The Mad Soul Art
A sword leveled straight ahead.
The rage coiled along its edge spilled outward as killing intent.
Yet the man facing it—Geumri—remained as unmoved as if a mountain breeze were merely brushing past. His gaze stayed fixed on Jegal Mun-Hyeon, who sat cross-legged in meditation.
To watch that man greedily swallow the fruit of a hundred years of labor and calmly circulate energy was infuriating beyond measure. Infuriating again and again.
From the beginning, a Spirit Fruit would not settle into a vessel that had never cultivated… and before long that vessel would crack, shatter into dust, and crumble away…
To mistake a cursed bond for a fated opportunity, to grasp at wicked greed without even knowing he was about to die.
Crrrk.
His teeth ground together hard enough to feel them wear down.
A hundred years of effort had come to nothing.
The tower he had raised with such care had collapsed overnight at the visit of nameless interlopers.
He had been so close.
The Spirit Fruit’s power had reached its peak; he had believed he would soon refine the elixir and cross the boundary between mortal and immortal. His heart had swelled and swelled with that hope.
Now that hope lay in ruins.
A hundred years of cultivation, reduced to empty prayer.
And yet—the faint spiritual energy, yeong-gi, still wavering around that bastard’s body.
He could not contain it.
He could not refine it.
Of course not.
He would have no idea how to hold yeong-gi within his body.
Which meant there was still hope.
The method of the Fetal Spirit Chamber used newborn infants as fertilizer to complete a Spirit Fruit—but now that damned man had swallowed it. If Geumri acted quickly and petrified the dantian, it could still become a Human Pill.
No one had ever attempted it, but this was no time to fear uncertainty. If the Spirit Fruit was going to vanish either way, better to try something—anything—than nothing at all…
And then—
“Was it you? Were you the one who kidnapped all those babies and used them as fertilizer for the bamboo?”
“…….”
Mujin’s hair, whipped by rage, seemed to lift on a wind of its own.
His obsidian-black eyes radiated a bone-deep chill, yet Geumri only managed a faint furrow of his brow.
Why bother paying attention?
The man’s presence was not light, but in the end he was still only human.
To Geumri—who had cultivated for long ages and stood on the threshold of the Half-Immortal realm—Mujin was nothing more than a pebble kicked aside on the road.
“Answer me. I’m asking if you’re the one who committed this atrocity that would make heaven and earth cry out in fury.”
Killing intent that had been formless turned tangible, becoming a vicious wind that raked the surroundings.
Crack! Crack!
Pebbles underfoot burst apart. The ground split open in spiderweb fractures.
Mujin’s rage was drawing the power sealed in his third seal to its absolute limit.
“Hmm…….”
Beating him to death would hardly be enough.
But Geumri had no time to spare for the gnat buzzing in his face.
First, the one who had swallowed the Spirit Fruit—
He took a step.
The moment his foot left the ground, his figure glided forward as if sliding on ice.
Ordinarily Mujin would have marveled at that speed and subtlety. Now every sense was dyed with fury; he swung his sword at once.
Szzzzzt!
Blue sword-light spat lightning as it carved a horizontal arc.
As a first-generation disciple of the Purple Cloud Palace, he had studied Flowing Cloud among the countless sword arts that represented Wudang.
Flowing clouds.
At times leisurely, at times swept along by the wind—supple, unpredictable.
It was the pinnacle of using softness to conquer strength. Yet what Mujin unleashed today was a rain-swollen thundercloud, pouring down lightning.
KRRRRACK!
Geumri avoided the horizontal cut, but the merciless sword qi that followed forced him back a step. The corner of his eye twitched.
“Answer. Why have you committed such a horrific act?”
At Mujin’s demand, Geumri’s face hardened.
In the brief instant he had been forced to yield a single step, the yeong-gi pouring from Jegal Mun-Hyeon’s body was diminishing.
Wh—why?
Unable to accept it, the energy should have been swelling outward. Why was it being gathered into that bastard’s body?
Refining it? A mere human?
