The Counter
They say a man always meets his nemesis on a single-log bridge.
Minor Thunderbolt Sword Moyong Hwi—overshadowed by the Azure Cloud Sword, yet still a prodigy who had awakened sword qi at a young age.
He was also the one who had persecuted Moyong Cheongjin, the other personality within me, for years.
If there was such a thing as a bitter fate, he was it.
Someone’s staring a hole through me.
I turned my gaze toward the nearby guest seats.
There, a middle-aged man was fixing me with a piercing stare. Moyong Cheon, lord of the Moyong Clan.
To the uninformed eye he might look like a dignified scholar, but I knew the cold nature packed inside that frame.
A man who put family prestige above family itself, who would do anything for the clan’s revival.
And did he know? That right now, on this very sparring stage, two of his grown sons were standing face to face.
I snorted.
If he had known, he never would have left the bracket like this. He would have pulled every string to split us up.
So he could aim for both champion and runner-up at once.
“Waaaaah—!”
The star of this Dragon-Phoenix Gathering, Moyong Hwi, raised his sword high before the match, and the crowd roared.
A completely different reaction from the stands than when I had faced Diamond Fist Hye Seung earlier.
From where I stood he was far too much of a prick to deserve that kind of popularity, but it seemed a fair number of Murim fanatics had flocked to this bout.
“Minor Thunderbolt Sword! Minor Thunderbolt Sword!”
“Crush that lucky vagabond bastard already!”
“While the Azure Cloud Sword’s not here, take the championship once!”
“Hey man, you don’t need to say that out loud!”
Martial artists were usually the type who kept their mouths shut, but when people gathered in clouds like this, a few bold idiots always found the nerve to shout whatever they wanted.
Exactly the sort of nonsense rising from the spectator seats behind me.
“Insolent dogs….”
Moyong Hwi ground his teeth at the spectator who had brought up the Azure Cloud Sword.
Right. I remembered. From long ago he had always been compared to the Namgung Clan’s Azure Cloud Sword and burned with rivalry because of it.
“In this whole world, I hate that Azure Cloud Sword bastard the most.”
Without anyone asking, Moyong Hwi launched into a monologue before the match even started.
So the person he hated most wasn’t me. Good to know.
“Why that much?”
“Because whenever I face him… I feel something overwhelming that no amount of effort can ever catch.”
Every time they met, he said, it was like being reminded of a wall he could never climb with hard work alone. Frustration and rage would swallow him whole.
“It felt exactly like looking at that third brother of mine….”
I flinched a little.
Why was my name coming up here?
“I heard the third son of the Moyong Clan was frail, sickly, and eventually died of illness.”
That was the story the world knew. It was the only excuse they could give for locking him away from every public event.
“Hmph. Frail, my ass. If that bastard had ever put his mind to it, by now he would have— Haah, never mind. It’s already over.”
With that, he pointed the tip of his sword at me.
Blue sword qi boiled up around the blade as if he intended to go all-out from the first exchange.
“I’ve wasted enough breath. As those people said, victory already belongs to me. I don’t recommend pointless resistance.”
In other words: hurry up and fall down for the star of the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering. Same cocky older brother as always.
And for all his talk about walls that effort couldn’t reach—he himself was a talent freak who had already hit the Peak Realm at eighteen.
Plenty of people would have loved to punch him in the face just for existing.
“You’ll never know who’s longer or shorter until you measure, will you?”
“Hmph. Only idiots say that.”
The moment the words left him, a fierce pressure flooded the stage. Weapons leveled at each other.
When the tension peaked, the judge swung the red flag that signaled the start of the match. A roar of “Waaah!” exploded from the stands.
“And you, just as Father said, are a complete fool!”
How dare you challenge someone who’s already reached the late Peak Realm—Moyong Hwi drew up his inner energy and charged in savagely.
Whiiing—!
True to the name Thunder Sword, the flashing tip of his blade came at me like lightning.
