Four Divine Beasts Sword
“Kill me. Do whatever you want, you’ll never pry a single word from my mouth.”
“You seem confused. If you think a disciple of Mount Jongnam doesn’t know how to torture someone, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“I am a man who endured countless tortures within our holy cult and walked away—Aaargh!”
“My torture is a little different, you see.”
Ryeong was interrogating a captured Blood Red Squad operative. She had originally intended to slaughter them all, but decided it was far more profitable to keep at least one alive to pry out information.
The wretch showed no sign of opening his mouth willingly. Yet Ryeong was all too familiar with such stubbornness.
How long had she lived as an assassin? Torturing another human being was no harder than breathing.
“Kaaagh! Just... kill me!”
“Quite resilient, aren’t you? But you won’t die until you spit out what I want to know. Give up now—it’s so much easier on both of us.”
Ryeong carried on the interrogation well out of Jin-young’s sight. She had ordered him to keep watch over Gu Ryang and prevent him from fleeing.
The man was merely a mountain bandit, yet he had ambushed and eliminated a transcendent master of the Blood Formed Array. That alone made him worth keeping alive. Without him, concluding the battle would have taken much longer.
“May glory shine upon the Sacred Cult—!”
Crunch!
The operative slammed his jaw shut in an attempt to take his own life. Ryeong thought she had already dislocated his jawbone to render self-harm impossible, but the zealot ignored the blinding agony, wrenching his facial muscles to bite through his own tongue.
Dark blood flooded forth in an instant, and his violent tremors swiftly subsided into stillness. In the end, he had perished without yielding a shred of intelligence.
“Is this really all that’s left?”
Ryeong drew out a crimson bead. It was a bizarre, inscrutable object she had plucked from the corpse of Mu Ui-seong. A bead possessed only by a unit commander of his standing was bound to be anything but ordinary.
Tucking it securely away, Ryeong looked up at the sky. Midnight had settled over the land, the moon hanging cold and high.
Traveling any further tonight would leave them without a chance of finding lodging at an inn. Her plan was to camp out here for the night and pay another visit to the Tang Family as soon as dawn broke.
By now, the spiritual beast Gu Ryang had spoken of had long slipped her mind.
“You’re saying this bead belonged to a commander of the Demon Blood Divine Cult?”
“Yes. Now do you understand why I came back? That bastard of a commander knew I was in the Transformation Realm.”
“...Starting today, I will suspend all outside clan activities for the time being. I promise you that I will comb through every soul in this household, down to the lowliest servant, until every spy of the Demon Blood Divine Cult is rooted out.”
Tang Jin’s eyes flashed with a lethal edge. The traitor had not been limited to Dang Cheol-ryeong; the rot had burrowed deep into the clan’s core.
At this point, there was no guaranteeing that only one spy remained. For all they knew, the infiltrators numbered in the double digits.
As the Young Clan Head and current acting leader, Tang Jin was on the verge of losing his mind with rage and anxiety. Dang Heo-gun would return soon, and facing the sheer disaster his clan had become filled Tang Jin with dread over what might unfold.
“You’re a reasonable man, Young Clan Head. I trust you, which is why I’m leaving this in your hands. You’d better not lose it, understood?”
“I shall mobilize the entire Tang Family to uncover its purpose.”
“And see if you can nurture that fellow out there. This is a request, not a demand, so feel free to drop him if you find him lacking.”
“If you recommend him, Lady Ryeong, there must be something of worth in him. While I cannot offer him the Tang Family’s secret martial arts, I will ensure he receives every comfort and opportunity.”
Ryeong had decided to leave Gu Ryang in the care of the Tang Family. At first, she had briefly contemplated passing down the Heaven-Killing Art to him, but his talent was ill-suited to bear it. No matter how secretive a personal martial art might be, scattering it about indiscriminately served no purpose.
Unless someone truly caught her eye, she had no intention of bestowing Cheonsal’s true legacy.
Regardless, Tang Jin would tear through the Tang Family to root out the Demon Blood Divine Cult’s spies, and those vipers would surely report the developments back to the cult.
The roads ahead might well crawl with cult divisions waiting for Ryeong. Even she had never imagined crossing paths with the Demon Blood Divine Cult right here in the Tang Family.
She had drawn their attention far too early. These were madmen capable of carrying out a wholesale massacre in Hu County.
Under circumstances like these, was wandering the Jianghu as a pair of two truly wise?
The intelligence that I’ve reached the Transformation Realm has already leaked. From now on, the foes I encounter may be far stronger than the Blood Red Squad.
Dragging Jin-young along at a time like this put his life in grave jeopardy. Yet she knew that even if she tried to leave him behind, he would never accept it.
Which meant that if he wanted to survive the coming storms against the cult...
“Y-You expect us to use light-footwork all the way to Hubei?! Is that even something a human being can do?!”
“I’m telling you because it is. You might be a first-rate master right now, but the cult experts we’ll encounter going forward will easily surpass peak masters. They already know I’m in the Transformation Realm.”
