The Heavenly Demon Copies Martial Arts
“What kind of nonsense are you spouting?!”
Chu Yeo-ryong roared.
“This formation was taught to us directly by Paeng Ha-jin of the Fifth Branch through a contract!”
“…What do you mean by that.”
So Yeomgyo’s eyes flared wide, her words cutting short.
Not to be outdone, Muk Se-hwi shouted,
“In ten years, not a single person who faced this formation has ever walked away alive! Consider it an honor!”
The pressure of the Great Blood Net Formation surged higher, swelling as if on the verge of exploding.
“These bastards.”
So Yeomgyo muttered under her breath.
“They don’t even know the origin of the formation they’re using? No—before that.”
Her stance was that of a wildcat with its fur standing on end.
“How does the one who taught them know a Blood Cult formation in the first place, and what was he thinking, passing it on while deliberately hiding its source?”
Back-to-back with her, I whispered what Mumyeong had recited to me.
“So Yeomgyo. See the haze rising off their blades?”
That shimmer was unmistakably the telltale mark of sword qi.
“There are first-rate fighters mixed in among them.”
“I know. And the branch heads are at least at the level of a fully matured Peak master, no matter how you cut it. On top of that, the Great Blood Net Formation… Any ordinary expert would melt away without even getting a chance to move.”
So Yeomgyo bit down on her lip.
“You recognize that formation?”
A low hum escaped her as she adjusted her grip on her soft sword.
“The Great Blood Net Formation is, if we’re being precise, lower-tier compared to things like the Ten Demon Liberations of the Underworld, the Four Armor Soul-Confusing Array, or the Grand Illusion Form Demonic Host Method. Even so, it’s still one of the Blood Cult’s representative formations—you can’t afford to look down on it. There’s even an unbelievable story that its creator once took down a Transcendent Peak master of the Demonic Cult using nothing but a squad composed entirely of second-rate fighters.”
…
I looked at her.
Her most loyal subordinate, Baekho, had once displayed the Blood Shadow Formless Body Art—an upper-tier technique even among Blood Cult martial arts.
And from the way she spoke, So Yeomgyo seemed to have mastered nearly every formation the Blood Cult possessed.
How does an assassin like her know Blood Cult formations in this much detail?
I didn’t voice the question.
I knew there was a proper time to raise doubts and demand answers—and this wasn’t it.
Black Path thugs were charging in by the second.
They were no longer mere Black Path thugs.
At least in this place, their martial force was no longer something that could be dismissed as simple underworld scrap. It was far more accurate to think of them as proper martial artists under the Blood Cult’s banner.
—KWA-KWA-KWA!
Crimson-black afterimages swelled with a pressure ready to burst.
“They’re coming.”
My eyes scattered a red glow.
I clenched my teeth and braced for the wave about to crash over us.
That was when it happened.
So Yeomgyo shouted,
“Biryu! I can trust you, right?!”
“What? What are you talking about all of a sudden?!”
“No matter how I look at it, this is like using a cow-slaughtering knife to catch a mouse…! But if I’m only using a soft sword instead of the Red Demon Bell Sword and the Nine-Tailed Death Flame Gate—!”
So Yeomgyo twisted her soft sword into her left hand and cried out,
“The Great Blood Net Formation opens with a twenty-eight-count chain assault, and the attacks grow fiercer as it goes! You have to settle it in that opening phase! Miss that window and you’re dead for sure! If you half-ass the defense, the moment those twenty-eight counts end they’ll occupy every direction, drive you like a rabbit, and carve you to pieces in an instant!”
“Then what?!”
A frenzied surge of energy exploded from her body.
“There’s only one way! Smash everything in a single blow!”
Her eyes washed over with a faint red light, shifting until they were nearly identical to her Flame Eyes.
She was drawing her inner power right up to the razor’s edge of the full Nine-Tailed Death Flame Gate state—stopping just short of committing everything.
“Biryu—twenty breaths! Just hold until then!!”
“…What?! Hey, So Yeomgyo!”
—WOOOONG!
There was no answer.
I could tell at a glance.
With those final words, she had poured her entire mind into gathering her internal energy in a single instant.
—PIT!
A small pebble ricocheted up from the black, writhing cloud raised by the Great Blood Net Formation.
It grazed her cheek.
—Trickle.
Her dark crimson mask split, and a bead of red blood rolled down.
“Khuk!”
Ordinarily she would have dodged it with her eyes closed.
But she held an immovable stance, teeth gritted, pouring every last scrap of power into drawing up her energy.
She was completely defenseless.
She was trusting me completely.
If anyone charged her in this state, she would die screaming in an instant.
I clenched my jaw.
“…This bitch. Without a single word of discussion she just goes and—!”
—CRACKLE!
Crimson thunderflame erupted from my body.
“What the hell am I supposed to do?!”
When wisdom appears, great falsehood is born.
