The Sword of Silent Extinction
Jeokmyeol Sword Mujin.
The final opponent of his duel campaign.
But the man's whereabouts were shrouded in mystery. When a Transcendent Realm master truly set his mind to vanishing, no honest search would so much as brush against his shadow.
Namgung Cheon fell briefly into thought.
Should I make use of the clan's intelligence network?
He shook his head at once. He had no wish to lean on the Namgung Clan for this. His proof had to be completed entirely by his own hand.
Which left only one path: deduction through information that he alone, as the man who had once been the Heavenly Demon, could possess.
Namgung Cheon reached into the memories of his past life. The Demonic Cult had operated its own intelligence apparatus to surveil the whole world under heaven — and supreme masters like Nangwang, forever capable of becoming variables, had ranked among the highest surveillance priorities.
And in the last of his memories as the Heavenly Demon lay knowledge of where Nangwang and his disciple Mujin had made their final dwelling.
Near the Feishui River in Hefei, without a doubt.
Follow the river, and he would find them.
I will find him.
Having settled the matter, Namgung Cheon left the inn the moment dawn broke the next morning.
"It's the Sword Ghost."
"The Sword Ghost is moving!"
People began trailing after him in growing numbers. None dared draw near, but they kept their distance and followed all the same.
It was a strange procession — the footsteps of a single man holding an entire city's breath hostage. Paying the followers no mind whatsoever, Namgung Cheon walked in silence toward the Feishui River, his destination fixed.
When he arrived, he began working his way upstream along the river's main channel. Through the whole morning he combed over several li of riverbank. There were rapids where the current ran violent, and broad shallows where a handful of anglers had staked their spots, but no trace of Mujin anywhere.
The sun climbed to its zenith, heat shimmered off the water, and sweat ran down his spine — yet his steps never stopped.
Afternoon came and went, and still he did not stop. Now he searched even the narrow side channels branching off the main current, secluded stretches where no human presence could be found.
How far had he walked? At last the city's noise had faded entirely behind him, and the sun was leaning west, its crimson light shattering across the surface of the river — when his steps came to a halt before a quiet field of reeds.
Each time the wind stirred, the golden-tinted reeds rippled like waves. He knew it instinctively.
This is the place.
Namgung Cheon followed the narrow path threading between the reeds down toward the water. At the river's edge stood an old pavilion, its paint peeling in patches, worn down by the weight of years.
And on its railing sat a man with his back turned. Dressed in plain hemp clothes, he held a long fishing rod cast out over the river, silently watching the golden current slip past.
The air around him was so utterly still it seemed time itself had stopped. The whisper of reeds swaying in the wind, the low murmur of the drifting water — within his domain, they all seemed to lose their meaning and sink into silence.
This man was Jeokmyeol Sword Mujin.
Namgung Cheon stopped before the pavilion. Even at his arrival, Mujin did not stir.
A suffocating stillness. At length, it was Mujin who broke it first. Still without turning, eyes fixed on the flowing river, he spoke.
"For you to have sought me out this far, this can hardly be ordinary business. Who might you be?"
Namgung Cheon went straight to the point without hesitation.
"Namgung Cheon of the Namgung Clan. I have come to request a duel."
At the name Namgung Cheon, Mujin's shoulders twitched — the faintest of movements. Slowly, he turned his head to look at him, and for the first time a spark of interest lit his listless eyes.
"So you're the Sword Ghost who's had all of Hefei talking of late."
Mujin's gaze drifted past Namgung Cheon toward the crowd watching from a distance, breath held, before returning to the quiet river.
"Plenty of noisy guests have found their way to this peaceful riverside."
His voice was flat, but it was unmistakably a question. Can you bear the commotion you've dragged here with you?
Namgung Cheon caught his meaning and laughed softly.
"Tranquility exists to be broken, after all."
The moment his answer ended—
KRA-KOOM!
The wooden floor beneath his feet split and cracked apart of its own accord. At the same instant, Mujin's fishing line, sunk in the river, bent like a drawn bow. The line trembled taut to the very brink of snapping, as though locked in a silent struggle against some vast, unseen thing.
A collision of invisible qi. The two men were already facing each other with drawn swords.
After a long moment, Mujin quietly reeled in his rod. The once-taut line had settled back into calm — and on the hook hung nothing at all.
At that, Namgung Cheon offered a single remark.
"I take it you were fishing for something other than fish."
Mujin turned, the corner of his mouth lifting.
"I was waiting for a stone big enough to stir ripples in this river."
With those words, Mujin laughed lightly and cast off the bamboo hat he wore — his back to the blazing crimson dusk.
Two shadows stretched out long upon the ground.
The Sword Ghost Namgung Cheon's duel campaign. This was its final chapter.
In the middle of the reed field, two men stood facing each other with the dusk at their backs.
SHRING!
