Yeonggang Stronghold (3)
“Cheonhwa, junior brother, are you all right?”
Yeobhwa asked, concern plain in his voice.
Necessary though it might be, taking a man’s life was never a comfortable thing. His worry was only natural.
“I’m fine.”
Cheonhwa answered calmly.
In the martial world of the rivers and lakes, life and death crossed paths so often that moments like this could arise at any time. Even if one never grew used to it, hesitation at the critical instant was something that could never be allowed. That single heartbeat of doubt could drag both oneself and everyone nearby straight into the grave.
Cheonhwa flicked the blood from Okgyeong and spoke.
“We know the location now. Let’s move on the stronghold.”
According to the information the bandits had given up, twenty-five men still remained at Yeonggang Stronghold. Subtract the ones they had just cut down, and roughly fifteen would be left. If they did not strike now, freeing the captive merchant-group leader with their present numbers would become far more difficult.
Crush the rest of the bandits still in the stronghold, then rescue the merchant chief and everyone else they’ve taken.
Cheonhwa set off toward the main camp with his companions.
Finding the heart of the stronghold proved no great challenge. Cheonhwa had always been at home on mountain slopes; once he knew the general area, the Six Harmony Sensory Path let him pinpoint the exact position.
The main camp of Yeonggang Stronghold was ringed by a wall of rough-hewn logs meant to keep wild beasts out. Watchtowers stood cunningly hidden among the brush. The bandits who had come looking for them earlier must have spotted the party entering the mountain path from those same towers.
At least the gate was built thin so it would open easily. Small mercies.
Something that flimsy would shatter under a single Jin Release packed with the principles of the Strong.
Cheonhwa returned to the others and reported what he had seen.
“Aside from the watchtowers, the perimeter is loose. Even those towers are watching the mountain path entrance more than the slopes below.”
“So we can get close without being noticed until we actually go in.”
“If the gate is that thin, forcing it should be simple. This humble one will handle that.”
They assigned roles for the assault. Once the plan was set, the party charged straight into the main camp of Yeonggang Stronghold.
Yeobhwa led the way. Drawing up the internal energy of the Vast Heaven Qi Art, he gathered Jin Release force into his palm and drove a single palm strike into the gate.
Boom!
With a heavy crash, the poorly made gate exploded into splinters.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The watchtower, realizing the intrusion too late, began hammering the alarm bell. Idle sentries snatched up their bows and loosed arrows.
“Not a chance!”
Myeonghwa stepped forward and swept his soft sword. A curtain of sword wind unfurled around the party, batting every shaft from the air. It was a defensive form from the Clear Wind Sword Art, perfectly matched to the Blue Heaven Qi Art.
In that same breath Cheonhwa spread a mist of true qi toward the cluster of bandits. A few with sharper senses felt its presence at once.
“What is this?”
“Why is he spreading his qi so wide?”
“Danger! Get inside the buildings—now!”
The quicker ones grasped Cheonhwa’s intent, but by then it was already too late.
Under Heaven Wind Flow!
Riding the mist of true qi, successive bursts of force poured out; waves of sword wind crashed over the bandits. Nine successive blasts of sword wind hammered them. Unable to withstand the sudden deluge, bandits toppled one after another.
That one exchange took down about seven second-class martial artists. More than I expected.
That left eight men in the stronghold, two of them first-class.
Myeonghwa will deal with the sentries and the watchtower.
By deliberately pouring nearly all his internal energy into the sweeping sword wind, he had drawn every eye. The remaining bandits would come straight to him.
Sure enough, the two first-class martial artists closed in on Cheonhwa.
“Even if the watch was sloppy, to be broken through this easily…”
“Where the hell is Yang Manseon?!”
One carried an axe, the other a heavy iron mace; both grumbled under their breath. The Yang Manseon they mentioned was the first-class fighter who had ambushed Cheonhwa’s party earlier.
Cheonhwa recalled the information the bandits had spilled.
The two first-class men still in the stronghold. The axe user is Gwak Chung; the mace user is I Heon.
They were said to be hot-blooded types who could not endure even a light taunt. He decided to use that fully.
