Chapter 121
'At this rate, we'll be annihilated.'
As Gwak Cheon trembled and surveyed the battlefield with cold sweat dripping down his face—
Swish!
Before he knew it, a dwarf assassin had emerged from among the Blade Tyrant Gate's forces and was hacking at his spine with a hand axe.
"Ghk!"
Regaining his senses, Gwak Cheon swiftly blocked the hand axe.
Clang!
Sparks flew through the air as Gwak Cheon's eyes widened in shock.
Not only did the hand axe carry martial prowess beyond imagination, but a surge of internal energy also violently shook his meridians.
"Dwarf Slayer... So you're the Valley Master of the Valley of Dark Death."
In an instant, Gwak Cheon recognized the assassin wielding the hand axe as the Valley Master of the Valley of Dark Death—the Dwarf Slayer.
"Heh heh heh, your skills are pathetic!"
The Dwarf Slayer spun his hand axe leisurely before letting out a sinister laugh.
"Now die!"
Swish!
In the blink of an eye, he closed the distance and brought his hand axe down toward Gwak Cheon's skull.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
Gwak Cheon raised his sword to block the relentless attacks, but the sheer force behind the hand axe was too much to withstand, forcing him to stagger backward step by step.
'An assassin with martial arts this profound...'
Despair flickered in Gwak Cheon's eyes.
Assassins, specialized in ambushes, were typically weak in direct confrontations. But the Dwarf Slayer was not only skilled in Assassin Secret Arts—his martial prowess was also terrifyingly formidable.
Splat!
Seizing an opening, the Dwarf Slayer's hand axe sliced through Gwak Cheon's shoulder.
A searing pain, as though his flesh were burning, erupted as blood sprayed into the air.
"Not so fast!"
Gritting his teeth, Gwak Cheon steadied himself and unleashed his sword techniques.
If even he fell to the Dwarf Slayer, the battle would spiral into irreversible collapse.
"Argh!"
Meanwhile, disciples of the Heaven-Shaking Gate were dropping like flies around him.
Gwak Cheon clenched his teeth as he quickly assessed the surroundings. They had already lost more than half of the sect's front courtyard.
Worse yet, the Earth Sword Unit was guarding their injured Sect Leader, Wang In-hwa, who was in secluded recovery, forming the final defensive line.
'We can't hold out any longer.'
With the frontlines shattered, the best course of action was to retreat and regroup with the Earth Sword Unit for a last stand.
"Fall back!"
At Gwak Cheon's command, the disciples of the Heaven-Shaking Gate began withdrawing as if they had been waiting for the order.
Their bloodied faces were all etched with terror as they retreated.
"It's over."
From a distance, the Blade Tyrant Gate's Sect Leader, Gwan Dok-gun, watched with a sinister smirk.
The Heaven Sword Unit—the Heaven-Shaking Gate's strongest force—was retreating.
Though a few of the sect's elite masters still stood their ground, the tide of battle had already turned.
"Truly, it's been a long fight."
Gwan Dok-gun muttered to himself, his voice tinged with something like lament.
Over a decade had passed since the Blade Tyrant Gate first clashed with the Heaven-Shaking Gate for dominance over the Sangyang region.
Under normal circumstances, the Blade Tyrant Gate, as the newcomer, could never have defeated the Heaven-Shaking Gate, whose roots ran deep in Sangyang.
'Heaven must be on my side.'
Gwan Dok-gun glanced sidelong at the masked man standing beside him.
He knew neither his identity nor his name.
The man had appeared before him months ago, offering to ensure his victory in the power struggle against the Heaven-Shaking Gate.
At first, Gwan Dok-gun had scoffed.
But when the masked man produced a banknote worth a million taels and told him to hire the entire Valley of Dark Death, he had no choice but to reconsider.
—What do you want in return?
Nothing in this world was free.
Gwan Dok-gun knew that all too well, which was why even the sight of a million taels made him wary rather than elated.
Yet the masked man had only uttered a single line in response.
—Are you in, or out?
Gwan Dok-gun had frowned and asked,
—Do you have a grudge against the Heaven-Shaking Gate?
