Will You Marry Me?
Yi Yeok vanished in a flash, braiding Shrinking Earth to Inches together with the Treading Snow Without Trace Technique until not a footprint remained.
Slung over his shoulder, Sang U let out a breath of relief. The shame of her position had not lessened one whit, but it was fortune enough that she had not fallen into the Demon Gate's hands.
"Fast."
Hwa Mu-gyeol's face tightened with shock at that speed. He shot straight up into the sky.
Even from the open heavens, with nothing to block his view, Yi Yeok's trail was nowhere to be found.
"Rat of a man."
Hwa Mu-gyeol chanted. His blood spirit became a vast thicket of thorned vines that ripped the earth open and spread, the reach swelling from dozens of yards to hundreds.
At last Yi Yeok showed himself. Behind him a colossal Buddha image surged upward and thrust a palm toward the sky.
Buddha Moves Mountains and Rivers!
It was a domineering art, power enough to blot out the heavens.
Hwa Mu-gyeol hauled the thorned vines together and blocked it. Yi Yeok did not pause. He charged straight in.
A blinding light burst from his leg as the kick tore the air apart.
Hurled at tremendous speed, the kick compressed the air until it detonated.
Boom!
Hwa Mu-gyeol's body reeled hard.
"Formidable."
The force was anything but ordinary. The arm that had stopped the Great Strength Vajra Kick throbbed to the bone.
Yi Yeok did not let up. Against a master of so high a realm, he had to drive his greatest weapon—raw speed—to its limit.
Heavenly Buddha Descends!
Once more a Buddha vast as a mountain appeared and slammed a palm downward, a momentum that seemed ready to crush the sky itself.
Hwa Mu-gyeol sent his blood-spirit vines surging desperately into the air. But the Great Sun Tathagata Divine Palm was not as strong as before. A chill raced down his spine.
Yi Yeok was already within arm's reach. With no time to recall the vines, Hwa Mu-gyeol had no choice but to take the blow with his bare body.
An attack that fused the Great Strength Vajra Kick with the Ten-fold Wave of the Blue Wave True Art exploded into his abdomen.
"Guh—!"
Hwa Mu-gyeol spat blood and was hurled away. Pain twisted through his organs like a hand wringing them out.
He could not believe it. His opponent was only around the realm of a Dao Master, and yet the man's speed and striking power defied imagination.
Yi Yeok came on like a man possessed. The gap in realms was vast; any momentary advantage could be overturned in a heartbeat. When an opening showed, you did not grant the enemy a breath. You cut the throat.
Before Hwa Mu-gyeol could find his balance, Yi Yeok was on him. He drove a knee into the man and slammed him into the earth, then, before the body had even finished falling, kicked his head again.
Hwa Mu-gyeol crashed into the ground and barely managed to open some distance. He drew a flashing longsword, but his momentum was already broken.
"Still feel like trying?"
Yi Yeok landed at his ease.
Hwa Mu-gyeol forced his blood qi up to staunch the wounds and spoke through clenched pain.
"If I may be so bold—with skill of this caliber, you can hardly be nameless. Who, precisely, are you?"
Yi Yeok narrowed his eyes and studied him. The man was still no easy opponent, but his fighting spirit had clearly snapped. A little bluster ought to land.
He drew himself up with feigned majesty and spoke low.
"You want my name? Are you prepared to bear it?"
Hwa Mu-gyeol's expression changed.
The Heaven-Center Immortal Realm was vast, and the world vaster still. Masters existed out there at a level he could not begin to comprehend.
Did this man have some extraordinary backing? A core disciple of the Seongdo Immortal Sect, perhaps, or a peerless genius of some hidden power.
At a glance he seemed to be using Daoist arts, and yet the techniques themselves were strange, their origins unknowable. He had even drawn on Buddhist arts. His true foundation might be far more terrifying than it appeared.
Hwa Mu-gyeol reached his conclusion. He reversed his grip on the sword and spoke with careful deference.
"Please forgive this Hwa Mu-gyeol's discourtesy today."
Yi Yeok laughed, rough and easy.
"That was rather fun. That woman, Sang U—she didn't last nearly so long against me."
Hwa Mu-gyeol forced a smile and felt his own foolishness afresh. Anyone capable of taking Sang U was no trifling Dao Master, however he might look.
Yi Yeok said nothing more. He simply watched the man, as if sunk in deep thought.
Damn it. The bluff seems to have landed. How do I wrap this up?
