Never Seen Anything Like This?
A thunderous roar erupted, the wall collapsed in its entirety, and the interior beyond came into view at a glance.
The man seated at the desk of what looked to be an office rose slowly to his feet, staring at me.
"...And just who the hell are you?"
"In your eyes, what do I look like?"
I feigned as much dignity as I could muster and drew up my killing intent. The aura radiating from the Supreme Divine Arts bore down on the room with a weight that belied my mere Peak Realm internal energy.
If this didn't work, things could get slightly out of hand.
The presence before me was, without question, a Transcendent Peak.
His eyes turned toward Dang Sohee's hollow, empty pupils.
The green robe draped over his frame rippled in the pressure the middle-aged man exuded.
"What... have you done to my niece..!"
And I drew a single feather needle from within my robes and hurled it at him.
It was a strike steeped in the principles of the Tang Clan's hidden weapon art — the very art he had unleashed against me.
And it was also a strike that reached out, stealthier than anything alive, through the principles of the Heavenly Escape Sword Art.
Thwip-
"...?"
He quietly looked down at the needle embedded in his shoulder — a needle he had never even sensed. Through the tiny wound, a dark crimson blood-demon qi bloomed and tore his flesh wide open.
The face of a man whose body and will had both reached Transcendent Peak contorted in raw agony.
"Uuurrrgh..!"
"That was the needle your niece threw at me. I've returned it with interest, so consider your thanks delivered."
"You..."
Fear took root in the man's eyes.
It seemed he had leapt to exactly the right conclusion. Well, how often does one get to see a practitioner of a Demonic Art in this world, after all?
"I've come to capture a traitor to the faith."
"...?"
"So cooperate. Do so, and I won't kill the lot of you just yet."
The Void-Seizing unleashed through my blood-demon qi pressed down upon the man's head and shoulders. Then the needles saturated with that same qi rose into the air and leveled themselves at him — every one of them taken from Dang Sohee.
Dozens of needles and throwing darts aimed their icy killing intent at his throat.
At the sight, the man ground his lips to shreds and bowed his head to me, as if the humiliation itself were choking him.
"Exalted one of the Divine Cult... I await your command."
So this actually works.
Even as I marveled inwardly, my face held its dignity. The qi-laden needles clattered down to the floor, one after another.
And that was how I first met Dang Jeong, one of the elders of the Sichuan Tang Clan.
"Gyaaaaargh!"
Swoosh-
A dark crimson aura trailed like an afterimage along the arc of my blade. A single line steeped in cruelty cleaved clean through the neck of the Iron Blood Gate's Master.
I clicked my tongue, recalling the martial art he had wielded.
"Not a particularly useful art."
It was a sword technique inferior even to the Heavenly Thunder Sword Canon. Its power and speed both fell far short of expectations, and unlike the Heavenly Escape Sword Art, it possessed no special properties to speak of.
Disappointment filled my chest to the brim.
Still in that state, I turned my gaze upon the mountains of corpses and seas of blood spread out around me.
Was it from learning the Blood Yin Demonic Art, or a lingering effect of my attempt to break through to Transcendent Peak? Either way, crimson wisps of energy rising from the dead and scattering into the open air had come into view.
"That's..."
Instinct whispered to me.
That was the life force of the slain.
Take it. Make it yours.
"...Why not."
There wasn't exactly a reason to refuse.
I reached out and, through the principles of Void-Seizing, drew in every wisp of energy floating around me, pouring it into my body. A tremendous power flooded into my dantian, and of the two halves into which it was divided, the right half holding the blood-demon qi swelled as though it would burst.
So I'm supposed to keep it balanced against the orthodox qi, then.
"I'll deal with that later with some elixirs..."
I would build up the Limitless Yang Divine Art's energy on top of it and compress my qi — that would settle the matter.
Bleached-white skeletons, drained of every drop of blood and vitality, rolled across the floor and caught at my feet. Dang Jeong's expression warped at the sight.
"What, have you some complaint?"
"...No, sir."
I snorted a laugh and turned my eyes from him, looking down at a staircase descending underground, deeper into the heart of where the Four Dark Lotuses' warriors had made their lair. Darkness shrouded whatever lay below, but I could sense it well enough — something deeply unnatural was stirring down there.
From within came a thick scent of blood, and with it, three enormous presences. Two massive masses of evil qi, and a single mass of power larger than the two of them combined.
If I faced all three at once, unable as I still was to pierce the Transcendent Peak...
Ten out of ten, I would lose and die.
Against two, my odds sat at roughly two in ten.
I had to lure one out. And as for how — well, that part didn't take much thought at all.
Nok Soyun stared at me with blank eyes.
"...What are you doing?"
"Bait."
