Cut and Polish
The Heavenly Killing Star grew strongest when it fought with its life on the line.
That was only natural, of course — the moment it appeared, it became an enemy of the entire Murim, destined to clash with every kind of scum under the sun.
But among all those foes, there was one fated presence that jacked the Heavenly Killing Star's progress up to absurd heights.
Its fellow ominous star and sworn nemesis: the Purple Micro Star.
"…You want me to trade blows with Jo Harang?"
I stared at the characters being scraped into the floor and pictured the storm of greatsword strikes Jo Harang liked to rain down. What Salsung was proposing was for Purple and Kill to cross blades — a sparring match that was basically the real thing.
It clearly hated leaning on the Purple Micro Star's help, but the further my martial arts climbed, the higher the Heavenly Killing Star's survival rate climbed with them. So it was putting on a show of restraint.
Knife in a Smile.
Or… not restraining itself at all?
Even while accepting the help, the Heavenly Killing Star kept a blade tucked in its sleeve and whispered that I should strike the second an opening showed. Psychopath star, every time I looked. Absolutely ruthless, even to people who were helping it.
I scrubbed out the characters with the tip of my foot. Salsung flared up in a furious red protest.
"Not happening. And even if I did, I'd get flattened, you lunatic."
This thing loved its honeyed words and hidden daggers.
The other party was a Peak Realm martial artist — and one swimming in the Purple Micro Star's raw talent, no less.
Still, the advice about taking the Purple Micro Star's help wasn't bad, so I decided to accept that much of it.
I headed for the open lot near the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering lodgings, and sure enough, there was Jo Harang under the starlight, drenched in sweat and deep in training. She and her massive saber had fused into one body; wherever the blade went, her frame flowed after it like water. Even so, she was scattering domineering saber qi that ripped the night air to shreds.
Whoosh!
She was only running through forms, but the force riding that blade made the whole scene look downright violent. Stand in front of that greatsword without a plan and you wouldn't even leave bones — your whole body would be sliced clean away.
"Hmm? Mujin, what are you doing out this late?"
There were no night sentries, and I was just standing there watching her sword dance in the dead of night, so Jo Harang rounded on me with wide eyes and asked what was up. I laid out everything without holding back — the wall I'd felt training alone, the way things had stalled.
No matter how I thought about it, swinging techniques at empty air just didn't suit the Heavenly Killing Star.
"You want a training partner? As a sparring opponent?"
The martial tournament ran for two weeks. Somewhere in that window, I wanted to crack the clue that would take me toward Peak Realm.
"Yeah. Think we can?"
"Of course! I've been waiting for you to ask!"
Jo Harang nodded so readily it looked like this was the moment she'd been hoping for. She slung the greatsword over her shoulder, thumped her chest, and told me to trust her — she'd keep me company all day if I wanted.
Not a scrap of malice, not a hint of calculation. Pure goodwill. Completely different from a certain blood-red bastard who'd tell you to look for a kill angle while accepting help. She was a woman who shone like broad daylight.
"You're weirdly fired up, though. Before, it felt like you were just collecting bounties and entering the rest as a side job."
She wasn't wrong. Back then I'd been thinking, I'm going to cash in bounties anyway, might as well pad my reputation and enter for fun. My whole approach had flipped since then.
"There's someone I've decided I really want to thrash."
Two humans who had spent two full days taking turns poking me. I could live with other people winning — but I refused to watch the bastards who'd cooked me walk off with the championship. So I was going to dump ash all over their nice clean plans. That was what this serious mode was for.
The only goal was seeing Moyong Hwi and Moyong Cheon's faces twisted into knots.
"Ah, that punk from before? You're going to fight him?"
That punk. An extremely accurate description of Moyong Hwi.
"But he's a Peak Realm martial artist and a favorite for the win. Can you actually do it?"
"That's why I need your help."
"Yeah. Okay. That tracks."
We'd already dragged each other's realms up once, hadn't we? Nothing said we couldn't do it twice.
Thud.
She stopped her own training and drove the greatsword into the dirt, as if to say she was giving me her time.
"So how do we do this? For the record, I can't use a lightning-fast sword style like the Heaven and Earth Wave Flash Sword."
She was warning me that her heavy, overbearing saber arts wouldn't help me adapt to that kind of swordplay.
