A Fleeting Life Before My Eyes
There were plenty of good things about palm techniques, but their greatest virtue was speed.
And not just palm techniques. Fist techniques, finger techniques, leg techniques—all of them shared the same advantage.
You saved even the precious split second it took to draw a weapon.
Besides, when you wore a sword so openly at your side like I did, nobody ever thought a palm strike was coming.
So the man whose eyes met mine never even managed to dodge my hand. He threw up his arm to shield himself instead.
BOOM!
My palm slammed into him with a sound like a leather drum being struck.
Even though I’d hit him in a hurry, the force was excellent.
Because my attack was the Ice Soul Divine Palm—physical edition. And he had no idea what that meant.
It was easy to tell how effective it had been. He was wearing a mask, but even so, the shock in his eyes was obvious.
More than that, his arm had gone strangely limp, which meant he’d definitely taken damage.
Maybe not broken, but at the very least, I’d cracked something.
Which was why I immediately drew my Hanjunggeom and swung. I couldn’t afford to waste the opening.
CRACK!
Jeokwol was so startled by the sword Harin had swung at him that, for the first time in years, his spine went cold.
The instant sword met sword, he felt that ominous chill. That crawling dread.
Because he’d hastily braced the blade with his left hand, only the sword itself broke.
If he hadn’t, his body would have split apart along with the shattered steel.
The previous strike had definitely been like that. Should he call it an attack that had somehow stepped outside the order of things?
In any case, the only certain thing was that his sword had snapped in two.
And the arm that had taken that earlier palm strike seemed broken as well.
The problem was that the white-haired girl’s next attack was already coming.
Having exchanged a blow with her once, Jeokwol knew for certain.
This attack could not be blocked. It had to be avoided at all costs.
So he twisted his whole body and barely managed to dodge Harin’s second strike.
He’d avoided it, thankfully, without making a fool of himself on the level of naeryeotagon, but no one could honestly deny that the sight was absurd.
The bigger problem was that he couldn’t keep stalling like this.
Sure, he’d made a bit of a racket, but that still wouldn’t be enough to stop Jeuksun. Not by a long shot.
He’d only bought himself a moment—just a moment.
Which meant he had to get this girl out of here as fast as possible.
For reasons he couldn’t understand, pressure point strikes weren’t taking, and it was making everything a misery.
Still, Jeokwol was a Hua Realm expert.
He’d weathered every kind of life-and-death situation in the black-path righteous path alike.
Even while fleeing in that wretchedly undignified way, he precisely kicked at Harin’s hand.
What if her sword broke? So what?
He could just take it from her. That was how he’d survived until now, wasn’t it?
When her hand was kicked aside, Harin lost her grip on the Hanjunggeom.
Then Jeokwol reached for the sword with a smooth, practiced motion.
First, he’d smash her head with the flat of the blade. That should knock her out.
With that thought, he seized the sword.
And once again, he felt that something was terribly wrong.
His body lurched. His center of gravity collapsed.
Jeokwol lost his grip, and the Hanjunggeom hit the ground with a heavy thud.
To be fair, this wasn’t Jeokwol’s fault.
What kind of insane bastard would ever expect a twenty-kilogram sword?
So this was an unavoidable misfortune. In other words, Jeokwol had done nothing wrong.
In any case, having his footing thrown off in a situation like this was extremely dangerous.
Besides, Harin didn’t actually need a sword.
The Ice Soul Divine Palm of the Ice Soul Divine Art was, in terms of close combat, easily among the finest techniques in the martial world.
Jeokwol, who had risen to the Hua Realm and never once faced a true threat to his life, felt the world slowing down around him in this instant.
And just as a flood of old memories began to rise within him, he forced himself back to his senses.
Damn it! He absolutely could not be seeing his life flash before his eyes right now! Damn it all!
If that Ice Soul Divine Palm were merely a simple internal force strike, then it wouldn’t really be a problem.
The protective qi of a Hua Realm expert was no joke.
Attacks from those of lower cultivation could be taken head-on and still feel no worse than a light tickle.
But he knew from blocking it with his arm earlier. If that thing landed, his organs would burst. His ribs would shatter.
That could not happen. The girl herself wasn’t the problem.
The problem was this situation—one where it would not have been strange for Jeuksun’s sword to come flying at him at any moment.
So Jeokwol made a bold decision.
Now was the time to run. Not fight.
With a sound like thud!, Harin’s palm struck Jeokwol’s right arm.
More precisely, Jeokwol had blocked her palm with his right arm. At a perfect angle.
Hearing the crack of his right arm breaking, Jeokwol rolled across the ground several times.
But that had been his intention, so he immediately pushed himself up and kicked off the ground, fleeing the spot.
Ah!
Harin let out a short cry as she watched him go.
She hadn’t expected him to make such a clean escape. Her face was full of pure disbelief.
But Harin didn’t just stand there and watch.
She quickly snatched up the Hanjunggeom, then hauled it far back over her shoulder.
W-what the hell?!
Jeokwol, who had been glancing back at Harin while running for his life, nearly had his eyeballs pop out when he saw that posture.
He didn’t need long to understand what it meant.
No martial artist who truly cherished their weapon would ever do that.
Whoosh! He heard the sound, followed by a humming roar as the world seemed to split apart.
