Heaven-Severing Blade
The moment Namgung Cheon stepped inside, an endless corridor stretched out before him.
Along its length, night-pearls had been embedded at close intervals, each one radiating a soft, dim glow. It was enough to give the illusion of walking beneath the Milky Way on a clear night.
Namgung Cheon moved forward slowly.
The path was utterly silent, his own footsteps the only sound in the stillness. He had gone perhaps a few dozen paces when the narrow passage came to an end, his view suddenly opening up to reveal an enormous plaza.
And then—
"……The Namgung truly are obsessed with swords."
The Sword Forest.
The plaza was, quite literally, a forest made of blades. Swords stood planted in the floor by the hundreds, edges facing upward, while from the ceiling more blades hung inverted like sharpened stalactites. Even the walls were blanketed without a single gap in gleaming steel.
There was not a spot to set foot—only swords, existing in a space of nothing else.
As Namgung Cheon took one more step forward, the formation activated, and the Sword Forest began to stir.
Uuuwoong—
An unsettling hum filled the chamber as thousands of blades resonated together. The swords in the floor quivered faintly, and those overhead swayed as if they might come loose and fall at any moment.
Slipping through quietly is out of the question.
Namgung Cheon realized the blades were not fixed in place. They moved like living creatures, waiting to tear any intruder apart.
He steadied his breathing for a moment.
I can't brute-force my way through.
There were simply too many. Break one, and ten would come flying; break ten, and a hundred would descend upon him. The instant he met them head-on, he would be swallowed by the tide of steel and erased without a trace.
I have to avoid them. Never touch, never brush against.
Namgung Cheon took his first step.
At that instant—
Shwaek!
A blade sprang up from the floor, aiming for his legs. At the same moment, two swords dropped from the ceiling.
Namgung Cheon instinctively executed the Cloud Stepping Footwork. He leaned his upper body back to evade the rising blade, then, half a beat behind, twisted his body to slip past the falling ones.
Kwajik!
The ceiling sword buried itself deep in the floor where he had been standing a heartbeat before.
But this was only the beginning.
Swish! Shishishik!
Responding to his movement, blades came flying from every direction like a downpour of rain. Front, back, left, right—nowhere was safe.
Namgung Cheon unleashed the Cloud Stepping Footwork once more—the version he had personally altered, layering unpredictability onto its foundation.
It wasn't enough.
The essence of Cloud Stepping lies in its roots.
The technique existed to plant one's feet firmly and hold one's center. No matter how much trickery he layered on top, there always came a moment when he had to stop and gather force into his step.
And in this forest of raining steel, even that instant of stillness was a fatal opening.
Chuchuk—!
His sleeve tore away, and a thin line of blood was drawn across his skin.
To stop is to die.
Namgung Cheon understood. Breaking through this place demanded nothing so refined as stillness within motion. He had to advance without ever stopping—relentless, unbroken.
At that moment, the footwork Namgung Mugang had demonstrated earlier flashed through his mind.
Infinite Steps.
The footwork that took no fixed form, shifting endlessly with the situation, advancing without end.
Yes. I lay Infinite Steps over the frame of Cloud Stepping.
Namgung Cheon's eyes changed.
Once more, dozens of blades surged toward him.
Don't stop.
He neither halted to dodge nor fell back. Tadadak!—his new footwork burst forth. No force gathered in his heels; his movement skimmed the ground like something riding the wind, weightless and unbound.
Pat!
His body slid into the narrow space between two swords like water through a crack. A blade coming straight for his face passed within a sheet of paper's width of his cheek; he used the one slashing in from his side as a stepping stone and sprang into the air again.
A cold edge grazed the sole of his foot—but it did not cut. Because he had emptied himself of all power entirely, surrendering his body to the flow, exactly as the principle of Infinite Steps demanded.
Don't fight the current.
The trajectories of the flying blades carried a rhythm of their own, a constant current threading through the chaos. Namgung Cheon read that current and rode it. Like a boat cleaving through rushing water, he moved serenely through the falling rain of steel.
His movement grew faster and faster. One moment he hurtled in a dead straight line, the next he was carving a sweeping curve; where he seemed about to halt, he exploded forward instead. The explosive drive of Cloud Stepping and the unreadable, shifting changes of Infinite Steps began to fuse into one.
Thousands of swords danced to claim his life, yet not a single one managed to so much as graze the hem of his robe.
Wind.
He became nothing more than a single gust flowing through the gaps between blades.
I can see it.
The movements of the swords, and the rules governing them, laid themselves bare before his eyes. Where the path was blocked, and where it opened. Where to step and live, and where to step and die.
Tadak. Tok.
In the blink of an eye, Namgung Cheon had crossed half the Sword Forest.
But the trial was not over.
Kwakwang!
Once he passed the center of the plaza, the blades' movements grew stranger and more ferocious. They no longer thrust in straight lines—they came spinning, curving mid-flight, relentlessly hunting for his vitals. It felt like fencing dozens of sword masters at once.
Good.
A smile touched Namgung Cheon's lips. Shwaeeaek!—he pushed his speed even higher. Kwang!
And then, the final gate. Hundreds of blades converged into a single massive wall and crashed down over him.
There was nowhere to flee.
Even so, Namgung Cheon did not retreat.
Tok!
A single leap. His footwork stretched through the air in an eerily elongated arc, and he wedged his body into the sliver of a gap between two swords.
Suk— Chuchuk!
Dozens of blades swept past his clothing all at once. They cut cloth and never flesh—not a hair's breadth of error. A perfect evasion.
Tok.
Namgung Cheon's foot landed on flat, unbroken ground beyond the Sword Forest. Behind him, the hundreds of swords that had torn through the air collided with one another in a deafening clangor.
