No! This Is Going Too Far! (1)
"Faster! Faster!"
"M-Master Uncle! I can't go any faster!"
"What the hell are you talking about? Can't you see what's over there?"
Baek Cheon's voice was thick with anger and urgency. They were climbing the cliff at a near-insane pace, but they still hadn't completely closed the gap from the start. At this rate, the Wudang disciples would reach the top first.
If that happened, Chung Myung would have to face all of Wudang's disciples by himself. No matter how inhuman that bastard was, there was no way he could take on that many Wudang disciples alone.
Not even Chung Myung's grandfather could do that.
No, Chung Myung's grandfather shouldn't come at all, but if it were Chung Myung after he'd become a grandfather, maybe he could pull it off?
Either way, that wasn't the important thing right now!
"If you don't want to watch your martial nephew die, squeeze out every last drop you have! I'm going on ahead!"
"What the—?"
Baek Cheon began scrambling up the cliff faster than he had ever moved before, and Yu I-seol quickly followed close behind him.
"Damn it!"
No matter how much training they had done together, those men were second-generation disciples, while Jo Gul and Yoon Jong were third-generation. There was still an unbridgeable gap between their generations.
"Jo Gul! Hang in there! We have to go faster!"
"I-I feel like I'm going to die!"
"Quit whining!"
Yoon Jong clenched his teeth.
He wasn't angry because Baek Cheon was outpacing him. That didn't wound his pride. Baek Cheon had always been an idol to him, both then and now. The reason Yoon Jong was seething was because Chung Myung might be in danger, and he couldn't do anything to help.
I have to do something somehow... Hm?
Then something strange caught Yoon Jong's eye.
Some of the Wudang disciples who were climbing higher up suddenly turned around and began crawling toward the Mount Hua disciples.
"What the hell are they doing?"
"Looks like they're coming to stop us."
"...Well, that's strange, isn't it?"
"It really is."
It was so odd.
"Who would have thought that all that cliff-fighting training, which looked like it was good for nothing, would actually come in handy here?"
Yoon Jong drew his sword. At the same time, Jo Gul drew his as well.
Fight a Wudang disciple of that level on flat ground?
Forget it. He wouldn't even dare try. There didn't seem to be a single opponent here who looked younger than him. At the very least, they were Jin generation, and some might even be Mu generation.
But this was a cliff.
And they were the ones who had taken Chung Myung's sword on a cliff before.
"You're digging your own graves here, you bastards!"
Yoon Jong kicked his way toward the Wudang disciples charging at him with fierce momentum.
Watching him from behind, Jo Gul muttered under his breath before he even realized it.
"...Man, that's seriously embarrassing to watch."
* * *
"Cheap tricks!"
Looking at the divine weapons flying at him, Heo Sanja bit down hard on his lip.
But just because they were cheap tricks didn't mean they were easy to deal with. Why were they called divine weapons? Because they could cleave sword qi and slice through a body reinforced by inner strength.
If he couldn't dodge each and every one of those swords...
"Hm?"
At that moment, Heo Sanja's eyes widened slightly.
The divine weapons...?
There wasn't the slightest trace of sharpness in the swords flying at him. They were nothing but rotten lumps of iron, rusted through, chipped and repulsive beyond reason.
"What is this?"
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Heo Sanja raised his sword and knocked the flying blades aside. Swords without even a shred of killing intent were sent bouncing in every direction. Some of them couldn't withstand the force of his casual blows and split clean in two.
"Wh—"
Whoosh!
From among those rotten swords came one with terrifying killing intent.
Heo Sanja gasped and twisted his body away. If that had come at him from the start, he would have dealt with it calmly enough, but with his guard flared by the confusion, even he couldn't avoid being startled when the real divine weapon came at him.
And then—
Wraaaah!
Chung Myung seized the opening without hesitation and came crashing in, sweeping at Heo Sanja's flank.
"Tch!"
Claaang!
He blocked it with his sword in midair, but he couldn't stop his body from being blasted backward.
Heo Sanja was hurled off the cliff, and he clenched his teeth hard enough to crack them.
"You keep using cheap tricks to the very end!"
He flipped in midair and hurled his sword forward. Then he lightened his body and used the force of the sword's flight as a pivot to vault himself back up onto the cliff.
Watching that, Chung Myung clicked his tongue.
