The Return of the Sword Emperor
Ten days in Hefei.
After the uproar of the duel campaign had finally drawn to a close, a long-missed stillness settled over Namgung Cheon.
He remained in his original quarters—the most remote, most dilapidated corner of the entire clan. Though the attendants Jegal Hwa had sent had freshened the place up somewhat, replacing a few worn pieces of furniture, the old, lonely air of the rooms had not changed. It was an endlessly humble space to house the man who had broken the legendary Jeongmyeolgeom just last night.
But Namgung Cheon paid it no mind. In this Namgung Clan, apart from the Azure Dragon Pavilion and a handful of other great halls, nothing held much meaning.
And what matters isn't the buildings. It's my martial path.
Standing by the window, he quietly reviewed the ten days behind him. Ten duels—from Gwak San to Gal Mu-seong the Blood Demon Sword, Jin Hyeon the Falling Blossom Sword, and finally Mujin the Silent Extinction Sword. Each had been a master who commanded Hefei in his own right, and each had indeed carved out a realm of his own.
Yet not one of them was a true threat to me.
Except a single man—Mujin.
Namgung Cheon retraced the moments of that final duel in minute detail. The ash-grey sword force that returned everything to nothingness. The desperate, ferocious will that had embraced even mutual destruction. Mujin had undeniably stood in the same Transcendent Realm, a genuine powerhouse. In terms of pure attainment, they had been nearly evenly matched.
So what had decided the outcome?
Namgung Cheon looked down at his own hand. Not the hand of Namgung Cheon—the hand of the Heavenly Demon. The countless lives that hand had taken rose vividly before his eyes.
In the end, that was the difference. Experience. And instinct.
Decades spent at the very apex of the Demonic Path, waging wars where thousands upon millions of lives hung in the balance. The overwhelming intuition of the Heavenly Demon, able to read an opponent's next move from a single breath, from the faintest tremor in their gaze.
Mujin had been strong. The sheer volume of his internal energy, the subtlety of his swordplay—there were many reasons to name. But that is the strength of a pure martial artist, nothing more.
He himself was different. He had been a single warrior, and at the same time a sovereign who had reigned over the summit. That was why he knew better than anyone: strength alone could never carry one to the peak.
What matters, in the end, is winning the fight.
Receiving Mujin's gambit of mutual destruction without a flicker of disturbance, and shattering his composure in the process—that had been the watershed of the duel.
I've recovered my martial sense to a reasonable degree, at least. Ten live duels had given him back that instinct. And my realm…
A matured attainment, past the threshold of the Transcendent Realm. Namgung Cheon shook his head. It falls hopelessly short of my previous life.
He was not satisfied. On the contrary, the fight with Mujin had laid bare his own flaw.
The Changgung Muae Sword Art. The peerless sword art that had made the Namgung Clan the foremost sword family under heaven. There was no question it was a magnificent art, inferior to no technique in the Jianghu on its own merits. And now, with the sword principles of the Demonic Path woven into it and the whole thing reinterpreted anew, the Changgung Muae Sword Art had become a martial discipline of an entirely different order.
And yet.
It is still incomplete.
Mujin's final question surfaced in his mind—the changes within it were not the Namgung art I knew.
He had been right. Namgung Cheon had already grafted the philosophy of the Demonic Path onto the framework of the Changgung Muae Sword Art. But it remained something half-raw—two different paths forcibly mingled, never achieving true harmony. It had worked against an opponent of Mujin's caliber, but it would not work against those who stood on higher realms than he did, against the grandmasters who roamed the whole breadth of the realm.
I must complete it.
Not merely mixing the two paths, but fusing them seamlessly into one. A sword of his own, in which Namgung and the Demonic Path became a single thing.
And thinking alone will yield no answer.
Namgung Cheon abandoned his reflections. To forge two opposing paths into one, there was no way but to swing the sword. He took Changcheon down from the wall where it hung, and opened the door of his quarters to step outside for training.
That was the moment.
"Ah, Young Master. Good morning to you."
He came face to face with a man ambling toward him from down the path. His wounds had evidently been tended—he looked far neater and more presentable than before. But that expression of his was as slyly insolent as ever, all slouched, greasy good cheer.
Mujin.
* * *
At Mujin's greeting, a crease flickered between Namgung Cheon's brows. An uninvited guest, appearing just as he was about to step out for training. Hardly a welcome sight.
"You seem to have time to spare, even this early in the morning."
At his icy tone, Mujin chuckled and slapped his own chest—over the very spot that had been pouring blood only yesterday.
"Thanks to you, I found an excellent physician and got patched up properly. The Namgung Clan's prestige is something else entirely. They didn't spare so much as a pinch of the finest medicinal herbs."
"I doubt you came here to brag about that."
"Ah, don't be so cold. Weren't we at each other's throats, meant to kill or be killed, just yesterday?" With that shameless remark, Mujin brazenly closed the distance.
Namgung Cheon crossed his arms and regarded him in silence. Mujin grinned sheepishly and glanced away, sweeping his eyes over the surroundings.
"By the way—is this truly where you live, Young Master?" His gaze lingered here and there across the aging courtyard. "I mean, for the dwelling of the famed Sword Ghost of the realm… honestly, this is more shabby than my master's place. And that old man lives in a thatched hut on purpose. This just feels genuinely poor."
