How to Build Inner Power as Easily as Eating Dang-gwa - 6
If this secret realm could only be entered by disciples of the Hongseong Sect, then it stood to reason the realm itself was a place tied to Hongseong.
Otherwise, there was no way they would have felt so calm from the moment they set foot inside — not in the middle of the great trial of conquering a secret realm.
And the others, it seemed, felt exactly the same.
"Senior Sister, this is..."
"Hmmm..."
Even Hong Ryeon, who had challenged secret realms any number of times, had never felt anything like this. It was as though the realm itself was stirring in response to those who had mastered the Hongseong Divine Art.
Naturally enough, the Hongseong Divine Art energy dwelling in her dantian was moving with it — though not out of any wariness of danger. No, it felt as if that power was reaching for something that would make her grow.
"Let's keep moving for now."
Even so, they could not afford to be careless. A secret realm was a proving ground laid down by the ancestors of old — a trial set for mortals who must forever lift their heads and gaze up at the heavens. And so every single step they took carried its own weight of tension.
Then, in the first chamber they entered, all three of them let out low groans of awe before they could help themselves.
"This is..."
It was a vast room. Its floor was a fathomless black darkness with no visible end, and the only way across was a scattering of footholds suspended precariously in open air — like stars in a night sky.
The moment they saw where those stars had been placed, all three understood at once. This was footwork. Footwork they knew well.
The Hongseong Divine Art was the art of the red star — the Ominous Star that burned its own wielders as fuel. That star was violent and immense, carrying the power to destroy all things, and yet at the same time a swiftness nothing in the world could stop.
The footwork that captured that swiftness was none other than the Star Flow Steps, one of the stepping arts of the Hongseong Divine Art — a stride that held the movement of stars, meant to be unfolded on legs hardened by the horse stance and the mountain marches demanded of Hongseong disciples every single day. The footholds had been placed precisely where only a master of that stride could reach. In other words, this room could only be crossed by those who had learned the Star Flow Steps.
"Is this truly a secret realm made for the Hongseong Sect?"
Ryu Hyeon murmured it in a trembling voice, as though she could scarcely believe her own eyes. Though she knew the question was not truly seeking an answer, Hong Ryeon could only nod. What lay before them was simply too plain for her to do otherwise.
"Could we cross with plain jumps alone?"
"It wouldn't be impossible. But there is an obstacle."
Ryu Hyeon drew a small throwing blade from her robe and flung it into the empty air. Clang. With the ring of an impact, the projectile that had been sailing through seemingly open space was swallowed by the darkness below. In the same instant something shimmered faintly into view — an iron plate of a strange, shifting hue. It wavered for a heartbeat, revealing itself, then stilled and cunningly hid away in the dark once more.
"If you use any footwork or lightness skill other than the Star Flow Steps... you'll smash straight into those plates."
And in the worst case, you would plunge down into that blackness and never come back. Of course, one could always ignore the hazard with rising lightness skill — or no, with a body-protection art shielding the flesh, one could simply bull through. But that was beside the point.
At Ryu Hyeon's words, Hong Ryeon slid a glance toward Sayun.
"Can you do it?"
"Yes."
"Good. I'll cross first. Sayun next, and Ryu Hyeon last."
"Yes. Understood, Senior Sister."
Hong Ryeon issued her orders briskly and set off. Her first step fell on Qian, the trigram of Heaven — the Star Flow Steps held the movement of stars threading across the heavens, and so every step had to be planted upon the sky itself. In the same breath she slid her body forward, and where she landed was Zhen, the Thunder, for the Ominous Star was swift as a thunderclap and the stride carried that very momentum. Unfolding the Star Flow Steps through the Eight Trigrams to the very end, Hong Ryeon reached the far side of the chamber without meeting a single obstruction.
"Sayun. Come across."
"Yes, ma'am!"
Sayun nodded hard and started forward. Like the practiced Hong Ryeon before her, her footwork lacked for nothing. Only after she had crossed and Ryu Hyeon had joined them on the far side did the tightly sealed door finally begin to open.
Hong Ryeon stared at it and swallowed.
"The next room may test the Hongseong Divine Art as well."
