What Are You Saying? You Killed Them Yourself
Hae Rim was the very image of a wrathful Vajra Buddha. Buddha-light surged in with the force of a tidal wave.
Yi Yeok moved the other way entirely, free as a fallen leaf on an autumn wind, slipping through the assault no matter where it came from.
One man chased as if his life depended on it; the other dodged as if it cost him nothing. The two of them flashed about like twin streaks of light. Hae Rim was powerful, there was no denying that—but in speed alone, he could not catch Yi Yeok.
Twelve monks charged Hwan Mong and her companions.
"You think you can beat me just by running?!"
Hae Rim roared, yet inwardly he seethed. He had reached the realm of a Great Daoist Master, and still he could not keep pace with Yi Yeok.
He ground his teeth and pressed the attack. His staff, quicker than before, came crashing down like lightning—and in the next instant Yi Yeok, who had vanished, was standing at his ease atop it.
"Old baldy. Quite the attachment you've got. Why not let it go and take refuge in the Dao? I'll make a special exception and accept you as my disciple."
Hae Rim swung a fist. Yi Yeok kicked him square in the face, turned a somersault through the air, and landed. Hae Rim reeled back with a vivid footprint stamped across his face.
His rage was nearly past mastering. In raw ability he overwhelmed Yi Yeok in every respect but one. Speed.
"You think you'll live after humiliating me like this?!"
"Humiliation? We haven't even started. Today you're going to feel it properly."
Searing heat erupted from Hae Rim's body, flaring like a sun.
Treading Snow Without Trace Technique
Frictionless speed, slipping clear of the Buddha-light.
Clear of the blaze, Yi Yeok drew a wooden fish from the Qiankun Ring—a Buddhist ritual instrument taken from an old monk whom Hyeon Geumyeongdeung had killed a few days before.
He struck it with all his strength. An ear-splitting roar rolled out, and everyone nearby—the lay devotees, the monks, even Hwan Mong's party—fell back with pain twisting their faces.
"Wretch! You dared steal a treasure of the Buddhist order!"
Yi Yeok laughed until it seemed his mouth would split, and beat the wooden fish faster still. His hands blurred into afterimages, and the roar pouring from the instrument seemed to take on visible shape.
Most of the devotees who had crowded in fainted outright. Even the Buddhist monks bled from nose and mouth.
Hae Rim spread a barrier of Buddha-light and shut the roar out. Yi Yeok did not stop. If anything he grew more delighted, hammering the wooden fish in a relentless string of blows.
A sharp clang rang out. At last the wooden fish could endure no more and burst apart, and the roar died with it.
"Huh?"
Yi Yeok blinked, genuinely puzzled.
"What? It's way too fragile. Was that not how you use the thing?"
Hae Rim looked at the shattered instrument with something almost like grief, then turned a glare of pure fury back on Yi Yeok.
"Wretch! Your life is forfeit!"
He roared and unleashed a Buddhist art, closing a gap of several dozen zhang in a single rush. A savage wind rose as his staff came down on Yi Yeok.
The blow missed, as expected. Its aftermath tore a pit five zhang across in the earth.
Before Hae Rim could recover his stance, Yi Yeok was behind him, and a kick landed squarely on his backside.
Hae Rim's face plowed helplessly into the dirt. Baleful killing intent writhed across features caked in soil.
"The strength's something else. You're just too damn slow."
Yi Yeok grinned.
Hae Rim whipped the hand clenched around his prayer beads. Beads wreathed in Buddha-light shot toward Yi Yeok, each one carrying force enough to punch through stone.
They broke the sound barrier with a shriek and punched clean through Yi Yeok's body.
Got him!
The instant Hae Rim clenched his fist in triumph, the Yi Yeok those beads had pierced scattered like smoke.
"Impossible!"
Hae Rim was aghast. The speed he had witnessed a moment ago was already past belief—and only now did he understand that even that had not been the limit.
When Yi Yeok reappeared, the beads he had snatched in that span were clutched in his hand.
"Far too fine a gift for someone like me. Allow me to return it."
He flung the stolen beads back at Hae Rim.
Hae Rim sheathed his whole body in blood qi and staggered backward. Not one bead broke through that qi to reach his flesh.
"Thick hide, old baldy."
The sneer came easily. Inside, Yi Yeok was no less uneasy. In speed he held a clear advantage, but he lacked the strength to make a blow truly count.
Hae Rim raised a hand. The other monks, on the verge of rushing in, stopped cold. Against speed like Yi Yeok's, they were nothing but toys to be played with.
"Fast. But let us see whether you can dodge this as well!"
He drove his staff deep into the ground, pressed his palms together, and cried out in a low voice.
Auspicious qi gathers. The light of the five directions descends in consecration.
In that instant the sky seemed to boil. Clouds rich with auspicious qi gathered, then turned to beams of light that wrapped Hae Rim—and a Buddha image appeared, blazing like a scorching sun.
It was enormous. Hundreds of zhang tall—no, thousands. The light was too fierce to look upon, and the pressure it shed was overwhelming enough to lock a body in place.
"And what the hell is that...?"
Yi Yeok muttered, staring. Light poured from Hae Rim's eyes. He no longer seemed the same being.
The Buddha slowly extended its right hand, baring a palm vast as a mountain. Yi Yeok realized that palm was by no means small even set beside Wolgye Castle or Jin Castle.
"Damn it!"
A palm beyond all imagining came down upon them.
Yi Yeok hesitated no longer. He broke into a dead sprint, and when he found Hwan Mong's party frozen where they stood, he snatched them up as well. Had he known how to trigger the teleportation formation, he might simply have left them behind and fled alone.
The moment his group barely cleared the village, the impact arrived.
The shock blasted outward in every direction, and a sandstorm roared up in its wake. The village vanished without a trace. All that remained was the print of a gigantic palm.
The Buddhist devotees who had been standing there were gone as well. Blood and scraps of flesh were all they left behind.
Hae Rim barely kept his feet, blood running from nose and mouth. He had returned to his own shape, and the colossal Buddha was gone.
He looked around. Aside from a handful of monks, no one was left alive.
"You fiend!"
His voice shook with rage.
A monk drenched in blood staggered up to him.
"Venerable Master, what are we to do now?"
"We report it, of course—and put to death every heretic who dared intrude upon the Buddhist domain!"
He looked again at the corpses, and when he spoke once more his voice was raw with grief.
"What was done today will never be forgiven!"