"Ah, that's fine."
I knew that sword style better than anyone. I'd watched it every day, and I'd been stabbed by it enough times while being chased to have it seared into my bones.
"You can put killing intent into your blade now, right?"
Thanks to my advice, she had accepted the darkness inside her — the murderous intent — as part of herself.
"Yeah, of course."
"Then from now on, think of me as someone you're supposed to kill, and swing that greatsword with full killing intent."
Murder techniques that came flying in so thick with bloodlust your hair stood on end. The Heavenly Killing Star flaring up and answering them on pure instinct. Dropping into a trance and fighting like a madman — that had always been the most efficient training method for me.
"Eeeh? What kind of barbaric training method is that?"
"Surprisingly, it exists."
Even all the way out here in distant Shaanxi, a certain cranky old man's face floated up. I shook my head hard and scrubbed the wrinkled mug out of my mind.
"Anyway, load it with killing intent and come at me like you mean to end me. That's what works best for me."
Jo Harang wore a look that said, Is this really okay? — but a request was a request, so she leveled that enormous greatsword at me. I drew my staff and settled into stance, bracing for the storm of heavy arcs about to pour down.
Except time kept passing, and she stayed locked in her opening stance without closing in.
"What are you doing? Not coming?"
Brilliant saber qi was pouring off her, so I'd expected a wave of overbearing murderous aura to crush me any second — but her blade tip refused to move. The Heavenly Killing Eye, which usually traced red trajectories, stayed quiet. Even Salsung, who had flared blood-red before a fight, sank back down.
"I tried to work up killing intent, but… mm, it's not really working…"
"Didn't you overcome that when you broke through to Peak Realm last time?"
"Yeah, I did. But standing in front of you, it's like… why is it doing this?"
She needed the mindset of cutting down the person in front of her, and she couldn't get it. She looked genuinely put out.
"Weird. What's different?"
"Hmm. Maybe it's because I like you?"
She scratched her cheek and tossed the line out like it was nothing.
"…"
…
Salsung and I both froze solid at a remark that hard to brush off.
"Ah, not like that. I mean I hold you up as a model. Kind of my ideal example."
She explained that she treated me like the Purple Micro Star's personal role model.
…You almost gave me a heart attack, woman.
She really knew how to mess with a person's head. Yanking people's feelings around like a game. Salsung must have been just as shocked, because it furiously scraped IMPOSSIBLE! into the dirt, as if that pairing could not be allowed to exist.
Sometimes this girl felt even harder to pin down than I was.
"Try thinking of me as your mortal enemy."
"But you're not that kind of person."
Apparently the good karma I'd stacked was visible to the naked eye, so she couldn't force it.
"…Then just picture whatever you hate most in the world."
If that didn't work, this training was dead on arrival. I gave the advice and let out a thin thread of the kind of killing intent a First-class martial artist might carry.
"What I hate most… the Heavenly Killing Star!"
That one landed. Her violet eyes snapped open, and a razor-edged killing intent rolled off her. As the Heavenly Killing Star currently in disguise, my feelings got a little complicated.
"That did it…! You're a really good person, but today I'm going to treat you like the terrible Heavenly Killing Star and fight you!"
A blade-body swollen with killing intent and saber qi loomed over me. That storm of presence and sheer size hit hard enough that just looking at it felt like pressure.
"Harang. You remember the promise we made last time?"
"Which one?"
"That even if I show up later as a villain, you'll look the other way at least once."
"Of course. I always keep my promises!"
Jo Harang puffed up with confidence, declaring herself a trustworthy B-rank vagabond.
"Good. Hold me to that later…!"
Nothing beat being built tough. Pure internal energy flooded out through my whole body. I double-checked that the safety belt was locked in, then started exchanging offense and defense with her greatsword, thick with murderous intent.
Clang-clang-clang—!
Salsung's advice to pit myself against the Purple Micro Star hadn't been empty noise after all.
Over a few days of training that could fairly be called short, I spent myself answering the killing intent and saber qi Jo Harang poured out — and somewhere in that chaos, I picked up a small realization. More precisely, it felt like I'd tugged a little harder on a thread I'd already been touching.
"At the end, even when it crashed into her saber qi, the Dog-Beating Staff held, right?"