"Um... then what do I do, Senior Sister?"
Sayun, who had as yet mastered only the first half of the art — would she be the thing that tripped them up? To that unspoken worry, Hong Ryeon flashed a grin. It was the same dependable smile of their Senior Sister that Sayun and Ryu Hyeon knew so well.
Just as Hong Ryeon had predicted, and as Sayun and Ryu Hyeon had suspected, nearly everything in the secret realm revolved around the Hongseong Divine Art. Footwork, palm arts, fist arts — and at the very last, even the sword arts. The one mercy was that the realm tested nothing beyond the art's fundamentals. Perhaps that was why the place felt less like a trial ground than a kind of training hall.
"I wish we could have brought the others along."
She carved one more sword mark into the wall, identical to the marks already etched there. Having reproduced the trace with the Crimson Flower Sword — the sword art of the Hongseong Divine Art's first half — Hong Ryeon muttered sourly as she watched the door grind open with a deep rumble.
"Senior Sister, have you ever seen a secret realm like this one?"
"Well... I've seen things like it."
None, admittedly, so brazen as to test a single martial art outright — but she had come across realms that gauged the level and refinement of one's techniques a time or two before.
"And at the end of realms like that—"
KIIIYEEEHH...!!
A dreadful shriek rolled out from beyond the open door. Sayun's shoulders stiffened and Ryu Hyeon's hand clamped around her sword hilt — and Hong Ryeon simply strode forward, calm as ever.
"There's almost always an enemy waiting."
An enemy. The demon beast set within the realm. Slaying that creature — the thing that could rightly be called the master of the realm — was what it meant to conquer the secret realm at all.
Ryu Hyeon nodded and moved to the fore. Hong Ryeon took the rear, and in the middle walked Sayun, whose martial skill was the weakest of the three. Formation set, the three advanced on the final chamber without loosening their guard — and there they found it.
KIIIYEEEEHH!!
Four arms. A powerfully built frame. Of its grotesquely twisted face, the most striking feature was teeth sharp as saw blades, and a tongue — long, endlessly long — slick with saliva that dripped dark as blood. Malice seethed in its slitted eyes, and vertical reptilian pupils had already marked the three who had entered as prey.
KIIIIEEE!
As that nerve-grating scream split the air and the thing rose to its feet, Hong Ryeon knew exactly what it was.
A Sonachal.
The most familiar — and most notoriously ferocious — of the demon beasts bound to secret realms. That a man-eating horror like this remained in the realm struck Hong Ryeon not as surreal, but as strangely realistic. Which made sense, really; it was the trials they had passed on the way here that had been the surreal part.
"Go on, then."
With a ring of steel, Ryu Hyeon leveled her blade at the Sonachal as it swept greedy glances over them. The Hongseong Divine Art energy — anathema to the beast — surged up along her meridians and wreathed her sword in a deep, blood-red sword qi.
But Hong Ryeon did not move. She simply stood with her arms crossed, watching, as though weighing the real against the unreal.
"Senior Sister?"
"Ryu Hyeon. Fall back."
"What?!"
"Sayun."
"...Yes, Senior Sister."
"Can you take it alone?"
"Senior Sister?!"
Ryu Hyeon could only be aghast. Say what you would about the Sonachal being one of the more commonly encountered demon beasts in secret realms — a demon beast was still a demon beast. Caught in those long, thick forearms, bone would snap; raked by claws sharp as knives, flesh would tear. It was a dangerous foe. So why on earth send a girl as young as Sayun in alone? Even if the beast was looking weakened, wounds gouged all over its body.
But Hong Ryeon's eyes were dead serious.
"If you can bring that thing down by yourself, you'll grow. And..."
"...I'll try."
Ryu Hyeon moved to protest — but Sayun stepped forward before she could. The only thing in her hand was a wooden sword, so Ryu Hyeon hastily tossed her a real one. Sayun caught it cleanly and gave a bashful little smile.
"Thank you."
"Ugh... you be careful! The moment it feels dangerous, you pull back, you hear me?!"
