The Murim Alliance
Body-Protection Qi.
Much like Sword Qi, it was a high-level art reserved for martial artists who had stepped into the Peak Realm. Unlike Sword Qi, which coated a weapon with razor-sharp intent, this technique stripped away that lethal edge, cloaking the practitioner's body in a mantle of pure, unadulterated true qi. If coating a blade in Sword Qi was meant to enhance its durability and cutting power, Body-Protection Qi did the inverse—dispelling sharpness in order to shield the flesh. Mastered properly, it rendered the martial artist completely impervious to ordinary weapons.
Yet despite this immense defensive advantage, Body-Protection Qi rarely made an appearance in actual combat. There were various reasons for this, but two fatal shortcomings stood above the rest.
First, Body-Protection Qi was not a passive state. One had to actively stir true qi within the dantian, strip it of its cutting edge, wrap it around the flesh, and sustain it continuously through unbroken focus. Worse still, sustaining Body-Protection Qi made it nearly impossible to employ Sword Qi at the same time. The mental and physiological coordination required to manifest a lethal aura on a weapon while simultaneously maintaining a dull, defensive shroud over one's own skin was dizzyingly complex. More often than not, one of the two would fail to manifest at all, and even if a master somehow managed to deploy both at once, the output of one would inevitably plummet.
As if that first flaw were not devastating enough, the second made it worse: its consumption of internal qi bordered on the obscene.
Sword Qi was demanding enough, but the human body was vastly larger than a sword, and defense was inherently more taxing than offense. Because the surface area requiring coverage was so immense, Body-Protection Qi devoured a martial artist's reserves at a terrifying pace. On top of that, the barrier had to be woven dense enough to absorb an opponent's ferocious blows. Combined, these handicaps turned Body-Protection Qi into an unwieldy white elephant—a magnificent technique in theory, yet utterly impractical in practice.
Still... I can maintain it.
Of course, those limitations applied only to ordinary men. To Dokgo Sanwol—an unprecedented genius the likes of which the Central Plains had never seen—such drawbacks were trivially overcome.
Having unlocked his Pass of Life and Death in the Mid-Peak Realm and gorged himself on every miraculous elixir he could get his hands on, he had broken through to the Late Peak Realm. Though barely a day had passed since his advancement, Sanwol was already accustomed to his newly deepened pool of internal qi and the manipulation of Sword Silk. The ironic reason for such a hasty breakthrough was this very spar against Geuk Cheonrang. In classic wuxia stories, a duel with an absolute master was the quintessential trope for triggering enlightenment. Even if rushed, stepping into the Late Peak Realm was his best shot at grasping that spark of understanding.
Even so, maintaining Body-Protection Qi and Sword Qi simultaneously is pushing my limit.
With his innate genius for channeling internal energy, Sanwol optimized his qi circulation to an absurdly high degree. He corralled even the stray scraps of wasted qi back into use, demonstrating an outrageous level of microscopic control. Thanks to this, he could sustain both Body-Protection Qi and Sword Qi without either suffering a drop in output.
As expected, you can never have too much internal qi.
Even so, there was no escaping the raw arithmetic of energy consumption. No matter how meticulously he rationed every drop, there was an irreducible baseline cost. Consequently, weaving ultra-fine Sword Silk while simultaneously keeping Body-Protection Qi active was simply beyond his current capacity.
"Body-Protection Qi, is it? I see. With neither Sword Qi nor astral ganggi to meet me, you intend to take the hits and endure."
This was a form executed by a master of the Profound Realm. No matter what tricks Sanwol pulled, he could not possibly deflect it cleanly. Cast aside the arrogance of thinking you can parry it all. Discard the delusion that you can track the trajectory of his sword. Minimize the damage, hold out as long as humanly possible, and observe!
Here he—!
—comes.
Before Sanwol's thought could even conclude, his entire field of vision was swallowed by Geuk Cheonrang's blade.
"You reacted. When it comes to raw instinct, your talent truly outstrips mine."
A faint curve touched the corners of Geuk Cheonrang's lips as he stood tall, looking down at Sanwol. Sanwol, on the other hand, had been blasted back several dozen paces, forced onto one knee as he looked up at the Alliance Leader.
That wasn't just a single strike.
Forcing strength into his trembling fingers and willing his shuddering legs to steady, Sanwol rose and mentally dissected the onslaught he had just endured. A Sword Curtain—yes, that was the only proper term for it. Geuk Cheonrang's opening move had been a relentless deluge of countless slashes, an offensive form delivered at such overwhelming speed that the swings blotted out the world. Caught in a tempest of several dozen strikes, Sanwol had barely managed to deflect a handful.
If not for Body-Protection Qi... He would probably be lying on the dirt with shattered bones, screaming for a physician.
"Come at me again, please."
Having tasted the sheer abyss between them in a single exchange, Sanwol let a grin slip onto his face. Because he had deflected it. Even if it was only a few strikes out of dozens, he hadn't taken the full brunt defenselessly—he had reacted and parried them. Research for his comic was merely an excuse. Naturally, he would draw upon this experience for his work, but his true purpose had always been to hone his own martial arts against Geuk Cheonrang's blade.
"Splendid!"
Geuk Cheonrang closed the distance once more. Sanwol widened his eyes and sank into the stance of the Three Talents Sword. An instant later, Sanwol swung, his weapon colliding with Geuk Cheonrang's.
Clang!
Metal shrieked in a deafening ring. Immediately afterward, a throbbing ache radiated through Sanwol's right flank and shoulder. He had missed two strikes again.
