The Wolf Unleashed
The Self-Recommendation Pavilion.
In the grandest tower of the Namgung Clan, Jegal Hwa held a teacup in her hands and gazed out the window. Beyond the glass, the rooftops of countless halls and the bustling vista of Hefei stretched away into the distance.
But her eyes were fixed not on this view, but on something far more distant.
“……The Blood Sword Gang, is it.”
At her low murmur, the shoulders of Namgung Un, the Chief Internal Steward standing at her side like a shadow, trembled almost imperceptibly. He had only just reported to her the news that had come in through the clan's intelligence network.
“Yes. He headed straight for the Blood Sword Gang, but….”
Deep, unconcealable worry was steeped in Namgung Un's voice.
By Jegal Hwa's command, he had not assigned a watch to shadow Namgung Cheon directly. Yet through the clan's network, which spread across all of Hefei, tracking the young man's movements had not been difficult. And everything he had heard was simply impossible to comprehend.
Namgung Cheon had gone to the Thunderbolt Sect, a respectable mid-tier Orthodox sect, and brought its leader, Gwak San, to submission—that much could be excused. One might assume he had simply hidden his abilities until now.
But his next destination was the Blood Sword Gang.
“The Blood Demon Sword, Gal Mu-seong… First he chooses Gwak San as his opponent, and now that man. He has a rather discerning eye, doesn't he.”
Jegal Hwa still gazed out the window and spoke with perfect calm, as if discussing someone else's affair entirely.
Namgung Un could not understand her composure. Unable to hold himself back, he stepped forward and spoke.
“The Orthodox masters who have perished by Gal Mu-seong's blade are too many to count on both hands. He is a man who knows nothing of honor. Under the pretext of a duel, there is no telling what foul trick he may employ. The Third Young Master…… may be in danger.”
He hesitated a moment, then pressed on. “Even now, if we were to send the clan's warriors—”
“Have you forgotten my order?”
Before his words could finish, a voice cold as ice cut him off. She slowly turned her head and looked at Namgung Un. At that frigid gaze, he felt an involuntary chill run down his spine and lowered his head.
“I beg your forgiveness.”
“I said that no one was to interfere. This matter is no exception.”
Jegal Hwa turned her gaze back to the window. “He went of his own will. He walked into the jaws of death on his own two feet, so he alone must bear the consequences.”
“…….”
“If he cannot come out of there alive, then he was simply a vessel of that much and no more. He declared he would accept no one's interference, so he must take responsibility for it.”
At her mercilessness, Namgung Un could bear to say nothing more and bit his lip.
The acting Clan Head's decisions were always right. But this once, it felt like treatment far too harsh.
“If a son of the Namgung, a son of the Sword Emperor, amounts to only this much… then there is nothing to be done about it.”
Such is the path of the strong, after all, Jegal Hwa thought. Her husband, the Sword Emperor Namgung Mugang, had also carved his way alone through countless fields of death to reach the seat he held now. With nothing but a single sword.
His son would be no different. If anything, his trial had to be even more severe.
Silence settled over the tower. Namgung Un sensed that it was time for him to quietly withdraw. But just as he bowed and turned to leave—
“But… if.”
Jegal Hwa murmured softly, still facing the window. A very faint smile touched her lips.
“If he walks out of that pit of death without a single wound, then I truly shall have to change my mind.”
Her eyes grew deeper than they had ever been.
Until now, she had regarded Namgung Cheon as something like a lost lamb—a creature who had lost his way inside the walls of his mother's pen, one who needed protection.
But if he emerged from the Blood Sword Gang unscathed……
Then everything will change.
It would mean that the wolf wearing a sheep's pelt had at last revealed its true nature and begun to hunt.
And so, if he came back alive, she would have no choice but to acknowledge it.
That what I loosed into the wilderness was not a lost lamb—
but a starving wolf.
The moment Mukhon slid free of its sheath, the air over the training grounds grew crushingly heavy.
Gal Mu-seong felt an involuntary chill crawl up his spine. That sword…… it's dangerous.
His survival instincts rang out like an alarm. But more dangerous still was the look in the eyes of the man holding it.
“So now you've finally decided to kill me.”
Namgung Cheon murmured the words quietly. And in that instant, Gal Mu-seong understood. This entire affair had been resting in his opponent's palm from the very beginning—that the man before him had read him perfectly: that he had no intention of killing at first, but did now. And those eyes that stared back at him, knowing all of it.
It was unmistakable contempt. At that poisonous humiliation, Gal Mu-seong's reason snapped.
“You bastard! I'll tear you apart with my own hands!”
With a roar, Gal Mu-seong charged again. The crimson sword qi erupting from his blade was fiercer and denser than anything he had shown before—a pure killing sword, devoted solely to one purpose: ending his opponent's life.
At the sight of it, the corner of Namgung Cheon's mouth lifted slightly. He's different from Gwak San.
Gwak San's saber had been far too honest. But Gal Mu-seong before him was another matter entirely—a killing intent without a trace of hesitation, a blade honed for nothing but death. This pure spirit of combat, faintly stirring memories of his past life, set his blood boiling.
Yes. This is exactly what I wanted.
Namgung Cheon did not avoid the fight.
CLANG—!
He swung Mukhon and met the oncoming assault of the Blood Demon Sword head-on. A shriek of tearing steel shook the training grounds to their foundations.
