The Heavenly Demon’s Martial Arts
“This is... this is martial arts? And I’m supposed to learn it?”
As my eldest brother stared blankly at me and muttered the words, I opened my mouth again.
“If you’re the head of the Neung Family, then you ought to know martial arts worthy of that position.”
At that moment, Seop Myeong-gyeol, who had arrived two breaths after me, stopped at my side.
I pointed at the wooden puppet she inhabited and continued. “And I’ll teach you enough to crush something like this wooden doll without much trouble. That should be enough for the Neung Family to rise again.”
Immediately, Seop Myeong-gyeol shot back, “Do you really think mere mortals can defeat cultivators just by learning a little martial arts?”
Unlike her, I knew very well that it was possible.
“Once one reaches the pinnacle of martial achievement and can freely unleash sword qi, even an ordinary Qi Refining cultivator is not so difficult an opponent.”
For a moment, Seop Myeong-gyeol fell silent, and in the meantime my eldest brother, his breathing ragged, looked at me and asked, “Fine, suppose everything you say is true. But no sect of immortals is going to teach martial arts, so how in the world did you obtain such extraordinary things?”
I answered him lightly. “A fortuitous encounter. The kind of wondrous fate most people never receive happened to reach me.”
In truth, my fall into this world after failing to ascend to immortality had been less a fortunate encounter than a dreadful stroke of bad luck.
And yet, for the sake of this body’s eldest brother, I was willing to call my misfortune a blessing and smile. For a brother as dependable as he was, I had no doubt he could restore the Neung Family’s former glory from my memories alone.
Just as I was about to continue, the gates of the Kim estate flew open, and someone stormed out shouting.
“Didn’t you hear that the feast is over? If you don’t want to invite trouble upon yourselves, then leave at once—”
The servant who had been raising his voice froze the instant he saw me. He must have been one of those who had witnessed what I did here.
That made things easier. I had rushed here precisely to finish the work left undone in this place.
“The man pretending to be master of this place will soon lose his life. Do you intend to die with him?”
The fellow heard me and immediately dropped flat to the ground.
“Oh, immortals, please! Spare my life, I beg you. What choice did a lowly man like me have? Where else was I supposed to go?”
I studied him for a moment and then went on. “Very well. I’ll believe you. From now on, you are a servant of the Neung Family. Now lead the way and show me where the bandits who invaded the Neung estate are hiding.”
My sudden declaration seemed to unsettle him, and while he struggled to his feet, my eldest brother spoke up again.
“What in the world is going on? You promised me you wouldn’t do anything reckless, did you not?”
I gave him a slight smile. “I did promise. That’s why I’m showing you directly. That the Lotus Heavenly Gate, and the Cheon clan, are no longer anything you need to worry about.”
My eldest brother still looked as though he did not understand a word of it, so I motioned to the servant with my eyes.
Realizing that his life hung by a thread held in my hand, the man hastily took the lead.
“If you’re here to see the estate lord... no, if you’re here to see the Kim estate lord, this way. The lord is receiving treatment from the physician at present.”
Even if the bleeding had been stopped, severed legs would still require treatment. Cultivators might restore a mutilated limb with a single healing talisman, but that was a power only cultivators possessed.
As I was about to follow the servant’s lead and move on, my eldest brother suddenly seized my wrist.
“Neung So!”
So I told him what had happened here, for his sake and to ease that lingering anxiety in his face.
“Do you know why the Kim estate lord is being treated by a physician? Because I cut off both his legs. If I’d known he was connected to the Lotus Heavenly Gate that attacked the Neung Family, I would have killed him on the spot. Unfortunately, I didn’t know that at the time.”
The moment I said I had already severed the Kim estate lord’s legs, the strength drained from my eldest brother’s hand, still clamped around my wrist. Even his legs seemed to wobble.
So I said to him once more, “Brother, you are already the head of the Neung Family, the true master of this estate. From now on, don’t show such weakness in front of your inferiors.”
He bit down hard on his lower lip and straightened his posture just as the Kim estate’s warriors, who had noticed our approach, came forward.
They came only so far, however; after recognizing my face, none of them dared even draw their blades. Every one of them valued his own life more than his loyalty to the Kim estate.
So I looked at the half-crouched men and spoke. “If you can’t draw your blades, then smash your heads into the ground and beg for mercy.”
But they only glanced at one another, none willing to move first. They knew very well that I was not a being they could withstand, and yet to bow with their faces in the dirt at once would not be permitted by their pride as warriors.
So I decided to help them make the choice.
“Myeong-gyeol! Kill every enemy who hasn’t put their head to the ground. And tear out the souls of the dead—use them as material to make puppets.”
As if she had been waiting for those words, the wooden puppet moved at once. From the crude fingertips burst thin strands of spiritual energy, which the puppet scattered in all directions like a spider web.
Even if the puppet’s power was only that of a Qi Refining cultivator, the soul within it belonged to a Nascent Soul cultivator, and that made such a feat possible.
Even for a martial artist who had reached the peak, like the lord of this estate, it would not be easy to deflect invisible strands of spiritual energy using only his senses.
That was entirely Seop Myeong-gyeol’s intention. As she had said earlier, the point was to show them that even if they learned martial arts, they would still remain mere mortals.
