The Eight Methods of the Sword
Even after the sun dipped below the horizon, the Guest Hall remained alive with sweltering heat and restless clamor. Applicants for the newly formed combat unit, the Mad Tiger Squad, had converged on the grounds like gathering storm clouds. The raucous noise produced by hundreds of martial artists was troublesome enough on its own, but the real issue was that Mok Woo-jeon insisted on handling the reception entirely by himself.
"Vice Commander, this sort of grunt work is meant for ordinary squad members," Mok Woo-jeon had insisted, flatly refusing Tang Pung-yeong's offer to help. "I can handle all of it, so just sit back and enjoy the show."
Relying on nothing but stubborn grit, Mok Woo-jeon took on the mountainous piles of applications and one-on-one interviews alone. As a consequence, the wait times dragged on indefinitely, culminating in the comical spectacle of the Guest Hall Master barging into the room to unleash a furious storm of complaints.
From his darkened room, Dokgo Jin watched the commotion through the window with an indifferent gaze.
His enthusiasm is commendable, but at this rate, he won't finish before dawn.
Exhausted applicants were already giving up and turning away in droves, but Dokgo Jin paid them no mind. Anyone who lacked the patience to endure even a few hours of waiting was of no use to him anyway.
Dokgo Jin's eyes narrowed thoughtfully as afterimages of the spar from earlier that day flitted through his mind.
"..."
The Vermilion Shadow Squad Leader had unquestionably been powerful. It was a stroke of tremendous fortune that Dokgo Jin had managed to conclude the contest before the man could unleash his signature ultimate technique.
It was a razor-thin margin.
Had the Vermilion Shadow Squad Leader unleashed that technique, Dokgo Jin would have been forced to reveal far more cards than he had prepared. To defeat him, Dokgo Jin had relied on two carefully calculated elements: exquisite swordsmanship and evasive footwork. He had parried the flying daggers with precise blade craft or slipped past them using the Nine Nether Trackless. Built atop that fundamental strategy was a final, decisive strike—a single sword stroke delivered at the exact split second, neither a hair too early nor a fraction too late. With that, he had brought the Vermilion Shadow Squad Leader down.
Through that single duel, Dokgo Jin had firmly etched an impression of himself as a brilliant, exceptionally capable young squad commander.
What comes next will be even more critical.
Dokgo Jin stared out into the empty air, his eyes chilled. The sudden establishment of a brand-new combat unit could not be without motive. There had to be a calculated reason behind it.
Depending on how I navigate this, everything I have built so far could vanish like smoke.
He needed to survey his surroundings with sharper vigilance and gather more intelligence. A cool, thin smile touched his lips.
I won't let myself be used so easily.
And even if they managed to use him, he fully intended to extract a commensurate price in return.
"Out of six hundred and fifty-seven applicants, I have screened out the deadweight and narrowed the list to sixty-two," Tang Pung-yeong reported the following morning, handing a parchment scroll to Dokgo Jin. "You mentioned wanting to keep our core unit small, Squad Leader, so I pared it down as aggressively as possible."
Dokgo Jin scanned the names and shook his head. "Still too many."
"...Pardon?"
"I intend to form the Mad Tiger Squad with roughly twenty men."
Tang Pung-yeong could not conceal his bewilderment.
Isn't that far too few?
Combat units belonging to the Five Banners of Northern Heaven typically numbered anywhere from a hundred to as many as two hundred warriors. Even the specialized covert detachments operating under the Flying Shadow Banner generally fielded over thirty operatives. Twenty was sparse beyond reason.
"That number is ideal if we are to operate with maximum efficiency," Dokgo Jin explained calmly.
"Hmm... Understood. Shall I conduct another round of screening, then?"
"No. Summon all sixty-two of them together. I will evaluate and select them personally."
"Understood, Squad Leader."
A thought struck Dokgo Jin, and he asked, "How is Member Mok holding up?"
