Recovery Is Not Enough (5)
“……That little bitch?”
Won Gang’s face darkened with rage.
The situation might not have been easy, but he was still a bandit chief of the Green Forest’s seventy-two bands. Even if he wasn’t as famous as that Mad Ox Blade, Go Hong, the name Merciless Yama—Won Gang of Mount O-dae—was infamous enough to make even crying children stop on the spot in the region he ruled.
And now this brat was standing in his way?
“I don’t have time for the likes of you. Move.”
“No.”
“……What?”
Yu I-seol shook her head slightly.
“The elder doesn’t have time to deal with trash like you.”
Her low, utterly flat voice made Won Gang’s face flush bright red in an instant.
“Y-you insolent—!”
No more words were needed. Even as he stood there, the battle line was already collapsing at a terrifying pace. Holding it together through sheer numbers had always had its limits.
Won Gang immediately roared and charged at Yu I-seol.
Kwaaaaaaa!
As though to prove he hadn’t seized the bandit chief’s seat by rolling dice, a tremendous amount of aura began pouring into his blade.
The jagged edge of his dao resembled the teeth of a saw, and once that savage aura joined it, merely looking at it was enough to make the hair on your neck stand on end.
And yet Yu I-seol’s eyes, fixed on the very front of that storm, did not waver in the slightest.
Fwoosh!
His dao tore through the place she had just been standing. The wind pressure alone flipped the ground over, sending dust billowing into the air.
But no matter how powerful an attack was, it meant nothing if it failed to hit its target. Yu I-seol evaded the strike perfectly simply by taking two steps back.
“Hup!”
Of course, Won Gang had never expected to finish this in a single blow. If he had been stupid enough to let his guard down that easily, he never would have risen to the position of Jeok-ung Band leader.
Kwaaaaaaa!
A storm of savage dao energy howled toward Yu I-seol, as though it meant to shred her entire body to pieces. But she only stared at the blade flying at her with steady, unshaken eyes.
Anyone who saw this should have been frightened stiff. Yet there was not the slightest tremor in her heart.
She had experienced too much to lose her composure over something of this level.
Thump.
Yu I-seol kicked off the ground and shot straight into the storm of dao energy, the swirling dust clouding the air around her.
And then—
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Three consecutive sword strikes carved a gap through the wildly churning dao storm.
Slip.
Like a mirage or an illusion, Yu I-seol slid into that gap, thrusting her sword straight toward Won Gang’s neck.
Ghk!
Won Gang was so startled his eyes nearly popped out of his head as he twisted his body aside in panic.
Thud!
He was so shocked he couldn’t even land properly, and his butt briefly touched the ground before bouncing up again.
“…….”
Cold sweat ran down his forehead in streams.
She broke through that?
This wasn’t even a matter of whether it was possible.
It wasn’t as though he had never been defeated before, nor was it as if his dao had never been neutralized. It had happened several times.
But none of the men who had beaten him had ever thrown themselves headfirst into the raging storm of his dao energy. Any sane person would never have done such a thing.
And yet this young swordswoman, who looked as though she hadn’t even lived half his life, had done exactly that.
Does she not know fear?
Then again, how could he know?
The person he was facing now was someone who had split the demonic energy radiating from the Bishop of the Demonic Sect head-on, and who had clung to the Bishop’s limbs even while her body was half dead.
Yu I-seol leveled her sword again at the sweating bandit chief. Her expression was as blank as ever as she thought,
Different.
He was lacking in every respect.
The Demonic Sect’s members might have been weaker in skill, but they possessed a ferocity that made them willing to sacrifice their own lives if it meant leaving even one more wound on their opponent before dying.
And the Bishop of that sect had been the sort of being who could make even Yu I-seol’s soul tremble with fear. He had truly been a lord of evil.
For someone who had faced such people, Won Gang’s dao could never possibly inspire fear.
People grow through experience.
Yu I-seol understood that truth deeply at this very moment. If she had never faced the Bishop, then even with the same level of skill, she would not have been able to remain as calm as she was now.
See more, endure more.
Those experiences would surely make her sword all the firmer.
“……So that’s it. I wondered how you were this strong, but it seems every single brat from Mount Hua has lost their damn sense of fear.”
Won Gang twisted his mouth into a sneer. Yu I-seol merely muttered in a low voice,
“Too noisy.”
“……You bitch!”
Won Gang roared, but it was Yu I-seol who moved first. Her body surged forward, leaving behind a threadlike afterimage as she drove straight at the front of his stance.
“Hraaaah!”
His dao swung down with enough force to split her waist cleanly in two.
But—
Clang.
Yu I-seol raised her sword diagonally beside her waist and met the incoming strike at the exact moment it arrived, guiding it downward. Then she spun lightly and vaulted over the dao as if riding on it.
W-what?
It was a technique so skillful it was almost supernatural. The instant the shocked Won Gang’s eyes flew wide open, her sword flickered like a hallucination and split into dozens of sword shadows. In an instant, they covered his entire body.
For a man wielding a heavy dao, it was practically impossible to block all those sword shadows blooming right before his eyes at once.
In the end, he had no choice but to raise his blade to defend his center as he threw himself backward.
Slash! Slash! Slash!
He managed to defend the vital points, but the thick muscles of his forearms and the tree-trunk thighs beneath them were cut open in long gashes, spraying blood everywhere.
“Gghhh!”
A groan escaped him despite himself.
The sound of sword and dao colliding scraped through his ears like nails on a coffin lid.
How……
Her sword’s sharpness? Her speed, so great it seemed impossible to even see?
Those were only secondary issues.
What truly shocked him was that her sword came for his vital points without the slightest hesitation.
