Southern Barbarian Beast Palace (2)
Palm strike met sword stroke.
The sword stroke won.
The trajectory of the jade wooden sword sheared through the jin-force of the palm that had been crushing space itself, and shattered the supreme technique of Great Power Grandeur that Pyoun had unleashed.
Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven, Twenty-Fourth Form: Heavenly Thunderclap. A counter that severed the opponent’s technique with the image of a lightning bolt. Breaking so large a form left Pyoun wide open, and Cheonhwa drove into that opening without a moment’s hesitation.
Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven, Seventeenth Form: Heavenly Grace. Originally a technique that loosed successive waves of sword wind, it could, with adaptation, become a chain of blade strokes. The keen edge of jin-force coiled around Okgyeong’s blade was reaching for Pyoun’s vital points when—
“……!”
Cheonhwa’s survival instinct rang a sudden, screaming alarm. At the same instant, the Six Harmony Sensory Path registered a presence that had never been there before—and the source of that presence was none other than Pyoun’s own shadow.
Something’s coming!
Cheonhwa abandoned his assault at once and retreated with a backstep of the Nine Palaces Footwork. From Pyoun’s shadow a massive shape burst free and slammed down on the very ground Cheonhwa had just vacated. A heavy boom rolled out; dust boiled up.
What emerged from the shadow was a black panther. Yet in every respect it was unlike an ordinary panther. Its bulk was large enough that one might have believed it a tiger, and black shadow rippled through the fur that covered its body. The presence it radiated was proof enough that the beast before him was no common predator.
A black panther… no. This one should be called a Shadow Leopard.
Even a beast raised with the martial arts of the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace could not simply leap out of a shadow. That sort of marvel was possible only for a spirit beast that had awakened Spiritual Nature and unlocked wondrous powers. In other words, the panther before him was no mere wild animal—it was a spirit beast.
Cheonhwa looked down at the ground the Shadow Leopard had stamped. The earth was gouged deep under the full weight of that huge frame. Had his reaction been even a fraction slower, that would have been him.
Is this the one that roared earlier?
Right after the formation had risen, during the council inside the Sichuan Dang Family’s inner keep, a roar had rolled out—one that had made every martial artist present feel the threat. That was something only a spirit beast, a creature of a different order from ordinary animals, could have done.
This thing is pinning me down.
The Shadow Leopard paid no attention to anything else. Its eyes were fixed on Cheonhwa alone. Had it decided he was the only threat worth watching here?
The moment I move, it tears my throat out.
A chill ran up his spine. The surging shadow that clothed the Shadow Leopard looked ready to vanish the instant he looked away. If he lost the creature now, he had no confidence he could dodge as he had a moment ago.
It has been hiding its presence in the shadows all this time. If it decides to vanish for real, I’ll never find it.
While Cheonhwa stood locked in place by the Shadow Leopard’s pressure, Pyoun recovered his footing. The spirit beast’s intervention had saved his life at the brink of death, yet the look he cast at the Shadow Leopard was far from grateful. Small wonder: the beast was not a spirit animal he himself had raised. It was closer to a watchdog the Palace Lord had set on him in case of betrayal.
Still, the fact remains that this creature saved my life.
Sensing his gaze, the Shadow Leopard let out a low growl—a clear command not to stand there staring, but to help. An animal ordering a man about with a jerk of its chin. Yet the other party was a spirit beast, and its standing was higher than Pyoun’s. So Pyoun obeyed the Shadow Leopard’s will and began his attack on Cheonhwa.
Facing the combined assault of Pyoun and the Shadow Leopard, Cheonhwa’s face twisted. Against the First-class martial artist Pyoun alone he could have held his own well enough. Adding a Shadow Leopard that would have been hard to face even by itself drove him onto the defensive in an instant.
The Shadow Leopard vanished into shadow and reappeared, over and over. Any shadow would do—Pyoun’s, the terrain’s, even Cheonhwa’s own. It hid and struck, and at times deliberately revealed its presence to bait empty swings.
I never imagined the power to hide in shadows would be this troublesome.
A spirit beast that had awakened Spiritual Nature was the equal of a Peak Expert; that was no exaggeration. Even for Cheonhwa, who had reached the extreme of the First-class and awakened Intent, facing a Peak Expert was a grinding ordeal. Layer on the coordinated assault of a martial artist and a beast trained in the same arts, and he was being driven back with no answer.
Under the joint attack of the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace martial artist and the shadow panther, Cheonhwa’s wounds multiplied as the exchange lengthened. The Six Harmony Sensory Path, pushed to its limit, kept him from taking a fatal blow, yet the inner-energy barrier of the Long Heaven Silk Armor he wore shattered and reknit again and again. His white long robe hung in tatters; the bare skin beneath was mottled with bruises, and blood from open gashes stained the cloth.
Even so, Cheonhwa did not fall. Eyes burning with fighting spirit said he had not yet given up the battle. Pyoun and the Shadow Leopard, pressing the attack, clicked their tongues in frustration. One clean hit should have dropped him—yet somehow the man clung on with stubborn tenacity. They could not help wondering what drove him to hold on so desperately.
Does he think the others will come to help him?