I flung my eyes wide and roared the second true word of the Asura Great Destruction Calamity.
“Advance!!”
—KWA-RUUUNG!!
In a single heartbeat the crimson thunderflame inverted into black lightning and blasted upward.
So Yeomgyo and I each poured out mad torrents of red energy and black energy.
“This energy—?!”
“My god. What the hell are those two?!”
“So the stories about a person’s aura whipping up a gale were actually true?!”
Now it was the Black Path thugs—who had been so full of themselves while deploying the Great Blood Net Formation—whose eyes bulged as if they might burst.
“Damn it! So the rumor that just two people smashed a branch wasn’t empty talk after all!”
Chu Yeo-ryong screamed, cold sweat pouring down his face.
They weren’t the only ones stunned.
“…You.”
So Yeomgyo broke her concentration for a dazed second and stared at me.
Until now, in every fight we had shared, she had only ever seen the first true word of the Asura Great Destruction Calamity.
With my nose already three feet under the water, I didn’t have the leisure to look at her face.
The only thought filling my skull was that I had to hold out for twenty breaths—somehow.
—Squeeze.
I stamped down the surging power and locked my stance.
Planting myself like a mountain in front of So Yeomgyo, I spread my legs wide.
I flung my black cloak back over my shoulders.
Bare-armed, I dropped into a lower guard.
My right hand half-closed into a fist; my left, sheathed in the Sevenfold Black Spider Silk Gauntlet, clenched tight as well.
“Come on, you sons of bitches! Even if it is the Great Blood Net Formation—twenty breaths is nothing!”
The light in the Black Path thugs’ eyes changed.
They understood too.
So Yeomgyo was preparing something enormous.
In an instant the entire battlefield filled with the desperate urgency that the fight had to be decided within those twenty breaths.
“Kill her!! Stop whatever that woman is doing!”
Muk Se-hwi’s voice tore as he screamed, and the undulating black tide crashed down like a tidal wave.
I drew a deep breath.
And let it out.
The count of twenty breaths began.
My pupils flared wide.
The entire world slowed at once.
Nineteen.
Dozens of blue true blades, flickering like candle flames, came screaming toward my body as if to shred me apart.
—CHARRUK!
“Heup!”
I held my breath.
The Sevenfold Black Spider Silk Gauntlet shot out.
—KA-RA-RA-RANG! KA-KAK!
Sparks flew as dozens of chained strikes from every direction began to bounce away.
The great clash had begun.
—KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA!
It was like a black storm.
Seventeen.
Every time my left hand swept, it was as if a massive iron wall had risen in front of me—every blade rebounded.
Following the ricocheting red sparks, the ceiling of the underground plaza flared bright and plunged dark again and again.
Sparks brighter than any blacksmith’s hammer striking iron filled every direction.
“Kraaak!”
I deflected a blade swung with a Black Path thug’s full strength.
He staggered.
I did not miss that split-second opening.
—JJAUNG!
I drove my right foot into the floor.
With everything I had, I whipped a roundhouse kick into the thug’s side.
His eyes went wide as he raised his scabbard to guard his ribs.
—WA-DEU-DEUK!
The scabbard shattered.
His wrist twisted the wrong way.
Even then the force in my kick did not die.
It snapped his ribs.
It snapped his spine.
Fifteen.
“Keok.”
The thug died on the spot. His corpse, waist folded the wrong way, went flying like a wet towel.
“Uwaaa!”
—WA-REU-REU.
The corpse smashed into the formation line behind him, tangling with the thugs charging after and sending them sprawling.
In that chaos, three or four thugs who should never have entered my range stumbled straight into it.
“The formation’s broken—!”
Their eyes bulged.
But my hands had already left my sides.
Ten.
I seized the wrist of a flailing, panicked thug, yanked him in, and drove a palm strike into his jaw.
—WA-DEUK.
His neck snapped.
I spun a back-fist into the face of the one beside him.
Stepping on his body, I drove a front kick straight into the solar plexus of the thug on the opposite side.
“Uwek!”
As the retching thug’s head dropped, my rising fist from below smashed up into his face.
Nine.
—KWAANG!
His face caved as if it had exploded, and he tumbled backward. I snatched the axe that slipped from his hand, smashed it down into the neck of the man beside him, confirmed his eyes rolling white in death, and hurled the weapon straight ahead in the same motion.
—KWAANG!
“Kkeuaaak!”
The thrown axe split both the hastily raised sword and the head behind it.
Chu Yeo-ryong stammered,
“W-what did I just see.”
Muk Se-hwi cried out in equal shock,
“Three men dropped in a single clash?!”
Chu Yeo-ryong flung out a hand and bellowed,
“Forget the man! Go for the bitch behind him! Something’s wrong!! Ignore the man!”
“Yes!”
—KWA-KWA-KWA!
The formation that had briefly scattered snapped back into ranks in an instant.
