Secret Branch Infiltration Operation 4
Shin Gi-woon charged straight at the Kunlun Light Sword. He didn't need to worry about attacking. Se-hwa would handle that.
All he had to do was ensure that not a single strike reached her. He had to answer the trust she had placed in him.
Block. With that single resolve driving him, Shin Gi-woon swung his spear. The Kunlun Light Sword shifted into a stance entirely different from before — not parrying, but dodging in a way that conserved stamina rather than burning it. That alone meant Se-hwa was weighing on his mind.
Shin Gi-woon felt no urgency. There was no reason to force an offensive. The moment his breathing frayed, he would be driven onto the back foot in an instant. That was the gulf between the Peak and the Transcendent.
He had pressed first a moment ago. From now on, he would not.
Shin Gi-woon eased back step by step. The Kunlun Light Sword's eyes glittered coldly.
"Planning to stall for time?"
"No matter how I look at it, five of us taking down one old man shouldn't be that hard."
"And you think you can hold out?"
"I held out alone. No reason I can't hold out now."
Shin Gi-woon goaded him with open confidence, even beckoning with a hand for him to come on. But the Kunlun Light Sword only steadied his breathing.
Take the bait here and you play into the enemy's hands. There was no need to floor the accelerator. Five people? So what. A handful of stragglers added to the pile, nothing more.
"You're becoming a nuisance. Come at me already. I have no interest in wasting time."
"That waste of time is exactly what we want."
"Adding one little girl changes nothing. Must you truly learn that with your own body?"
"How many times do I have to say it… our goal is to buy time."
"Tch."
The Kunlun Light Sword clicked his tongue — and vanished in a blink. Shin Gi-woon immediately cast his sensory net in every direction.
The man reappeared directly behind Se-hwa.
"Duck!"
Whoooosh!
Se-hwa dropped at Shin Gi-woon's shout. The Kunlun Light Sword's blade skimmed past the bridge of her nose by the thickness of a sheet of paper.
In the same instant Shin Gi-woon's spear lanced for the man's throat — and the figure vanished again as if it had never been there.
A movement art whose name meant a dragon at play among the clouds — a body technique that flipped freely through empty air, capable of reversing direction eight times mid-flight.
One of the most renowned movement arts in the martial world, and one that was all but impossible to counter without the ability to step on empty air.
Even now, the man had not simply disappeared. His perfected lightness skill was operating at the absolute peak of efficiency.
Only then did Shin Gi-woon understand. Every clumsy opening the Kunlun Light Sword had shown until now had been an act.
The man was finally fighting at full strength. Look away for a heartbeat and a throat would be cut before the eye could blink.
From here on, it was real.
"Spread your senses as wide as they'll go. Only step into the fight at the most decisive moment. The opening… I'll make it."
Shin Gi-woon's eyes shone with a cold, bleak light. The Cloud Dragon Great Eight Forms was a troublesome lightness art, no question.
But if there was a weakness, it was this: even the Cloud Dragon Great Eight Forms was still a form of lightfoot technique. That meant you didn't have to be dragged along by it — you could turn its force against it.
If he could step on empty air, it would have been simple. No point fretting over what he didn't have. He set the thought aside.
Shin Gi-woon poured every scrap of power from the Battle Demon Divine Art into both legs. His eyes could track the man's movements.
His body, however, was slower than his eyes. To meet those strikes, every ounce of energy had to go into his legs.
A flash.
The Kunlun Light Sword's presence vanished again. Shin Gi-woon's gaze swept hard to the right.
Not this time. His spear, already in motion, drove for the man's temple.
Startled, the Kunlun Light Sword kicked off empty air. His trajectory snapped sideways. He reappeared at Shin Gi-woon's back.
But Shin Gi-woon had expected it. This was hardly the first or second time he had faced the Cloud Dragon Great Eight Forms.
The body might be slow — the mind remembered.
Too late to reverse the spearhead. Shin Gi-woon yanked the thrusting arm back and flooded the shaft with inner force.
Clang!
He caught the Kunlun Light Sword's blade on the spear shaft, barely.
"Ghk—!"
"You managed to block it, I'll give you that."
Even so, the impact hurled him three jang back. No matter how fast the mind reacted, the flesh was still only Peak. Every single blow from a Transcendent master hit like a mountain.
The raw disparity in strength was already absurd — and with his inner energy poured entirely into speed, he had nothing left but pure muscle to meet the Kunlun Light Sword.
"Still no thought of giving up?"
"Shut up."
"Very well, then."
The Kunlun Light Sword accelerated. His target was not Se-hwa — it was the passage leading down into the deepest level of the prison.
Shin Gi-woon had forgotten. The man's assault had been so overwhelming that the original objective — sealing off the stairway — had slipped his mind entirely.
He flung himself forward in desperation, but the man had already reached the mouth of the stairs.
