Dogfight
There were seven presences I could feel now. That was nearly half of everyone who had gathered in Dark Dust Market.
Even so, only four of the masked cultivators had actually revealed themselves before us. The others were still holding their breath somewhere nearby, hidden in the dark.
Of course, they were not the sort to feel shame, if that was what they were waiting for. They simply meant to let us be torn open by this greedy pack of wolves, then snatch away the flesh we’d lost and call it their own.
To someone like me, who was well used to every kind of struggle the martial world could offer, it was a scheme so transparent I could see through it at a glance.
But to the people beside me, there was nothing in the world except the enemies standing directly before us.
And while I was busy gauging the positions of the ones hiding in ambush, my second brother let loose with that sharp tongue of his.
“Senior brothers! Surely you’re not saying you’ll still attack us now that you know who we are? If you lay a hand on us after we’ve revealed ourselves, the upper elders will definitely take issue with it!”
Then the greediest of the cultivators—the one who had stepped forward first—spoke again.
“Who said anything about harming you? Those treasures are far too precious for the likes of you to keep, so we’ll take them into safekeeping for you instead. Thanks to that, once our cultivation advances, Hyeondo Sect itself will grow stronger as well. And who knows? You may even receive separate compensation later on.”
At his words—words that openly admitted he intended to steal what was ours—my second brother clenched his fists in fury, and just then Yang Jeon stepped forward.
“So in the end, you’re saying you’ll seize their belongings by force, are you? This Yang Jeon won’t simply stand by and watch such uncouth conduct! If the way of our Hyeondo Sect is dragged through the mud, then as disciples of Hyeondo Sect, it is only right that we set it straight!”
He was one of the two among us with the lowest cultivation. He was also someone with nowhere near the strength to back up his blustering, yet somehow I found myself feeling a surge of admiration at his words instead of mockery.
"You won’t need to step in."
But just as I spoke those serious words and reached toward the money pouch at my waist, his next words froze my hand in place.
“Young lady! I’ll hold them off! Hurry back to the main sect with Neung Jeon and inform the elders of what’s happening here!”
He had recognized my second brother’s face just fine, and yet he was still treating me as a woman. At that absurd misunderstanding, a small laugh slipped from my lips, and laughter also rose from the mouths of the ones blocking our way.
“Pfft—Yang Jeon! You think you can stop even one of us?”
“We won’t take your life, but you’d best be ready to get beaten to a pulp for the sin of daring to challenge your senior brothers!”
Then my second brother shouted again, louder this time.
“That won’t happen! If you seniors don’t back off now, I’ll activate this Ringing Blaze Talisman!”
The Ringing Blaze Talisman had been enough to force even the most capable cultivator among those gathered in Dark Dust Market to retreat.
And yet, even after he threatened to unleash its shriek and draw the sect’s attention, no one backed down.
“If that thing in your hand is the real Ringing Blaze Talisman, then yes, that would be rather troublesome for us. But however you look at it, that doesn’t seem to be a genuine talisman made by a Foundation Establishment cultivator. There’s no way you’d possess such a rare treasure. If you have no other tricks, you’d best hand over what you’re carrying obediently.”
They seemed to know already that the Ringing Blaze Talisman in my second brother’s possession was a fake.
How had they learned something even the high-ranking cultivator, whose skill far surpassed theirs, had not realized?
In that moment, I understood. That high-ranking cultivator had not truly been frightened by the counterfeit talisman and accepted the trade so readily. She had known all along and simply allowed herself to be fooled. After all, she had come here for a transaction from the start, not a robbery…
By contrast, the wolves who had already bared their teeth at us ignored the fake talisman entirely and began drawing their weapons.
Two of them produced Flying Swords.
One took out a talisman.
And the last, unexpectedly, held a flexible sword like the ones martial artists used.
“You’d better end this here before you see something uglier!”
As the one who had spoken boldly began making rapid hand seals, the Flying Sword he had taken from his pouch suddenly swelled in size, until it had become a massive greatsword, nearly as large as a person, hurtling straight toward us.
Who among us had guessed that my swallowing my saliva at the heavy whoosh of cutting wind meant I’d be the one to stop that monster blade?
“It won’t go as you please!”
Clang!!
Fortunately, the fan Yang Jeon held was no ordinary object; even under the greatsword’s crushing force, it did not split apart, but rang out with the sharp cry of metal on metal.
