Defying Heaven (1)
As we raced through the forest, I kept swallowing down the sensation of breath climbing to the very back of my throat.
My master’s back as she moved with light-footed grace was still straight and unyielding, but the presence I felt beyond those shoulders was unmistakably different from before.
Subtle, but certain. The sight of her meridians twisted out of shape, her dantian growing dim.
The disorder in her vital energy, which she was trying so hard not to show.
The aftereffects of her head-on clash with Bang Chunghyun’s demonic qi still hadn’t faded from her body.
And yet my master didn’t stop.
Instead, as if pulling me into her arms, she drove deeper into the heart of Zhangjiajie.
Something rose and fell hard in my throat.
Maybe it was because I remembered the sight of her carrying me when I was little, moving through the air with light-footed grace.
Master.
But there was no voice to carry the thought.
When the sound that had risen all the way to my throat scattered without a trace, the forest itself changed.
The flow of the wind twisted, and even the direction the leaves fell had gone wrong.
The movement of qi reflected in my Mind’s Eye was tangled like a spiderweb, and at its center, something ancient was holding its breath.
This place...
Without my Mind’s Eye, I would have dismissed it as nothing more than a dense forest. Ordinary to the point of being unremarkable.
But before I had time to wonder further, my master groped her way toward the trees, then kept going from trunk to trunk until she drew closer and closer to the cliff.
Thud.
My master placed a hand against the cliff face.
On the surface, it was nothing more than a gray stone wall one might find anywhere in Zhangjiajie, no different from the forest around it.
A rock overgrown with moss, worn dull by time. A sight no passerby would have spared a second glance.
"Look closely, my disciple."
But my master’s voice was firm.
It sounded much like the tone she used when teaching me as usual.
She placed her palm on a particular point of the stone wall, knocked three times, then shifted her angle and pushed in with a subtle force.
Rumble.
It wasn’t the sound of stone breaking, but of interlocking gears turning.
As the sleeping mechanism awakened, the entire stone wall trembled faintly.
Grrrkk.
With the grinding friction of rock scraping against rock, the whole wall began to move.
I quietly tugged on my master’s sleeve and wrote on her palm.
[What is this place?]
"The Stone Tomb of Zhang Liang."
At that name, my heart dropped with a heavy thud.
Zhang Liang.
Zhangu... no—Zhang Liang.
The strategist who had left his mark on an era, the man whose name gave this valley in Zhangjiajie its very title.
And the tomb my master and her forebears had guarded for more than a thousand years.
The fact that a name I had only ever seen in history books still existed here, with such tangible reality, deep within the heart of the martial world, warped my sense of what was real.
Even after seventeen years since I had been thrown into Daemyeong Pungwhajeon, facing the currents of such a massive alternate history was no easy thing.
Thunk, thunk, thunk.
A thin line appeared across the center of the wall, then slowly split open to the left and right.
From the endless darkness lurking beyond it, a cold breeze drifted out softly.
"We go in."
Without hesitation, my master stepped inside.
I followed immediately after.
The instant the tomb door closed, the sounds of the outside world were cut off as if by a lie.
***
The inside was larger than I had expected.
Not a natural cave, but a space deliberately carved and refined by human hands.
Geometric patterns covered the walls, along with the angular characters unique to the Mo Sect that my master had taught me.
The flow of qi visible to my Mind’s Eye was even more blatant here.
The entire place was one vast mechanism, the core of a formation.
My master stood before a stone altar at the center.
Three enormous circles, their grooves and protrusions intricately interwoven.
On the mechanism shaped like a geometric ring, there was a strangely recessed palm print.
"The Formation Method of the Qimen Gate that Youhou studied under Huang Shigong."
My master’s eyes wavered for an instant.
Clack. As she let her inner force flow, the outermost ring began to shudder and rotate.
"And the Mozi Defense Array, which Mozi used to block the Chu army nine times."
Clank.
The second movement. The middle ring began to turn in the opposite direction from the outer ring, rotating counterclockwise.
"And finally... the Ten Directions Formation that Youhou once reconstructed and recorded, the one used by Han Xin."
The third movement. The innermost ring rotated clockwise, in opposition to the center ring.
Tick, tick, tick.
The sound of gears interlocking, of something being fitted together.
At the same time, the three rings came to a stop.
In that moment, the entire tomb trembled as if drawing a breath.
"These three have been woven into one, forming the formation laid across all of Zhangjiajie."
BOOM—!
From far away—so far away it might as well have been from the ends of the earth—I felt the ground groan.
It was as though something enormous had opened its eyes all at once.
My Mind’s Eye was forced open.
It wasn’t something I could hold back.
The qi of all Zhangjiajie connected into a single flow, and that sight burst into my vision.
The mountain ranges became veins, the valleys meridians, and the entire region moved like a colossal human body centered on this tomb.
This is...
I couldn’t speak.
It was larger than any fantasy I had ever imagined in the modern world.
"Activate."
My master muttered low, sending her inner force outward.
The grooves in the stone altar glowed red, then blue, then black, then gold, one after another.
