Drunk on the Glory of the Past Is a Dead Man (4)
Thunk.
The head of Danhon Hyeolsoo, severed from his body, hit the ground and rolled.
Even amid a battlefield already crowded with screams and the clash of blades, the sound rang out with eerie clarity.
As if enchanted, everyone turned to look at the corpse with no head, and their eyes shook like an earthquake had struck them.
Danhon Hyeolsoo...
This was a battlefield, so it wasn’t strange for someone to die.
But the fact that it wasn’t just anyone—Danhon Hyeolsoo, cut down by the sword of an obscure old swordsman—was enough to leave those who knew how formidable he was utterly stunned.
“Ugh...”
Unless they were fools, they could tell the situation had already passed the point of no return. And these were Sa-pa people, the sort who were more sensitive than anyone to the flow of a battlefield.
There had been two reasons they had managed to hold on this long.
One was that even if they wanted to run, there was nowhere to flee.
And the other was that they had still been clinging to a final hope—that this tide of battle might be overturned all at once by someone’s extraordinary performance.
But the master who should have been leading the battlefield and turning the momentum had lost his head and lay face-down on the ground, already growing cold.
Despair darkened the eyes of the Sa-pa fighters.
Gangseo Chilsal and a few other named figures were still left, but even they were locked in desperate struggle.
The sight of the famed Gangseo Chilsal actually being pushed back by nameless Mount Hua swordsmen poured cold water over the hearts of those who had already grasped the situation.
The place their hopeless gazes naturally turned to was obvious. The reason they had gathered here in the first place. The only one they could still dare to place their last hope in.
But the sight before them mercilessly crushed even that final shred of expectation.
Crash!
Sword and dao slammed into each other, producing a thunderous boom before both were thrown apart.
The clash was even, neither side able to seize the advantage. But anyone with even a little understanding of martial arts could easily guess that, in such a collision, one of them would not be satisfied with the result.
Gal Cheon-lip’s face twisted.
“You bastard!”
He kicked off the ground with savage force and shot forward like an arrow, slashing again.
Kwaaaaaa!
The air itself seemed to split apart, torn open by the piercing shriek of the blade. It was a strike delivered with such terrifying speed and force that it was nothing short of a full-blooded slash.
But the sword that drew a clear arc from below to above soon collided head-on with Gal Cheon-lip’s charging dao.
Kwaaaang!
Another explosive blast erupted, and Gal Cheon-lip’s body lurched backward like reeds battered by a typhoon.
Tap! Tak!
Unable to absorb the force, his feet stumbled back again and again.
Fury reddened Gal Cheon-lip’s eyes.
Of course, Un Geom also retreated by roughly the same distance after blocking his strike. But to Gal Cheon-lip, that was an insult all the same.
“Ugh...”
He bit down on his lip until it bled.
He had swung his dao with both hands, yet he had only managed to draw level with a sword wielded in one hand. Considering that his dao was at least twice as thick and three times as heavy as that sword... it was basically a miserable defeat.
Because this wasn’t a matter of internal energy or swordsmanship. It was, quite simply, a loss in pure physical strength.
What kind of strength does that one-armed freak have...?
He had heard that when someone lost an arm, they were forced to do everything with the one that remained, which often made their grip and arm strength stronger than those who used both hands.
But that was the talk of people who hadn’t studied martial arts, wasn’t it?
Someone with internal energy should be able to live with one hand without suffering the same inconvenience as ordinary people. So where in the world did that absurd, impossible strength come from?
“...If he’d learned the dao instead, he’d have reached the peak.”
At Gal Cheon-lip’s words, Un Geom slowly shook his head.
“It wasn’t innate. It was trained.”
“...That swordsman?”
Un Geom wore a faint smile.
When he had first felt the need to rebuild martial arts from the ground up, there had been only one scene that came to mind.
Back when he first engraved the name Chung Myung into his memory.
That bastard had been torturing his own body, strapping on a huge boulder and training in the most brutal way imaginable.