But just as he seemed to be holding the blade at bay by relying on a magical tool, his body began to give way beneath the pressure.
Crkkk—crkkk!
The harsh sound of his leather shoes scraping over the dirt ground rang out loudly, and at last I stepped in.
“This is hard to watch.”
Tap.
I gave the money pouch at my waist a light knock, and a tiny Flying Sword—no bigger than a finger—shot out from it to intercept the greatsword. Then, in that same instant, I quickly began working hand seals to control it.
Pop!
Third Form of the Slanted Death Blood Sword: Flowing Blood! As flowing blood never stops, the sword’s current cannot be severed!
My Flying Sword, guided by the subtle principles of the Slanted Death Blood Sword, collided repeatedly with the greatsword, and at last Yang Jeon’s body, which had been driven back helplessly all this time, came to a stop.
But the subtleties of the Slanted Death Blood Sword had only just begun. The third form, which placed great importance on the flow of the sword, kept driving its body against the opponent’s blade in order to alter the direction of its force.
Clang! Clang! Clang-clang!
It was a seamless chain of strikes, flowing like water. After several clashes, the direction of the force in the opponent’s greatsword warped and twisted, and the blade sliced through empty air before driving straight into the tree beside it.
BOOM!!
With more than half of the greatsword’s edge buried in the trunk, the blade trembled for a moment before finally going still.
The one controlling it, startled by the unexpected turn of events, barked angrily, “Are all of you just going to stand there and watch? That priest’s Flying Sword seems to be a valuable item too, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t we help lighten the heavy burden resting on that priest’s shoulders?”
Apparently deciding he could not handle me alone, he quickly dragged the others into it.
As though they had been waiting for exactly that cue, another Flying Sword sliced through the air toward me. This one was a normal-sized blade, no bigger than a dagger.
Of course, unless they were using some bizarre cultivator’s sorcery, there was no way I would lose in a fight of ordinary blades like this.
So I hurled my own Flying Sword at his.
Then, before that was enough, I immediately drew the sword at my waist as well.
But at that very moment, something astonishing happened. Somehow, the other man’s Flying Sword clung in a strange way to my own Flying Sword the instant they met, and my blade was sent crashing straight into the dirt.
And his attack did not end there. The moment he tossed out a talisman, the sword in my hand also began to grow heavier and heavier.
This was a true cultivator’s fighting style, one I had never experienced in my sparring with my second brother.
Still, after weighing the sword that now felt as though it had become at least five times heavier, I calmly lifted it again. I could do that because I possessed not only sorcery, but inner power as well.
It seemed the talisman had not merely deceived my senses, either; a heavy whoosh of cutting air rang out where my blade swept past.
Wooong—
At this point, it would be best to think of the item he used as a Metal Spirit Talisman. Like the Ringing Blaze Talisman my second brother had mentioned, the Metal Spirit Talisman too could be made by a Foundation Establishment cultivator, and it held within it the power of metal—force that governed iron and steel.
As a tool imbued with a special attribute, it was even more valuable than the Ringing Blaze Talisman.
But even that impressive Metal Spirit Talisman could not ultimately halt my movement, which was driven by inner power. After all, it was nothing more than a talisman carrying only a fragment of a true Foundation Establishment cultivator’s strength, not the cultivator’s actual power itself.
The man was so shocked by that he stumbled backward in panic.
“That’s impossible! You overpowered the Metal Spirit Talisman’s force?”
At his cry of disbelief, another cultivator—the one who had been standing back with a talisman between his fingers—snapped to action and hurled it forward.
“Then take this one too!”
No sooner had he shouted than the talisman flying toward us began to grow, swelling from the size of a palm to the size of a human head in the blink of an eye.
And then, with a sharp slap, it covered Yang Jeon’s face.
Mmph! Mmmph!
Apparently he had never imagined the attack would come for him instead, so this time Yang Jeon was struck without even being able to borrow the power of a magical tool. Letting out pained groans, he clawed wildly at the talisman smothering his face, trying to tear it off.
Then my second brother lunged forward at once and began helping him pull the talisman away.
“I’ll get it off in a second! Just hold on!”
My second brother had never been especially close to Yang Jeon, but it seemed he had at least decided that, for now, they were on the same side.
I agreed with him, of course. I had never hated Yang Jeon that much to begin with, and more than that, the ones irritating me now were the people in front of us, tormenting him.
