Chapter 243
Chapter 243: Yeop Bi-hwa (3)
The air inside Hero Gate went still.
Jin Ha-gyeong could not even lower his outstretched arms. In the exact posture he had opened to block those behind him, his sleeve rose once in the wind and then froze there. It was not that he had stepped back into position, nor that he had made up his mind to do so. His body had simply stopped where it was.
Because a few meters ahead, the two were still locked in confrontation.
The Sword Rigidity that had been hovering over Yeop Bi-hwa's Falling Flower Leaf Needle was slowly withdrawing from the blade, being drawn into a single point at the sword's tip.
The gathering Sword Rigidity did not remain still where it converged. As it contracted to a single point, it was pulling the surrounding energy toward itself. The air around the sword's tip could not escape outward—it bent and was drawn inward toward that one point. A single leaf lying on the ground that had been rolling along against the grain was being pulled toward the sword's tip, and Jin Ha-gyeong saw it clearly.
The morning sunlight also naturally passed over that single point, yet that spot alone received no light. What reached it could not exit. It was neither reflection nor absorption. It was a convergence to a single point carved into the center of the scene before him.
The Sword Rigidity continued to be pared inward like that. The thick Sword Rigidity that had covered the entirety of the blade was now being compressed into a single inch at the sword's tip. That compression showed no sign of ending. Until it became a single point invisible to the eye, until that single point was pared inward into itself once more.
The roof tiles of Hero Gate, the walls, the line of a branch on a distant tree—for one instant they all appeared to curve toward that single point. It was not Jin Ha-gyeong's retinas that bent, but the air itself.
The moment that single point was released.
"One-Point Paring Rigidity……"
What slipped through Jin Ha-gyeong's lips was a sound indistinguishable from a gasp or a warning.
Even if it were Kim Rae-won, it would be precarious. Jin Ha-gyeong thought so.
Though it was barely known in the wider Martial World, the reason the Vast Heaven Limitless Sword Sect had not been thrown into great urgency despite being attacked and pushed back by the Dark Net Rakshasa Path of late—that reason was here.
One-Point Paring Rigidity.
A technique that contracted a Line into a Point, converging a lifetime of swordsmanship into a single point—One-Point Flash. This was the new Rigid Energy that the Iron-Faced Lady had at last completed in recent years in order to actually realize that technique.
It was a sword principle so immensely powerful that upon witnessing it, the Sword Venerable had said, 'This has rewritten the definition of the sword. From this moment forth, whatever sword stands against Vast Heaven, it shall be erased.'
Yet Kim Rae-won still stood with the green leaf sword hanging at his side. Both arms were loose, and his shoulders were loose. Even with the lifetime sword of Yeop Bi-hwa, the foremost sword master of Vast Heaven, leveled at him, not a hair's breadth of tension was loaded into his posture.
"Guild Master! That sword is—!"
Jin Ha-gyeong's cry could not reach its end.
The sound clearly traveled forward through the air, crossing the center of the training grounds, heading toward the man's back where he stood without so much as flinching. Yet that cry did not reach the man's ears. It was not that there was no time—it was that in the process of arriving where it needed to arrive, the sound wave was distorted, torn apart, and dissolved within the air itself.
By Yeop Bi-hwa's sword arts……
Naturally, Kim Rae-won did not turn his head, and the green sword hanging at his side, the angle of his shoulders, the direction of his toes—all remained as they were.
Yeop Bi-hwa, who had been staring directly at that Kim Rae-won, drew a long breath in.
Huuu—
The long exhaled breath could not travel straight through the air. The moment she breathed out, the void tilted, and her exhaled breath was sucked toward the sword's tip. The breath she had let out was returning to her own sword.
Sliiide.
The two hands Yeop Bi-hwa had placed on the hilt were not gripping the sword—they were being gripped by it. The single inch of the sword's tip was pulling her elbows, her shoulders, her waist, even the soles of her feet together toward it.
Thup. Thup.
Fine specks of dirt on the ground rolled toward that single point of the sword's tip.
A strand of hair that had been resting against her cheek floated up into the void, and unable to settle back into place, froze tilted toward the sword's tip.
Everything in the area was drawn together into that single point at the sword's tip.
Yeop Bi-hwa let out her final breath.
At the moment that last breath ended.
The tip of Falling Flower Leaf Needle moved first. The blade followed after.
Gooooooo—
In the path the sword had passed through, there was no trail.
The place where a trail should have been had ceased to exist.
The air of the training grounds, the morning sunlight, even a single speck of dust that had been drifting before the wall—all of it had been erased along that line.
Falling Flower Leaf Needle had not slashed through and passed. There was no cut mark either. It was only along the path the void had traveled that something was missing. A single thin line the width of two fingers was sunk blackly into the center of the scene.
