Chapter 232
Chapter 232: Silence (3)
Jin Ha-gyeong stood with her sword drawn, gazing up at the mountain.
Something had flashed beyond the mist.
From the Red-Red Alliance's main camp to the mountain's midpoint was well over two hundred jang, and the early morning mist filling the space between made it impossible to see clearly—but she could feel it well enough.
The reason was that the vibrations underfoot had changed in a distinctly different way.
Until just a moment ago they had been intense enough, but still within the range of combat one might expect in the Martial World. The trembling of internal energy clashing against internal energy—the kind one could understand and make sense of.
But now.
It was different. An inexplicable light was piercing through the mist, and the very quality of the vibrations had changed.
"This—I'm not the only one feeling this, am I?"
Jeon Ra-hwa stepped up beside Jin Ha-gyeong with her hand resting on her sword.
"Can you feel it too, young lady?"
"……Yes."
Jeon Ra-hwa's reply was brief, but there was an edge to her voice.
Yet they had no time to fully absorb this overwhelming threat.
Thud—!
"The flank!"
The moment Jin Ha-gyeong's shout fell, reddish-brown monk's robes came bursting out from the direction of the mountain's foot.
The remnant Rakshasa Monk forces. Even at a glance there appeared to be at least several dozen.
As a result of the battle unfolding above, the scattered troops were flowing down along the mountain's foot toward this side. Their ranks were broken and their sutra chanting had been cut off, but the hands gripping the Crescent Moon Blades were very much alive. However badly Dong Bong-soo's party had crushed them, they were still Rakshasa Monks of the Dark Net Rakshasa Path.
"Namu Amita—!"
The lead Rakshasa Monk swung his Crescent Moon Blade and charged.
Swiing—
Jeon Ra-hwa's sword was first.
The sword carrying the cold energy of the Snow Snow Yin Cold Art swept upward at a diagonal and knocked aside the Rakshasa Monk's Crescent Moon Blade. As the sword's tip grazed the surface of the monk's robe, frost bloomed across the reddish-brown cloth.
The Rakshasa Monk's shoulder froze solid—and then, immediately.
Crack.
It shattered.
Whoosh—!
Jeon Ra-hwa immediately sliced through that Rakshasa Monk's throat. Without stopping there she lowered her body and drove forward. The sword drew a horizontal line, freezing the second Rakshasa Monk's knees, and severed the third's wrist clean off. Two Crescent Moon Blades spun through the air and fell onto the dirt.
And she cut down the throats of the two shaved-headed monks who were still in the middle of thinking 'what is happening?'
It was brief. But it was fierce.
"Hah, hah—"
Her own cold energy was turning her breath into billowing puffs of vapor.
It was her first real battle, yet unexpectedly she wasn't nervous. She drew her sword and swept through the enemy as if it were something she had always been expecting.
"Move the children and the wounded to the rear first!"
As if matching the rhythm of Jeon Ra-hwa's movements, Jin Ha-gyeong shouted and swung her sword relentlessly with her left hand. The empty right sleeve flapped violently alongside her.
Ho-ae, too, without panicking at the sudden change, pushed Seok-gyeong's back and moved the wounded toward the rear.
"Forward……we need to stand at the front, uncle."
Ho-ae's voice was firm. Seok-gyeong gritted his teeth and took his place in the defensive line. The tip of his sword trembled, but its direction was pointed toward the enemy.
Four Rakshasa Monks came charging at them—but.
Swish—!
Jin Ha-gyeong launched herself forward and her sword moved. It hadn't been long since she'd become one-armed and she wasn't yet accustomed to it, but the direction was precise. She sidestepped half a pace to avoid the trajectory of the lead Rakshasa Monk's descending Crescent Moon Blade, guided it away with the flat of her sword, then brought the tip to meet the returning wrist and unleashed a burst of sword energy with full force.
Ching—!
The Crescent Moon Blade flew free, and with that recoil the Rakshasa Monk's wrist bent backward and he stumbled back a step.
Exploiting that gap, the remaining three pressed in simultaneously. With one arm, the angles weren't enough to handle three. The moment Jin Ha-gyeong blocked the one on her left, her right side opened up.
Whisssh—
A Crescent Moon Blade bored in toward the side where the empty sleeve was flapping.
At that moment.
Clang!
