The Unorthodox of Hubei
“What bastard dares trespass here?!”
“Bitch, actually.”
In the blink of an eye, Ryeong found herself encircled by the martial artists of the Fire Tiger Sword Sect. Their movements were crisp and well-drilled, suggesting they had rehearsed for sudden intrusions many times before.
Standing at the center of the encirclement was a man radiating an oppressive weight of authority. Anyone with eyes could tell he was the master of the sect.
“Are you the sect leader here?” Ryeong asked nonchalantly.
“Barging in without warning and spouting nonsense... Do you have a death wish?”
“When someone asks you a question, the polite thing to do is answer. Are my words too hard for you to understand?”
“Reasoning with her is pointless,” the sect leader scoffed, losing whatever patience he had left. He waved a dismissive hand to his men. “Break her limbs and bind her.”
“Understood!”
He turned his back, expecting the matter to conclude in seconds. Smashed gates or not, she was just one woman. How could a lone intruder ever hope to overcome this many trained warriors?
Or so he thought, right until the following instant.
KABOOM!
Bodies sailed past the turning sect leader, hurtling through the air at a velocity far surpassing any lightness art. Scenting something terribly amiss, he whipped back around, only to see her standing there with a relaxed smirk, crooking her index finger at him in an unmistakable taunt.
Don’t bother sending lackeys. Come at me yourself.
“I intended to spare your life,” the sect leader growled, his face darkening, “but you leave me no choice.”
“Spare my life? You don’t even know your own pl—”
Whoosh!
Closing the distance in a single breath, the sect leader aimed a lethal thrust straight at Ryeong’s throat. Yet with a subtle tilt of her head and a flurry of short, precise steps, she vanished from his line of sight, slipping effortlessly toward his blind spot.
Stunned by her absurd speed, he twisted his torso in sheer desperation. By a paper-thin margin, Ryeong’s dagger sheared past his stray locks of hair.
A chill seized his spine, forcing him a step backward. He had no inkling that the near-miss had been an intentional mercy on Ryeong’s part.
“For someone who swaggered forward so confidently, you’re looking awfully skittish,” she teased.
“Shut your mouth!”
Regaining his footing, the sect leader unleashed the full brunt of his inner energy. Instinct screamed that even the slightest lapse in concentration would cost him his life. Yet Ryeong merely regarded him with casual amusement. He was marginally stronger than Sect Leader Gwi Hujin of the Saber Ghost Gang, but that was the extent of it.
To someone who had attained the Transformation Realm like Ryeong, he was nothing more than a convenient plaything. The only trouble was that the man seemed under the tragic illusion that they were evenly matched.
“Witness the pride of our sect—the Raging Fire Tiger Sword! Take this!”
“A tiger, huh?” Ryeong murmured.
ROAAAR!
With a thunderous beastly roar, fiery crimson qi erupted across his blade, dispersing like a shower of embers. Though she had never encountered this sword art before, it clearly wasn’t some crude scoundrel’s style. If he was calling upon the tiger, it was only right to answer in kind.
“Funny enough, I’ve got one of those too.”
“What...?!”
A low, guttural growl vibrated through the earth as a pure, luminescent white energy began to swirl from the tips of Ryeong’s feet. The sect leader, just about to charge, involuntarily flinched. The disparity between them was supposed to be manageable, yet the aura billowing around her now shattered every conventional standard of mortal martial arts.
Imbued with the ferocious majesty of the Western Guardian Beast. Where the Black Tortoise defends and the Vermilion Bird executes, the White Tiger reigns supreme in absolute destructive devastation.
The Four Divine Beasts Sword was an art notoriously difficult to wield in real combat, primarily due to its ruinous consumption of inner energy. To solve that flaw, she needed to pinpoint its operational bottlenecks under genuine combat pressure—without placing herself in actual mortal danger. And right now, this man presented the ideal testing ground.
As expected, the sect leader stood paralyzed. The surrounding disciples were equally frozen, suffocating beneath the invisible weight of the colossal white beast descending upon the courtyard.
“Not coming?” Ryeong asked, tilting her head. “Should I make the first move, then?”
“Impudent wench! How dare you look down on me!”
“I wasn't looking down on you at all.”
When Ryeong settled into her opening stance, the sect leader ground his teeth and kicked off the flagstones, pouring every scrap of internal qi into a decisive, desperate killing strike.
Watching him rush forward, Ryeong exhaled a frosty breath.
“First Stance: Great Tiger Intersecting Sever.”
A single step accelerated past the threshold of sight, piercing the atmosphere until she materialized right before his face. His pupils dilated in slow motion; his nervous system simply could not process the speed at which she moved.
She is different.
She existed on a completely different plane of reality. Calling them equals was a delusion. From the very beginning, she had been dancing circles around him.
Only with death greeting him face-to-face did the sect leader understand that this entire confrontation had been her stage.
Still... so this is what a technique from the transcendent realm feels like.
A single stroke. Two distinct crossing arcs of sword qi.
A physically impossible form unfolded right before his eyes. It was no illusion; both arcs possessed identical, terrifying cutting power. His feet had already left the earth, and she was far too close for him to twist his momentum away. There was no escape. This was death.
SHRRRIIING—!
The whistling gale ceased abruptly. The blade hovered a hair's breadth from his throat.