That bastard's annoying as hell.
It would have been nice if he'd just gone tumbling down the cliff, but of course it wouldn't end that easily with a man like him.
Meanwhile, standing back on the cliff, Heo Sanja narrowed his eyes and looked at the swords scattered across the ground.
"...This is."
"They're still just swords."
"...."
They were still as miserable-looking as ever: rusted black-red, decayed, and utterly ruined.
Come to think of it, I suppose that's right.
Even divine weapons were still made of iron. Left in a damp underground place like this for two hundred years, it was only natural they'd rust and rot away.
And yet some of them still retained their killing edge. In other words, those swords weren't just called divine weapons—they truly were divine weapons.
Yes, they were all meaningless in the end.
It almost felt as though Yakseon's sneering laughter was drifting into Heo Sanja's ears.
The people who came into the Sword Tomb did so for one reason: to seize divine weapons.
Only a handful of sects—Wudang, Beggars' Sect, Shaolin, and a few others—knew that Talgeom Muheun was Yakseon.
Even that secret had leaked to the world by accident, through one of Yakseon's disciples.
Which meant that when Yakseon built the Sword Tomb, he must have expected the future intruders to come seeking only divine weapons.
Had Yakseon really not known that these swords would rot away?
Of course he had.
If he had truly wanted to pass these swords down to the future, he would have stored them in a far more precious place than this. He wouldn't have stuck them in a damp cave.
"Were you trying to toy with your descendants? You weren't exactly a fine man yourself, were you?"
Heo Sanja's gaze shifted to the wooden box.
The divine weapons no longer mattered. His goal had been that box from the beginning.
And... it seemed Chung Myung's was the same.
Chung Myung, too, wasn't sparing even a glance for the divine weapons strewn across the floor.
"Looks like we're after the same thing."
"If you want those swords, I'll let you take them and leave."
"You're really talking nonsense now."
"Hah. That's rich coming from you."
Or was he the one being greedy?
Chung Myung leveled his sword forward. With every passing second, the one at a disadvantage was clearly Chung Myung. If he couldn't bring Heo Sanja down quickly, the other Wudang elders would make it up here too.
And then we're done for.
One fist couldn't beat ten. That was the law of the world. Even that Heavenly Demon bastard hadn't been able to escape that truth. Chung Myung had no intention whatsoever of personally testing whether that law was right or wrong.
"I'm coming!"
"You're awfully impatient!"
"You've got a lot to say, old man! Immeasurable Life Buddha!"
Chung Myung's sword drifted softly through the air.
"Hm?"
At that instant, Heo Sanja's aura changed. He had sensed that Chung Myung's sword was no ordinary thing.
Red blossoms began to bloom from the tip of Chung Myung's sword. Heo Sanja let out a cry of astonishment before he could stop himself.
"Plum Blossom Sword Art? You really restored the Plum Blossom Sword Art!"
Well, damn. He was pretending not to care, but he was really interested all along.
It seemed he had known Mount Hua had lost the Plum Blossom Sword Art. Of course, what Chung Myung was using now wasn't the Plum Blossom Sword Art but Chilmaegeom, yet to Heo Sanja's eyes, it must have looked the same.
Red petals began to dance through the air.
In a place where they had no business blooming.
Plum blossoms burst into bloom inside a cave where no plum tree should ever grow. Then, as if all at once, those blossoms opened and flew toward Heo Sanja.
Heo Sanja lowered his sword.
Lower guard.
The most stable stance, and the place where Wudang's sword began.
His sword began to move heavily.
Circle.
Heo Sanja's blade soon drew a vast circle in front of him.
The circle was the root, the source—the point where all things began.
In the beginning, there had been only one world, but that world was divided into yin and yang and created all things.
In the end, the beginning of the world was yin and yang, and yin and yang were Taiji.
"Haaaah!"
The circle drawn by Heo Sanja's sword split in two, then began to whirl as black and white energies.
Taiji Wisdom Sword.
Wudang's supreme martial art, the peerless technique that made Wudang Wudang.
At last, the Taiji Wisdom Sword had been realized through Heo Sanja's hands.
Mu Jin had once used the Taiji Wisdom Sword against Chung Myung, but what Mu Jin had shown was nothing more than a crude imitation of the shell. It had not been worthy of being called the Wisdom Sword.
