Heavenly Demon's Martial Copy – Chapter 54
The vast cavern shuddered.
The fifth secret cave of the White Lotus Demon Sect, built centuries ago, convulsed and began to collapse.
A massive cleaver came screaming down. He dodged.
Clink. Clink. Clink!
The beads hanging from the Belt of Protector Ryu blazed with light, driven to their absolute limit.
Rank 4 — Kongtong Sect
Hwan-yeong-dae-sin-bo
Wrapped in crackling lightning, he raced along the cavern walls and slipped past the Golden-Furred Divine Ape's cleaver by a hair's breadth.
"Grrrrr!!"
Missing by that paper-thin margin seemed to drive the Golden-Furred Divine Ape into a towering rage. It began swinging the enormous cleaver like a thing possessed.
At this rate, I'm finished!
He had driven his body to the brink through relentless training. He had polished Hwan-yeong-dae-sin-bo to its absolute peak. But in the end, the footwork itself had its limits.
The beads set into the Belt of Protector Ryu howled and flared. Whether they had read his desperate state of mind or not, the footwork began to exceed anything the technique was ever meant to produce.
Even so, the Golden-Furred Divine Ape was catching up. The wind pressure alone was starting to tear his flesh. Without the Belt of Protector Ryu, he would already have been reduced to a slab of meat. A single clean hit meant instant death — defense didn't even enter into it. The overwhelming brute force was a natural disaster unto itself, more terrifying than even Transcendent Peak speed.
The Golden-Furred Divine Ape swung again. The distance closed. The yellow-eyed yaksha's breathing grew abruptly quieter.
Their eyes met. Something felt off.
Is it looking for something?
The cleaver's ferocious pace never slowed. But the rapidly thinning breath and the fading howls carried a strange, creeping dread.
No. That can't be—
Those golden pupils tracked him with obsessive focus, raking him from the tips of his toes to the ends of his hair. Then the golden gaze locked onto the bead blazing blue at his waist — and stopped dead, as if nailed in place.
This bastard. It's thinking.
He ducked under a cleaver stroke that nearly took his head off. Then, without warning, the blade froze above him.
A sharp crack. The edge split cleanly in two. He stared blankly at the twin blades hanging over his skull.
"Dual wielding?"
In an instant the divided cleaver filled both of the Golden-Furred Divine Ape's hands.
"Oh, hell—!"
[Dodge!]
The blades crossed and scythed in from both sides. He kicked off the ground with everything he had and twisted his body midair.
The edges grazed past, carving lines across his waist and thigh. His body hung suspended. There was no way to change direction in open air.
The Golden-Furred Divine Ape hurled the cleavers aside. A massive hand shot toward him like a thrown mace.
"Damn it!"
He unleashed the Vajra Demon Subduing Fist at full power, trying to slip the grasping fingers. But the hand had never been aiming for his body.
It snatched the Belt of Protector Ryu.
[So that's what it was after!]
Mumyeong's cry rang out like a scream. The world went white. In the next heartbeat he was slammed into the wall like a wet rag.
Flesh tore. Blood sprayed from his mouth as he hit. If not for a body reinforced by the Heavenly Demon Jade and tempered to its absolute limit, that single impact would have burst him open on the spot. The way Eunpyeong had died without even managing a proper defense had been no exaggeration.
"Ah… aagh."
He rolled across the floor. Pain like his entire body was coming apart wracked him as he clawed desperately to his feet. There was no chance to restore his flesh.
"Grrrr."
The Golden-Furred Divine Ape held up the Belt of Protector Ryu in its fist. A creature like that shouldn't have been capable of expression — and yet it looked for all the world as if it were grinning. Goosebumps crawled over his skin.
The ape clenched its fist. The belt pulverized to powder in a single crush.
"Damn it."
The spirit beast had figured it out — that he was using the belt to evade its attacks. How it had known was beyond him. But reasons no longer mattered. The reality was right in front of his eyes.
"Hah! Hah!"
Clutching his waist, he gasped for air. The Golden-Furred Divine Ape strolled off to one side, in no particular hurry now. It picked up the two halves of the cleaver it had flung aside, fused them back into one enormous blade, and settled its grip.
Beyond it, a single shaft of light fell from the ceiling. And there, in that light, stood a jade stele.
