One Flash of Extreme Light
The eyes that held the first light of dawn, drawn from the turning of a dream, stared straight at O-eum Maje Aban. The blue protective gang qi of the Heavenly Firmament Wall, summoned through the Azure Sky Divine Energy, wrapped around Namgung Woo’s entire body. It felt as though he stood before a celestial general draped in the flowing robes of the sky itself.
The descendant of a ruined clan. He must have crammed every last remnant of their power into that single body.
Otherwise, such a realm would have been impossible to comprehend. The final masterpiece sword, forged by scraping together every divine art, spiritual elixir, hidden grand technique, and secret spell the Namgung family had ever possessed—nothing left behind. That was what Namgung Woo looked like in O-eum Maje’s eyes.
O-eum Maje clenched both fists.
In our first meeting he was still a clumsy boy. Now he truly carries the bearing of a martial artist.
When they had crossed paths at the Jegal family estate, he should have ended the boy’s life even if it meant overexerting himself. Back then O-eum Maje had not yet understood the gap between their realms and experience, and his own body had not been whole, so he had avoided the fight. Even during their second proper clash at the Hyeongsan battle, O-eum Maje had held the advantage. The proof was that even with Tae-mun Jin-in’s cooperation, Namgung Woo had failed to take his life.
But now.
Namgung Woo stepped forward into the space where O-eum Maje stood.
Not yet. It is still incomplete. This time, without fail, I will kill him.
O-eum Maje’s resolve bled fully into his mind, dyeing his internal energy with an even deeper, more vicious darkness. When two supreme masters who looked down upon the world pledged a battle to the death, everyone around them paled and hurriedly widened the distance. In the blink of an eye a perfectly circular space ten zhang across appeared. Righteous and demonic factions alike, even while locked in their own fights, split off a fragment of their consciousness to watch the clash of the era between the strongest of each side.
Pop!
Namgung Woo moved first. A transcendent movement technique that escaped the bounds of time in a single breath—the Infinite Step fused with the Heavenly Wind Divine Art. True to its name, he became an endless storm and charged.
The sword gang enveloping his blade swirled with thick lightning energy. From the very first strike he unleashed the essence of the Thirteen Thunder Swords, the technique he relied on most in real combat and trusted without reservation.
A single sword line that split the world—an ultra-fast strike.
A supreme sword that cleaves the world in a single line of blinding speed.
Kwaaaaaaaaang—!!
His opponent, however, was no ordinary martial artist. This was O-eum Maje Aban. After the Blood Cult’s rampage replaced most of the old Seventeen Masters of the Murim, new titles were granted to those who had proven their true power against the cult. Aban had proudly claimed one of those seats.
The Ten Dominators of the Nine Provinces. The new protagonists who had pushed aside the era of the Seventeen Masters. Though their fame had since faded, succeeded by the absolute beings known as the Three Extremes and Twelve Sovereigns, less than a century had passed since the name O-eum Maje shook the entire world.
The brilliant flash of Single Flash of Extreme Light was caught and halted in O-eum Maje’s black grip. The ashen true qi of his Unabashed Leaking Art, channeled through the Myriad Manifestations Corruption Hand, transformed into an unparalleled destructive force capable of shattering anything it seized. Whatever that hand grasped would lose its original form, twist, and crumble away. Even the greatest achievement of humanity—the starlight dragged down to earth by the will of the cosmos—became nothing more than a mere torch inside that grasp.
Crack—
Namgung Woo heard it clearly. The sound of his own sword gang being crushed whole, fissures spreading through the blade.
Impossible…
Impossible? The moment the thought rose, Namgung Woo rejected it. There was no such thing as impossible. Not in this world.
Martial arts and sorcery were already miracles to him. Everything was possible. What mattered was belief and skill. That was the correct mindset, because the foundation of any martial art lay in the technique itself and the mental image its user held. Therefore, even this was entirely possible.
With a strange, ringing screech—clang!
“The sword gang?”
The gang qi wrapped around the blade shattered into countless fragments. Normally, tangible energy such as sword qi or sword gang would lose cohesion and dissipate the instant its flow was severed. Yet the pieces Namgung Woo had deliberately split preserved both their original shape and the power contained within.
Namgung Woo saw it all. He saw the iron arrow of the Ghost Palace Leaf—how its qi form had maintained its shape even after leaving the body completely. He saw O-eum Maje’s hand technique that could transform gang qi itself. The instant he witnessed it, the knowledge became his.
A deafening resonance that defied description erupted. At the same moment, a shout burst from O-eum Maje’s lips.
“Hup!”
The moment the sword gang fractured, O-eum Maje realized what Namgung Woo intended. He was splitting the gang qi and launching the fragments like hidden weapons. O-eum Maje immediately circulated the energy concentrated in his Myriad Manifestations Corruption Hand throughout his entire body and surrounded himself with protective gang qi.