Then was he a cultivator as well?
Urgency seized him at once.
But—
“Villain! I told you to answer!”
The sword flowed toward him.
No afterimages remained; every scattered stroke was a true strike.
KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA!
And then it poured down.
It drove in like a cloudburst.
With his path blocked, Geumri could endure no longer.
“Damn gnat! Get out of my way!”
His open palm swept wide as if it were a banana-leaf fan, raising a catastrophic wind.
Mujin tried to scatter it, but blade-sharp edge qi rode within the blast and sliced his robes. He lunged in front of Jegal Mun-Hyeon and raised his sword into a barrier.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
The wall of layered sword qi shattered as if it were nothing.
Each impact sent shockwaves thrashing through his internal energy and rising nausea, yet Mujin could not give ground.
If he dodged, Jegal Mun-Hyeon—still circulating energy—would be exposed.
He had to hold.
What in the world was this wicked creature, that wind raised by a bare hand could smash sword qi?
More than that, his presence was unlike any martial art Mujin had ever seen.
Mujin had already reached Intent Qi; if their power were equal, sword qi should not break. He had witnessed a martial uncle of his own mountain who had attained Sword Qi, and he could make the comparison.
Yet this wicked power was like nothing else.
What on earth…
But there was no room to ponder.
He had to fill the breaches again.
His sword grew faster; his energy swelled higher.
Blue light turned black. Blood-light surged in his obsidian eyes.
Then a hand thrust through a gap in the sword-qi wall.
H—how?
Mujin’s startled blade faltered for a heartbeat, and the hand that did not miss the opening drove deep into his abdomen.
THUD!
His internal energy cut off in an instant.
A shock that made him want to vomit blood.
“Khuhk!”
Driven far back, Mujin’s knees buckled.
It felt as if his breath had stopped.
His sword had not worked.
What in the world was this man?
Could the immortal of Dongho that Jegal Mun-Hyeon had spoken of truly exist?
With difficulty he raised his head.
He saw his opponent take a step.
Only a single blow.
But it was enough to feel the gulf in power.
His trembling legs refused to straighten, and the pain in his gut would not fade.
At this rate…
Mujin clenched his teeth.
In that moment, one thing rose in his mind.
Gwanghongyeol.
The Mad Soul Art.
This was not a martial art but a mind-method.
A way to amplify internal power through inflamed emotion.
The five desires and seven passions become the flame of wicked rage; every sound in the world becomes a beast’s roar.
A martial method of the demonic path.
A cursed fate had reached him.
But he could not refuse to use it.
In the destruction of evil, good and evil themselves do not matter. If destruction benefits the many, why should one not claim the name of evil?
Thuk!
Mujin stabbed a point on his own body.
The fourth seal.
Before, Jegal Mun-Hyeon had draped darkness over him. Now he walked toward the dark of his own will.
The demonic nature that had languished in the deepest prison of his heart, never seeing the sun, roared awake the moment the door opened.
Mujin circulated the Mad Soul Art.
Rage amplified his demonic nature into something far more ferocious.
KWOOOOOOM!
Energy surged like a flood through his meridians, racing to the ends of his limbs—to fingertips and toes—and in that instant—
BOOM!
Thunder cracked inside his skull.
And his mind went hazy.
“……?!”
Geumri could not set down the foot he had lifted to step forward.
In a flash—
The presence of the man who had crumpled powerlessly was transformed.
A black, hideous energy.
And beneath whipping hair, obsidian eyes that gleamed wetly.
Grrrrr.
Even a beast-like growl.
Geumri was already a cultivator who had transcended the mortal and was approaching the immortal, yet the cry that rang in his ears raised gooseflesh along his skin.
And that energy—was it the same kind as his own?
KRAAAAAAH!
Crouched like a four-legged beast, Mujin launched himself with a savage howl.
“Y-you bastard!”
Startled, Geumri swept his hand through the air at once.
But Mujin’s palm slammed into the wind pressure at the same moment.
BOOM!