Tang Pung-yeong struggled to suppress a smirk. "Well... after staying up all night processing applicants and sorting them into categories, he completely collapsed. He is probably still dead to the world in his quarters."
Dokgo Jin let out a faint chuckle. "Is that so? When we assemble the candidates later, tell him to come thoroughly prepared."
"Do you mean...?"
"Mok Woo-jeon will be testing the prospective members," Dokgo Jin replied as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
While Dokgo Jin could test them himself, observing from the sidelines offered a far more objective assessment. Moreover, there was another underlying purpose.
"Mok Woo-jeon's martial prowess will serve as the benchmark for every warrior in the Mad Tiger Squad."
A training ground within the Guest House Hall.
Outwardly, Mok Woo-jeon appeared to possess the cultivation of an ordinary First-Class expert, yet in actual life-and-death combat, his martial prowess easily rivaled that of the Peak Realm. Even applicants who had reached the First-Class Realm could not hold out against his two-handed longsword for more than thirty exchanges.
"Pathetic! You thought you could join our Mad Tiger Squad with such meager skill?!"
"..."
The applicant hung his head in shame and slunk away.
"Next!"
Dokgo Jin was inwardly disappointed.
Truly formidable talents are rare.
Though he had gone out of his way to spar with the Vermilion Shadow Squad Leader to draw attention to their recruitment, the results so far left much to be desired.
The seventh applicant was a burly, barrel-chested man. His bristling beard resembled that of Zhang Fei from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, yet despite his rugged appearance, he wore frayed gray monastic robes and had a heavy necklace of Buddhist prayer beads draped over his neck.
"Amitabha. This poor monk is called Wang Saeng."
Dokgo Jin's eyes narrowed as he took in the man's presence. His rigorously tempered physique and the quiet aura radiating from him were far from ordinary.
Beside him, Tang Pung-yeong murmured, "He is a defrocked monk from Shaolin. When he was excommunicated, his tendons were severed and his dantian destroyed, yet somehow, he managed to make a full recovery."
If true, it was nothing short of miraculous.
"Did Shaolin simply let that be?"
"They had little choice. Laying hands a second time on a defrocked monk whose martial arts they had already crippled would have severely tarnished Shaolin's upright reputation. Unless he openly displays Shaolin's sacred arts, there is little they can officially do."
"..."
"He has drifted through numerous combat units across the alliance, never settling down anywhere, constantly jumping from one to the next," Tang Pung-yeong added, lowering his voice. "His combat ability is certainly adequate, but he stirs up trouble wherever he goes... Personally, I believe it would be wiser to turn him away."
Dokgo Jin, however, held a different opinion.
In the meantime, the duel between Mok Woo-jeon and Wang Saeng commenced.
Clang! Cl-cl-clang!
Sharp metallic reverberations rang out across the courtyard. Wang Saeng fought using a rosary strung with heavy iron beads, cracking it through the air like an iron whip one moment and wrapping it tightly around his forearms as reinforced vambraces the next. He commanded the iron beads with such uncanny mastery that even Mok Woo-jeon struggled to breach his defenses.
When the exchange surpassed thirty bouts, Dokgo Jin called an abrupt halt.
"Enough."
Mok Woo-jeon stepped back, his expression dripping with reluctant frustration. "Tsk. I was just about to knock him flat."
"Amitabha. Patron Mok's jokes are rather excessive."
"Joke? You think a shaved head like you is actually my match?"
"On the contrary," Wang Saeng replied placidly. "This poor monk was merely lamenting that had I been granted just a few more moments, I could have wrapped my beads around Patron Mok's throat and sent you straight to Sukhavati... A true pity."
"What did you say?!"
Before tempers could flare further, Dokgo Jin broke the silence.
"Wang Saeng, what is your reason for wishing to join this unit?"
"Amitabha. To put it simply, this poor monk judged it to be the combat unit where I would fit best."
"Which is to say, you didn't fit into any of the others."
"...!"
A guilty flinch crossed Wang Saeng's rugged face.
