A Sudden Gale
“Kh-urgh!”
Her strength depleted, Ryeong finally sank to one knee. Had she acted too rashly?
She had pushed herself past the limit. Knowing full well she was hopelessly outmatched, she had stubbornly forced a head-on clash anyway, and this was the bitter result. To make matters worse, the Jongnam brats were trying to form an encirclement around the foe, thoroughly convinced they could actually help.
Every fiber of her being screamed at them to turn tail and run. For anyone who had yet to reach the Peak Realm, confronting a master of the Absolute Peak was nothing short of suicide. The sole reason Ryeong had endured this long was her baptism in countless life-or-death battles; greenhorns who had never tasted real blood would not last a single breath.
“Jongnam does not abandon those who come to our aid!”
“Keep your wits about you! Our enemy is a master of the Absolute Peak!”
“Remember your training!”
The disciples were trembling with fear, their eyes already consumed by terror. They possessed neither the heart nor the will for this slaughter, yet they raised their swords all the same. Because Ryeong had saved them. Because Ryeong was bleeding for Jongnam.
Old man... is this what you wanted me to see?
This was true chivalry. Not empty platitudes, not calculated gains and losses, but throwing oneself into mortal peril for another's sake in spite of paralyzing dread. A swelling surge of emotion tightened in her chest. She had no idea why she felt this way, but it wasn't half bad. Their desperate defiance breathed fresh vigor into her battered limbs.
The leader of the raiders twisted his lips into a sneer. In truth, he didn't feel the slightest bit threatened.
There's no reason to slaughter them all anyway.
Once he secured the sacred relic, his work here was done; until then, everything else was mere diversion. Though the masked assassin was dangerous, she was hardly an insurmountable variable.
“I will grant you one final mercy,” the raider declared smoothly. “Flee now, and I shall let every last one of you live.”
“What did you say?!”
“You're the bastards who ambushed us in the first place!”
An arrogant decree—hardly words fitting a man surrounded on all sides. The second- and third-generation disciples shouted in outrage. Having already witnessed Jongnam crumble before their eyes, they could look upon this intruder with nothing but seething hatred. Yet those with sharper wits saw the reality for what it was.
The enemy was offering clemency. Even if he was the villain responsible for bringing ruin to their sect, accepting his offer was the only logical choice for those charged with protecting so many young lives.
“Will you truly spare us?”
“Martial Uncle?! What are you saying?!”
“We vastly outnumber him! He struck at us without provocation!”
“We cannot let this go!”
“And if we cannot let it go,” the senior disciple barked, “do any of you have a way to strike him down?!”
At the roar of Cheongheon—the first-generation head disciple who had entered Jongnam before anyone else among them—the junior disciples clamped their mouths shut and stared down at the dirt. They were not blind. An Absolute Peak master could stand shoulder to shoulder with the leader of an entire sect; to mere first-rate combatants, such a being was an insurmountable wall.
Just then, a steady voice cut through the silence.
“We cannot let this go.”
“Jinyeong?”
Jinyeong stepped toward the masked assassin and pressed something into her hand before anyone could intervene. When Cheongheon realized what it was, his eyes went wide with horror.
“You! Why on earth would you give that away now?!”
“Let us withdraw,” Jinyeong replied calmly. “This person will take care of everything now.”
“That's not the damn point!!”
The pill Jinyeong had placed in the masked assassin's palm was none other than one of the greatest sacred elixirs crafted by their neighbors, the Mount Hua Sect: the Purple Mist Divine Pill.
A miracle medicine that granted decades of pure internal energy with a single swallow! A peerless panacea capable of forcefully shattering the martial barrier for a first-rate expert poised on the threshold of the Peak Realm! To simply surrender such a treasure to a complete stranger... Cheongheon could not begin to fathom what was going through Jinyeong's head, especially considering the trials the boy had endured to obtain it in the first place.
The real trouble began the instant the pill was consumed. The amusement vanished from the raider leader's eyes. Refusing to grant her another second, he launched a preemptive strike at Ryeong as she swallowed the elixir.
“No—!”
Jinyeong desperately lunged to shield her, but the raider's blade was already descending to cleave Ryeong's skull in two.
BOOOOM!
“Kuh-urk!”
A colossal shockwave shattered the disciples' formation, sending them stumbling back. Seizing the gap, Cheongheon bellowed, his voice infused with inner qi:
“All disciples! Fall back!”
Not a single person hesitated. The instant a master of the Absolute Peak bared unadulterated killing intent, the very air grew suffocatingly heavy. The disciples scrambled backward purely on survival instinct. Jinyeong stubbornly refused to leave, swearing to fight to the end, but Cheongheon, on the verge of fury, struck his sleeping acupoint.
“Sleep for now.”
He hoisted the limp youth onto his back and wheeled around. While the younger disciples might have missed it, Cheongheon had caught the assassin's movement—she had evaded the blow and repositioned elsewhere.
While that bastard's eyes are glued to the assassin—that's our only chance!
If they missed this window, their chances of survival were effectively zero. Slinging Jinyeong higher onto his back, Cheongheon bolted from the clearing.
Meanwhile...
“I believe this is what they call a dog chasing a hen onto a thatched roof?”
“Not quite. It's more like the quiet cat snatching the fish from the hearth, you idiot.”
Having completely purged the energy-dispersing poison with the Purple Mist Divine Pill, Ryeong curled the corners of her mouth upward. But it had done far more than just neutralize a poison.