“Yang Manseon is already in hell. I’ll send you both after him soon enough.”
Cheonhwa pointed Okgyeong’s tip at the pair and goaded them. Their faces twisted with rage as they raised their weapons.
“That mouth of yours is going to get you killed!”
“I’ll crush you first, then the rest of your little pack!”
At that moment Yeobhwa stepped in from the side and charged the man with the iron mace—I Heon.
“This humble one will take you!”
“Who the hell is this brat?!”
At the same time Cheonhwa seized the attention of the axe-wielder, Gwak Chung.
“Looking the other way already?”
“You little bastards think you can keep playing around?!”
With that, both first-class fighters’ gazes locked onto Cheonhwa and Yeobhwa.
This way the chance of Senior Jo Mangu being spotted is almost nothing.
Jo Mangu’s task was to use the chaos to secure the captives. The party had deliberately made the opening as flashy as possible precisely to pull every eye toward them.
I only need to hold until Myeonghwa comes to help… but I’d rather finish these two with my own hands.
The bandits of this place were pure scum who lived only to plunder. He had already heard that the first-class fighters, the chief among them, had led the worst of the atrocities. If he could not cut down men like these, what had all his training been for?
A sharp light flashed in Cheonhwa’s eyes as he fixed on the bandit before him. Gwak Chung snorted and rushed in.
Cheonhwa honed every sense through the Six Harmony Sensory Path and watched Gwak Chung’s every motion.
The way he moves that axe is no ordinary thing. He’s clearly mastered a proper axe art.
Gwak Chung was said to be the second strongest man in Yeonggang Stronghold. From outer strength to weapon skill, he was far superior to Yang Manseon in every respect.
Still, his movements are simple.
That was the weakness of arts that relied mainly on the principles of the Strong: straightforward trajectories. Cheonhwa used that flaw, absorbing the shocks with Under Heaven Rain Pool while turning the man’s offense aside. Then, the instant Gwak Chung looked puzzled at the lack of satisfying impact, Cheonhwa unleashed Under Heaven Sudden Rain without warning and tore open a gap.
Now!
Cheonhwa drove into that opening without hesitation. A razor edge of sword wind formed along Okgyeong’s blade—the applied form that combined Qi-Infused Sword with sword wind, Clear Wind Rainwater. A blade of force sharper than most steel swords streaked toward Gwak Chung.
Yet somehow the edge failed to cut him. The formidable sword force only shoved the man backward. Cheonhwa’s eyes narrowed.
“So you’ve reached the state of Impervious to Blades.”
“Heh. Took you long enough. Even with that freakishly hard wooden sword of yours, it’ll take forever to beat me to death!”
Just as a certain level of internal energy allowed one to wield various arts through a mist of true qi, a certain level of outer strength granted the body Impervious to Blades—a state where edges could not cut. Against such a body, even blows from a wooden sword would be blunted to a degree.
I heard there was a first-class fighter with Impervious to Blades here, but facing it in person is every bit as troublesome as expected.
Clear Wind Rainwater, Qi-Infused Sword, even pure sword wind—none of them could deliver a clean wound.
But that doesn’t mean there’s no way.
Impervious to Blades was powerful, yet it was not absolute.
Cheonhwa traded dozens of exchanges with Gwak Chung and landed hit after hit, yet of course he never pierced the man’s Impervious to Blades. Even so, he never stopped attacking.
No matter how many times he hits me it’s the same. Doesn’t the fool realize he’s striking rock with an egg?
Gwak Chung sneered inwardly. The jade-colored wooden sword was heavier than expected, yet it still failed to inflict any real damage. Impervious to Blades was effective not only against lesser opponents but against peers as well. Growing bold, Gwak Chung pressed the attack harder.
“What’s wrong? Where’d all that earlier fire go? Didn’t you say you’d send this body to keep Yang Manseon company? Go on—try it if you can!”
Gwak Chung cackled and mocked him, but Cheonhwa calmly turned every blow aside and answered.
“Don’t worry. The preparations are finished.”
“What are you—huh?”