"Se-hwa! Stop him!"
Se-hwa moved at Shin Gi-woon's urgent shout. But the Kunlun Light Sword's body was already descending.
"In a fight, the objective is what matters most, hahaha!"
The Kunlun Light Sword was still flapping his mouth as if delivering a lesson when—
Shhk!
"Kh—!"
"You goddamn horse-nosed bastard… I told you, didn't I? I said I'd stick a blade in you."
"Y-you—!"
A sword punched through the Kunlun Light Sword's heart. A thrust from behind. The culprit was a man soaked head to toe in blood — the Deputy Commander of the Manbyeon Soul-Chasing Corps, who had been locked in the prison's deepest cell.
"Im… possible… There was a trap—"
"Don't know, don't care. Just die already."
Shraaak!
The Deputy Commander's face twisted into something monstrous as he wrenched the blade upward. The Kunlun Light Sword's body split in two and collapsed.
Shin Gi-woon steadied his breathing and looked at the man. It was an encounter so awkward it almost hurt — and if the others hadn't arrived right then, it would have been worse.
"Hey, Shin Gi-woon! You good?"
"Jin…"
"Deputy Commander secured. Now we link up with Se-hwa and head back to the Cult."
Ma Ra-jin appeared first, followed by Bi So-hyang and Sama Yul. So this man who had carved the Kunlun Light Sword apart in a single stroke really was the Deputy Commander of the Manbyeon Soul-Chasing Corps.
"I never expected people like you to come for a rescue…"
The Deputy Commander's gaze flicked briefly over Se-hwa. Shin Gi-woon noticed the look and said nothing about it.
The Deputy Commander was free. All that remained was the return to the Cult.
"We should move. I hear getting me back to the Cult is your mission?"
"That's right."
"Lead the way. I may look like this, but I won't be dead weight."
Dead weight? Hardly. He would be a tremendous asset. Even if the Kunlun Light Sword had let his guard down, he had still been a Transcendent master — and this man had killed him in one blow. Carelessness and arrogance had been the Kunlun Light Sword's undoing.
With the Deputy Commander in tow, Shin Gi-woon led them out of the prison. Outside, he felt a faint tremor in the ground and turned to the others.
"Anyone else feel that? Someone's fighting out th—"
"Looks like the Commander is here. My getting caught was a smokescreen from the start."
"What?"
Shin Gi-woon stiffened. The Commander of the Manbyeon Soul-Chasing Corps was one of the few Extreme Demon masters in the entire Cult.
Against a secret Kunlun branch that didn't have a single Transformation Realm expert, a fighter of that caliber could tear the place apart alone.
That was information he hadn't had. Which meant it was entirely possible Lee Hyeong-seop had known even this when he sent them here for the trial.
The real question was why no one had told them in advance. Something about the whole arrangement still refused to add up.
Of course, the fact that their reinforcements included an Extreme Demon master was almost too sweet to believe.
"Let's get outside and head back to the Cult first. If the Commander is already fighting, we'd only be in the way."
"Solid judgment, all of you."
Shin Gi-woon took the lead, spreading his sensory net wide to check for ambushes.
Bi So-hyang and Sama Yul kept full watch as they moved, while Se-hwa and Ma Ra-jin stayed close to the Deputy Commander in case of traps.
From the clash of energies he could feel, the fighting was concentrated near the secret passage they had used to infiltrate. In a situation this chaotic, walking out the front gate was not an option.
"Rear gate."
Fortunately, almost no fighting strength remained inside the secret branch. People appeared here and there, but they were ordinary folk.
There was no need to kill civilians who had never learned martial arts. They ignored them and moved on. No one needed to say it — everyone agreed.
"This batch of Jamma Cave candidates has a lot of decent human beings in it."
"We're the unusual ones, sir."
"No? The fact that twenty teams are sitting the third Jamma Cave trial is absurd to begin with. Even at the high end, it's never gone past ten."
The Deputy Commander of the Manbyeon Soul-Chasing Corps was grinning to himself, clearly pleased about something. He didn't look particularly old — and yet a thick aura of old-man lecturing seemed to radiate off him.
That was when it happened.
"They're here! The intruders are over here!!"
"…Everyone, combat ready."
Just as they reached the rear gate, a shout went up and Kunlun martial artists poured in. None of them were Peak-level experts.
Anyone of that caliber would already be facing the Extreme Demon master. Which meant the people here had no hope of stopping Shin Gi-woon's group.
"No reason to make a big scene. Drop them in one go and push through."
Shin Gi-woon stepped forward and stamped into a combat stance. His fierce inner force swept the surrounding ground, and the Kunlun disciples tightening the encirclement flinched.
The young man's power was nothing ordinary.
"Who wants to come first?"
"Kill them all!!"
Success in the third Jamma Cave trial was right in front of them. There was not the slightest intention of letting this chance slip away.
Not even a shred.