Normally, consuming an elixir demanded immediate meditative circulation so the body could properly assimilate its potent medicinal essence. Yet Ryeong had bypassed that process entirely; her Celestial Immortal Divine Art had greedily devoured every scrap of energy the moment it entered her stomach. She had no clue how the mechanics worked, but in that single, explosive breath, Ryeong shattered the barrier and ascended straight into the Absolute Peak Realm. Though the Transcendent Realm was still far off, her internal reserves now rivaled those of the raider leader.
And that meant one simple thing.
“You're dead meat now.”
In a duel to the death between equals, victory always belonged to the one with greater combat experience. In other words, the outcome of this fight had just been sealed.
“Amusing. Let's see you tr—”
“Right. Let's.”
“—?!”
Swoooosh!
In a single bound, Ryeong closed the distance until she was breathing down his neck. Stunned by a burst of speed that defied imagination, the raider recoiled. Anticipating his retreat, Ryeong took half a step further forward. Unable to keep up with her uncanny agility, the raider leader instinctively threw up a guard, but—
Thwack!
Her dagger plunged cleanly into his left collarbone.
“Kh-argh! You wretched wench!”
Grimacing in agony, the raider slashed wildly with his sword. Ryeong tracked the blade's path with razor-sharp dynamic vision, contorting her supple body to let the steel slip harmlessly past. Twisting mid-motion, she snapped a kick directly at his right temple.
“Insolent!”
Having caught on to her speed, the raider brought the flat of his blade up just in time to block her heel. But the kick was never the true attack.
Thwip-thwip-thwip!
The hand she had planted on the ground to pivot was suddenly elsewhere. In the blink of an eye, three throwing daggers sprouted from his thigh.
The raider stiffened in shock. Giving him no room to breathe, Ryeong pressed the assault relentlessly.
Th-th-th-thump!
An assassin burying daggers into an opponent at point-blank range, within arm's reach—who could have imagined such madness? Assassins were supposed to favor range and shadows, an occupation forged to kill silently, surely, and from afar. Yet Ryeong shattered every established notion of the trade. Slipping into hyper-close quarters, she carved through split seconds to deliver devastating blows.
“You slippery little ferret!!”
“My, your language is getting rather foul, isn't it?”
“Shut your mouth!”
The raider stomped the ground with a thunderous stomp step, hoping to shake her footing and restrict her maneuvers. Instead, the heavy motion only exposed a fatal opening.
Shiiing! Thunk-thwack!
Daggers poured incessantly from beneath her black robes—one had to wonder if her sleeves were bottomless. The momentum had shifted irrevocably. No matter how desperately he struggled to seize control, every effort was met with steel striking from his blind spots. Close-quarters, mid-range, long-range—none of it worked. It was no longer a battle between equals; it was a predator methodically dismantling its prey.
“God DAMMIT!!”
Driven mad by desperation, the raider flailed in wild frenzy. As if she had anticipated even his madness, Ryeong toyed with him effortlessly. Slowly, relentlessly, with every step he took, she pelted him with throwing knives, daggers, and any scrap of metal on her person, punching holes across his flesh. Before long, the raider bristled like a porcupine. It was the gruesome price of clashing at a tempo that left him without even a fraction of a second to yank out the blades embedded in his body.
“Hah... kh-urgh...”
His knee finally slammed into the dirt. In stark contrast, Ryeong stood before him, casually spinning a dagger, her breathing barely elevated.
“What? Is that all you've got?”
The raider stared up at her in utter disbelief.
“Are you... some kind of monster?”
“Monster? Don't be ridiculous.”
“A sudden awakening might be explained away, but... the way you wield that newly blossomed qi, the way you move—that is never the work of a novice.”
He still could not fathom her state. Under normal circumstances, an expert stepping into the Absolute Peak for the very first time was no different from a newborn infant. They lacked tempo control; their bodies simply could not govern such an abrupt influx of immense power. Yet Ryeong was different. Far from stumbling, her movements had become sharper, cleaner, and vastly more lethal—like a fish returned to water.
Ryeong's lips curled into a broad smirk beneath her mask. Though the porcelain surface hid her expression, the raider could not shake the spine-chilling dread washing over him. To him, she seemed less like a human and more like a vengeful specter.
Just then, the raider's eyelids fluttered, and he let out a long, resigned sigh—the breath of a man who had abandoned all hope.
“...It seems I am the victor of this battle after all.”
“What?”
“Mission accomplished.”
SPLATTER!
Without warning, the raider drove his own blade straight into his throat. A man who had clawed desperately for survival moments ago was now ending his own life after declaring his mission complete?
“Wait, don't tell me—!”
Their true objective was the sacred relic. Which meant his accomplice had successfully acquired it. Panic seized Ryeong, and she broke into a sprint. She had to recover the stolen relic at all costs. The trouble was that a familiar presence had just begun radiating in the distance.
“Taecheong Jin'in?!”
A grandmaster of the Transcendent Realm and the revered Sect Leader of Mount Jongnam. He was closing in on the mountain at blinding speed. Ryeong's mind raced. Officially, she was supposed to be locked away in the prison caves; if she was caught lingering here, she would inevitably become entangled in the fallout of this catastrophe.
I need to retrieve the relic, but...
There was no time. Taecheong Jin'in's return meant whatever business had kept him away had drawn to a close. She had to sneak back into her cell and act like an obedient prisoner before anyone noticed. Ryeong melted into the shadows, hastily retreating from the scene.
And soon after...
“...Hwanggu. Hwangyeol.”
Taecheong Jin'in stood frozen in the ruined courtyard, staring down at the severed heads of the two elders, unable to tear his eyes away for a very long time.