At last, the moment one of the surrounding warriors dropped to his knees, Seop Myeong-gyeol yanked at the spiritual threads that had been dangling lazily around the bodyguards.
“Kraaaah!!”
“H-haaagh!”
With a chorus of shrieks, the warriors collapsed all at once, and from the ends of the spiritual threads that had swept through their bodies rose pale, mist-like shapes that were unmistakably the souls of martial artists.
The lone warrior who had knelt to save his own life began to tremble violently, his jaw clacking. He had realized that if he had been just a little slower to kneel, he would have died like the others.
His life as a warrior had effectively ended there, with the light already gone from his eyes.
I turned away and resumed walking.
But the servant, though terrified, had been leading the way so well that he had now frozen in place and could no longer move.
“Are you envious of the dead?”
“H-hic! No! Absolutely not! I-I’ll guide you at once!”
This time, however, the daughter of the Baekri clan in our party was trembling so badly she could not move.
When I turned my gaze to her, she met my eyes with one filled with terror.
“Did you ever want to become a cultivator like this?”
At my words, her head drooped weakly. It seemed the image of the cultivator she had once admired only made her even more afraid.
Then my eldest brother asked me, “Do you truly intend to use their souls that way?”
He had lost his family to his enemies, and even lost one eye and his wife’s tongue, and yet warmth still remained in his heart.
“I do. I’ll turn them into puppets to handle all the dirty work of the Neung Family, and make them labor for a thousand years, ten thousand years, until those wooden bodies of theirs wear away.”
My eldest brother’s face darkened with sorrow at my words.
Leaving him behind, I moved on once more.
Then the door to the inner residence, located deeper within the estate, flew open and a group of warriors poured out.
Behind them, the Kim estate lord, his severed legs wrapped in cloth, managed to prop his upper body up with both hands.
“So you came all this way to destroy the Kim family after all!”
The wounded warriors had screamed so pitifully just now that the people inside the inner residence had apparently grasped the general situation.
“The owner has come to reclaim what is his, and yet the thief is the one throwing a tantrum. The wealth and splendor you enjoyed here were originally the property of our family—was it so painful to pay the price with your lives? Then you should never have done it in the first place!”
“You bastard!! The Lotus Heavenly Gate and the Cheon clan will not sit idly by and watch this!”
“Good. Then I had intended to send them after you soon enough as well. If that is all you have to say, then die.”
The moment I finished speaking, I sent my flying sword out at once, and the Kim estate lord, unwilling to lie there and take it, drew the sword from a nearby warrior’s hand.
Then he threw himself into blocking my flying sword with every ounce of strength he had.
And in that instant, as his bloodshot eyes held mine and he braced himself against my strike, my flying sword—already cutting through his blade with sword qi—suddenly stopped. Not only that, but the sword half-embedded in the weapon he held began to force its way backward.
His desperate resolve had finally shattered the wall of the pinnacle that stood before him. The realm of the pinnacle, where one could freely unleash sword qi. Just as I had expected, that was a power that would work even against a magical artifact forged from spiritual materials and against cultivators alike.
But perhaps because of the rapture of having broken through that wall, and the delight of seeing even my flying sword pushed back, the fellow suddenly burst into a booming laugh.
“Kahahaha!! Heaven! Heaven has not abandoned this Kim Jeoksan Mountain! Today I’ll kill you, and I’ll pickle your flesh into salt fish to offer tribute at my son’s grave!”
He had only blocked one of my attacks, and yet he was already talking as though he had won the battle himself. I looked at him and calmly withdrew my flying sword.
Seeing that, he grew even more arrogant and started running his mouth again.
“Yes! Run, if you like! My legs are in this state, so I can’t chase you right this second, but someday I will surely tear out your throat!”
Of course, unlike what he claimed, I had no intention of fleeing. What I wanted was simply to pour my inner power into the flying sword.
Now that my martial attainment had already reached the Essence Transformation realm, creating sword qi was not difficult in the slightest.
In an instant, a massive sheath of sword qi wrapped itself over the flying sword in my hand, and the Kim estate lord, who had been so smug thanks to that thin membrane of sword qi, had his face twisted into a miserable mess.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you to run. After all, you won’t be able to escape me anyway.”
The moment I took one step forward after speaking, the warriors with intact legs all retreated a step in unison. At a glance, it looked as though no loyalty to the Kim estate lord remained in them at all.
Keeping my expression blank, I took another step forward, and then I heard a whisper, as though the wind itself were speaking to me.
“Scatter and run all at once! And when he tries to attack the lord, we strike his companions and capture them!”
It was transmitted voice, the technique martial artists used to speak in secret. The moment those secret words reached the range of my senses, I could hear them too. No wonder it was so difficult for martial artists to face cultivators.
It was precisely the power of cultivators that neutralized the strength of martial artists, as though the two were natural opposites.
“Now!”
With another exchange of transmitted voice, the bodyguards met one another’s eyes and launched themselves into motion. At that very instant, my flying sword—now encased in sword qi as large as a human torso—stabbed into empty air.
Heavenly Demon Three Swords, First Form: Heavenly Demon Flash! When the shadow of the Heavenly Demon cleaves the void, the sword has already pierced the enemy’s heart!
At last, the true martial art of the Heavenly Demon, the one I could use only after crossing beyond the pinnacle and entering the Essence Transformation realm, revealed itself to the world for the first time.