The Battle of Botap (2)
The day of the decisive battle dawned.
The allied forces of the Zhongnan Sect and the Huashan Sect advanced into Botap, where Paegeommun awaited them.
At the vanguard stood the Super Experts of both great sects. Among them was a face Cheonhwa already knew.
Hyeonwon, Martial Hall Master of the Zhongnan Sect.
The Super Expert whose path had crossed Cheonhwa’s when they escorted Yongwang, Chief of the Yangtze Waterway Sect, back to headquarters. Even as he marched out to war, he retained the same unshaken composure he had shown at their first meeting—a silence worthy of the title Silent Sword.
Zhongnan’s other Super Expert was Ilhyeon of the first-generation disciples, a master of the Tae-eul sword. Unlike the expressionless Hyeonwon, he carried a bright presence. The confident smile at the corner of his mouth and the bold, unrestrained way he moved made it plain why men called him the Great Flame Sword.
From the Huashan side, two Plum Blossom swordsmen joined the fray. Their silent footwork and unshakable centers alone proclaimed that their light-body arts had reached the realm of true mastery; neither looked inferior to the warriors of Zhongnan.
Paegeommun answered with four swordsmen of their own.
The Five Defeating Swords.
The five Super Experts who stood immediately beneath the Sect Leader of Paegeommun and represented the sect itself. Four of them had gathered here today.
Their faces and names were famous enough that Cheonhwa needed only a glance to know who was missing.
So the one who stayed away is Tan-paegeom.
Tan-paegeom was notorious as an obsessive sword collector—a man who would crawl on all fours for a famous blade. Put another way, there was no reason for him to show his face where no renowned swords waited. He had probably volunteered to remain at the main camp.
As if determined to make their presence felt, the four began chattering among themselves, their voices ringing through Botap.
“What a joyous, joyous time for fighting!”
Hui-paegeom, the Defeating Sword who looked like a boy and delighted in battle.
“Stop making so much noise! Your voice makes my head ring!”
Gwang-paegeom, a towering giant whose twisted face hid neither irritation nor rage, eyes sharp as blades.
“…I would be grateful if you lowered your voice as well.”
Bi-paegeom, the only woman among the Five Defeating Swords, her expression permanently melancholy, as though combat itself disagreed with her.
“This is a battle against those hateful righteous dogs. Endure that much.”
And Gi-paegeom, who made no attempt to conceal the hatred he bore toward the orthodox path.
At the appearance of Paegeommun’s Super Experts, tension rippled through the righteous ranks.
“Oh-ho, you look unusually cheerful today. Looking forward to this fight as well, are you?”
“Of course. How could I not rejoice when I finally have the chance to cut down Super Experts of the righteous path instead of some demonic-art rabble from the unorthodox schools?”
At Hui-paegeom’s playful question, Gi-paegeom answered and at the same moment raised his internal energy to its peak.
Without the slightest warning, a wave of qi erupted.
The moment that wave touched them, a black, sticky sensation coiled around every body and crushed downward. Mere contact with the qi made breathing difficult; the hatred-soaked intent dissolved within it rode straight into the mind, vivid and unmistakable.
“Now, now—there’s no need to torment the others.”
From the righteous side an answering surge of qi exploded outward.
It was the Great Flame Sword Ilhyeon. His aura shoved Gi-paegeom’s pressure aside and opened the throats of those around him. Where Gi-paegeom’s intent had been black and hateful, Ilhyeon’s was bright and warm.
So this is the realm of a Super Expert?
He drew forth a vast tide of qi as naturally as breathing, and with that tide alone he generated a pressure that dominated the entire gathering. It was only a simple contest of auras, yet even that clash left lesser martial artists gasping under its weight. That this was nothing more than a preliminary probe was astonishing.
Ilhyeon’s qi and Gi-paegeom’s qi locked against each other, pushing and repelling. One by one the others released their own auras. Eight Super Experts’ qi collided in midair and fought for territory.
The mutual repulsion produced a crushing pressure incomparable to anything before.
I had never seen Super Experts reveal their full power… and it was this intense?
