Cheongak as Cheon Soyak and sent him out to the promised meeting place.

When Soyak heard the plan, she saw Cheongak’s eyes tremble.

‘If it’s for Cheonhwa... then... but... it’s for Soyak... but still...’

He couldn’t do anything except pull the wig over his head.

And astonishingly, aside from the height being a little off, a cold, beautiful young lady with delicate lines was born.

Of course, Cheongak couldn’t lift his head from shame and self-loathing, but...

Sitting there blankly by himself was, if anything, closer to how Soyak looked.

“Cheongak will be safe, won’t he?”

Soyak spoke quietly.

She, Gong-eop, and Shaolin’s Rakshasa monks were moving carefully through the forest.

Their target was the safe house in Henan.

It would be where Seol Yegang had told them.

“He will be safe, Young Lady Soyak. The Abbot is with him.”

Gong-eop soothed her in a low voice.

Abbot Gwanggyeong was an absolute expert charging toward the middle stage of the Transformation Realm.

And assassins who had reached the Transformation Realm were so rare that, aside from the Dark Sovereign—the legendary figure from a previous era—none were even known.

No matter who came, Cheongak would be safe.

Seol Yegang was the same.

The Parasitic Poison inside him kept squirming, and his condition was deteriorating sharply.

When he insisted on coming anyway, Soyak stopped him and made him sit beside Cheonjeong.

“I’m more worried about you, Young Lady Soyak.”

“Me?”

“Yes. These Rakshasa monks are all members of the Rakshasa Unit. As those who spread the Dharma, they are not the ‘righteous path’ in the usual sense—but they are accustomed to opening the Killing Precept and executing evil. But you...”

Soyak understood what he was worried about.

Even if she was an expert standing at the edge of Apex, staring toward Transcendent Apex—

to anyone’s eyes she was still just a small, thin, fragile fourteen-year-old girl.

It would be normal to assume she had never committed the karma of killing.

But Soyak [N O V E L I G H T] only smiled bitterly.

Her first kill had been Ak Seowon, back when he was still called the Flame-Saber General.

And even after killing him, she had felt nothing at all.

Her second kill had been the assassin who attacked them.

Soyak had no way to know it then, but it had been Night-Heaven Hall Deputy Hall Lord Gisan Gwang.

It hadn’t been much different.

“You’re worried I might not be used to blood. Thank you.”

“...You’re truly sharp, Young Lady Soyak.”

Gong-eop gave a small shrug and nodded.

He had tried to speak around it, but she understood instantly—hard to see her as merely a child.

Even so, saying she was fine didn’t make the worry disappear.

Gong-eop had seen it.

People who opened the Killing Precept for the first time and went mad with it.

Soft-hearted people couldn’t bear the karma of killing.

They couldn’t endure the fact that with their own hands they had cut off someone’s—some human being’s—lifeline.

“Even so, if your heart feels heavy, always come to me and—”

“—Master Gong-eop. Something’s wrong.”

A Rakshasa monk running point as a scout cut him off.

It was that urgent.

“What is it, Master?”

“Their stronghold... it looks like someone has already wiped it out.”