Each fragment struck like heavenly thunder. Even though he guarded himself and retreated swiftly, the destructive force that slammed into his body reverberated all the way to his bones.
Yet Namgung Woo’s technique was ultimately nothing more than an improvised stopgap. Though he had executed it beautifully through astonishing internal energy control and a rock-solid mental image, it still lacked the power to kill O-eum Maje.
“Not bad. You’ve even learned how to improvise.”
O-eum Maje smiled, clenching and unclenching his hand. On the surface it might have looked as though he, having retreated first, had lost the exchange. In truth, the one who had suffered was Namgung Woo. Among supreme experts, internal energy consumption was trivial. At this level, battles were decided by strength of mind. The difference in mental energy expended in that single move had clearly been greater on Namgung Woo’s side. On top of that, his weapon had cracked.
Unlike O-eum Maje, whose specialty was hand techniques, Namgung Woo was a swordsman. He could substitute with formless swords or gang qi blades, but doing so in an already difficult fight would only double his mental burden—a self-defeating move.
“Now it’s my turn.”
It was a world-shaking battle. One could feel on their very skin why experts who had reached the Transformation Realm were called beings beyond the heavens and treated with awe. Simply standing nearby was overwhelming; facing that power directly would surely break any will to resist. Only a future of surrendering to approaching death remained imaginable.
That was what Jegal Jun thought.
“…This is the worst.”
The words slipped out before he could stop them. Not because Namgung Woo—the man who had become the Jegal family’s hope—was at a disadvantage. What he could not endure was his own pathetic figure, accepting defeat before the fight had truly begun.
What filled him with even deeper self-loathing, however, was the faint sense of relief beneath it all.
Yes. Because the man was that strong. There had been nothing he could do. The gap had simply been too wide. He had done his best….
Disgusted by his own rationalization, Jegal Jun shook his head fiercely.
Stop thinking, Jegal Jun. Right now, focus only on carrying out your duty as a direct descendant of the Jegal family.
Yet human affection was not an emotion easily mastered. Unconsciously, Jegal Jun found himself searching for Paeng Ha-ryeong, telling himself he needed to find where the disadvantage lay and provide support. He did not realize it was a mistake.
“Ah…”
It was the first time he had seen Paeng Ha-ryeong fight with his own eyes. He had heard the rumors—that the Blade Princess of the Paeng family was displaying astonishing prowess. Of course she was. She was, after all, a Peak Realm expert. In the murim, merely reaching the Peak Realm placed one in the top tenth.
Still, he had assumed the stories contained some exaggeration. The Paeng Ha-ryeong in his memory had been a First-class practitioner who had not even stepped into the Peak Realm, and she had only broken through earlier that year.
That should have been the case. Yet the sight of her fluidly adapting two different blade techniques in perfect timing was something else entirely. How could anyone call that the movement of someone who had only just entered the early stage of the Peak Realm?
A fully mature Peak Realm expert? No. That level was within Jegal Jun’s own reach. But Paeng Ha-ryeong’s movements had already taken one more step beyond that.
Martial arts was a vast mountain. Even after climbing to its summit, a single glance aside would reveal an even taller peak waiting. Climb those ridges one after another, and eventually one would face the true summit—the new domain called the Transcendent Realm.
And Paeng Ha-ryeong had already begun her ascent toward that summit far ahead of Jegal Jun. She stood at the absolute limit of the Peak Realm, gazing toward transcendence.
“Hahaha…”
It felt hollow. Had he truly tried to defeat a monster like that with skill that could not even surpass Paeng Ha-ryeong? The precious feelings he had cherished, the ones that refused to fade even without meeting her, grew faint. Once he fully accepted the absolute gap in strength he had never truly grasped before, Jegal Jun’s heart strangely grew lighter. It was like a blind man who had touched an elephant’s leg and thought he might win, only to finally open his eyes and see the creature’s entire body.
This, too, must be a form of enlightenment. Ironically, the heart demon that had been dragging him under released its hold because of it.
What remained afterward was pure support—the sincere wish of a member of the Jegal family that Namgung Woo would win.
“Please win.”
At that exact moment—
Kwa-chang—!
Namgung Woo’s sword shattered. At the same time, Jegal Jun caught sight of a woman rushing past him.
The female Taoist…?
Thanks to his eye technique, Jegal Jun managed to take in her appearance even in that fleeting instant. The embarrassingly tight clothes beneath her loose Taoist robe dazzled the eyes, while her sharp-featured beauty, accented by red makeup around the eyes, somehow steadied them. Before he could even wonder if such a woman had been present earlier, he realized where she was heading and reached out.
“It’s dangerous! If you get caught up in their fight—!”
Swish— His outstretched hand cut through empty air.
“Huh?”
The female Taoist was no longer there.