It Is Not Reliance, But Walking Together (4)
As Chung Myung kicked off a branch and sprang upward, the leaves rustled violently in his wake.
A murderous intent so cold it seemed to numb the skin spread across Mount Hua, now swallowed by darkness. Chung Myung felt that prickling, skin-crawling presence and only bared his teeth in a grin.
Fwoosh!
At that very moment, two swords suddenly shot up from below, flying straight for Chung Myung’s stomach and throat.
Thin, needlelike narrow swords.
They were twisted blades, forged with one purpose only: not to cut, but to stab and kill.
The tips of the narrow swords, bathed in moonlight, gleamed with an ominous black sheen. They were laced with a deadly poison.
Two poisoned swords flashing out of the darkness.
Yet there was not the slightest tremor in the tip of Chung Myung’s sword.
Clang!
He smashed the incoming blades aside, and in an instant his sword split into more than ten shimmering afterimages as he thrust downward.
Thunk!
His fingertips met a clear, unmistakable resistance.
He had definitely driven his blade through flesh and cut through bone.
And yet, even after taking such a wound, not a single groan escaped from below. That alone was proof of just how rigorously trained these men were.
Tap!
Kicking off the branch again and launching himself higher, Chung Myung dropped like a raptor.
The moment his feet touched the ground, two Black Claw Unit members who had been lying in ambush in the trees charged him like wolves pouncing on prey.
Whoosh!
Long, extended blades.
Their sword stance had abandoned all defense, existing only for offense.
The kind of sword that carried the vicious resolve of men who would gladly die if they could leave even a single wound behind.
With just one cut, they could poison their opponent. They knew all too well how to deal with someone stronger than themselves.
Anyone without experience fighting such men would be unable to unleash even half their true skill and would die to those vicious tricks.
But.
Fwoooosh!
Chung Myung’s sword sliced through the air like a streak of light.
Before the enemy’s blade could even reach him, his sword qi pierced them first.
Crack-crack-crack!
The narrow sword struck by the sword qi split cleanly down the middle. Even so, Chung Myung’s sword qi did not lose momentum; it went on to cleave the man’s body in two.
The body split cleanly apart, the two halves flung left and right as blood poured down like rain.
Even after seeing his comrade sliced in half, the man attacking beside him did not slow in the slightest.
Chung Myung fixed his cold gaze on the sword shooting straight for his throat, then stepped sideways and turned his body in a sharp spin.
Swish.
His robe was lightly torn, but the blade never touched his flesh.
And then.
Slash.
Chung Myung’s casually swung sword took the Black Claw Unit member’s head clean off.
Thud.
With half his neck severed, the man crashed to the ground and convulsed once in a violent spasm. Then, after a brief moment, his body began to grow cold.
Ssssshhh.
When the poisoned sword he had been holding fell to the ground, the grass around it withered almost instantly.
Just how vile a poison had to be for something like that to happen?
Chung Myung flicked the blood from his sword and, breathing in the stench of iron, looked quietly up at the sky.
This feels filthy.
The smell of blood seeping into his nose, the murderous intent slicing at his flesh, the chill radiating from the corpses as they rapidly lost their warmth.
It all pressed against every nerve in his body, an uncanny sense of déjà vu as though he had somehow fallen back into some forgotten fragment of his past life.
Rumble.
The clouds rolled in thicker and thicker, until at last thunder cracked and lightning split the sky.
Before long, rain was pouring down as though a hole had been torn open in heaven.
Standing there and letting the rain soak through him completely, Chung Myung lowered his gaze in silence.
The situation favored them.
Those hiding in the darkness, waiting for an opening, would be able to mask their presence even more perfectly in the thunder and rain.
This was the battlefield they wanted most.
Jumping into that battlefield was the height of foolishness.
And yet Chung Myung pursued them without the slightest hesitation as they tried to pull away.
If he threw himself directly into their hunting grounds, then no one could possibly ignore him and target the Mount Hua disciples instead.
Rain ran down his wet hair.
As the cold rain chilled his body in an instant, he spoke quietly.
"If you won’t come to me, then I’ll come to you."
