Elder Nam
Spat!
It was clearly a plain throwing blade, not a magical weapon. A tool used in daily life, not a weapon meant for battle.
And yet the blade that left my hand cut clean through a sliver of the gray wind Nam-so-ryong had sent flying. Even after that, it still had enough force left to draw a thin red line across the shoulder of the woman who had sunk down on the stone steps. That was the flow of spiritual energy I had poured into the blade.
“Hup!!”
The woman, startled to see my blade embedded in the stone steps, hurriedly struggled to her feet. At that moment Nam-so-ryong frowned and flung out another scrap of gray wind.
He seemed to believe I had also been trying to torment her, and had merely happened to block his attack by chance.
This time, the flying sword at my waist shot out with fierce speed.
Swish—sht!
The flying sword sliced through Nam-so-ryong’s gray wind far too easily. And because it was a magical weapon, unlike the throwing blade that could only travel in a straight line, it spun in place, whirling menacingly around the woman’s body.
Then, at the slightest twitch of my fingertips, it shot straight toward Nam-so-ryong, proving that my earlier attack had not been a mere coincidence that had happened to catch his wind.
Startled by the sudden appearance of the flying sword, Nam-so-ryong failed even to speak. He frantically poured the gray wind he had been keeping aloft toward the sword, desperate to stop it.
Fip! Fip-fip! Boom!
Only after several fragments of wind vanished without a trace did the real explosions begin to sound, and only then did the flying sword come to a halt.
And when it stopped in midair, the distance between the sword and him was no more than the length of his arm.
At last able to catch his breath, Nam-so-ryong snapped at me.
“Brother disciple Neung!!”
I answered calmly.
“I’m not very fond of forcing a woman’s clothes off.”
While Nam-so-ryong stared at me in dumbfounded disbelief, the woman who had forced herself upright climbed two more steps.
I moved the flying sword that was standing before Nam-so-ryong again. The woman, still gasping and frozen in place, saw the sword reappear, spinning as it flew toward her as though it meant to take her life. In terror, she quickly took two more steps to survive.
In the end, she exhausted the last of her strength and collapsed on the steps above, but those two steps made it that much harder for Nam-so-ryong to continue humiliating her.
Of course, that only made Nam-so-ryong even angrier at me. He barked again, voice sharp with fury.
“What exactly do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m testing whether she can overcome a fitting trial.”
Of course, the one I was calling the trial was not the woman, but Nam-so-ryong. He could hardly have failed to understand that.
Until just a moment ago, my flying sword had been right in front of his nose. If he couldn’t understand that, something would have been wrong with him.
“How dare you! Are you mocking me?”
The reason I had wanted to grow stronger was simple. It was to make sure that people like Nam-so-ryong, who tried to manipulate another’s fate as they pleased, could never stand above my head.
And besides, even now, it was terribly hard for me to look at the woman’s exposed body. The Heaven-Defying Lust Madness Classic I had cultivated was beginning to stir up the lust I had barely forced down the instant I saw her naked skin.
In other words, I had more than enough reason to step in and stop him.
So I only smiled back at him, utterly composed.
“Senior Brother, there is no tiger that fears the shadow of a fox.”
“You bastard!!”
At my words, Nam-so-ryong could no longer hold back and struck out at me. From his hands, which had quickly formed seals, several spheres made of gray wind shot toward me in rapid succession.
It was a fairly vicious wind art. The gray wind attack he had used just before had been unusual as well; clearly he had learned something entirely different from the ordinary spirit arts practiced by the disciples of Hyeondo Sect.
But no matter how special his spirit art might be, it would not matter if it did not hit.
Swish.
With a few light steps of footwork, I slipped past the wind spheres he had fired at me. The moment they passed harmlessly by, my counterattack came immediately. I grasped the hilt of the flying sword that had already returned to my waist, drew it, and struck at him in the same motion.
Sa-sa Blood Sword, Sixth Form: Blood Eye. A blood-drenched eye that pierces the enemy!
As the sword, filled with the blazing red spiritual energy unique to Hongyeon Flame Soul Scripture, shot toward him with murderous force, Nam-so-ryong’s face instantly went pale.
He had already been overwhelmed by the killing intent radiating from Sa-sa Blood Sword before my attack even reached him. He was a pitiful cultivator, unworthy of the mid Qi Refining stage he possessed.
Still, panicking as he was, he managed to pull a talisman from his pouch and shout,
“Guard!”
At once, the talisman in his hand rose into the air and vanished as though it were melting into nothing.
Then, the moment my attack reached him, it slammed into the empty space where the talisman had disappeared and erupted with a tremendous sound.
Thooooom—
The flying sword rebounded as if it had struck a thick iron plate.
Seeing that, I felt the memory of the protective wall around San-su Jin Myeong long ago come back to me.
And indeed, my suspicion seemed to have been correct.
“No matter how outstanding you are, you won’t get past this protective wall. This is a protective talisman made by a Golden Core cultivator. Do you really think a Qi Refining cultivator like you can pierce it?”
Overflowing with confidence thanks to the talisman handed to him by his father, Elder Nam, the boy suddenly began forming seals again.
And interestingly enough, this time I sensed something dangerous moving behind me.
Tap!
I lightly kicked off the stone steps and turned my head. Sure enough, the gray wind spheres I had sent veering aside earlier were now hurtling toward my back. So his spirit art really was not something to take lightly.
But once again, it was not difficult to avoid. He did not seem to have much experience fighting this way, because his attacks were far too simplistic.