No.
It was not even black.
For there to be black, there first needs to be space. There was no space there. In the place where something should have been, nothingness had settled in.
It was a kind of sword strike she had never seen before. No—it was not even a strike. Because it did not take the form of hitting something.
Thud.
Along that line, at its far end—at some one point before Kim Rae-won—sounds converged for one instant. The sound of Yeop Bi-hwa's footsteps, the sound of her breath and all others' within Hero Gate, the sound of branches at the training ground's edge swaying in the wind. Every sound that had been arising from all directions drew itself inward and was sucked into that single point.
And then.
"……"
The sounds ceased.
All sound in the world was captured within that single point. What remained in Yeop Bi-hwa's ears was only every kind of pulsing felt within her own body. The heartbeat and various organs, the pulse, and the minute trembling of skin. Yet even those only resonated deep within the body—sounds heard not from outside herself but only from within.
One beat.
Two beats.
Swaaaaaah—
All the captured sounds were released at once. Wind, branches, the cry of a distant bird, someone's breath, then another's. Sounds that returned simultaneously from all directions collided with each other and tore through the air. A world that had arrived slightly, fractionally late.
Yet in the space before Kim Rae-won, that 'nothingness' was still embedded there, unyielding.
Kim Rae-won moved his wrist ever so slightly.
His arm remained hanging at his side, and his elbow had not moved. One wrist movement. That was all.
Yet as much as that wrist moved, one layer of the training ground's air moved along with it. The hanging green sword rose about an inch from his side. The sword's trajectory was slow, but at each point that slow trajectory passed through, the air withdrew ever so slightly. Only the speed was slow.
The sword's tip was angling precisely toward one direction.
The line of the One-Point Paring Rigidity Yeop Bi-hwa had launched—toward the very point at the far end of that line where the 'Void' was embedded.
As the leaf sword drew closer to that one point, the shape of the sword began to look strange.
The green of the leaves was slowly draining from the sword's tip outward. On the hilt side, a deep green still remained, but the color was fading toward the tip. Navy was layering over the green, and over the navy a still darker shade was settling. It was the same sword, yet each part of it wore a different color.
That was not all.
The sword's length looked somewhat longer.
Whether it had actually grown, or whether the surrounding air had subtly curved around the sword making it appear that way, Yeop Bi-hwa could not tell. The line of the wall behind the sword bent once near the sword and then straightened again. The wall should have still been standing where it was. Yet to Yeop Bi-hwa's eyes, the wall appeared to tremble slightly where the sword had passed.
And the sword's movement grew even slower.
Compared to when it first began to angle, the closer the tip came to that one point, the more its speed decreased. As if that single point were stealing away the movement itself, one layer at a time. Yeop Bi-hwa felt the interval of her own breathing growing longer than the remaining distance to the sword's tip. One inch. Half an inch. That half an inch refused to close.
It seemed as though that sword would never reach that single point.
Before that illusion had even finished forming.
The leaf sword touched the 'Void.'
"……"
At the point of contact, nothing happened. No sparks flew, there was no sound of rupture, the air did not tremble. In the place where two objects meeting ought to exchange something, the exchange itself did not exist.
Only.
The leaf sword that had risen an inch from his wrist disappeared.
The green sword woven from dozens of leaves vanished—not a single leaf vein, not a speck of ash remained—it simply ceased to exist.
It had been, and then it was not.
A single sword that had unmistakably been there one breath before was erased from the world one breath after. Even the proof that the sword had existed there was erased along with it.
Kim Rae-won's hand was now gripping empty air.
"Interesting, interesting. You really did bring an interesting move, didn't you."
Kim Rae-won's empty hand closed lightly once.
It was a hand with nothing to grip. His fingers had wrapped around only air. Yet at the moment those fingers closed, a single sword had appeared within his hand.
What had not existed until just now 'had existed' from just now. There was no time placed between the two. No posture of drawing a sword, no sound of cleaving the air, no place where a scabbard should have been.
Yeop Bi-hwa's pupils trembled.
The light went strange for a moment.
Though the morning sunlight had been descending, no sunlight settled on that sword. It was not that the light had settled and slid off. The moment it touched, it disappeared. It was not that the blade did not reflect light—the sword consumed light.
The sword was dark, and dark, and dark still.
A material she had never seen before. No iron produced from any forge across the Martial World wore such darkness. Like adding another layer of pitch-black onto pitch-black……
A single thread of weight from the sword pressed down upon the air.
It was a completely different weight from the green sword woven from leaves.
The air of the training grounds sank one layer, centered on that sword. Into Yeop Bi-hwa's ears, a thread of soundless pressure fell from the place the sword had appeared.