Chachachang!
Namgung Cheon rose slowly to his feet. He turned to look back at the path he had walked—at the Sword Forest itself.
The blades still danced, spitting killing intent. But they could no longer threaten him. He had already learned how to walk atop their very edges.
A new footwork. A new sense. A gait like walking across the heavens themselves.
Namgung Cheon spoke the name quietly.
"Heavenly Walking Steps."
A new pair of wings for the Azure Sky All Phenomena Style.
With Heavenly Walking Steps in his grasp, nothing could slow him. The minor mechanisms that leapt out of the darkness could no longer even register as threats. He passed through the corridors at his leisure, as though out for a stroll.
How long had he walked? The narrow passage widened once more, opening into an immense cavern—a space far vaster than the Sword Forest.
Yet this place was nothing like the noisy chaos of blades he had just crossed. Instead, a still, solemn air hung over it, so profound he could hear his own breathing.
And at the very center of that space loomed a single colossal cliff of stone.
Tens of jang in height alone—a titanic monolith, like a pillar holding up the heavens. Namgung Cheon knew instinctively that this wall was the heart of the trial.
As he approached, his eyes caught the one great mark carved into its face.
A sword scar.
From the summit of the cliff to its base. A single stroke had split the entire monolith from top to bottom. The cut surface was glass-smooth, and its depth was beyond measuring. Even now, a cold, razor-sharp aura drifted out from within the scar.
Extraordinary.
Namgung Cheon felt a pure, unfeigned awe. Only then did the scenery around the great scar come into focus: across the cliff's margins, and pocking the floor and walls on every side, countless small sword marks had been carved in disorder—some shallow, some cut surprisingly deep.
So they tried to imitate that scar.
His gaze shifted to a short inscription carved beside the great mark.
"Namgung Heon."
The name of the founding patriarch of the Namgung Clan—first Clan Head, the man called the Azure Sky Sword God.
Beside the scar stood a small stone stele bearing a single line:
Only after cleaving the heavens may one stand above them.
"Only once the heavens themselves have been cut down may one stand above the heavens."
Namgung Cheon grasped the meaning at once. It means to surpass this sword scar.
He reached out and ran his fingers along the scar's cut face, reading its exact depth and the aura lingering within.
At that moment—
Jjirit—!
A shiver ran up through his fingertips.
This energy……
A power beyond sword principle, where overwhelming force and ruthless swiftness coexisted in a single edge. It was not unfamiliar. Memories of his past life brushed across his mind—the aloof yet savage swordsmanship Namgung Mugang had displayed.
Namgung Cheon's eyes narrowed.
Then this scar is……
The ultimate sword born from the distillation of everything Namgung—the Emperor's Sword Form. The first Clan Head had engraved the very principle of that art into this cliff. The successive Clan Heads, no doubt, had opened their own path by resonating with this scar, or by reproducing it, through the Emperor's Sword Form.
By the proper method.
But the Emperor's Sword Form was a secret art taught only to the Clan Head. Namgung Cheon let out a hollow laugh. The Namgung Cheon of now did not even know its forms. How could he imitate a sword he had never learned—and open this gate?
And yet, at that very moment, a single thought crossed his mind.
Was there ever any need to imitate it in the first place?
What had the first Clan Head truly wanted—descendants merely aping his sword? His gaze turned back to the stele. Only after cleaving the heavens may one stand above them.
No.
The words carved into the stone were not a command to preserve the past. They were a call to surpass the old Namgung and open a new heaven.
Mimicking the Emperor's Sword Form will never take me beyond it. No imitation ever outshines its original.
Then there was only one answer.
I cut with my own sword.
Namgung Cheon drew Changcheon.
Seureung—
He wiped every afterimage of the Emperor's Sword Form from his mind. Namgung Mugang's swordsmanship, the first Clan Head's colossal scar—all of it, forgotten. Within him remained only one thing: the sword he himself had created.
Azure Sky All Phenomena Style.
A sword that enveloped with the softness of a sea of clouds, pierced with the destructive force of heavenly thunder, and cleaved with the light of the moon.
Uuuwoong—!
Changcheon began to sing. A black radiance bled into the azure sword force that wrapped the blade.
Namgung Cheon raised the sword slowly. A storm of air currents whipped around him. Loose stones lifted from the floor, and the countless small sword marks were scoured away by the swirling wind.
My goal was never to stand above the heavens.
Another heaven entirely—
To become one.
That is my Azure Sky. That is my sword.
The instant Namgung Cheon brought the blade down—
Kwaaaa—!!
A thunderous roar erupted. Beside the first Clan Head's scar, a new sword scar began to carve itself across the cliff face. Kugugung! The entire monolith shuddered violently, dust cascading from the ceiling above.
When the dust settled and his view cleared, Namgung Cheon stood breathing hard, staring up at the wall.
Another great sword scar had been born.
Where the first Clan Head's mark was smooth and profound,
"Looks like something a beast raked open."
—his own was pure savagery. A viciously, thoroughly destructive mark. It was a path that had never once existed in all of Namgung history—one that only Namgung Cheon could have made.
He glanced once at the first Clan Head's scar, then ran his hand gently over the one he had carved himself.
"A Namgung sword, or a sword that is no Namgung's at all."
In that moment, the words on the stele began to glow with a soft, warm light, as if in congratulations.
Kugung.
And then, in the wall beside the cliff, a hidden seam parted with a deep rumble. From within poured a cascade of brilliant, multicolored light.
A smile spread across Namgung Cheon's lips.
"Now that's worthy of being called a treasure vault."
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
Address | 7F, Gwangseong Building, 28 Bongeunsa-ro 114-gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, South Korea
ISBN | 979-11-7306-734-1
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