Just knowing there was someone behind her thinking of her — someone ready to protect her — was enough to thin the tension. A fight to the death. Doing battle with a demon beast was nothing less than the raw arena of survival, where life itself was the wager. If even a sliver of that tension could be eased in a place like this, it would only keep her safer.
Ryu Hyeon watched the girl walk steadily toward the Sonachal — then whipped her glare onto Hong Ryeon.
"Why Sayun...?"
"Let's just watch, for now."
Gone was Hong Ryeon's usual playfulness. In its place was a cold edge that no one present could have defied.
KYAAAAHH!!
I can do this.
Sayun tipped her body away from the claws lunging for her head and slashed back, fast. It was not her first time holding a real blade — but it was her first time pointing one at something that lived.
No — could she even call that thing alive? That demon beast, dripping black fluid like pus, hurling itself at her without the slightest care for its own wounds? Could an enemy whose eyes held nothing but hostility and malice truly be called a living being at all?
However quickly those thoughts raced, her feet moved with utter naturalness. There was little tension in her at all. Because her senior sisters stood behind her? No — it wasn't that. Perhaps it was because she had already felt tension far greater than this. Perhaps, unlike back then, some of the weight was gone — the burden of people she had to protect.
But what did any of that matter? The task before her hadn't changed.
KYAAAAHH!!
Sayun evaded its strikes while slipping stabs into every opening, hooking its legs or falling back on her footwork to answer with fist strikes — and apparently the little nuisance was beginning to grate on the beast's nerves. The Sonachal's head reared, killing intent boiling in its eyes.
And still she was not afraid. Still she was not nervous.
Sayun twisted her head aside. A few strands of hair like grey thread fluttered up into the air — but the claw found nothing. Better yet, it opened a gap in the beast's guard, and she seized it, driving her blade into the Sonachal's armpit.
SHRAKK!!
The strike flowed on in one seamless line. Even a blow that grave did not quell the beast's greed, but the arm she had half-severed on the downstroke dropped away with a dull thud. She kicked the severed limb into its face and pressed through the opening, one step closer. Like a star weaving across the night sky, Sayun's small body closed in on the Sonachal.
Something so small. Something that looked as though a single clean blow would kill it outright — that such a tiny thing carried stings so sharp, so threatening, was an humiliation the Sonachal could not stomach. And so it had no thought of dodging. Two of its arms came crashing down—
FWOOSH!!
KIIYEEEHH!!
—and were severed.
Blood Wind. One of the sword forms of the Hongseong Divine Art had unfolded — and accomplished the feat.
To be sure, the Blood Wind of Sayun's current level could never have split the Sonachal's thick hide and bone in a single stroke. The reason its arm came off all the same was that she had spent the whole fight patiently seeking out those same spots, wearing the hide thin.
But what did that matter now? Only one thing mattered. The Sonachal's arm was gone — and a great opening had yawned open before her.
So Sayun closed the distance, fast. Faced with the aura radiating from the little girl it had scorned and dismissed mere moments ago — a plaything it had meant only to tear apart — the Sonachal found itself taking a step back. Utterly crushed, from sheer presence alone.
...Kkeh...
Then there was no reason left to hesitate. Sayun whirled her sword hand in a full circle and struck — and the keen point became a single streak of starlight that pierced straight through the Sonachal's heart.
"Hahh... hahh..."
Only after the Sonachal's body crumpled did Sayun finally gulp down great lungfuls of air. The first half of the Hongseong Divine Art — nothing more than the techniques she had reconfirmed while working through this realm — had been enough to bring the beast down.
She stared blankly at the fallen thing, then backed away, blade still raised against some last twitch of revival — but the Sonachal never rose again. Only then did she turn her head, and there she saw it: Ryu Hyeon, beaming and clapping, and Hong Ryeon, who had believed in her.
But Sayun was looking further still. Among those she saw were others who, unlike Hong Ryeon and Ryu Hyeon, were not at her side — and for that very reason felt all the more precious.
'...Thank you. Uncle.'
To her benefactor — the one who had, it seemed, taught her all of this for the sole purpose of seeing her grow — Sayun offered her thanks in silence.
And she resolved to write her letter the very moment she returned home.