Namgung Cheon's gaze sharpened, and Mujin hurriedly backpedaled.
"No, no, that's not what I meant—it's just, yesterday at the main gate you were glaring at some dazzlingly grand hall, the Azure Dragon Pavilion or whatever it was. I naturally assumed you'd moved there. Not yet, then?"
"What business is that of yours?"
"Plenty of business!" Mujin suddenly barked, his face gone earnest. "I'm to be your table-man from now on, so this is where I'll be living, isn't it? Hmm, speaking of which—where should I stay?"
When Mujin asked as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, Namgung Cheon studied him for a moment, then pointed a finger toward a corner of the grounds. At the tip of that finger stood a small wooden building that looked dilapidated even at a glance.
"…Isn't that a storage shed?"
"It used to hold firewood," Namgung Cheon replied placidly. "It's empty now. Any complaints?"
Mujin was struck speechless for a moment—then burst into a great roar of laughter. "Haha! No, none at all. A roof over my head is all I need. It suits me perfectly!"
Before anyone knew it, he had wandered up to the shed and was inspecting it like a man surveying his own home, rattling off his opinions on its merits. The razor-edged martial artist of yesterday had vanished without a trace, replaced by some idling layabout.
"What is it you actually want."
At Namgung Cheon's words, Mujin flashed a grin.
"I told you yesterday at the main gate, didn't I? Do as you like."
"That was a polite way of saying get lost. Apparently you misheard."
"Interpretation is always the listener's privilege, is it not?"
Mujin simply plopped himself down right in front of the door, turning Namgung Cheon's words over in his mind. What I want, hmm… He pondered the sky for a moment, then said with a smile,
"For starters, feed me. I spilled so much blood yesterday I'm absolutely famished. I'm one of the Namgung Clan's household now, aren't I? You have to at least put rice in my bowl."
Namgung Cheon snorted at his unshakable nonchalance and called for the attendants. Before long, a modest breakfast for two was laid out on the old table in his quarters. Mujin fell upon the food like a man starving, and for a long while the room filled with nothing but the sounds of hearty eating. At last he scraped the bowls clean, patted his belly with deep satisfaction, and spoke.
"That was a fine meal, Young Master."
"Then get going."
At those words, the greasy smile drained from Mujin's face, and yesterday's grave eyes returned in their place.
"My request to become your table-man was made in earnest." His voice dropped low. "Young Master, what I seek to be is not a table-man of the Namgung Clan. I would be your table-man—Namgung Cheon's."
His gaze went to the sword at Namgung Cheon's waist: Changcheon.
"In yesterday's duel, I saw the limits of my own sword. But in yours, I saw a new path. And so I found myself wanting to see with my own eyes where that blade ends—the blade that shatters every settled frame and carves out a road of its own."
His eyes blazed with pure ambition and fighting spirit. It was something close to the simple yearning of one seeker of the Dao, wishing to walk alongside another seeker whose path ran ahead of his own.
Namgung Cheon was silent for a moment. He considered it a bother. And yet, at the same time, he thought the offer wasn't a bad one. To complete a sword of his own, he needed a solid whetstone—one that could endure anything he brought down upon it. And right now, no one alive was better suited to take his sword head-on than Mujin.
Shrrk—
In place of an answer, Namgung Cheon rose from his seat, took up Changcheon, and walked out into the courtyard. Mujin stared blankly for an instant, then grasped the intent, broke into a wide grin, and followed.
Two men stood facing each other in the center of the empty yard. Namgung Cheon let the tip of his blade drift lazily toward Mujin—and a smile as bright as a child's bloomed across Mujin's face.
"My, what a rousing welcome this is."
Sreung— Mujin drew the sword at his own waist in answer.
"Since it's only a welcome, I take it we won't be fighting for our lives like yesterday?"
"I make it a habit to always take the sword seriously."
Mujin chuckled. "Now that, I like. I'm much the same myself."
The air between the two men drew taut once more. Their auras collided, and the dust of the courtyard rose spinning in a whirl. Namgung Cheon moved his sword first—and Mujin's pupils contracted sharply as he faced that blade.
This is—!
A deeper power than yesterday was already flowing from the man's sword. …A monster.
On pure instinct, Mujin summoned everything he had and caught Namgung Cheon's sword head-on.
KWAANG—!
And in the very instant their blades were about to meet once more—
They stopped. Both swords froze midair, as if bound by a promise, and the eyes of Namgung Cheon and Mujin turned together toward a single point: the direction of the clan's main gate.
"…This energy…?" Mujin murmured in disbelief.
A vast, overwhelming presence bore down upon the entire estate. And the moment Namgung Cheon recognized what it was, his eyes trembled.
From the distance, a man came sprinting toward them, his voice tight with urgency. Namgung Cheon's escort—Baek Heon. He faltered briefly at the strange sight of two masters frozen mid-duel, staring at the same distant point, but then he ran up and spoke.
"You must come at once, Young Master!" Baek Heon swallowed dryly. "The Patriarch has returned!"
The only rival who had ever matched him in his past life. The Sword Emperor, Namgung Mugang, had come home.