Instead of answering, the masked man said something unexpected.
—Sect Leader Wang In-hwa of the Heaven-Shaking Gate has been in secluded recovery due to old internal injuries, hasn't he? Now is the perfect time to strike.
Gwan Dok-gun couldn't make sense of it.
Who was this masked man? Why did he want the Heaven-Shaking Gate to be defeated? Where had he gotten such an enormous sum of money?
As questions tangled endlessly in his mind, Gwan Dok-gun could only stand there, dumbfounded.
—If you refuse, I'll take my leave.
When the masked man reached for the banknote, Gwan Dok-gun snapped back to reality.
Opportunities had to be seized when they came—that was his lifelong philosophy.
—You truly want nothing in return?
—Nothing.
With that answer, Gwan Dok-gun snatched the banknote without hesitation.
And so, with the Valley of Dark Death's aid, he launched a full-scale assault on the Heaven-Shaking Gate.
"Now all that's left is to exterminate those rats."
Gwan Dok-gun grinned and turned to the masked man.
"Thanks to your generosity, my lifelong ambition is finally within reach."
Just as he was about to exchange a few more friendly words—
—Aaaargh!
Suddenly, a series of agonized screams erupted from the Blade Tyrant Gate's rear lines.
"What's happening?"
At Gwan Dok-gun's question, a subordinate urgently replied,
"The Human Sword Unit has returned!"
"What did you say?"
Gwan Dok-gun hastily surveyed the rear.
There, martial artists and mercenaries clad in Heaven-Shaking Gate uniforms were cutting through the Blade Tyrant Gate's forces.
Mun Gwang and his Human Sword Unit, along with the Wanderer Corps, had arrived.
"How did they get here?"
Gwan Dok-gun blinked in disbelief.
He had personally witnessed the Valley of Dark Death's assassins setting up formidable boundary formations and traps at the Bear Family Mountain Villa to eliminate the Human Sword Unit.
And those formations and traps were absolutely beyond the Human Sword Unit and mercenaries' ability to dismantle.
"But how are they returning unscathed?"
"Don't let a single one escape alive!"
Under Mun Gwang's command, the Human Sword Unit and the Wanderer Corps began cutting down the Blade Tyrant disciples.
Having achieved a great victory against the assassins at the Bear Family Mountain Villa, the morale of the Human Sword Unit and the Wanderer Corps was at its peak.
Moreover, the Blade Tyrant disciples had let their guard down after breaking through the Heaven-Shaking Gate's defensive line.
Thus, when their rear was suddenly ambushed, they were too stunned to react.
"Commander Mun!"
Gwak Cheon, who had spotted Mun Gwang directing the battle from the rear, shouted to his subordinates.
"Support the Human Sword Unit!"
—Raaaaah!
With a thunderous war cry, the fierce battle resumed in an instant.
"These bastards!"
Gwan Dok-gun, watching the scene, roared in fury.
Just a little more pressure, and they could have beheaded the Heaven-Shaking Gate leader and forced their complete surrender.
But the entirely unexpected arrival of the Human Sword Unit and the Wanderer Corps had thrown the tide of battle into unpredictable chaos once again.
"Break through the retreat path!"
As the Blade Tyrant ranks faltered, the assassins began desperately struggling.
In fact, they were even sacrificing their own allies—Blade Tyrant disciples—without hesitation to protect their own lives.
"These human butchers!"
The wanderers fighting at the forefront of the Wanderer Corps cursed loudly upon seeing the assassins using the corpses of the fallen as shields.
"If you're even human, don't you dare desecrate the dead!"
But the assassins of the Valley of Dark Death paid no heed, continuing to shamelessly exploit the corpses.
"They're stronger than the assassins at the Bear Family Mountain Villa."
Heuk-pyo, who was circling the battlefield while throwing hidden weapons, remarked, and Namgung Un's eyes flashed.
"So these are their true elites!"
Swish, swish, swish!
Meanwhile, the assassins of the Valley of Dark Death shifted tactics.
They began slaughtering not only the disciples of the Heaven-Shaking Gate but also their own Blade Tyrant allies to carve out an escape route.