His foot slammed into the ground.
Shot out like a beam of light, Chung Myung made red plum blossoms bloom in the darkness. They were vivid beyond measure, beautiful beyond measure, and precisely because of that, they seemed all the more out of place in this blood-soaked battlefield.
The plum blossoms settled onto the bodies of those hidden in the dark.
Slash.
The blossoms, as delicate as if they had only just bloomed, were nothing of the sort; far from soft, they cut sharply through everything they touched.
"...Ugh."
With a faint scream that he failed to suppress, another body pitched forward and crashed to the ground.
And then, at that very moment.
Whoooooooooosh!
Cutting through the rain that had been pouring down, more than ten black shadows shot toward Chung Myung.
Eyes colder than the falling rain gleamed from within the darkness.
Thud!
Chung Myung stomped down hard, and his sword moved through the air as nimbly as a venomous serpent. From that wicked blade’s tip, beautiful and brilliant plum blossoms were born once more, swallowing the charging attackers whole.
There was not a trace of hesitation in that sword.
Clangclangclangclang!
The poisoned swords hurled with all their might could not pierce the forest of plum blossoms blooming like clouds. The blades that struck the blossoms rebounded in every direction.
Then.
Fwoosh.
A pitch-black poisoned blade shot up from beneath Chung Myung’s feet. He reflexively leapt into the air.
He avoided being skewered by the poisoned blade, but he could no longer maintain his sword stance. The moment the plum blossom formation scattered, the Black Claw Unit members surged toward him at twice the speed they had shown before.
Grinding his teeth, Chung Myung tightened his grip on his sword.
Then, twisting through the air, he began hurling his blade in every direction.
The Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Sword Art’s Falling Plum Blossoms in Rivulets painted countless plum blossoms into the air. Like petals dropping from a plum tree battered by a torrential downpour, countless blossoms rained down with the storm.
"Hup!"
Those charging at the suddenly blooming blossoms went wide-eyed.
But the momentum had already carried them too far. It was too late to retreat.
The Black Claw Unit members hurled themselves into that rain of plum blossoms without caring for their own safety.
Slash! Slash!
Sword qi seeped into their bodies from all directions. But even as their flesh split and their bones broke, they did not lose their ferocity, stabbing their swords only toward Chung Myung.
A simple technique.
No dazzling feints, no cunning to deceive an enemy, just straight-line attacks that were fast and nothing else.
And yet, when a dozen such swords gathered together, they became the deadliest killing blades in the world.
Attacks that had long since abandoned death itself poured toward Chung Myung’s body. Some of the swords had lost their force and could do no more than jab, but among them were a few that drove in with brutal, razor-sharp intent.
Tap!
Chung Myung landed on the ground and bared his teeth at the sight.
Then he kicked off the earth and hurled himself between the blades striking down at him.
Bang!
A thin, sharp sword collided with Chung Myung’s plum blossom sword and shattered into pieces. The fragments flew outward at horrifying speed, mercilessly ripping into the body of the Black Claw Unit member charging in.
Fwoosh!
Seizing the moment when his opponents faltered for just a fraction, Chung Myung’s sword took the head of the Black Claw Unit member charging at the front. The instant the severed head soared into the air, Chung Myung stamped down hard and sent his sword sweeping in all directions.
Plum blossoms blossomed.
Blood sprayed.
In an instant, the forest drenched by torrential rain was stained red with blood and red with plum blossoms.
Severed limbs flew through the air, and split bodies crashed to the ground with a heavy thud, unable even to scream.
But Chung Myung was not entirely unscathed either.
Slash.
Just then, a poisoned sword came in and drew a thin line across his shoulder.
"Got, got..."
Fwoosh!
But the head of the man who had stabbed at Chung Myung’s shoulder was soon sailing through the air like a kicked ball.
With a brutal swing, Chung Myung severed the enemy’s neck and flipped his sword to a reverse grip. Then he drove the blade into his own shoulder where the poisoned sword had grazed him.
Slash.
The sword sank in with a chilling sound as it cut through flesh.
Slash. Slash.