A first form of the Heaven and Earth Wave Flash Sword, swift as a thunderbolt. A truly pride-worthy sword of the Moyong Clan.
First Form — Lightning Flash Thrust
Clack!
But today, that pride stopped dead against my staff.
Moyong Hwi’s eyes flew wide at the staff that had already moved into place, as if I had known exactly where the strike would land.
“What….”
Violent shock and tremor traveled up the locked blades.
“I told you. You only know after you try.”
I had nearly died to this sword once already. The Heavenly Killing Star had drilled the entire art into my bones.
Just from the footwork, the tips of his toes, the shift of his shoulders—I could tell which form was coming and how to answer it.
“Today you’re going to take a proper beating, Minor Thunderbolt Sword.”
I hadn’t named this staff the Hell Vengeance Staff for nothing.
Fierce inner energy coiled at the tip—carrying every grudge Moyong Cheongjin had ever suffered.
Taat!
“You’re dead!”
Moyong Hwi did not like the vagabond named Dan Mujin standing in front of him.
He disliked the way people who drifted between orthodox and unorthodox circled the Murim Alliance, and he disliked even more the way the man spoke so familiarly with his older sister.
So he had decided that if the chance came, he would drag this lucky bastard’s true level out into the open for the whole world to see.
Clack! Clack!
Something was going terribly wrong.
Every time he thrust his sword, Dan Mujin answered as if he already knew the move and counterattacked without fail.
“What is this!”
The sharp fifth form stabbed into empty air. A blade thick with sword qi swept across, yet the man’s stick refused to be cut.
It wasn’t even Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron, nor was it wrapped in staff qi—yet after absorbing the blow with only a shallow nick, the club immediately struck back.
“What the hell is going on!”
Furious at a match that was unfolding nothing like he had imagined, Moyong Hwi roared.
Dan Mujin snorted and muttered under his breath.
“What else? Manners education.”
Was it possible that his Heaven and Earth Wave Flash Sword was being completely predicted by this man?
Moyong Hwi forced the uneasy thought down and kept swinging.
Shadowless Steps churned. Inner energy burst from his toes. Rage-laden sword strikes poured down onto the vagabond’s head again and again.
Yet the man blocked every single one—leaving only scrapes or broken capillaries—while unfolding an ever more uncanny footwork.
In a blink the vagabond’s form blurred, closed the distance, and whipped the staff in a reverse grip.
Clack!
Moyong Hwi barely raised his sword in time, but the club rebounded off the blade and smashed straight into the crown of his head.
A blow that left every limb tingling; he let out a pained cry.
“Guhk!”
He staggered back three or four steps.
At this point he could no longer deny the one premise he had been desperately rejecting.
“You… who showed you that sword art….”
Someone must have taught this man the Heaven and Earth Wave Flash Sword specifically for today’s match.
Otherwise those movements that seemed to predict every path of his blade made no sense.
“Who else? Your own sister.”
But the answer he received was even harder to believe.
Moyong Hwi shook his head violently from side to side.
“……Nonsense. That can’t be true!”
A drop of blood slid down my jaw.
I briefly touched the thin red line drawn across my cheek.
And there were more—scrapes etched all over my body.
I had blocked them, sure, but the continuous barrage still managed to graze me here and there.
So even knowing what’s coming, late Peak Realm is still late Peak Realm.
An overwhelming speed of sword that you could understand and still not fully evade.
Earlier he had whined about feeling a wall of talent when looking at me and the Azure Cloud Sword. Looking at this, I wanted to laugh.
Kill!
If only the bastard had wrapped even a thick murderous intent around his blade, the trajectories would have been easier to read.
But he was still an orthodox martial artist, and this was a sparring stage, so he was holding back from true killing moves.
Then I’ll just drag the murderous intent out of him.
I looked at the man who was already grinding his teeth in fury over my earlier remark and laid out the plan.
“Why would my sister ever teach a mongrel like you! And to make you face me, of all people!”
Apparently Moyong Cheonghye was a berserk button for his emotional lines.
