Southern Barbarian Beast Palace
Pyo-un, a martial artist of the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace and the leader of this raid, was far from pleased with the situation at hand.
I never imagined I would receive orders to strike a gathering of the Righteous Path’s rising talents.
Had the target been someone who had openly shown hostility, he might have understood. But to attack a righteous sect with which they barely had any relationship? No matter how he turned it over in his mind, the operation offered nothing but loss for the Palace.
He would have liked nothing more than to protest—yet the fact that this was the new Palace Lord’s first command bound his hands. Refusing it would be as good as scorning the Palace Lord’s authority. A misstep could cost him his head.
And it’s strange enough that a mere First-class martial artist like me is leading the squad.
In an operation of this scale, a Peak Expert ought to have taken command. For reasons he could not fathom, that role had fallen to him—Pyo-un, who was only First-class. In other words, the Palace had no intention of committing a Peak Expert to this mission.
There were any number of things that set his teeth on edge, but Pyo-un valued his own life too highly to point them out. Surviving left him no path but to carry out the order.
They told me the plan would be simple—lay down a formation in advance, then hit them by surprise. This is nothing like what I was told.
Pyo-un surveyed the interior of Dang-ga-ta, thick with fog. Even a competent martial artist would struggle to see properly in such conditions—but for a fighter of the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace, it was no real obstacle. They possessed the Palace’s secret art, the Beast Sense Extreme Path, which sharpened their senses to a bestial keenness. That was why Pyo-un and his men could move through the mist without trouble.
And yet, somehow, every human presence had gathered in a single place—as if they had known of the attack and withdrawn in advance.
Did information leak? Or did their response simply outpace us?
Either possibility was bad. The former meant a traitor had fed the enemy their plans. The latter meant someone on the other side could act with speed and precision under pressure.
Before long they neared the inner compound of the Sichuan Dang Family, and martial artists who had already sensed their approach and taken defensive positions came into view. That alone was as good as declaring the original surprise assault a complete failure.
But what I have to do does not change.
He had no appetite for it, yet he could not abandon the mission. As a warrior and martial artist of the Beast Palace, Pyo-un did his duty.
“First, a probe. Release the beasts.”
At his order, his subordinates loosed the fierce beasts. The animals charged as one into the martial artists who were already rushing toward them.
The result was an even fight. The righteous side had greater numbers, but inexperience against beasts left them hard-pressed. These were no ordinary animals, either—they had been raised under the secret arts of the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace. Creatures were born sturdier than humans, and beasts tempered by those secret techniques stood on an entirely different level.
The righteous martial artists did not simply endure. Through trial after trial they began to find tactics that worked against the beasts. Left as things were, the animals would soon be forced back—yet Pyo-un studied the battlefield with careful calm, showing no sign of agitation.
Between hunter and hunted, the roles can reverse at any moment.
It was a maxim every martial artist of the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace carved into their bones—those who lived and died in the brutal jungle. And in this hunt, they were still the hunters.
Starting with Pyo-un, the Beast Palace fighters began issuing orders to the beasts through sound transmission. Once the animals, which until then had fought as individuals, began to coordinate, the advantage the righteous side had held flipped in an instant.
Push them like this.
Pyo-un had not the slightest intention of giving the enemy room to breathe. His orders were to kill as many of the rising talents as possible. To fulfill that command, he had deliberately sent the beasts in first while the fighters held back.
Bleed them dry with the beasts’ combined assault, then throw the warriors in and sweep them away in a single stroke.
A tactic whose sole aim was to strangle the enemy without mercy. The beasts’ losses would not be light, but this way he could answer any variable that arose.
Sure enough, just as he expected, an unforeseen variable appeared.
A martial artist tore straight through the beasts’ threat and charged toward Pyo-un in a single line. He ordered the animals to bar the approach—only for other righteous fighters to interfere and block even that.
They went out of their way to clear his path. Does that mean this one’s skill is that exceptional?
By outward appearance the youth had not yet passed twenty. But in the martial world, underestimating someone for their age was a fine way to get your nose broken. Pyo-un judged the young martial artist not by years, but by the atmosphere of the battlefield.
He’s a rising talent the righteous side is counting on. Kill him, and their morale will shatter at once.
Pyo-un set his stance to intercept the approaching figure.
And in the next instant—
With a sound like wind being cut, a jade-colored wooden sword was suddenly at his nose.
…?!
Pyo-un reeled. The wooden sword had lunged the very moment he settled into his ready stance. The force-waves coiled around the blade told him exactly how such sword speed had been achieved.
He used sword wind to drive the blade’s velocity?
It was a strike that bored in as if severing the breath between breaths—like a light sword polished to the extreme. What saved Pyo-un in that crisis was none other than the Beast Sense Extreme Path. As an animal flinches from danger by pure instinct, his body moved sideways of its own accord.
The jade wooden sword, wrapped in sword wind, grazed the tip of his chin and left a shallow cut. An evasion by a hair’s breadth.
Having barely slipped the attack, Pyo-un flowed straight into a counterstrike, following the experience etched into his body. From a silent driving step, power climbed from foot to ankle to knee, through the torso and out into the arm—an application of Jin Release delivered at point-blank range: Amgyeong, Dark Jin.
