Chapter 29
“Answer me. How can a man live without going mad?”
Song Wol yanked the sword from the prisoner’s body. The look in his eyes was no longer human.
It was as if the sword had swallowed his soul whole. He and the blade had become one.
“I had ten long years. Ten years to think. How I would take my revenge. No, who I would take my revenge on.”
He gave the sword a light flick, shaking off the blood clinging to the blade. A thin red line ran along the steel, and the sword itself gave a faint, trembling hum.
“One day, a single noble house was wiped out. No, that’s not right. The word ‘wiped out’ feels wrong. What would fit better? Hmm...”
Song Wol knit his brows as if he were truly considering it, then relaxed them again.
“Massacre! Yes, that fits. One family was massacred in an instant! And yet how!”
BOOM!
The moment he lifted his leg and stamped down hard, the floor cracked and the ground began to tremble.
“And they couldn’t even find a clue to the culprit! Was it because they were incompetent, or because there was no need to look!”
Song Wol laughed like a madman. No, it was a scream. The cry of a man who had lost his mind and could only howl.
He was already lost in a world of his own. He had not lied to me. Not since the moment he made that promise to me.
“So tell me, do you know the conclusion I reached?”
“...”
“Incompetence is a crime.”
“...”
“The leaders of the orthodox sects who let their numbers dwindle while lining their own pockets? Incompetent. The investigators of the orthodox faction who couldn’t even find the culprit after a massacre? Incompetent. And the most incompetent of all...”
As his emotions rose higher and higher, tears began to spill from Song Wol’s eyes.
“Me. I was the one straining to curry favor with the Alliance Lord, all while my own sect, my family, my blood kin were dying without me knowing it.”
The moment his tears ran down his cheeks, his face became impossible to describe. His eyes were wet with tears, but his mouth was smiling.
“Song Wol. You’ve gone completely mad.”
“Isn’t that how the martial world is, in the end?”
Song Wol’s thoughts leaped wildly. At that moment, I remembered the rumors of a first-rate martial artist who had escaped from the dungeon in the past. The rumor said he had been like a sword demon starving for blood.
They said that even after escaping the dungeon, he never stopped fighting the orthodox masters around him.
For a moment, the thought of a demonic sword flashed through my mind, but I immediately shook my head. As far as I knew, there was only one demonic sword that truly existed in the Central Plains.
My thoughts tangled together, but for now I had to focus on Song Wol. Keeping my eyes fixed on him, I searched the surroundings.
I was looking for a weapon, anything I could use to stop him.
But this was the dungeon.
What weapon would there be?
Of course, there was nothing.
“You there. Why are you looking away? Are you searching for something?”
Song Wol smiled as he slowly approached me. He didn’t seem to realize it himself, but he was already releasing a razor-thin killing intent.
“I won’t forget our agreement. The men you mentioned to me seem to be ones I should take revenge on as well.”
He stopped in front of me and raised his sword lightly.
“But I can’t leave you alive.”
“A man trapped in a prison cell, not knowing when he’ll die. I open the door for him, and he wants to repay kindness with enmity.”
“Kindness... I suppose there’s nothing for it.”
Song Wol gave his sword a casual sweep.
“You are orthodox, after all.”
The instant his blade fell toward my head, I drove my body forward and caught his hand with both of mine.
“So that’s your judgment. Not retreating, but charging straight into the blade... You’re a remarkable one.”
I had no weapon to protect my body with. Simply put, if I backed away from his sword, I wouldn’t be able to respond to his follow-up attacks and would only be driven back.
Being forced backward. Under ordinary circumstances, that wouldn’t be a huge problem, but right now it was critical. Backed into a narrow dungeon? That was practically a death sentence.
And for someone like me, who had to fight in close quarters, closing the distance was the obvious choice. The problem was that making the judgment and actually carrying it out were entirely different matters.
“Hand-to-hand against a swordsman. How cruel.”
“What else am I supposed to do when I’ve got no blade left?”
I tried to twist Song Wol’s wrist, but he drove my technique back with his internal energy. I didn’t stop, though. The moment I loosened my grip, I slammed a fist into his side.
“Do you really think a clumsy trick like that can stop me?”
I threw the punch only to buy the briefest opening, but it felt as though it had no impact at all. Instead, he drew his body back slightly and thrust his sword toward me.
I kept weaving left and right to evade the blade while trying to close in. But he gave me no distance at all.
He began to swing the sword like a madman. Gradually, his blade filled the space around us, pressing in on me from every side.
At this rate, I’ll just die.
I made my choice. I would no longer keep dodging Song Wol’s sword.
I felt the internal energy surging from my dantian flow to my fingertips. At the same time, I traced a circle with my arm. It was not a simple circle.
What I drew was a taiji diagram.
Song Wol’s sword shot toward me at terrifying speed. I met it head-on, letting the blade slide past me, then quickly reached out and struck his arm.
“Taijiquan? Were you from Wudang?”
He kept thrusting even as he spoke. I deflected the sword and struck at his body with precision.
The exchange repeated itself. Then, the moment I thought he might actually be feeling some of the impact himself, Song Wol pulled back and stopped his sword. He looked down at it and spoke.
“I could have sworn you said you were Baek Mugeuk of the Baek family?”
“I did.”
“And yet, from where I’m standing, the martial art you just used looked exactly like Wudang’s Taijiquan.”
“So?”
“Did you lie when you made your promise? No, perhaps you’re a Wudang lay disciple? But even then...”
At first, I thought Song Wol was speaking to me. But his gaze never left the sword.
“You used it far too familiarly, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t lie. And I’m not from Wudang.”