Frowning, Nam-so-ryong suddenly reached toward the wind spheres returning to him and raised his voice.
“Let’s see you dodge this too!”
Then, with a push of his palm, he sent the wind sphere that had drawn close to him flying again. The gray sphere, once as large as a human head, split into dozens of smaller spheres no bigger than walnuts and shot straight toward me.
But more than the dozens of tiny wind spheres he was sending at me, I paid greater attention to the attack he kept glancing toward behind me.
The large wind spheres he had fired at me a moment ago had clearly numbered three. Yet only one had returned to him after attacking me from behind. I remembered that plainly.
And once I had grasped his intention, his attacks, however irregular and varied they might become through a special spirit art, could not possibly threaten me if the power behind them remained at the level of Qi Refining.
If the attacks I avoided could return to me, then I would simply break them apart first.
Boom! Fip-fip-fip! Boom! Fip!
Using the sword in my hand, I split every one of the hailstorm of large and small wind spheres raining down on me from the front and back.
Breaking apart walnut-sized wind spheres was easy enough, but whenever I cut through a larger one, my body jolted and was forced back. Still, aside from my grip being slightly torn, I suffered no real damage.
However, a beat later, a delayed reaction to his attack erupted on the stone steps.
“Hah!”
A participant who had been climbing the steps behind the woman, who was already unconscious and collapsed, let out a frightened groan and cowered at the sight of the fragments of wind scattering through the air and the racket they made.
What Nam-so-ryong made of the fact that I had briefly turned my gaze toward him, I did not know, but he suddenly twisted into a grin and spoke.
“What would you do now?”
Then he pulled a flying sword from his pouch and sent it hurtling toward the new test participant, before glaring at me and forming seals again. It seemed he believed I would save the participant just as I had the woman a moment ago, and that he could exploit the opening when I did.
But unlike what he expected, I made no move to stop his flying sword.
I wanted him to understand clearly exactly what he was doing.
In the end, the flying sword he had kept waiting for a chance to use ruthlessly pierced the participant’s chest. Considering that not long ago, he had said, “We won’t let a single person die in this entrance exam, if only for the sake of Hyeondo Sect’s reputation,” this was one hell of a disaster.
Even then, the boy still kept glaring at me and forming seals as though trying to catch a gap in my defenses, and only after the participant collapsed with a clear, piercing sound of “pshhk!” did he finally seem to realize what he had done, going blank with shock.
Only then did I speak to him.
“As for how to deal with Senior Brother, that’s for Elder Nam, the chief supervisor of this entrance exam, to decide, isn’t it?”
At those words, all the blood drained from his face. At the same time, the great formation surrounding us shuddered violently once.
Then, appearing right beside me as if he had simply materialized there, was a middle-aged cultivator with a refined air about him.
“From that sword alone, I need not ask who did it.”
I still could not sense his presence at all, but at his heavy words Nam-so-ryong’s legs gave way and he staggered.
“E-Elder! Just a moment! Please, at least listen to me!”
Despite his desperate plea, the elder immediately turned his head away.
“Useless thing!”
Those words, sharp as a blade, struck Nam-so-ryong, who was already reeling, until he dropped to his knees with a thud. It seemed the relationship between father and son was far worse than I had expected.
Like a frog faced with a snake, Nam-so-ryong could do nothing as he was pinned in place. Then, that viper-like gaze shifted to me.
“No matter how foolish that one may be, he would hardly take out the protective talisman I gave him without cause. So it seems you are a rather useful fellow?”
It was a gaze both creepy and unpleasant, as if the tip of a snake’s cold tongue were sweeping over my entire body.
I did not hide my discomfort and met his eyes, though he looked at me with a surprising degree of goodwill.
“Elder, I suppose you think even your own son is merely a tool.”
In that instant, a towering blaze burst from his eyes. It was not just that he looked at me with eyes full of anger; actual tongues of flame rose along the line of his gaze.
At the same time, a dragon’s head overlaid itself above him. And just as I had earlier bound Nam-so-ryong’s body with overwhelming killing intent, Elder Nam’s oppressive aura became pressure itself, bearing down on my whole body.
It was the kind of crushing force that made cold sweat pour down in streams simply from standing there, the kind that made one’s legs tremble uncontrollably. He was trying to force me to submit.
Of course, I resisted his arrogant display with all my might. Even if he were not a Golden Core elder but the sect lord himself, one who had reached Nascent Soul, I had already resolved that I would no longer bend my heart.
Then the dragon head, its eyes flickering with flame, looked at me and spoke.
“Do you think a trifling Qi Refining cultivator like you could even be a tool fit for me? For the price of seeing the power of my true form, your spirit will be drained for a long time. Consider it the cost of speaking out of turn.”
Then he muttered an incantation again, and astonishingly, Nam-so-ryong’s flying sword slowly slipped free from the body of the test participant, whose warmth had been fading with the sword still embedded in his chest.
The dead man slowly opened his eyes.
It seemed a Golden Core cultivator possessed even the ability to revive the dead.
“Ah... I truly thought I had died... So Hyeondo Sect’s reputation is no empty boast after all!”
The participant, now completely alive again, let out a cry of wonder to himself before gathering his strength and beginning to climb the stone steps once more.
The dragon-headed Elder Nam watched this for a moment, then gave me one brief glance before disappearing as well.
Thanks to that, the suffocating pressure wringing my body vanished, and I let out a long, trapped breath.
“Hooook—”
But after I steadied my roughened breathing for a moment, something strange came to me.
The barrier that had blocked my cultivation level—the bottleneck—had disappeared.