“...Why did you stop?” he gasped out, his chest heaving.
“It felt like a waste to kill you,” Ryeong replied coolly. “You had a fleeting moment of enlightenment just watching my sword, didn't you?”
“How... how could you possibly know that?”
Ho Jihwan, Sect Leader of the Fire Tiger Sword Sect, completely overhauled his tone. He was no longer in any position to look down upon her or speak with casual disrespect.
Ryeong found herself quite pleased with Ho Jihwan's immediate shift in attitude. Unlike the slippery sycophancy of Gwi Hujin from the Saber Ghost Gang, this man demonstrated genuine humility and earnest martial sincerity.
“Doesn't that just prove the astronomical gap between us?” she remarked.
“...I have committed a grave discourtesy,” Ho Jihwan conceded with a deep bow. “Please forgive my insolence. I shall receive you as an honored guest and extend every proper courtesy.”
“I hear you have bad blood with the Saber Ghost Gang,” she said, cutting straight to the chase. “What caused it?”
Ho Jihwan halted, thoroughly baffled. No matter how much he racked his brain, he could not fathom what common ground this woman could share with the Saber Ghost Gang. She was an peerless swordmaster; the moves she had just displayed could never be born from a saber artist's lineage. Her forms bore the purest essence of the sword. Yet, having already offended her once, he refrained from prying into her background.
“Every time we attempted reconciliation in the past, an incident disrupted it,” Ho Jihwan explained somberly. “I am aware that it was not truly the Saber Ghost Gang’s fault, but far too much time and bad blood have accumulated between our men.”
“Then if an impartial mediator steps in, can the two of you unite?”
Ho Jihwan fell silent. From her words alone, it was evident that she desired peace between their factions. Whatever her ultimate goal, for someone of her caliber to come knocking meant she intended to achieve something greater through their coalition.
Weighing his thoughts carefully, Ho Jihwan finally spoke.
“...It will not be easy. Unless, of course, we share a common enemy.”
“Enemies can be made easily enough. Isn’t Wudang right around the corner?”
“Even if Wudang has faced hardships recently, our sects possess no grandmasters at or above the Transformation Realm. If we band together to provoke them, nothing awaits us but total annihilation.”
The wall of Wudang was insurmountable. While Mount Zhongnan was revered as the foremost sword sect of Shaanxi, Wudang was heralded across the world as the foremost sword sect under heaven. Even if their recent momentum had waned, Wudang remained Wudang—an ancient titan not to be provoked lightly.
Even if every unorthodox sect in Hubei formed an alliance, they stood zero chance of breaching past the Sword Relinquishing Pool. In the eyes of Hubei's unorthodox factions, Wudang loomed even larger than Shaolin.
Ryeong had already known this, of course; she had merely floated the name to test his mettle. Since Wudang was out of the question, uniting them required a more plausible target.
“Do you know the name of the unorthodox power rooted in Wuhan?”
“The Martial Twin Society,” Ho Jihwan replied, his brow furrowing. “Why do you mention them?”
“If the Saber Ghost Gang and the Fire Tiger Sword Sect join forces, wouldn't you have the strength to swallow the Martial Twin Society whole? Or do you plan to squabble over petty turf in this cramped backwater forever?”
“...”
Ho Jihwan bit his lip. Wudang was a suicide mission, but the Martial Twin Society was an entirely different matter. While they were formidable, a unified front between his sect and the Saber Ghost Gang could realistically bring them down. Absorbing their territory would vastly expand their sphere of influence, eliminating the friction of competing for local scraps.
In the long run, survival demanded unity. While a sect leader had to heed his subordinates' concerns, there came moments where bold decisiveness was paramount.
“Very well,” Ho Jihwan declared firmly. “If you arrange the meeting, I shall sit down and speak with the Saber Ghost Gang.”
“A wise choice.”
Murmurs immediately broke out among the surrounding disciples, their faces pale with shock and confusion at their master's sudden decision. Seeing their agitation, Ho Jihwan stomped his foot into the stone courtyard, releasing a sharp crack that silenced the unrest.
“I know what concerns you all harbor,” he projected his voice across the grounds. “This is merely a discussion; it does not mean we are blindly joining hands. If there is even the slightest sign of foul play or detriment to our sect, the alliance will be called off immediately. You need not worry.”
At his solemn proclamation, the uneasy murmurs gradually subsided.
Meanwhile, Ryeong maintained a subtle smile, her gaze fixed on a single figure among the crowd. Among all the disciples, there was exactly one man who appeared visibly agitated and restless at the mention of peace.
She had spotted a nearly identical character among the ranks of the Saber Ghost Gang earlier—someone who was unmistakably a mole, leaking information to an outside master.
From the start, Ryeong had pushed this aggressive play for a singular reason: if every past attempt at harmony between the two factions had ended in bloodshed, it meant an external hand had systematically sabotaged them.
The bait had now been laid perfectly. Once the peace summit commenced, that shadowy mastermind would inevitably reveal themselves to disrupt it once again. All she had to do was lie in wait and tear off their mask.
Indeed.
Using the Fire Tiger Sword Sect and the Saber Ghost Gang as live bait, Ryeong intended to reel in the truly monstrous fish lurking beneath the surface.