Anti-Dragon King Faction (5)
Cheonhwa and Cheong-ha advanced by leaping from ship to ship of the Anti-Dragon King Faction as though the vessels were stepping stones across a river.
Their target was the flagship where Yeo Yongmyeong, leader of the Anti-Dragon King Faction, held command. They were not alone; martial artists of the righteous path closed in from every quarter, all intent on the same man.
Right, left, and center. Three simultaneous offensives tightened the noose, leaving Yeo Yongmyeong nowhere to flee.
A thunderous crash rolled from behind them, followed by the prolonged groan of splintering timber. Righteous-path warriors following in their wake were sinking the enemy vessels one after another.
Most of the Anti-Dragon King Faction, true to their pirate origins, had mastered water-walking arts. The unorthodox martial artists who had joined them later, however, had not. Blocking their routes of reinforcement and delaying their arrival was only one purpose of the sinkings. The other was simpler still: without ships, the Anti-Dragon King Faction could never return to piracy on the Yangtze, no matter how skilled they were in the water.
While pressing forward toward their goal, Cheonhwa sensed an anomaly through the Six Harmony Sensory Path. A faint current was gathering, drawing everything toward a single direction. Within that current drifted fragments of demonic qi and true energy alike.
This… could it be the Essence-Stealing Qi Absorption Art?
It differed in every way from the crude versions he had encountered before. Rather than a blatant suction, it created a current so subtle it was nearly impossible to notice. Had he not been surveying the space itself through the Six Harmony Sensory Path, he would never have detected it.
In the chaos of battle it quietly drinks in demonic qi and true energy. The same scheme the master of the Yihua Gate once attempted in Baoji.
The difference was only one of degree: this was far more refined, far more insidious.
The center of the flow… is the ship where Yeo Yongmyeong sits.
Then the man himself was almost certainly the culprit. Such delicate control was impossible for anyone who had not awakened spiritual consciousness—anyone below the realm of Peak Expert.
When the two finally boarded the target vessel they found a giant of a man seated in the center of the deck. The absorption of the Essence-Stealing Qi Absorption Art radiated outward from him. The moment he sensed their presence, the copper-skinned giant opened his eyes.
“So the first guests to come calling are the promising juniors of the righteous path. That, I did not expect.”
Yeo Yongmyeong rose with a crooked grin, rolling his shoulders as though shaking off boredom. For the man who had engineered a full-scale river battle, his composure was almost insulting.
Perhaps he had read the doubt in their eyes through his own spiritual consciousness; his smile widened.
“You wonder why I look so at ease. True enough, we are more outnumbered than I planned.”
Then the smile turned savage, and murderous light flashed in his eyes.
“But if I simply butcher the prize stallions that deliver themselves to my door, I can overturn a board of this size whenever I please.”
He would not be caught. Anyone who came at him would fall. That confidence blazed from him without the slightest concealment, and in answer the demonic energy he had held in reserve erupted in a violent surge.
“Do not count on reinforcements. My men are already sealing every approach.”
The Anti-Dragon King Faction had split from the Yangtze Waterway Sect, and Yeo Yongmyeong was far from the only Peak Expert who had left with them. Peak Experts now ringed the battlefield on every side—except the single path Cheonhwa and Cheong-ha had taken. A deliberate deployment meant to isolate and crush the righteous-path masters one by one.
“Blame your own rotten luck!”
Yeo Yongmyeong’s figure closed the distance in an instant. His movement was fluid as flowing water, a delicate grace that belied his massive frame—perhaps he was deliberately avoiding explosive acceleration so as not to damage the ship beneath them. The unexpected angle of the assault sent a fist straight at Cheonhwa. Cheonhwa barely managed to raise Okgyeong in time.
A sharp metallic ring split the air, far too keen for the collision of fist and wooden sword. Protective qi sheathed the giant’s knuckles; pure white sword qi danced along the blade that met them.