“You mean to kill me with nothing more than this?”
Even amid the furious exchange, Namgung Cheon lost not an ounce of composure, needling Gal Mu-seong without pause.
“Shut your mouth!”
Having abandoned all reason, Gal Mu-seong swung his blade harder and faster. His sword followed no set forms, driven purely by instinct as it plunged toward Namgung Cheon's vitals. He threw every scrap of his senses and experience into the fight—feinting with an exposed shoulder while seeking a lethal opening, exhausting every trick in his repertoire.
It was a battle willing to stake everything on mutual destruction.
This is what my fighting was made for!
Gal Mu-seong's Blood Wind Sword Technique was struggle for survival in its purest form. There was no room in it for the honor or prestige the Orthodox sects prized so dearly. To deceive, to cut down, to kill—that alone was its sole purpose.
CLANG—! BOOM!
Their blades met dozens, then hundreds of times, scattering furious sparks across the entire training ground.
The watching members of the Blood Sword Gang held their breath. Never before had they seen their leader fight with such desperation.
On the surface, it looked like an even match, and no one could easily predict the outcome.
I can win this!
As the exchange passed a hundred clashes, arrogance began to sprout in Gal Mu-seong's heart. It was a delusion—that even if this young man had beaten Gwak San, he would crumble in the end before Gal Mu-seong's blade.
But that thought soon curdled into absolute despair.
What… what is this….
Gal Mu-seong was appalled. Every attack he launched was turned aside by that uncanny black sword, unable to advance so much as a handspan. Worse, each time their blades collided, he had the eerie illusion that some strange, ominous force flowing from the black sword was scrambling his internal energy.
The killing sword he had forged over a lifetime of real combat and slaughter was being neutralized. It was a savage humiliation he had not felt even once since reaching the Peak Realm.
He refused to accept it.
“Die!”
Gal Mu-seong drove his internal energy to its utmost and cleaved down at Namgung Cheon from an oblique angle.
KWAANG—!
Namgung Cheon deflected the blow. And in that instant, his movements began to change. The man who had defended until now took the offensive for the very first time.
Mukhon's swordplay was nothing like it had been when he wielded Changcheon. Every motion was stripped to its most concise and efficient essence—parrying the enemy's attack with the smallest possible movement, then piercing the opening that bloomed in the very next breath.
CLANG! SLASH—!
Even as he turned Gal Mu-seong's blade aside, Mukhon grazed across his shoulder. The wound was not deep, but his clothes split open and a line of dark blood welled forth.
“Kgh!”
More than the pain, it was the mere fact that he had been wounded at all that shook Gal Mu-seong to his core.
“You're shocked by this much? I haven't even begun.”
Namgung Cheon's voice was cold as ice. His offensive was only starting now.
The trajectory of Mukhon grew more and more irregular, more and more bizarre. Gal Mu-seong swung his sword in desperation to hold the attacks back. But the more he blocked, the more he felt himself sinking into a vast swamp of helplessness.
His opponent was reading every move he made, while he could not predict at all where the next strike would come from.
Shk—.
Small wounds began to bloom across his body, one after another. His cheek was laid open; his thigh was torn. The smell of blood seeped through the training grounds. The faces of the watching Blood Sword Gang members drained white.
Their leader was now being toyed with, one-sidedly and completely.
“Is that all there is?”
Namgung Cheon's voice rolled across the training ground. And in that moment, his stance shifted minutely.
For the first time, the tip of Mukhon—until now confined to short, economical strikes—leveled at Gal Mu-seong's throat. Namgung Cheon then assumed the opening stance of the Changgung Muae Sword Art.
But what radiated from that stance was not the spirit of the Namgung. It was an intensely aggressive, dominating energy that sought to devour and annihilate everything in its path—a sword art of his own making, the forms of the Changgung Muae reinterpreted through a different soul entirely.
“You were the one who first unleashed killing sword arts, so you'll have no complaints about this.”
Overwhelmed by that aura, Gal Mu-seong instinctively stumbled backward. But it was already too late.
Namgung Cheon's body became a single streak of black lightning, cleaving through the air.
SLASH—!
A speed the eye could not follow. Gal Mu-seong sensed the danger on pure instinct and raised his blade to block. But in that instant, the azure light rippling from Namgung Cheon's sword slowly began to take form.
“……Th-the Sword Astral!”
Mukhon, wreathed in azure Sword Astral, ignored Gal Mu-seong's guard entirely, traced a bizarre arc, and plunged toward his throat.
The Transcendent Realm—!
That was the last thought to flicker through Gal Mu-seong's mind.
And then—
Shk—.
A sound of something parting, and a terrible stillness settled over the training grounds.
Namgung Cheon was already standing behind Gal Mu-seong's back.
Drip. Drip.
From the Mukhon in his hand, drops of blood ran down along the black blade and fell to the earth. Behind him, Gal Mu-seong stood frozen, staring at nothing.
And in the next moment—
Thud.
With a small, soft sound, Gal Mu-seong's head rolled across the ground.
The Heavenly Demon of Namgung
Author | Baek Rihaeng
Publisher | Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
Managing Editor | Editorial Department
Published by | Samyang C&C Co., Ltd. — Dreambooks
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ISBN | 979-11-7306-734-1
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