He kept screaming denials at the top of his lungs.
“She came to me herself. Said her brother was a total piece of trash and asked me to beat some sense into him.”
“……That’s pure bullshit! My sister would never!”
Of course, she had only taught me so I could win the bet against Moyong Cheon—but he didn’t know that.
His head must have felt like it was about to explode.
“Never? Then explain how a lowly vagabond is casually catching every one of your sword strokes right now.”
“…….”
“Looks like you’re not exactly beloved inside the clan. Maybe if you’d been a little nicer on a daily basis, your own family wouldn’t be—”
“Shut your mouth, you vagabond dog…!”
When the tide goes out, you finally see who’s been swimming naked.
After the third son’s departure, Moyong Hwi had never been able to accept that he was now the clan’s golden child. He launched a strike of pure rage at me.
Every motion of his body and every cut of his blade was soaked in murderous intent.
Clack-clack-clack-clack—!
Flashing sword light poured down from every direction like a sudden cloudburst. The Hell Vengeance Staff answered with a dazzling interception.
A brilliant exchange painted the empty air. Fierce qi from both sides exploded in savage shockwaves that swept across the stage.
Now this finally feels like a real brawl instead of a polite spar.
Even Moyong Cheon up in the stands looked furious, so the provocation had clearly worked.
Unlike before, I was now reading the murderous trajectories cleanly and refusing him even a single scrape. Moyong Hwi’s face twisted deeper into disbelief.
“Th-this doesn’t make any sense…!”
“It makes perfect sense!”
If the opponent was the abandoned son of the Moyong Clan and a Heavenly Killing Star that rapidly learned the very martial arts meant to kill him—then it made all the sense in the world.
I caught a flash of insight in that instant, smashed aside the sword that came slicing along a fatal line, and slammed my foot into the ground with all my strength.
Moyong Hwi’s face was suddenly right in front of mine, eyes wide with shock.
I watched the tip of his sword whip up in a desperate block—and drove my fist into the opening with everything I had.
Puhk!
A rupture like a leather drum exploding.
That single fist, stuffed full of a certain old man’s violent teaching methods, sent Moyong Hwi flying off the stage, teeth spraying like popcorn.
“Kyaaak!”
“So, who did you say you were?”
Vice Leader of the Demon Exterminating Squad, Moyong Cheonghye.
She looked at the unidentified man who had suddenly appeared and, with overwhelming information and manpower, helped her capture Hye Seung—and asked the question.
Her own clan had already fallen out of favor with her; they would never offer this kind of aid. She stroked her slender jaw, puzzled.
“I am called Ma Jungcheon of the Divine Wind Heroes.”
She had heard the name once or twice. But she had never heard of any force that size operating in Shaanxi.
“What is your true identity?”
“Does that matter? What matters is that we joined forces and caught this bastard, isn’t it?”
He pointed at the Hye Seung impostor who had been steadily herded by ragged-looking men until, at the final moment of his escape, he had fallen into the hands of the Evil-Slaying Divine Maiden and been thoroughly beaten.
He was right, yet something still felt off. Moyong Cheonghye’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“Then at least tell me why you helped.”
“That would be for my own advancement… no. The four seas are all fellow travelers under the same sky. Fellow orthodox martial artists should help each other, right? Yes.”
A man whose motives she could not parse. She had heard he was mainly active in Kaifeng. Surely it wasn’t that particular faction.
She had been told they were currently leaderless and in chaos.
“Anyway… all right. Thank you for the assistance….”
What was urgent right now wasn’t that side of things. After speaking, she seized the collar of the bald man dressed in Shaolin robes and hauled him up.
She had run into the real Hye Seung several times at orthodox gatherings in the past. The youth she remembered had been overflowing with a sense of justice befitting a Shaolin disciple.
“I have a great many questions for you.”
Two eyes burning with killing intent toward the wicked.
The Evil-Slaying Divine Maiden wore a ferocious expression she had never once shown in front of the righteous.