The power of different formations collided without conflict, blending together naturally, as if they had always belonged there.
And in that moment, Zhangjiajie changed.
***
Outside the Stone Tomb of Zhang Liang, a hellscape unfolded.
Bang Chunghyun’s subordinates halted in the middle of the forest.
The path that had been straight only moments ago now curved into a circle the instant they took a step, returning them to where they had begun.
"W-what is this?!"
"We’re circling the same spot!"
The mountain moved.
Or rather, it only looked as though the mountain were moving.
Rocks blocked the way, ravines surged upward, and the shadows of the trees suddenly bared their killing intent like blades.
The pressure was like invisible soldiers closing a siege from every direction.
Ten Directions Formation.
Killing intent surged simultaneously from east, west, south, north, above, below—every direction at once.
The very concept of an escape route vanished.
"Aaaagh!"
One man screamed and collapsed.
There wasn’t a single wound on his body, but his face had completely shattered in spirit.
A formation does not always kill with swords and blood.
It can make a man lose his way, strip away his choices, and force him to break himself.
And if the formation had been created by sages who once defined their age, there was no need to say more.
"Don’t scatter! Keep formation and advance carefully!"
The most seasoned-looking masked man roared, but it was already too late.
The moment the formation activated across all of Zhangjiajie, the very idea of a small unit became meaningless.
Each of them was left alone.
And a human left alone is far too easy to break before fear.
Screams erupted everywhere, bodies fell, and blind, desperate swings of the blade severed the throats of allies.
Bang Chunghyun watched all of it from a single step removed.
"Not bad."
Crimson demonic qi wrapped around his body and rippled gently.
The confusion and killing intent born from the formation could not affect him directly.
"Mukjeok... only you would be able to trigger this."
A faint smile touched his lips.
A distant, dim emotion—something like respect, as fragile as sunlight on a rainy day—flickered past and sank back down like the abyss.
He lifted a hand and signaled his subordinates to fall back.
Even amid the chaos, the survivors followed instinctively.
"Enough."
Bang Chunghyun murmured it as if to himself.
At that moment, the masked men standing in the heart of the formation held their breath like mice and waited for their king’s next command.
"I have seen enough."
He closed his eyes.
The next instant, a dark red light burst from the depths of his dantian.
Something far more concentrated than the demonic qi commonly cultivated by White Lotus cultists.
A vicious, explosive inner power packed full of hatred, madness, and murderous intent.
Yet there was no madness on Bang Chunghyun’s face.
If anything, he was too calm.
"I have seen enough of the struggles of old ghosts."
The words rasped from his mouth.
"This king will open the road for you insignificant wretches."
Crack—krkkk!
The ground split beneath his feet.
Demonic qi stretched outward like threads, beginning to seize and wrench the very veins of Zhangjiajie in reverse.
Oh...
That is...
The masked men whispered without sound.
Huntian Shura Demonic Art.
An utterly vile martial art that overturned heaven, shattered the earth, and destroyed all things, reducing them to nothing.
The pinnacle of slaughter, said to be accessible only to the White Lotus Cult’s leader, the Shura Path Demon King, Myeongjon, and the five Demon Kings beneath him, was about to be unleashed.
He took one step forward. The moment his foot touched the ground, the qi veins sustaining all of Zhangjiajie cried out.
The formations installed throughout Zhangjiajie were built on the principle of dispersing and deflecting an intruder’s power.
That was because all three formations were defensive in nature, designed to withstand an opponent stronger than themselves.
But Bang Chunghyun’s demonic qi was seizing the flow itself and twisting it out of shape.
Rumble.
Dark red and deep blue demonic qi sparked like lightning around Bang Chunghyun’s fist.
The Heavenly Path Demon King’s punch swung toward the veins of the formation scattered through the air in the blink of an eye.
BOOM!
The force rippled like a giant invisible hammer striking the void.
The defense mechanism of the Ten Directions Formation activated, unleashing razor-sharp killing intent from every side.
Invisible sword qi, the illusion of massive falling boulders, and hallucinated voices gnawing at the mind crashed down on Bang Chunghyun.
"Pathetic."
Bang Chunghyun thrust out another fist.
From his fingertips, dark red demonic qi spread in all directions like a spiderweb.
The third form of the Huntian Shura Demonic Art: Blood River.
Crackkkkk!
It was the sound of space itself screaming.
Light, warped by the formation, scattered and flashed in every direction.
But Bang Chunghyun remained as still as the eye of a typhoon at the center of the chaos.
He simply watched the formation crumble, then brought his gathered hand down in a crushing strike.
—BOOOOM!!
A thunderous blast shook the entire mountain as if one side of Zhangjiajie had collapsed.
Bang Chunghyun’s demonic qi directly struck and destroyed the land veins that formed the foundation of the Ten Directions Formation.
The laws of the Ten Directions Formation—how a straight path became a circle, how a circle became a maze—were all brutally shattered before overwhelming might.
Before the absolute violence unleashed by their Demon King, the masked men could only shiver in silence.