Jeon Ra-hwa's sword, having rushed over without warning, knocked that Crescent Moon Blade away.
They hadn't exchanged words. Not even a glance had passed between them. Jeon Ra-hwa had simply seen Jin Ha-gyeong's right side opening up, and her body and sword had moved first.
Jin Ha-gyeong sealed off the left and Jeon Ra-hwa cut down the right. Jin Ha-gyeong stepped forward and thrust, and Jeon Ra-hwa cut off the retreat of the Rakshasa Monk who slipped out from behind.
Jin Ha-gyeong had been wielding the Vast Heaven Limitless Sword Sect's swordsmanship, and Jeon Ra-hwa loaded the cold energy of the Snow Snow Yin Cold Art onto her blade. The quality of their swords differed, and the weave of their footwork differed. Naturally they had never once practiced fighting together—yet unexpectedly, the combination came together well.
When Jin Ha-gyeong's sword energy created an opening, the cold-energy sword covered it; when the cold-energy sword slowed the opponent, the one-armed sword finished them off.
But they were not the only ones on the battlefield.
"Kill them!"
"Slaughter those enemies!"
All the Vast Heaven Limitless Sword Sect warriors who could still fight, and the still-green Hero Gate disciples like Ho-ae and Seok-gyeong, fought with everything they had against the Rakshasa Monks.
However elite the Rakshasa Monks might be, there were no masters among this scattered remnant force—they had no means of stopping Jin Ha-gyeong or Jeon Ra-hwa, nor could they stand against the surviving Vast Heaven forces whose spite had sharpened to a killing edge.
And so before long, every last one of the ambushing Rakshasa Monks was laid flat on the ground.
"Hah, hah……"
The cold energy dissipated from Jeon Ra-hwa's sword, and frost formed on the blades of grass around her.
"Huff, huff……"
Jin Ha-gyeong too was panting as she lowered her blade.
"Are you all right?"
"……Yes."
Jeon Ra-hwa's reply was brief, but the hand gripping the sword was trembling ever so slightly. It was her first time cutting down a person, yet she still hadn't sheathed her sword. Because the threat had not yet passed.
Boooom—!
As if to remind them of precisely that, a shockwave came crashing down from above.
It was on a completely different level from before. The dirt underfoot leapt into the air, and the mist was pushed back in a semicircle. Through the gap where the mist had been driven back, sunlight streamed in alongside a pillar of light rising from the mountain's midpoint, shining down indiscriminately.
It was a beam of light so intense that opening one's eyes fully was a struggle.
"……!"
Every gaze naturally turned in that direction.
But the light showed no sign of fading—it was only growing stronger and stronger.
"Just what on earth is……No, what exactly is he fighting up there?"
***
Hummmmmmmm—
Sound had vanished, and in its place only rays of light were pouring forth from Beom-eum's body.
The world after the Ten Thousand Sound Sea was shattered was, for Beom-eum, no different from losing his eyes.
These were eyes he had kept shut for twenty years. He could see, but he chose not to. Because he could hear, he did not need to look.
When the melody of his sutra chanting stained the air, that was Beom-eum's field of vision.
The reverberations of the alms bowl's beat would sketch the outlines, and the sound waves of the sacred text would fill in the details. The chorus of hundreds of Rakshasa Monks chanting in unison turned the entire mountain into a single sheet of music, and upon that sheet of music Beom-eum heard everything.
But now.
The sheet of music he had been conducting had been shredded to pieces.
The alms bowl had been split in two. Half of the Dharma treasure he had shared twenty years with. Having only that half remaining, resting in the palm of his hand—it felt terribly strange. The other half would be buried somewhere in the dirt.
What was buried was not only the alms bowl.
Gak-jin's presence had disappeared too.
To be precise, the sound of his heart had stopped. Over there. Not all that far away, the towering eight-cheok frame lay crumpled like a rag on the dirt.
Naturally, he had already heard all of it.
The sound of the trident falling, the sound of bones splitting, and the silence of a heart that would beat no more.
The duet that seemed as though it would never end had finally come to its close.
Twenty years.
From the day he first set foot in the Rakshasa Monk unit, Gak-jin had always been at Beom-eum's side. When Beom-eum opened a path with his sutra chanting, Gak-jin's trident walked that path. Melody and impact. Beat and shattering. Whenever the two's breathing locked as one, no enemy under heaven could break that duet.