The form-fist of the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace that mimicked a black leopard hunting without sound in the dark—the Shadow Black Leopard Fist.
A fist strike that lunges from the blind spot of vision, following the path revealed by the Beast Sense Extreme Path’s animal instincts—driving into the wooden sword’s interval and cutting across empty air.
An attack that could not be dodged, and was even harder to block.
Yet the young martial artist—Cheonhwa—somehow sensed it and thrust his wooden sword forward in defense.
Kuuung!
Wooden sword and fist collided, and a dull thud rolled outward. At the sensation traveling up his hand, Pyo-un could not help frowning.
The impact feels thin.
The Shadow Black Leopard Fist’s Jin Release carried enough power to send a clumsily interposed wooden sword flying—yet the blade did not fly. It did not even take a proper hit. Almost certainly the youth had worked some trick with a martial form.
And that isn’t all. This brat’s fundamentals are sturdier than I thought.
Even after defending a blow that was all but a surprise attack, his center had not wavered. He immediately settled his stance, found the spacing that suited him, and opened the distance. Not mere natural gift, but habit carved in through long years of training.
Dragging this out is dangerous.
Against an enemy with solid foundations, a prolonged fight was a losing proposition. No matter how hard you shook them, they recovered their balance almost at once on the strength of what they had built. Pyo-un closed the gap and reached for Cheonhwa’s wrist.
The form-fist that seized an opponent the way a wolf bites down—the Wolf Fang Seizing Hand.
Break his center and snap the joints of his limbs in the same motion.
Pyo-un moved to collapse the rising talent’s balance before his eyes—only for it to be Pyo-un himself who shook. It felt as though he were grappling a great boulder sunk deep into the earth.
What in the world…?!
While Pyo-un visibly faltered, Cheonhwa moved. He released one hand from the wooden sword’s hilt and swung a fist. Ordinarily the Beast Sense Extreme Path’s keen reflexes would have let him slip the blow—but the situation was poor. He was pressed tight against his opponent, and one hand still held the youth’s arm. Twisting free or opening the distance was already too late.
Cheonhwa’s fist drove straight for his liver. Even with the inner-energy barrier of his protective qi and the blade-repelling toughness of his outer force, the shock bored deep. Pyo-un threw his body into the flow of a fist-technique Jin Release to bleed off the damage, and managed to spring far back, putting space between himself and Cheonhwa.
A fraction later, and that would have been a mortal wound.
A sharp ache rose from his side; Pyo-un’s face twisted. But there was no room to mind the pain. Cheonhwa was already closing again, sword swinging.
Pyo-un met him with the Beast Sense Extreme Path pushed to its limit. The art’s instincts screamed. He must not, under any circumstances, touch that wooden sword. The cutting edge of force-waves wound around the blade’s body—the moment that edge touched him, there would be no undoing it.
Rather than press a clumsy offense, he meant to guard himself on the back foot and watch for an opening. It did not take long for him to realize that judgment was wrong.
Cheonhwa’s sword speed was not especially fast, except for those occasional surges when he accelerated with sword wind. Yet he answered every motion with the least possible movement, and the sword force riding each stroke was heavy and fierce enough that Pyo-un could find no easy purchase. The longer their exchange ran, the more the space he could move in shrank—another problem.
At this rate I’m no better than an animal being driven into a kill zone.
Cheonhwa’s reading of the fight was nothing extraordinary. But grounded in thorough fundamentals, he was slowly, steadily tightening the noose. Stay like this, and the room to flee would vanish—and then he would be hunted down.
So Pyo-un slipped Cheonhwa’s assault with the Beast Sense Extreme Path while preparing a single move to overturn the board. Even as he evaded, he planted soft, secret driving steps, and Jin Release power gradually accumulated within his body. When the buildup reached its limit, light flashed in Pyo-un’s eyes.
He flung an arm high overhead, and his aura swelled explosively. Jin Release force erupted from his entire body as formless pressure, crushing the space around him. In the instant that pressure froze Cheonhwa’s movement, he brought the raised arm crashing down.
Using his whole frame like a spring, he hurled a sudden shift of his center of gravity into a hand that accelerated like a whip. Overwhelming Jin Release force rode the palm-strike’s arc and crushed the air.
A form-fist that mimicked a bear’s majestic strength—a single palm too fast, under that crushing pressure, to evade, and certain to pulverize whatever tried to block it.
It was the finest technique Pyo-un could currently produce. If the strike landed, this one move could reverse the entire situation.
Well then—what will you do?
Pyo-un fixed his gaze on Cheonhwa, the Beast Sense Extreme Path drawn to its peak.
But Cheonhwa’s answer was the opposite of everything Pyo-un had expected. He neither dodged nor blocked. Even under the pressure of Jin Release force, he settled into a ready stance—and swung the wooden sword to meet the blow head-on. The response was that of a man who had been waiting for Pyo-un to unveil his decisive technique.
Like a thunderbolt falling from the sky, the jade wooden sword carved its path. Then the palm that carried a bear’s might and the sword stroke that plunged like lightning collided full-on—
Kwaaang!
A heavy blast of torn air, and the shock of impact burst outward like exploding fire.