“You know just as well as I do that running around doesn’t magically boost someone’s cultivation realm...”
“Then should I just leave you here? We have a long road ahead.”
Jin-young fell silent at her question. His silence spoke volumes: he dreaded being abandoned here alone far more than he dreaded sprinting all the way to Hubei.
What choice did he have, then? He had to run.
“Two days. We’re arriving in Hubei within two days, so brace yourself. Understood?”
“T-Two days?! Do you have any idea how far that is?! You’re telling me to run for two whole days without resting?!”
“Are you the type to sit on your hands and wait to die when a grandmaster hunts you down and traps you in an inescapable snare? You have to run like hell if you want to live.”
“Why would I ever get caught in an inescapable snare in the first place?”
“Don’t assume you won’t. You know as well as I do that war with the Demon Blood Divine Cult is inevitable sooner or later.”
Jin-young clamped his mouth shut. That they would have to wage war against the Demon Blood Divine Cult was an inescapable certainty. When that time came, in a meat grinder of kill-or-be-killed, they would have to swing their swords until their dying breath.
Without fundamental stamina to back it up, surviving a war was an absolute impossibility. And Ryeong understood the importance of stamina better than anyone alive.
Because she had been an assassin, desperate for every scrap of advantage to kill her mark, she had done whatever it took to elevate her survival rate as a mortal human being.
It was that very experience that had forged the Ryeong of today. While she would not force her harsh methods onto Jin-young, physical stamina was a non-negotiable exception.
A building could only stand tall on a sturdy foundation.
Jin-young was still a budding sprout; if he built up his endurance from the ground up now, the day would come when it would bear brilliant fruit.
“If you still don’t want to run, I’m really leaving you behind. What’s your answer?”
“I’ll run. But I don’t even know my own limits, so don’t expect any guarantees.”
“That’s the spirit. If you can’t keep up, I’ll just abandon you on the road, so grit your teeth and stay on my heels.”
Whoosh!
With that, Ryeong burst forward in a blur of light-footwork, and Jin-young gritted his teeth, dashing after her wake.
She’s always so willful and reckless, but that’s precisely why she shines so brilliantly.
Over the past year, Jin-young had learned an immense amount from Ryeong. Along the way, deep awe and respect for her had blossomed within his heart.
A person who overflowed with mischievous teasing on ordinary days, yet turned deadly serious whenever the moment called for it.
By remaining at her side, Jin-young had been able to discover a new side of himself.
Tough trials undoubtedly lay ahead, but so long as he was with her, he was certain they could overcome them all.
Two days later.
Having departed Sichuan and crossed the threshold into Hubei Province, Ryeong and Jin-young presented two starkly contrasting sights.
“Look at that. See? It worked, didn’t it? Stop thinking you can’t do it and just throw yourself into it. People don’t die that easily.”
“...Don’t have the breath... to speak.”
A stream of curses rose to the tip of his tongue, only to be swallowed back down. Having pushed his light-footwork non-stop for two straight days, his legs no longer felt like part of his body.
The uncontrollable trembling was one thing, but with every step he took, he felt on the verge of collapsing face-first into the dirt.
Ryeong, on the other hand, was as fresh as a daisy. This wasn’t merely a gap in their cultivation realms; it was pure, unadulterated baseline stamina.
Now he understood all too well why she placed such brutal emphasis on physical endurance.
“If it’s really that bad, you could just swallow the Poison Sky Pill.”
“That is my lifeline... Unless I’m on the brink of death, I intend to save it.”
The Poison Sky Pill was the Tang Family’s supreme esoteric elixir. It was a miraculous cure capable of pulling a person back from the jaws of death with a single dose.
Rather than squandering it for an immediate breakthrough in cultivation, Jin-young had chosen to keep it in reserve for future crises.
It was a matter of personal conviction, so she had no reason to fault him for it. As for Ryeong, she intended to absorb her own Poison Sky Pill once she found a secure and peaceful environment.
I need to refine the Four Divine Beasts Sword, after all.
It currently felt like wearing clothes that didn’t fit. Although the Four Divine Beasts Sword originated from the Celestial Immortal Divine Art, executing it with celestial qi drained an exorbitant amount of internal energy.
It possessed devastating destructive power, but the consumption was simply too immense. To wield it effectively in real combat, she needed to reduce its internal energy cost.
And so, Ryeong and Jin-young made their way deeper into Hubei. Their very first order of business was finding a nearby inn to sit down and order a hearty meal.
Jin-young, in particular, ate as though possessed by a ravenous ghost after two days of starvation, shoveling food into his mouth the second it touched the table.
Even as he ate, his limbs shuddered uncontrollably—clear proof that he had truly wrung out every last drop of his physical endurance.
It was right at that moment.
“You worthless bastard! How dare you lay a finger on the Tyrant Blade Chaos Ghost?! Do you have a death wish?!”
A commotion erupted across the inn. Evidently, some boorish ruffian had picked a fight with another patron.