In that instant Gwak Chung felt something wrong inside his body. His qi and blood twisted; his internal energy refused to move as he willed. Blood sprayed from his mouth.
“Urgh! This feeling—internal injury?!”
A body that had been perfectly fine suddenly suffering internal damage was no ordinary matter. Only one person could have done it. Gwak Chung glared at Cheonhwa and demanded,
“You bastard—what did you do?!”
“Figure it out yourself.”
At Cheonhwa’s reply, Gwak Chung’s face turned a sickly blue-green.
What Cheonhwa had used was the Internal Heavy Hand Method—an art that forced internal energy into an opponent’s body to induce internal injury. Among the forms of the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven was one that performed the Internal Heavy Hand Method through the sword.
Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven, Form Nineteen: Under Heaven Flowing Clouds.
Like clouds that slip past without notice, the form quietly poured a mist of true qi into the opponent. Every time Okgyeong collided, Cheonhwa had used Qi-Infused Sword to inject a little more internal energy into Gwak Chung. Because the man had trained mainly in outer strength, his senses were dull; he realized the damage only after the internal injuries had already taken hold.
“Internal Heavy Hand Method! So that’s what it was… How does a green brat like you know such an art…?!”
Gwak Chung voiced his disbelief, but Cheonhwa had no intention of answering. Instead he looked at the bandit who could barely keep his feet and said,
“Impervious to Blades is certainly a formidable ability. But it only resists external wounds. Against internal injury like this, it is helpless.”
That was why great sects that tempered the body and lower dantian also cultivated middle-dantian mind methods to protect against internal damage; matters of true qi and internal injury were closely tied to the middle dantian.
“And one more thing—there is a way to break Impervious to Blades.”
Cheonhwa drew up both Vast Heaven Qi and Uniform Heaven Qi at once, loading Okgyeong with the principles of the Heavy Sword. Then he raised the wooden sword high and accelerated it to the utmost with Under Heaven Whirlwind before bringing it down.
Crunch!
A dull, wet sound rang out as Gwak Chung’s skull split; he crumpled to the ground.
“You simply drive in overwhelming force—enough force to smash straight through the opponent’s Impervious to Blades.”
Having felled Gwak Chung, Cheonhwa glanced toward Yeobhwa, who was still fighting the other bandit. Yeobhwa was hard-pressed. In internal energy Yeobhwa held the edge, but in outer strength I Heon was superior. In a contest of the Strong—where Jin Release power was everything—insufficient physical ability left Yeobhwa on the defensive.
Cheonhwa prepared to intervene, yet the moment their eyes met, Yeobhwa’s gaze spoke clearly.
Do not help me.
If he could not overcome even this much hardship with his own hands, how could he ever become the foremost fist master of the Zhongnan Sect?
Though he was being driven back from start to finish, Yeobhwa kept boring in deeper. The distance between them shrank to little more than a handspan. I Heon sneered at the move—pressed this close, how could a man even throw a proper punch?
Yet contrary to I Heon’s expectation, Yeobhwa’s fist slammed into his side. Dark Jin—the art of releasing force from extreme close range with the smallest possible motion. The impact that rocked I Heon’s body was nothing like a punch thrown at such short distance. Yeobhwa did not waste the opening. He stepped in on a diagonal, planting a foot between the man’s legs, and drove his entire body forward to shove I Heon back.
That movement…
It was a form Cheonhwa knew well—the applied technique of the Five Elements Fist that Cheonhwa himself had once shown Yeobhwa in a sparring match.
Earth Horizontal Neutralizing Jin.
Struck by Earth Horizontal Neutralizing Jin, I Heon went tumbling across the ground. Yeobhwa seized the chance, drawing up the force he had stored within his body until his aura itself trembled.
Boom!
The overwhelming Jin Release of Stored Jin crashed down onto I Heon’s head. Exposed without defense to that explosive force, I Heon collapsed and did not move again. Having wrung out every last scrap of strength, Yeobhwa gasped for air and swayed on his feet—yet he never fell.
“How was that?”
“Excellent.”
At Cheonhwa’s answer, a faint smile touched Yeobhwa’s lips.
