Chapter 222
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 222
Chapter Title: Sword of the Sovereign (2)
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- Heh heh heh, so firm...
Listening to Dang Narin's perverted sleep-talk drifting from the next room, Baek Riyeon changed her clothes.
"Ugh."
The thing that was always hardest to get used to was the compression bandages.
They were priceless treasures woven from the world's rarest Heavenly Silkworm Thread, but wrapping them tightly around her chest was still a trial.
After binding herself so snugly that she could barely breathe.
"Heh, huu."
She took a deep, held-back breath.
Baek Riyeon prepared to step out.
There was no need to fool Dang Narin's eyes. Of course, if she returned too late, separation anxiety might kick in, and she'd wail like "Hooee, huee."
But if she had her smartphone in hand, she could hold out for about an hour.
It wouldn't take that long to get back.
However.
No matter how she thought about it, she doubted she could fool Geum Sihyeon's senses if she followed him.
Even so, the reason she was venturing out into the night was.
"...I have to see it for myself."
Her senior, the Chairman.
What on earth was Geum Sihyeon thinking?
Though her master had ordered her to seize the chance and kill him, that thought had long faded into the background.
At least, from what Baek Riyeon had seen.
Geum Sihyeon wasn't someone who deserved death.
...Nor was he someone who would die for her sake.
That was why.
She wanted to confirm it.
Why he had held a secret meeting with the Blood Cult's minion.
And why, right after that meeting ended, the two of them had moved together.
Could her judgment be wrong?
Was her master right, that clinging solely to the will of the Azure Heaven was the true path?
With these confused emotions churning inside her.
Baek Riyeon climbed out the window, onto the roof.
And raced through the night.
She already knew where to go.
It was regrettable for the Chairman, but during their brief meeting earlier, she had secretly dusted him with Tracking Scent.
His footsteps led outside the city, to the southeast.
She didn't know what she'd find at the end, but Baek Riyeon wanted to see it with her own eyes.
Geum Sihyeon.
The true face of that man.
Of course, Baek Riyeon couldn't catch up to the speed of Geum Sihyeon and Cheon Siwoo, so she arrived at Cheonju Mountain a bit late.
What appeared before her eyes was.
"Thousand Kills Star? And here I thought I'd let you go."
The Blood Cult's minion, Cheon Siwoo, blocking the path up the peak while stacking the Nangong Family warriors—covered head to toe in vomit and even feces—into a pile in the corner.
Sovereign Sword Form.
It was a technique with such overwhelming fame that anyone who heard "Nangong Family" immediately thought of the Sovereign Sword Form, yet in the history of the martial world, it had rarely been unleashed in its true, perfected might.
The reason was simple.
Until mastery was achieved, it wasn't even as powerful as the Soaring Bow Unfettered Sword Method.
Thus, enthusiasts speculated wildly about the true essence of the Sovereign Sword Form.
Some guessed it was a form that dominated space with the emperor's dignity, spreading a net of internal energy like an inescapable web to control the entire area.
Others thought it was the world's most serene sword, one that crushed anything with ultimate heaviness.
There were those who said the sovereign's sword advanced only forward, protecting those who followed, and some believed blending in Nangong's Heavenly Thunder was the real deal.
But what unfolded now from Nangong Heun's hand.
Was a sword so simple it rendered all those guesses meaningless.
"No beginning before the beginning, no end after the end."
"Well said. Isn't that the pinnacle of the sword?"
It touched the essence of solo sword supremacy.
A sovereign ruled above all people.
Thus, the Sovereign Sword must break all swords.
Delusion became obsession, obsession became hope.
Hope became conviction, and finally, conviction touched reality.
Before they knew it.
The two men's bodies seemed frozen in place.
Or so it appeared on the surface.
Fingers twisted ever so slightly.
Muscles twitched faintly.
And their feet ceaselessly shifted across distances less than an inch.
For that one moment of drawing the sword, countless exchanges grazed the air, tracing phantom trajectories and clashing.
And then.
The first clash.
Without deciding who went first, both swung their swords simultaneously.
The two blades collided almost at the same instant, producing a faint resonant hum.
And then.
"Tch."
"Haha."
Naturally, Geum Sihyeon took the loss in the first clash.
Was the Sovereign Sword Form superior to solo sword supremacy?
Not necessarily.
A sword was just a sword, a sword art just a sword art.
It was simply the one wielding it.
The gap was the distance and years, the depth of the path the swordsman had walked.
