Sunrise [3]
The first to strike was Gu Jung-cheol, a master of the Transcendent First-Rate.
His saber tore in on a shriek of split air, hunting my throat.
…The tactics I used on bandits won't serve here. Deliberately slowing, then answering a shade faster the instant the opponent committed — that only held if I could outpace him. Meeting the blow head-on was out of the question, and simply evading would hand him the initiative, so that too was to be avoided. Which left a single answer.
Steel rang. I ran the form of Mount Tai Pressing Down in reverse and cut upward; the blade cracked against the saber's flank and kinked its path.
A strange light settled in Gu Jung-cheol's eyes. In the same breath, as if by prior agreement, both weapons hummed and were sheathed at once — mine in sword qi, his in saber qi.
This time I was the faster. Shedding the saber aside had left me in the better posture to swing.
A horizontal cut, thrown from the better posture.
The blade crashed against the broad face of the ringed broadsword and stopped dead. I gave ground along my footwork, opening the distance, and my brow drew tight.
These forms. They're in the way.
Short of the First-Rate, internal energy could not be counted on to answer reliably, so a martial artist had to rely on set forms — standardized movements built to ride a predetermined flow. And my realm, at present, was the peak of the Second-Rate. Five acupoints remained to be opened. Which meant free movement was still impossible.
Gu Jung-cheol seemed to have noticed. His eyes narrowed, and he spoke.
"You ain't even First-Rate. How're you throwing sword qi?"
"Don't know."
I answered short and took my stance.
"Huh. That right."
He settled into his own, the words low. A brief standoff. Then I broke it — I moved first, and Gu Jung-cheol met me by swinging for my right arm.
Changing direction in the middle of a hard charge is difficult. So I spun where I stood, and the air tore with the turn. Just as I came halfway around, blood burst from my left shoulder blade. My right arm was whole, and his saber was still traveling out along the line my sword had drawn.
In a word: an opening. I loaded the spin into the blade and drove it out as it was.
The spin becomes a horizontal blade.
The cut tore the air and, together with the front of his robe, kissed his chest. From that shallowest of scratches, a thread of blood ran.
"…Heh."
A hollow little laugh, nearer wonder than mockery, scattered on the empty air. I paid it no mind. As he yielded ground step by step, I took his left side.
Modified. From the upper left, down to the lower right.
The cut fell toward Gu Jung-cheol. He swung at my sword as if nothing were amiss. Half-solid, steel-blue saber qi and a faint red sword qi, shivering like heat haze, met in the empty air — and the impact rang out like a bell. The sword punched through saber qi that had taken a [Nick] and knocked the saber wide.
"What—!!"
Bewilderment, shock, and doubt flooded his face. And agitation is one of the many things a fight does not permit.
The form drives for the chest.
He wrenched aside in a hurry, and still my point went through his chest and fetched up against a rib.
Not enough time to break the rib.
On that judgment I drew the sword and gave ground. Sure enough, his saber surged for my neck and sheared the empty air above my ducked head — and then his kick sank squarely into my jaw.
"Ghk—!"
The bone half-crushed and sagged. I hit the dirt, rolled, and was flung backward. I snatched for a stance. Too late. He was already coming, saber swinging.
I took in his breath, his pulse, the shift of muscle, the line of his eyes, the length of the saber, the reach of his arms and legs — all of it — and judged. I couldn't block that. I couldn't dodge it, and I couldn't shed it.
Do I gamble?
I had never once tried it in a real fight. It didn't matter. This was the best move I had. If I couldn't do it, I would die in the end anyway. A hot breath leaked through lips barely parted. My mind drew itself up in ranks and stopped time, and only my spirit remained whole inside that single frozen scene. Looking down on the battlefield from a higher place, that spirit began to spit forth understanding.
Mount Tai Pressing Down is the earth's pull — the force that drags a human down. Sweeping a Thousand Armies is the breadth of heaven, and its capacity to hold.
Then the form of the Immortal's Road — what is that? The middle of earth and heaven. The place where they meet. The horizontal line and the vertical line. The place where they meet. The instant born inside that meeting, an instant without even length. Is that not a point, and at the same time a person? A line is nothing but an endless succession of points. Then is a person, in and of themselves, heaven and earth both?