So while the two of them struggled to peel the talisman off, I stepped forward toward the enemies and spoke.
“From this moment on, I will no longer regard you as fellow sect brothers.”
First Style of the Breaking Wasteland Sword: Rousing the Wasteland! Raise the sword and shake heaven and earth; let the first strike rattle the root of the ground.
DONNNG—
My Flying Sword, flooded with inner power, released a fierce sword cry before plunging down with crushing force. I forced the internal energy within my body to collide head-on with the earth’s natural qi.
Fwoooosh!!
With a deafening roar, dirt burst skyward and a deep pit opened in the ground. In the center of that pit, the sword I had driven down unleashed a pale shockwave straight ahead, exactly as I intended.
It was a force similar to the spellcraft those men used, but this had been a technique born purely of martial skill. It contained the fragments of insight left behind by a warrior who had reached the Death-Calming realm.
Of course, there was no way they would recognize that properly.
“What is this!”
“You think we’ll just stand here and take it?”
Still, as cultivators, they did at least react in their own ways.
Two glaring red fireballs—clearly some kind of fire shot technique—appeared instantly in midair.
One of them slashed at the shockwave with the flexible sword in his hand.
Another leaped high into the air to avoid it altogether.
And two of the four responses succeeded. The supple flexible sword cut through the thick shockwave, and the wave itself skimmed perilously beneath the feet of the man who had jumped high into the air.
Of course, if two responses succeeded, that also meant the other two had failed.
BOOM!!!
Fire shot technique was a basic spell that any cultivator in the early Qi Refining realm could use.
The higher a cultivator’s realm, the faster the blazing fireballs would form and the greater the power they would contain. It was a tremendously useful technique.
Unfortunately, the Fire Shot Techniques those men unleashed at their level were a little too weak to withstand the shockwave I had created.
As a result, the explosion of the fire shots, together with the damage caused by my shockwave, left two of the cultivators drenched in blood and rolling on the ground.
Thanks to cultivators’ notoriously tenacious lives, they did not seem to be dead, but in that condition they would be hard-pressed to join the fight again unless someone used healing talismans on them.
Since I had used the Breaking Wasteland Sword, a martial art that devoured inner power with ruthless greed, I too had almost no power left, but it was still a decent result.
What’s more, the two people who had been struggling to remove the talisman from Yang Jeon’s face looked encouraged by the result I had created.
Though perhaps it would have been better not to remove the talisman stuck to Yang Jeon’s mouth at all.
“At this rate, maybe we really can win!”
“Young lady! What exactly is that technique?”
“It isn’t a technique. It’s martial skill.”
Even though I had kept speaking in a man’s voice the entire time, Yang Jeon still seemed not to understand what was wrong.
“That’s absurd! Young lady, how could some mere trickery defeat four Qi Refining cultivators?”
It was ridiculous to hear him chatter away like that, never having understood the true depth of martial skill, but unfortunately I had no leisure to answer him.
This time, the cultivator with the flexible sword attacked first, determined not to allow another blow from me. Of course, delighted to be facing an opponent with a sword at last, I willingly crossed blades with him.
Clang! Sssrrrk!
The other man’s flexible sword, after colliding with mine, bent as softly as a limp blade of grass, trying to bury its sharp teeth into my body. In truth, I had met flexible sword users before, more than once. There were even martial sects that made flexible swords their primary weapon.
But the flexible sword moves the man was showing now surpassed every flexible sword master I had ever fought.
That did not mean he was simply a martial arts expert deeply skilled in using a flexible sword. Rather, his flexible sword was one of the magical tools cultivators used, and so it displayed movements that were entirely unnatural and grotesque compared with ordinary weapon techniques.
Still, however alive the sword might seem, there was no way I would lose to an opponent I had crossed blades with…
At that moment, as I saw the tip of his blade bend and began to lean my upper body back lightly to evade it, I suddenly felt the sword grow longer.
It was not some sword technique that merely gave the illusion of lengthening; no, the blade was literally stretching outward, trying to rip through my chest.
So I twisted my body sharply backward, not with a mere lean but with the iron-plank bridge technique, bending like a drawn bow. Only then did I barely manage to keep the blade’s sharp tip from tearing through me.
Of course, because the attack had been so utterly unexpected, I could not stop the front of my robe from being slashed open.
Slash!
As the torn strips of cloth fluttered down through the air, the smile lingering at the corner of my mouth grew deeper.