It was fun.
This is sincere.
When the screams of hundreds and thousands wove into a melody, when fleeing footsteps built a rhythm, when the sound of a sword breaking struck the final note—every time, it was a joy.
The sound Beom-eum loved most in this world was the sound of a person breaking apart, and Gak-jin had been the musician who produced it best.
But now it was a performance and a duet that could be realized no more.
The fingers gripping the half alms bowl tightened.
What a shame.
It was not sadness. Nor was it anything like anger.
Only the regret that the 'amusement' had come to an end was great.
The corners of Beom-eum's mouth rose. Beneath his shut eyes, a smile spread. It was his first smile in twenty years.
Because now he could play for real.
That realization awoke something inside Beom-eum's body.
It was not sutra chanting. It was not the internal energy flowing through his meridians. It was something that had been inside his body since twenty years ago, before he had first donned a Rakshasa Monk's robe.
Whoooooooooo—
Something bloomed from the center of his chest. It did not travel through the meridians. It did not pass through the Dantian. A resonance erupting simultaneously from bones and flesh and skin—from his entire body at once.
Spirit Roots.
The Spirit Roots Beom-eum possessed were of Rhythm. The root of sound and the seed of vibration. Existing in complete independence from the meridian framework of this world—the Rhythm Spirit Roots, an existence that was itself an instrument.
The Rakshasa Monks' sutra chanting was a degraded martial art that crammed these Spirit Roots into the framework of the meridians and put them to use. The Ten Thousand Sound Sea's Inner Rotation—a energy art that used bones as strings, flesh as membranes, and blood vessels as pipes—had come closest to the true nature of the Spirit Roots, yet the moment it passed through the meridians as a conduit, it was already inevitably distant from Spiritual Energy.
Right now was different. He was not rerouting through the meridians. His entire body resonated. Each and every bone vibrated, blood vessels harmonized, and his skin became a membrane that struck the air.
This was the Rhythm Spirit Roots. The original sound.
Its quality was different from internal energy.
This was Spiritual Energy.
The power blooming from true Spirit Roots. The conduit of the meridians was not needed. The body itself was the conduit.
Light seeped out from beneath the monk's robe.
A soft, even light. Different from the morning sunlight—neither cold nor hot, a light that had no business being on this mountain. That light began tearing through the threads of the reddish-brown monk's robe one by one, forcing its way out.
Beom-eum stood up.
Boooom—!
That alone caused every energy in the mountain and the mountain itself to buckle.
Beom-eum had done nothing more than rise from where his feet had been planted on the ground, yet the earth within a radius of dozens of jang sank all at once. The debris scattered around was pushed outward simultaneously. At the same time, Spiritual Energy poured from Beom-eum's body and changed the very weight of the air itself.
"What in the world is this……!?"
Eom Bi-ryeong's sword, standing some distance away, hummed within its grip. Not the sword trembling—the internal energy loaded onto the sword was trembling.
"That man……he was something beyond comprehension all along, not your ordinary Dark Net Rakshasa Path."
Myo Jin-heo's hand gripping the fan also began to flinch against his will.
Hummmmmm—
The mountain began to resonate with Beom-eum.
His eyes remained shut just as they had been. Because there was still no need to see.
The moment Spiritual Energy spread through the air, a sense of hearing on a completely different level from the Ten Thousand Sound Sea had opened.
The entire mountain could be heard.
The outline of the ruins. The cross-sections of the severed ridges. Shattered rocks and trees uprooted whole.
And the man standing before him.
When Beom-eum's Spiritual Energy reached the man—Dong Bong-soo—something strange occurred. He could not be read.
No, to be precise—he could be read, but not grasped. An invisible Field spread around the man's body. A strange energy field that was simply in perfect harmony with nature, one that held dominion over the space itself. It was so uniform and natural that it was, paradoxically, abnormal.
"You……you too have come from there."
The light had completely torn free of the monk's robe.
And then.
The fierce rays of light that had seemed about to rend the mountain apart softly seeped into every inch of Beom-eum's body.
A lean frame, eyes still shut. There was no trace of the Rakshasa Monk anywhere.
He—the Cultivation Seeker, Gwang-eum, who had revealed his true form for the first time in a very long while—took a single step toward Dong Bong-soo.