Chapter 6
"I-I’m going after that barbarian first!"
Woo Ha-sik hastily switched his priority target from Moyong Yehwa to Geom Mujin.
He’d thought it would be enough to keep an eye on the woman called Liaoning’s Greatest Beauty, but that had been a mistake.
Shashashak-!
At the search party leader’s command, the escort warriors scattered at once.
"That’s some nasty business. Real nasty."
I rolled my eyes and watched the escorts rapidly close in to form a perimeter.
I wasn’t planning to fight, though.
I’d only meant to swipe the Baekdu Cheongak-eung and leave. This whole brawl had not been on the schedule.
What, you think they weren’t the smugglers who brought the bird in?
Smuggling was a crime in Ming, sure, but that was an issue for the local magistrate, not for a black-haired barbarian like me. What was I supposed to know?
Look, black-haired barbarian~ I dunno about Ming law, okay~
I’d simply obtained their lost property, aka contraband, by chance.
I should’ve left Dabie Mountains ages ago, but an unexpected situation had dragged things out.
Did I seriously expect to run into Moyong Yehwa?
Distracted by meeting the heroine in the flesh, I’d ended up crossing paths with Baekmun Escort Agency instead.
For the record, in the original My Martial Arts Academy, Baekmun Escort Agency didn’t even appear.
More precisely, it was only mentioned as the escort agency that smuggled the Baekdu Cheongak-eung, and when the protagonist came to take his fateful opportunity, it was already in ruins for some reason.
So I’d figured I’d take a look and see what kind of trash these guys were, but every word and every move they made stank to high heaven.
You could argue that was obvious, since they were involved in smuggling, but this was on another level.
They’d probably tried to hide it, but they couldn’t fool the instincts I’d forged over twenty years of Murim life.
My big-data analysis had never been wrong: guys like this were never decent people.
As expected of all-knowing, all-powerful big data, the moment I tossed them a bit of bait—a black-haired barbarian—they immediately drew their blades.
Thanks to that, I could give Moyong Yehwa one more stroke of fate—
"Hey!"
A sharp voice from right beside me snapped me out of my thoughts and dragged me back to reality.
"There’s a net coming at us!"
Moyong Yehwa pointed ahead and shouted.
Excuse me, wasn’t it just a second ago that you told me not to take my eyes off you? Then why are you spacing out now?!
Even though the net was flying straight at her, Geom Mujin didn’t move an inch, so Moyong Yehwa wrapped her sword in sword qi and swung.
Flowing Meteor Sword Technique
Flowing Meteor Flash
"Haaah!"
Slash-!
Like a star tearing across the night sky, the swift sword strike violently shredded the wire-woven net.
"Uwaaaah!"
"Take this!"
The instant the net was cut apart, one of the escort warriors charged in.
"No chance!"
Moyong Yehwa severed the escort’s sword, then moved to cut him down as well, only for another warrior to strike from her blind side.
"Ungh!"
She twisted her upper body to evade the blade, but by then the escort had already withdrawn.
As soon as the warriors pulled back, another net came flying in.
"This kind of garbage!"
Her sword, sheathed in sword qi, cut the net apart, and the escorts attacked again.
Once more she blocked the assault, trying to force an opening, but every time she did, some other warrior interfered and another net came in.
Since they’d come prepared to capture the Baekdu Cheongak-eung, they had plenty of binding tools in storage.
"Heh heh, don’t resist and come with me— Gaaah!?"
"Keep your mouth shut."
Thud-!!
Well, it wasn’t as if I was only playing defense.
When some fat bastard gave me a sleazy grin, it pissed me off, so I sent a fist into his jaw and he toppled backward with the squeal of a pig being slaughtered.
Still, the pressure of the repeated rotation battle began to shake Moyong Yehwa’s concentration.
Slash-!?
As her focus wavered, the sword qi gathered on her blade also started to tremble.
And once that sword qi scattered, the blade that had been halfway through cutting through the fourth net ended up getting tangled in it instead.
She instinctively pulled with all her strength, but it wouldn’t budge.
"Damn it...!"
Moyong Yehwa drew up internal energy from her dantian and tried to raise her sword qi, but she was too slow.
Shushushuk-!
The nets and snares the escorts threw came flying in at high speed.
Just as frustration clouded her face—
Sit-!
A red line flashed through the air.
In an instant, the nets and snares exploded into pieces.
"I told you to stay put and watch. You really don’t listen, do you?"
"What kind of nonsense is that when you were just standing there spacing out in a situation like this!"
Moyong Yehwa bared her teeth at him like she was looking at a troublemaker.
"You don’t know anything. Staying calm in a crisis is what gives a master their dignity."