The Hanjunggeom Harin threw spun like a wheel as it streaked toward him.
Damn it! How many times was he supposed to see his life flash before his eyes today?!
Thinking that, Jeokwol desperately twisted aside.
And then, with a thunderous KRAAAANG!, the wall behind him exploded as if it had been hit by a cannonball.
Jeokwol felt his blood turn cold at the sight and fled even faster.
Then another sword came screaming toward him with a swish!
Jeuksun emerged from the dust and smoke, her clothes burned to tatters, half-draped over her body like something snatched from a corpse. She reached out like a ghost.
Jeuksun’s telekinetic sword control was different from Harin’s.
It wasn’t a straight-line attack. Once you were within Jeuksun’s sight, it would chase you until it sank into your body.
So Jeokwol felt his life flash before his eyes once more, poured every ounce of strength into his legs, and kicked off the ground again.
The blade grazed his thigh, nearly sending him sprawling, but thankfully he escaped Jeuksun’s line of sight and fled with a look of sheer relief.
Seeing the masked intruder running from Jeuksun’s sword, I first hurried to check on Yeo I-ryeong.
I was in danger too, sure, but I was still on guard duty. Yeo I-ryeong’s safety came first.
Fortunately, she was fine. I’d shielded her, so she hadn’t been hit by the fireworks of destruction.
And the men who had rushed us had already been subdued by Baek Jin-ah and Dang Yeong-young, all of them lying on the ground.
That was settled, then.
“Senior sister!”
I turned my attention to Jeuksun right away. And, wow. She looked terrible.
The slight singe on her hair was one thing, but the real problem was her clothes.
A woman absolutely could not be walking around showing that much skin.
I grabbed the cloth that had been spread over the table, yanked it free, and hurried over to drape it over her.
Even in this situation, Jeuksun was still staring coldly in the direction where the intruder had fled.
Tsk.
From the look of it, she was deeply dissatisfied.
It seemed she was thinking that if it weren’t for her clothes ending up like this, she would already have gone after him.
“Are you all right?! Are you hurt anywhere?”
When I asked that, Jeuksun looked at me, and her expression softened a great deal.
“Do you think something like that could injure me? And what about you? Are you unharmed?”
“Me? Yes. I’m fine. As you can see, I’m more or less—”
But that didn’t seem to satisfy her.
I could feel her concern in the way her eyes moved over my body, checking every part of me.
“Then go back to that child at once. This may not be over yet.”
“Yes, Senior Sister.”
So I returned to where Yeo I-ryeong was.
Yeo I-ryeong had people bring ropes to bind the captured intruders, and soon enough Yeo Jong-wi, the guild head of Mangeum Merchant Guild, came hurrying over as well.
“I-ryeong! I-ryeong! Are you all right!”
“Yes, Father. I’m fine. I was able to stay safe thanks to Miss Baek here. And thanks to Palace Young Lord and Miss Dang here, we were able to capture them too.”
“Oh, thank goodness! Thank goodness! Miss Baek! I truly can’t thank you enough! How could I ever repay this kindness!”
“I only did what was needed of me as a guard.”
When I said that, Yeo Jong-wi looked deeply moved and thanked me again and again.
And just like that, Yeo I-ryeong’s banquet came to an early end.
Well, there wasn’t much else anyone could do in a situation like this.
Besides, the banquet itself was no longer the important thing.
Getting those captured men to open their mouths was.
At this point, my original duty was essentially over, so I could have just gone back.
But if I turned around and left immediately, there was no telling what might happen.
That masked man we’d lost earlier wasn’t ordinary either, after all.
There might be more like him. In that case, leaving right away left a bad taste in my mouth.
But then an unexpected person appeared, and that unpleasant feeling finally eased.
The Murim Alliance’s lobby hall chief came to Yeo Jong-wi’s side, and Yeo Jong-wi’s face lit up as he hurriedly said, “Hall chief! Hall chief! May I make one more urgent request? As you can see, the situation has become this dire! So I would like to extend the commission I made to Miss Baek!”
Then he leaned close to the hall chief and whispered something to him.
From what I could catch, he was offering to pay more than triple the original fee.
Well, money probably wasn’t the important thing to Yeo Jong-wi right now.
“Understood! I’ll speak to Miss Baek about it at once!”
The hall chief came over to me, wearing a look that said he was trying to figure out how to phrase the request.
“I’ll do it.”
“Huh?! Miss? I haven’t said anything yet.”
“It’s obvious. You’re asking me to keep guarding Miss Yeo, aren’t you?”
“That’s right! Nothing else, nothing else at all.”
“Then I’ll do it. Conditions don’t matter. I’ll help.”
At that, the hall chief slapped his own forehead as if overwhelmed with emotion and said, “Hah! Miss Baek, you truly are a righteous hero and a noble martial artist! This old one is deeply moved! Very well, then I shall convey that!”
Grinning from ear to ear, the hall chief bounced back to speak with Yeo Jong-wi again.
And sure enough, Yeo Jong-wi brightened as well, then turned toward me and bowed politely.
Yes. That was enough.
In this line of work, reputation was the most important thing. Same as in games, really—nothing mattered more than farming up your rep.
So this was fine. In any case, I couldn’t just leave everything behind and walk away now, so there was no better outcome than this.