[Host. Do you see it? That is—!]
Bloodshot veins flooded his eyes. In Yuk-bi-dong, the stele of the Heaven-Cleaving Blood Martial Art had stood the same way — planted in a pool of descending light, split down its center. He didn't need to get closer to read it. He already knew what it was.
Patcheon Hyeolma Gunrimbo.
One of the decisive milestones that would let him survive. One of the periods he would set at the end of his cursed, powerless past when he finally declared it finished.
I have to take it. I must!
His dimming eyes blazed with hunger — and beyond hunger, with a deep, smoldering grudge.
"Grrrr…."
As if sensing that gaze, the Golden-Furred Divine Ape stepped into his line of sight and leveled the cleaver. A declaration of war and a provocation all at once: if you want it, kill me first.
"Fine by me, you damned monkey."
He had trained for this day. He had swallowed tears of blood for this day. He reversed his grip on the iron sword with its broken teeth. From Eunpyeong's corpse he had also taken a short blade; he held one weapon in each hand.
"Today, the spirit beast of the White Lotus Demon Sect's fifth secret cave gets chewed down to the last splinter of bone."
"KRAAAAAH!!"
The yaksha's first true roar threatened to blow the cavern apart. He clenched his teeth.
[The matchup is the same. Host, your strength lies in close combat that prioritizes overwhelming external force over speed! And that spirit beast has always fought by seizing the advantage in raw power! If both sides are swinging blades of the same kind, there's nothing for it but to keep swinging until one of them shatters!]
Crimson light flooded both his eyes. Veins stood out across his entire body. Blood began to boil through every channel.
The foundation was the Vajra Demon Subduing Fist. But running through every inch of him—
"Uwaaaaah!!"
From the soles of his feet, violet lightning and golden lightning surged upward together. His whole body overloaded.
"Kroa?"
Tension crept into the Golden-Furred Divine Ape's eyes, where amusement had been lingering a moment before.
Blood erupted from all seven orifices. His meridians twisted; his entire body convulsed in violent rejection of the abnormality. It was like walking a tightrope on the threshold of qi deviation. Forcing the reverse flow of energy through his system, he drew the last card he had.
"Namsang Samadhi!"
Extraction System — Fully Displayed
Rank 1 — Heavenly Demon Divine Cult
Incomplete · First Stage
His front teeth punched through his bitten lower lip and blood sprayed upward. There was no room left to blend any other martial art. Rational thought itself was barely possible. In this stripped-down state, the only things he could still perform were the Vajra Demon Subduing Fist he had drilled into his flesh until blood and pus formed, and the most primitive brawling imaginable.
[Cast duration as practiced: one-fifteenth of a gak, further subdivided into sixty units. I will display the count continuously! Exceed that time and brain death accelerates — remember it!]
The blood running from his eyes boiled and turned a vivid violet. Crimson lightning seethed across his entire body. Hot steam blasted from his mouth as he settled into the most basic form of the Vajra Demon Subduing Fist — the opening stance.
Counts remaining
The ground beneath his feet shattered in an instant.
"Kroa?"
The Golden-Furred Divine Ape's pupils blew wide—
—and he drove both blades into its chest.
"…! KWAAAAAGH!"
Even caught by surprise, the ape twisted in a fraction of a second, so the blades sank only shallowly. Pain sent it into a frenzy. Every movement until now might as well have been play; it began thrashing at speeds that transcended anything human.
The cleaver came howling in. He no longer dodged. Gritting his teeth, he stared down the oncoming mass of steel and tightened his grip on both swords. Lightning coiled fiercely around the blades.
There was nowhere to run. Without the Belt of Protector Ryu, evasion only meant getting caught.
Stone cracked and exploded beneath his heels. He met the blades head-on and began beating them aside.
"KROOOOH!"
The Golden-Furred Divine Ape roared in even greater fury as its cleaver was knocked away. Between them, the steel flashes grew faster and faster.
"Th-this is impossible! How can a person display martial might like that?!"
The head senior disciple's legs gave out; he pressed himself as far into the corner of the cavern as he could.
"And from Ha-mu-gwan, no less! Even the senior brothers of Cheonsubaekryeonsa… no, even the senior brothers of our own sect couldn't show martial prowess like this!"