Across the field, the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace and the righteous martial artists were locked in a hard-fought stalemate. The Beast Palace side had followed the plan: first bled the righteous fighters with their beasts, then committed their own martial artists. As expected, the righteous ranks were being pushed back—yet only pushed back. There was no decisive blow. The resistance of the righteous martial artists had proven fiercer than anticipated.
At the heart of that resistance stood the Taoists of the Zhongnan Sect.
“Junior Brother Cheonhwa is holding their captain!”
“While Woo-bo holds the line, push as hard as you can!”
“With my junior brother fighting like that, I refuse to lose as his senior. Let’s show them the strength of Zhongnan!”
The Zhongnan Sect burned with fighting spirit so that Cheonhwa’s struggle would not be wasted. The younger third-generation disciples formed sword formations and drove the beasts and Beast Palace martial artists with perfect coordination, while the more experienced second-generation disciples supported from behind and snuffed out crises before they could bloom.
When Zhongnan stepped forward like that, the rest of the Nine Great Sects and One Union did not simply stand and watch.
“Zhongnan is fighting with such fire—how can Huashan sit idle? Let the enemy see the spirit of Mount Hua!”
Beginning with Huashan, Zhongnan’s longstanding rival, the Wudang Sect and the Kongtong Sect—both bound by ties to Cheonhwa and Zhongnan—followed hard after. When three of the great sects of the Nine Great Sects and One Union led the charge, the other righteous martial artists rode the rising momentum and began to press the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace hard. Righteous morale soared until it scraped the heavens, and the Beast Palace’s earlier advantage collapsed back into a deadlock.
Turning a losing battle around is impressive, I’ll grant them that. But that’s all it is.
Pyoun assessed the field with cold clarity. The righteous martial artists had no strength left to spare. Simply holding the present line was their limit. Of course they had no leeway to come to Cheonhwa’s aid.
This stalemate is being held together by that one man alone.
Pyoun looked at Cheonhwa again. There were people like that—fighters who stepped to the front of every battle and, by their mere presence, lifted their allies’ spirits and tipped the war in their favor. The Taoist before him had been born with the makings of such a vanguard captain.
He has to die here.
If they let him live, he would become a catastrophic problem later. Somehow, they had to cut his life short on this ground.
Pyoun and the Shadow Leopard worked in concert to drive Cheonhwa as hard as they could. Cheonhwa could not stop every rain-like blow that fell on him. At last his defense collapsed completely, and a decisive opening appeared—the reverse of the earlier moment. Just as Pyoun and the Shadow Leopard moved to finish him, aiming for vital points—
Boom!
A sound of space itself shuddering rolled out. It did not end with one impact. Vibration after vibration followed, and the source of those tremors was the crimson sphere that still radiated a stark presence through the fog.
Crack!
Fissures spidered across the red sphere. At the same time the fog that had hung so thick began slowly to thin. What that meant was unmistakable.
The formation is collapsing?!
The plan had been to eliminate as many of the righteous path’s rising talents as possible before the formation fell, then escape. He had not realized how much time had slipped away while he was locked on Cheonhwa. The moment that thought struck him, a suspicion flashed through Pyoun’s mind.
Don’t tell me—he was aiming for this all along?
Pyoun looked at Cheonhwa by reflex. Cheonhwa’s eyes still burned as he watched Pyoun and the Shadow Leopard. That unwavering gaze, even as the situation flipped yet again, was as good as confirmation of Pyoun’s guess.
He was buying time until the righteous masters could break free!
Keep them from noticing until the formation fell. That was why Cheonhwa had clung so desperately to Pyoun and the Shadow Leopard all this time. Rage boiled up at the thought that he had been played by a green brat whose blood had barely dried, but Pyoun crushed the emotion and issued his order as squad leader.
“Withdraw!”
At the command, the martial artists and beasts of the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace moved at once. They broke off combat with the righteous fighters, opened distance, and the martial artists swung up onto the larger beasts. The beasts turned and began to peel away from the field. Pyoun himself mounted the Shadow Leopard and fled without a backward glance.
“Don’t let them escape!”
“After them!”
The righteous martial artists struck at the rear of the fleeing Beast Palace force. But the beasts used animal instinct to weave and dodge the rain of attacks; the best the righteous could manage was to slow them a little. Even so, those efforts were not entirely in vain.
Crash!
With a sharp noise like shattering porcelain, the crimson sphere collapsed completely. At the same instant the masters who had been sealed inside burst free—and some of them kicked off the empty air and shot after the fleeing enemies like bolts of light. They flew as if invisible footholds hung in the void: Void Walking, an art possible only for those who had taken lightness skill to its extreme.
“Faster!”
“If they catch us, we die!”
With death on their heels, the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace martial artists fled with everything they had. But it was not only Super Experts who pursued them.
“Insects.”
An aging elder stood in the empty air where the red sphere had broken and looked down on the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace. Dang Myeong-cheol, Grand Elder of the Sichuan Dang Family, murmured the word. When he moved his hand, the fragments of the shattered crimson sphere that had been falling to the ground froze in midair. Then his fingertips pointed at the backs of the fleeing Beast Palace force.
“Die.”
With that single word the shards of the red sphere began to move. The Sichuan Dang Family’s supreme secret art: Full Sky Flower Rain. The fragments that filled the heavens became a rain of death and poured down.