This is Heaven-Overturning Qi Armor…
Cheonhwa recognized the nature of the barrier at once. The internal-energy wall guarded Yeo Yongmyeong’s hands like a pair of gauntlets, and the rebound force of the impact fused with Jin Release, doubling the shock. Even the forms of the Heavenly Subtlety could not fully absorb the blow; Cheonhwa’s fingers went numb.
He locked his stance with the maxim of the Heavenly Dipper Sword Secret—Never Retreat from Battle—and launched an immediate counter. Jade-green light swirled along Okgyeong’s blade as multiple streams of energy twisted into a vortex.
An applied form designed to tear open defensive barriers.
Yeo Yongmyeong sensed the danger at once and chose evasion over interception. In the same motion he lunged at Cheong-ha, who had been holding distance. Cheong-ha slipped through the Peak Expert’s assault by the narrowest of margins, his body flowing between footwork, body technique, and light-body art with ethereal grace—the supreme movement of the Huashan Sect, Dark Fragrance Drift.
Even as he dodged, Cheong-ha unleashed a sword form of the Flower-Root Sword Formula. He had refined the principles of scattering swordplay with the speed of the swift sword and named the new sequence Flying Flower Sword. Fragments of sword force shot toward Yeo Yongmyeong’s vital points like arrows, only to rebound harmlessly from the Heaven-Overturning Qi Armor.
Cheong-ha clicked his tongue.
I expected it might not work, but not even a scratch…
His Plum Blossom Heart Method had advanced, his internal-energy refinement had deepened, and the power riding his sword forms had grown markedly stronger—yet his present achievement was still far from piercing that barrier.
Yeo Yongmyeong’s smile thickened as he recognized the same truth. He widened his stance and launched a rapid chain of punches—a continuous fist art meant to pin an opponent under relentless pressure. Cheong-ha tried to dance clear with Dark Fragrance Drift, but the giant slid after him like oil, pouring strikes without pause.
Cheonhwa was not about to stand idle. He layered the principles of Wind-Flow Cloud Mountain atop the Heavenly Thunderclap form that fused sword wind with the Heavy Water Method, sending a twisting column of force between the two combatants. Yeo Yongmyeong was forced to give ground or be caught in the blast, and Cheong-ha seized the opening to fall back to Cheonhwa’s side.
Without taking his eyes from the giant, Cheonhwa asked quietly, “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Thanks to you I’m still breathing.”
Cheong-ha wiped cold sweat and steadied his breath. Each elastic, high-speed blow of that continuous assault had carried Jin Release too heavy to ignore. One clean hit would have invited a storm of follow-up strikes.
“I’ll support you,” Cheong-ha said, voice trembling—not from fear, but from frustration. “Focus on the attack.”
He had felt, with brutal clarity, that his own strikes could not break through. The only way to tilt the odds was to free Cheonhwa to fight at full strength. He had already reached the realm of sword-body unity despite still being only first-class, all so he could keep pace with his rival. Even that was not enough against a Peak Expert.
“Understood.”
Through the Six Harmony Sensory Path Cheonhwa sensed the contortion of Cheong-ha’s expression, yet he pretended not to notice and simply answered.
Yeo Yongmyeong clapped slowly, the sound mocking.
“What a touching friendship. One who hates being a burden, and one who covers for him. Perfect recipe for dying like fools who don’t know their place.”
The taunt was pure unorthodox-path venom, a verbal needle meant to rattle them. Even after reaching Peak Expert, the man’s roots remained the same.
Or rather, he’s wary enough of us that he won’t spare any method—including words.
If he truly regarded them as weaklings, there would have been no need for provocation. He acknowledged their strength and was calculating coldly.
He’s on an entirely different level from every demonic-arts madman I’ve faced until now.
Most unorthodox practitioners drunk on demonic power grew overconfident and careless. Yeo Yongmyeong showed none of that. More: he did not rely on demonic arts alone, but used them as precise support for his existing martial foundation. Exactly the behavior of a Peak Expert who had forged spiritual nature—and that made him all the more dangerous.