As if mocking the common belief that a swordsman should be nimble.
At first, he had thought it was merely a means of forcibly dragging along the senior brothers older than himself. But as far as he knew, Chung Myung had never once stopped training his body after that.
Yes. It had been right in front of him.
Someone who had seemed to possess no talent at all, with a frail, tiny body, had now reached a realm he could scarcely dare to imagine. The path was so vividly illuminated before his eyes—how could he not follow it?
And everything he had gained by walking that road now rested in full upon the tip of his sword.
“Why don’t you find out for yourself?”
Murderous intent burst from Gal Cheon-lip’s eyes.
“You sure talk big!”
And in an instant he kicked off the ground, closing the distance to Un Geom. He had confirmed that this one-armed left-handed swordsman was stronger than expected. Under normal circumstances, he might have taken a little more time to probe his opponent.
But now was not the time for such luxury.
Part of it was that the arrogant bastard’s words before the fight had already set his insides ablaze, but the greater reason was that he couldn’t afford to drag this out any longer.
He had seen with his own eyes how that idiot Danhon Hyeolsoo had his head cut off before he could even properly bring out his strength. If he dawdled here too, those dog-like bastards would end up losing the will to fight and surrendering.
And if that happened, Gal Cheon-lip wouldn’t even be given a chance to fight. Maybe those others might get away with it, but Mount Hua would never spare the one who had actually started this.
“Die, youuuuu!”
Paaaaaang!
The dao sliced through the air and came down toward Un Geom, wrapped in blood-red blade aura.
This time even Un Geom did not dare to meet it head-on, instead darting to the side to avoid the strike.
Kwaaaaoooooooom!
The ground beneath the blade exploded apart. It had been nothing more than a downward slash, yet the solid earth was ripped open into a crater large enough to swallow a person whole.
It was power so overwhelming that a few of the onlookers involuntarily sucked in sharp breaths. It also proved that the title of Heartless Ghost Blade had not been given for nothing.
But the eyes of Un Geom, who had just evaded the attack, showed no change at all. He merely fixed Gal Cheon-lip with a cold stare.
“You...”
At that instant, Gal Cheon-lip’s dao let out a chilling shriek as it swept horizontally.
The slash was powerful enough to make anyone wonder whether such force could truly be blocked with something as thin as a sword.
Gal Cheon-lip was certain this time that the damned one-armed man would never dare take this strike head-on.
But in that moment, Un Geom drove his foot into the ground and swung his sword ferociously toward the incoming dao.
Fool!
Was this a mistake caused by the memory of his earlier advantage being too vivid in his mind? To anyone watching, it was reckless.
Crash!
Then a tremendous collision rang out. As expected, the sword was flung aside helplessly. Gal Cheon-lip inwardly cheered and poured more strength into the hand gripping his dao. He meant to split Un Geom cleanly in two.
But then it happened.
The sword that had been repelled came back with even greater force than before and slammed into the dao.
Crash!
As the dao faltered for a split second, another sword strike followed immediately after.
Crash! Kwang! Kwang!
In the blink of an eye, more than ten sword strikes burst forth, completely killing the momentum of Gal Cheon-lip’s dao.
Gal Cheon-lip’s eyes bulged so wide they seemed ready to tear.
W-what?
How fast did a sword have to be to do that?
No, this wasn’t something that could be described as mere speed. It was a feat only possible if, at the moment the sword and dao collided, one perfectly dispersed the shock that spread through the body and then used that force in reverse to launch the sword again.
Paaaaaat!
The moment Gal Cheon-lip’s dao was knocked away, Un Geom’s sword transformed into a beam of light, releasing more than ten streaks of red sword qi.
The sword qi shot toward his whole body, and Gal Cheon-lip’s thoughts were cut off in an instant. This was no time to be stunned by his opponent’s skill. Those sword qi were aiming for nothing less than his life!
