The Treasure of the Baekri Family
On rough, aged paper, the Heaven-Cutting Sword Art was copied by hand.
To anyone of low cultivation, it would surely have looked like nothing more than a madman’s rambling, but the faintly mysterious force carried in the formula itself was something even the least perceptive could not simply dismiss.
That was why my eldest brother had carried it on him all this time, treating it as a third-rate manual whose name sounded impressive enough. Right from the brazen line written on the first page, the very purpose behind this technique had been laid bare.
“Split the heavens with the sword, and defy the laws of heaven!”
In other words, it had been created to confront cultivators who drew strength from the laws of heaven themselves. Yet because the content of each formula was so wildly overweening, ordinary people could only see it as absurd boasting.
“First Stance, Heaven-Cutting Annihilation! When the sword cleaves the void, even the principles of the world will lose all meaning!”
“Second Stance, Heaven-Cutting Star-Absorption! The qi of heaven and earth shall freeze in an instant, and all of that power shall gather upon the sword!”
“Third Stance, Heaven-Cutting Severance of Immortals! The laws of the immortals shall be cut apart, and the heavenly qi shall collapse!”
“Fourth Stance, Heaven-Cutting Reverse Formation! When the will of heaven is taken into the sword, the heavens themselves shall be broken!”
“Fifth Stance, Heaven-Cutting Opening of the Way! Upon the fallen heavens, a new road shall be opened!”
A martial art that rendered the principles of the world meaningless, stopped the flow of heaven and earth, shattered the laws of immortals and heavenly qi, and in the end even broke the heavens themselves.
If this art did not seem absurd to someone, then that, rather, would have been the strange thing.
But as I read the manual—complete with annotations that carefully explained each formula—I did not feel that the Heaven-Cutting Sword Art was nonsense at all.
The commentary on the very first formula was already strikingly similar to a martial art I knew.
‘If you would break the law, first grasp the resonance of the sword. The instant the sword is thrust, leave a tremor behind, and let that tremor shatter the law. Do not tear space by force, but by principle; erase the law not with strength, but with sharpness.’
The very idea of vibrating the sword with internal qi and then striking an enemy with the resulting tremor was extremely close to the first stance of Heaven-Demon Three Swords, Heavenly Demon Flash, which I had learned myself.
All rivers return to the source, indeed. In the end, all branches of martial arts seemed to converge upon the same point.
And yet the Heaven-Cutting Sword Art was not merely similar to Heaven-Demon Three Swords.
Not only did it contain passages impossible to understand unless one could freely wield sword qi and glimpse the realm beyond it, but unlike Heaven-Demon Three Swords, which had only three stances, this art was built from five.
In the end, the urge to try cultivating the Heaven-Cutting Sword Art right away rose in me, and after checking that my eldest brother was still deep in his trance, circulating his qi, I left the room without a sound.
Then, in the middle of the courtyard, I immediately began vibrating my sword with internal qi, just as I had when using Heavenly Demon Flash, the first stance of Heaven-Demon Three Swords.
Buzzzzz—
As the sword trembled faster than I had expected, sword qi surged with it, and before long even the space around it began to twist, ever so slightly.
If Heaven-Demon Three Swords simply used those countless vibrations to unleash dozens of unexpected strands of sword qi at an enemy, then the first stance of the Heaven-Cutting Sword Art was a method that poured in even more internal qi, raising the vibration speed itself to produce another result altogether: the faint warping of space.
The reason the Heaven-Cutting Sword Art deliberately consumed more energy to create distortions in space was obvious enough.
There had to be something that even sword qi could not cut at once, or something that would require great effort to cut with sword qi alone. Things like magical implements or protective barriers used by cultivators, for example.
When I swung my sword toward the sky, having at last grasped the essence hidden within the first stance of the Heaven-Cutting Sword Art, space itself seemed to be sliced apart for an instant—only to knit back together moments later.
That single move alone proved that the Heaven-Cutting Sword Art was not merely a third-rate manual full of empty nonsense.
So I immediately moved on to the second stance.
‘The qi that enfolds heaven and earth is not the same for everyone. Cage that flow and gather it upon the sword. An enemy robbed of qi is no different from a scarecrow.’
Perhaps because my spiritual root had become sturdier thanks to the Spirit-Heart River Array, I could understand even the second formula, which seemed more difficult at first glance, without much trouble.
So I immediately began drawing the qi of heaven and earth around me into my sword.
The sword soon hummed loudly in response. The problem was that the qi I gathered was only natural energy converted into internal qi; it was not spiritual qi.
According to the original formula, this stance was supposed to briefly draw in the surrounding spiritual qi as well, even disrupting the spell arts of an opponent. Unfortunately, because I had been rejected by heaven and was unable to move the spiritual qi around me, it became a stance I could not even hope to realize.
In the end, I suppressed my disappointment, scattered the natural energy I had gathered for the second stance, and turned my attention to the third.
‘Grasp the sword that cleaves the soul. Wherever its tip reaches, the laws of the immortals shall be severed, and body and spirit shall return to one.’
The profound meaning of the third stance, Heaven-Cutting Severance of Immortals, was to cut the connection between an overgrown lawful soul and the body.
However, even though I understood that meaning at once, it was impossible to accomplish at present.
That was not because this too was obstructed by the heaven-rejection phenomenon, but because severing the connection between body and soul according to this stance first required training the senses to locate the point where that connection existed.