“Huu…”
Cheonhwa steadied his breath and adjusted his grip on Okgyeong. Realizing that mockery would gain him nothing, Yeo Yongmyeong fell silent. Tension stretched between them like a drawn bowstring.
It was Cheong-ha’s sword that broke the silence.
A cascade of force fragments laced with phantom afterimages surged forward like a breaking wave—the Myriad Flower Sword, a form that married the principles of illusion swordplay with scattering technique. Light glittered off the shards and phantoms until the deck seemed painted with living brilliance, more artwork than martial form. Anyone might have been forgiven for staring in wonder mid-battle.
That was precisely what Cheong-ha intended. An illusion sword whose sole purpose was to drown the world in false images and steal the opponent’s sight. The phantoms swallowed Yeo Yongmyeong and even Cheonhwa—yet Cheonhwa walked through the veil unhindered, guided by the Six Harmony Sensory Path.
The strike that followed was closer to an ambush than open combat. Wind-Flow Cloud Mountain shattered the Heaven-Overturning Qi Armor.
The instant the barrier broke, Cheonhwa’s survival instinct screamed. The Six Harmony Sensory Path read a projectile hurtling toward his skull. He stamped into footwork and twisted aside; Yeo Yongmyeong’s fist grazed past his eyes by a hair’s breadth.
In that fraction of a heartbeat Cheonhwa understood what had happened.
He prepared the counter on the assumption that the rebounding barrier would fall?
A moment’s delay and Intent Qi Manifestation would have left him crippled. Whether the giant trusted his externally tempered body or simply trusted his own reaction speed, the gamble had nearly ended Cheonhwa’s life.
When the gambit failed, Yeo Yongmyeong moved to the next without pause. His leg swept in a low arc, generating a circular blast of force that tore Cheong-ha’s curtain of sword fragments away. Cheong-ha tried again to veil the space, but Yeo Yongmyeong was no easy prey.
“You think I’ll fall for the same form twice?!”
Fist-winds saturated with vast demonic energy poured forth, shoving Cheong-ha’s sword wind aside and seizing control of the deck. The space around Cheonhwa was no exception. He carved through the incoming force with sword qi, holding his ground.
In the midst of the exchange a strange sensation prickled at him.
The Jin Release riding those fist-winds is growing stronger with every successive strike…
It was not the simple chaining of Stored Jin. There was no preparatory surge; each successive release simply carried more power and more demonic momentum than the last.
A new demonic art?
If each use of Jin Release fed the next, then prolonging the exchange would be suicide.
A colossal explosion thundered from behind them—exactly where the ships of the Shaanxi righteous path were clustered.
“Looks like they’ve finally begun on that side as well.”
Yeo Yongmyeong halted and murmured, almost conversationally.
“Before the river battle even started I planted a separate detachment to strike your rear. I wonder whether the righteous-path brats can hold.”
Cheonhwa glanced once toward the sound, then fixed his gaze on Yeo Yongmyeong again without a word. The giant’s brows rose in mild surprise.
“Cold-blooded, aren’t you? Not even worried about your fellow disciples?”
“There’s no need to worry.”
“What?”
The answer was so unexpected that Yeo Yongmyeong’s face twisted. Cheonhwa continued as though the man’s reaction meant nothing.
“My martial brothers and sisters are strong. Strong enough to crush your petty tricks without my help.”
The demonic energy pouring from Yeo Yongmyeong thickened, as though the reply had personally offended him.
“Fine. Then I’ll send you to hell ahead of them!”
He charged once more. Cheonhwa met him with a sweep of Okgyeong. Two Peak Experts ignited Intent Qi Manifestation at the same instant. Black and white trails carved luminous arcs through the empty air. Fist force and sword force collided head-on, and the shockwave warped the space around them.