"Very well, Wang Saeng. As of this moment, you are an official member of the Mad Tiger Squad."
A wide grin that looked comically out of place on Wang Saeng's ferocious countenance broke out, and he bowed deeply. "My thanks, Squad Leader."
Mok Woo-jeon immediately shouted, "Splendid! Now that you're one of ours, let's finish our duel properly!"
"Amitabha. Patron Mok would do well to cherish his own mortal life a little more."
"Why you bald rogue...!"
"A rogue, you say? It seems Patron Mok's foul tongue stands in dire need of spiritual enlightenment."
Tang Pung-yeong's brow furrowed, but he soon gave a resigned shrug.
Then again, with that lunatic Mok Woo-jeon already in our ranks, someone like Wang Saeng won't make things any more chaotic than they already are.
Tang Pung-yeong intervened with a frosty voice. "That's enough, both of you. And Mok Woo-jeon, you have evaluations to conduct. What nonsense are you spouting?"
Looking somewhat sheepish, Mok Woo-jeon pointed an accusing finger at the monk. "...Just you wait until these tests are over."
"You will only live to regret it." Wang Saeng refused to give an inch.
Time slipped by, and the twelfth evaluation concluded.
Despite fighting twelve consecutive bouts, Mok Woo-jeon showed almost no signs of fatigue. His endurance was enough to make even Tang Pung-yeong shake his head in disbelief.
"Are you holding up, Member Mok? You can take a breather if you're spent."
"I haven't even finished warming up yet, Vice Commander. Don't waste your breath worrying about me."
Having been forged in the brutal fires of northern battlefields where life and death hung by a hair, a dozen brief sparring matches were child's play to him.
His stamina really is monstrous.
The evaluations pressed onward until, before long, the thirtieth applicant stepped forward onto the flagstones.
He was a slender youth with a noticeably pale complexion, wearing a simple robe with an antique, weathered sword buckled to his waist.
"..."
A strange glint surfaced in Dokgo Jin's eyes as he looked upon him.
Unaware of Dokgo Jin's sudden interest, Tang Pung-yeong leaned in to explain. "Lee Cheongil. You likely haven't heard of him yet, Squad Leader, but he is quite infamous around here as the 'Sword Addict.'"
"The Sword Addict? What of his martial cultivation?"
For once, Tang Pung-yeong wore a conflicted expression. "Estimated somewhere between the Third-Class and Second-Class Realm... though truthfully, no one knows for certain."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Lee Cheongil is one of the most obsessed training maniacs in our entire alliance. From dawn until the sun sinks below the earth, he spends entire days swinging his sword, frequently forgetting to eat a single meal."
Tang Pung-yeong offered a brief account of the young man's background.
Though the Northern Heavenly Alliance overflowed with martial artists fanatically dedicated to the path, few could match the obsessive tenacity with which Lee Cheongil honed his blade. Yet he was not training some supreme esoteric art. He practiced only rudimentary routines: the Three Powers Sword Method, the Six Harmonies Sword Method, and the Seven Stars Sword Method—the most basic forms imaginable. Even when his posture appeared flawless to external observers, something dissatisfied him, driving him to repeat the exact same movement thousands, tens of thousands of times.
There was an old fable circulating in the Jianghu: that even a Third-Class martial art, if polished to the absolute extreme, could turn a practitioner into a peerless master.
Yet anyone who had genuinely cultivated martial arts understood how hollow and absurd that notion was. Martial techniques possessed inherent ceilings, and no amount of repetition could bridge the chasm left by inferior internal foundations. Nevertheless, a rare few stubbornly chose to live out that naive myth.
"Lee Cheongil is one of those fools," Tang Pung-yeong continued. "While his dedication and tenacity are undeniable, in actual combat... well..."
Many had challenged Lee Cheongil out of sheer curiosity. Though he declined most invitations, he occasionally accepted a duel, and every single time, he was trapped in passive defense, incapable of mounting an effective counterattack before invariably suffering defeat.
