A Man Who Draws His Sword Should Aim for the Neck, at Least! (6)
Faaat!
An invisible flash of sword light tore mercilessly into flesh.
If they blocked with a sword, it sliced through the wrist; if they stepped back, it surged faster than their retreat and pierced the heart.
Death Sword.
A sword meant for nothing but killing, with not even a sliver of consideration for subduing the enemy, severed vital points with perfect precision.
“Keugh…….”
The sword that had pierced the heart was withdrawn even faster than it had thrust in. Dark red blood burst from the hole in the chest like a fountain.
Distrust, shock, and emptiness.
The expression of someone staring at death always looked much the same at the end. Chung Myung swept that gaze aside carelessly and looked at the blood-robed men instead.
Each of them was glaring at him with murderous intent in their eyes.
“Oh?”
If four comrades were cut down in an instant right before your eyes, anyone would panic or be frightened. But these men didn’t seem especially excited, nor especially enraged.
Chung Myung instinctively licked his lips slowly.
The moment he smelled the thick scent of blood and saw those venom-drenched eyes, something familiar swept through his entire body.
“This…….”
The corner of his mouth twisted.
“I feel like I’ve smelled this stink somewhere before.”
Sharp fangs showed as he bared his teeth. Murderous energy filled Chung Myung’s eyes as he tightened his grip on the sword hilt until it seemed it might break.
Thud!
The sound of him kicking off the ground exploded like a blast.
Before long, Chung Myung was flying low and swift, skimming the earth like a swallow.
The blood-robed men frantically thrust their swords at him.
Claaang!
But the force of the strike sent them all flying back uselessly.
Faaat!
There was no time for their minds to even begin understanding what was happening. A sword speed beyond all common sense lunged for the blood-robed men’s throats.
The man instinctively snapped his head aside, and the blade grazed his neck.
Sssshk.
The edge of the sword sliced through skin and cut into the flesh beneath.
Fwoosh!
The sound of blood leaking out spread with eerie clarity.
Counterattack…….
At that instant—
Whooooosh!
With a sound like a sudden gale, Chung Myung’s sword whipped sideways in a single motion and drove straight into the blood-robed man’s neck.
Gur……k…….
Bloody froth bubbled from his mouth.
“Ku……u…….”
With a convulsive tremor, he grabbed at the sword buried in his throat. Blood foam kept spilling through his red-soaked teeth.
Even though he knew death was already upon him, his eyes held not despair, but venom.
“……Die…….”
Slowly, the blood-robed man’s long sword reached toward Chung Myung’s abdomen.
Chung Myung watched that sight with cool eyes, then let the corner of his lips curl upward.
Faaat!
The sword lodged in his throat suddenly exploded with sword energy and shot free, only to sever the man’s wrist outright.
Splurt.
Blood gushed from the severed wrist and splattered across Chung Myung’s face, but he didn’t even blink. Instead, he stabbed into the man’s chest more than ten times.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Kwaddeudeuk!
With those horrifying sounds, he finally pierced the heart.
“…….”
Life vanished from the blood-robed man’s eyes in an instant, and his body collapsed as though trying to bury Chung Myung beneath it.
“You…… have no mercy…….”
Faaat!
Before the last words even ended, the Dark Fragrance Plum Blossom Sword coldly cut his throat away.
Drip, drip, drip.
Blood poured down like rain. Bathed in that red shower, Chung Myung casually kicked the corpse aside, shoving it away as though clearing an obstacle.
Swishhhhh!
After flicking the blood off his blade, he slowly took everyone in with his gaze. A chill murderous aura spread from him.
“You’re sloppy.”
“…….”
The blood-robed men’s eyes began to change.
Their ease had long since vanished. They looked like wolves who had chased a rabbit into a den, only to see a tiger walk out of the darkness.
And the first person to sense that change was not one of Mount Hua’s disciples, nor one of the blood-robed men, but Go Hong.
“W-what are you doing!”
Go Hong bellowed, his face turning red and then pale with rage.
“Kill that bastard! Seize him and kill him now!”
“B-bandit chief!”