He'd given me this staff when he acknowledged me as a junior, so the whole time we'd been trading blows I'd been hyper-focused on whether it would get sliced clean through. Then, thrashing around trying to stop one last strike aimed at my gut, I'd somehow knocked a Peak Realm martial artist's attack head-on — like something had possessed me.
"…How the hell did I do that?"
A strange sensation lingered at my fingertips. Beyond circulating the body's energy into a weapon, it felt like I'd reached for something further.
Jo Harang studied me for a long moment, then offered a few guesses.
Isn't it just that you're short on insight?
Insight?
She said it was because I'd learned too fast. She pointed out how absurdly short my training years were, and how my body and mind couldn't keep up with the volume of internal energy I was packing — a mismatch.
Come to think of it, I was only in my second year of martial arts. Even a newborn in this world usually took about fifteen months just to walk. I had crammed martial arts far more complex and profound than that into a crash course.
Mujin, what does martial arts mean to you?
Beating people up.
Haa. That's why you hit a wall. How did your master teach you?
By beating me up.
…
Not a single lie in that. There was none of the careful guidance and hand-holding you got from orthodox sects. If you didn't get it, you got pounded with that same technique until you did. That was daily life.
Sorry, but… is that even a master…?
That's what I'm saying.
Which was exactly why I was so reluctant to call that old man Master. He had to treat me like a disciple first.
Anyway, that was how I ended up walking onto the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering stage with an incomplete realization in hand.
"Waaaaaah—!"
Even from the waiting room, the crowd's roaring cheers punched straight through my ears. Outside was a cauldron of frenzy, whipped up by flashy martial arts and matches from all kinds of fighters. Meanwhile, what filled my head was a thick, sticky regret.
"Hss. Feels like one real fight would be enough to get it."
The Heavenly Killing Star grew by feeding on blood and killing intent. The last missing piece wasn't sparring mixed with murder techniques — it was the real deal, two people trying to kill each other. That felt like it would lock the feeling in place.
But this was the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering. Not a battlefield — a tournament. Swing a killing technique on purpose and put someone in the ground, and you were disqualified. So that kind of thing almost never happened.
And as if that weren't enough…
After grinding through the preliminaries, my round-of-sixteen opponent turned out to be a Shaolin Temple martial artist with a shaved head.
"Heh heh. Namu Amitabha."
Vice Leader's office, Demon Slaying Squad.
Moyong Cheonghye had no time to watch the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering. She was buried under the paperwork the Leader had dumped and fled without finishing. She had refused the Leader's seat and clung to the Vice Leader post specifically to avoid this, and still Leader Jeok Unyeop had shoved the whole stack at her and left.
"Haa. I wanted to see that spirited young man's stage, too."
He was probably trying to force the Leader's seat on her. He seemed to carry a heavy burden over his background and his martial arts.
"Not a chance."
She had no intention of giving up the freedom of movement she currently enjoyed. After losing someone precious, wealth, fame, and power had become hollow things to Moyong Cheonghye. Which was why she was locked in this odd standoff with the Leader inside the Demon Slaying Squad.
"Vice Leader!"
A coroner who handled the heads of wanted criminals for the Murim Alliance came sprinting into her office. Moyong Cheonghye, leaning back in her chair, looked at him with a puzzled frown.
"What is it, Coroner?"
"The Bloodsucking Demon's corpse is… wrong."
"Wrong how? It's a salt-cured head. How wrong can it be…"
"I performed an autopsy on the head and found traces of that group's blood arts!"
The Bloodsucking Demon had long been suspected of ties to a certain sect with a history written in blood. The coroner described how he had driven a specially made long needle into the skull, pulled it back out, and checked — and his expression said this was no small matter.
"Wait. If it's the Bloodsucking Demon, then the people who brought that in were definitely…"
The vagabond named Jo Harang, and the young man she had handed a short blade to — Dan Mujin.
"We need to go ask them in detail what happened, even now. And as you know, those people hate having their trail caught more than anything…"
"So they might try to silence them."
"Yes, exactly."
And a martial tournament was the perfect stage for dressing a murder up as an accident.
Moyong Cheonghye's brow twitched as she looked uneasily toward the direction of a certain young man currently fighting in the round of sixteen.
"Surely not…"