As if bound by a promise, both drew their swords in the same instant.
The blade Namgung Cheon drew was Changcheon. Azure sword qi erupted from its body, wreathing the edge like flame and heating the surrounding air — its sheer presence alone seemed to boil away the moisture rising from the riverbank.
Answering him stood Mujin. From his blade rose a hollow grey sword qi, as if all light and color had been scrubbed from the world, curling up like heat haze around the steel.
Something unusual flickered in Namgung Cheon's eyes.
So that is the Jeokmyeol Sword Technique.
A sword in which neither splendor nor ferocity lived — only the loneliness of a wanderer who walked his road alone, and the long years behind him. It did not shatter what it struck; it weathered it, as time weathers stone, slowly bleaching all light away. A sword of nothingness.
Their opposing sword qi clashed midair, and the atmosphere around them trembled. The faces of the onlookers watching from afar drained into shock.
"Wh-what in the world—!"
"This much force, and they've only just drawn their blades…"
Murmurs broke out along the riverbank — but even that clamor was crushed beneath the knife-edge tension between the two men, scattering before it could carry far.
A breathless silence settled between Namgung Cheon and Mujin. All four directions fell still.
And then—
BOOM!
The first to move was Namgung Cheon. The instant he kicked off the ground, the earth beneath his feet split open. He shot toward Mujin in a dead straight line — and Mujin did not dodge either. Rather, he advanced half a step forward and met Namgung Cheon's blade head-on with his own, grey qi shrouding the steel.
Two qi-clad blades collided face to face.
KWAAAAAANG!
With a roar that threatened to split eardrums, a massive shockwave rippled outward from the two men. The sand of the riverbank gouged away in deep furrows, and the surrounding reeds tore up by the roots and hurled themselves skyward.
The recoil of the first clash drove both men backward.
One exchange.
"Not bad at all."
Mujin offered his verdict on the first exchange flatly. His voice was calm, but the hand gripping his sword trembled ever so slightly — with exhilaration.
A smile touched Namgung Cheon's lips.
"Likewise."
In the same breath, both men kicked off the earth once more.
KWANG! KRACK!
Steel rang against steel without pause, shaking the whole riverbank, the ground itself trembling faintly in time with their clash.
Namgung Cheon's sword was overwhelming. Heavy and ferocious, as if to crush everything in a single blow, it drove Mujin backward — and each time it carved through the air, azure sword qi crashed down over Mujin's entire body.
Mujin's sword, by contrast, was strange. Even taking the full weight of that crushing force head-on, he embraced the raging power and dissolved it within his own.
"Is that… is that truly a feat a human being can perform?"
Someone among the watchers on the bank murmured. They saw it — a great boulder splitting silently into fragments beneath Namgung Cheon's sword qi, and the reed field swept by Mujin's blade sheared away whole.
As their exchange grew fiercer, the radius their swords commanded widened beyond all restraint.
KWANG! SHAAAA—
Everywhere they passed, the nearby river erupted upward as if detonating.
Dozens of exchanges unfolded — and then a subtle change came over Namgung Cheon's expression.
At this rate, this will never end.
The sensation of his own attacks being neutralized. It was different again from the flowing sword of a Taoist who had reached the summit of defense — that art diverted force away, but the Jeokmyeol sword took it head-on and consumed it, erasing it as it went.
Tap.
Namgung Cheon broke the distance in an instant, then gripped his sword anew and drew a deep breath. His eyes had grown incomparably graver than before.
"Reconnaissance ends here."
The azure qi pouring from his blade deepened further.
KUNG!
Namgung Cheon's frame shot forward — a crushing charge, as if to tear the very heavens open.
First Form
Heavy Mountain Cleaves the Sky
The azure blade descended upon Mujin along a perfectly straight trajectory, and for the first time, Mujin's expression grew heavy. He did not evade. Instead he planted both feet into the earth as though taking root, and thrust his sword forward — the movement of a man bracing to receive a mountain's weight with his whole body.
The azure force that split great peaks and the grey abyss that swallowed all things collided head-on.
KWAAAAAH!
A primordial roar of destruction unlike anything before shook the four directions.
Ssshhk.
The recoil of the impact drove both men back several zhang. Namgung Cheon twisted in midair and landed lightly, while Mujin slid backward, carving two deep scars into the ground beneath his feet.
Namgung Cheon frowned. His strike, laden with immense internal force, had begun losing its strength the instant it touched Mujin's blade. It had bitten far deeper than any attack before it — and yet in the end it had been checked by that grey energy, unable to pierce through completely.
He isn't blocking it. He's erasing my strength.
Then the answer was simple.
Then I simply deny him even the opening to erase it.
Namgung Cheon's sword rhythm transformed utterly. As his blade danced through the air in blinding flourishes, hundreds of azure sword qi burst forth.
SHWAAAACK!