A sword that existed solely to kill, showing no intention whatsoever of merely subduing an opponent.
Of course, there was no law that said an orthodox warrior couldn’t wield a killing sword. But the fact that this girl, still barely old enough to have lost her baby fat, could send out such a sword without blinking made a chill run down Won Gang’s spine.
……The world has Mount Hua all wrong!
If anyone had known monsters like this were growing up inside Mount Hua, they would have taken action long ago, by any means necessary.
“Kraaaaaaah!”
Having pulled back to create distance, Won Gang bared bloodshot eyes and raised his dao high.
He intended to keep her from closing in and settle this with brute force. It was a terrible mistake. Anyone facing a Mount Hua swordsman should never give them distance.
Frrrrt.
Yu I-seol’s sword tip trembled gently, as if it had been waiting for exactly this. Then, scarlet plum blossoms began blooming in layers.
Won Gang gaped like a man whose soul had been sucked out.
The plum blossoms drifted through the air as if they were alive. More and more petals swelled in the gaps, seeming at first to swallow Yu I-seol whole before filling Won Gang’s entire field of vision.
An illusion. Yes, it was an illusion.
But what was an illusion indistinguishable from reality, if not reality itself?
Without realizing it, Won Gang took a step back and clutched his dao with all the hatred in his heart.
“Aaaaaaaagh!”
Then he shrieked and swung wildly.
The fierce wind pressure drove the incoming plum blossoms back with all its might. But no matter how much he pushed them away, no matter how brutally he ripped through them, the eerily beautiful flowers kept blooming.
Inside that forest of plum blossoms, he swung his dao like a madman, against petals that kept coming without end no matter how many he destroyed.
No, this can’t be happening!
He was a bandit chief of the Green Forest. A man who should have stood atop the Green Forest as its king.
There was no way he would fall to some little female swordsman from Mount Hua, not some mere nameless orthodox expert. Such absurdity must never be allowed to happen!
“Dieeeeeee!”
As he lashed out in panic, his dao lost its sharpness for a split second, dragged down by his impatience.
And then—
Faaah!
Yu I-seol’s keen senses never missed that instant.
Rising from within the fluttering plum blossoms like a hawk sighting its prey, her sword shot toward Won Gang’s neck at terrifying speed.
“Kuh!”
Even with his stance in disarray, Won Gang lifted his dao to block it. Or rather, he tried to.
Whirl.
But Yu I-seol’s sword, which had seemed to fly like a ray of light, lightly rode over his dao and plunged into his neck at a speed even greater than before.
Slash!
“…….”
Won Gang’s eyes flew wide open. His face was frozen in utter disbelief.
But no matter how wide he opened his eyes, he could no longer find even a trace of Yu I-seol. She had already cut his throat and passed by the dying body in a single breath.
He did not have enough life left to turn his head and check her retreating back.
That sword speed…… changed……
Puuuuut!
The half-severed throat burst open, and a fountain of blood sprayed into the air.
His vision blurred. Strength left his body all at once.
Sword ghost……
That was Won Gang’s final thought, as he understood at last what had happened to him.
Thud.
The giant body fell. Blood from his throat seeped into the wild grass scattered carelessly across the ground.
“Ch-cheif!”
“Chiefhhhhhh!”
The bandits who witnessed Won Gang’s death screamed in anguish. But the screams were not grief for their leader’s passing; they were the cries of men who had just lost their last pillar of support, and were now drowning in terror.
Fwoosh.
Yu I-seol casually flicked the blood from her sword and glared coldly at the bandits.
“…….”
Silence spread through the battlefield. The faces of the bandits staring at Yu I-seol were drained white with fear.
Won Gang, the Merciless Yama who had once been as good as a king in Mount O-dae, had just lost his life at the hands of that swordswoman without even managing to put up a proper struggle.
That crushing gap was enough to break the last shred of their will.
“You start with the head.”
Having carried out Chung Myung’s doctrine to perfection, Yu I-seol turned her gaze toward Baek Cheon.
Baek Cheon grinned and nodded.
“The enemy chief has been brought down!”
Then he pointed his sword at the bandits, whose faces had gone completely white.
“Crush those who refuse to surrender and make them pay the price!”
“Yes, sir!”
The disciples of Mount Hua, whose morale had already soared sky-high, all shouted as they launched their attack with renewed ferocity.
“Hiiiik!”
“You damn bastards! I’ll become a vengeful ghost and— Ugh…….”
Even the few who still had the will and strength to resist were cut down helplessly, and terror spread like wildfire.
“I-I surrender! I surrender! Please, spare us!”
“Throw away your weapons, you lunatics! Hurry up and throw them away!”
The battle had lasted less than half an hour, yet the number of fallen bandits had already easily exceeded a hundred. If they kept fighting like this, the outcome was obvious.
Beaten in spirit and having lost their leader, they were left with only two choices: death or surrender. Even those too stupid to calculate the odds knew exactly how precious their own lives were.
In unison, the bandits hurled away their weapons and prostrated themselves on the ground.
It was Mount Hua’s victory.
It was a different sort of accomplishment from defeating the martial forces of Maninbang or the Yacha Hall of the Dae-byeol Bandit Band.
This was the first time they had utterly crushed an entire, fully formed force under the name of Mount Hua.
The disciples of Mount Hua flushed red with excitement.
Pride in their victory and the results of battle burned warmly in their chests.
“Elder.”
“Mm!”
Hyun Sang, who had been opening and closing his fists in an effort to calm his pounding heart, raised his voice.
“This battle is Mount Hua’s victory! Destroy their martial power and bind them!”
“Yes!”
It was a clean victory without a single shred of room for argument—a crushing triumph.