Nangong Heun, born to the sword's fate and refined over nearly a century.
Versus Geum Sihyeon, born to an unknown fate, who had only befriended the sword for a mere three years.
Their depths could never be equal.
But.
They clashed.
Clashed again.
Deflected, countered, clashed once more.
Suddenly, Nangong Heun felt like a blacksmith.
With each strike of his hammer-like swing against the unrefined ore that was Geum Sihyeon.
The youthful brashness that hadn't yet washed from his body, the incongruity, the childish greenness of a kid swinging a sharp sickle wildly.
It was shaved away, strand by strand.
At an incomprehensible speed, Geum Sihyeon's body began adapting to the sovereign's path.
Soon.
Chaaang—!
For the first time, a sharp resonant ring echoed.
Amid the countless dissonant notes from skirting each other's openings, this one clear sword cry.
"Heh, heh heh..."
Rang out like a bell tolling with arrogant will to steal away his passed years.
Nangong Heun sensed it instinctively.
His opponent, shedding the husk of raw ore and beginning to take perfect form.
Did he need to temper it further with his own hands?
If it were a child of Nangong, he would have welcomed it with joy.
If a child of another righteous faction, he might have overlooked the shadow it cast on Nangong's future for that overwhelming talent.
But.
From the start, Nangong Heun had known.
Those two men who first set foot on Cheonju Mountain's peak.
Both carried the seed of demons—men who might become the Heavenly Demon, or perhaps already were.
Of course, the sword doesn't lie.
This man before him.
His body harbored demonic qi, his attitude and words were utterly frivolous.
But his essence was good.
Even so...
"How is the Sovereign Sword?"
"Well-deserving of its name."
The joy ended here.
As a warrior.
As a swordsman, Nangong Heun set aside his pleasure.
Now.
As a pillar of the righteous martial world.
As head of the Nangong Family and sovereign.
He had to prune the errant sprout.
"Will you kill me?"
Seeming to sense the thick killing intent replacing the joy in Nangong Heun's eyes, a faint shadow of worry crossed the young man's face.
"Don't think the sovereign heartless. Blame only your own excellence."
Even without channeling internal energy, Nangong Heun was a man of robust strength.
And.
Will alone could project into the world without internal energy, twisting providence and imposing oneself.
So Nangong Heun wrapped his heart, the world, around his sword.
"Using Overawing Aura."
"I can't understand you young folks these days."
Not grasping Geum Sihyeon's joke referencing Huibinghwan's meta commentary, Nangong Heun unwittingly lumped all the Central Plains' youths together in disdain.
Right after.
The heart-image he had forged wholly began to descend.
Why was the Sovereign Sword sovereign?
Because the one wielding it was sovereign.
Thus.
He had no need to seal others' internal energy.
No need for cunning tongues to draw unfair promises, nor to stick fingers into others' minds.
He too had pursued all his life the "no beginning before the beginning," the way of the foremost person.
Of course, techniques could do it.
But if overwhelming strength could crush the foe, what meaning did forms have?
Thus, he embodied that majesty purely in his heart.
So his heart was the sovereign.
Baring his chest openly, Nangong Heun gripped his sword and assumed an overhead guard.
Stars swirled along the blade's edge.
Soon, a ferocious aura spread, as if it would pulverize anything daring to block the sovereign.
"D-Dangerous...!"
Even as Nangong Hwi's scream-like cry burst from afar.
Geum Sihyeon calmly fixed his gaze only on the sword's tip.
"I said no internal energy, and you bring out something even greater."
"Didn't you do the same?"
"Haha, true."
Even before the immense pressure that could crumble the entire mountain, Geum Sihyeon dangled his sword loosely and traded jokes.
Had he given up on life?
No.
The flame flickering in Geum Sihyeon's eyes still burned brilliantly.
But now, that gaze reached not here, but far away.
Recalling memories from the Manchurian plains.
After hurling Invincible Meteor Strike with all his might.
The memory of the man who surrounded him, debating how many times to hurl this bastard off the cliff, hesitating not even to voice such brutal words aloud—that memory, the world.
Settled into Geum Sihyeon's hand.
Just before the sovereign dominated the land.
From the grip of a top that even Buddha would shake his head at, the notion of impermanence unfurled.
Thus, what remained was emptiness.
A gash, far from shallow, etched across Geum Sihyeon's chest.
And at the same instant.
"You aimed for it from the start."
With Nangong Heun's sigh.
His right arm lost its master and spun through the air.