So I quietly closed my eyes and began by examining how my own lawful soul and body were linked. As I finished my Qi Refining and felt that enlarged lawful soul within me, I also began searching for the way it connected to the outside world.
To be honest, now that my cultivation had risen so sharply that my lawful soul and body were almost one, tearing the soul away from the body was an almost impossible task.
And yet, because the lawful soul had become one with the body, I did not think cutting away the external domain that had become controllable through that union was impossible.
After all, the flow of spiritual qi that had escaped from my body was already encroaching upon a certain area outside me.
Of course, even if that flow were severed, it would reconnect before long and only produce a very brief barrier. But the fact that such a thing could even be done was remarkable in itself.
In a true expert’s battle, victory and defeat were often decided by that one fleeting move.
Even if it was difficult to use in real combat right away, this was enough to make me turn with renewed delight to the fourth stance.
‘When you defy the flow of heaven, even the tide runs backward. When you defy the flow of the sword, the principles of heaven and earth will break. Sever the flow before a formation is complete, and reverse an already completed formation with sword qi.’
As its name, Heaven-Cutting Reverse Formation, suggested, this fourth stance had been created to shatter a cultivator’s formations. I had not yet learned many formations, nor had I encountered an enemy who used them freely.
But there were cultivators who specialized in formations with extraordinary abilities, much like the one in Nine Palaces Tower. Just because I had not faced them yet did not mean this fourth stance was useless.
Besides, if I used the sense I had gained from the third stance—the sense of severing the flow between body and soul—it seemed likely I could master this as well. That special perception, which allowed me to learn two stances at once, was something I would need to hone a little further.
And as for the final fifth stance…
‘What shall you do when heaven and earth collapse? Seek a new road upon the ruined heavens. The sword is not merely for cleaving; carve your own path. Whoever would block this new road does not exist in this world.’
Ordinary martial artists would not understand this commentary at all, even if they read it. In fact, until just a little while ago, it had been a commentary I found extremely difficult to understand myself.
But now I understood exactly what it meant.
The first stance, Heaven-Cutting Annihilation, and the final fifth stance, Heaven-Cutting Opening of the Way, followed the same current.
In other words, if the first stance, Heaven-Cutting Annihilation, was about vibrating the sword quickly to create a faint warp in space, then the fifth stance, Heaven-Cutting Opening of the Way, was a move that created a massive distortion in space capable of breaking whatever target it aimed for—just as the words said: to break the heavens and open a new road.
So I poured a great deal of internal qi into the sword and began vibrating the enlarged sword qi as quickly as possible. Like the first stance, this fifth stance seemed worth trying as well.
But as the greater distortion in space began to form, the pressure of spiritual qi around me suddenly increased as well. It felt almost as if spiritual qi were surging like waves from beyond the rift in space.
I had no idea what lay beyond that crack in space, but it was enough to make me believe that the other side could be filled entirely with spiritual qi and I still would have accepted it.
And then the wonders kept coming.
The moment I traced the fifth stance through the air with my sword, space did not merely split and then heal as before; this time, it opened wide as though a hole had been torn in the void itself.
And beyond that opening, astonishingly, was a blue sky I knew all too well.
A blue sky appearing in the middle of this place’s yellow heavens, faded like old paper…
Could the space beyond that crack really be the world I knew?
As I stared at the opening, large enough for a person to pass through, and let my curiosity grow about what lay beyond it, a pale, hazy energy suddenly appeared, veiling the blue sky.
Then that energy soon sealed the rift where the blue sky had been, filling the gap once more with the faded, yellow sky…
Just as I was about to cut the void open again with the Heaven-Cutting Sword Art, I felt another presence approaching me.
Worried that the visitor might run into trouble if I continued, I first finished my training with the Heaven-Cutting Sword Art. Then, after hanging my Flying Sword back at my waist and waiting, I heard the rustling approach toward me after a brief hesitation.
When the figure finally revealed herself, I spoke first.
“It’s late, and my eldest brother still hasn’t returned, so I suppose you couldn’t sleep either. He’s in the middle of training right now. He’s driving out the turbid energy that had lingered in his body and circulating the mental method he just learned, so it’ll take a little more time.”
At my words, she bowed her head. No—she was not simply bowing; she was writing characters on the dirt with a branch.
‘I have repaid an old grudge, so I must repay a kindness.’
She was saying that, having settled an old grievance, she would now repay a debt of gratitude. Among the people harmed by the Gold Marital Alliance Master, Jin Deok-san, were not only the members of the Neung family but also the people of her own family, the Baekri family, so she seemed to regard my killing him as an act deserving thanks.
“I didn’t resolve the Baekri family’s grudge. I only avenged the Neung family. So there’s no need to repay me for anything.”
And yet, even after hearing me, she shook her head with a firm expression and took something from inside her robes, then held it out to me. It was a folded scrap of cloth with bloodstains on one end.
Since I did not sense any special energy from it, I accepted the cloth and unfolded it.
Inside, a rather intriguing line of writing caught my eye.
‘The method for crafting the Great Ultimate Yang Brightness Pill is a mysterious secret inherited from our Baekri family’s ancestors, and so it was hidden beneath the foundation stone of the clan to guard against foreign greed.’
The method for making the Great Ultimate Yang Brightness Pill—the very reason I had been driven out of the Neung clan.
In truth, the Great Ultimate Yang Brightness Pill, which increased both internal energy and spiritual qi at once, was a fairly valuable thing. Naturally, the method for producing such a pill was even more valuable.