"Both of you, fall back."
Bu Eun-seol, who had been silently observing, stepped forward and unleashed a single fist.
Whoooosh—
With a sound like the air itself being sucked inward, the assassins who had been darting across the battlefield were sent flying, reduced to bloody pulp.
"What kind of fist technique is that?!"
The assassins hiding among the Blade Tyrant disciples recoiled in terror, their faces pale.
The range of Bu Eun-seol's fist energy was so vast that no matter how they tried to escape, there was no avoiding it.
"That bastard!"
As Bu Eun-seol slaughtered the assassins, the Valley Master of the Valley of Dark Death, Dwarf Slayer, leaped from a Blade Tyrant disciple's shoulder and reappeared.
"I'll have to kill you first to clear our retreat."
The moment Dwarf Slayer appeared, Bu Eun-seol spoke to Namgung Un behind him.
"Fight him."
"Me?"
Bu Eun-seol nodded with utmost seriousness.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
A duel against an assassin who had mastered not only the Assassin Secret Arts but also Superior Martial Arts—in broad daylight, no less.
Even masters who had roamed the martial world for decades rarely experienced such a battle. Surviving this fight would bring immeasurable benefits.
'I see.'
Namgung Un understood.
This battle against Dwarf Slayer—this was Bu Eun-seol's gift to him.
"Very well!"
Namgung Un charged forward without hesitation, unleashing the Azure Sky Flying Swallow Sword toward Dwarf Slayer.
As sword strokes swift as light enveloped the battlefield, Dwarf Slayer's eyes widened.
"The Namgung Family?"
Realizing the young man before him was from the Namgung Clan, Dwarf Slayer instead curled his lips into a relaxed smile.
"Heh heh heh. So it's the young master of the Namgung Clan."
Deflecting Namgung Un's sword strokes one by one with his hand axes, he smirked confidently.
"You should know that martial arts and killing are two different things."
It was no exaggeration to say that those born into prestigious families like the Namgung Clan had lived their entire lives being revered.
And such an upbringing only inflated their youthful arrogance, making them look down on the martial world with contempt.
"Let me take your head quickly."
Dwarf Slayer was certain.
No matter how skilled Namgung Un's martial arts were, he could never defeat someone as battle-hardened as himself.
"...?"
But after ten exchanges, Dwarf Slayer's eyes gradually filled with disbelief.
The reason assassins—despite being inferior in skill—could gain the upper hand against orthodox masters was simple:
They used underhanded, despicable techniques that righteous warriors would never resort to.
But Namgung Un was the opposite.
To dodge hidden weapons, he'd lift his rear and leap backward. To evade killing moves, he'd roll frantically on the ground.
When cornered, he'd even grab dirt to throw in his opponent's face, and in close combat—he didn't hesitate to spit?
Dwarf Slayer's jaw dropped in astonishment.
'This brat... is from the Namgung Clan?'
The Namgung Clan, renowned as a family of the sword, was famous for its strict discipline.
Yet here was a direct descendant shamelessly employing techniques even assassins would balk at?
'But his swordplay is unmistakable.'
The sword technique raining down on him was undoubtedly the Azure Sky Flying Swallow Sword, a skill only the Namgung Clan's direct descendants could master.
Just as Dwarf Slayer, barely keeping his wits, narrowly dodged a stroke—
Ptui!
Namgung Un suddenly spat a thick wad of phlegm at him.
And, to Dwarf Slayer's terrible luck, some of it splattered onto his cheek.
"..."
Wiping the spit away with his sleeve, veins bulged on Dwarf Slayer's forehead.
"The Namgung Clan has truly fallen! To produce a reckless ruffian like you!"
For a clan descendant, this was an insult that should have made his blood boil—but Namgung Un wasn't angered. Instead, he chuckled.
"Pretty slow for an assassin. Took you long enough to figure out who I am."
Dwarf Slayer's eyes flashed as realization struck.
"You're that wastrel of the Namgung Clan—Namgung Un?"
Namgung Un, effortlessly deflecting Dwarf Slayer's attacks, grinned leisurely.
"Now that you know, why don't you stretch out your neck for me!"