What use was a formation, however profound its principles or meticulous its design, before overwhelming power?
Had not the Ten Directions Formation of heaven’s net, so painstakingly devised by Han Xin to kill the greatest man under heaven in his day, ultimately bowed to the martial prowess of the Western Chu Hegemon and opened a path for him?
When the dust rose thick and the vibrations finally subsided...
There was no maze, no illusion left before Bang Chunghyun.
Only a devastated stretch of earth, broken trees, and the clearly revealed path beyond them.
The road leading to Zhang Liang’s tomb.
Bang Chunghyun’s instinct shouted it to him.
"..."
Bang Chunghyun steadied his rough, ragged breathing.
That had been a strike at full power.
His complexion had gone pale, and his robe was torn and ragged from the backlash of the formation.
But his gaze burned more brightly than before.
He slowly lifted his head and stared toward the mountain’s summit.
Through the air torn apart by his demonic qi, a familiar presence could be felt.
Mukjeok’s quiet inner power, and that strange boy he had faced earlier—the disciple of Mukjeok—whose qi was just as peculiar.
"The road is open."
Bang Chunghyun said it without inflection.
The surviving subordinates staggered up and gathered behind him.
"Move. I’ll take the head of anyone who drags their feet."
He took another step forward. There was no formation left to stop him now.
***
"Khuk..."
Mukjeok clutched her chest and spat out a mouthful of blood.
It was the result of forcing herself to exchange blows with Bang Chunghyun just now.
Wolyeon stared in shock and supported her.
What his Mind’s Eye showed of his master’s inner power was already a mess.
The cracks in her dantian had become a great fissure, leaking qi in all directions, and the life force she had been holding together by sheer will was as precarious as a candle going out.
Mukjeok seized Wolyeon’s sleeve with trembling fingers.
"My disciple. Listen carefully."
Mukjeok looked directly at Wolyeon.
There was a fierce light in her eyes, as though she were squeezing out the very last of her strength.
"The formation will not hold much longer. The Qimen formation has weathered for a thousand years, and that monster has even mastered the Shura Demon Lord’s martial art. However..."
Mukjeok drew in a breath.
"There is still room left for you to leave."
Her grip tightened painfully on Wolyeon’s shoulder.
"Go. This is the burden of your master and my house. It is not yours to bear."
Wolyeon’s blue eyes met his master’s.
Then the disciple’s pale fingers moved across Mukjeok’s palm.
[Master is like a parent to me, so this is also the disciple’s burden.]
Mukjeok simply looked at her disciple.
She wasn’t surprised. She had expected that if it were her disciple, he would choose exactly this.
"So you intend to disobey your master, you unfilial fool."
[Master, that is like telling someone to fan the flames and pour oil on them when a great fire has already broken out.]
Mukjeok’s eyes widened for a moment.
[The disciple would at least like to throw on the tea water I was drinking.]
The words his father had once asked her.
The analogy Mozi had used in rebuttal when arguing with Wumazi.
Even though Mukjeok had not asked it that way,
her disciple had of his own accord understood the logic and was speaking it back to her.
It was a useless refusal, thrown out as an act of resistance.
But the disciple, as always, refused to yield and struck back.
A faint tremor touched Mukjeok’s lips.
When had he gotten so rotten, that he could openly talk back to his master like this?
It was infuriating, and yet she felt proud at the same time.
At last, with her final lingering regret, the master asked her disciple:
"My disciple. This is your chance to leave your master’s skirts behind and roam the jianghu. Though you are a mute who cannot speak, your master has taught you without stint, so the rabble of the martial world will surely not dare look down on you."
Mukjeok’s voice trembled ever so slightly, so subtly that Wolyeon would never have noticed it.
She fell silent for a moment.
"And even so, will you remain here and throw your life away uselessly with your master?"
Wolyeon’s answer came at once.
[Master, doesn’t the Dao of the Mo Sect uphold the will of heaven, Heaven’s Will?]
"It does."
[Then since the will of our master and disciple has already reached heaven, how could some riverbank and ponds—the jianghu—catch my eye?]
Mukjeok’s expression hardened at the answer she had never imagined.
Only her eyes, round with surprise, revealed what she felt.
Her lips, which had been trembling, parted at last in laughter.
"Kwahahaha!"
After a long, roaring laugh, Mukjeok gave Wolyeon a refreshed smile.
It was the first expression she had ever shown her disciple.
"You, you unfilial rebel’s disciple. You actually managed to leave your master speechless."
Wolyeon widened his eyes at the smile he had never seen before.
But soon, he let a faint smile rise on his face as well.
Mukjeok picked up the old longsword hanging on the tomb wall as if it were on display.
Even after the passage of ages, the blade still glimmered with a cold brilliance, as though untouched by the winds and rains of time.
"Very well, my disciple. Just don’t go tattling to Yama that your master drove you into a desperate corner."
[Didn’t Master say that ghosts and strange phenomena do not exist?]
"Don’t talk back."
Mukjeok lightly tapped his forehead and smiled in silence.
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