Air burst. Shockwaves rippled outward in every direction.
The ground flipped over; the withered bamboo shattered into splinters and scattered.
“Wh-what in the world—?”
He was not wounded.
Mujin, who had met the blow head-on, did not fall, though he was driven back as before.
Only now he did not groan—he unleashed a roar even more vicious than before.
How?
The nature of the energy had changed, but it was still power held by a human. Why did his wrist ache from the impact?
Yeong-gi was a transcendent force.
Far stronger than the qi martial artists kept within their bodies.
“Were you a cultivator too?!”
He shouted, drunk on rage, but no answer came.
KRAAAASH!
Not techniques—pure physical motion, instinctive attacks like a beast’s.
Mujin crashed into him without restraint.
“Damn it!”
Geumri finally abandoned the step he had been taking toward Jegal Mun-Hyeon and was forced to meet the assault.
BOOM! KRA-BOOM!
Under his strikes Mujin was shoved and slammed down again and again.
But he would not stay down. He had not mastered Shaolin’s Diamond Imperishable Body, yet no matter how often he was struck he rose and charged once more. He kept coming as if racing toward death itself.
Geumri could not understand it.
He had briefly mistaken him for a cultivator—but he was not.
The scent was different.
Then how could the man’s power jolt him?
But the Mad Soul Art—
It had been the final insight the Heavenly Demon Baek Kang-Hwi conceived before forming a spirit body, while cultivating the Ascension Method in Taegeuk Cave.
Thus it was power that transcended the human realm not as the immortal path, but as the demonic.
Energy born of a human, yet capable of contending with yeong-gi…
Especially against a cultivator who had not yet become a Half-Immortal—against Geumri—that power was landing solidly enough.
BOOM! KRA-BOOM!
As the exchanges mounted, Mujin’s body turned bloodier—and wounds began to open on Geumri as well.
Scarlet lines marked where claws had raked him; a throbbing ache lingered where blows had landed.
Yet far more than the pain in his own flesh, what gnawed at him was the complete vanishing of yeong-gi’s trace from Jegal Mun-Hyeon’s body.
Because of this bastard…
Because of this damned bastard…
Heat surged through Geumri until his body flushed crimson, as if smeared with fresh blood.
Coarse scales sprouted across torn skin.
As if he had donned fish-scale armor.
From both sides of his jaw, long whiskers unfurled and streamed like a dragon’s beard.
They did not appear as immortals.
They called themselves Half-Immortals, yet to the eye they were monsters, fiends, and ghosts.
As Hyeoncheonja had once said, Geumri’s form now seemed to lie somewhere between the monstrous and the demonic.
And the power of his revealed true body was vast enough to send a faint quake through the whole area.
KRAAAASH!
Mujin’s attacks no longer worked.
Partly because the demonic qi he had drawn out was spent—but Geumri’s body, clad as if in fish-scale armor, possessed defense no different from an iron wall.
THUD!
With every clash, it was Mujin’s body that burst.
Flesh. Head…
Grrr.
After several more collisions, even that growl thinned. At last Mujin panted and stopped moving.
His strength was gone.
The demonic nature receded; consciousness returned.
In his unfocused eyes, Geumri’s grotesquely transformed figure appeared only as a blur.
A red shadow…
Was it blood flowing?
Or had blood pooled in his own eyes to make him see it so?
Collapsing to his knees, Mujin let both arms hang limp.
Why is evil so strong?
Even after choosing to become evil himself, why had he failed to bring this man down?
His heart crumbled under the lament.
Through a dazed haze, death approached.
What cut deeper still was the knowledge that he could no longer shield Jegal Mun-Hyeon.
Death came to a halt directly before him and looked down.
“Because of you… even my last hope is gone. Because of you!”
A voice sunk cold and deep.
Geumri’s hand rose.
And swung toward Mujin’s head.
In the instant before it connected—
WHOOOOM!
A streak of light flew like a ray of brilliance and smashed into Geumri’s body.
KRAAAAAASH!