The Golden-Furred Divine Ape's rage hit a boiling point. It split the cleaver into two again and raised both hands. Judging by the deceptive attack lines from earlier, a single strike carried less weight this way — but dual-wielding was clearly the ape's true form.
"KRAAAH!"
Crossed blades locked and spat sparks. He poured every ounce of strength into crushing the opponent down. He did not give a single step. He met it head-on with everything he had.
A flying shard of stone split his forehead open. Blood ran. When he blinked, the red streak cut a clean line down across his crimson eye, over his cheek, and dripped from his jaw.
The cavern was coming down.
"Eek—!"
Aryun flailed the sword he had drawn, swinging wildly. Before raw terror, he forgot every martial art he had ever learned. A falling boulder from the ceiling caught him before he could even properly execute the footwork he used to show off in front of Young Lady Eunpyeong; his feet tangled and he went down.
"How can some lower-rank bastard fight a monster like that when I—!"
The rock smashed down on top of him. That was the end of Aryun.
"Kh—!"
Blade against blade, the momentum was even. Neither side yielded an inch. Sparks showered as the edges ground against each other. The lightning pouring off his body only grew more violent with every passing moment.
That was not a good sign. The technique he had activated — Heaven and Earth Great Shift — had never been fitted to his body. He had taken it from Jeokmaryeong and stopped halfway, forcing his flesh into a shell shaped for someone else. The longer it ran, the more that flesh crumbled and came apart.
Mumyeong had explained it: the lightning was an abnormal discharge, internal energy leaking out as his body — which had absorbed the Heavenly Flower White Ginseng and the Heavenly Thunder White Ginseng — broke down and ground itself to pieces. The closer he came to the time limit, the greater the agony flooding his system and the denser the lightning became.
He was one step short of overwhelming it. With Heaven and Earth Great Shift at the incomplete first stage, even going all-out only let him fight the Golden-Furred Divine Ape to a standstill.
"Damn it, damn it!"
Through the storm of blades he closed the distance.
The hand gripping his sword hilt burst open.
"T-time—!"
The blade bent. Under hundreds of impacts, the Golden-Furred Divine Ape's claws began to loosen and tear free. Mumyeong's voice turned urgent.
[Host! You'll die like this! Do you hear me — you will die!]
At the same instant something inside him snapped with a dull lurch, and the entire world turned red.
A piercing whine filled his ears. Blood-light drowned every scrap of vision. Vessels burst past mere bloodshot eyes; his entire body hit its limit and began to shake apart.
"UWAAAAAH!"
A fight to the death. He had to end it. Delay any longer and he would detonate from the inside!
He flung aside the cracked short blade and seized the long sword in both hands. Then he charged the Golden-Furred Divine Ape with everything he had left.
He slipped the cleaver dropping toward his skull. Cut right. Twisted left.
Sparks screamed as he deflected the second cleaver crashing down on his shoulder with every last shred of strength. A sharp ring — and his sword snapped.
He reversed his grip on the broken blade. Right in front of him, the Golden-Furred Divine Ape's nape lay exposed, thick hide and all. Lightning shrouded his entire body as he drove the shattered sword straight into the center of it.
He stabbed down. Stabbed. Stabbed and tore, splitting and shredding the hide. Dozens of times. Hundreds of times.
The Golden-Furred Divine Ape thrashed, trying to tear him off. He clenched the ragged hide and refused to let go.
Clinging to fistfuls of golden fur, he rode the thrashing body and stabbed like a madman. Hide tore away. Muscle showed. Then bone.
As if swatting a gnat, the Golden-Furred Divine Ape's palm smashed into the back of his head.
Pain like his eardrums exploding — and after that, no sound at all. He kept stabbing with the broken edge.
A grinding scrape of rib bone, and there in front of him a heart pulsed and thrashed.
"This is the end, you son of a bitch!"
He raised the blade for the final strike—
Heaven and Earth Great Shift — Disengaged
The red light died in both his eyes. The lightning wreathed around his body vanished.
"Oh, no—!"
In the same breath, a thousand-catty weight and a hellish exhaustion crashed through every limb. A massive palm filled his vision, closing at a speed he could never hope to avoid.
"Ah."