I can't go on like this.
Taking several blows from Geuk Cheonrang's sword brought the stark truth home. Geuk Cheonrang was currently wielding an unsharpened blade—not merely dull, but effectively an iron club shaped like a sword. He could see the movements and react. He could endure the hits behind Body-Protection Qi. And above all, the opponent's sword bore no edge.
The only reason I managed to deflect even a few strikes isn't because of my skill—it's because Geuk Cheonrang is holding back immensely.
Confronted with an objective assessment of reality, Sanwol gritted his teeth. What was he supposed to do? Sanwol racked his brain. Approaches, attacks, defensive maneuvers—none of them worked. Even if he brought every trick in his repertoire to bear, not a single one seemed capable of piercing the defense of an armed Geuk Cheonrang.
Why? Sanwol asked himself.
Because the technique lacks profound mystery.
Having answered his own question, Sanwol drew a deep breath. He didn't know what martial art Geuk Cheonrang was wielding, but he knew his own inside and out. The Three Talents Sword Art was a third-rate martial art; its underlying principles were shallow and elementary. Because it was simple, it possessed a stubborn, straightforward strength, but against a master of this caliber, that very simplicity was poison.
"Alliance Leader, care to make a wager?"
"Oho? And what might the stakes be?"
"If my sword touches your body, grant me a single request—within reason, of course."
Cold sweat ran down Sanwol's neck as he forced a smirk onto his face, manufacturing confidence to stamp out the tremor of nerves inside him. Watching him, Geuk Cheonrang burst into hearty laughter. Was it because Sanwol's words sounded ridiculous, or because he was amused by the junior's audacity?
Geuk Cheonrang dropped into a stance. It was identical in every detail to his initial opening posture. He offered no verbal reply to Sanwol's proposal—neither an acceptance nor a refusal. He merely leveled his sword. Though Geuk Cheonrang's exact thoughts remained veiled, Sanwol instinctively understood that this was a test. If you want that wager, prove you can earn it. The silent posture seemed to shout those very words at him.
If what I have isn't enough, I just have to steal someone else's and fill the gap.
The Three Talents cultivation art he had learned possessed nothing resembling the profound principles of internal strikes. Yet earlier, Sanwol had attempted the Internal Heavy Strike Method against Geuk Cheonrang. How could he execute a martial art he had never been taught? The answer lay in his unique combination of experience and genius.
Back when he worked at the escort bureau and crossed paths with countless martial artists, Sanwol had witnessed the Internal Heavy Strike Method firsthand. He had an innate gift for mimicking movement. He perceived an opponent's motions broken down into individual, discrete frames, much like the celluloid sheets of an animated film. Tracing those precise footsteps and trajectories, he synchronized his own body to replicate what he saw. Was this an innate gift born of this life? Or was it the fruit of his past life, where he had spent countless hours sketching, copying, and breaking down objects and scenes frame by frame? That was a question far too convoluted for Sanwol to answer right now.
"...I see."
A broad grin crept across Geuk Cheonrang's face once more. In a single glance, he had grasped exactly what Sanwol was about to do. He couldn't fail to recognize it even if he tried. After all, that stance belonged to Geuk Cheonrang himself. Where in the world lived a martial artist who could fail to recognize his own sword form?
"A genius after all, aren't you?"
Geuk Cheonrang stomped violently, unleashing an explosive burst of force against the flagstones. His silhouette launched forward like a cannonball straight toward Sanwol. Sanwol mirrored him in kind. Stamping the earth with fierce momentum, he hurled himself forward like a shot from a mortar.
Two martial artists, executing the exact same form, finally collided.
Blades clashed. Sword Curtain smashed into Sword Curtain, violently repelling one another. The identical forms unleashed by two different warriors crashed together in a savage frenzy, showering the arena with sparks and shrieking metal. The spectators stood utterly paralyzed, held breathless by the sheer intensity of the clash.
"Mmh...?!"
The first gasp of surprise escaped Geuk Cheonrang's lips. It wasn't because he had been bested in the exchange. Even holding back, this was his own martial art; Sanwol's imitation had yet to mature to a level that could truly match the original's precision. Then why?
Geuk Cheonrang realized the cause immediately.
Countless fine cracks were etched across the surface of his unsharpened blade. They were wounds carved into the metal itself—visual proof that the weapon had reached its breaking point.
Natural enough, I suppose.
Throughout the spar, Geuk Cheonrang had refrained from channeling a single wisp of Sword Qi or astral ganggi into his sword. Because his blistering speed had made his attacks near-impossible to parry, direct edge-to-edge clashes had been sparse... until now. When two fighters battered each other head-on with the exact same form dozens of times in an instant, the toll on an unreinforced blade was catastrophic.
Fracturing under the sheer kinetic shock, tiny flecks of metal began flaking off the sword. And finally, the moment the final strike of the form collided—
Crack!
A crisp, crystalline chime rang across the sparring grounds.
"Ha."
Geuk Cheonrang's sword shattered.
"Kuh-ack!"
And Sanwol crumpled to the ground.
A mere Peak Realm practitioner had attempted to execute a form belonging to a transcendent master of the Profound Realm. Even if imperfect, forcing his body through such motions took a horrific toll; there was no way his meridians and muscles could emerge unscathed.
Thus, Sanwol collapsed, having shattered his opponent's weapon. And Geuk Cheonrang stood tall with a broken hilt, holding absolute power over Sanwol's life and death had this been a true battle.
There was no need to ask who had won.