But the Taiji now traced by Heo Sanja's sword tip was undeniably connected to the Dao.
Chung Myung's scattering petals were pulled into the swirling Taiji.
Soft, yet strong.
Two opposing qualities melted together. It gently sucked in the petals and then crushed them with ferocious force.
"To bring plum blossoms into bloom at your age!"
If he could not be persuaded, then he had to be brought down. Killing intent flickered in Heo Sanja's eyes.
"It's too early to be impressed!"
Chung Myung's sword swung once more.
Opposites.
He had felt it before, but the reason Mount Hua could not beat Wudang was not simply because its martial arts were weaker. Wudang's softness was the natural enemy of Mount Hua's sharpness.
Swift and fast swords always revealed their weakness against soft, patient countermeasures.
But so what?
So what if they were opposites?
Fire is put out by water, yes—but a great fire, when doused with water, burns even more fiercely. Every nature could be overcome by greater force.
Come!
The true qi crouched in Chung Myung's dantian answered his will. Pure, untainted energy surged out from his core, coursed through his body, and finally settled at the tip of his sword.
It bloomed.
And bloomed again.
The plum blossoms that had formed a small grove now spread and spread until they covered the whole little hill.
Soon, it looked as though every visible inch of the world had been swallowed by plum blossoms.
It wasn't Chilmaegeom.
Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Sword Art.
The sword form that Jongnam had once tried to steal, but whose true meaning they had never been able to possess.
Plum Blossoms Scattering Everywhere!
They fluttered and fluttered, like plum petals drifting on the spring wind, like snow.
For a brief instant, Heo Sanja stared blankly at the sea of plum blossoms flying toward him.
How... can there be a sword form like this?
All things began with Taiji.
To place Taiji in the sword was, in a sense, to place the world into the sword.
But the sword before him seemed to ask him something else.
Were roots everything?
Was the beginning everything?
No.
The world was what it naturally was.
If Taiji contained the Dao, then the Dao was also contained in the dew gathering on leaves at dawn.
All of that was the Dao. All of it was nature.
Plum petals simply fluttered through the air, yet within them lay the principles of the world.
"Haaah!"
"Wraaaah!"
As the petals and Taiji collided, a massive storm erupted.
It was fortunate that no one else had reached the top of the cliff yet. If anyone had been here, the fragments of plum blossoms and Taiji that were blasted apart would have torn them into a dreadful mess.
"Ghhk!"
Heo Sanja, flung backward, clutched his chest.
He broke through my sword?
His chest was soaked in blood. Not only that, but all over his body, sharp cuts were opening and spraying blood.
What about that bastard?
Heo Sanja jerked his head up. Across from him, Chung Myung lay sprawled on the ground.
"Grrrrrr..."
Chung Myung slowly struggled to his feet. It seemed that bastard wasn't unscathed either.
A draw?
No, maybe this side had even fallen slightly behind.
A sense of awe welled up in his chest.
At this moment, Heo Sanja felt an impossible reverence for that young boy. At the same time, however, his sense of danger had grown sharper too.
"That old bastard's stupidly strong."
Chung Myung laboriously pushed himself upright and spat at the floor. It was more blood than spit.
"This is the end for next."
"As you wish."
The two faced each other and quietly drew in a breath.
But both of them had overlooked something.
This wasn't a dueling ground, and it wasn't a place where the two of them were fighting alone. And they weren't even here to settle a match.
"Senior Brother!"
At the same time, both men turned their heads.
Heo Gong.
At last, Heo Sanja's junior brother, Heo Gong-jin-in, had climbed the cliff and reached this place.
In an instant, Heo Sanja's expression wavered. Realizing what he had been doing, he roared at the top of his lungs.
"Junior Brother! The wooden box! Grab the wooden box right noooooow!"
Heo Gong's head snapped around violently.
His eyes clearly found the wooden box resting on the central rock.
"Yes, sir!"
Without hesitation, Heo Gong hurled himself toward the center. At that very moment, Chung Myung screamed.
"Nooooooooo!"
Chung Myung immediately tried to leap after Heo Gong. But Heo Sanja quickly blocked his path.
"That's far enough, you bastard!"
"No, that's not it, you idiot—!"
Heo Gong's hand closed around the wooden box, and that sight was burned plainly into Chung Myung's eyes.
"Ah..."
...We're screwed.
Damn it, you idiots!