Anti-Dragon King Faction (7)
The ultimate technique Jeok Muho unleashed—pushed to its absolute peak with the reinforcement of Intent—was truly formidable.
It had incinerated not only the ship he stood upon, but every vessel in the surrounding area. The heat was so immense that not even smoke remained; only blackened heaps of ash were left behind. Parts of the river itself boiled away into rising vapor.
Jeok Muho, the very man who had wrought this devastation, plunged into the water as the deck beneath him burned away. With a heavy splash he sank steadily downward, yet he felt no panic. Instead of thrashing desperately for the surface, he steadied his breath with water arts and checked the condition of his body.
The expenditure was worse than I expected.
The ultimate techniques of the Heavenly Yang Divine Art had always been extreme in their consumption of internal energy. This time he had poured even more power and Intent into heightening the force, so the fatigue was inevitable. In the rush to draw up his energy, his meridians had overheated, leaving him with a light but undeniable internal injury.
Still, it was a sudden strike. There is no way those dogs could have withstood it.
The power had been so excessive that his own men had been caught in the blast. But they had been useless dead weight anyway, getting slaughtered without putting up a fight. If they had at least served as bait to wipe out the righteous sects, then the loss was even.
Some might call it heartless, but using and discarding subordinates was common practice in the unorthodox path.
I need to surface if I want to recover what I spent.
The fatigue Jeok Muho felt came from the drain on both internal energy and Intent. The latter could only be restored through rest, but the former could be replenished through the Essence-Stealing Qi Absorption Art. The surface would be thick with the corpses of his men and the righteous martial artists alike—saturated with demonic qi and true qi. Absorbing that would restore what he had burned.
Yet as he rose toward the surface, something strange entered his vision. A pure white expanse floating on the water. Moments later he realized it was ice—more precisely, a sheet of ice.
Ice, when the heat of the Heavenly Yang Divine Art had not yet faded?
With a surge of disbelief, Jeok Muho spread his sensory field and spiritual awareness as wide as he could, scanning the surface. Dozens of living presences answered him.
His teeth ground together of their own accord.
It had been a surprise ultimate technique. How in the world had they blocked it?
Even among Peak Experts, a wide-area technique like that cannot be neutralized without reinforcing Intent!
Something was wrong—badly wrong. Feeling that certainty settle in his bones, Jeok Muho burst through the surface and swept his gaze around.
Sure enough, what met his eyes were the martial artists of the righteous path. In place of the ships reduced to ash, they stood firm upon thick ice that covered the water.
Not a single one dead?
He checked the numbers in an instant through sight and sense. Every last righteous martial artist was unharmed. By contrast, every one of his own subordinates was confirmed dead.
Is this… a nightmare…?
For a moment Jeok Muho denied reality. He simply could not believe that an ultimate technique strengthened by Intent had produced no result at all. The hollow emptiness twisted at once into boiling rage, and that rage-filled gaze locked onto the figures standing on the ice.
I will kill every last one of them.
He still did not know how they had stopped his technique, but that hardly mattered. How could a Peak Expert fail to kill even a single first-class martial artist? That was nonsense.
I will kill them one by one, without fail.
With that resolve, Jeok Muho pushed his water arts to the extreme and shot toward the ice like a launched arrow.
“Haa…”
As Yeonhwa steadied her breathing, a chill white mist slipped from her lips. She had pushed the Profound Heaven True Qi to its limit, and her entire body had gone cold. Even this was only possible because she had fully mastered the art; it would not have been strange for the yin-cold energy to invade her meridians and leave her with severe internal injuries.
But it had to be done.
She had needed both to block the heat of the demonic art and to create footing for everyone. The other Zhongnan disciples who cultivated Profound Heaven True Qi were in much the same state. They had wrung every drop of yin-cold energy from themselves to spread the cold as widely as possible with Yeonhwa at the center.
I am fine, but the other senior and junior brothers who use Profound Heaven True Qi will not be able to fight any longer.
Still, thanks to their help, none of their allies had fallen into the water.
When he suddenly unleashed that ultimate technique it was genuinely dangerous, but somehow we got through it. That is a relief.
The method the Zhongnan martial artists had used to stop Jeok Muho’s ultimate technique was brutally simple. As a group they had employed the forms of All-Under-Heaven Flash to shear away the heat of the technique and scatter it into the air. The scorching yang energy of the Heavenly Yang Divine Art burned without discrimination and was therefore extremely dangerous, yet there had been no other way to stop the technique.
Because of that, everyone is completely drained.
They had spent internal energy and concentration to the point that their heads ached; of course they were in no condition to fight well. Yet not one of them showed it. They regulated their breathing and fixed their eyes on Jeok Muho. Their limbs trembled with fatigue and fear, but there was no hint of flight in them. On the contrary, the will to stand and fight still burned in their eyes. That stubborn streak reminded her of a certain senior brother among the second-generation disciples—and Yeonhwa herself was no different.
Everyone has been influenced by Junior Brother Cheonhwa.
Even if the enemy was exhausted from overusing an ultimate technique, he was still a Peak Expert. The orthodox approach was for several first-class martial artists to rotate in a wheel formation, but that did not mean it was safe. The reason they willingly stepped into that danger was because the image of a certain someone still fighting elsewhere burned so clearly in their minds.
The ones who can still move properly… including myself, about four.