He swallowed a sharp breath, twisted his body quickly, and swung his dao. Having swept away the incoming sword qi all at once, he raised his blade again with a feeling close to spitting blood.
This can’t be.
This should not be happening.
I am Gal Cheon-lip!
He was the one who should lead all of this, march out to Qinghai, and become one of Sa-pa’s great lords.
Yes. Of course that was how it should have been. What he lacked was recognition, not skill. Now that he had belatedly realized that fact, he should naturally be able to seize it.
Fame. Honor. Glory. Power.
All of it!
Ultimately, the one who should have risen to the same position as Jang Il-so is me, Gal Cheon-lip. I’m not the one who should be held back here by some nameless swordsman!
Paaaaaaat!
And in that moment, the sword qi Un Geom had unleashed pierced through the fierce curtain of blade aura and slashed a long line across Gal Cheon-lip’s side.
Throb!
The instant a sharp pain tore through his flank, blood-red ferocity surged from Gal Cheon-lip’s eyes.
“You—you dog bastard!”
With his face twisting like a demon’s, Gal Cheon-lip let out a beastlike roar.
“Aaaaargh!”
The blue blade aura he spewed forth swept out like a storm.
It seemed as though he had thrown away all reason and was simply swinging wildly. But it was an attack that proved that even if a strike lacked refinement, speed and force alone could turn irregular blade aura into a devastating finishing move.
The storm of dao qi surging outward in all directions around Gal Cheon-lip swallowed Un Geom for a moment.
Kakang! Kaang!
Un Geom hastily retreated and deflected the blade aura rushing in. The intense malice and killing intent embedded in the dao qi chased after him like gaping hellish jaws.
“Dieeeeee!”
The blade aura came even more fiercely this time, as if determined to shred Un Geom apart once and for all.
“Kkh!”
For the first time, a groan slipped from Un Geom’s lips. Perhaps hearing that sound, the storm of blade aura intensified further, stretching out as though it were devouring space itself.
But Un Geom was not the only one meeting the suddenly erupted dao qi.
“Huh?”
One of the Sa-pa fighters, who had been locked in brutal combat against a Mount Hua disciple who pressed forward relentlessly without pause, felt a chilling sensation rise behind him and, forgetting the fight for a moment, turned around.
And then—
“Aaaaargh!”
The dao qi Gal Cheon-lip had unleashed surged from behind and swept across a great many Sa-pa fighters.
“Aaaargh!”
“You damn—aaaaagh!”
Those cut down by the blade aura that had flown in from behind screamed in agony.
There was no need to explain what became of those caught in the storm of blade qi, which raged without leaving even a single step’s worth of room to escape. Blood scattered in red sprays along the direction of the swinging dao.
“Huh!”
“That lunatic!”
The Mount Hua disciples, witnessing the fighters they were facing get swept up in the blade aura from behind and turned into chopped meat, recoiled in shock and stepped back.
The Sa-pa fighters, for their part, were busy throwing themselves aside just to avoid being cut down.
Whoooooooosh!
With a sound that made the skin crawl, the spinning dao gradually came to a stop. And when the scene finally emerged, the word “horrific” was hardly enough to describe it.
The ground was soaked through with blood. Scraps of cloth and chunks of flesh were scattered here and there, so mangled it was impossible even to guess whose they were.
“Huff. Huff... Huff!”
Gal Cheon-lip stood with his dao planted in the ground, gasping for breath. He had forcibly dragged up a massive surge of internal energy in an instant, and his face had gone as pale as paper.
Everyone stared at him, speechless.
Just then, as Gal Cheon-lip clenched his teeth and tried to say something, Un Geom spoke.
“Beasts...”
Un Geom, who had witnessed the slaughter wrought by Gal Cheon-lip’s dao, let blue killing intent spill from his eyes.
“...don’t bite at the backs of their own pack.”
“...”
“I’ll grant you a death worthy of you.”
Un Geom stomped down hard on the pool of blood at his feet and stepped forward.