Light burst. Enlightenment seized my internal energy and bored all five acupoints clean through.
Ah.
A dizzying release, and a thrill, ran the length of my body.
The upper dantian, evolved a stage higher, carried the enlightenment on. Red sword qi gathered at the tip of the blade and took on a deeper color. With nothing but the single thought of piercing for a lamp, I lit the sword's path, and upon that path I set my will. One human, born of the earth, rises into heaven.
Born of the earth. Rising into heaven.
The point surged for the center of Gu Jung-cheol's chest as he charged me head-on.
"…!!"
He tried to wrench himself aside. A body already committed, at full speed, to a single direction cannot simply be turned. It was all but impossible. With a blast no sword ought to make, his entire left half blew apart, saber and all.
"Hoo."
I had poured ninety-nine parts in a hundred of my internal energy into a single form, and the sigh that left me was heavy.
"…Wh… what…!"
He stared at his own left half, torn clean away, viscera spilling in wet clumps from the sheared face of what remained, and his eyes filled up with horror. Of that half, not even a fragment was left. He was a martial artist's body, internal energy running through it — and still, wherever Feathered Ascension had touched, the qi had been entirely [Deleted], the world's own natural qi included. It was a sight more than sufficient for terror. His face the color of a corpse, he squeezed out a guess.
"The… the Sword Immortal…?!"
A clean slice. That was his final testament.
I looked down at Gu Jung-cheol's head where it rolled across the dirt, and my gaze was cold.
A killing intent with no source raked through my skull. I wanted to kill them now. Simply — all of them. Not a heart-devil. Pure, primordial Mara. The thing itself writhed in the deep of me, and the master of that Mara shimmered before my eyes.
Black dragon robes. A black imperial crown. Seated upon a throne of black jade: a Demon God with black hair and crimson eyes.
He took me in his arms. Words I could not understand. A voice I was not permitted even to recognize as sound. A body the sense of touch would not register. A face I could not see. And yet… something. It was ease. It was softness.
…But it was not warm. There was none of the warmth that had spread through my whole body when Seol-ah held me. None of the peace I had felt when I told her my life, and told her my pain.
A single shaft of sun, laid across a sky shut in by storm cloud, washed my spirit. That light pushed through the clouds and shone upon the earth. It was sunrise.
Feels like something happened… I couldn't remember. Gu Jung-cheol's severed head caught under my foot. I kicked it aside, turned the matter over for a moment, and then—
"Ah."
This wasn't the important thing. Seol-ah — was she all right? My eyes snapped to the side.
There she was, ringed by martial artists, swinging her sword with the look of someone at her limit. Each time the blade came around, men with their vitals opened dropped like leaves in an autumn wind — and for every one of them, another wound, large or small, was added to Seol-ah's body.
I drove the sword into my own side, hauled my sinking eyelids back up on the pain, and ran straight for her. The moment I reached her, the blade was already moving. Red sword qi, wrung from every scrap of internal energy I had left, half-manifested and wound itself around the steel. With every swing, several of the Black Tiger Sect were ground apart.
"Hah… huff…"
Lee Seol-ah stood with her mouth hanging open, dragging in rough breaths, and watched the sight with shining eyes. When the last of the remnants was done, I looked at her, panting.
Honestly… she hasn't changed. Seeing her watch a fight as if spellbound, relief washed my heart clean.
"…Ah! Wait — th-those wounds, what are they…? Are you all right?"
Coming back to herself, Seol-ah scurried over and asked it with worried eyes. I looked over her injuries in turn. None of them were deep, fortunately, but wounds large and small had been left across her whole body.
"Ah…"
A cracked groan slipped out of me.
"Y-you really are all right, aren't y—"
I pulled her in and held her tight.
"…I'm sorry. I should have handled it alone."
The sight of her wounded, blood running freely, snapped my mind clear at once. Those wounds might as well have been ones I gave her. I was the one who had asked her to clear the surroundings.
"No, what are you saying? I was the one who fought in the first— I was— …"
Her voice drew farther and farther away, and my vision went black.