Well, how could a mere Peak expert who’d only just started producing sword qi possibly understand the profound world of true masters?
"Hoo... Being misunderstood is such a painful thing."
"Gghh...!"
Something rose in her chest, and she bit her lower lip.
"Sword qi isn’t something you force out with sheer effort like that."
"Pardon?"
Moyong Yehwa’s eyes widened at Geom Mujin’s words as he stepped forward.
"If it’s in your hand, then it’s you."
"What does that even—"
"Throw it!"
She tried to ask what he meant, but Woo Ha-sik’s shout drowned her out.
"Watch closely this time."
The sword moved toward the nets pouring in from all directions.
Shaaaaak-!
As the blade passed through, the nets were torn apart without resistance.
I’d figured out what kind of opportunity she needed.
* * *
Beautiful.
That was the first thought that came to Moyong Yehwa as she watched the sword dance unfurl before her eyes.
She forgot even the words she’d thrown at Geom Mujin and became utterly absorbed in the motion of his blade.
It felt as if time itself had slowed.
Within that slowed world, the sword wandered freely through the air.
Or so it seemed.
Its movements looked wild and unstructured, as though it knew neither form nor pattern, yet the path it traced was full of reason, and the route it cut through the air held a strange, exquisite logic.
That sword path was like a melody of its own.
It has to be. Otherwise something like that would be impossible.
She saw the traces left behind by his sword qi—the thin threads of sword qi, the sword threads—and watched them as they rippled through the air.
Even while shredding apart the nets attacking from all sides, those sword threads never once broke.
...No, they keep connecting further.
Geom Mujin’s sword qi was different from her own.
Where hers was like unstable smoke, his was like a river flowing cleanly and without clutter.
His sword qi never lost its sharpness, never wavered for even a moment.
Sword qi was, at its core, the art of forcibly shaping intangible energy into something tangible, a blade.
Maybe because it was turning one extreme into another, sword qi often lost form and scattered the moment its user slipped even slightly.
She herself had just seen hers scatter moments ago.
...He said not to force it out with sheer effort, didn’t he.
She stared at Geom Mujin’s sword qi.
In the sword qi that sliced through everything that blocked its path, she couldn’t feel a great amount of force.
Instead, it felt similar to the energy she herself used when forming sword qi.
Lost in thought, Moyong Yehwa let out a small gasp.
"Ah?"
Her gaze fell on the sword qi again.
The sword qi is flowing.
Looking closely, Geom Mujin’s sword qi wasn’t just wrapping around the blade—it was circulating.
When damage appeared in one part of the circulating sword qi, it immediately replaced that section.
So that’s why his sword qi doesn’t lose its edge!
If you used that method, you could achieve maximum efficiency without wasting great effort.
But how is something like that possible...?
She raised sword qi around her own blade.
The energy rising from her lower dantian wrapped itself around the sword, but that was all.
Unlike his, it was unstable and full of waste.
She wanted to circulate her sword qi like Geom Mujin did, but manipulating energy lodged inside a weapon foreign to the body wasn’t easy.
If it’s in your hand, then it’s you.
The words Geom Mujin had spoken while she struggled alone flashed through her mind.
He was a black-haired bastard who had injured a young swordsman and could be considered her enemy, and yet when it came to the sword, he was more real than anyone else.
A man like that wouldn’t have said such a thing for no reason.
Without realizing it, she’d begun to form something faintly resembling trust in Geom Mujin.
It’s you.
It’s you.
.......
.......
She kept repeating Geom Mujin’s words over and over in her head.
If it’s you, then it means it’s the same as me.
But if it’s in my hand...?
What, exactly, was she holding in her hand right now?
Moyong Yehwa looked down at the sword in her grasp.
The sword that had stayed with her ever since the day she was recognized as a formal martial disciple of the clan.
Think of this sword as me?
The symbol of the family.
A means to raise her realm.
A tool for crushing barbarians.
She had trained with the sword ever since entering martial arts, but she had never once thought of it like that.
You and I are the same.
The sight of herself reflected in the blade made Moyong Yehwa’s eyes drift into the distance.
Just because she’d thought a few things she’d never considered before didn’t mean an immediate transformation would occur.
But all change begins with recognition.
Especially right after witnessing the finest of examples.
With that question thrust into her inner world, the boundary between her and the sword blurred for a moment.
Wuuung-
A portion of the sword qi that had been confined to the blade began flowing toward the palm of her right hand.
When that thread of energy touched her palm, Moyong Yehwa began to understand why Geom Mujin could circulate his sword qi.
Because there’s no boundary between my hand and the sword.
She and the sword had not become one in any complete sense.