It was like a swarm of flies that scatter at a wave of the hand only to cluster again at once. That swarm poured toward So Yeomgyo.
Mumyeong shouted the moment he registered the shift in targets.
“I know!!”
—KWA-JIK!
I shattered the stone floor and launched myself forward.
I threw myself into the oncoming black wave and met fire with fire.
Eight.
“He’s charging us!”
“He’s insane—he’s diving straight into the formation?!”
The Black Path thugs screamed.
I did not dodge. I drove head-on into the black fly swarm.
—KWAAAANG!
Two waves collided with a thunderous roar.
Thugs went flying.
The ones who recovered their footing hurled themselves at me.
They tried to slip past and reach So Yeomgyo.
“Where do you think you’re going!”
I snatched every thug who tried to ignore me and pass behind, slamming them into the ground.
It was like trying to grab a massive waterfall bare-handed as it roared past.
—PI-BIT! PIT!
Blood sprayed.
Seven.
In the same instant one thug’s entire body crumpled under my fist, I snared the shoulder of another racing past my side.
I crushed his skull.
—PAAT.
In that gap, a thug planted a foot on my shoulder and tried to drive his blade into So Yeomgyo.
—KWAAK!
I sank my teeth into his calf.
“Kkeuaaak!!”
The thug shrieked.
His body, lunging forward, jerked to a halt.
My front teeth and canines tore into the muscle of his calf.
—Trickle.
Blood ran down along my front teeth.
Six.
I spat out the calf and seized the leg in the same motion.
I swung it sideways and bowled over three more thugs.
—PPAK!
I flew forward and kicked a skull clean.
I snatched the hair of a thug trying to slip left.
I smashed his face in with my knee.
Five.
—KWAAK!
A blade loaded with sword qi punched through my protective qi and carved toward me.
By a hair’s breadth I twisted my body aside.
I didn’t clear it completely—the edge skimmed along my side and blood sprayed.
“Eueup!”
Fire blossomed along my abdomen and I bit back a scream.
I clamped the blade in the Sevenfold Black Spider Silk Gauntlet.
I lifted my head.
Standing before me was Muk Se-hwi, eyes wide in disbelief.
“You dodged my Peak-level strike from that distance?!”
With a harsh grind the Sevenfold Black Spider Silk Gauntlet threw sparks as it locked hard around Muk Se-hwi’s sword.
He thrashed, trying to wrench the blade free, but it would not budge.
Four.
I closed the distance on him.
—KWAANG!
My fist buried itself in his gut.
“Uwek!”
Muk Se-hwi vomited and tumbled across the floor.
I scooped up his body and hurled it into the pitch-black ranks of charging thugs.
“Uwak!”
—WA-REU-REU!
Startled thugs abandoned the formation mid-flow, scrambling to catch their leader, only for their limbs to tangle and send them sprawling.
Three.
I did not miss that instant. I charged in.
I shattered and pierced the limbs of thugs howling in from every direction.
“You bastard!”
The head of Chu Yeo-ryong’s chain-linked axe separated and came flying.
Hidden in the shadows of the Great Blood Net Formation, I felt nothing until it was right in front of my nose.
—Gulp.
Even as it sliced across the bridge of my nose, I arched my waist back with the subtlety of the Baekryeon Eight Night Strain and dodged.
“Ah—!”
Too late I realized it was flying toward So Yeomgyo behind me and thrust out my hand.
Two.
—CHARRUK!
With a metallic rattle the chain whipped around my arm. My body locked rigid.
“Kwahaha! Got you!”
Chu Yeo-ryong seized the chain and hauled.
—KWAAK!
The chain cinched tight around my forearm and brought my body to a dead stop.
For the first time, my ceaselessly moving body halted.
I felt the black cloud of the Great Blood Net Formation—which until now had eyes only for So Yeomgyo—snap its gaze onto me like lightning.
One.
“Die!”
Dozens of Black Path thugs stabbed in like a swarm of light, trailing crimson afterimages.
“Keuk!”
I clenched my teeth and poured strength through my entire body.
That was when it happened.
—WOOOONG!
The air trembled.
A vast heat filled every direction.
From behind my back, a killing intent hotter and fiercer than the hundreds of murderous true blades filling my vision washed over me like living flame.
“Biryu! Get down!”
The instant I heard her, I wrenched on the chain with everything I had and flattened myself against the floor.
So Yeomgyo’s cry tore through the air.
Strength enough to uproot mountains, presence enough to blanket the world—!
“…Is that a Decisive Secret Art?!”
White flame—not the familiar crimson fire—coiled around So Yeomgyo’s entire body. I had never seen it before in my life.
Heaven and earth were shaking.
—KWA-DEU-DEU-DEU-DEU!!!
Her soft sword shot forward as her clear, ringing voice rolled out across the plaza.
White flame erases everything under heaven in a single instant.
In that one moment, pure white fire wiped this world clean of all things.