They had merely raised their qi, yet the dense intent steeped within it created an absurd weight—as though Intent Qi Manifestation had been spread across the entire field.
That pressure multiplied with every collision. Even Cheonhwa, a Peak Expert, found it hard to endure. First-class martial artists began to tremble uncontrollably or simply lost consciousness.
Even trained martial artists react like that. If ordinary people were exposed to this clash, it would be a catastrophe.
Even a commoner whose sensory gates had never opened would feel the pressure of concretized energy. At best they would faint; at worst their minds would shatter and leave them idiots. No wonder the residents had been evacuated beforehand.
We cannot stay here.
The real fight was about to begin, yet both the righteous and the unorthodox ranks were being crushed beneath the Super Experts’ auras. Remaining meant being swept into the battle.
Snap out of it!
Cheonhwa sent a sound transmission that jolted the righteous martial artists awake.
First-class fighters who can still move—get clear of this place. Peak Experts, carry those who cannot walk on their own.
At his order the men moved at once. No one protested that he had no right to give commands. The experience and instincts forged through the war so far screamed the same warning: stand still and you die. Survival demanded action, and Cheonhwa had given the necessary order. Rank and seniority could be sorted later.
While Cheonhwa led the righteous martial artists in a slow withdrawal, the Super Experts finally moved.
Each drew his weapon and vanished in a single breath.
BOOM!
In the next instant the eight Super Experts collided and a thunderous roar shook the air. The shockwave expanded in concentric rings. The earth beneath their feet cratered; the afterblast whipped outward and set the surrounding buildings shuddering.
That single exchange marked the true beginning of the battle.
Silent Sword Hyeonwon watched the enemy before him while his sensory perception and spiritual awareness tracked the movements of his allies.
Fortunately they are falling back in good order.
It was no surprise that the qi released by Super Experts generated crushing pressure. What was abnormal was the excessive force now spreading across so vast an area.
This must be Gi-paegeom’s doing.
He had been the first to begin the contest of auras, and his unique art—the Layered Hatred Overwhelming Qi—possessed the power to impose pressure through qi alone. When the eight auras collided, he had almost certainly worked some subtle trick.
What troubled Hyeonwon was that the pressure affected the unorthodox side as much as the righteous.
Does he care nothing for the rest of Paegeommun’s disciples?
Gi-paegeom’s hatred for the orthodox path was legendary, yet even Hyeonwon had not expected him to accept collateral damage to his own allies without hesitation.
Under normal circumstances our side would have suffered badly as well. Luckily someone reacted with surprising speed, so the damage was limited.
Cheonhwa, senior disciple of the Flower Character generation—was that the name? A rising star who had reached Peak Expert before even finishing his third decade. The same young disciple Hyeonwon had met while escorting Yongwang. Because of him, Hyeonwon could now fight without worrying about the rear.
The dense pressure still prevented Peak Experts from offering support, but Super Experts were meant to face Super Experts. That was the proper order of things.
The Super Experts began exchanging moves, each unleashing their ultimate techniques.
The first strike belonged to the Huashan Plum Blossom swordsmen and their Plum Blossom Sword Art. Qi blooming from their blade tips conjured images of scattering plum blossoms; a wave of those blossoms of pure qi swept across the space. The sight was so enchanting that eyes found it hard to look away—yet in truth it was a merciless tide of Intent Qi Manifestation that ground everything it touched to powder.
The Four Defeating Swords knew this well and each answered in their own fashion.
“Kyahahahaha!”
Hui-paegeom laughed wildly and sliced through the wave of blossoms with a continuous, unbroken stream of sword strokes.
Fwoosh!
Gwang-paegeom ignited a blaze of Extreme Yang energy and burned the approaching plums to ash.
Wooooong—
Bi-paegeom drove them back with sound-based arts born of her sword’s ringing cry.
Kuuung.
Gi-paegeom simply used the pressure of his qi to keep the blossoms from ever reaching him.
Though they practiced the same school of martial arts, their responses could not have been more different. Each had opened their Spiritual Nature, united essence, energy, and spirit, and poured their unique individuality into their techniques; such divergence was inevitable.