Yeonhwa, Myeonghwa, Jeokhwa, and Yeobhwa. Among the third-generation disciples who had fully mastered an advanced mind method and reached the realm of Sun-Moon Convergence, these four stood at the very top. They would have to form the core that stopped Jeok Muho.
Here he comes.
Seething with fury, Jeok Muho charged straight at them, wrapping his entire body in the blazing yang energy of the Heavenly Yang Divine Art. The heat was so intense that even the thick ice began to soften and melt wherever it touched. He looked as though he were simply charging in blindly, but it was clearly an attempt to destroy their footing and create a situation advantageous to himself. The martial artists of Zhongnan and the other righteous sects had never learned water arts.
“Block him!”
At the cry, the Zhongnan martial artists moved to respond. With the forms of All-Under-Heaven Flash they absorbed the heat pouring from Jeok Muho and flung it skyward. In the process their swords glowed red from the scorching yang energy; in the worst cases some even suffered burns or internal injuries from the invasion of that heat. Still, the Zhongnan martial artists never stopped shearing the heat away.
“While we hold back the heat, get to the ships at once!”
Yeobhwa’s thunderous voice rang out toward the other righteous martial artists. The ice had only ever been a temporary measure to keep people from falling into the water. Sooner or later they would need to transfer to the nearby ships. The shout snapped the dazed righteous martial artists back to their senses; they hastily employed lightness arts and raced across the ice toward the vessels.
In that interval Jeok Muho closed the distance and began unleashing his assault. Yeonhwa and Myeonghwa moved to receive it. Yeonhwa erased the scorching yang energy with Profound Heaven True Qi. Her meridians, already near their limit, screamed with every exchange of energy, yet she rarely twisted her expression as she endured the rising pain. Once the yin-cold energy erased the blazing yang, what remained was simple fist force. But the opponent was a Peak Expert fist master; the jin release packed into those punches remained devastating. Myeonghwa poured everything into his soft sword techniques and took the blows. The immense power traveling up the blade felt as though it would tear his grip apart, yet he clenched his teeth and held, receiving the assault again and again. Under normal circumstances even receiving it would have been impossible, but the enemy was also exhausted from overusing his ultimate technique, and Myeonghwa had built his fundamentals so thoroughly that fighting while drained was second nature.
While Yeonhwa and Myeonghwa held the offensive, Jeokhwa and Yeobhwa attacked Jeok Muho. He wrapped heat around his entire body to defend. Yet neither Jeokhwa nor Yeobhwa paid the heat any mind; they swung sword and fist without hesitation. Even through the barriers of internal energy, the heat burned its way in. In the literal agony of their flesh scorching, the two of them never stopped. The moment they stopped, everyone’s efforts would become meaningless. The swirling energy coiled around blade and fist shoved the scorching yang energy of the Heavenly Yang Divine Art aside and finally struck Jeok Muho’s body, landing solid blows.
“Khk—!”
Blood spilled from Jeok Muho’s lips. Cloud-Drift Mountain was a technique that used the wrapping energy to drive successive internal-impact methods into the target. The depth of each strike might be shallow, yet when the count reached dozens even a Peak Expert would develop openings from internal injury. Yeonhwa and Myeonghwa, who had been on the defensive, did not miss that fleeting gap. A continuous crackle of lightning sparked from the energy coiled around their blades—the herald of the final form of the middle section of the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven.
KWA-RUNG! KWA-RUNG!
Thunder crashed twice in succession. The twenty-fourth form of the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven—All-Under-Heaven Thunderbolt. Sword forms carrying the mental image of a lightning strike came crashing down.
CLANG!
The jade-colored wooden sword and a tightly clenched fist collided, ringing out with a sharp metallic cry. A blade of pure white will against dark, heavy hand techniques. Each time sword qi and fist qi clashed, space itself warped and left ripples in the air.
Cheonhwa had tried to keep the exchanges short, yet his opponent showed no openings at all. As a result they had traded more blows than he could even count. The longer the clash continued, the greater Yeo Yongmyeong’s jin release became. Cheonhwa received and neutralized the force with sword forms, yet with every passing moment the advantage tilted further toward the enemy.
But is that all there is to it?
Even while being pressed back, Cheonhwa never lost his cool.
Demonic arts possess marvelous functions, yet they always carry side effects proportional to that power.
Heaven-Overturning Qi Armor was a counter-rebounding art of overwhelming capability, yet it freely consumed even lifespan in order to maintain that function. Yeo Yongmyeong seemed to be suppressing those side effects with the vast demonic qi he had gathered through the Essence-Stealing Qi Absorption Art and the energy circulation of a Peak Expert.
Then what side effects does this demonic art that keeps increasing its jin release carry—and how is he suppressing them?
Cheonhwa felt it instinctively. Only the side effects of that demonic art could serve as the key to ending this precarious exchange.
Neither I nor Cheong-ha can hold out forever.
With pupil breathing and the various functions of his middle dantian, Cheonhwa himself could endure a prolonged battle well enough. But Cheong-ha, who was using illusion sword techniques at decisive moments to obscure the enemy’s vision, could not. Even though he had fully mastered an advanced mind method and achieved Sun-Moon Convergence of the middle and lower dantians—raising his energy efficiency—no amount of internal energy could ignore the toll on body and mind in a situation this extreme.
I will throw the decisive move before it is too late.
Even as the situation grew more precarious by the second, the light in Cheonhwa’s eyes had not died. On the contrary, a fierce will to overcome this crisis and win flared within them.