Chapter 405: Peerless Realm (5)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 405: Peerless Realm (5)
The darkness cast by the shadow of the Invisible Greatsword was vast.
It was a shadow born from decades of rigorous training by Southern Zhili's greatest swordsman. At this moment, the very life of Namgung's First Sword dwelt within that sword-shaped abyss.
He recalled the rough bedding of a commoner's inn. He remembered the soft touch that had slipped into his embrace, and the bleak, bloody wind that blew over a young man who had dispersed his sense of Qi solely to feel his beloved.
—Eldest Son, the lowly creature has revealed her true colors.
—What?
—While you slept, Eldest Son, the lowborn thief stole a treasure and fled. I watched the foolish woman's movements from the shadows with the utmost caution, but when she began haggling with a merchant at the opposite stall... I took action.
—What... is this...?
—I secretly severed her head and retrieved it. The Clan Head ordered me to strictly discipline your conduct, Eldest Son... After all, you have an upcoming marriage with the Huizhou Great Merchant Guild, which possesses a hundred thousand dan of rice.
Namgung Mu-jin was the eldest legitimate son of Southern Zhili's greatest clan.
The bodyguard by his side was the Clan Head's trusted confidant, and as the Eldest Son, he could not defy his family.
So, he left home like a fugitive, carrying nothing but a single sword.
Wandering the Jianghu aimlessly, the cowardly Eldest Son finally found something fundamental to blame.
The World Tree, standing tall and alone upon the cracked earth. That strange, violent, chaotic, and supernatural entity didn't look like a tree at all, its deep green leaves obscuring the entire sky...
It was no mere ancient tree.
It was clearly an entity possessed of a will.
The young swordsman stared up at the tree from a distance for a fortnight.
Evading the strict guard of high-level experts whose ears were as sharp as sword tips, he forged a conviction that grew as sharp as a blade.
That is it. That is the demon sucking dry all the earth energy of the world.
It had to be cut down.
Hence, Sword Night Painted in Moonlight. Unified Martial Transcendence was the summation of the intent refined by a peerless expert. Namgung Mu-jin's Invisible Greatsword loathed the famine cast over the world.
At the same time, it yearned for the manifestation of a Martial God who would never again be swayed by the earth's energy.
At this moment. On this land as well.
Kwaaaaah!
A massive sword shadow flickered repeatedly like lightning over the desolate clearing. Namgung Mu-jin had infused the Invisible Greatsword with variation movements.
Though the white streaks of Shooting the Moon were pinned beneath the blade of the Invisible Greatsword—whatever trick the Commander of the Demonlight Wing had pulled earlier—Namgung Mu-jin did not care.
This was the profound truth of the heavy sword that would one day crush the World Tree and the Lord of the Desolate Fortress.
Rather than being blocked by a brat who had not even formally attained the Purple Rank, it was better to shatter it here. Through that destruction, his Unified Martial Transcendence would advance even further.
Imperial Sword Form, Azure Thunder Heavy Karma.
It was a sword move that accumulated shockwaves through repeated, bending variations to deliver a devastating blow. It aimed for both sheer power and the precision of a guaranteed hit.
Swoooosh!
Despite its immense size of fifteen zhang, the blade changed directions dozens of times in midair as it pressed down. Dust swept up by the sword wind erupted in all directions.
It was accompanied by a sound like hundreds of sheets of paper being incessantly torn apart.
At the end of that massive trajectory stood Jeong Yeon-shin, the Commander of the Demonlight Wing.
Namgung Mu-jin intended to crush the young man clad in the purple silk robe, starting straight from the crown of his head.
Just then, a blue radiance flared like fire from Jeong Yeon-shin's highly raised sword.
This directly contradicted the intelligence stating he did not employ internal energy projection techniques such as sword Qi or slashes.
The blue flame sword Qi that flared up with a whoosh spread to the dozens of white lines clinging to the Invisible Greatsword.
It happened in an instant.
The fiercely burning blue flame raced along the long white lines, looking exactly like a spark set to a fuse.
Rumble—
The Invisible Greatsword faltered. A heavy vibration rippled through it.
The blue flame, which seemed to merely flicker on the surface, was actually composed of incredibly sharp fragments of sword Qi.
They were more than enough to burrow into the Invisible Greatsword and grind its interior to pieces.
The shadow cast upon the ground was dyed a bluish hue.
A crackling sound, like flying sparks, filled the air. It was the noise leaking from the interior of the visibly slowed Invisible Greatsword.
Now, Namgung Mu-jin's Sword Night Painted in Moonlight truly did nothing but cast a shadow.
The scene was practically frozen. Even a young child could have closed their eyes and dodged it.