Hyeonwon was no exception.
The harmonious yellow energy of Equal Heaven Qi.
The heavy, bold white energy of Vast Heaven Qi.
The cool black energy of Profound Heaven Qi.
With Equal Heaven Qi as the axis, Vast Heaven Qi and Profound Heaven Qi fused into one and formed the unshakable Profound Heaven Qi that granted absolute mental stability.
A solemn, icy light flashed in Hyeonwon’s eyes. He swung the longsword wreathed in Profound Heaven Qi. The slow yet weighty stroke slowly swallowed space itself, asserting an unmistakable presence.
Zhongnan’s supreme mountain-guarding art—the Heavenly Star Sword Art—shone brilliantly amid the chaos of Super Experts.
Cheonhwa led the righteous martial artists farther from the site of the Super Experts’ clash. Once free of the crushing pressure of their auras, the warriors gradually recovered. After confirming that everyone was safe, Cheonhwa extended his senses through the Six Harmony Sensory Path and observed the battle of the Super Experts.
A life-and-death duel between Super Experts was a rare sight, and he meant to broaden his horizons.
“Good heavens…”
The moment he truly watched, Cheonhwa muttered without realizing it.
Sword forms detonated, the earth overturned, nearby buildings shattered. The aftershocks of qi and force release produced thunderous booms and howling gales. Every collision of techniques distorted the very air with its impact. A blood duel between Super Experts existed on an entirely different plane from anything a Peak Expert could produce.
What caught Cheonhwa’s eye most of all was the way they employed their techniques.
They can unleash great ultimate techniques so freely, without the slightest foreshadowing…
To execute a technique one had to move body and internal energy, and that required the emission of intent. Emitting intent and moving body and energy took time; the greater the technique, the longer the interval and the clearer the signs.
Yet these Super Experts circulated their energy without the least gap, without any preparatory motion at all.
For that to be possible, the giving and receiving of internal energy must be instantaneous.
Moving internal energy through intent was like sending a courier. Intent issued the order; energy carried it out. But the Super Experts moved as though intent and energy had become one: the moment intent arose, energy answered.
So that is the realm of Mind-Instant Motion?
The state in which energy responds the instant the heart moves—meaning qi and spirit had become one, the union of energy and spirit.
But how did they fuse qi and spirit into a single whole?
Cheonhwa studied their energy circulation, trying to grasp the principle. He was no genius, yet he had opened his spiritual awareness and handled intent since childhood; in the field of intent alone he had nearly a decade of experience and knowledge.
Intent is steeped thickly into the energy itself. Proof of deep cultivation of the Upper Dantian.
Mind methods that worked the Upper Dantian were so exacting that even great sects possessed few of them, and they were permitted only after Lower and Middle Dantians had reached a certain level. Moreover, Upper Dantian arts were classified as supreme techniques in every school and could be learned only after one became a Peak Expert.
Cheonhwa had long since met the requirements, yet he still had not learned an Upper Dantian mind method—because of the restriction attached to Zhongnan’s own supreme art.
The moment one learns the Celestial Casket Heart Method, our mountain’s supreme mind art, one can never study any other mind method again.
The restriction existed because the Celestial Casket Heart Method possessed the power to integrate and sublimate every internal mind method Zhongnan had perfected. Learning a new method after that integration risked the energies mixing and inviting qi deviation.
That was why Cheonhwa delayed learning the Celestial Casket Heart Method until he had fully mastered all four mind methods of the Four Directions Heavenly Void.
While he was absorbed in the Super Experts’ duel, darkness suddenly began to fall in pockets all across Botap.
“Hey… is that what I think it is?”
“No—how can this happen in broad daylight?”
As the darkness erupted here and there and slowly expanded its domain, the righteous martial artists’ eyes went wide. They knew exactly what the phenomenon was; they had seen it often enough of late.
Cheonhwa, recognizing it a moment later, frowned and muttered,
“Why have the jiangshi shown up here?”
That darkness was a curtain of demonic energy woven through the Black Wind Divine Art—clear proof that a horde of jiangshi had forced their way into the war.