By all rights, he should have been purged during the initial document screening. Yet Tang Pung-yeong had wanted to observe him up close, and was equally curious to see what judgment Dokgo Jin would pass on him.
The Squad Leader might only end up disappointed, though...
Mok Woo-jeon recognized the youth as well.
"Been quite a while since we crossed blades, Sword Addict."
"..."
At those words, Lee Cheongil's brow twitched involuntarily.
Mok Woo-jeon had once sought him out after hearing rumors of the eccentric swordsman. Lee Cheongil had politely declined, citing his own inadequacies, but Mok Woo-jeon's relentless badgering had eventually forced his hand. The ensuing duel had been completely one-sided. Trapped beneath Mok Woo-jeon's ferocious, tempestuous onslaught, Lee Cheongil had barely managed to fend off the blows before crumbling in defeat without ever displaying what he was capable of. Thoroughly disappointed, Mok Woo-jeon had never visited him again.
"Did your skills improve any in the meantime?"
Lee Cheongil, who had remained silent, finally spoke.
"Rather than a duel... I wish to demonstrate my sword art."
His voice trembled faintly, tight with tension.
"What sort of nonsensical drivel is that?" Mok Woo-jeon asked, casting an incredulous glance back toward Dokgo Jin.
Dokgo Jin gave a faint nod.
"Fine. Let's see what you've got. What are you going to show us? The Three Powers? Or the Six Harmonies?"
Yet Lee Cheongil's gaze was no longer on Mok Woo-jeon; his eyes were fixed solely upon Dokgo Jin.
"What I will demonstrate are the Eight Sword Methods."
Mok Woo-jeon scowled. "The what?"
The Eight Sword Methods referred to the eight foundational actions of the sword: Thrust, Cleave, Flick, Strike, Deflect, Dot, Snap, and Stir. They were the absolute bedrock of swordsmanship, taught to every novice who took up a blade.
"You came all this way just to show us the Eight Methods?"
"Yes. Because they are the entirety of my sword."
Lee Cheongil's eyes blazed with intense, unyielding conviction.
"..."
As Dokgo Jin continued to study him without a word of objection, Lee Cheongil took the silence as tacit approval and drew his sword.
Shiiing!
An aged yet impeccably maintained iron blade emerged from its scabbard. Without hesitation, Lee Cheongil began to execute the Eight Methods in sequence.
Whoosh! Ssshh!
In the breathless silence of the training grounds, only the crisp, sharp tearing of displaced air reverberated. Watching the demonstration, even Mok Woo-jeon was inwardly stunned. To a veteran who prioritized bloody battlefield practicality above all else, Lee Cheongil's posture was astonishingly pure—stripped of even an ounce of superfluous motion.
Swiiish!
With the final 'Stir', Lee Cheongil brought the Eight Methods to a close. Though it consisted of merely eight elementary movements, fine beads of sweat had formed upon his brow.
Clack.
Sheathing his blade, Lee Cheongil stole a tentative glance at Dokgo Jin.
"..."
Yet Dokgo Jin's face remained utterly impassive, giving no clue as to what thoughts stirred beneath his calm demeanor.
I gave it everything I had.
Just as Lee Cheongil began to step back with a bitter, resigned look, Dokgo Jin's voice broke the silence.
"Halt."
"...?"
"Are you planning to withdraw without undergoing the sparring examination?"
Lee Cheongil's pupils trembled. "Pardon? But I assumed my demonstration of the Eight Methods would serve as..."
"I do not recall ever saying that alone would constitute your evaluation."
Dokgo Jin took a slow, deliberate step forward onto the courtyard floor.
"It seems you have already tested your blade against Member Mok in the past. So this time, I shall be your opponent."
Dark Sky Martial Emperor
Author | Jeong Cheon
Publisher | Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
Editor-in-Chief | Editorial Department
Published by | Samyang C&C Co., Ltd. - Dreambooks
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