Beneath it, the two swordsmen faced each other at a distance of thirty steps. Namgung Mu-jin had to struggle to keep a dumbfounded expression off his face before the youthful man.
"How did you do it...?"
"No matter how profound the martial arts, aren't there only two fundamentals?"
The two concepts the Commander of the Demonlight Wing calmly spoke of... Namgung Mu-jin understood them immediately.
Spirituality, which births divine weaponry when infused into a weapon and divine arts when imbued into martial arts. And true Qi, which refers to natural Qi refined through breathing and circulation techniques.
Even the divine arts of the Nine Sects or the Heavenly Demon Divine Art, which had left deep footprints in the history of the Jianghu, must have started with those two.
Namgung Mu-jin spoke again. He was a warrior of the Martial Dragon Association—an alliance of madmen who shared their sects' martial arts with others to enhance their achievements. If a question about martial arts arose, he had to ask, even if the Black Rank warriors of the Desolate Fortress were closing in.
"And so?"
"From the white lines of Shooting the Moon, I felt the propulsion shockwaves that enhance the power and speed of the arrows. Though the texture inside the lines was quite complex... once I endured it with my own body, I got a feel for it. I realized what kind of internal power wave Shooting the Moon responds to," Jeong Yeon-shin concluded, looking inexplicably calm.
Namgung Mu-jin's eyes trembled slightly. A realization that would shock anyone struck him like a blow to the back of the head.
He had turned the Lord of the Dark Night Hall's Unified Martial Transcendence against him to drive the blue flame sword Qi into the Invisible Greatsword.
It was a feat difficult to even attempt without possessing two things: a peerless body protection Qi that bought time to analyze the opponent's ultimate technique, and a heaven-defying sense bestowed as if by mistake...
"They say a clumsy joint attack is worse than swinging a sword alone, and that applies to you two. If you had come at me one by one, I might have struggled more."
Jeong Yeon-shin's calm voice seemed to settle upon the sword he held. It truly felt that way.
This was due to the transparently shimmering airflow over the silver blade. Was it spirituality? The haze on the blade and the blue flame dwelling within the Invisible Greatsword seemed to be connected by a long, unseen line.
Even the sword Qi he had already projected was fully under Jeong Yeon-shin's control.
It could not be denied. The man before him was a once-in-a-lifetime genius.
A look of ecstasy appeared in Namgung Mu-jin's eyes.
"Your... your martial talent is truly extraordinary." He stammered as he continued. "Your achievements are faster than any eccentric I have ever seen or heard of. If someone like you joined the Martial Dragon Association, we could harmoniously select only the strengths of the world's martial arts to create an unprecedented divine art...! I... I will be your backer! The martial arts of all kinds of prestigious sects lie dormant in our association! If it is you, me, the Association Lord, and Hwayeonbi...!"
"You've lost your mind."
Jeong Yeon-shin's sword drew a curve. Leaving a faint afterimage like a lunar halo, the blade vanished into the scabbard at his waist with a sharp click.
A picture-perfect sheathing. At the exact same time, the airflow that transparently connected his sword and the blue flame was severed.
That was the beginning.
Rumble—
Thunder roared above the heads of the two men.
A wave rippled out from the Invisible Greatsword in the shape of sky-blue concentric circles.
Following the mystical shockwave, the ground was dyed a pale hue.
With a noise that exploded like thunder, the shattered fragments of the Invisible Greatsword began to rain down, glowing with a brilliant blue light.
They were entirely different from the debris that had fallen at Jeong Yeon-shin's feet earlier. Both their power and speed were on another level.
Fwooooosh!
The blue-glowing fragments drew thousands of vertical lines like world-shaking fast swords. The sunlight, piercing down late, was chaotically scattered within them.
It was a rain of shockwaves more lethal than any hail.
Such was a battle in the Peerless Realm. The harmony of a single sword they had refined rivaled natural disasters.
[If it comes to this, you won't escape unscathed either...!]
The telepathic voice rang out like a beam of light. Namgung Mu-jin's spirituality overflowed, betraying his extreme urgency.
The Invisible Greatsword had shattered right above the heads of the two swordsmen. Evading was impossible due to the blue flame mixed into the rain of shockwaves, acting as propulsion.
Wuuung!
A colorless, glittering energy enveloped Namgung Mu-jin's entire body.
The body protection Qi of the Heavenly Thunder Emperor Divine Art.
There was no time to slow down the fragments with the Imperial Sword Form. He was not even given the leisure to deploy his body protection Qi to its absolute limit. Moreover, the true Qi he had exhausted on the Invisible Greatsword was already immense.
Southern Zhili's greatest swordsman bitterly blamed himself. This was exactly why one should not recklessly unleash Unified Martial Transcendence.
Ugh...!
Namgung Mu-jin's Imperial Sword Form had long since strayed far from the orthodox, profound truth of commanding the sword and space.
