Botap
An extreme tension hung over Botap.
It was a vital thoroughfare leading into Yan'an, one of the heartlands of Shaanxi. Because of that, the righteous and unorthodox factions now stood locked in a standoff over the strategic ground.
From time to time small clashes broke out between first-class martial artists or Peak Experts, yet they never left the bounds of one-on-one duels, and the fighting never truly spread. Above all, the strongest force of all—the Super Experts—had yet to move. That alone kept the situation from exploding.
Super Experts.
Masters who had reached the realm of the Three Flowers Gathering at the Peak, warriors praised as among the hundred greatest of the martial world. In a war between great sects they were the decisive pieces.
Naturally their numbers were few. Only two Super Experts of the Zhongnan Sect had joined this campaign. Huashan had likewise sent two, bringing the righteous side to four in total.
Paegeommun, by contrast, possessed the Five Hegemon Swords—five Super Experts bound together under that single name. Four of them now stood on the field, matching the righteous side man for man.
The righteous forces refused to fight until the townsfolk living in Botap had finished evacuating. The unorthodox side, seeing their opponents hold back, simply tossed out taunts and goaded them to march. The whole situation balanced on a knife-edge.
Amid that uneasy quiet, Cheonhwa and his martial brothers and sisters were helping the remaining residents flee.
"This way!"
While guiding people from the front, Cheonhwa swept the surroundings with the Six Harmony Sensory Path. Botap was no central city like Yan'an, yet it was still a sizable region. Even with light-body arts pushed to the limit, escape took time.
The family Cheonhwa's group was escorting now was ordinary—a father, a mother, and three children. Myeonghwa and Jeokhwa carried the parents on their backs. The towering Yeobhwa held the young son and daughter in his arms. Yeonhwa cradled the infant, wrapped carefully in swaddling cloth, moving with the utmost care.
We're even slower than I expected. At this rate they'll catch us in no time.
Carrying people meant they could not travel at their usual speed. One misstep and a passenger might vomit from the force, or the children might burst into tears.
If only we had carts or some other means of transport… but that is impossible right now.
Such conveyances belonged to merchant caravans or wealthy notables. Those people had sensed the coming war long ago and fled. Everyone left behind had been born and raised here; their family property was hard to move, and even if they escaped they had nowhere to go and no way to live.
Even if we did have a cart, it would draw far too much attention in a place like this.
A cart, however small, was larger than a person and made far more noise. It would only paint a target on their backs for the Paegeommun scouts.
With their numbers, Paegeommun men are scattered everywhere. Slipping past them completely is nearly impossible.
As if to confirm the thought, a presence shot toward them at high speed. There was no detour. Stay on this path and they would meet head-on.
Cheonhwa drew Okgyeong and fixed his attention on the approaching aura. The moment the owner of that presence appeared, he took the man's measure in a glance.
Eyes gleaming with murderous light from countless killings. Another man's blood staining the hems of his robes. A sinister demonic energy rising from his breath. Without question, a martial artist of Paegeommun.
While Cheonhwa studied him, the man studied Cheonhwa in turn. The instant he recognized the youth's appearance, the corners of his mouth curled upward.
"You… you're the Mad Sword!"
Zhongnan's Mad Sword—the moniker circulating among the Paegeommun ranks. Because of it Cheonhwa had drawn more unwanted attention than he ever desired. Some even charged him just to test whether the name was deserved. Under normal circumstances it was nothing but a nuisance.
Today, however, the situation was different. A perfect bait that could pull every enemy gaze onto himself.
"I'll handle this!"
Shouting the words to his martial siblings, Cheonhwa crossed blades with the Paegeommun disciple. The man ignored everything around him and fixed his entire focus on Cheonhwa alone—exactly the sort of sword-mad behavior one expected from Paegeommun, and a sight Cheonhwa had grown thoroughly sick of since arriving at Botap.
I can't let this drag on.
A prolonged fight would draw other Paegeommun men toward the noise, forcing him into successive battles. To avoid that disaster he needed a short, decisive clash.
Cheonhwa faced the Defeating the Righteous Sword Style he had seen countless times. Even the same art took on a different flavor depending on its user. This particular disciple specialized in blistering speed. He wrapped himself in the black wind of the Black Wind Divine Art and poured that speed into his blade. Each stroke, half a beat to a full beat faster than ordinary, only made the overbearing momentum of the hegemonic sword more ferocious.
Cheonhwa wove soft sword and heavy sword principles together, blocking the onslaught while waiting for an opening.
"Is that all you've got?!"
Seeing Cheonhwa forced onto the defensive, the man sneered and pressed harder, yet that ironclad defense refused to break. Even though the situation demanded a swift finish, Cheonhwa remained perfectly calm.
The impatience cuts both ways.
The Defeating the Righteous Sword Style was a hegemonic sword art, and hegemonic sword arts excelled at short, decisive battles. Demonic arts might paper over certain weaknesses, but they could not change the fundamental nature of the style itself. Its purpose was to hammer out rapid, powerful strikes that forced openings, then drive through those openings and end the fight in a single breath.
So what happened when the opponent simply refused to show an opening no matter how hard one attacked?
He'll search desperately for some way to break through.
With another art a fighter might prolong the exchange and wait for a chance. The intent that saturated hegemonic arts, however, sought to smash through everything in its path. A swordsman who had trained such a method deeply would never choose patience.