Kwaaaaaaaaaang!
Go Hong’s crescent blade crashed down behind the backs of the terrified bandits.
“Aaaagh!”
More than ten bandits were flattened into pulped meat in a single blow.
“…….”
The surrounding bandits looked back and forth between Go Hong and Chung Myung with ashen faces.
“Want to die by my hand?”
When Go Hong growled low, venom flooded back into their eyes.
“Kill him!”
“There’s only one of him! Surround him and kill him!”
The Dae-byeol Bandit Band, drunk on madness, rushed at Chung Myung with their eyes rolled back in rage. Chung Myung bared his teeth, as if he found that amusing.
“Good.”
And then, above the heads of the charging bandits, surging like a flood swollen by a torrential downpour, crimson sword energy rose into the air.
The red blade aura began to bloom like flowers.
Faaat!
The sword passed perilously close to Gwak Hoe’s face.
Slash!
The sword energy carried in that strike carved a long wound from the corner of his mouth to his ear. The searing pain, like hot iron pressed to flesh, twisted Gwak Hoe’s face on instinct.
After wounding him, the blood-robed man took a step back and said,
“Looks like you’ve found a little courage.”
“…….”
Mockery was written plainly on his lips.
“In the end, that’s all you get from people who’ve never gotten blood on their hands. I almost pity the one who has to fight while dragging dead weight like you around.”
Gwak Hoe frowned. Sweat slid down from his forehead and stung his eyes. But he didn’t dare blink. If the man in front of him saw even that tiny opening, he could easily slice open his throat.
But what truly scraped at Gwak Hoe’s insides was not the murderous aura pouring from the man—it was the words coming out of his mouth.
He’s not wrong.
The moment danger approached, the moment he felt his life hanging by a thread, he found himself unconsciously looking for the Mount Hua Five Swords.
And that fact made Gwak Hoe unable to bear it.
I’m not dead weight.
If he kept leaning on others every time a crisis came, he would never catch up to his martial brothers in this lifetime. He was not someone who leaned. He was a proud disciple of Mount Hua who should be pushing at the backs of his senior brothers.
What he had to trust was himself.
Inside him lived the teachings of Mount Hua that he had guarded until now.
So…….
Gwak Hoe’s eyes slowly lowered.
The wounds that had been pierced through him began to throb, but he had no intention of taking a single step back.
“Yeah. I’m still an amateur.”
Gwak Hoe’s blue-tinged eyes glared at the blood-robed man.
“Oh?”
“Then…….”
A dense murderous aura began to spread.
“I’ll break you right here today and shed this amateur’s skin!”
“Ha ha!”
At those words, both amusement and bloodlust rose together in the blood-robed man’s eyes.
“Then come at me, brat!”
Gwak Hoe contorted his face like a beast and shook his sword.
But unlike his expression, the strength in the hand holding the sword loosened at once.
Keep my head cold.
The teachings of Mount Hua, hammered into him until his ears were calloused, remained perfectly intact within his body. He had also learned, to the point of sickening familiarity, how to face someone stronger than himself.
And if he knew what to do but could not do it, if he had learned but could not unfold it, what did that make him but a fool?
Whooooosh!
Gwak Hoe’s sword, bearing all his accumulated experience, shot fiercely toward the blood-robed man.
Claaang!
The moment their swords met, the blood-robed man frowned and took two steps back.
How does this brat have this level of inner power……?
It was a level of strength utterly mismatched with his apparent age. There was clearly something different about him from the other young brats of other sects he had faced until now.
“I am!”
Then Gwak Hoe, having withdrawn his sword, shouted at the top of his lungs.
“A third-generation disciple of Mount Hua, Gwak Hoe!”
It was not a declaration made with any grand intention. It was simply a primal shout to rouse himself as he kept getting pushed down, to reclaim his own sword.
But.
The Mount Hua disciples who heard that shout all tightened their grips on their swords at once.
“I am Baek Sang, a second-generation disciple of Mount Hua!”
Baek Sang also shouted until his throat seemed ready to split, then pointed his sword forward. Voices sprang up everywhere, awakening themselves one after another.