The sound of the blade carving through meat cut through the rain and rang out grotesquely. There was not the slightest hesitation in the hand that sliced open his own shoulder.
Without even blinking once, he cut away a handful of flesh, then stopped the bleeding and gripped his sword again.
Crash!
As if waiting for that exact moment, a thunderous explosion ripped through the ground, turning the earth upside down, and five more Black Claw Unit members shot up from below, thrusting their swords at Chung Myung.
Fwoosh!
Chung Myung chopped off the necks of the men coming at him in one sweep, and before the blood on his sword could even be shaken free, he pressed the blade to his own side again.
Slash.
With one controlled motion, a chunk of flesh was cut from his ribs and fell to the ground.
This time too, he finished staunching the blood with a calm expression, then turned his head and stared in one direction.
His gaze pierced through the dark forest and locked precisely onto Heoksi, watching from far away.
"Heh..."
A laugh, more like the growl of a beast, slipped from Chung Myung’s mouth.
"..."
Heoksi stared silently back at him with serpent-like eyes.
How strange.
It felt as though his body were turning ice-cold.
I’ve never seen a bastard like that before.
The reason Heoksi was unsettled in a way he had never been before was simple: that boy looked far too familiar with this kind of fight.
A child who seemed as if he had never once taken a life had no hesitation about severing throats and ending lives. Even after killing more than ten men in a single stroke, he showed not the slightest disturbance.
And then there was the audacity to cut away the poisoned flesh without a shred of hesitation.
Heoksi had fought countless enemies until now, but he had never faced anyone like this.
In an instant, twenty men had lost their lives.
While nearly half the Black Claw Unit’s total force had been killed, all they had managed was to leave two minor wounds on the bastard’s body.
Normally, that would have been enough. They were only small cuts, after all, so the enemy would have let his guard down, and the poison spread from them would have driven him into agony and death.
But that bastard looked as though he had not the slightest complacency or hesitation in him.
Crk-crk-crk.
Heoksi’s hand began to move, accompanied by a strange grinding sound.
The enemy was certainly strong.
But...
There’s nothing quite as exciting as the screams of the strong.
Killing the weak was as easy and trivial as crushing an insect. It hardly stirred anything at all.
But the blood of the strong was special.
Crack.
Heoksi bit down lightly on his own tongue and smiled low to himself, truly pleased as the taste of blood filled his mouth.
The black bandages wrapped around him parted just enough to reveal eyes that shone with a hideous light.
Chung Myung was walking toward him.
Even with the rain pouring so heavily, the blood staining the shoulders and side of his black uniform was terrifyingly vivid.
And yet—
The sight of him approaching with blood on his body and his sword hanging low stirred a feeling Heoksi had never once known before.
Fear. Yes, this was fear.
I’m feeling fear...
Clang-clang-clang.
Long claw-like blades shot from within Heoksi’s sleeves and struck against one another, producing an unpleasant metallic sound.
He has to die.
If that bastard wasn’t killed here, then one day Maninbang would surely collapse under his hand. Given his age and the rate at which he was growing, there might come a day when even the leader of Maninbang himself would be unable to handle him.
So he had to be killed here, no matter what.
"...Seventh Form."
The voice that dripped from his throat sent a faint tremor through the forest.
Seventh Form.
An order to disregard one’s own life and, by any means necessary, kill the opponent.
Since the Black Claw Unit had been created, this was the first time such a command had ever been given.
Step.
Whether he knew it or not, Chung Myung dragged his sword across the ground and advanced toward Heoksi with indifferent eyes.
"Come on, then," he said.
From his calm-looking mouth came a voice colder than the rain.
"How do you want me to kill you?"
Watching him with glittering eyes, Heoksi spoke to the Black Claw Unit.
"Kill him."
At that rasping signal, the forest shook as dozens of black shadows surged toward Chung Myung.
Chung Myung grinned, baring teeth stained with blood.
"That works too."
It was lucky that it was raining.
This filthy blood would be washed away by the rain.
A somewhat plaintive, somewhat lonely plum blossom bloomed at the tip of Chung Myung’s sword.