“Not from Wudang, yet you can use Taijiquan... That’s a funny thing to say.”
“Believe it or not, that’s your choice.”
“Baek Mugeuk. I’m curious what kind of man you really are.”
The moment Song Wol finished speaking, the look in his eyes became slick and heavy. At the same time, that thick, sticky killing intent crashed down on me.
“You’re right. You’re going to die anyway, so what does it matter if I know?”
“Who are you talking to? Song Wol!”
“The same goes for you. What use is it to know when you’re going to die?”
Song Wol’s sword came crashing down on me again.
This blade couldn’t be allowed even the slightest opening. The instant that thought crossed my mind, I drew the taiji diagram once more.
Again, the taiji I traced began to perfectly divert Song Wol’s sword. But in that moment, I saw it.
Song Wol’s smile.
I thought I had blocked it perfectly. And yet new cuts began appearing on my body.
I couldn’t understand it. I had clearly deflected and stopped every strike. And yet the wounds kept multiplying. This wasn’t sword qi or anything like that.
He wasn’t pouring internal energy into the blade. The sword he was using was nothing more than a sword swung in the most ordinary sense. So why were the wounds increasing?
Is the sword lengthening? An extending sword?
A sword that lengthened. Naturally, that was the thought that came to mind. But no. I was a man who had searched the world and learned martial arts by force of memory and experience. There was no such thing as an extending sword swung without inner strength.
Then I have to assume the blade itself is really growing longer.
As the cuts on my body increased, I became certain. His sword really was lengthening.
“Why is it that your famed Taijiquan can’t even deflect my sword?”
“...”
“If you can’t block even this much, you’ll be dead soon.”
Song Wol grinned faintly and swung his sword with increasing force. But I did not stop drawing taiji. I needed to confirm something.
“Go on. Block it with brute force if you like. In the end, you’ll just bleed out slowly and die.”
Song Wol continued the fight with complete ease. After all, at this rate, I would die in the end.
“No last words? Or perhaps speak of those masked men you mentioned. I think they need to be killed too.”
“...”
“Why aren’t you saying anything? Have you gone speechless because you know you’re about to die?”
“I understand...”
“What was that? I can’t hear you very well.”
“I said I understand.”
“What?”
At my words, Song Wol’s expression flickered for an instant. But his sword intent did not dim.
At that moment, I deflected his blade and shifted immediately onto the offensive. Internal energy condensed in my fist, and the force that had erupted from my dantian spread through my arm. The air cracked with a sound like a tiger’s roar and slammed through the dungeon.
CRACK!
The violent explosion burst from Song Wol’s abdomen, and his body was thrown straight into the wall behind him.
COUGH!
He spat out a mouthful of blood. But his momentum did not die. If anything, he lifted the corner of his mouth as though amused.
“...How did you know?”
“How else would I know? It’s right there in front of my eyes.”
“You could see it?”
The secret of the lengthening sword.
The answer was simple.
The sword’s sharpness.
That was right. The secret of the lengthening sword was the sharpness it released. It was astonishing, of course, but a sword emitting sharpness was hardly unheard of.
There were certainly weapons, though not many, among the so-called divine or wondrous armaments that could release such sharpness.
But Song Wol’s sword was different.
His blade released its sharpness at the exact moment it was needed. It was as if the sword itself understood the situation and emitted sharpness precisely when it should.
The blade’s spreading sharpness had cut past the target beyond the sword’s physical length. Reacting to that range in an instant was not easy. But I judged that the sword was truly growing longer, and I expanded Taijiquan accordingly.
Of course, I couldn’t evade every strike, so a few wounds had been left behind.
Song Wol slowly stepped out from the shattered wall. Then he turned his gaze back to the sword.
“I’ve swung this blade for ten years. I never thought it would be broken so easily, and yet you really are something else. What’s even more surprising is this.”
His expression twisted. No, he was smiling in a way that made my skin crawl.
“Wudang doesn’t have a boxing technique like that. And on top of that, you mixed another school’s martial art in while using Wudang’s? What exactly is that martial art?”
He looked like a man possessed by martial arts. Even after his sword had been broken through, what interested him more was the martial art I had used.
“You’re curious about everything.”
“I’m not curious about the martial art. I’m curious about who you are, the bastard who mixes martial arts together. Who are you?”
“The strongest under heaven.”
“The strongest under heaven?”
I heard a faint snort of laughter. Song Wol looked at me with open amusement, then quickly let a cold sneer settle over his face.
“Don’t you think that claim is a little lacking for someone calling himself the strongest under heaven?”
“Do I?”
I planted my feet hard against the floor. Then I drew in a deep breath and raised my internal energy. In an instant, the fist qi spilling from my body shook the dungeon as it spread outward.
“You’re trying to show me something? Do I look like a man who’ll just stand here and watch!”
Song Wol lashed his sword out in rapid succession. Sword qi poured forth along the blade. But my eyes weren’t on that sword qi.
I watched only Song Wol and swung my fist. The fist qi flowing through it took the shape of a tiger.
In the blink of an eye, the form erupted and began to charge. The narrow dungeon seemed to collapse as if swallowed by the tiger, and Song Wol’s sword qi was swept up and scattered by the rampaging beast.
Mighty Tiger Strike?
The instant the maddened tiger charged down on Song Wol, he drew up his internal energy and slashed at it with his sword.
Mighty Tiger Strike. One Punch Breaks the Mountain.
The moment sword and tiger collided, the sound of air being ripped apart rang out, followed by a thunderous detonation.
WHOOOOOOOSH!
BOOOOOM!
This was not merely the sound of sword qi colliding with fist qi.
It was the roar of Sangun, the mountain that brings mountains down.