The snow-white blade vanished beneath a coat of dark crimson blood-demon qi. Having compressed the stolen life force over and over, a sword aura as potent as Gang Qi itself smoldered from the steel like heat haze.
I raised the impossibly heavy sword above my head with every ounce of strength I had.
"Ah... Ahh..."
"..."
Dang Jeong scrambled backward in horror, while Nok Soyun quietly studied my sword — as though hoping to glean something, anything, from it.
From my fingertips began to unfold the technique I had drilled into my bones, practiced over and over for sixty years.
Mount Tai Presses the Summit
Crrrrunch-
A dark crimson line drew itself through the air — and along that line, everything in this great hall split in two with a deafening roar. Beholding that power, even I could not suppress the awe welling up inside me.
Its destructive force alone, at the very least, left every other art I knew far behind.
And before long, one of the massive presences within began to move.
A jade-green sword qi shot out from among the rubble, shattering everything that stood in its path.
BOOOOOM-!
And from within that ruin, a man revealed himself. The head of a man who looked to be in his late twenties emerged from the debris — and I swung Mount Tai Presses the Summit down toward the crown of his skull.
"...!"
The very next instant.
Swoosh-!
His sword, buried beneath the wreckage, burst free, slicing smoothly through the debris above it. That blade carried unmistakable Gang Qi.
I quietly beheld the sword where emerald starlight lingered and shimmered. I took in, one by one, both the path along which he swung and the starlight glinting from his steel.
"So I can't replicate Gang Qi itself..."
Unlike the Void-Seizing unfolded through enlightenment, Gang Qi demanded something fundamental. And so, regrettably, copying it outright proved impossible — but I could feel the condensation of my sword aura hardening, growing ever denser.
Now that it held the life force of countless souls within it.
For a moment, at least, I could stand against Gang Qi.
The supremely condensed sword aura collided head-on with the Gang Qi. The intent woven into the Blood Yin Demonic Art was simple: to covet the lives of all living things. And to wield those stolen lives as power, smashing headlong through everything that dared block the road.
BOOOOM-!
Energy struck energy face to face, and the shattered fragments of both scattered to the four winds. At the sight, the young man who had just burst free twisted his face into something grotesque.
"No — you're stopping Gang Qi with a plain sword aura..?"
"What? Never seen anything like this before?"
"A mere Peak realm—"
Crack-!
Before he could get another word out, I whipped my leg up into his jaw. But he hadn't gambled his way into Transcendent Peak by luck alone; he caught my kick in his hand and locked eyes with me.
"Eyes stained with blood... You're a Demon."
"Maybe."
"You wield a Demonic Art yet cling to your sanity... so you're no mere Peak Realm, are you? Strange. In seventy years, I have never once seen the likes of you..."
"..."
One of the martial world's iron truths: the Peak can never defeat the Transcendent Peak.
To be precise, anyone who cannot wield Gang Qi collapses helpless before one who can — for unless you answer Gang Qi with Gang Qi, your body gets carved apart along with your weapon.
The gulf was that dire. And so sheer brute force alone would never bring down the being before me.
The sword aura sheathing my blade began to shift, taking on the shape of lightning itself.
Crackle-
"...?"
Heavenly Thunder Shakes the Horizon
Dark crimson lightning filled the space to bursting. Hiding within that storm of thunder, I watched him.
"Where are you, you wretched Demon..! This is not what was promised! The Rite is drawing to its end — do you mean to discard me like a used tool?!"
"The Rite?"
"I... will not die so easily, you Demon of the Demonic Cult. You will pay dearly for looking down on the Four Dark Lotuses."
And I fell upon the back of his skull as a single bolt of lightning. His senses, it seemed, were not sharp enough to see through the Heavenly Escape Sword Art's concealment.
Crack-!
"Uuurrrgh!"
Struck in the head and driven face-first into the ground, he began to scream. I walked up to him, seized him by the hair, hauled his face up, and met his eyes.
"You... you... no — who are you..."
"This won't do as it stands, now will it?"
"What is that supposed to—"
Thwip-
My sword bored mercilessly into the man's back. Through that wound, my blood-demon qi pried apart his meridians and began tearing through them without restraint.
The demonic energy that had burrowed in devoured the evil qi flowing through his body and ripped his meridians to ribbons.
The power he had built over a lifetime scattering into nothing, insects gnawing through his flesh and devouring him from within — such was the sensation.
It was a pain no mortal could hope to withstand. Pale as death, drool streaming from his slack mouth, his eyes rolled back in his skull; from his lips came nothing but rasping croaks where screams should have been.
Soon enough, his mind broke completely.
And in the instant our eyes met, mine began to glow a dark, bloodshot crimson.
Eroding a broken mind took no time at all.