Under that gaze, unease crept over Hwa Mu-gyeol. He drew a silk pouch from his robes.
"This is a thousand-year spirit herb I found in the Northern Region—a snow lotus. A humble thing, but I beg you to accept it."
Yi Yeok held his silence. If the man meant to lull him and strike, exhausted as he was, he would have no answer for it.
Hwa Mu-gyeol read the silence differently. Sweat beaded on his brow.
He set the silk pouch carefully on the ground and swept his hand once more. A heap of spirit stones appeared—thousands of them, at a glance.
"A hundred or so of supreme grade, some three hundred of high grade, and the rest mid-grade."
He had gathered them to break through to the next realm. To keep his life, he had no choice.
Yi Yeok still said nothing. The temptation was fierce, but the moment he showed an opening, Hwa Mu-gyeol might take his head.
After a long struggle, Hwa Mu-gyeol clenched his hand and produced one thing more: a bone some two feet long, gold shot through with red. It looked like a human leg bone.
His face had gone rigid. The thing was far more precious than the spirit herb and the spirit stones he had already offered. Even so, it could not be more precious than his life.
Yi Yeok forced his voice to stay calm.
"That's enough. We'll pretend today never happened. Go."
Hwa Mu-gyeol managed a strained smile and nodded. Leaving the spirit herb, the spirit stones, and the golden bone behind, he fled without a backward glance.
The instant that figure vanished, Yi Yeok moved. He swept every last item into the Qiankun Ring, slung Sang U over his shoulder, and ran for his life in the opposite direction.
Hwa Mu-gyeol, meanwhile, was fleeing just as fast.
"Damn it. To run into a monster like that. Still, he didn't seem completely mad... He doesn't look like he belongs to the Seongdo Immortal Sect, either. Most likely someone from a power hidden from the world. I have to report this as soon as I can. There might even be a chance to win him over."
Yi Yeok ran on for a long while with Sang U slung over his shoulder. Her face burned crimson. Her wet clothes clung to her skin until it felt as if bare flesh were pressed to bare flesh, and in all her life she had never endured anything like it. Humiliation and shame churned together until her insides boiled.
"Put me down this instant, you ill-mannered brute!"
"Hm?"
Yi Yeok stopped as if he had forgotten she existed and dumped her on the ground.
Thud!
Sang U was flung into the dirt. Dust coated her from head to toe.
"You... you madman!"
Yi Yeok paid her no mind. He sat on a flat rock, closed his eyes, and began circulating the Hidden Soul Divine Spirit Art to recover his strength.
Bound tight in Golden Silk, Sang U could not move a finger. Her thoughts tangled. She had only come out to train with her disciple, Yoyo, and in the blink of an eye she had been reduced to the prisoner of some lunatic whose name she did not even know.
She had not seen the fight between Yi Yeok and Hwa Mu-gyeol with her own eyes, but through her divine soul she had grasped the shape of it well enough.
She grew warier of him still. He possessed speed and improvisation that transcended the Dao Master realm. Her capture had not been pure accident, either.
An hour later, Yi Yeok rose. Unlike ordinary cultivators, who recovered by absorbing the spiritual qi of heaven and earth, he recovered by stealing it—and so he recovered far faster.
He snatched up Sang U, who was watching him with uneasy eyes, slung her over his shoulder again, and started to run.
"What are you going to do with me?"
Yi Yeok answered without interest.
"No idea. I'm thinking."
"Let me go now, and I'll bury today's matter. I won't speak of it."
"And I'm supposed to believe that?"
"Please, trust me. I swear it on the honor of the Jareung Immortal Sect."
"Gods, you nag. I can't think with you yapping."
Yi Yeok hurled her high into the air. She went white and could not even scream.
He caught her as she fell and kept running.
"Much quieter."
But before even a quarter of an hour had passed, Sang U, having recovered her wits, opened her mouth again.
"I have money. I have spirit stones! I have spiritual artifacts, and my family is wealthy. I'll give you as much as you want—just let me go."
"And then you'll come after me for revenge. Without fail."
"No. Absolutely not. I swear it!"
Yi Yeok made to toss her high again. Sang U spoke in a rush.
"Wait, wait! Don't throw me. I'll make you believe me!"
Yi Yeok laughed coldly.
"Make me believe you? You think that's possible?"
Sang U clenched her teeth, her face scarlet, and cried out as if in a fit of desperation.
"...What?"
"Marry me! I'll become your Dao companion. Then you won't have to worry about revenge, will you?"