And that sword was standing upright, aimed toward the end of that space where Yeop Bi-hwa's One-Point Paring Rigidity still held unresolved before it—the far edge of that 'Void.'
The pitch-black sword, having been raised upright toward the far edge of the 'Void,' began to rotate.
It was not his hand that rotated it. Kim Rae-won's wrist remained still in the posture gripping the hilt, and his elbow and shoulder were the same. What rotated was the sword itself. The hilt and blade became a single axis and began to revolve of their own accord within his palm.
At first it was visible.
The flat face of the blade appeared once, and the next moment the thin line of the cutting edge appeared. Then the flat face again, then the thin line again. Each time the sword completed one rotation, it showed Yeop Bi-hwa a different face.
Visible.
Still visible.
No longer visible.
At some point the rotation had passed beyond a speed the eye could follow. The flat face and the thin line chased after each other, chasing, chasing, until at last they swallowed one another. The shape of the blade dissolved. The dissolved shape spread as afterimages through the air. As the afterimages overlapped, a single mass began to settle into place within the air.
What had been a sword was leaving a single shape in the air.
A vertically elongated gray column—sweeping from top to bottom along the sword's length, to the outside of the sword's breadth in one stroke.
That gray column was standing planted in Kim Rae-won's hand.
Kim Rae-won did not move. He did not raise the sword, did not set his arm upright, did not shift his toes. He simply left what he held in his hand as it was. Yet what extended from that hand had already become something other than a sword. In some respects it looked similar to her own One-Point Paring Rigidity……
Before that thought of Yeop Bi-hwa's had even finished.
The 'Void' that had been formed at the tip of Falling Flower Leaf Needle touched the edge of the gray column.
It was drawn in.
Her One-Point Paring Rigidity had not been reflected, had not been deflected, had not been dissolved. That single point which had touched the surface of the column was sucked into the inside of the column. The single technique forged through a lifetime of training was swallowed whole by something larger.
One brief vibration.
That vibration traveled back in reverse all the way to Yeop Bi-hwa's hilt. It was the sensation of the sword she had launched returning to her own hands. Only, nowhere in that sensation remained any trace of the 'Void' she had just released.
Whirrrrrrrrr—
The rotation of the gray column……stopped.
The afterimages dissipated and the dissolved shape found its way back. The flat face and the thin line separated again. The vertically elongated column that had been standing in the air was gone, and in its place the original pitch-black sword stood.
Not a single mark anywhere on the blade.
No cut mark, no shaved mark, not even a sign that something had touched and passed. As if nothing had happened at all.
The product of the sword principle Yeop Bi-hwa had honed and realized over a lifetime—where it had gone, not even a trace remained.
"……Haa, haa."
It was then.
From the direction where Kim Rae-won stood with his sword lowered, light spread.
As if something had descended from the sky, the air itself was brightening.
Without Yeop Bi-hwa needing to lift her head, the grain of the surrounding air rushed en masse toward the bright side.
That light spread toward Yeop Bi-hwa.
Shwaaaaaaaaah—
The light reached Falling Flower Leaf Needle in an instant.
The moment it touched, Yeop Bi-hwa felt the energy that should have been coating her sword releasing. Even the faint remnants of Rigid Energy left on the sword were swept away by the light and vanished. Not an attack coming in—but the sensation of what had been there being stripped away.
What came next was of course……
The light touched Yeop Bi-hwa's body.
Into the Inner Core that had been emptied in the act of releasing the One-Point Paring Rigidity, into that empty space, light seeped in. It was not an intrusion. It was not something breaking through. Like water filling an empty vessel—it was the illusion that something was filling the place where something should have been.
It was warm.
It was an attack, and it was warm.
It had touched, yet it did not hurt. It was seeping in, yet it could not be pushed out.
'……What is this?'
Yeop Bi-hwa's breath caught in her throat for a moment.
It was neither an attack nor the ordinary intrusion of a martial art.
'Nor is it a sword principle.'
Before long, the light that had been washing over her body disappeared inside Yeop Bi-hwa. It was not that the light outside had lessened—the light that had entered from outside had dissolved from within.
It was at that moment.
Behind Kim Rae-won, over his shoulder, light formed a vast round circle.
Something like the sun yet not quite the sun—a round texture of light spreading through the morning dust, a single layer of border that appeared to support Kim Rae-won's head and shoulders from behind.
It was not only Yeop Bi-hwa. Everyone who had been in the training grounds witnessed it clearly.
But the sphere of light dissipated even faster than it had appeared—like a mirage.
In that place, there was only sunlight and dust.
'That light……'
Yeop Bi-hwa could not put a name to what that light had been. Only the sensation that something round had been there a moment ago remained, squarely in the center of her chest.