But in this instant, the sword had become an extension of her hand.
It was difficult to manipulate energy in something external to the self, but if it was the energy of her own body, that was a different matter.
Moyong Yehwa quietly closed her eyes, and the wavering sword qi gradually settled down.
"....."
Leaving her behind as she sank into stillness to organize her realization, Geom Mujin’s momentum changed.
I’ve shown her enough.
Now it was time to turn from Geom Mujin the fate-dispenser back into Geom Mujin the Great Swordmaster.
* * *
"L-Lord of the escort...! S-she—"
One of the escort warriors who had been charging toward Woo Ha-sik suddenly had a red line drawn across his throat, then collapsed to the ground without a head.
Splat-!
Blood sprayed from the severed neck and splattered across his face.
".....!"
He couldn’t make sense of reality at all and wondered if he was dreaming, but the lukewarm blood trickling down his cheek reminded him it was real.
"What the hell is this...?"
Woo Ha-sik was thrown into panic by the insane reality before him.
"J-just what the hell is that guy...!"
Even when that barbarian had first shattered the net to pieces, Woo Ha-sik had still been confident.
He’d been slightly surprised to learn they had a hidden card, but that was all.
That barbarian and Moyong Yehwa—those two were Peak experts who used sword qi, so what of it?
Even a Peak expert couldn’t beat a dogpile, and in practice they’d used that very tactic to send many so-called great experts to their graves.
It had been a tactic that had never failed them until now, but those were the stories of yesterday.
"M-move—!"
Clang-!
"D-die...kgh!"
Clang-!
Every time the red sword light flashed, another escort’s head flew off.
As the sword that had been focused only on defense, cutting nets apart, shifted into offense, the roles reversed.
Now they were no longer hunters.
They were prey.
"Go after Moyong Yehwa!"
"She’s in a lull; she’s defenseless!"
In that chaos, the few escorts with quick heads tried to target Moyong Yehwa through Geom Mujin’s blind spots.
"Huh?"
Puwaak-!
As the sharp slash of the blade tickled the waists of the escorts trying to strike Moyong Yehwa, their upper and lower bodies were neatly separated.
"Thanks for clustering up for me."
Usually, enemies gathering together was undeniably annoying.
But for him, it was basically the same as begging, Please kill us all at once.
The hunt continued after that.
No, you couldn’t even call it a hunt.
"Aaaaaah! Die!"
Clang-!
Those who fought back died with their throats cut.
"M-monster bastard...!"
Clang-!
Those who tried to run died split in half.
"P-please, just spare me once! My kids are at home—"
Clang-!
And begging on your knees for your life didn’t save you either.
The fundamentals-first sword strikes butchered the escort warriors wholesale.
What, you wanted to kill him and reclaim the Baekdu Cheongak-eung?
Woo Ha-sik cursed the version of himself from just moments ago.
"Glurgh!"
The last escort, pierced through the throat, coughed blood foam and died.
Having finished the hunt in less than the blink of an eye, Geom Mujin walked toward Woo Ha-sik.
Chaplchap-
The sound of him stepping across the blood-soaked ground made Woo Ha-sik’s legs give out, and he slumped down onto his backside.
R-right!
He urgently grabbed a single medicinal pill from inside his robes, but a red line flashed through the air and his wrist dropped away.
"Tsk. No cheating."
"Kraaaagh!"
Woo Ha-sik let out a scream of agony and clutched at his wrist.
"J-just who are you...?"
The collapse of his earlier etiquette crisis having somehow restored normalcy, Woo Ha-sik asked in a trembling voice.
"Why? You feeling like something’s gone wrong now?"
Geom Mujin lifted the brim of his bamboo hat with a crooked smile, emphasizing his eyes and his black hair.
He wasn’t the only black-haired person in the Central Plains.
There were plenty of black-haired people who had drifted into the Central Plains from their homelands for various reasons.
And among them, there were quite a few black-haired swordsmen who made their living by the sword.
But if you narrowed it down to those who could use sword qi, the number dropped dramatically, and if you asked who could put on a massacre like this, there was only one person.
A key figure of the Orthodox-Demonic War and one of the Seven Martial Stars.
"Yo... you can’t mean... the Great Swo—"
"Correct."
Woo Ha-sik’s eyes bulged as though they might rip apart once he reached the answer.
Ah, this is the taste I live for—hiding my strength and my brains.
"Th-there’s no way... The Great Swordmaster is just some lucky commoner who got lumped into the Seven Martial Stars because the martial world was feeling generous..."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
Clang-!
Woo Ha-sik’s head flew off.
"Who the hell spread that bullshit?"
Shaking the blood off my blade, I muttered in disbelief.