“Come on, you bastards!”
“……These bastards…….”
The Mount Hua disciples regained their composure once more. No trace of fear remained in their eyes, and their firmly planted feet were set solidly against the ground.
“Raise your voices, you damned fools! Are you only going to run your mouths at those who look easy to pick on!”
At Baek Sang’s shout, the Mount Hua disciples each erupted with the momentum that had been pressing down on them and surged forward.
“You little shits!”
Just as the blood-robed man grit his teeth and tried to cut down the Mount Hua disciple before him—
Faaaat!
From somewhere, a sword flash like lightning pierced straight through his shoulder.
“Kh!”
The blood-robed man flinched and hurriedly pulled back.
This swift sword…?
He hadn’t even seen it. He hadn’t even noticed it coming.
“It’s one thing to rush in looking full of confidence,”
When he turned, he saw a man walking toward him with a weight that was anything but light.
“But then you’d better be ready to offer up your neck too.”
“You…….”
Jo Gul lazily brushed back the unruly bangs hanging over his face and licked his lips with a crooked smile.
“I’ll kill yo—”
Faaat!
But before the blood-robed man could finish speaking, Jo Gul’s sword was already flying for his throat again.
Clang!
He blocked it on instinct, but the chill murderous intent in Jo Gul’s eyes made his heart drop and a shiver run down his spine.
“What’s wrong? Scared?”
“…….”
“A man draws a sword, he should cut off a neck at least!”
With a grotesque grin, Jo Gul unleashed a ferocious assault.
“You little amateur!”
Faaat!
The instant Jo Gul charged out, someone leapt over his martial siblings’ heads, twisted his body once in midair, and descended.
Faaaaat!
The sword of the swordsman who dropped into the middle of the blood-robed men spread outward in all directions like an illusion.
“Kuh!”
“Ugh!”
The terrifying edge of the blade, slicing through flesh as it passed, forced the blood-robed men to stagger and groan.
Yu I-seol swung her sword as if sweeping the floor, her expression unchanged.
Swishhhhh!
With a sound like silk being cut in one stroke, the wind pressure kicked up dust. Through the yellow haze, the sword that moved as if it were alive swiftly slashed at the blood-robed men’s ankles.
“You damned bitch!”
One of the men, spitting out vile curses as he charged, suddenly turned his head in alarm at the chilling sensation he felt.
Whooshhhhh!
Spotting the throwing knife that had flown up to his nose, he hastily rolled his body and barely managed to dodge.
Cold sweat trickled down his spine. If he had noticed it even a moment later, his head would have become a skewer ornament.
“I’ll cover you!”
At Dang Soso’s shout, Yu I-seol nodded and reversed her grip on the sword.
That was when the standoff became fixed.
Step. Step.
A man walked out among his martial siblings and took a middle stance. It was as if he were declaring that only by passing through him could anyone attack the others.
“Come.”
His brief words contained not a shred of excess. If anything, that only made the provocation more perfect.
The blood-robed men’s faces twisted hideously.
“I’ll kill them all!”
They roared like starving beasts and charged at Mount Hua like bolts of lightning.
That was then.
Frrrttt!
Red plum blossoms began to bloom before the charging men. The blood-robed men, as if bewitched by the dreamlike sight that seemed to transplant an entire grove of plum blossoms here, slowed their rush.
At Baek Cheon’s signal, his plum blossom sword aura blooming in the air, the Mount Hua disciples drew strength once more and swung their swords. They drove the blood-robed men back without mercy.
Baek Cheon glanced briefly at Yu I-seol, Yoon Jong, Jo Gul, and Dang Soso. Then he shifted his attention to the right. There, as if by prior arrangement, was Chung Myung.
That bastard, as always.
He was in the place he needed to be most at the moment he was needed most. No matter how hard anyone tried to catch up, they never even caught a glimpse of his shadow.
And yet.
“Don’t let that bastard Chung Myung hog all the glory!”
At the very least, they could push at his back.
“Strike!”
The plum blossom swords in the hands of Mount Hua’s disciples unleashed blinding sword energy.