Sure enough, the Paegeommun disciple wrenched his demonic energy to its peak and raised his momentum another notch—the clear prelude to unleashing his absolute highest speed without the slightest reservation. He meant to use the ultimate technique of the Defeating the Righteous Sword Style, also called the Three-Wave Sword.
That choice was precisely the flow Cheonhwa had been waiting for.
KWA-RUNG!
A thunderous boom like a falling lightning bolt rang out as Cheonhwa's sword form flung the man's strike aside. The flashing blade light severed both the sequence of the Defeating the Righteous Sword Style and the flow of internal energy in a single instant. Cheonhwa seized that broken rhythm and made it his own, launching into a relentless counter-assault.
A hegemonic sword rode the principle of overwhelming the opponent and then riding that momentum. Reverse the flow, and the same principle made defense difficult. Once forced onto the back foot, the Paegeommun disciple immediately began revealing openings.
To recover he would have to meet Cheonhwa head-on and forcibly reset the rhythm—yet Cheonhwa gave him no such chance.
KWANG! KWANG! KWANG!
Blade after blade crashed together in explosive succession. Just as the man used the hegemonic sword, Cheonhwa answered with heavy sword and hard sword principles, driving him backward. Condensed internal energy and powerful jin release crushed down upon him. Even a hegemonic sword that combined strength and speed began to lose in pure force. The overwhelming disparity in sword power shattered the man's defenses and tore wider the openings that had not existed before.
At the decisive gap that would end the fight, a sharp light flashed in Cheonhwa's eyes.
Heavenly Dipper Sword Secret — Layer Upon Layer
Four-colored energy condensed upon the jade wooden sword. Outer force and inner energy intertwined to produce a ferocious jin release. Every motion was reduced to the absolute minimum. Riding the flow, the strike drew a perfectly straight trajectory without the slightest waver.
A simple, almost crude cut—yet the sword power contained within it was anything but ordinary. The black wind the man had wrapped around his body like an internal-energy barrier proved powerless before that overwhelming force. Okgyeong did not merely shatter the opponent's weapon; it reduced the Paegeommun disciple himself to a mangled wreck.
The moment the life-and-death duel ended, Cheonhwa left the spot at once. The Six Harmony Sensory Path had already caught several auras racing toward him. They had clearly heard the noise of battle and were coming at a run. Stay any longer and he risked successive fights against every unorthodox martial artist in the vicinity. Before that could happen he poured everything into his light-body arts and raced after his companions.
Before long he caught up with the group that had gone ahead. Rejoining them so quickly was good news—yet it was also proof of how slowly they were still moving.
"Good work, Junior Brother Cheonhwa."
"I've returned, Senior Brother Myeonghwa."
"That makes four already, doesn't it? I knew there were a lot of Paegeommun men around, but I never expected to run into them this often."
"It only means this place truly is the heart of the fighting."
Not long after, the party finally left Botap and reached a temporary camp the righteous forces had set up nearby. They set the family down inside a tent. A disciple of the Hao Clan stepped forward to receive them.
"We'll leave them in your care."
"Leave it to us."
The Hao Clan disciple bowed and led the family away. Just before disappearing, the little girl turned, bowed deeply toward the group, and spoke.
"Thank you for helping us!"
At the child's pure words of gratitude, Cheonhwa and his martial siblings alike smiled as they watched the family go. Escorting civilians to safety was never easy, yet saving innocent lives was always a rewarding task.
"The evacuation inside Botap is almost finished."
"Yeah. Before long the real clash is going to start."
Ordinarily armies preferred open plains for battle rather than fighting inside a town. For some reason, however, Paegeommun refused to leave Botap and the other strongpoints, digging in instead—behavior completely at odds with their usual aggressive style.
"Ten to one this is a plan cooked up by that strategist, Gal Sahyeok."
Myeonghwa stroked his chin and narrowed his eyes. Righteous sects always fretted over the homes and livelihoods of common folk. Paegeommun was simply using that concern, turning the streets of Botap itself into a kind of wall.
"Looking at it this way, the whole plan seems to assume they'll lose Botap."
"They're going to lose it anyway, so they'll make sure it's a wreck when they hand it over?"
"Exactly. After all, three great sects have joined forces on our side."
Even if Paegeommun had absorbed every unorthodox band that flocked to the north, winning a war without suffering losses was impossible. In the worst case they might even be pushed back as far as Yulin, where their headquarters stood.
"So if damage is inevitable, they refuse to hand anything over intact."
If I cannot have it, neither shall you. The spiteful logic of the plan was plain to see—and at the same time it was effective. Having occupied Botap for so long, Paegeommun knew the terrain far better than anyone else.
"Still, the one who truly decides the occupation of Botap will be the Super Experts."
"We've never seen Super Experts fight before. How big do you think the gap will be?"
It was common knowledge that the higher the realm, the more extreme the disparity became. The gulf between a Peak Expert and a Super Expert was greater than that between a first-class martial artist and a Peak Expert; the gulf between a Super Expert and a Peerless Expert was greater still.
Reaching the Peak Expert realm raised my standards, and because of that I can finally feel just how high the wall of the Super Expert realm truly is.
Reaching a certain height in essence, energy, and spirit was only the foundation; one then had to fuse all three into one. Easier said than done.
And now I may get to watch Super Experts fight with my own eyes.
The thought of war raging inside Botap weighed on him, yet at the same time his heart pounded at the chance to witness their martial prowess firsthand. Once again Cheonhwa felt, keenly, that he was a martial artist.