When his instinct cut through the split second, what bloomed from his sword was not a sword force that spread righteousness far and wide, but merely four streaks of sword light barely enough to ensnare a single person.
The moment bluish despair welled up in his eyes, fragments of deep blue flame poured down from the sky like torrential rain.
Clang-clang-clang-clang!
Blue sparks erupted all over Namgung Mu-jin's body.
Multiple shockwaves from the explosions overlapped continuously, distorting the atmosphere, and cracks that formed in the earth raced far along the ground.
The ultimate technique he had refined his entire life had rebounded upon him. What had gone wrong?
Namgung Mu-jin stumbled, losing his balance amidst the incessantly pouring streaks of light. If a peerless swordsman was disrupted to this extent, the battle could already be considered over.
By then, Namgung Mu-jin realized it too late.
The Lord of the Dark Night Hall had practically washed his hands of this matter. That cunning archer would never show his face here.
Soon after...
Aaaaargh!
His body protection Qi crumbled along with a scream.
* * *
Jeong Yeon-shin walked through the rain falling in blue streaks.
Step.
The chaotically raining fragments of shockwaves could not harm him in the slightest. They merely drowned out his footsteps, bouncing off his body with white flashes of lightning whenever they struck.
The ground was cracked in all directions, as if a severe drought had struck.
Jeong Yeon-shin, stepping through the deeply settled dust, stopped at a certain spot. He lowered his eyelids slightly.
Jeong Yeon-shin's figure was reflected in the eyes of the blood-soaked, fallen Namgung Mu-jin. He stood with his long black hair draped down, a faint cluster of stars embroidered over his purple silk robe.
Namgung Mu-jin burst into a cough-laden laugh.
"You... are not someone who should be called a mere genius. Just another powerful, peerless expert... has emerged from the Desolate Fortress. For the World Tree's... strange, violent, chaotic, and supernatural entity... this is a far too generous... blessing."
"He is my master," Jeong Yeon-shin replied quietly. He was calling him insolent.
For if one had learned properly from a sect, one could not insult another's master to their face.
Yet, the corners of Namgung Mu-jin's mouth did not drop. Instead, his expression of hollow amusement deepened.
"Using a sword style I've never even heard of... and yet you deceive me."
"Why would I bother lying... to you?"
"Have you ever heard rumors of Perfected Zhang Sanfeng or Zen Master Bodhidharma having a master? What could a breed like you deeply learn from anyone? You would be too busy adapting everything to fit your own body."
Namgung Mu-jin's voice grew clearer by the moment.
Had his innate Qi, on the verge of dispersing, risen to his throat? Anyone could see it was his final radiance—a brief moment of clarity before death.
"In any case, it is a pity. Look over there, at those fading white lines. The Lord of the Dark Night Hall is fleeing." Namgung Mu-jin gestured toward the empty air with his eyes. "No matter how extraordinary your lightness skill is, catching up to him from this distance is impossible. Yes... it is something only the Beggar Sect Leader, Ju Gwang-singae, when sober, could pull off."
Step.
Jeong Yeon-shin did not reply and kept walking.
The dying man at his feet was not someone with whom he would share thoughts about the Azure Qilin. He merely provoked an unfamiliar contempt. Seeing him today, dealing with his younger brother, the White Qilin, was more than enough.
"I was not wrong. I am right. There is no proper emperor in this starving world... This is an era where only the martial arts that can cut down the plunderer before one's eyes hold value."
The delirious mumbling trailed after Jeong Yeon-shin's heels.
Without a word, he kicked off the ground and soared toward the streaks of light from Shooting the Moon that fluttered aimlessly in the air.
Fwoooosh—
The moment he set foot on them, the white lines surged like waves. They were peerless streaks of light that turned every arrow into a fast sword to strike their target.
While they did not seem to be retracting under the Lord of the Dark Night Hall's will, they did not welcome Jeong Yeon-shin either.
At least, not until he suddenly drew his sword and flicked it like a cracking whip. The white lines stretched out straight, tearing through the air with a loud roar. It was Qilin's Judgment of the Lightning-Flash Sword Ridge Style.
With a single sword, he commanded the wind.
Namgung Mu-jin's fading eyes widened in shock.
That was the end. As Jeong Yeon-shin's figure, leaning slightly forward on the white lines, blurred and distorted, the sword wind extending from his feet severed Namgung Mu-jin's neck and buried itself in the dirt.
Slash—
With the sound of tearing flesh, the severed head tilted toward Jeong Yeon-shin's back.
Namgung Mu-jin's dumbfounded eyes were filled with the purple fabric fluttering like a cape, until the rapidly receding purple silk robe finally dwindled into a dot and vanished into the distance.